Part 11

When she was on her feet again, Kelpie was strangely content just to stay where she was. It seemed to her that her life had been violently wrenched apart, and she hardly knew how to begin putting it back together again. She needed time to think. Kelpie had always found the world full and interesting, however cruel. She played a game. She avoided the cruelty when she could, and bore it if she must, and fought back when she had the chance. She adapted herself to each new situation that came along, and had quite enjoyed—on the whole—the glimpses of various new worlds that the last few months had offered.

But now she seemed to be cast out of every world she knew, for she could never go back to Glenfern, or to Mina and Bogle (even if she would), or to Campbell country. Worse, she did not even know what she wanted, now that the power of witchcraft was denied her. The old gypsy life no longer seemed attractive. New ideas had been planted in her mind, and she had found herself groping restlessly for something she could not name.

To keep her mind and hands busy, she began to help Alsoon and Callum with the various chores, and took an unexpected pleasure in them. For once, walls seemed not a trap but a warm, safe shelter from the early frost and biting wind outside, and from the world in general.

And so the autumn passed, and it was the dark of the year, with only a few brief hours of daylight and long gray dusks. In that remote glen they heard little of the outside world. It wasn’t until she had been there for two months that a neighbor from over the hill came that way in search of stray cattle and stopped in to pass on the news that his brother had heard from someone’s cousin who had been away in to a town.

Montrose had taken his army north to Aberdeen, and this time he had let his men sack the city. “It was because they had shot a wee drummer boy,” explained the neighbor. “The lad was just along with the envoy, asking them would they like to send their women and bairns to safety. And Graham was so angry at it that he took the town and turned his army loose on it, but they say he was sorry after.”

And then, it seemed, the old game of tag had started again, with Argyll panting after Montrose all the way from Bog o’ Gight to Badenoch, Tumnel to Strathbogie, devastating lands as he went, and slaughtering people if he even suspected them of royalist sympathies.

When Kelpie awoke the next morning, she saw the white light of the first snow coming through the cracks in the shutters, and her first, unbidden thought was: did Ian lie somewhere beneath that blanket? Had Alex been punished for killing him? Where was Montrose now, and what was happening in Scotland? It was the beginning of a new restlessness and a growing desire to learn whether Ian was dead, and perhaps even to take vengeance herself on Alex, if no one else had done it already. Even without magic powers, she reflected with narrowed eyes, she could still use her wee _sgian dhu_!

The dark, smoky shieling became too cramped for such thoughts, and, in spite of the cold, Kelpie took to making long walks over the braes and around the foot of Ben More. Alsoon looked at her wisely. If she guessed that confusing thoughts were disturbing the young waif, she said nothing but merely finished whatever task Kelpie might have left undone when the restlessness was upon her.

“Och, and you’ll be away again one day,” predicted old Callum mildly one crisp afternoon when Kelpie paused at the sheep pen where he was working. “’Tis the wanderlust you have in your feet—but are you not also wanting somewhere to call home?”

Kelpie had never thought of the matter. She did so now. What _was_ a home? For Ian it had been Glenfern, where his heart stayed wherever the rest of him might be. But for Kelpie, Glenfern was not just a place; it was a feeling and it was people. It was Wee Mairi’s bonnie face and confiding smile; and the twins crowding close, bright-eyed, to demand more stories; and Eithne’s quick sympathy; and laughter beside the loch. It was teasing and love and trust among them all, and her own heart given recklessly against her better judgement.

No, home was not a place but a feeling—a deceitful feeling, she remembered bitterly. She had endangered Wee Mairi by her very affection, and Ian had trusted too much.... And Kelpie thought again that if Glenfern had not settled the score with Alex, she herself might do it one day. She thought of Mina and Bogle too, and hoped fiercely that they had not escaped.

There was more heavy snow the next week, and now this was nearly the longest time she had ever spent in one place—except for Glenfern, and Glenfern had been much more lively. She longed more and more for excitement, for adventure, aye, even for danger, for these were the spice of life. And so she stiffened with anticipation on the morning that wee Angus MacNab came racing over the hill toward the shieling hut. Important news was in his every movement.

“Och, Callum, and have you seen it?” he demanded in a shrill shout. “Montrose himself it is, and his army, just yon over the braes on the edge of Campbell land. It is said they will be going to harry Mac Cailein Mor in his own castle!”

Kelpie had been standing over near the sheep pen, very still, watching the small lad come. A too large kilt flapped about his knobbly knees, and himself and his long shadow and his twisting track were all dark against the white of the snow. To her left was the black of the shieling hut, smoke rising vaguely against the pearl-blue of the sky, and Callum standing by the door. Everything seemed to stop in time for just an instant, while something inside Kelpie awoke, stretched, looked around, and made a decision.

She didn’t ask herself any questions then, but turned in her tracks and walked back to the hut, where Callum and Alsoon were greeting the lad and asking for more details.

“And where are they?” she demanded.

Angus waved a skinny arm toward the north. “Yon, near Loch Tay. The clan is called out and will be joining there. I wish I could be going!”

Sudden reasonless elation filled Kelpie. She wrapped her plaidie more firmly about her shoulders and looked at Callum and Alsoon. “I’m away,” she announced.

“Och, no, heart’s darling!” protested Alsoon. “Not into Campbell lands, and in midwinter! Bide with us a wee while longer, until spring.”

“I’m away,” repeated Kelpie, a little sharply, as she realized that once again she was in danger of giving her heart. “And what harm from cold or Campbells when the army and all the women and bairns are along? I cannot bide longer, for my feet have the urge in them.” And she tossed her dark head like a young Highland pony, so that the thick braids—well tended by Alsoon—leaped over her shoulders and beat against her waist, as if impatient.

Alsoon sighed. “Well, then, and you must go if you must. But come away in first, my light, and I’ll be giving you food to take along. Dried venison there is, and fresh bannocks, and oatcakes. And here are the new skin brogans that Callum has finished for you.”

“Haste ye back, white love,” she added at last as Kelpie took the food and put on the shoes and stood looking at her.

“Aye,” said Kelpie, and her heart was torn. The MacNabs gave and asked no return but to be able to give more. “You’ve been kind, and I not deserving it,” she murmured, and then clenched her fists and walked quickly out of the low doorway, lest she be caught up in folly again.

Halfway up the hill she paused, stared back at the long, low shieling hut, and then waved at the two old people standing there. Tears stung her eyelids for a moment, and impulsively she crooked her forefinger, calling down a blessing upon them.

Five minutes later she had shaken off her sadness. She lifted her head and breathed the air of new adventure. The hills had been calling this long while, calling through the spell of black depression that was on her. But the spell was broken now, and she was answering the call.

At the top of the hill she was seized by fresh exuberance. Curving her arms upward like a stag’s antlers, she broke into the light, wild leaps of a dance that the Highland men did around the campfire or at friendly gatherings, and then laughed aloud at her own impertinence—she, a lass, to be doing a man’s dance, and doing it well too. The dance took on a distinctly mocking and impudent quality.

From the top of the next hill she looked down on Montrose’s army, which had made camp by the loch. From the mouth of the glen, the MacNabs were arriving, great-kilts swinging about their bare, strong knees, and the top halves of the kilts wrapped round massive shoulders. Kelpie surveyed the scene for a moment before going down, counting tartans. MacDonalds were still most plentiful, with Gordons, MacPhersons, Stewarts—but she saw no Cameron tartans.

She also saw no children, and only a small scattering of women. Where were they all, then? Frowning a little, she went down, over the snowy hillside, to the camp.

“Whist, lass, and what is it you’re wanting?” It was a bearded Irish MacDonald. “The time for sweethearts’ farewells is past, and we off to raid and harry the Campbells in their lair.” The beard split in a grin of vengeful glee.

“It is I that am coming with you,” announced Kelpie cheekily. “Where are all the women and bairns?”

He stared. “Back at Blair Castle, the most of them, safe in Stewart country. It is only a few of the strongest, and they with no children, that we have brought. ’Tis no adventure for you, lassie. Be away back home.”

“I am strong, and with no bairns,” argued Kelpie. “And I’m frightened to travel alone.” She looked helpless and pleading. “I have no home, and I’d like well to raid the Campbells. Can I not be coming?”

He grinned sympathetically. “Och, well—we’ve a bloody enough work to do, and might even use an extra nurse once or twice. Go find Morag Mhor, then, who is head of the women.”

Kelpie recognized Morag Mhor as soon as she saw her—the tall, gaunt woman she had noticed at Blair Atholl, who well deserved the title of “great” Morag. Ragged woolen skirts were kilted up over a bright red petticoat, showing ankles as sturdy as a man’s. The worn Gordon plaidie had fallen back from her head, and her face was more alive than it had been at Blair Atholl, but as fierce as ever. When Kelpie found her, she was berating a red-faced MacGregor at least two inches shorter than she, who clearly had no fight left in him.

“And don’t be crossing my path again until I feel forgiving, or I’ll box the other ear!” she finished briskly and then turned to look at Kelpie. “Gypsy!” she said, crossing brawny arms on her breast.

“Indeed and no!” protested Kelpie with great promptness. “Only a poor lost lass, and away from home—”

Morag Mhor laughed loudly. “Gypsy!” she repeated, pointing a long forefinger.

Kelpie regarded her warily and trimmed her tale. “The gypsies were stealing me when I was a bairn,” she conceded, not expecting to be believed.

“Aye, then,” agreed Morag Mhor surprisingly. “Because of the ringed eyes of you, I think. You’ll have the Second Sight. Are you a witch?”

“Are you?” countered Kelpie, remembering with a pang that she herself was not and never could be.

Morag shrugged wide shoulders. “I have a healing power. But I’m not belonging to any coven of daft folk who hold Black Mass and dance their silly feet off at midnights. My power is in what I’m doing, not what I’m saying.” Her lined face drew down fiercely. “I’ll be helping to put the curse of deeds on the Campbells this week. They passed my happy wee home in Gordon country and left behind a blackened stone—and I arriving back from over the hill to find the thatch still smoldering, and my man dead, and my son beside him, and the lad not yet ten! I have thirsted for Campbell blood ever since, and I shall drink deep.”

She stopped, staring into the white distance with eyes that were of burning stone. Kelpie reflected that she would not like to have this woman for an enemy. Best to go canny.

“I was prisoner of Mac Cailein Mor,” she volunteered. “He would have burned me, but I escaped.”

“Och, then, and you’re another who hates him!” Morag’s eyes returned from unpleasant places. “Stay along with me, then, gypsy lass. We’ll see revenge together, and no man nor devil will harm you whilst I am near.” And Kelpie believed her.

17. The Road to Inverary

They had slept on the border of Campbell country, after feeding on Campbell cattle collected by some twenty or thirty Highlanders. Their tightly woven woolen plaids had helped to keep out the cold, and so had the fires scattered along the glen. But Kelpie was glad enough of the red wool hose that Alsoon had knitted for her, and of the warm bulk of Morag beside her.

Now they were heading up Strath Fuile, and the warm-hearted comradeship of the Highlanders became a savage expectation, for here at last was the great enemy ahead. Montrose might talk all he liked of getting to the border to aid the King in England—but a score or two must be settled first. Montrose had had to compromise; otherwise too many of his army would have just slipped away home, taking with them as many stolen cattle as possible.

Now an advance party had gone ahead of the main army to find cattle before the owners could be warned and drive them off to hide in the hills. And Morag Mhor, with a dark and unpleasant grin, had attached herself and Kelpie to them. The men, knowing of her murdered husband and child, let her join them, with a grim jest or two about the fate of any Campbells unlucky enough to run into her.

They rounded a curve in the river, and there before them was a long, low shieling hut with two children playing out in front and a handful of cattle scattered up the hill behind. Morag saw the hut first and was off toward it with a flash of red petticoat. Kelpie wished suddenly that she had stayed with the rest of the women, but she hurtled after Morag simply because it didn’t occur to her to do anything else. Now the men had seen it too, and a menacing yell rose from thirty throats as some of them raced around after the cattle, and the rest—mostly Irish MacDonalds—followed Morag and Kelpie toward the hut.

Even as she was running, the thing inside Kelpie felt sick at what was to come. Campbells they were, certainly, but what fault had the bairns committed? Montrose would be angry, surely, with his scruples about making war on the innocent. Now the children had seen them and were running toward the house, screaming with terror. An ashen-faced woman gathered them to her and then paused in the doorway, uncertain whether to run inside or away into the hills. Kelpie could almost taste the fear in her.

Then Kelpie’s foot hit something soft and yielding. She tripped and flew head first into a patch of wet snow. There was a wail of pain and—the cry of a small child.

Kelpie raised her head from the snow in time to see Morag stop, whirl, and race back toward Kelpie and the child. Was she going to begin her revenge by killing the bairn?

“Is it hurt that you are?” roared Morag, but she was not speaking to Kelpie. She picked up the crying child and stood, her gaunt face twisted with the conflict of feelings going on in her. Then she turned to Kelpie, with the Irish MacDonalds only a few yards from them. “Come on!” she ordered and raced with the child toward the hut and the cowering woman.

Bewildered, Kelpie scrambled up and followed, just barely ahead of the men. Morag thrust the baby into its mother’s arms, whirled, and drew her _sgian dhu_.

“You’ll not be touching them, whatever!” she bellowed at the astonished giant who led the pack. “Back, or I’ll skewer you, Rab MacDonald! Am I not a woman and mother myself? A plague on men and war! Back, I say!”

She was terrifying; her avenging fury turned to defense of her prey. It was altogether too much for the Highlanders. They stood and stared, a full dozen of them in a semicircle before her.

“Fine brave soldiers ye are!” jeered Morag. “Are ye no afraid to be attacking such dangerous foes? Here’s the wee bairn, now. Will one of you not challenge him to fair combat?”

They shuffled their feet, quite taken aback. The madness that Morag herself had kindled in them trickled out, to be replaced by the Highland sense of the ridiculous. One of them chuckled, and then several others began to roar with laughter. “And is this your own vengeance, Morag Mhor?” they hooted. “I will be remembering this the next time you are clouting me on the ear and send for a bairn to protect me,” added the giant called Rab.

Morag Mhor seemed not to care about the teasing. She stood guard over the grateful little family while the cattle were caught and while the rest of the army arrived on the scene. And, with the backing of Montrose, she defied those who wanted to burn the house.

“I can do no more for ye,” she told the Campbell woman when the army and its captured cattle had started on once again. “You have your bairns and your home—although your Campbell army left me neither, nor husband. I intended to do the same to you, but I could not, for I saw myself in you, and it came to me that a woman’s place is to give life, not to take it. It comes to me, too, that men are a senseless lot with all their useless killing, and perhaps we mothers should be raising our sons to different ideas.”

And then she turned abruptly and headed in long strides back to the Highland army, not waiting for the stammered words of thanks.

Kelpie trailed along at her heels, saying nothing but thinking a good deal.

And so it went, along to Tyndrum and up Glenorchy. Morag Mhor vehemently defended every woman and child they found, against the threats and wild arguments of the Highland soldiers. It didn’t take Kelpie long to discover that all this was a great act put on by the Highlanders for Morag’s benefit, and it was a surprise to her that a woman as shrewd as Morag didn’t know it too. But she never guessed.

“I know you for the braw liar you are,” remarked Kelpie saucily to Rab one morning over their beef-and-oatmeal breakfast. “You will be teasing her every time, and you as softhearted as herself.”

“As ever was,” agreed Rab, rolling a dark eye at her. “But do not be telling Morag, whatever, for it is not just teasing. With the grief of her, she is needing something to fight, but she is happier to be fighting us to save bairns than the other way around.”

Although the campaign through Campbell territory was less bloodthirsty than Kelpie had expected, still it was not pretty. Men of fighting age found little mercy, few cattle escaped the voracious appetite of the army, and more than a few barns and thatch roofs went up in smoke behind it.

Blazing fires and roasted meat were good at night, after long and cold marches. Since there were so few women to do the cooking, the men helped too, with good will and bantering. Kelpie poked at a haunch of beef one chill but clear evening, thinking to herself that they were going a long way round to Argyll at Inverary, in a huge triangle to north and west. Surely by now Argyll would have received word of this invasion! Kelpie wondered what he would be doing about it. The obvious thing would be to come away after them, and she looked apprehensively toward the purple-black hills that surrounded the orange firelight.

“Is there food for a starving—Why, ’tis the water witch!” Kelpie turned to face Archie MacDonald, whose black eyes were sparkling with curiosity. They stared at each other.

“And where did you vanish to that day?” he demanded. “A braw lot of trouble and grief you caused! If you’ve the power to vanish into thin air, you might have been doing it before Ian Cameron was cut down trying to save you.”

Kelpie winced. “Was he killed entirely?” she asked, her heart pounding for fear of the answer.

“Na, na, not entirely. But a nasty wound it was. Still, he survived it, although he had to go back to Glenfern, and no more fighting for the time.” Kelpie saw again in her mind the savage downward sweep of Alex’s broadsword and had to push aside the tumult of feelings that it brought. But—Ian was not dead! Alex had not killed him!

“And Alex MacDonald?” she demanded balefully.

“He’s—away,” said Archie, and it was clear that he was going to say no more. But then, he was Alex’s cousin and not likely to want to speak of it. At least Kelpie knew now that Alex had not been hanged, and she thought again that she might be the one to avenge Ian some day. For she doubted that, even now, Ian himself would raise a hand against Alex. She looked right through Archie, and her slanted blue eyes held no very pleasant expression.

The meat was done now and being divided. Archie pulled his _sgian dhu_ from his stocking, vanished briefly into the crowd of hungry men, and emerged with a smoking hunk for Kelpie in one hand and one for himself in the other. She bit into the meat hungrily and then looked up to find the deep black eyes still fixed on her, and a question in them.

“That day,” he began, with an uncertain note in his voice, “were you sending a call in the mind to Alex before you gave the Cameron rant with your voice?”

Kelpie looked as blank as she felt. “I don’t understand you whatever!” she said warily.

“Why,” he began, and frowned a little, “there we were in the tavern, with Alex and Ian in a fury at each other, and none of us even hearing the sounds outside. It was a braw quarrel, with Ian gone white with the anger in him, and Alex the color of a rowan berry. And then Alex was stopping in mid-word, with an intent, listening look on the face of him, and looking round. And it was because of his silence that an instant later we were hearing the Cameron rant, and Ian shouting ‘’Tis Kelpie in trouble!’”

Kelpie shook her head blankly. “And what then?” was all she said.

Archie shrugged. “Why, then, Ian forgot the quarrel and was away out the door, and Alex after him with drawn sword, and the rest of us collected our wits and followed, not knowing if Alex’s black fury was still for Ian, or for the witch-hunters. His face was a fearful thing to see, and I’m hoping I never meet the like in battle, for ’twould be the end of me. But you know the rest better than I. How was it, Kelpie, that Alex heard you even through the quarrel, and before the rest of us?”

“I don’t know,” said Kelpie absently, her mind on another question altogether. For the thing she had suspected was clear. It was herself had helped bring about the scene in the loch, and hatred of her had caused Alex to strike down his foster brother. It was the only possible explanation, and there was a sore hurt in the thought of it. How could Alex have hated her that much, who had never seemed to hate her at all, but only scorn her? Her short upper lip curled. Och, he would pay for it, just! Even though Kelpie could no longer hope for witchcraft to help her, he would pay for it.

Archie looked at her uneasily. There was a look about her not quite canny, and it was occurring to him that folk called after water witches, who could communicate without the voice, might not be a braw choice for companionship, so he brought her another hunk of meat—to avoid offending her—and melted hastily into the crowd of soldiers.

* * * * *

The army passed the very spot near Loch Awe where Kelpie had first seen Janet Campbell that June day six months ago. And then they were heading at last toward Inverary, through the steep wilds of Glen Aray where she and Janet had gone. And what had been happening to Janet all this time? she wondered. Not that she really cared, she tried to tell herself, except that Janet was a harmless soul and not deserving to be harmed by either Mac Cailein Mor or his enemies.