A few hundred yards ago there had been a track, or at least some sort of vague line of smoother ground between the wet rushes and moor-grass that covered the hillside. But now even that had petered out, and Davie was half-running, half-trudging up an unreasonably steep slope with nothing at all to show the way his feet should take but the tread of Alan’s in front of him. Everything beyond the immediate surroundings—this little patch of hillside, the sodden vegetation, now and then a boulder or a tree, equally black with drenched moss—was lost in bleak white fog, which was getting even thicker now, and turning to rain. The air had the kind of cold, still clamminess that went with dense fog, but somehow there was still enough of a wind to blow the increasing rain in their faces as they walked.
Bloody miserable weather, in short. You’d never know it was June.
Davie stopped for a moment, pushing his clinging hair out of his eyes. His hands and face were numb with the cold, but at the same time the exertion of climbing at this pace made him uncomfortably hot. There was an unpleasant chilly dampness over his back, and he wasn’t sure whether it was sweat or fog.
Alan, noticing that he had stopped moving, turned round. ‘You all right, Davie?’
Davie looked up and bit back a very rude answer. Alan was tired and cold and wet too, after all. (Even though it was his fault they were on the run like this at all.) ‘Right enough,’ he said with a sigh, then went on walking.
At least Alan apparently still knew where they were going; Davie himself didn’t have the faintest clue where they were. (It was five days since they’d left James of the Glens’s cave; they had been somewhere in Glencoe, but that was a little while ago, and now? ...No; definitely no idea.) Alan placed his feet between the stems of the grass with an easy, nimble instinct. He didn’t trip and stumble over the tussocks, or end up above the ankle in muddy water after stepping suddenly into the alarmingly deep and almost invisible hollows in between them. He didn’t even make much noise in moving over the hillside. There was nothing else to hear in the muffling fog, and Davie’s ears were full of the sound of his own movements, the stumblings and splashings and heavy, clumsy footsteps. Alan seemed to move without making any sound at all. Really, now that he was paying attention to it, none at all.
Davie’s thoughts were interrupted by the need for close attention in navigating another tussock. When he raised his head the fog was actually clearing a bit up ahead, though by now he knew the Highlands well enough to know that it was only a brief respite. The real dense cloud would be back before long. Their route had brought them to a sort of broad cleft between two slopes: to the left rose the side of the mountain, steep and rocky and vanishing into the clouds of mist; on the right was a gentler, greener slope, which ended in a rounded peak low enough to be just visible. A couple of boulders stood close together at its foot. A little burn ran down the bottom of the cleft, more a gradual increase in the general sogginess of the ground than a distinct feature.
...As Davie demonstrated a moment later by stepping straight into another water-filled hollow. He had only time to think what a mistake it had been taking his attention off where he was placing his feet before he overbalanced completely. For several moments afterwards he just stayed like that, lying among the wet and muddy grass where he had fallen, one foot still submerged in black, icy water, too exhausted and cold and angry to try and get up.
‘Davie!’ Alan had turned back again and seen him. ‘Are you hurt? Can you get back up?’
‘I’m all right.’ With some mental effort, and what felt like a lot of physical effort too, Davie pulled his foot out of the water and shifted so that he was sitting on the ground, on the higher and merely damp part of the tussock.
‘Come on, then. We have to keep moving.’ Alan’s voice was not unkind, and he reached down a hand to Davie as he spoke. But Davie made no move to take hold of it.
‘What’s the point?’ he said. He pulled his leg further up and clasped his arms round his knee. ‘We’ve been running for days, and we’re hardly ahead of the redcoats. If this’—he made a sweeping gesture indicative of the unreasonable extent of boggy tussocks in the general vicinity—‘goes on much longer, I really will break my ankle sooner or later, and then...’ He trailed off and shook his head; he didn’t even have the energy to go on complaining.
‘We are ahead of the redcoats,’ said Alan, ‘and that’s worth a great deal. And I, for one, would like to stay ahead of them, so you’ve got to get up and keep going.’ This time he did not wait for Davie to take his arm, but got hold of him round the shoulders and pulled him bodily to his feet—still not ungently. Somehow that was the worst of it all.
‘I can’t, okay?’ half-shouted Davie. ‘I cannot keep going on like this. It’s been getting worse all day. If the redcoats don’t get us, I think I’ll die of cold, or exhaustion, or—’
‘Davie.’ Alan had hold of his arms now, and they were facing each other, close together. Alan’s face, always so expressive, showed a strange mix of impatience and earnestness. If it had been only impatience, or anger, Davie might have stood it better. ‘Davie, you won’t die. Not if we keep going. I—’
‘Oh, it’s all very well for you, isn’t it?’ said Davie. ‘You skip about over these bloody bogs like it’s the best road in Scotland. You know where you’re going; you’re used to this life. I can’t do what you can. And I never agreed to take the blame for James of the Glens, either! Did you even think what that would mean, Alan, when you told him you’d let him grass on us? Or was that the bottle of whisky you’d almost finished doing all the thinking for you?’
He pulled his arms away from Alan’s hands. He knew perfectly well that the things he was saying were unfair—or at least, they went further than it was fair to go—but he couldn’t stop himself, any more than he could drag his exhausted legs another step up the hill. The rainy fog was still drifting in his face. The bog-water squelched in his shoe and made the end of his trouser leg cling freezing to his skin. And the touch of Alan’s hands was the absolute worst of it all, because it reminded him, much more than he could bear just now, that despite all his anger at Alan for getting them into this ridiculous mess he still wanted nothing more than to stay with him. He wanted Alan near him, wanted to feel his hands touching him like that...
But with those last words, it seemed, he had succeeded in making Alan really angry. Alan’s eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head and took a step back, saying, ‘Davie...’
What more he might have said, Davie never knew. They were staring at each other, absorbed in their argument; and the fog around them was thickening again; and between these two facts it was perhaps not very surprising that neither of them saw or heard the redcoats until it was too late.
‘There they are! Hey—you’re under arrest!’
They both spun round. There were two soldiers: one striding up the hill behind them, the other coming round the side of the green mound, both with muskets levelled. It was no use running, not when they were that close. For a desperate moment Davie wondered if they could fight. He looked at Alan, whose hand was on his swordhilt, but Alan shook his head. Davie looked back, and saw more soldiers coming up behind the first two—more of them than even Alan could take in a fight.
So this is the end of it, Davie thought glumly, and wished with a desperate, heartfelt sincerity that he had not been arguing with Alan at the last moment. Perhaps there would be time to make things right with him when they were in prison together.
Then Alan’s hand moved—first slowly, from his sword to an inner pocket of his coat, and then very quickly, so quickly that Davie couldn’t make out exactly what he was doing. It looked like he drew a couple of small objects from his pocket and hurled them at the nearest soldiers, one after the other.
The stricken redcoats might have hit an invisible wall, so suddenly did they stop moving; then they both sank to the ground and lay still.
Davie looked back at Alan in amazement. ‘What did you just do? They—have you killed them?’
Alan shook his head. ‘They’re not dead. But there’s no time—I haven’t got enough for the others. Here, this way!’ He grabbed Davie’s hand and pulled him away from the two mysteriously fallen redcoats.
Something very strange happened as they ran. A sudden wind, far stronger than the perverse breeze that had blown the fog into Davie’s face earlier, rose up and whisked the white droplets about in swirling eddies. The rushes and the grass stalks bent over almost to the ground, now this way and now that, as the wind hurled them about too. Davie put up his free hand to shield his face, trying to see where they were going.
They were approaching the boulders at the foot of the green mound. Davie, seeing them, lowered his hand to rub his eyes in astonishment, but there was no mistaking what he saw. Set into the side of the further boulder was a low wooden door.
‘That,’ he said, pointing to it, ‘was not there a few minutes ago.’
‘Not for you to see,’ said Alan, grabbing hold of the door-handle—a roughly-shaped handle made, not of metal, but of the same wood as the door itself. ‘No time—here!’
And without further explanation he pulled Davie through the door and slammed it closed behind them.
For a few moments they both leant against the door, getting their breath, and then Alan said, ‘We’ll be safe in here. The redcoats can’t see that door any more than you could.’
Davie, shaking his head, pushed himself away from the door and walked slowly forward into the—room? It seemed to be a room. It was a large, roundish room with high walls; darker shadows here and there gave an idea of passages leading off it. Towards one side the floor was empty, but the other side was filled with long tables, and these were set in preparation for a banquet: ornate plates, cutlery and vessels crowded densely over the tables, all made of gold and crystal, but there was as yet no food or drink on or in them. Various shelves and cupboards (if you could use as everyday a word as ‘cupboard’ of something with that many fancy carvings of leaves, flowers, birds and things all over its surface) stood against the wall behind the tables. The shelf nearest Davie was a store of musical instruments: there were a set of pipes, some small bells, four or five whistles of various sizes and designs. At the furthest point of the wall behind the tables there was a huge hearth in which a fire burnt, filling the room with a surprisingly strong flickering light. Davie looked closer, because something seemed odd about that fire, and then he saw: there were no logs, or peats, or in fact any fuel at all visible within the flames.
Looking at all the unexpected splendour, though, Davie remembered the green hill outside (surely it wasn’t even big enough to contain all this?). ‘This is another cave,’ he said, almost accusingly. ‘Does another of your chieftain friends live here?’
‘You might say that,’ said Alan, who had wandered over to the nearest of the tables and was inspecting a large golden goblet which stood thereon. ‘But it’s not a cave, Davie. It’s a brugh.’
‘A brew? Well, I could certainly do with a cup of tea—maybe not that cup, though—’
Alan shook his head impatiently. ‘A brugh,’ he said. ‘We’re inside the hill. And yes, you might say that a chieftain friend of mine lives here, though it looks like no one’s home right now.’ He glanced round him at the cavernous shadows of the empty room. ‘But they won’t mind us taking shelter here for a while—till those soldiers have lost track of us, at any rate. And the soldiers can’t get in here. Not on their own.’
‘Right.’ Davie, slightly mystified, followed him over to the table and sat down on the bench, which was of dark wood decorated, like the shelves, with intricate carved designs of plants and animals. His foot and ankle were still slightly soggy, and his legs tired; it was a relief to sit down for a moment. He traced the stem of a carved rose with his thumb, took a few slow breaths and then said, ‘So we’re safe here for now, then. Will you explain what’s going on, Alan? Why was there suddenly a door in the hill? What did you do to those soldiers? What is this place?’
Alan hesitated for a moment, looking uncomfortable. Then he replaced the goblet on the table, sat down on the next bench to Davie’s, ran a hand over his hair and began, ‘It’s a bit of a long story. We’re inside the hill, like I said. The door appeared because I’—he waved his hand vaguely, searching for a word—‘knew it was there, and I asked it to. I—’
He had glanced at the door as he spoke—and now he broke off abruptly, his expression changed, and Davie, following his gaze, saw the door open and someone come in through it.
Quite a lot of someones, in fact.
They were walking slowly, in a sort of procession, so that it took a fair time to see how many people there were, but by the time the door closed behind the last of them there were maybe forty or fifty in the room. Apart from their size—they were all smallish people, the tallest of them being about half a head shorter than Davie—they looked ordinary enough at first glance. Most of them were dressed in green: green coats with ruffles all down the front, greenish tartan plaids, odd green wrinkled caps. The plaids were certainly not the red tartan that James of the Glens and his people had worn, so, deduced Davie, they must be from another clan. Besides that, they were not very different from the residents of Appin.
But then again, they were. There was something in their movements, or their manners, or some indefinable air about them, that was extraordinary. Now that Davie looked closer, those green dresses and coats and shawls were not the rough homespun he had at first taken them for; they were fine, beautiful clothes, richly embroidered with patterns that seemed akin to the carvings on the furniture, and far more the fashion than anything he had seen in the Highlands so far. And the people were all incredibly beautiful to look at: their features perfect, their movements stately. At the head of the procession was a lady, who seemed to be their leader, and who was the most grandly-dressed and beautiful of them all. Davie stared at them, fascinated.
—Of course: it was the music they were making! He had not even realised at first that it was music. It drifted in gradually, growing like the numbers in the procession, and it seemed more like part of the air made visible than like sound; but now he saw that the people were singing as they went, a solemn song without words, and some of them playing whistles and pipes and slowly beating little drums. It was about the most beautiful sound Davie had ever heard—though he couldn’t have said why, or described it very well at all.
Then he ran his eyes over the procession again and saw, near the back, two figures taller than the rest, and dressed not in green but in red. They were singing along with the others. But surely he had seen them before? It was difficult to think with that music in his ears... but Davie was sure that there was something important in the identity of those two figures, and he pushed his thoughts impatiently forward in the effort to find it.
He shook his head—looked again—and then, with an effort, turned away. ‘Alan, those are the redcoats!’ he whispered (it seemed appropriate not to speak too loudly over the music). ‘The ones you—shot.’
Alan must have cared less than he did about interrupting the music, because he got to his feet, pushing the bench noisily back as he did so. The lady at the front of the procession turned her head at the noise and saw him.
The music faded and stopped.
‘Alan Breck Stewart!’ exclaimed the lady. She was wearing a sort of scarf of very fine, gauzy green cloth draped over her arms above her dress; now she flung the scarf back over her shoulders and strode forward. ‘Well, well! What is it brings you here?’
It was a bewildering change of manner. The lady’s actual looks had not changed (surely they hadn’t?), but somehow in a moment she had lost all her grandeur and become—well, she looked rather like someone’s cheerful, good-natured auntie. She was beaming at Alan.
‘Oh, passing through,’ said Alan. ‘My companion and I are in need of a shelter for the night, and—’
‘You’re always welcome to join us, you know!’ she cried, not waiting for him to finish the question. ‘Who is your friend?’ And she peered at Davie.
‘My name’s—’ he began.
‘Just a friend, who’s travelling with me,’ interrupted Alan. ‘And this...’ Here he trailed off, unsure how to make the introduction.
‘He’s ashamed of me,’ said the lady in a jocularly confiding tone to Davie. ‘Alan, you’ve been spending too long on the other side. Still at that Jacobite business? It’s no good, I tell you. I’m Alan’s auntie,’ she added, turning back to Davie.
‘You—’ That wasn’t a very polite way to greet Alan’s relations, and Davie pulled himself together. This was a chance to show off his newly-acquired knowledge of the Highland clans. ‘You’re... related to James of the Glens, then?’
‘Oh, no!’ she said. ‘Other side of the family. I can’t stand James and his nonsense, personally. In-laws, you know!’ She was still speaking quite cheerfully.
‘Oh—okay,’ said Davie vaguely, trying to work this out. He could still see the redcoats at the back of the little crowd. The others next to them were directing them to a particular corner of the room. Some realisation or conclusion was trying to form itself, knocking insistently at the back of his mind, something to do with those soldiers, but he couldn’t think what it was.
Well, there was no harm in just asking.
‘Why have you got those soldiers with you?’ he said.
‘They’re going to dance with us!’ said Alan’s aunt, beaming again. ‘And to come to our dinner. Thank you for inviting them, Alan—and for this laddie, too... Now, Alan, you’ll play the pipes for us, won’t you? You’re the finest piper of us all, you know. The pipes!’ she added, in a voice suddenly imperious.
At this, one of the people standing behind her, apparently a sort of lady-in-waiting, skipped over to the shelf of musical instruments, picked up the pipes, brought them to where her mistress stood and finally, at a sign from her, held them out to Alan.
Alan glanced at Davie for a moment, hesitating, but he quickly made up his mind. ‘Of course I’ll play!’ he said, and took the pipes.
His aunt smiled—and it was not the smile of the woman she had been a minute ago, but the beautiful, cruel expression of the lady Davie had first seen leading the procession. In another moment the look was gone, and she turned from them with a sweep of her elaborate green dress. ‘To the dance, everyone!’ she cried, clapping her hands. ‘And’—this in a softer tone—‘you’ll make sure our guests are welcome.’
Davie, who was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he did not at all trust Alan’s auntie, looked indecisively between her and Alan, who was adjusting the pipes ready to play. The people were forming themselves into couples. Alan’s aunt had gone over to the taller of the two redcoats, and was saying something to him in a low voice. He looked about as bewildered as Davie felt, but he took the lady’s hand and allowed her to lead him to the head of the dancers.
Even besides how tired he was from all the climbing and running he’d done that day, Davie had no intention of joining them. He retreated into a corner by the tables and sat down on a bench.
Then Alan began to play.
That Alan had something of a talent for music, Davie already knew. In the last five days’ flight through the heather they had got to know each other’s little habits, as people do when they’re spending every moment of the day in each other’s company. One of Alan’s, which he indulged in whenever their rapid pace allowed him breath for it, was that of singing to himself: usually little disconnected scraps hummed or sung low, mostly in Gaelic, sometimes, Davie suspected, bits of his own invention, made up as he went. He had a very beautiful voice... and there was the same beauty now in his piping. It almost reminded Davie of the song his aunt’s people had been singing and playing when they first came into the room.
It was while thinking thus, and while watching Alan’s fingers move deftly over the chanter, that Davie at last actually recognised the tune he was playing. It wasn’t a Gaelic air, nor the strange song that had accompanied the procession. It was the Scots ballad called ‘Bonnie House o’ Airlie’—one of Davie’s own old favourites. He vaguely remembered having mentioned it, a day or two ago.
He raised his eyes from Alan’s hands to his face, and Alan, meeting his gaze, winked at him.
Davie looked away, shaking his head. But all the while the strange, familiar pipe-music sang in his heart, and he was smiling.
‘You like our music,’ said a voice, and Davie turned to see the lady-in-waiting, she who had fetched the pipes for Alan, standing in front of him, smiling mischievously. ‘Won’t you join in the dance?’
‘Ah—no, thank you. I’m... not much of a hand at the dancing,’ said Davie.
‘But Alan invited you here for us!’ she said. ‘And your friends are dancing. See that tall one with my lady, and there’s the other one dancing with my brother. Oh, their coats are so handsome, aren’t they? We haven’t had any of their sort come here for six years.’
‘They’re not my friends,’ said Davie, irrelevantly.
‘Well, but you’ll come and dance anyway?’ She held out her hand—less like a young lady flirting with a young gentleman than like a child guilelessly inviting a playmate to join in a game.
‘I don’t know any of the steps or anything. I really don’t think—’
‘Oh, well, suit yourself!’ she cried, and with that turned and walked off in a way that could only be described as flouncing. Her skirts, the colour of midsummer bracken and something like it in texture too, streamed in fronds behind her.
Davie was liking the goings-on less and less. He still felt, at the back of his mind, that there was something he ought to have realised and hadn’t. Sighing, he picked up and examined one of the plates on the table behind him: it was made of gold so highly polished that Davie could see his own face perfectly reflected in the middle of it, surrounded by an intricate border of embossed heather and thyme with gemstone-studded bumblebees flying among them, and then a complicated braided pattern round the rim. It was very beautiful, but, Davie couldn’t help thinking, not very practical. Gold was so heavy (though, curiously, the plate—which was certainly solid gold, not gilt, to look at it—didn’t feel as heavy as it ought to have done), and far too soft; and those fancy decorations would just get in the way.
He shook his head. Then he looked back at the dance, where the lady whom he had just so gravely offended was revolving in a circle of joined hands with the two redcoats and a gentleman who was very like her—the brother she’d mentioned, he supposed. The music had changed, and he liked this new song much less than Alan’s playing. It had the same weird enchanting quality as the music that had accompanied the procession, but it wasn’t pleasant at all anymore; it buzzed as if the bejewelled bees on the golden plate had come to life and were flying around inside his head. But if someone else was playing now—and a glance round the room confirmed this, for a small group of players were parading up and down with pipes and whistles—where was Alan?
It was as if in answer to this thought that a hand was placed on his shoulder. He looked up to see Alan.
‘Not dancing, Davie?’ he said. ‘I’m going to... won’t you?’
He held out his hand—with a smile, and not with the same manner as his strange kinswoman had just done.
And perhaps it was that, or the song he had played, or the memory of their quarrel before they came here, or the memories of other times before that when they had not been quarrelling... However it was, Davie, thinking that perhaps the day really was going better than it had been after all (his shoe and trouser-leg were almost completely dried out, even), stood up and took Alan’s hand, and went with him to the dance.
His protest about not knowing any of the steps had been quite true. There hadn’t been much dancing in Essendean—it was regarded as an eccentric and suspicious thing to do, even worse than going about wearing a bag—and he’d never learnt. So it was a silly thing to try and do it now, and Davie really expected to make as much of a fool of himself as he’d done in the fight on board the Precariosa, and to much less purpose. But he didn’t. Well, no, he did trip over his own feet a little, to start with, and the music was still making an unpleasant buzzing in his head, and the sheer weirdness of everything that was happening still bothered him. But Alan’s hand on his waist was steadying, and Alan’s smile when he did fumble a step (not in the least a mocking smile; no, it was something else, something he had to look away from almost as soon as he met Alan’s eyes) took his mind quite off those worries. In fact, as they moved together between the couples and groups that filled the empty floor it seemed as if Alan was leading him somewhere away from the music and the eerie firelight and the glittering gold—and away, also, from the hardships of running over the mountains and the danger of pursuing redcoats... somewhere that was just theirs. Davie was very ready to follow him there.
‘What is this place, then?’ Davie managed to ask after a little while, thinking that this was a chance to resume their interrupted conversation of earlier. ‘Is she really your aunt?’
Alan grimaced, and said ‘Yes’ as if he’d rather not have acknowledged the connection. ‘She’s not so bad, really, once you get to know her. A bit... peculiar.’
‘Well, that’s not much of a surprise,’ remarked Davie, thinking of James of the Glens.
‘And she and her people will give us shelter here for the night, which is the important thing. We’ll have to move on tomorrow. It wouldn’t be wise to stay very long, and we’ve got to keep moving. And’—this last was added with a manner of having suddenly remembered something important—‘don’t eat any of their food. It... wouldn’t agree with you.’
‘Right,’ said Davie. ‘Well, we’ve still got the oats, I suppose.’
‘Hmm. There’s no great harm in this, though,’ said Alan, with another sudden smile.
Davie opened his mouth to reply—though what he was going to say, he didn’t know—but before he could do so the music stopped, all in a moment, and the other dancers left off their dancing. Alan stepped away from him. The sudden change brought him back, a little bewilderingly, to awareness of the great room and its inhabitants. He looked around and saw Alan’s aunt striding through the crowd, her hands raised above her head.
‘Time for dinner!’ she cried. And then, turning and addressing Davie, added, ‘Look—it’s all here.’
He looked in the direction she indicated, at the long tables with their gold and crystal dishes. And those dishes, which had been empty, were now covered with food—food of a surprising abundance and variety. There were great joints of roast meat, pies with broad, glossy pastry lids, towers of fruit which certainly didn’t grow in the Highlands, little iced cakes that glittered more than the gold...
Somehow, none of it really looked very appealing. Certainly it was a far greater spectacle than Davie was accustomed to see at his meals—and his muddy, sweat-stained clothes were not an appropriate costume in which to sit down to such a feast—and he was more tired than hungry, really.
‘Er—I’m not hungry,’ he said. ‘I think I’d rather just go to bed, if you don’t mind.’
‘You don’t want any?’ said the lady. ‘Dear me, your friend isn’t much of a one for fun, is he, Alan?’
‘We’ve been on the run through the heather for five days,’ said Alan by way of excuse, placing a hand on Davie’s shoulder. ‘He’s tired, that’s all.’
While they spoke the dancers had been crowding towards the tables, and now most of them were seated on the benches, talking noisily to each other. Servants—vague shadowy figures, whose dress had not the glamorous splendour of their masters’—began to dish out the food. The lady-in-waiting and her brother were seated on either side of the two soldiers, and as Davie’s glance fell on the four of them a curious scene played out. One of the servants was helping the smaller of the redcoats to a generous slice of pie, to beaming encouragement from the lady. (It looked like chicken and leek—and leeks were Davie’s favourite; they were a rare luxury in the old days in the Borders—but the sight inspired in him no more desire to partake of the meal himself.) But the servant—surely he was a redcoat too? Not one Davie recognised from earlier; but his rather worn and tattered costume was, or must originally have been, the same scarlet, although made in a slightly different style—one that had been in fashion maybe twenty or thirty years ago.
‘Well,’ said Alan’s aunt, interrupting Davie’s puzzled thoughts, ‘I suppose that’s... understandable. We’ll find you a bed for the night.’ She spun round and went towards the tables, clapping her hands, and two of the servants left off their tasks and came over. ‘Alan’s guest here is tired,’ said the lady to them. ‘Find him a bedchamber.’
‘Of course, my lady,’ said one. He, at least, was not a redcoat; he was a wizened old man who wore the ordinary Highland dress of shirt and great kilt, with a wrinkled green cap on his head. ‘Come with us, laddie.’
He and his fellow-servant took Davie’s arms and made as if to march him off towards one of the doorways in the further wall.
‘Now, hold on,’ said Alan, trying to follow them and turn back to face his aunt at the same time, ‘I think I’ll come too—I don’t feel much up to dinner either, really—’
‘Oh, you must stay here, Alan!’ she said, taking hold of his elbow (surely she hadn’t been taller than him earlier?). ‘We haven’t seen you in so long. You must stay and tell us all about what you’ve been doing in France and everything. And what’s this about you being wanted for a murder?’
‘I—’ Alan hesitated, looking back at Davie, whom the servants were now leading firmly away in the direction of the shadowy doorway.
There was nothing to be done. Davie had almost reached the doorway—which, he now saw, had a dark, embroidered curtain hung over it instead of a door. He looked back over his shoulder for a moment and met Alan’s eyes; he was not sure what he saw there. Then one of the servants pulled the curtain aside and the other ushered him briskly through, and they saw each other no more.
The servants led Davie a short way along a passage and into a room, where, with a cheerful ‘There you go! You may stay the night here, we’ll fetch you in the morning,’ they left him.
He looked around. This room was much smaller than the grand hall they had just left, but no less richly furnished. There was a large four-poster bed with embroidered hangings; a dressing-table carved with the same motifs that adorned the tables and benches in the hall; a brazier in which a cheerful flame was crackling (but, like the big fire in the hall, there didn’t seem to be any actual logs or peats or anything in it); a mantelshelf on which stood a very intricate-looking clock in a wooden case. He peered at the clock for a moment: it had far more than the usual number of hands and hour markings, and he could not at all make out what time it indicated.
Well, it was a better accommodation than he’d had since his embarkation on the Precariosa, at least. And he’d see Alan in the morning... Mentally shrugging, Davie took off his coat and boots and lay down on the bed, pulling the layers of blankets over him.
But he couldn’t get to sleep. The strangely sourceless light from the brazier, which was not excluded by closing the bed-curtains, kept him wakeful. Whenever he did manage to close his eyes, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that his other senses were protesting against his sight, and that he lay, not in the luxurious bed that he saw with his eyes open, but on what his hands and body insisted was a hard, bare, narrow wooden bench. And all the time there was a thin, cold little worry in the back of his mind about Alan. He still didn’t trust this place; was there danger here, after all?—danger that might threaten Alan, separated from him?
And so, lying restlessly awake, he heard at once when a knock sounded on the door.
He swung himself out of bed, and reached the door a moment before it opened to reveal the lady-in-waiting and her brother. They wore perfectly-matched smiles, and she was holding something covered by a green cloth.
‘We were so sorry you couldn’t stay with us,’ said the gentleman. ‘But we’ve brought you some supper. You’ll take it, won’t you?’
And his sister, stepping forward, removed the cloth with a flourish, revealing—a dish of porridge.
‘We thought perhaps you didn’t like all that fancy stuff out there,’ she said confidingly. ‘Something a bit simpler will suit you better, no?’
It was a bit simpler than the feast outside, Davie supposed as he took the bowl from her, but even so it was unlike any dish of porridge he had ever seen before. The bowl was one of the ones from the hall—golden, and decorated round its broad rim with the familiar pattern of heather, thyme and bees. There was a spoon, whose golden handle was formed of another intricate pattern of twists and braids. The porridge itself... looked like ordinary porridge, actually, but porridge cooked to perfection: made with milk and probably cream too, just the right consistency, no doubt with a perfectly-judged pinch of salt in it. Nothing like the poor drammach on which he and Alan had subsisted the last few days.
Maybe it was that thought of Alan that did it... or maybe it was something suspicious in the offer itself. He looked at the bowl again with the sudden, sharp thought that he should not have taken it so casually and unthinkingly; then he raised his head and met the lady’s eyes.
And the realisation that his mind had been trying to arrive at ever since he got here was definitely made.
‘No,’ he said, taking a step back. ‘No, I don’t want this.’
‘You don’t?’
Davie shook his head. ‘No. You see,’ he said, ‘—I may not understand much of what’s going on here, but I’ve worked out who you are, and what you’re trying to do. They tell stories about you in the Lowlands, too, you know. It’s “the guid neighbours” there, and they take people to their dances under the hill and offer them food, just like you were doing to those poor soldiers.’
He was fairly in a panic. It was true that his hosts were well-known figures in the sort of winter fireside tales with which he was familiar, but he’d hardly expected ever actually to meet them—much less to meet them while wanted for a murder he’d had nothing to do with and on the run across a strange country, as if he didn’t already have enough problems. He had a vague sense that if he could go on talking, he would hit upon the right thing to do. While he talked, he was racking his brain trying to remember the old fanciful stories his mother had told him.
‘Oh, now,’ said the lady, holding up her hands, ‘don’t be so hasty. We only wanted—’
‘And I know what this means,’ interrupted Davie, brandishing the bowl of porridge. ‘You offering me food and all these—these silly gold things. Your queen, I suppose she is, said Alan had invited me here, but he asked for a night’s shelter, not to stay enchanted down here for a hundred years, or whatever it is! In fact,’ he added—and in a stronger voice, for his fear and panic were turning to anger now as he worked out the full meaning of his hosts’ plan; it was worth getting angry with people who tried to treat him and Alan like this—and what a better use of his anger than quarrelling with Alan! ‘—In fact, do you know what you’re trying to do? You’re trying to bloody kidnap me—again! God, I can’t go five minutes round here without someone—’
Here he broke off, for as he spoke he had glanced at the bowl of porridge in his hand. No longer was the bowl an ornate work of gold and gemstones, with its braided patterns and its heather and thyme and bees. It was a rough dish of wood, carved with no precision of shape, and very dirty. As for the porridge, it wasn’t porridge at all; it had turned into—
‘—Horse dung?’ said Davie. ‘Ugh.’ Wrinkling his nose, he put the bowl hastily down on the end of the bed—which had also transformed, from the rich four-poster that he had seen before to the bare wooden board of his more truthful senses.
At this point it occurred to him that his kind hosts, knowing that he had seen through them, might now be about to attack by some less subtle means than those they had tried at first. He swung round and looked back at them. But the... lady and gentleman... were both standing in the doorway, looks of dismay on their faces. They had changed too. The glittering gown and kilt were gone, replaced by dull green rags; their hair was unkempt and their faces frankly dirty.
...Why did they look like that? How had he made the porridge and the bowl and the bed reveal their true natures? And now Davie remembered what his mother had told him in her stories about the ‘guid neighbours’: they hated and feared the name of the Deity, the pronouncement of which would always dispel their enchantments. Well, Mr Campbell would probably have chided him for blasphemy for speaking as he had just done, but God Himself didn’t seem to mind.
What else could you do against them? They tried to say things, or ask you questions, to trick you, and you had to answer them back with ready wit. That wasn’t promising. He wasn’t witty or clever. Alan was much better at that sort of thing than he was.
Well, he would try and get out before they could start anything. ‘Where’s Alan?’ he said. ‘What are your friends doing to him? Let me out—’ He tried to get past them, but the lady, recovering herself, suddenly brought up her hand and gripped his arm with considerable strength.
‘You’d better not scorn our gifts like that, I think,’ she said. ‘What about the first one you took?’
Davie, trying to pull his arm free, stopped. ‘The first... What?’
‘The first one you took from us,’ she repeated, and let his arm go. ‘Your silver button. It’s one of ours, of course.’
Without thinking about the action, Davie reached into his pocket and retrieved Alan’s button. There it lay, heavy in his palm. It had not transformed into anything else—but nor could it be denied that the tiny, intricate twisting patterns on its silver surface were akin to those that had lately adorned the porridge spoon, and the dishes in the hall.
Perhaps he should think a bit more about what it meant that the Queen of the brugh beneath the hill was also Alan’s auntie.
But not now. ‘You’re trying to trick me again,’ he said, with more firmness than he felt. ‘I’m not staying here to listen to you—and this is a better gift than anything you’ve tried to give me!’ Pleased with this retort—hopefully it was witty enough to serve, and certainly both lady and gentleman looked disgusted—he stowed the button back in his pocket, and added deliberately, ‘Where’s Alan? God knows what your friends are doing to him.’
Not waiting for an answer, he pushed past them and ran out into the passage.
Which way had it been?... They’d turned left and then right to get here, he thought... He had to stop and think carefully a couple of times, but hurrying in what he hoped was the direction of the hall, he heard the sound of voices up ahead. One was a lady’s, too low to make out the words; but the other was raised in panicked anger—
‘What have you done with him?’
That was Alan! With a rush of relief, Davie ran towards the sound.
He reached a doorway covered by a curtain—whether it was the same one through which he had been taken earlier he couldn’t remember, but when he pulled the curtain carefully aside, there was the big hall again. The long tables still stood there, but the food was gone, and so were most of the diners. Only two figures remained, both on their feet, facing each other behind one of the tables about fifteen paces away from Davie. Neither of them had noticed him.
‘Where is he?’ demanded Alan. ‘Oh, you’ve—you’ve tricked us! I ought to have seen it—but how dare you do that to me?’
‘I really don’t know why you’re being so unreasonable, Alan,’ said the Queen. (Davie took it that this was her proper title. And she certainly looked it now: she stood a head or so taller than Alan, and the light in the room seemed to have gathered round her, so that she was brighter than anything else in it.) ‘You invited him here. You know what that means—or have you forgotten, spending so much time bothering about men and their silly little wars and their silly little thrones? I always thought my sister was a fool—and as for James of the Glens—’
Alan’s arm had jerked forward, as though he meant to make a very definite reply to that remark about the Jacobite cause. But by the time the Queen finished speaking his manner had changed, and what he said was, ‘I never did. I never invited him like you mean! The redcoats, ay, I know how that works, but he and I came here asking for shelter. Both of us, together. You had no right to think it was anything else. I... He’s my—friend.’ He wasn’t shouting anymore.
The Queen shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she said, not sounding much like it. ‘You can see him again, of course—whenever you’re here, in fact.’ And she smiled brightly.
Davie wondered if he ought to go into the room, or at least try and attract Alan’s attention somehow. But it seemed a very dangerous thing to do, when the Queen looked like that. He decided to stay put for the moment. Perhaps if their conversation ended and Alan tried to come this way?
Alan took a step back, shaking his head. ‘It’s too late, then,’ he said. He looked at the floor and bit his lip. For a moment Davie’s resolve to stay safely hidden was almost broken—so dejected and defeated Alan looked, he wanted nothing more than to go and tell him it wasn’t true, he was all right, and comfort him... But then, all at once, the air of hopelessness left Alan. He raised his head again, with a very different look in his eyes—and drew his sword.
‘Alan! You wouldn’t dare!’
The Queen leaned back before the sword’s point. She spoke slowly, and not in the flippant tone in which she had just condemned Davie to eternal enthralment under the earth. And, really, Davie was a bit shocked too: Alan drawing his sword on an unarmed lady! (Well, technically unarmed; what she could do without a weapon, he didn’t like to think...)
But then he saw. Alan didn’t mean to use the sword, at least not in the usual sense. The Queen was cringing away in a sort of fearful disgust, just as the other two had done when Davie named the Deity to them and parried their trick question. He remembered another piece of wisdom from his mother’s stories. You didn’t have to do any stabbing—not with these people; not if you had a steel, which was to say an iron, sword.
Alan wasn’t so defenceless, then; this seemed like a good point to interrupt. He pulled the curtain back and ran into the hall. ‘Alan! I’m here—I got away!’
Alan swung round. ‘Davie!’
One moment of shocked, incredulous relief—of a look in his eyes that fairly flipped Davie’s heart over in his chest to see—and then he was once more the fighter, intent on his purpose.
‘This way,’ he said, still speaking to Davie but looking back at the Queen. ‘We’re getting out of here. And I know what you like to do to people who escape from you,’ he added, ‘and if you try any of that on him—’ He brandished the sword menacingly.
Davie reached Alan’s side. Alan, keeping the sword firmly in his right hand, grabbed Davie’s hand with his left, and together they turned and ran.
As they got near the big door, which resolved into familiarity from gloomy shadow as they ran, Davie glanced back—had a brief vision of the Queen, now almost unrecognisable as the cheerful aunt of his first introduction to her, a terrible expression on her face, raising her hand towards him—then, all in a moment, they were through the door and out on the hillside.
It was night, and much clearer than the day had been. The nights never got totally dark at this time of year in the Highlands, and the lingering light of the vanished sun mingled with the cold silver of the moon to illuminate a wide expanse of hillside.
After a moment to take this in, Davie turned round. ‘The door’s not there anymore!’ he said.
‘Not to your sight,’ replied Alan, ‘but they can get through it just the same. We’d better go. Come on.’
He sheathed his sword and set off running in the same direction where they had been going before seeking safety in the brugh. Davie followed.
For a while it was almost the same as it had been before: endless running, stumbling in hollows, splashing in bog-water that was blacker than ever in the shadows of the dusky moonlight, pushing through clinging shoulder-high bracken. Ahead of him, Alan was breathing heavily and his face showed the effort of running, but he still went easily over the ground, and silently—as silently as the procession in the hall of the brugh...
At last Alan stopped. They were in a little stony hollow with a burn splashing through it. A small rowan tree, sturdy with the surprising robustness that rowans growing in such inhospitable places can have, clung to the rocks above the burn.
‘Have you heard anything?’ said Alan, turning and taking hold of Davie’s arm. His eyes were intent on Davie’s face, and he spoke with low urgency. ‘Any music, or a sound like a dog barking, or anything like that?’
Davie wasn’t sure exactly what ‘anything like that’ was supposed to mean from those two examples, but he hadn’t heard any sounds of pursuit, and said so.
‘Good,’ said Alan; ‘me neither.’ He let go of Davie’s arm and sighed. ‘It worked, then. And there’s no sign of any more redcoats either! We can rest here for a while.’
Davie, thinking that that was certainly a relief, sat down by the burn. He lowered his cupped hands into the water and took a drink, and then began washing his face. But after a few moments he looked up again. Alan wasn’t doing the same; he was standing still, looking at Davie, frowning.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Davie.
‘Nothing.’ Alan sat down beside Davie and dipped his own hands in the water. But no, something was still the matter. He kept leaning over as if to inspect the water in front of Davie, and once or twice glanced over at the rowan tree and (Davie thought) whispered something to it, before looking back at him again.
‘No, you’re still worried about something,’ said Davie. ‘What are you doing?’
No answer. There was a peculiar expression on Alan’s face; he looked almost guilty at thus being discovered (in whatever it was he was doing, talking to that tree), and yet still perplexed with worry.
Davie sat up straight. ‘They didn’t do anything to me, really,’ he said. ‘I’ve still got my sight—and—and she didn’t try to give me “a tongue that can never lie” or tell me I was going to die in a few days, or...’
He racked his brain, trying to remember what other terrible fates were supposed to befall people who made the escape that they had just made... and then something else occurred to him.
‘But you don’t know,’ he said, slowly, ‘that they didn’t do something earlier, before I found you... and one of the things they might have done,’ he went on, speeding up as the conclusion worked itself out, ‘is—kidnap me after all, and send an enchanted log of wood, or something, out to meet you and trick you into thinking everything’s fine! Is that it? You’re afraid they did that?’
Alan said nothing. He was sitting quite still, looking down at the water.
It was a difficult problem, thought Davie. How to prove that he was not, in fact, a log of alder wood enchanted into the semblance of himself and sent out into the world, while the true Davie Balfour was kept captive beneath the earth?
Then an idea occurred to him. Perhaps it was no good, but— He fumbled in his coat pocket. ‘If I was a changeling,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t still have this, would I?’ And he held out Alan’s silver button.
Alan looked at the button for a long few moments, then reached over and took the hand that held it gently in his own. He brushed his thumb across the patterned surface of the silver; Davie, feeling the movement, tried to hold still. ‘No,’ said Alan softly. ‘No, that’s true... they could fake your clothes and everything, but not this.’ He let out a long breath—not quite steadily—dropped Davie’s hand, and leaned back where he sat among the rocks.
Davie was still looking at the button. ‘You said you had this from your father, Duncan Stewart,’ he said after a moment, ‘and that sounds like the name of an ordinary Highlander, a man of Clan Stewart. But if this is... something special that they couldn’t fake with magic—and it’s made the same way as those gold dishes and things in the brugh—and if that... lady... is your aunt... Alan, you told me when we first met on board the ship that “we were both men”. But I don’t think that’s really true, is it?’
Another moment passed. Alan raised his head, but he didn’t look at Davie, and when he spoke it was very quietly. ‘It was true enough, in a way,’ he said. ‘And Duncan Stewart was an ordinary man of Clan Stewart, if you want to put it like that. But his wife... well, that was a strange story.’
The moon was very bright on the water of the burn. The soft white reflections and the sound of the flowing water were both at once steady and moving, almost nervously. A little wind shivered the feathery leaves and blossoms of the rowan tree. At last Davie said, ‘What did you do to those redcoats?’
In answer Alan sighed, reached into a pocket of his coat and brought out some small objects which he held out to Davie. Davie leaned over and examined them. They were two or three little pointed darts or arrowheads made of shaped flint. The points were slightly blunted. ‘Anyone hit by one of these,’ said Alan, ‘seems to die—seems to, on the outside. Really they’re taken away into the brugh. They’ll become servants of the Queen. They wait on her, and do the work of the brugh, and go to their dances and walk in their processions and run with them out hunting—for a hundred years or so. Then they’ll be let go, maybe.’ He glanced up at Davie. ‘You saw we were surrounded—it would’ve been no good to fight them with the sword. It was all I could do to save us. But I can’t say I regret it very much, for the like of them.’
Davie shook his head, though his gaze remained fixed on the flint arrows. He was feeling slightly sick. Perhaps it was that revulsion, or perhaps it was the natural desire to drag one old doubt, kept buried during the last few days of desperate flight, back up in contemplating another, that made him say next, ‘Is that what you used on Colin the Fox?’
Alan pushed the little arrows around his palm with the fingers of the other hand. ‘Enchanted,’ he said, rather meditatively, ‘under the hill, for a hundred years—or longer, sometimes, if they feel like keeping them longer. Buried in magic, more than they’re buried in earth. A servant to the Queen—waiting on her every whim—no will of their own, and no cruelties of their own devising either. Never to see another human face, unless it’s another poor soul enchanted the same way... It’s a horrible fate, Davie. Worse than death. No one could deserve it more than Colin the Fox.’ Alan really believed that; his tone as he pronounced the hated name left no doubt of it. He sighed. ‘But it’s not what he got. I didn’t use these on him.’ He replaced the arrows in his coat and leaned back slightly on the bank, his arms round his knees. And, in a few more words, still spoken very quietly, he explained why he had not thrown one of the flint arrows at Colin Campbell, nor done anything else to him, when he had the chance.
Now he raised one trailing hand in a little, useless gesture before letting it fall back to hang above his boots again. ‘We needed a place to hide from the redcoats,’ he said, ‘and I thought we could take shelter in there. I’ve been there plenty of times before! My aunt has always been... difficult. She likes to make trouble. But, Davie, I didn’t think she’d try that. If she’d succeeded today—’
If she had succeeded, it would be just as if Alan’s perfect aim had failed him in throwing an arrow at Colin the Fox. And that had meant so much to him that he had given up the chance of doing so, even though he hated Colin so much he thought he deserved the fate...
The last few minutes of revelations had been a lot for Davie to take in. He said nothing, and went on looking at the moonlit water, and tried to make sense of his own thoughts. They were more and more very still, as if the currents of the burn had swirled his mind round unfamiliar, confusing, twisting paths for too long, and they had now come to one of the calm pools amid the eddies and stopped there.
His hand was still clasped round Alan’s button. It was slightly warm to the touch, and he traced with his fingers the intricate patterns of the silver—which, whatever enchantment might originally have made them, had not faded or turned into roughly-hewn wood or some other worthless material, at the name of the Deity or anything else.
Since Davie had first read his father’s letter and set out for the House of Shaws his world had grown rapidly and bewilderingly wider. He had... had a lot of new experiences, and met some very strange people, sorts of people he’d had no idea even existed. True, things had got just a little bit even stranger today... But when he made that first choice to leave his old home, with only the letter and Mr Campbell’s hastily-drawn map to guide him, it had been with a sense of purpose and truthfulness which was new, unfamiliar and yet welcome. The life of old expectation—the prospect of choosing something to mong and getting an apprenticeship and sooner or later settling down with a nice girl from the village—he had faced then with a vague unease which by now had sharpened into definite knowledge. It would have been wrong to stay in Essendean; he had been right to leave. And, after all, he had been sneakingly aware, even then, of what being so reliably uninterested in nice girls from the village might mean... Well, plenty of the things he’d seen and experienced on this journey had been distinctly unpleasant; but plenty of them had not been—even today. The hope and confidence with which he had embarked on his travels had not always been rewarded, but they had always been right.
At this point Alan looked suddenly up and interrupted his thoughts. ‘It doesn’t matter, I see,’ he said, with another impatient little wave of his hand. ‘I can’t expect you to understand. And I shouldn’t. Never mind. I’m sorry for keeping it from you. You’ve got your half of the money; I’ll give you your half of the oats—if you can trust that gift!—and you can make your own way.’
‘No,’ said Davie—instinctively, almost before he understood what Alan meant. Then, more deliberately, ‘No, I don’t... Alan—’
Putting the button back in his pocket, he leaned over and took Alan’s hands in his own. For a moment they just looked at each other. Alan’s eyes held an awful doubt and a sort of earnest hopefulness.
He was all of that, wasn’t he? All the strangeness and frustration and wonder of Davie’s journey were in Alan. Even more so today, again. For all that his aunt and the other people of the brugh had been so unpleasantly inhospitable, Davie looked at this new revelation about Alan himself and felt... only the awed wonder that he’d felt at first, watching Alan balance on the bowsprit and leap across from one ship to the other.
Like so much of the rest of his knowledge, it had grown surer and more definite since then, and was only the more so now. Perhaps it was illogical—just as much as still feeling the way he did despite all the business of the murder and all their arguing—but it was just as true. Alan had promised so solemnly, when they were on the ship together facing that fight, to stand by his side; and he had kept that promise too, true as the silver of his gift.
Davie steadied the grip of his hands on Alan’s, and then leaned in and kissed him.
It was, perhaps, another kind of enchantment.
When they broke apart Alan’s eyes were shining in the mingled light. He had brought his arms round Davie, strong and warm, and now he shifted his hold slightly, stroking across the back of Davie’s shoulder through his coat.
For a little while neither of them said anything. Davie’s mind, tired out by all the thinking he’d been doing, was now full of a sort of light cloud of dizzy happiness that didn’t exactly make it easy to think of any more words to say out loud; but he thought something was called for, and so eventually, shifting his hands from Alan’s chest to cradle his face, he said quietly, ‘We’ll be more careful to keep a look out for the redcoats next time, right? Instead of getting distracted arguing. Oh, Alan, I’m sorry for what I said earlier, it was—’
‘Oh, no,’ said Alan, with a sort of stumbling laughter. ‘I’ve forgotten it. It doesn’t matter. You’re safe—and we’ve survived—and we won’t go and see my aunt again... and we’ll make it. Really.’
And for all the danger and difficulty they surely had still ahead of them if he was going to make it back to Cramond, Davie believed that. He nodded.
‘Will you tell me more about... your mother, and who you are, and what it means?’ he said after a moment. ‘Later, I mean.’ (He had other priorities just now, and reminded Alan of this as he spoke by moving one hand back and running the fingers through the hair at the back of Alan’s neck.)
‘Yes, if you want to know,’ said Alan, sounding slightly surprised.
‘Of course I want to know about you,’ said Davie, stroking Alan’s hair again. He had very pleasingly soft hair. ‘Besides, if there’s anything else you can do to keep us safe from redcoats by magic, I’d like to know about it before they’re almost upon us and I think we’re about to die.’
Alan looked slightly sheepish, but said, ‘That’s fair. Yes, there are ways—this friend will keep us safe here, for example’—and he nodded over at the rowan tree. ‘And I could tell you a few things that happened in ’45...’
But he trailed off and looked back up at Davie before saying any more, and as their eyes met he seemed to agree that this was best left for another time. Davie, almost laughing, pulled Alan to him and kissed him again.
A little later, ‘Davie, you’re cold,’ observed Alan.
‘I really don’t mind the cold right now, Alan,’ replied Davie, though it was true, now the heat of their run away from the brugh had worn off. A clear night like this was a cold one.
Alan smiled, disengaged himself from Davie just enough to take off his blue French coat, and then swung it round, with slightly more of a flourish than was really necessary, to settle it over both of them. They were very close together; the coat was quite big enough to cover them both. ‘That better?’ he said. In his mischievous smile the anxiety and dread of a little while ago were entirely forgotten. Davie’s heart was full of relief and fondness to see it.
‘Much better,’ agreed Davie.