Part 4

“Witchcraft!” squeaked Fiona.

Kelpie flushed guiltily and found a sudden lump in her throat. Och, here was a mess! Why had she done such a foolish thing? All in fun it was, and yet who would believe her for a minute? Now she would be punished and sent away—and, for once, for a thing of which she was innocent! The novelty of the situation was so shattering that for once she lost her glib tongue. She simply stared at her mistress, her eyes growing wide with frustration and despair.

The twins and Marsali broke into simultaneous explanations—all slightly different—with Fiona putting in exclamation points here and there, so that it was some time before Lady Glenfern could get an idea of what had happened. When she did, she turned questioningly to Kelpie, who was still trying to think up some lie that sounded more plausible than the truth. But Eithne spoke first.

“Och, then, Mother!” she said, laughter and distress in her voice. “She was teasing; I am sure of it. Look you how the twins are always at her to cast a spell, and Fiona just begging to be teased by the very look of her. I am sure that was the way of it! Was it not, Kelpie?”

Kelpie nodded a bit sullenly. This was humiliating. She wished she really had power to do a wee magic spell and dared show them, just to see their surprise.

“Well—” Lady Glenfern hesitated, inclined to believe it, but not quite sure. After all....

At that moment Wee Mairi popped into the kitchen, looking, in her full skirts, like a fairy child caught in an overblown rose. And, like a fairy child, she knew instantly that something was wrong, and what to do about it. She pattered across the floor and slipped her small, soft hand into Kelpie’s.

“This is _my_ Kelpie,” she announced, smiling angelically at her mother. “’Tis myself loves her, and you must not be cross at her.”

“There, Mother!” crowed Eithne. “Wee Mairi loves her, and Mairi has the Second Sight; you said yourself that she is never making a mistake about a person!”

Lady Glenfern relaxed. “Aye so,” she agreed and smiled at Kelpie. “I can well see how you were tempted to tease,” she admitted and then became grave. “But you must be careful, lass. To joke about such matters could cause you sore trouble.”

Kelpie hardly heard the warning. Her hand was gripping the small one still protectively clinging to it, and she found herself again seized by an alarming surge of feeling for its owner. Och, the fair, sweet heart of her....

Wee Mairi chose this instant to lean confidingly against Kelpie and peer up with a beguiling smile. “_My_ Kelpie,” she repeated.

And Kelpie was swallowed in a tide of the first real love she had ever known. She found it extremely upsetting. All her training and experience warned her that it was dangerous to be trapped into this sort of feeling. It left one vulnerable, could lead one into foolishness. And here she was, bewitched, unable to help it! She scowled helplessly.

Lady Glenfern, seeing her distress, mercifully took her from the kitchen for the rest of the day and set her to work at a simple bit of weaving. For an hour or so Kelpie sat alone, brooding. Eithne came in for a while to work at her own more complicated length of Cameron tartan, but Kelpie was so unsociable that she left again.

And then the twins arrived, dark heads cocked to one side, eyes dancing at her impishly. “We have found you,” they announced in triumph.

“Fine I know it,” growled Kelpie, refusing to look at them.

Undaunted, they seated themselves on two wee creepie-stools and regarded her with affable curiosity. “There is a thing that we have in our minds,” they told her.

“I am doubting that!” snapped Kelpie.

The twins digested this insult and then chuckled. “I am liking you fine,” said Donald, “even though you are not a witch.”

Kelpie, touched again on that newly sensitive spot, shot the shuttle through the warp with unnecessary violence and said nothing.

“Why were you saying you are a witch when you are not?” asked Ronald with interest. “Why,” he continued, getting warmed up, “do Fiona and the others think you are? Would you like to be? Are you truly Old Mina’s girl? Is she your Grannie Witchie? If you were a witch, Kelpie, what would you do first of all?”

“Put a spell of silence on the tongue of you,” retorted Kelpie and found that her ill humor was beginning to evaporate. It was impossible not to smile back at their cheeky grins, not to chuckle when they said that Mother would probably approve such a spell. The atmosphere became quite congenial.

“I thought you were going fishing,” observed Kelpie.

The twins looked depressed. “We were,” they agreed. “But Father is come back from seeing Lochiel and told us to bide here for our lessons that we missed this morning. I think ’twill take him a wee while to find us in here, whatever,” added Ronald cheerfully, and Kelpie grinned again.

“We are learning about the war between King Charles and Parliament and the Covenant,” volunteered Donald sadly, “and we could do fine _not_ knowing about it. Grownups are gey confusing, so they are, and sometimes I think gey foolish besides, and we are not understanding it all very well.”

“Are you loving King Charles?” demanded Ronald.

“Ou, aye,” murmured Kelpie vaguely and hastened to turn the question. “Are you?” she countered.

“As ever was!” they chorused instantly. “Is he not our King, and a Stewart, besides?”

Well, Kelpie had already known that Glenfern was pro-Royalist. “And so the King is always right?” she pursued, trying to think what else to ask.

“Och, no!” said the twins in surprise. “No one is always right,” they informed her gravely. “Except,” they added, “for Father.”

Kelpie put her shuttle through the wrong way and had to take it out again, her lip twitching ever so slightly. The twins, having settled that subject of conversation, looked at her hopefully. “Can you,” they asked, “tell us a story?”

Now if there was one thing Kelpie could do better than any other, it was to tell stories—pathetic tales to earn sympathy or a copper, outrageous lies to escape impending trouble, embroidered yarns of her own adventures, old gypsy stories, eerie folk tales of the wee people and other uncanny beings, or fanciful bits and snatches that she wove for herself among the hills or beside the campfire. Her eyes sparkled. “Fine I can that!” she asserted and dropped her voice to an eerie pitch.

“Have you ever,” she whispered, “heard of the _uruisg_ of Glenlyon?”

They shook their heads and drew their stools nearer.

“Well, then.” Kelpie paused, shuttle in hand. “It was a farmer’s wife who was making porridge for breakfast on a wet morning, when who should come walking in but an _uruisg_. Och, a slippery, damp, uncouth monster he was, half man and half goat; and wasn’t he just sitting himself down at the fire to dry, and not so much as a wee greeting to her? Well, the farmer’s wife was fair angered at his impertinence, and she having to step over and around him every minute, so presently she just lifted a ladle of the boiling porridge from the pot over the fire, and poured it over him, just. Well, at that he leaped up, howling, and ran out the door and never dared set foot in that house again....”

When Glenfern finally tracked down his elusive twins some time later, Kelpie had got very little weaving done, but she had made a place for herself forever in the hearts of Ronald and Donald.

6. The Picture in the Loch

“’Tis a terrible complicated matter, the war,” objected Eithne doubtfully as she began basting a sleeve into what was to be a fine linen shirt for Ian’s birthday. “I fear I’d only be confusing you.”

Kelpie surveyed the four or five yards of red and green tartan wool which constituted a kilt for a small lad, and wondered how even Donald could have managed to tear such stout weave. “I could not be more confused than I am,” she pointed out, “for I am knowing nothing at all. Tell me at least a little.”

Eithne sighed and obeyed. “Well,” she began hesitantly, “you know that King Charles is King of England and Scotland both?” Kelpie nodded. “But in both countries are representative bodies of men called Parliaments, and they help to rule. They are supposed to agree with the things the King does, and it is the English parliament who must vote to give him things like extra money when he needs it—which he usually does.”

She paused to squint critically at her basting, and Kelpie waited. Somehow she had developed a great eagerness to learn about the matters which had thrown England and Scotland into civil war. “Aye, go on,” she murmured.

“Well, so. Neither King Charles nor his father before him has got along well with Parliament. King and Parliament each said the other will be trying to take more rights and power than they should have, and they became angry. Parliament would refuse to vote money for the King, so the King would dissolve Parliament, which meant that they could not meet any more to vote on anything at all until King Charles called them back, and so everyone was unhappy.”

She bit off her thread and held the shirt closer to the dim light which filtered through the thick diamond-shaped mullion panes of the casement window. “And then”—she sighed—“religion came into it. Father,” she remarked severely, “says that religion should never be mixed with politics, but they do not listen to wise people like Father, and so there is trouble.”

“What has religion to do with it?” asked Kelpie curiously. She had never known anything of religion for herself, only that the stern Kirk of the Lowlands had severe views on all other faiths, on fun and laughter, and most particularly on witches. But the Anglican services here at Glenfern seemed peaceful and vaguely pleasant, even though she did not understand them.

“Och!” protested Eithne, but Kelpie’s face was implacable, so she went on. “Well, the Catholics and Protestants do not like each other, and especially the Protestants of the new Reformed Church, like the Puritans in England and the Calvinist Covenanters in Scotland—and we Anglicans caught in the middle. King Charles is Anglican, but the Parliament is mostly Puritan, I think. At any rate, they were very angry when the King married Queen Henrietta, who is a Roman Catholic and said she would turn the country all Catholic and burn Protestants at the stake. And the Catholics said the Protestants were trying to rule the country and force their religion on everyone, and so it was a fine braw quarrel for years, with religion and politics all mixed together.”

Kelpie carefully selected a strand of wool to match the soft, dull red of the Cameron tartan. This was the most difficult bit of mending she had yet been trusted with. “Mmm,” she murmured after a minute, turning her mind back to the conversation. “And then?”

It was Eithne’s turn to pause, while the rain beat against the casement windows. Wee Mairi turned from her doll to lift a merry smile in the direction of “her Kelpie,” who felt a new pang of affection. Och, the bonnie wee thing!

Eithne scowled at the shirt and then glanced up at Kelpie with a rueful shrug. “Ou, I cannot mind me of all the details.” She sighed again. “But the quarrel turned into fighting.”

“But what of Scotland?” demanded Kelpie. “What had it to do with us at all?”

“Why,” interrupted the dry voice of Alex, “King Charles himself must be bringing that on!” They looked up to see him standing in the doorway, a shirt in his hand and a wry grin on his angular face. “Scotland might have been loyal to him, even though all the Lowlands are Calvinist, and even more rigid than the Puritans, but he had the bright idea of forcing the Anglican prayer book on Scotland. And the next thing he knew, there was a Solemn League and Covenant formed against him, and Scotland divided as England was, with Lowlands against the King, and most of the Highlands loyal to him.”

Eithne looked both relieved and worried, while Kelpie studied Alex’s expression in the dim light, not quite certain if he were teasing or not. She decided not—for once. There was a faint note of bitterness in his voice. “I thought you were a King’s man!” she challenged him.

“I am so,” he returned promptly and unpropped himself from the doorway. “Look you, Eithne,” he went on, crossing the room to her. “I have ripped my shirt sorely and am needing a bonnie sweet lass to mend it for me.”

Eithne tilted her chestnut curls at him and wrinkled up her nose in an impish grin. “If I do,” she said, bargaining, “will you be explaining the rest of the war to Kelpie?”

“_Dhé!_” said Alex and raised both eyebrows at Kelpie.

“She is truly wanting to know,” said Eithne sternly, “so do not be teasing her, Alex. And I am gey muddled about it, and you knowing so much more, with having been at Oxford and even seeing the King and his family yourself. Will you?”

“’Tis a hard bargain,” complained Alex, “and I am thinking I pity the man who will one day marry you, Eithne _m’eudail_.” He perched on the corner of the massive table, his kilt falling in heavy folds about his lean knees. “Well, then, and what bit of my great knowledge should I be sharing with you first?”

Kelpie gave him a wicked pointed smile. “Tell me,” she said softly, “in one word, just, _what are they fighting for?_”

“My sorrow!” exclaimed Alex, straightening up as if he had sat on a thistle. “Is that all?”

“Don’t you know?” asked Kelpie tauntingly. “I will tell you, then. They’re fighting for power. Is it not so?”

Alex resumed his perch and surveyed her ruefully. “Och, and are you not the young cynic!” he observed. “And you have shocked my foster sister, too.” For Eithne was looking both dismayed and indignant. Both girls had forgotten their sewing for the moment and sat staring at Alex challengingly, waiting for his opinion.

He laughed. “I fear me I shall anger you both,” he remarked, “and go through the rest of my life with an evil spell on my head and a tom sleeve in my shirt.”

“Well?” demanded Kelpie.

Alex gave her a crooked grin. “Sorry I am to agree with you even in part,” he confessed, “but no doubt some men are fighting for power. No, no, Eithne,” he added as she opened her mouth. “Do not deny it too quickly. What about Argyll?”

Eithne subsided.

“On the other hand, Alex _avic_, there is Montrose.” It was Ian. He pulled up a hassock and ranged himself quietly but firmly on Eithne’s side.

“Montrose?” asked Kelpie.

“Aye,” said Ian, turning his warm smile upon her. “James Graham of Montrose, and he one of the finest, truest men under the sun. He it is who is named to fight for the King’s cause in Scotland, even to form and organize the army. And he is fighting for no selfish reason whatever, but only for what he believes to be right. Alex cannot deny it, for we both met and talked to him last winter in Oxford.”

“Indeed and I’ll not deny it,” agreed Alex amiably, “though Kelpie might. My point was just that all men are not like Montrose, and my proof of it is still Argyll. Och, and have you done, my sonsie Eithne?” he added as she held up the mended shirt. “Come away, then, Ian, and let’s be outside. I believe the sun is going to come out.”

And they were gone before Kelpie could ask about Argyll. Perhaps it was as well, she decided, going back to her mending. For she really thought she had heard quite as much as she could absorb all in one lump.

Eithne flickered a mischievous sideways glance at her. “And wasn’t I warning you ’twas complicated?” she murmured.

* * * * *

As if by tacit agreement, no one brought up matters like war and politics for some time. After all, it was easy enough, in that peaceful, secluded glen, to put such things far out of mind. Kelpie’s free hours were full enough, as spring days became longer, with other things. Wee Mairi tagged along with her, a self-appointed guardian, and the glenspeople had learned to hide their hostility when Mairi was there. The twins were insatiably hungry for more stories—and so, for that matter, were the older young people. Books were rare and precious, and mostly devoted to serious and difficult subjects. And, as Ian generously remarked on a sunny afternoon by the loch, Kelpie was a master at telling tales.

Alex grinned impishly. “She is that!” he agreed with a wicked twinkle in his eye and a double meaning to his voice which Kelpie chose to ignore.

“Next time I will tell you about the _sithiche_ (fairies) of Loch Maree—_if_ you are all very kind to me,” she said blandly and glanced impudently at Alex.

She sat on alone by the loch for a little while after the others had left, thinking about things. How Alex had changed since she first met him! He was much nicer than she had thought. And she had begun to like his teasing and mockery, for it was all good-humored.... Or was it perhaps herself had changed? And if so—She rolled over to lie full-length on her face in the fragrant long grasses and pondered. Then, lazily, she stretched until her head was over the edge of the loch.

What was her real self like? Had that changed? Could it?

The bank at this point rose abruptly about two feet above the glassy surface of the water, with tough curling roots of heather overhanging the edge. Kelpie reached down skillfully, scooped up a handful of the cold water, and drank it from her palm before it could run through her fingers. The surface rippled slightly and returned to its mirror stillness, with sky, hills, and trees reflected so clearly that it would be hard to tell the reflection from the real. Or was one, perhaps, as real as the other?

She stared down at her own face, still looking indecently bare with all the thick dark hair pulled back into plaits. Was that any less real—or more—than the scenes she saw in Mina’s crystal?

And then it was no longer her own face she was seeing, but a town street and an ugly-tempered crowd surging down it. Not merely annoyed, that crowd, but murderous. Kelpie shivered a little, for she knew too well how bestial a mob could be. And this one had a victim, for there was savage satisfaction in the grim Lowland faces above their sober Covenanter garments, pressing closer and closer.... And there was Ian! Whatever could he be doing in the Lowlands? Pushing through the crowd, he was; and Alex came after, shouting at him, his angular face all twisted with fury. And now they were closer, and Alex was catching up to Ian.... Alex was lifting his sword, and through the crowd Kelpie could see him bring it down savagely.... _Dhé!_ Ian had fallen, his dark head vanished in the throng! And Alex’s sword with blood on it!

Kelpie jerked with horror, and a bit of dry heather plopped into the water—and the picture was gone. Nor did it return, though she waited, staring at the still water and brooding bitterly.

_Dhé!_ That serpent Alex! She had never liked him from the beginning! And now he was going to turn on his foster brother, strike him down from behind, perhaps kill him—for the Sight never lied.

She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter to her, but it was too late. Ian had crept into her heart, and Wee Mairi, and the rest of them. Even Alex, deceitful scoundrel that he was, had somehow tricked her into liking him—for a while, anyway. But now she knew better. Och, she must try to warn Ian! Even if he could not prevent it, perhaps he could be on his guard, could put off the evil day of it, could duck in time to save his life.

Dismayed, angry, resolute, Kelpie got to her feet, smoothed down the full folds of her blue dress, and started back up the loch.

* * * * *

Now what, wondered Alex, had got under the skin of their wolf cub lately? For there was a new venom toward himself—and after he had been thinking her nearly tamed, too. Aye, a wolf cub: belligerent, cunning, snarling, biting, thieving, destructive—and yet innocent, as a wolf cub is innocent because it knows nothing else.

But she had been changing. She had been learning trust and affection, even to play and tease. And now, suddenly, there was a new and deadly hatred smoldering at him from those ringed eyes. It was puzzling, it was, and rather less amusing than her old spitting indignation had been; and even though it could hardly be a tragedy to him, still it was disconcerting. Alex kept a wary eye on her, lest she should decide to take her _sgian dhu_ to his back.

As for Kelpie, she found the business of warning Ian a bit harder than it had seemed. For one thing, it was none so easy to find him alone, for he and Alex were usually together and about their own affairs, while Kelpie had her tasks in the house. In the evenings the family sat together in the withdrawing room, which was not Kelpie’s place. The big warm kitchen, or her wee cot in Marsali’s room, was where she belonged, or—more often—away by herself outside, in the pale half-light of the long northern gloaming. For summer was drawing near, and darkness now merely brushed down late upon the world and, like a gull’s wing, quickly lifted.

So she glared at Alex and did her tasks and kept her eyes and ears open and bided her time. And at last Alex went off for a few days to visit his brother in Ardochy. And the next evening Kelpie, on one of her rambles, saw Ian on the hill above her, quietly looking down over the glen.

Kelpie drew near, and then paused. Och, a braw lad he was! But how might she be approaching him best? It might be he wanted to be alone. Before she could decide, Ian saw her, smiled, beckoned, his face oddly blurred in the half-light that turned all things gray. She sat beside him and for a minute followed his gaze over the long shadowed cup of the glen, lit by the silver gleam of Loch nan Eilean.

Finally Ian stirred and spoke. “I wish I might never need to leave it again,” he said wistfully.

Did he love it so? Kelpie dimly sensed that he did; but she did not understand, for she herself had no roots to her heart, but only a wanderlust to her feet. “And must you, then?” she asked. Why could Ian not be doing as he pleased, since he was the heir to Glenfern?

“Aye so,” he said, a bit more briskly. “For I must finish my schooling if I am to be a fit chieftain and leader to my people. However”—he brightened considerably—“I think we’ll not be able to return to Oxford for some time, with the war moving northward and becoming more serious, and Argyll endangering all the Highlands.”

Now was the moment for her to warn him about Alex. But it was also a chance to ask about Argyll and put off the more difficult thing. “Tell me about Argyll!” she urged.

Ian turned to look at her with friendly interest. “You’ve a good head on you, haven’t you, Kelpie? Mother says you’re quick to learn and that you speak English as well as Gaelic. Are you truly interested in national affairs, then?” Kelpie nodded.

“Well, then,” began Ian, “you know who Argyll is, do you not? Mac Cailein Mor, Chief of Clan Campbell in the Highlands, and also head of the Covenant Army of the Lowlands. So he has that power added to the power of his own clan, and he uses it ill, Kelpie. He is a vicious man, cruel, ambitious, and vindictive.”

Kelpie could not resist a gibe. “And is he not also a Campbell, and his clan at feud with yours?” she remarked.

Ian flushed. Even in the dusk she could see it. “’Tis not that!” he protested. “I am not one to hate a man for his name, Kelpie! And in any case, my own uncle married a Campbell lass; and the son of Lochiel, our own clan chief, married Argyll’s sister, and we are anxious to be at peace. But Argyll, devil that he is, wishes to dictate his own terms entirely. Do you know what he has done, Kelpie? He has taken his nephew Ewen—Lochiel’s own grandson, who will be chief of the Camerons some day—and is keeping him at his own castle of Inverary. He says he wishes to see to his education—and I can guess what kind of education ’twill be—but do you see that Ewen is hostage for Lochiel’s actions? And if Lochiel dares to take the side of the King against Argyll—”