Chapter 20
It took Isolde several hours of plunging through bramble patches and then trudging across the eerie grandeur of Doon’s cairn-strewn moorland and worse, before she spotted Devorgilla picking her way along the edge of the bogs.
The crone walked with her shoulders bent and a large willow basket on her arm. Even from a distance, Isolde could see that her boots’ red plaid shoelaces were bright as ever, as if the peat muck itself wouldn’t dare soil them.
Isolde shivered as she watched her, for the far-famed cailleach was surely on a magical quest, searching the ground as she shuffled along the edge of the nearest bog pool.
“Devorgilla!” Isolde hurried forward, Bodo on her heels.
“Ho, lassie!” The crone plucked a dark purple flower from a small cluster of green by the water’s edge and dropped it into her basket before she straightened.
“A good morrow to you.” She beamed at Isolde.
“And to you, great lady.” Isolde returned her smile. “A fine morning.”
“Tcha, but is it?” Devorgilla narrowed her cloudy eyes, peering at her. “You look a bittie ragged.”
“Only from crossing the moor.” Isolde glanced back at the way she’d come. Heather and rock stretched as far as she could see, a seemingly endless expanse. Turning back to Devorgilla, she shook out her skirts. “I should have rested on the way.”
“Tut! A young lassie like you?” Devorgilla set a hand on her hip, cackling. “I be out here almost every day.”
She leaned in, looking like a tiny black-garbed bird. “Such a fine morn shouldn’t be wasted.”
Isolde bit her tongue, almost telling her that a worse day had never dawned.
Instead, she bent to peer into the crone’s basket. It held mostly bunches of greenery. But also roots still clumped with earth, tiny purple bog violets, and something that smelled tart, spicy, and familiar.
Something she wished worked as powerfully as it tasted.
Isolde straightened, relieved. “Are you gathering ingredients for the potion?”
“So I am. My bones told me you’d be wanting more,” Devorgilla said, her voice guarded, the look on her face unusually cautious.
Secretive.
“Your bones are accurate as always.” Isolde pushed a tendril of hair off her face. “I do need more. Much more, and this time of a stronger potency.”
Devorgilla’s eyes widened. “Why is that?”
“The potion isn’t very effective.” Isolde glanced out over the bog pool. When she turned back, she found the crone’s faded blue eyes studying her.
“No’ working proper, eh?”
“Apparently not.” Isolde sighed. “And please do not douse my food again. He noticed.”
“Ach!” Devorgilla clapped a hand to her cheek. “By the moon and stars, but I forgot he’s dining with you.”
Isolde knew she was lying through the gaps in her teeth.
“Please be more careful.”
“Och, for sure. It willnae happen again,” Devorgilla promised, scrubbing at a peat smudge on her sleeve.
Avoiding Isolde’s eyes.
Looking up at last, she gave Isolde a crafty smile. “I dinnae ken why I was so careless.”
“Just make another batch as quickly as possible, double or triple its strength.” Isolde hoped that would help. “And see it’s delivered only into my own two hands.”
“As you will.” Devorgilla bobbed her grizzled head. “Did the MacLean eat the victuals I treated with the potion?”
“He ate a frog leg.”
“Did he now?”
Isolde nodded. “He didn’t care for the taste, but he finished it.”
“Dearie me.” Devorgilla pursed her lips. “Did he touch anything else?”
“Nae, thank the gods.”
“They do be watching o’er ye.” Devorgilla used a sage tone, her gaze on a birch knoll on the far side of the bog.
“I’ve been searching for you since sunrise,” Isolde said, changing the subject. “I probably still would be if Lugh hadn’t told me where to look.”
“He spoke?” Devorgilla whipped her head back around, delight in her cloudy eyes.
“Only a few words.” Isolde glanced again at the still, black-surfaced bog pool. “He worried I’d lose myself out here if he didn’t tell me the direction you’d taken,” she said, trying to ease into asking what she must. “I told him I must speak with you on a matter of great urgency.”
“Is that so?” Devorgilla bent to pick another bog violet. She parted the cluster of leaves until her fingers found the wee purple bud. “More urgent than needing the potion?”
“Indeed, something most grave.” Isolde glanced at the clear blue sky and wished her life could be as cloudless.
“I must ask a favor,” she said, looking back at the crone. “Nae, a request. Something you must do for me.”
“Eh?” Devorgilla held up the tiny flower and peered at it. “A request I must do?”
Isolde nodded.
“Lassie, you know I will help you always. But a request is just that. Something I must do is an order.”
Devorgilla raised a bristly brow, waggled her knotty fingers. “Be it Laird MacLean’s bonnie smile or his braw embrace that’s tied your tongue in knots?”
She leaned forward then, looking mischievous. “Or has he kissed you?”
Seeming pleased by the notion, she rocked back on her heels. “A kiss from such a bonnie man would scatter the wits of any woman.”
Isolde blinked, half wondering if the crone’s powers included seeing through walls.
What would you know of his smiles and kisses? She almost blurted. “You speak as if you know him,” she said instead.
“Now, lassie, how could I call this isle my own if I didn’t?” Devorgilla tilted her head, her foggy-eyed gaze remarkably bright. “Let us say I know of him.”
“Did you see him in your cauldron’s steam?” Isolde tried to trick her, hoping she’d reveal if he was indeed the man shown to her by the yarrow sprig on Beltane.
“I told you that when you came to my cottage.”
Isolde frowned. “You didn’t answer at all.”
Devorgilla raised a knotty finger. “That was the answer.”
“You haven’t seen him since?”
“I last saw him in your dungeon, as you know.” Devorgilla gave her a mischievous smile. “That was enough, it was.”
“For what?” Isolde blurted, startling Bodo who jumped up at her, his forepaws slamming against her skirts, his quizzical expression and crooked teeth making her smile despite her woes.
Devorgilla used the ruckus to adjust the willow basket against her hip. “You should know I dare not reveal all I see. Doing so would anger those who confer such gifts.”
Shuffling forward, she touched the bog violet to Isolde’s cheek. “Ah, lassie, do you no’ yet know there are some things we must see for ourselves?”
“I do, but…”
“So?”
Uncomfortable, Isolde glanced at the little flower in Devorgilla’s age-spotted hand. “How did you see that? Even I wouldn’t have noticed it, hidden as it was beneath so many leaves.”
“The most precious treasures are often found when we look in unlikely places,” Devorgilla said, and dropped the violet into her basket.
Knights admire wenches with steel in their veins.
The MacLean’s words swept past her then, riding the tail of a soft, sun-warmed breeze. So soft and warm, chill bumps broke out on her arms.
Isolde frowned.
But the moment passed, and she squared her shoulders. “Devorgilla, I want you to get a message to Balloch MacArthur,” she said before her rush of steely courage left her.
Devorgilla blinked. “Do ye now?”
“Aye.” Isolde stood firm.
To her surprise, the crone’s brow pleated.
“Even the worst winter storm will spend its force, lass,” she said, worry replacing her usual caginess. “Those who are wise do not disturb sleeping dogs.”
“I am not afraid of dogs.” Isolde glanced at Bodo. “Not four-legged or two-legged ones. Truth be told, some men are not worthy of being called a dog, for they lack a dog’s goodness.”
“They can still have a nasty bite.”
“I know.” Isolde spoke calmly, but Devorgilla’s concern deepened her own. “I will be careful.”
“See that you are.” Devorgilla nodded. “I’d rather you leave the MacArthur be.”
“It is too late.” Isolde tamped down the ill ease tightening her chest.
As if he knew she needed comfort, Bodo leaned hard against her legs, and she reached down and scratched him behind his soft, floppy ears.
“I must know. Can you get a message to MacArthur?” she asked when she straightened. “Is it in your power to do so?”
“Pah!” Devorgilla waved a hand as if dismissing the question.
But then she peered at her black-booted feet and as Isolde watched her, her nape prickled.
The crone’s red-plaid laces glowed and even appeared to dance, tossing about as if by a strong wind. Only – the gods save her – at the moment there was nothing more than a light spring breeze blowing across the moor.
Isolde blinked, and when she looked again, the laces were still. Equally reassuring, the red plaid was bright, but the colors no longer shimmered.
“Devorgilla…” Isolde prodded when the old woman began poking at a clump of grass with the toe of her boot. “Can you reach MacArthur?”
“What do you think?”
“That you could call him down from the moon if need be.”
Devorgilla cackled. “So I could.”
Isolde pounced. “Then you will help me?”
More grass nudging. “I would know why.”
Steely wenches.
“Because it matters and I am asking you,” Isolde said, feeling quite brave.
The crone glanced heavenward. “It will rain soon,” she claimed. “A fierce storm.”
Nary a cloud marred the brilliant blue sky.
“Lives depend on my getting a message to Balloch.” Isolde tried another tactic. “And not just the MacLean’s.”
That caught the cailleach’s attention. “Whose lives?”
“Gavin MacFie’s for one,” Isolde told her, hoping to impress the crone with the urgency of her task. “And two fine horses.”
“Nae!” Devorgilla’s eyes rounded. “Be that the truth?”
Isolde nodded. “Of course.”
“Aye, well…” Devorgilla set down her basket. Straightening, she fisted her hands on her hips. “You’d best tell me everything.”
And Isolde did, repeating the arguments she’d heard in the hall that morning. When she finished, Devorgilla shook her head, then stared out across the moor toward Dunmuir.
“I dinnae like it,” she said. “You’ll be treading perilous ground if you do this.”
A fine bold lass.
“I must.” Isolde squared her shoulders. “It is the only way.”
The crone picked up her basket. “So be it. What would you have him know?”
“That I am with child,” the steely wench in her said. “I want him told I am to bear another man’s child.”