Chapter 13
The storm raged for most of the night, which kept us comfortably alone in the cellar.
Nobody wanted to venture from in front of the fires to come down here, not with the rain whipping around the walls edged with the ice of oncoming winter, and the wind making the sea send spray high enough to pepper the headland with gobbets of salty foam.
Thunder occasionally kicked over the celestial dustbins and we slept in sudden jerks of waking and bursts of low conversation.
Lachlan and I did not discuss the kiss. It felt to me as though it had happened somewhere outside all this activity, in a place that time couldn’t reach.
I couldn’t think about it now, anyway. I had to concentrate on planning my approach to the earl and I let the kiss remain in the back of my mind as a quiet secret.
So I felt a little bit awkward when the morning dawned, quiet and with strips of sunlight coming down the stairs, when I was woken by a nudge from Lachlan and handed a mug of something warm.
‘It’s not tea, sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s gravy from the stew.’
‘Oh.’ I struggled to sit up, bleary and hoping my hair wasn’t standing on end. ‘Well, better than nothing.’
David was still asleep, so tightly wrapped in his blanket that I half suspected he might crawl free as a butterfly. Kaylinn and Mal were sitting at the table, clearly discussing Lachlan and me because they kept glancing over and grinning.
‘Are you sure you’re all right about doing this?’ Lachlan went on. ‘I’d like to say you don’t have to, but I really can’t see what other options we’ve got.’
‘It’s not dangerous,’ I said, sipping at the watery warmth. It was comforting on the stomach, that was about all you could say for it. ‘He can’t exactly throw me out of the window.’
‘What if this goes the same way as with the other one?’ Lachlan asked. ‘You could be invisible to this bloke too, after all.’
‘He’ll be able to see me. He just will, I know it.’
Lachlan stroked his beard again. ‘You seem very sure.’
‘I am. I can’t explain it. Like when I saw him, I knew who he was. As though we’ve got a connection of some kind.’
Now I got raised eyebrows. ‘Should I be worried?’
‘Don’t be daft. He’s three hundred years too old for me for a start.’
‘Right, right.’ More chin stroking. ‘Pax, I—’
‘Let’s not talk about this now, all right? I’ve got to do this and find out for certain and then we’re a step closer to getting home.’
He gave me a grin. ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’
‘It doesn’t really matter. Let’s do this, before the earl starts mingling with everyone else. I stand a better chance if he’s alone in his room.’
Kaylinn sighed. ‘I sure wish he could see me. I kinda like older men.’
‘Little bit too much older,’ Mal said. ‘Not exactly a sugar daddy, more like a quietly rotting corpse.’
‘Right.’ I stood up now. ‘Let’s wake David up and get to the castle.’
The doors were thrown wide this morning and there was much coming and going.
Cellar Dog detached himself from the milling pack of hounds and followed us up the inner stair, passing Jeannie on her way down with an empty bowl.
She was smiling to herself as she swept past us and I hoped the earl hadn’t been importuning her, even though I had only a vague idea what importuning was.
My imagination could fill in any gaps in my vocabulary.
He was alone when we arrived, sitting at the desk and leafing through papers. There was a mug of something that smelled like spiced wine beside him and he was in his shirt and breeches with no sign of the sweaty coat he’d arrived in.
We peeped from behind the tapestry. Now it came down to it I could feel my back prickling with nerves and my stomach was resenting that cup of warm gravy. What if he couldn’t see me? What if this was all a huge bust?
‘Go,’ Lachlan whispered. We still couldn’t stop ourselves from whispering. It was a hard habit to break.
I eased aside the fabric and tiptoed into the room.
The earl stayed bent over his paperwork, his long hair brushing his shoulders.
He must have had it tied back yesterday, I thought, getting closer.
He had the same straight nose and angular cheekbones as Lenny, but a squarer chin and, from the dark stubble that ornamented his lower face, he’d obviously not shaved in a day or so.
He pulled out a sheet of thick paper covered in, as Mal would have said, ‘ADHD Spider’ writing and scrutinised it closely.
I crept a bit closer but there wasn’t a single movement of acknowledgement and I found myself burning with annoyance and anger.
If he couldn’t sense me, then why was I even here?
I was about to reach out a hand and give him the same poke in the head as I’d given Ratface, when he said, ‘Well?’
I had that horrible feeling of embarrassment when you aren’t sure whether someone is talking to you or someone else and so any reply is going to look awkward.
I didn’t say anything, but I did jump back a few steps.
The earl sighed and now his eyes came up, raked over me and finally settled on my face.
‘You’re not fooling anyone, lass,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘If you want to go as a soldier you need to do more than put on your brother’s clothes and cut your hair.’
His accent wasn’t as broadly Scots as most of the others, but had a soft burr to it. This was not at all the ‘screaming, yelling about ghosts and trying to run away’ that I had expected, and I couldn’t think of a reply.
‘You’ll either be coming to fight or you’ll be wanting your young man released to go away with you,’ the earl went on, conversationally. ‘So, which is it? I have to tell you that I’ll no’ have young ladies in the battle that’s coming, however well they think they can hold a sword.’
My mouth still flapped. I heard a ‘Tell him!’ muttered at me from behind the tapestry and pulled myself together. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m… I’m a spirit. Sent from another world.’
It sounded stupid even as I said it and I wasn’t totally surprised when he burst out laughing. ‘Well, that’s a new one!’
‘I am!’ I said indignantly.
‘All right, you’re a bonny lass, I’ll humour you.’ Those brown eyes were very twinkly. ‘Why were you sent here? And if you’re a succubus after seducing me then you’re wasting your time. I’ve left my wife and the wee bairns away down in Edinburgh and I’ll not betray her.’
‘Good,’ I said, without thinking.
He stood up and came around the desk, leaning against it in front of me.
He smelled muskily of ‘man sweat’, not the BO I’d feared, and I made a mental note to tell Kaylinn, whose face I could see peering around the tapestry edge with an open mouth of lustful admiration.
He did look a bit like Chris Hemsworth, when you got close up.
‘So, then, young spirit. You’re not here to follow the army and you’re not here to take one of my boys home. So why are you here?’ He was still amused, his mouth pleated into a half-smile that he was clearly trying to restrain.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘That’s where it all gets a bit confusing.’
He didn’t believe me. That was obvious, so I must look totally solid to him. Short hair, trousers and boots, no wonder he thought I was impersonating a man.
‘Confusing, aye? Well, I think you’d better get back down to yon Jeannie and help her sort the provisions…’ He stretched out a hand to take my shoulder, presumably to turn me around and hurry me out of the room, and so his reaction when his hand went right through me was almost comical.
‘All the saints!’ He stepped back, hit the edge of the desk and stood staring. ‘But… but you’re there…’ He moved his hand through me a few times. It was very disconcerting to watch. ‘You’re a ghostie?’
‘Not… exactly.’ I tried to keep my voice level so as not to panic him further.
‘A demon, then? Or it’s a trick? Down in London they have the players, they sometimes act the ghost and it all looks real.’
‘Yes, but they don’t have people actually putting their hands through them, do they?’
‘Well, no.’ He seemed to calm down a little bit. ‘Perhaps I’m tired. Yes. That’ll be it. It was a hard ride yesterday, and I’m dreaming. Jamie!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Can you come in here a moment?’
The man we’d been calling the earl up to now came barrelling up the stairs. ‘Is all well with you?’ He walked straight through me and put a hand on the earl’s shoulder. ‘George? You look a little pale.’
Earl George cleared his throat a couple of times, straightened up and glared at me. I didn’t know why – it was hardly my fault that nobody else could see me. ‘Jamie,’ he said. ‘There’s no one else in here, is there?’
Jamie looked around suspiciously. The others, having had warning by being run through, had tidied the tapestry. ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘Why? Are you thinking we’ve spies in the castle?’
‘Not exactly,’ George said, subsiding to sit on the edge of the desk. ‘But would you go fetch Kenna for me?’
‘Kenna? The witch?’ Jamie stared at him.
‘She’s no witch, she’s a Wise Woman,’ George said evenly. ‘If anyone asks.’
‘Right. Right. And you want her? In here?’
‘Yes. Now, Jamie, if you will.’
Jamie, with another suspicious glance over his shoulder, left and George took a very deep breath.
‘Well, demon, spirit, whatever you are. What do you want, now?’
‘I want to prove that I am what I say I am and no dream,’ I said, as we’d rehearsed last night. Behind me, Mal and Lachlan crept into the room. ‘I can make things happen.’
‘I’ve no doubt you can.’ George sounded a bit shaky but he was holding up well, I had to admit.
‘No, you have to let me,’ I went on. I didn’t want to waste what we’d prepared.
‘Go on, then.’
‘Fire!’ I turned commandingly to the small fire that burned in the grate. ‘Come to me!’