Firebrand (Rebel Angel Series) Page 12

  ‘Aye, so he is! Let him through!’

  Conal let me go, pushing me back into the press of people so that he was alone beside the priest’s corpse.

  Morag MacLeod was somewhere near me; I could hear her. ‘Fell right over on his back, so he did. Like a tree. I never saw the like of it. Not even a moment to cry out, poor man. Put his hands to his face like he’d been struck, and over he went.’

  She was loving this, the auld bitch.

  ‘Something not natural about it,’ growled a voice behind me.

  ‘That’s no’ the first unnatural thing I’ve seen the day.’ William Beag slanted his eyes in my direction, a nasty little smirk on his face.

  ‘A seizure,’ someone suggested. ‘A fit.’

  The priest’s eyelids were wide open, but his eyes were empty of light, empty of everything. I saw Conal’s fingers shake slightly as he drew the man’s eyelids down, but it took him a couple of attempts; the lids wouldn’t close, as if the priest still couldn’t believe what had happened to him. The crowd behind me fell silent as they watched Conal. At last he held the lids down with his fingers, and they stayed shut. Hesitantly, he took his hands away.

  ‘Was there nothing you could do, then?’ That was the miller. Wolf-killer.

  Somebody was muttering on the far side of the crowd. I couldn’t hear what was said, but a voice agreed grimly, ‘Aye. Damn right.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Conal redundantly, standing up. For a moment he hesitated, as if he thought he was missing something, then stepped back and pressed back into the first line of gawpers. Morag MacLeod had pushed her way through for a better view, and now she made that ostentatious crossing motion with her fingers against her breastbone. Others glanced at one another, then followed her example.

  Under his breath, Conal swore at himself.

  ‘Seizure?’ I asked him, as he hustled me away.

  Conal was silent for a second, glancing over his shoulder. Once again, no-one was watching us. Back to normal. I thought.

  ‘It could have been. Come on.’

  That wasn’t all it was, I could tell. I knew Conal better than that. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s trouble,’ said Conal, and spat. ‘Let’s go.’

  15

  It’s all very well saying Let’s keep our heads down. There’s still business to be done, and bread and ale to be bought, and lots to be drawn. We couldn’t stay away from the clachan forever, but we spent as little time there as we could. I worried vaguely about Ma Sinclair, but I didn’t go near the inn for a while.

  It seemed the clachan couldn’t do without a god-botherer, so a new priest arrived when the old one was barely cold in the ground. We’d see this new one around the place: preaching his joyless gospel, frowning on the flirting girls, wringing his bony hands in prayer, but he didn’t go to the inn as the old priest had. He was a lot younger, though you’d think from the way he stood on his dignity and his moral high ground that he’d lived longer than a Sithe, and had loved nothing.

  We never went to the services in the small grim church, never had done and weren’t about to start. Besides, the priest’s arrival coincided with an epidemic of sickness in the clachan. When it first broke out, even Conal and I found ourselves nauseous and feverish, as if a miasma of disease lay over the whole glen and couldn’t be escaped. It wasn’t that we were vulnerable to plague, if plague it was; it’s just that we were unaccustomed to sickness and Conal seemed ever more unnerved. He muttered about the people of the glen thinking he was a healer, that he didn’t know what was wrong or what to do about it so there wasn’t any point sticking his neck out. And then under his breath I heard him say something about blame, and the laying of it, and that we’d better keep our mouths shut and keep our heads down.

  It wasn’t plague. After a few weeks the sickness ebbed, and glen life grew normal again. We swallowed our misgivings, and frequented the clachan, and did our best to ignore the priest proselytising in the muddy marketplace. We kept ourselves as much as we could to ourselves, and we trusted to the Veil. And I’d almost forgotten the priest, had almost learned not to worry about him preaching his god’s wrath and his own hate, when he walked up the glen and through the mossy birchwood one night and rapped his staff on our door.

  Conal was shocked, and suspicious, but he could hardly turn the man away. The priest sidled into the blackhouse with a look of contempt he couldn’t hide, his nostrils flaring in distaste. He was the boniest creature I’d ever seen, short of actual cadavers (of which I’d now seen plenty), so at least he seemed to follow his own strictures of thrift and frugality. His pale eyes had a yellowish tinge, his skin a papery cast, his hair was lank and sparse. Gods knew—well, his god would—why he cast such a spell over the clachan and the glen.

  ‘Good evening, my brothers.’ He smiled. I could taste bile in my throat; I didn’t smile back, but Conal gripped his proffered hand, glanced down at it, then let it go like a viper.

  ‘I’m not your brother,’ I pointed out.

  He looked at me, silent just long enough to make me fidget with discomfort. His voice, when he wasn’t braying his hatred, was like the rustle of air through dead leaves. ‘You’re the simple one, aren’t you?’ He gave me a conspiratorial smile. ‘Well. Perhaps not, hm?’

  Conal had backed slightly against a wooden chair, and I knew why, but perhaps it was that movement that gave us away; perhaps it was just that Branndair could not repress his tiny growl of distrust. He got a nip for it from Liath, but it was too late. I glanced up at the priest, alarmed, but he only looked thoughtful as he stooped to look at the cubs beneath the chair, then straightened again.

  ‘What a quaint choice of…’ he hesitated, licking his upper lip ‘… pets.’

  I knew he’d been on the point of using another word. But he was choosing his words very, very carefully.

  ‘It’s kind of you to visit, Father,’ said Conal mechanically.

  ‘Please,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t call me Father. I am Pastor of my flock. I have no idolatrous pretensions.’

  ‘No.’ Conal flushed and glanced at me. I rolled my eyes. I’d known all along he was making a mistake: trying to understand these people and their mutating theologies, that god of theirs who couldn’t make up his mind. I told him so, silently, but he didn’t even snap back at me. He just looked miserable.

  ‘You haven’t been in church,’ said the priest. ‘You know attendance is compulsory?’

  ‘Yes, Fath … your gr … Pastor,’ Conal managed, lamely.

  ‘You are strangers here, of course, so we have to make allowances.’ Taking his time, he looked us up and down, examining our clothes. I’d refused to wear the coarse shirt and plaid of the peasants; I found them ugly and uncomfortable, though the peasants seemed to find them practical enough. Conal had given in too, in the end, and like me he’d gone back to his own shirt and trews made of leather or decent wool. He was worried we’d stick out like bogles, but the astonished stares hadn’t lasted more than a week. They’d got used to us. And I’d got used to the Veil. In fact I was getting to like it very much.

  This man had taken notice of us, though. This man didn’t look as if he was going to let it drop. I felt my upper lip curling, so quickly I made my face expressionless again.

  ‘The kirk session has decreed,’ he told us with a tight little smile, ‘that those who fail to worship on Sundays should be punished in the stocks.’

  We both just gaped at him.

  He looked keenly at Conal. ‘I believe you often kept company with my … predecessor.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Conal.

  The priest made a little sound with his tongue and teeth. ‘Reverend Douglas was not strict in his application of God’s will. I have had much work to do since I arrived.’

  ‘That’s too bad,’ I said. ‘You should relax. Come to Ma Sinclair’s place.’

  His gaze on me was suddenly unshielded, and I saw the loathing with crystal clarity. ‘Whisky,’ he hissed, ‘is an abomination. The people
of this glen see their error and sin, and their mortal peril.’ His lips twitched. ‘I hope I will soon be able to say the same of both of you.’

  I must not spit. I made myself not spit on his feet. Conal nodded and muttered a few more niceties, and when he finally shut the door on the priest, he shut his eyes and exhaled as if he hadn’t breathed since the man had put his foot over our threshold.

  He turned to me. ‘You ever seen that man in the sunlight?’

  I frowned. ‘I suppose. It’s summer. And he’s over the glen like a rash, all the time.’

  ‘I mean, have you seen him in full sunlight?’

  I thought about it. ‘I don’t know. What are you thinking?’

  He shrugged. ‘Oh, probably something stupid. I can’t be sure. Don’t worry.’

  ~ Aye, right.

  He grinned at me suddenly. I liked that, I liked to see him looking himself again. It happened less and less often, but it reassured me when it did. Conal being afraid made me very, very afraid.

  I didn’t know how we were going to get out of the interminable, mind-numbing church services, but Conal was going to have to find a way. I swore to him that if I had to sit through the man’s brimstone-reeking opinions, I’d cut my own throat and put myself out of my misery. A long life was a long life, I told Conal, but it had to be worth living.

  Conal thought we would have to submit. I had never submitted in my life, unless it was to Conal’s damned educational ambitions. I loved him and I knew he had my best interests at heart but he didn’t own my conscience.

  I gnawed it over in my mind all week, till my head throbbed. I wanted the priest to forget we existed, I wanted us to slip from his mind the way we should, but it wasn’t happening. His pale gaze found me whenever I slunk into the clachan, and he’d smile.

  I was afraid of him.

  I wouldn’t submit to him, though. My life was not my own anymore but my soul was, and I wouldn’t do this. I didn’t want to go in the stocks, I didn’t want a whipping, and more than anything I didn’t want to fight Conal. He was my Captain and he had the right to order me to go, and he was capable of knocking me senseless and dragging me to church. But if I capitulated to this priest I’d lose something indefinably precious to me and I’d never get it back. Standing my ground was worth a beating, from the priest or from Conal. I just didn’t know how far it would go, and yes, I was afraid.

  My last morning in the clachan was a Saturday. I remember that because I had gritted my teeth and wound myself up to face my Captain either that evening or, failing that, at dawn on Sunday. I was there alone; I’d gone to draw lots for the best rigs next year, to negotiate our turn of the community plough, to fix a price for the shoeing of a horse. I’d gone to buy some ale and whisky, and with it some courage.

  I was so anxious, wound so tight inside myself that I almost failed to hear the men. But one voice caught my attention, thank the gods: William Beag’s grievance-ridden one.

  ‘She’s a bloody cheat. Waters her ale and overcharges for that shite whisky of hers.’

  I stopped in my tracks, but they hadn’t seen me, so I dodged into the shadows. It was obvious who they were verbally ripping to shreds, but what made me most uneasy was their dark huddle, their quiet grumbling voices, their quick over-the-shoulder glances. These were not the empty complaints of men who’d go straight to the inn and be cheerfully cheated again.

  ‘Aye,’ said another. ‘And it is true what Roderick Mor told you, William. Such a woman is a peril to all good men. There are those who don’t want to hear, who don’t want to know the danger. That is all.’

  ‘Aye, the fools! When their own bairns fall sick, when their own milk sours, when their own parts fall to disease: that’s when they’ll take notice. They don’t care about other folks’ misfortunes: no, not till it happens to them, and then they are sorry. Well, I will not sit by and see my neighbours ill-used.’

  ‘You are a good man, William Beag. You’re right, it’s time for right-thinking men to take a stand. I am with you.’ The burly redhead clasped William’s fat arm. ‘We’ll go up and find the boys at Nether Baile. They will want in on this.’

  ‘I’ll watch the place.’ William Beag nodded gravely. ‘She must not have the chance to slink away, and she may have charms to warn her. There are other villages that would not thank us for letting her go to them, unshriven and unrepentant and unpunished.’

  ‘Will you get the minister?’

  ‘Later,’ a small man growled. ‘Let’s find the Nether Baile boys first. They would not be wanting such business to go ahead without them.’

  As I watched them go, bloated with bloodlust and self-importance, I leaned against a mud-and-wattle wall and made swift cold calculations. The three brothers at Nether Baile: the blackhouse they shared with their beasts lay not a mile further up the glen, but this crowd were in no hurry. They were basking in their moment and they’d want to stretch it out.

  Conal had said the witch-terror came in waves, like a tide. He said that for years it would subside, and grow calm, and then it would roar to life again like an Atlantic storm. Conal had hoped we’d be lucky with the tides, lucky in the timing of our exile.

  Always looking on the bright side, that was my brother.

  Ma Sinclair kept her sullen old pony in a hollow beneath a small cliff, separate from the drovers’ ponies, penned in only by steep slopes and grey rock and its own disinclination to make a bid for freedom. Through a ragged forelock it glared at me, jaws moving round a mouthful of tough grass, but it didn’t shy away when I seized a handful of its coarse mane. It just swallowed its grass and bit me, so I bit it back, and so we came to an understanding, and I led it through the narrow gap in the rocks and round the back of the cliff.

  Overlooking the clachan from the north, I stopped, rubbing the pony’s warm neck. The little settlement backed onto the rocks here, sheltered and shadowed, with the bere-rigs on the farther side. No-one ever glanced this way, except by chance, and I could see the back of the inn quite clearly, and William Beag skulking at its rear.

  I laughed, and the pony shook its neck and whickered in echo. Flicking one ear back, it gave me the evil pony-eye. Scratching between its ears, I shoved the grubby grey forelock out of its face. Deep down in the brown eyes I thought I saw a gleam of silver that wasn’t weak reflected sun.

  I pulled back its eyelid with my thumb to make sure, and then I laughed again, and let the forelock fall untidily back.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ I scratched its neck. ‘The lover? Have you been thirty years with her? Or was it your dam or your sire he gave her?’

  The pony ripped up more grass and ignored me.

  ‘You, I think.’

  Sagging as if worked to exhaustion, the beast sighed and rested a hind leg. I looked out across the rough ground to the walls and the yard behind the inn, and the fool William Beag who thought he was hiding.

  ‘You’re not daft,’ I said to the pony. ‘You know what needs doing.’

  * * *

  ‘Ma,’ I said, knocking on the counter. ‘You’re needed.’

  Irritably she turned from a customer. ‘Now, lad, what is it? I’m busy, can you not see?’

  ‘You’re needed,’ I said again. ‘You’re needed to come now. It’s the pony. The pony’s needing you.’

  A bearded wonder glowered at me. ‘Ach, you wee feel, can you not leave her alone?’ Impatiently he rapped his tumbler on the counter.

  Ma Sinclair had turned to me. Her look was long and solemn, and broke at last into a smile. Her teeth glinted.

  ‘There now, Donal, the lad’s come to help. And you are to help yourself now, till I get back.’

  ‘I am to help myself?’ Bearded Wonder needed no further invitation, and he wasn’t bothered with me any more. I slid a pewter jug off the counter and led the old woman out the back.

  At the end of the dank passageway that led out to the yard, I stretched my arm across Ma Sinclair’s way and she came to a halt. Lifting the bag of clothing
and money and meal that I’d thrown together from the few possessions in her hovel, I thrust it into her arms.

  ‘Do you have anything else you need to take?’

  Briefly she peered into the bag. ‘Nothing more than what’s here. You’re a good lad. Is it so bad?’

  ‘It’s so bad. Shush, there’s one of them out the back.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘William Beag.’

  ‘Oh, laddie. Little William? Name or no name, he’s a good bit bigger than you.’

  ‘I’ve got help.’ Putting my fingers to my lips, I eased open the plank door.

  Bang on time, I heard the dull clop of hooves, and the pony turned into the yard and shook its mane. William Beag’s shadow, pressed back out of sight just to my left, detached itself from the wall and he took a step forward.

  It wasn’t a water horse or anything like one, but maybe it had known one in a previous life. It certainly seemed to know the routine. Lifting its head, all shy and enticing, an uncertain whicker, the rap of a hoof on the stones when William Beag’s attention seemed to wander back to the inn door. Raddled old nag that it was, it arched its thick neck and plumed its scraggy tail and was, for an instant, beautiful.

  ‘Ah,’ crooned William Beag, ‘and where did you come from, my bonny boy?’

  He stretched out a hand to the pony’s bridle, his fingers closing on its cheekpiece as mine tightened on the pewter jug. He did not look at its eye, and he did not look at the tilt of its head. He played true to form and forced its mouth open to look at its yellow teeth; and the pony, not liking his impudence, clamped them savagely on his fingers.

  I hadn’t meant that to happen, and I hadn’t meant the fool to scream like a girl, but I cut off his noise fast enough with one strong blow of the jug. He buckled and his face hit the mud. Catching the pony before it could shy and bolt, I strapped the meagre bag of belongings to its saddle.

  No untimely modesty from Ma Sinclair: she hitched up her skirts, and I caught a flash of her voluminous underwear as I gave her a leg up. I passed her a flask of water and one of whisky, and she stuffed them into the folds of her skirts.