Chapter Fourteen
“Tell the man what about the bridge,” he asked, heart slamming. Releasing Morag, he kept hold of Catriona’s arm as if to protect her from falling, even as they stood on turf.
He knew why he held her so tightly. He did not want to think about it. The shock of seeing her near the gap, and the fear of losing her in a fall from a bridge, left him shaking.
“The bridge is safe for walkers. Carts and horses do not use it now,” Catriona said.
“Safe? Are you mad?”
“We cross it without trouble,” Morag said. “Sturdy as mountains, that bridge, at least on one side.”
“It desperately needs repair,” Evan said.
“It has been repaired before,” Catriona said. “But it collapses in the center again.”
He narrowed his eyes to look at the bridge.
“The arch is too low,” he said. “The construction is old and looks faulty throughout.” Nodding, he watched the water flow rapidly between the high bank to one side and the steep slope on the other.
“That hill has runnel tracks from melting snows. Does the stream flood in the spring or in heavy rain?”
“Sometimes,” Catriona said. “When the water reaches the bridge, stones break off.”
“We put them back,” Morag said.
“That low curve is unstable across such a wide span. That’s why it comes down.”
“The fairies take it down,” Morag said.
He looked at her. “Fairies?”
“This is Drochaid nan Sitheach,” she answered.
“Bridge of the Fairies. It leads to Beinn Sitheach, the Fairy Mountain. Ben Shee, most call it. That high slope over there. The daoine sith, the fairy folk, do not want humans to cross over to their territory, so they take down the bridge whenever they please. And the people put it back up. When I was a lass, my father and other men repaired the bridge and the stones fell even as the men worked. They said it was fairy mischief. That was before your father evicted my father and others from their homes. They were old men, no longer useful to lord or land,” she added bitterly.
“I am sorry, Mrs. MacLeod. I am. Please tell me more about the bridge.”
“The fairies wreck it, and we put it back up. It has not come down for a long time. It is a sturdy wee footbridge.”
“There’s a hole in the middle!” He pointed.
“A wee bad step. You just have to know how to cross it.”
“A wee bad step.” He frowned. “How then do you cross it?”
“You must speak a fairy charm first.”
He blinked incredulously. Both women nodded as if there was nothing odd in Morag’s statement.
“We say a charm when we go over, and the same charm when we come back. It keeps the traveler safe,” Morag said.
Bewildered, Evan looked from one to the other. “A fairy charm.”
“Tell him, Catriona Mhòr. Then he can cross the bridge safely too.”
“By all means, tell me.” Evan folded his arms.
“Hold your fingers just so,” Catriona said, closing her thumb and forefinger in a circle. She recited a Gaelic verse and then repeated it into English.
Like the birds of the air, I fly,
Like the leaves on the wind, I fly
Head to foot, crown to sole,
Angels protect me from the fairies of the knoll.
“And that keeps you safe on this ruin of a bridge,” Evan drawled.
“That, and long legs to leap the gap,” Morag said.
“Dear God,” he muttered, shaking his head, looking at the crumbled stones and the gap that hung over a drop of nearly twenty feet. “I am closing this bridge.”
“You cannot! It is the straightest route to the lower slopes here,” Catriona argued. “Morag and her husband live up there, and so does her husband’s old granny. And I use it often when we walk the hills. Crofters and herdsmen use it too.”
“Not with carts or animals,” Morag pointed out. “Then they use the drover’s track lower down, which crosses this stream several miles down the glen.” She pointed. “But it takes much longer that way.”
“I saw that bridge when we walked the glen this morning,” Evan said. “It is not in much better shape than this one. It will not inconvenience anyone to close this for a bit.”
“But children go to the village school at Kilmallie this way, through Kildonan lands,” Morag objected.
“Children! Absolutely, this must be closed.”
“You do not want bairns walking through your lands?” Morag asked.
Evan sent her a sour look. “I do not want them to fall off the bridge.”
“I suppose that is fair. But our charms keep us safe. The children use them too.”
“Nonetheless, it must be closed until it can be fixed or replaced entirely. Tragedy happens all too easily.” He knew that too damn well, he thought.
Morag sighed heavily and muttered to Catriona in Gaelic, though his bride was silent. As Evan walked up the bridge to test the stones, he discovered that some bounced or sank underfoot. He turned. “This has to be closed for the safety of the glen folk.”
“The Earls of Kildonan and Glen Shee never cared much for tenants before,” Morag said. “Why start now?”
Scowling, he walked over to pick up a large rock, big as a hatbox. He dropped it with a thunk in front of the bridge as an impediment. Lifting and tossing several large rocks, he built a crude barrier. Wiping his hands of dust, he turned to the women who stood staring at him.
“He is a strong wee lad, your man,” Morag said. “I like that.”
“Huh,” was all Catriona said.
“That should help,” he said. “I’ll have someone come up here with a rope and a sign to keep off the bridge. Or I will do it myself, soon as can be.”
“Some of us cannot read,” Morag said in a pragmatic tone.
“Post it in Gaelic or English,” Catriona said, “and even then, not all your tenants will heed a sign. You would have to post a guard to keep them away.”
“I could wait under the bridge myself like a troll,” he said irritably. “This thing is dangerous. It is disturbing to know it’s been like this for years. Was my father informed of its condition?”
“He would not have cared,” Morag said. “He never came this way. The hunting was not good enough here to please him, so he never bothered us up here.”
Evan sighed. “If you must go walking today, you will have to use the lower bridge.”
“I live a stone’s throw from this spot, and I will not walk all the way down there and back up from the lower bridge,” Morag said, raising her chin.
Catriona lifted her chin too. Then both turned, lifted their skirt hems, and stepped neatly over the rock barrier.
“There! I could not read your sign,” Morag said.
“Lord save me,” Evan grumbled, and strode after them. Just as he reached the apex behind them, he felt a subtle tremor. His additional weight behind the women tested the weakest point of the arch.
“Catriona, come back. You, too, Mrs. MacLeod. Carefully.” He held out a hand.
“Your new husband is a worrier,” Morag told Catriona.
Then they said the Gaelic charm in harmonic singsong voices and cleared the breach lightly, helping each other with outstretched hands. Standing on the other side of the span of rock and the hole in the bridge, Catriona turned.
“We did just fine, you see,” she said. “Good day, Kildonan. I will return before supper.” She took Morag’s arm, and the two walked down the other side of the bridge.
Evan stared after them as they struck out on a steep upward ascent on the forested hillside. Far above, the mountain and more distant peaks soared into a cloudless blue sky.
He looked down to the rushing water that cascaded over sharp rocks and eddies far below.
Returning to Kildonan, he never expected to confront a collapsed bridge.
This structure was small, yet reminded him too keenly of a magnificent thing built of steel and stone, red-painted girders gleaming in the sunlight as it crashed down into a harbor in Fife.
He rubbed his eyes, shook his head to dispel the difficult memories. He could not let this bridge go without repair. Seeing Catriona on its broken arch made his heart plummet with fear. But he would face it and make sure nothing ever happened to her or anyone else.
He walked toward the center to test his weight here and there, holding on to the parapet as he felt a dangerous shimmy underfoot. Beneath his feet, the broken edge was a row of jagged stone teeth. He moved back.
One hard fast step in a certain spot could take down these stones like dominoes. Then all the fairy charms in the world would not prevent the bridge from crashing down. He had to prevent that from happening.
*
A little stone house with a thick thatched roof sat at the top of a steep slope. Looming over it was a massive wall of dark rock with patches of green moss and rusty-colored bracken. A few wild goats clung to its heights, Catriona saw, as she and Morag walked closer.
Tendrils of smoke rose from a hole in the center of the roof, and two goats nibbled on a block of turf beside the closed door. She saw no other signs of life about the place.
“Is Mother Flora at home?” Catriona asked Morag.
“She’s always here, except when she walks the hills for her exercise. She refuses to come away from her home otherwise. But I warn you, she usually sends me away when I come up here—after she takes whatever food or gifts I have brought.”
“I hope she will agree to sing her songs for me. I brought paper and pencil in case she does, so that I can take notes.”
“I would not be too quick to take out your paper,” Morag said. “She knows we’re coming—I came up here the other day with my daughter-in-law and got her promise that she would see you. Look, her door is not open. She’s going to make us knock and beg to come in, the old witch.”
As they walked, Catriona looked around. This remote slope was part of the foothills of Ben Shee, although the angle prevented her from seeing its uppermost peak.
The wind cut brisk and cold, and Catriona drew a deep breath of the air, a nearly intoxicating essence that combined pines, grass, water, and the strength, somehow, of the mountain.
She could feel the magic in these hills—if there really were such creatures as fairies, surely they existed here, on the powerful and mysterious mountain slopes named for their kind.