The Night Side (5 page)

“That sounds almost like pipes,” Colin commented, squinting up at the battlements from whence the ghastly noise came. “Are you slaughtering pigs to-day?”

Frances and George both grimaced.

“That is Agonybags,” George explained. “He likes to play the pipes when we are out gowffing.”

“
Agonybags
?”

“The creature’s name is Tearlach MacAdam—and if he approaches us with his man-staff I wish you to beat and castrate him,” Frances said.

“I beg your pardon?” Colin asked, exchanging a puzzled look with MacJannet, who was playing respectful ghillie and standing a pace back with the pannier of clubs. Surely
man-staff
could not be a vulgar name for a club?

“If he comes down from the wall without his clothing I wish you to beat and castrate him,” Frances repeated. “The MacLeod said that you would assist me in every possible manner to improve my game. This would assist me. Who can play well with that monster about?”

“Is he apt to come down without his clothing?” Colin asked, a frown forming between his brows. He did not relish having to inform Mistress Balfour that his assistance with her game would likely stop short of perpetrating grievous bodily harm upon anyone—especially not the insane.

“
Oui.
It is most annoying. How am I to play with that filthy man about, torturing the dead skin of an animal? And he is not a fit sight for my cousin, who is still most young and innocent.”

“Have you considered taking away his pipes?” Colin suggested. “That would be less drastic than actually
destroying them or him. Pipes are quite expensive, you know.”

“That is a most clever idea,” Frances agreed. “And perhaps we should remove his tongue as well. He could not speak without a tongue.”

“His tongue?”

“
Oui!
His tongue and man-staff and pipes. I want them gone from my presence.”

Colin stared, quite dumbfounded. The woman, he was certain, was not jesting. But surely she could only suggest such a spleenful thing because she had never seen someone tortured.

Disturbing as her speech was, it did partially explain the MacLeod’s attraction to this female. Her expressed sentiments were very much after his own heart.

“It is on account of his handstaff not working anymore that he bothers Frances,” George innocently explained.

“His…handstaff?” Colin echoed again, feeling foolish but still hopelessly adrift. The only meaning he had ever heard applied to handstaff was one that a lady would never speak about, nor a gentleman in her presence.

“Aye,” George explained. “His pillicock, the baldheaded hermit, his—”

MacJannet coughed. “If I may? To be delicate, I believe the lad is speaking of Polyphemus, the one-eyed Cyclops of Greek legend.”

“George!” Frances scolded. “I do not wish to hear of this again. Tearlach speaks enough about such things!”

“Quite!” Colin agreed, frankly shocked at the conversation.
“But I am still rather puzzled. What has this creature’s, er, impotence to do with you?”

“Nothing! Have I not said so repeatedly?” Frances asked, stomping up the narrow cliff trail, her tiny feet sinking deeply into the loose shale. “If a ghost took away his manhood then he must ask the ghost to bring it back!”

“Ghost?” Colin knew he sounded startled.

“The matter is a little unusual,” George explained, breathing heavily as he toiled upward after his cousin. “Now that Tearlach cannot be with a woman anymore, he likes to talk about…things. This kind of speech used to aid him in…well…
things.
He thinks that maybe speaking with Frances will help him to become himself again and then he can lie with a woman.”

“I see.” Colin had to admit that if anything could reanimate wilted flesh it would be Frances Balfour. “But the ghost—”

“But Frances does not care for it, as it is disrespectful,” George went on. “And
I
do not care for his music. It hurts my ears until I cannot think. That is probably what chased the ghost away.”

“What ghost?” Colin demanded for a third time.

“Oh, the one that appeared after my father died. It blamed Tearlach for being alive when my father was dead. Since then he hasn’t been able to um…do things.”

“What idiocy!” But was it? The pipes squealed again, causing a shooting pain in Colin’s skull. “Why has no one thrashed this creature and taken his pipes away?” Colin demanded.

“It’s bad luck to hurt a piper,” George explained as
they topped the rise. “And we have no other to replace him. Ranald used to be our piper, but he is dead. And frankly, no one wants to risk any more bad luck. Besides, I don’t know who
could
kill him, as all the men are—”

“Ah, merciful Virgin!” Frances swore, a hand laid against the shapely bosom that jutted beneath her silken leine. “He comes!”

“Aye, but he has his plaid on,” George reminded her. “And he has not said anything to you. Yet.”

“If he speaks to me of pudendum, notches, ruts, heaping, coiting—”

“Quite!” Colin interrupted, horrified at the list of indelicate words tripping off Mistress Balfour’s delicate tongue.

“You are to beat him,” Frances instructed. “I insist upon it.”

“Certainly.” And he would, too. It occurred to Colin that his original thought that this poor creature might be suffering from more than lameness of staff could be correct, for this belief in impotence-causing ghosts sounded like an extreme weakness of the mind. Still, even the stupidest of creatures could be taught to avoid certain things if the right techniques were applied.

MacJannet coughed again, warning them that Tearlach was upon them.

“Leave us,” Frances said imperiously. Her tiny foot tapped impatiently. “I do not want you here.”

“Now, mistress! Ye ken that a cannae leave ye alone wi’ strange men.”

“I am not alone. My cousin is here, and these are not strange men. This is Monsieur Colin Mortlock, my Master of the Gowff, and his servant, MacJannet.”

“A sassun! Clasped at yer bosom?” Tearlach gasped. “Well, most surely I cannae leave ye now. We know wha manner o’ people these sassuns are.”

“No one is clasped at my bosom. Nor shall they be,” Frances Balfour said stonily. “My bosom is quite alone and contentedly so.”

“And what manner of person is that, ancient one?” Colin asked, more amused than offended. While the old man searched his memory for more insulting words, he hurried on, “Any road, I am only part sassun. I am of clan MacLeod on my mother’s side.”

“And mair the shame for it! A MacLeod! As well to hae a starving wolf in our midst.”

Colin was inclined to agree but could hardly say so with Frances and George standing about. “Be that as it may, if you are to remain with us, I must insist upon silence while I instruct my students. If you cause them to miss a shot I shall have to throw you into the sea to collect their balls,” he explained pleasantly, earning a look of approval from his new mistress.

“Aye! You and wha’ army, ye fiery pimpled pillico—
Ack!”
The old man got no further before Colin picked him up and hove him over the side of the short cliff.

It was not a long drop and there were no boulders below; still, Colin watched attentively to see that the oldster did in fact emerge from the surf with limbs unbroken. His present goal was to instruct, not maim.

“He fell in the water,” Frances said on a note of disappointment, watching as the bedraggled man toiled back up the cliff face.

“Aye, but it is very cold water,” Colin answered consolingly. “And now he shall have to go and find dry clothing. So we will be left in peace.”

However, Tearlach did not follow this sensible
course. It took him a few moments to regain the cliff top, but when he did, he turned immediately in their direction. His expression was dogged.

“So, it is as I feared. The man is daft,” Colin said softly to MacJannet.

“So it would appear.”

“This may prove fatiguing.” Colin selected a club at random and handed it to Frances Balfour. “I should like to see your form with my stick in hand,” he said blandly.

She did not react to his leading remark, suggesting to Colin that in spite of her horrifying vocabulary she truly was an innocent.

“As you wish.” Frances’s face and voice were both dubious, but she calmly set about addressing the ball. Her swing was clean and forceful, and it sent the leather pouch straight into the air, where it fell to earth only a few feet away.

“
Mon Dieu
!” she breathed, dismayed.

“Not at all, mistress,” Colin said quickly. “That is the design of this club. I thought we should see how they all performed before resuming the game.”

“Ah! That is sensible,” she said, relaxing. “George, you must try this one. It will be good for sand.”

The dripping Tearlach rejoined them. “You must be one for coo-kissing,” he said, squinting at Colin through dripping gray locks.

“He means that you are rough, sir,” MacJannet translated, sotto voce. He added, before Colin could react violently: “Coo-kissing is a mild vulgarism but not actually indecent speech.”

“I shall be rougher still if you use impolite language in front of your mistress again,” Colin said
sternly, handing the club to George. He instructed the lad: “Move up a wee bit and try to keep your head down.”

Tearlach searched Colin’s expression, and finding strict purpose there, wisely waited to speak until George had finished his swing and the ball landed back in the same place it began.

“How should I ken yer intentions tae the mistress? There were a sassun here once what went after a lass, and before he went away she was left in full disgrace and broken-kneed.”

“What? He broke her knees?” Colin asked, distracted in spite of himself. “Try again, George.”

“The saying is actually ‘she hath broken her leg above the knee,’” MacJannet explained.

“Aye—and so she had been! Hit on master vein, she was by this sassun fancier of the kirtles! And he didnae do right by her.”

“He means that this unfortunate maid had a child filiated upon her by a dissolute person from England who fled before a marriage could be arranged,” MacJannet reported, clearly warming to his role as Tearlach’s interpreter.

“Thank you, MacJannet, I followed that much. Hush now, both of you. George, try that swing again. You are still throwing your head up. I may have to tie a heavy stone to your neck to help you recall the need to keep your head still.”

“Does that work?” the boy asked hopefully.

“Aye, but it is best used only as a last resort. ‘Tis too easy to lose one’s teeth when the stone flies up.”

“Oh.”

George looked down with determination. This time
the ball managed to travel a couple of feet. Deciding not to press his luck, Colin urged them to move on.

Below he could hear the bellowing cattle coming up onto land. They sounded no happier than the sheep, but at least they were alive.

Tearlach followed them determinedly, though he was plainly interested in the cows milling upon the beach. “They’re aboot as restful as a nose full o’ wasps,” he observed. “They took tae that ocean wi’ as much pleasure as the Devil takes tae holy water.”

Colin handed Frances a different club and stood back smartly. It took her only a moment to let fly with a mighty swing. The leather ball sailed into the sky and seemed to disappear into the clouds.

“
Bien Dieu!”
she breathed happily if irreverently. Her smile was ecstatic.

“That one’s away wi’ the angles.” Tearlach exhaled through his teeth in veneration. “Who’d have thought that some wee lassie could hit a baw sae far?”

“Frances, that was amazing!” George congratulated. “You’ve never hit one so long.”

Colin was astounded, too, but did not permit himself to gasp.

“Very nice,” he said cautiously. “We shall have to see where it landed, of course, but excellently done.”

Frances smiled at him, eyes shining. “Ah! Splendid! I wish that we might play all the day and on every day. It is of much good fortune that you have come to us, Monsieur Mortlock. It seems that I shall actually have to say sincere thanks to the laird of the Mac-Leods for his suggestion of a Master of Gowff.”

Colin returned her smile but thought:
Play golf all the day and on every day?
He prayed that this would not be the case, or he, too, would have something to
say to his cousin, and it would not be words of thanks.

He made a mental note to instruct MacJannet to pray nightly for rain. He would do it himself, but he and the Lord had not been on the best of terms in recent years.

The twelvemonth and a day being up,
The dead began to speak:
‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep?’

—
“The Unquiet Grave”

Eventually the game came to an end and Colin was finally allowed to enter the keep. It was a good thing that things had gone smoothly with his introduction to his employer, because the MacLeod’s ship had not waited for him. He was stranded with the Balfours until his cousin chose to rescue him.

Noltland Castle came as rather a surprise. The first interesting feature was an iron yett that might be used to close upon hostile visitors. It had not the strength of some of the Norman fortifications, lacking a moat and bridge that might be drawn up, yet it was certainly something for which King James II should have been petitioned when it was installed in the last century. The castle was clearly a defensive fortification and could be used against the crown if taken by hostile forces.

Also of interest were a conspicuous number of shot holes built into the walls, a feature rarer in castles built in the last century, when the perpendicular style had been waning. In all, the keep had been designed
with one purpose, and that was to hinder intruders. It was not a pleasure palace where lords might play in between their hunts and carouses.

Given that he liked his hosts, Colin tried to put aside his years as an intelligencer and to look at the castle and its inhabitants with the eye of a guest. But it was in his nature to evaluate every new situation for its potential danger to both his person and the crown. Seen with these experienced eyes, the second unwelcome thing that intruded upon his notice was the extreme stillness within the keep’s walls.

Of course it was not completely noiseless. There was the eddying wind, which carried the familiar odors of fiery peat and sea. And there were the noises from fowl, which hunted grain in the courtyard while doing their best to avoid a group of children intent on playing some game that involved tossing pebbles at the birds and ominous chants of “Pullet gullet.” There were also the ripples of hushed female conversations that echoed softly off of the stone walls that sided the small yard.

In the distance was the slow clanging of a smith at work, though the blows he struck sounded as lazy and weak as a child’s. All about Colin was the hushed quietude of a churchyard.

A churchyard. Colin nodded at this description. It fit well. There were no horses about, and of the cattle and sheep that had come from the MacLeod, there was no sign. Colin assumed them to be grazing out on the heath—he hoped that they found something to eat out there. Belatedly it occurred to him that bringing animals to Noltland had been a mistake. If there was not enough grazing for them, they would have to be slaughtered immediately and that would be a waste.

Colin frowned and exchanged a long look with MacJannet, who nodded slowly.

It reassured Colin that MacJannet felt the strangeness as well. His bored brain was not imagining things. It
was
too calm. There was a sense of silence beyond the stillness of observation that followed the arrival of a stranger into a small and isolated community. Something was amiss at Noltland.

Mayhap the silence was partly mourning for the dead laird and his sons, but still it seemed to him that there should have been the sound of men practicing their swordplay or shooting at butts, and there should have been laughter as they teased each other about their mistakes or praised one another’s prowess. However, the courtyard was bereft of any males save those who had been in Mistress Balfour’s retinue.

Colin paused, watching and listening intently. There were a few small buildings standing against the walls, which might serve as stables, but they were stout and shallow, thatched with bracken and pegged with hazel sticks. They would shelter no beast larger than a pig or sheep.

This was not the sort of place where men would spend their time. It belonged to the women and children. Yet, where could the men be if not in the vacant yard? There were no fields to tend and no sign of nearby crofts.

Colin looked next at the battlements where he expected to see guards posted, and exhaled in shock. There were no men on the ramparts, only some pikes leaned against the wall and a woman seated on a threelegged stool, winding yarn into balls. Occasionally she would look up from her work and cast an eye over the
landscape, but she seemed to be the only lookout facing south.

Colin turned about slowly. There was another woman seated on the wall that overlooked the sea, but she was occupied with dipping stripped rushes into fat and not paying attention to the MacLeod’s retreating galley.

To the east and west, the battlements were bare of all but pikes.

“’Tis a shame,” Tearlach commented, and for one moment Colin wondered if the man had actually perceived his thoughts. But then the oldster went on with an apparent non sequitur: “The master and the Keith were brother starlings. She were a MacKay—and a faithless notch. She betrayed them both wi’ a buckface cuckholder in clan Gunn. She said she were seduced by the master, but I say that nae woman but a halfwit is ever seduced against her will.”

For the moment, Colin was too distracted to reprimand Tearlach for his conversation, and MacJannet too busy to translate the more unsavory parts.

Emboldened by Colin’s silence, Tearlach went on. “Master and I used tae gae holing. Had meself a fair horn-colic in them days. The master did envy me that when it came tae wenching. Mayhap he envies me still and that’s why he haunts me.”

MacJannet finally turned to stare. It was plain to Colin that he understood what the old man said, and equally apparent that MacJannet had no wish to render the words in an understandable vernacular. Colin prayed that the oldster’s conversation was equally incomprehensible to Mistress Balfour, or she would likely renew her demand that the obscene creature be beaten
and castrated. That would be a pity, as he seemed the only remaining adult male in the castle, and his information—however garbled—could be of use. Unless it truly was the
fallacia consequentis
it first appeared to be.

“Now there is just the laddie.” Tearlach went to clap a hand on George’s back, but the boy skittered away with an expression of distaste. “And how am I tae teach him the proper way fer a man tae drain his juices? We’ve nae agreeable ruts of life aen this castle, saving the mistress. But she’ll nae be coited until after marriage. Though I offered her an herbal pessarie an she wished to lay wi’ a man and not get herself wi’ child.”

Colin stared in disbelief. “Good God!”

“Wha?” the old man asked.

Colin decided that he was unprepared to comment on Tearlach’s offer of birth control, though he was feeling hourly more sympathetic to Frances’s expressed desire to have the old man’s tongue removed. This castle was no place for a lady—and apparently it never had been. The dead Balfour had obviously been diligent about practicing his seigneurial rights among the female inhabitants. How else would he have come to have thirty sons under one roof? Colin found himself moved to pity for the former mistress of Noltland and prayed that he would not meet her ghost.

“George will learn about these things in the fullness of time—and without your assistance!” Colin said adamantly.

At least he hoped this was so. This old satyr was not a proper person to see to the morals and education of a youth. There
had
to be someone else more fitting of guardianship. “Now, we will have no more
talk about this. And, if I were you, I would never speak of these things to the lady again. Your mistress is quite capable of knocking your head across the heath any time she chooses. She has already mentioned that you need castrating.”

Tearlach turned and eyed Mistress Balfour with new caution. Her swing with these newer, heavier clubs was indeed formidable, and there could be no denying that she—most inexplicably—did not care for his presence. At the moment she was engaged in conversation with an elderly woman who was busy drying fish on polished Ballachulish slates, and not paying him any heed, yet she retained her hold on one of the thicker clubs from MacJannet’s basket and was only a few paces distant. That club could do great damage to either his head or his other, more valued, organ.

“And another word of advice,” Colin added. “Do not play those pipes before dawn or I will hunt you down and throw them into the sea.”

“Ach! That willnae hurt them. Many a time it is that they have fallen in the brine.”

Colin could well believe it. He had never heard pipes sound so ill. They were some horrid degeneration of sound that was closer to screaming than music. Nevertheless, he felt he had to make his threat formidable.

“Perhaps not, but there is every chance that they will be carried out to sea if the tide is on the turn. You’d have to swim to Norway to see them again.”

“Hmph! Lowland heathen!” Tearlach snorted and stomped away from his unappreciative audience. A nearby gander hissed at him, perhaps also offended by the noise he produced.

“May I offer you something to drink?” George
Balfour asked, rejoining Colin and MacJannet now that Tearlach was gone. “We haven’t any proper whisky. ‘Tis a brew made with new heather and only a little malt, but it is still rather good.”

“Thank you,” Colin answered with a polite smile that concealed his thoughts.

“Frances would conduct you about, but she will be engaged for a while yet,” George said with slight awkwardness. “She is always very busy. It was lucky we could play today. Come inside and I shall show you over the place. It is not a difficult castle to learn, being quite modest and mostly a tower.”

“Of course.”

They entered first into a great hall whose ceiling was made with only a moderate vault, which had but one fireplace built on a wall opposite the circular staircase that led up and down to other levels. It was not an unusual design for castles built in this era. Colin knew that directly below them would be the lower vault where the servants, and sometimes animals, would be quartered in winter or in times of war. Beyond that would be the dungeons.

Being a young keep, the latter would not be so sullied with blood as many older prisons, but still, all dungeons were dreadful. The air was invariably foul and dank, and only dark deeds were done there, the kind that made angry ghosts. At the moment, it seemed unlikely that anyone living was in residence below, but Colin made a note to himself to explore after everyone had retired to bed. He was curious about this Bokey hole where the spectral hound was supposed to live. It sounded like an excellent place for a secret passage. If there was any danger to be had from that quarter, he preferred to know about it in advance.

Colin let his eyes wander upward and pause at the entresol. The room was more functional than ornamental, as was the narrow winding stairs, which could be easily defended by men with pikes or swords. And one ghost. The apparition first announced itself with an auditory herald, and Colin was able to school his face into calm before it appeared. The apparition was vague in the daylight, but he could plainly see that the haunt was a young man, dark and cruel of face, and he was dragging a body down the stairs by its heel. The only sound was the wet clunk of the victim’s battered skull thumping down the treads. As usual, no one else seemed aware of its gruesome presence. If they felt anything, it was probably an instinctive avoidance of a cold spot in the room. The spirit would be stronger and clearer at night, and Colin made a note to himself to avoid the stairs after dark unless it was an emergency. He had yet to meet a ghost that had hurt him physically, but some were very adept at inspiring terror and could be obnoxious once they realized that he could see them.

“You like it?” George asked.

“Indeed. It is a most sensible design.” It said a great deal about the thoughts of the builder that even the interior of the castle was assembled around the possibility of war. This certainly was no rich man’s toy.

The only surprise in the great room was a grand baldaquin of silk and gold canopied over a heavily carved cross-framed chair of state, which was more suited to an earl—or even a king—than a mere knight. Colin doubted that the present regent knew of this display of power, and that if she did that she would be pleased by it. Monarchs, and especially regents, tended to be sensitive to these things because of their many
wars with the rebellious lairds of the Isles, and were apt to react with opprobrium when they met with such usurpations of state. It might be wisest if the chair were taken down before they petitioned for royal help, if that were the path to be taken in defense of the keep.

There came a stir in a narrow passage, and then a serving wench arrived with a tray upon which rested a silver ewer and four goblets fashioned in the intricate design of the Gaels.

Refreshments were quickly but silently poured. Colin accepted his cup with a word of thanks that seemed to fluster the serving woman, and then raised his goblet in salute to the young Balfour. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it contained the sweet wine sent by the MacLeod rather than the offered brew made from heather. He wondered how the women had managed to move the heavy casks that had arrived on the ship, for he was quite certain that the MacLeod’s men had not been allowed inside.

MacJannet had also been served with a silver goblet of fine wine, though he was supposedly only a servant. Colin wondered if it was because he was a man. Those seemed so scarce at Noltland that mayhap every one was valued. Too, there seemed a lack of the formality among the servants that usually dominated such households. Perhaps a siege mentality had set in and they had dispensed with class roles. And perhaps they had all lost so much that mourning united them.

George tossed back his wine, wearing an expression of delighted surprise, and then, wearing a new flush in his cheeks, suggested that they continue their tour of the keep. His young tongue quickly relaxed in the genial
company and he grew expansive. He pointed the way to the privies and solar and even the kitchens, and then offered to conduct the men to their chambers. All the way up the stairs he regaled them with gruesome stories of haunts and portents. Obviously, he didn’t believe in any of the ghosts that supposedly haunted Noltland. This was simply the grisly appetite of an eleven-year-old boy finding an outlet in a male audience who might appreciate the sorts of things his female cousin doubtless abhorred.