After the Gloaming #5
Disgusted, and even a little ashamed, Caden closed his mother’s book and put it back on the shelf where he had found it.
He moved round the library, scanning the titles of the many books, until a thick, red leather-bound book with the words Witchcraft in Scotland: Tales and Trials by Professor Alastair P.
Wallace embossed in faded gold caught his attention.
He snatched the book from the shelf just as the door to the library opened.
A worried looking Deidre poked her head in, looked around, and then sighed in relief when she saw him.
“Look what I just found.” He held the book out to her. “It’s a book about the history of witchcraft in Scotland.”
“Oh Caden,” she said, stepping inside and closing the door behind. “Does it say anything about Agnes Bowquan? What about curses that turn a person into a bean shìth?”
“I don’t know. I only just found it.”
He walked over to the heavy oak table in the centre of the room and pulled out a chair for Deidre, then sat in the chair beside her. He opened the book and searched the table of contents for anything that might be related to Deidre.
“Look,” she said, pointing at an entry halfway down the page. “There is a section on curses.”
He flipped to page two hundred and sixty two and began reading aloud.
“In the fifteenth century and early into the sixteenth century, the most powerful witches lived in the lowlands, where the ley lines intersect, and mystical energies flow as strong and mighty as the River Tweed. Arguably the most potent witch to live in that time was Agnes Bowquat (see also witch hunt) of Caerlaverock who was believed to be skilled in the art of healing.”
Caden skimmed over an explanation of the art of healing and the difference between white and black witches until he came to the part he was looking for – there, mid-way down page two hundred and sixty four was a brief reference to Deidre.
“At some point, Agnes Bowquat began practising black magic, casting her most powerful spell on a dying woman. The legend is that one night the son of a great lord found the woman he loved lying in a pool of blood after she had flung herself off the ramparts of his castle. Distraught, he took her body to Agnes. Instead of healing her, the black witch turned her into a bean shìth.”
Caden stopped reading and looked at Deidre.
“Does it say how the curse is to be broken?”
He shook his head.
“It only says your soul is connected to the Maxwell Clan and therefore it will take a Maxwell to break the curse.” Caden turned back to the book and read the last paragraph. “When a Maxwell proves himself worthy of her love, and gives his love in return, he will break the curse in four moons time.”
Caden turned the page hoping to find more clues about Deidre’s death and the curse placed upon her.
He was not disappointed. Reproduced on the next page were a newspaper article and a small black and white photo of a pile of bones in a heavy, scarred wooden box.
The caption read: Old bones found in a box during excavation of the old tower of Caerlaverock believed to be the remains of a woman who lived over four hundred years ago.
“That’s it! I think I know what will break the curse.”
“You do?”
Caden nodded.
“Maybe you are still haunting the Maxwells because you were never given a proper burial. I’ll find your bones and bury them.”
“But how will you do that?”
Caden read the newspaper article again and saw the dateline was 5 August, 1956. He thought of Mrs Harriet. She had to be at least sixty-five years old. He wondered if she might know something about the bones.
He grabbed the book and headed for the door.
“Wait here!”
He searched in several rooms before he found Mrs Harriet asleep and snoring softly in a wingback chair in a cosy sitting room attached to one of the smaller downstairs bedrooms.
She jerked awake when he touched her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs Harriet, but I was wondering if you might be able to help me with something.”
“Ay coorse! Whit can ah dae fur ye?”
He showed her the article.
“Do you know anything about some old bones found at Caerlaverock?”
Mrs Harriet removed a pair of rectangular reading glasses from her sweater pocket, slid them on to her face, and squinted at the page. Her cloudy eyes moved slowly as she read the caption beneath the photo.
“Aye,” she said, nodding her head. “Thaur was some excavatin’ of th’ auld castle an’ moat years ago. Some of th’ artifacts waur returned tae th’ Maxwells.”
“Where are they now? In a museum?”
She shook her head again and told him that she believed they were still stored in the old kitchen.
“Old kitchen?”
“Och aye, th’ garage was once a scullery.”
The garage? Deidre’s bones were in his father’s garage? Only in an old European house would one find priceless treasures haphazardly stored in an attic or garage.
“Thanks Mrs Harriet.”
He pressed a kiss to the dear old woman’s crumpled cheek before racing back up the stairs, anxious to share the information with Deidre, but when he got to the library, she wasn’t there.
He crossed the hall to his room, but found it dark and empty, too. He grabbed his cashmere coat and scarf and was just about to go in search for her when James’s hospice nurse rushed into the room.
“You might want to come,” she said. “I think it is time.”
James Montague Maxwell’s time to die had finally arrived and there was nothing Caden, the hospice nurse, or the capable and unflappable Mrs Harriet could do to postpone it.
The emaciated man’s chest rattled with each tortured breath and his blue eyes, yellow with jaundice, darted frantically back and forth as if terrified at the thought of dying alone.
“I’m here,” he said, taking his father’s bony hand in his. “You’re not alone.”
James smiled weakly and then gestured with his free hand for Caden to move closer. When Caden knelt beside the bed, James sucked in a strangled breath and began speaking in a raspy whisper.
“I regret many things,” he said, tears spilling down his cheeks. “But most of all, I am sorry I wasna the dad ye deserved.”
Caden hugged his father and told him that he forgave him.
Just before James Montague Maxwell took his last breath, he turned his head towards the window and lifted his hand as if beckoning for someone.
Caden followed his father’s gaze. Floating outside the window, her grizzled hair swirling about her slender shoulders, her eyes sunken into her face, was Deidre Monreith, banshee of the Maxwell Clan.
James took his last breath and Deidre began to wail.
Bleary-eyed and heavy-hearted, Caden found Deidre in the woods that separated Blackstone House from the mudflats and the sea. She was sitting on a stump, her head in her hands, sobbing.
Caden went to her and pulled her into his arms.
“Please don’t cry,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.
“I am sorry, Caden. So sorry.”
He rubbed her back, inhaled the floral scent emanating from her hair, and sighed.
“You have no reason to apologise.” He kissed her forehead again and stepped back, holding her at arm’s length so she could look into his eyes. “You did not kill my father. You lamented his death.”
He pulled her back into his arms and kissed her without restraint, searing her soul with his passion. When she pressed her body against his and moaned deep in her throat, Caden knew he had to possess her again, even if only for a moment.
After making love, Caden and Deidre spent several hours in the garage searching through dozens of old boxes and crates filled with mouldering clothes, yellowing photo albums and chipped porcelain.
“We don’t have much time left,” she said, looking nervously out through the arched doorway to the setting sun. “Once twilight has passed, I will become a bean shìth again.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t think we’re going to find the trunk before the sun sets.”
“I don’t think so, either,” she said, sighing heavily. “Even so, there is something I would like to tell you before the light wanes completely and we cease to inhabit the same world.”
Her grave manner captured Caden’s attention. He set down the crowbar he had been using to pry open crates and took a seat on a wooden trunk filled with porcelain bric-a-brac.
“I want to tell you about your mother and father.”
“What? Why now? We had a deal.”
She perched on the edge of the crate opposite him.
“I know we had a deal, but I do not know how much longer you will be able to see me …”
He crossed his arms and leaned forwards until their noses nearly touched.
“Doubt who and what you will, Deidre Monreith, but never doubt me. I promise you, I will find your bones and break the curse.”
The deep timbre of his voice, the earnestness of his avowal moved her nearly to tears. Why couldn’t they have lived in the same time period? What cruel and dark force separated them?
“I believe you, Caden.”
He kept his arms crossed but leaned back, apparently appeased so she continued.