Green Grow the Rashes and Other Stories (6 page)

She looked around, but the garden was
all in blackness, all silver leeched away. She stood still,
scarcely breathing, feeling the cold eat its way to her bones, but
not wanting to move, afraid to break the spell.

And she was rewarded. The cloud moved
on and the silver returned, spreading away from her across the
lawn, hitting the beech and causing its branches to light up in a
white, blinding, radiant skeleton. The laughter came again, but she
was unable to pinpoint its source. She walked across the lawn, eyes
fixed on the tree. Small shadowy buds had formed on the branches
and, as she got closer, she could see them sprout, like in a
time-lapse film, opening and blossoming into long, fine, diaphanous
leaves which glowed with their own inner light.

And there, high up in the branches, a
brighter light.

It was a boy, about ten years old, but
like no boy she had ever seen. He sat, high in a fork in the tree.
His silver hair fell in a long swathe to below his waist and his
eyes sparkled like diamonds.

He seemed to be wearing a cloak made
of tiny leaves and he glowed, silver and clear blue and white, all
at once. She reached up a hand and was about to speak, but another
cloud blocked out the moon and the scene faded into
blackness.

Small tears of frustration welled up
at the corners of her eyes. She did not notice that her legs had
gone numb with the cold, not that she had no feeling in her
fingertips. She waited, eyes raised to the clouds, waiting for a
break in their sullen darkness, hoping and waiting.

The cold sank deeply into her, slowing
her heart and thickening her blood until it thudded, slowed, then
thudded, then slowed, barely reaching the extremities of her
body.

And still she waited as the cloud hung
heavy overhead. Time passed as she prayed for a wind, a breeze, the
hand of God, anything to let the moon shine again. And, finally,
she was answered.

The laughter began first, high and
clear and beautiful, just as the darkness parted and the silver
streamed through the garden in an explosion of blue and grey and
silver and white. It was too much for her old eyes. She blinked,
twice, and raised a hand to shade them from the glare, then
stopped. Her hand was gray and white, radiating pale glimmers of
moon dust.

She saw her veins pulsing darkly, saw
the small crystalline diamonds of her skin writhe and dance in the
cold night air. The cold finally took her and she fell backward,
full length onto the glassy spikes of the lawn, her eyes full of
stars.

She heard a movement; the padding of
tiny feet, and she looked up into the face of the boy.

His eyes watched her, sad and lonely,
as he stretched down and placed a feather light palm on her
forehead, She felt the cold spread, slivers of ice piercing her
brain.

Suddenly she knew what he
wanted.

She strained her neck in order to lift
her head, one last look at the house, her house that now sat dark
and empty, a prison waiting in shadows. She looked up into the deep
black eyes and saw a question.

She nodded, only once.

He pulled and she parted and now she
was young again.

Two young people giggled and danced in
the light of the moon as the first rays of dawn spread.

She had one last look back at the old
thing she had left behind on the grass, but it was soon forgotten
as they chased the darkness into the West.

The sun was going down behind the
mountain and the loch was fading from blue to black, the breeze
throwing refraction patterns in intricate dances across its
surface. Later the moon would dance in those patterns, but for now
there was only blackness.

There was still over an hour till
nightfall, but already there was a chill in the air, a portent of
the winter yet to come. The trees rustled softly, and occasionally
a leaf fell to swim in the ripples for a while before softly
sinking to join its decaying brothers.

Far out over the water, a deeper
blackness in the gloom, the island sat like a blot on the water.
Until now I had paid it little attention, but I found myself trying
to pierce its dark secrets. Despite my best efforts the night kept
it hidden from me and I had only the memory of the passage from
that last fearful tome to remind me of the taint it threw on the
waters of the loch.

From my vantage point on the balcony I
watched the patterns in the water, trying to instil some meaning to
order my thoughts. My body was remembering the relative warmth of
the library and goosebumps ran over my arms. I was going to need a
jacket sooner rather than later, but my discovery had thrown all
such thoughts out of my mind.

I needed to talk to someone, to share
my bewildered thoughts, but Mrs Jameson, the housekeeper, had long
since closed up for the night, the remainder of the staff were abed
and Sir John wasn't due back till the morning.

The house was dark and quiet behind
me. I knew that a fire was burning in my bedroom, keeping a small
spot warm just for me, but from out here on the balcony the house
was as cold and bleak as the surrounding countryside. How Sir John
coped with the solitude I could never fathom.

"Come down for the week," he had said.
"I believe Grandfather's library has a good deal of that esoteric
waffle that you find so interesting."

We were in his club in Pall Mall, all
elegance and leather and, yes, warmth.

At the time I believed that it was a
plea for company - for someone to relieve the tedium of the duties
forced upon him by a chain of unfortunate deaths that led to his
inheritance.

Even then I was loath to leave London
- I need the comforts of the city more than I like to admit, but
then he mentioned, in his offhand way, the names of some of the
books, and I knew that I had to take him up on his
offer.

And when I got to his residence - a
journey I pray I never have to repeat - I found that John was going
to be away for three days, called to officiate in some provincial
court. I almost turned at the door and left, but Mrs Jameson would
have none of it.

She is one from that unbreakable mould
of Scottish housekeepers; stout and broad with a bristling energy
that is as hard to ignore as it is to deny.

Within ten minutes she had me sitting
in her kitchen, a bowl of soup with enough gusto to feed a small
army placed in front of me.

After that I had no desire to travel
further than the comfort of an armchair, further fortified by some
fine brandy and an even finer cigar.

"The maister telled me tae mak ye
maist comfortable." Mrs Jameson said. "And I would no' be doing ma
job if I did onything other."

After I recovered from her
ministrations I headed for the library.

Sir John had underestimated the worth
of his Grandfather's collection. There were early editions of
Boehme and Paracelsus, but best of all, the jewel of them all, was
the collection of the works of Michael Scott, that figure of
legend, astrologer to Ferdinand II, consorter with demons and
necromancer. Even my beloved Corpus Christi could not boast such a
hoard of delights.

I settled myself in the library that
very day - if I was to plunder its secrets in a week then I would
have to apply myself.

And there I stayed for two whole days,
leaving only for sustenance and sleep, fortified by more of Sir
John's fine brandy.

As I worked I became aware of a
presence among the works, a fine, legible hand that annotated and
collated, a scholar who had, like me, been striving to make sense
of an older, altogether different, philosophy.

The scribbles held pointers to other
works on the shelves, cross references that expanded and
illuminated. Soon the table at which I worked was groaning under
the weight of the books and I had taken to utilising the floor
space as I strived to bring the threads together.

It was on the evening of the second
day that I realised I was being led towards a conclusion, the
answer to a secret more than six hundred years old, a clue to the
final resting place of Auld Michael himself.

I was puzzled when the final note in
the volume I was studying pointed me to 'A History of the Earls of
Kilbeith', but as soon as I took the book from the shelves I
recognised the same, neat, handwriting to which I had become so
accustomed.

It was then that I discovered the
writer’s identity - it was none other than the 23rd Earl, Robert,
Sir John's grandfather. The pointer led me to a heavily annotated
page near the beginning of the volume. As I read a chill seemed to
work its way into my bones, a chill that has stayed with me ever
since.

I have been searching for
many years, and now I believe I have tracked down the source of
that scourge which has so plagued my family down through the
centuries. To understand it fully, it is necessary to go back to
the early years of the thirteenth century. The first Earl, my
ancestor, one Richard de Bourcy, raised the first castle on this
spot, but it wasn't the first dwelling. At that time there was a
chapel on the island on the loch - a small cell which was home to a
local cleric whose name is lost to history.

It was while the castle
was being raised that a stranger came to the chapel, an old, bent,
man with silver in his hair and red fire in his eyes. Not long
after that strange rumours spread across the region - rumours of a
jet black steed with hoofs of iron that carried on its back an old
man whose very gaze spelt death. The local country folk beseeched
Sir Richard to rid them of this deviltry, and so it was that the
Earl took himself to the island. And there on that accursed island
his eyes met great abominations and outrages against good Christian
nature which I will not detail here for fain of disturbing my
reader's sensibilities.

And Sir Richard took up
his sword against the perpetrator of the crimes, an old man with
blood on his nails and at his mouth. Yet even as the old man was
struck through the breast he uttered an almighty curse, that the
Earl and all his family would be joined with him on the island
before any of them should see fifty summers. The Earl razed the
chapel to the ground, cleansing it with the pure fire of his faith,
but that same faith failed to sustain him, and the next summer,
just short of his fiftieth year, he passed from history, his
resting place unknown. And so it has gone down the centuries, the
old man's curse laying its foul hand over us all. I have tracked
him down, the old devil, the necromancer Michael, and tonight I
will go to the island and say the rites. If I succeed then the
curse will be forever lifted. If I fail, I leave these notes so
that one who follows me might see where I did not and, if his faith
be strong, succeed where I could not.

By the hand of Robert,
23rd Earl of Kilbeith, in his 49th year in the sight of our Lord,
in the sure and certain hope of his infinite mercy.

I laid the volume on the desk,
noticing with horror that my hands were shaking, a tremble that I
could not stop. It was then that I felt drawn to the balcony, but I
did not stay there long, the dark and the cold soon sending me back
to the relative warmth of the library.

But the room was no longer a
comforting place to be, the books now enemies rather than trusted
friends. I made sure that the windows were firmly locked and
repaired to my bed.

Sleep would not come. Images flowed in
my mind, of dark islands and warlocks, of swords and flames. Deep
in that part of the night were nothing moves I heard, as if from
far off, a loud drumming as of a horse in a wild gallop, but it was
soon over and I was left, staring at the soft interplay of shadows
on the ceiling. Dawn was washing the sky pale before a troubled
slumber finally took me down and away.

I was awoken by the rattling of the
doorknob in its casing, followed by the entry of Mrs
Jameson.

"A guid morning to ye sir," she said,
laying before me a tray of food that would have sunk the trustiest
battleship. "The maister has sent word that he'll return after
lunch, and asks that ye forgive his further absence."

She didn't wait for a reply. The door
slammed behind her as if to punctuate her exit, and I was left
staring with dismay at the mound of food before me.

I managed a single cup of tea and two
spoonfuls of porridge before my troubled thoughts drove me from my
bed and out into the cool morning where I thought that a brisk walk
might bring a clearer view on my discoveries of the previous
night.

For the first time I had a view of my
old friend's estate, but I'm afraid that the panoramic splendours
passed me by. From all vantage points I found my gaze drawn back to
the loch and to the dark island at its heart.

By the time I headed back to the
castle the sun had already passed overhead, or as near to overhead
as it ever gets this far north. When I entered I found John in the
hall, a brace of fine plump pheasants in his hands.

"William. I’m so glad you could make
it," he said, and the warmth of his welcome almost dispelled the
deep chill inside me.