Duet (16 page)

On the darkest of days, that smile had lit the world, and now it was gone, taking all joy.

Aillil placed the waistcoat back on its peg and continued searching the room for the item he sought. He found what he needed on the desk—the violin he’d bought to replace Malcolm’s broken one. Aillil regretted the reason for the original’s destruction but had secretly reveled in the opportunity to replace the inferior instrument with one more worthy of the gifted composer.

His violin lessons in Glasgow had been halfhearted, at best. He’d chafed at being taught English compositions and eventually rebelled. Until he played with Malcolm, his talents hadn’t truly blossomed. Aillil had enjoyed teaching his lover the traditional Scottish tunes, songs handed down from one generation to the next, one of the few things the English hadn’t tried to take from them. In return, he’d learned English tunes; not by force, but because he wanted to share Malcolm’s favorite melodies, many created by Malcolm himself
.

Well, those days were gone forever now, buried in a lonely grave in the grove. Memories were all that remained, memories and Malcolm’s violin. Aillil lovingly caressed the gleaming wood before tightening his fingers around the neck. With both violins and bows secured in his cloak, he stepped from the safety of the stone walls that no longer felt like home.

The full moon hung low in the sky, caught in the skeletal branches of the trees. In its pale light, he followed the twisting and turning path to the grove, picking a way through the ruins of the curtain wall that had once defended the clan from invaders. The memory of the last time he’d made the journey alone ached like a knife in his gut, for then he’d laid his love to rest.

A low keening grew louder the closer he came to the ring of trees, the strains of a bagpipe playing a customary funeral dirge. He’d heard the eerie tune far too often of late. It seemed in times of great peril, the English laws banning the playing of the great pipes lost their significance. When he stepped from the trees into the clearing, he stopped in awe and held his breath. The moonlight touched each of the yews, and they appeared to glow with an inner light. Outside the circle, Old Maeve waited, warming her hands by an herb-scented bonfire. The figure of the boy who’d summoned him earlier huddled in the shadows nearby. A lone piper stood silhouetted in the moonlight, playing, and several other figures appeared beyond the circle, faces hidden under hooded robes.

“I ken ye’d come, Aillil,” the healer said, affection in her tone. “Yer love be strong.”

She approached slowly and reached up to cup his face in rough hands. Holding him still with gnarled fingers, she gazed into his eyes and asked, “Aillil mac Eoghan, dae ye wish tae reunite wit yer lover?”

“What of my family, my people?” Aillil swallowed hard around a lump of uncertainty. No matter how badly he wanted to be with Malcolm, he couldn’t. He was the laird; the clan must come first.

The elderly woman smiled and patted his cheek. “Whit ay braw Scotsman ye be. Thinkin’ o’ others. Mae lak ye an’ twad end
Sassenach
rule. Donna worry bout yer fowk. Th’ brithers ye lost hae gaen on tae new lives, an’ it were ne’er yer destiny tae lead th’ clan. Yer brither will be ay good laird an’, followin’ yer example, care fer them e’en at his ain sacrifice.”

Yes, Niall was a cunning lad, and if Old Maeve foresaw him as a capable laird, Aillil believed it too. Maybe Druid magic showed her these things. Fionan had been a firm devotee of the Druids’ power, and believed the dead would be reborn. The prospect of Dughall and Dughlas getting another chance to live a full life gave him immense comfort.

Placing his trust in the woman who’d attended at his birth, Aillil said, “Yes, Old Mother, I would be reunited with my lover.”

“E’en if it tak an age, o’ mae?” she asked with a note of caution.

“Even if it takes eternity,” he readily agreed.

The old woman nodded, pulling his head down to place a kiss on his brow, like she’d done when he’d been a lad and she came to the castle to deliver his siblings. “Aillil, dae ye bring somethin’ o’ his?” He nodded and handed her Malcolm’s violin. “Good. An’ yer ain?”

Aillil raised his hand, showing her the instrument. “What would you have me play?”

“Nae fer me.” She nodded toward the lonely grave within the circle of trees. “Fer him.”

A motion of her hand silenced the piper. A breeze toyed with the branches of the trees, yet the wind made not a sound. The very night seemed to be holding its breath.

He put bow to strings, beginning one of the early pieces he’d learned from Malcolm. Without conscious effort, the song changed until he recognized the heartrending strains of a tune conceived while Malcolm lay dying, a tune born of pure misery.

The somber notes told of pain, loneliness, and loss, lamenting days without number, wandering aimlessly, searching for the missing piece of his soul that had followed Malcolm to the grave.

The music summoned other memories, filling his mind with images of laughing green eyes, alive with mischief during a game of Fox and Hounds, or auburn-lashed lids closed in concentration while negotiating a difficult piece of music.

The song changed, light and airy as a summer breeze, carrying Aillil back to a day by the lake when he’d first kissed Malcolm.

He pictured Malcolm beneath him, moaning in passion, their bodies joining and becoming one, and the music changed to a heart-rending refrain that spoke of a love strong enough to defy death. Caught up in the notes, he barely registered the quietly spoken, “Step intae th’ circle.”

When he passed through an opening in the trees, still playing, a tingling began in his fingers and toes, working up his arms and legs. His eyes flew open wide, and he stared in amazement at the yews. Each one glowed brilliantly, echoing the music until sounds of a dozen instruments filled the grove. A thrumming resonated outside the circle, the chanting of the Druids growing louder. The pungent, burning herbs began to cloud his mind. The images became clearer, Malcolm laughing, singing, playing. The tune evolved into something Aillil had never imagined before, a love song of bittersweet beauty. He poured every ounce of his being into the notes, becoming one with the music.

“Say his name,” he heard hissed from the shadows.

The words escaped on barely a whisper from his lips: “
Mael Caluim
.” The world dissolved into nothingness.

M
AEVE
handed Malcolm’s violin to her grandson. “Ye be ay lad, but tonight ye be entrusted wi’ ay task,” she told him. “Ye an’ yer offsprin’ are tae protect this wi’ yer lives. Ye donna ain it, ye guards it. Its ainer be claiming it by an’ by.”

“’O willa ken him?” the boy asked.

“Ye willna, th’ fiddle will.” With an affectionate pat on the head, she pushed him toward his father, who’d resumed playing the pipes. She stood watching the yews, their gleam fading. The ancient holy site of her people once more appeared to be an ordinary ring of trees. How fortunate that Aillil had taken his lover for the first time within its confines, a fact the yews whispered to her with amusement, for ages had passed since a pair coupled within the sacred circle to receive their blessing.

The Druids ceased their chanting, and Maeve stepped through the trees to retrieve Aillil’s violin and cloak, and the laird’s brooch. One of the robed forms approached, throwing back a hood to reveal a wild tangle of dark hair.

“Niall.” She acknowledged her novice with a dip of her head. “Tak thae tae th’ castle an’ be sure ye kens its worth. ’At fiddle maun be kept safe.” She smiled and patted it, much like she’d done her grandson.

“Aye,” the new Laird Callaghan replied, before slipping through the trees and out of sight. One by one, the others followed suit, leaving Old Maeve alone. A gentle breeze thrummed through the glen, the sound an eerie echo of Aillil’s love song. Gazing up into the clear night sky at the twinkling stars, she breathed in the crisp autumn air and smiled, content.

N
IALL
waited until Rory fell asleep before dressing in the woolen robe he kept hidden beneath the bed and pinning on the laird’s brooch. With stealthy footsteps, he crossed the great hall to climb the tower to the tutor’s room, clutching Aillil’s violin.

He stood before the hearth, head hung low. In such a short time, he’d lost three brothers. Old Maeve assured him that the twins were already on their way to a new destiny. And deep down, he knew Aillil wasn’t really dead, but that didn’t make the loss any less difficult, for the results were the same. Never again would they laugh or share a joke, never again would Aillil commiserate with him over the follies of youth. Never again would Niall sneak away to spy on Aillil and Malcolm.

Oh, he’d asked his mentor about them without naming names. She’d explained that pure love was good in its own right, regardless of who loved whom. It comforted him to know Aillil and Malcolm weren’t bad men to want each other. Watching the two declare love for each other with their bodies in the grove…. Well, even if he wasn’t a lover of men, Niall couldn’t deny the beauty of the moment, for he, a novice Druid, found beauty in every living thing.

The loose stones came away from above the mantel with a bit of coaxing, and Niall encased his brother’s precious instrument with great care in the secret compartment he’d found several years ago. Chanting softly to avoid detection by curious servants, he murmured the Druid words of farewell, adding his own, “May you find him in time, my brother,” in parting.

Ten

1846

T
HE
current Callaghan laird’s sanity hung in precarious balance. After twenty-eight years in the ancestral seat of Clan Callaghan with nary a sighting, or sounding, as it were, the ghost of his great-great-uncle chose his honeymoon to put in an appearance. Instead of lying snuggled close to his new bride, for the third night in a row, he hunted for the spirit of a man who’d vanished without a trace over eighty years before—at his lovely wife’s insistence. How had she learned the legends, being an English lass?

Holding a lantern high and accompanied by Old Meg, the cook, he approached the older, unused part of the castle. The stones, worn smooth by the footsteps of his ancestors, beckoned ever upward, each step bringing him closer to the beseeching melody that had plagued the household for three straight nights.

He’d like to believe the disturbance the work of some prankster reenacting the legend, only no one of his acquaintance played violin with such skill.
No one but Aillil,
a memory whispered in his mind, sounding like his grandmother, who’d spent many an evening retelling the old tales. Laird Niall Callaghan, for whom he’d been named, had a brother who’d mysteriously disappeared, she’d said, a brother whose spirit still resided in the castle.

She’d been a gifted storyteller, and impressionable Niall hung on her every word. He’d gone looking for the spirit once, before his mother caught him and delivered a sound scolding. Now a man fully grown, he scoffed at childhood ghost stories. But were they? The unnerving music grew louder, a spectral advocate presenting its case.

When the stairs ended he stood before a dilapidated door, the wood around the hinges rotting with age. He imagined how it must have appeared years ago, before decay set in. The hinges screeched when he pulled on the handle and he jumped back, coughing away decades of dust. The mournful notes ceased, like they always did. “It’s now or never,” Niall muttered more to himself than to Old Meg. For the past two nights, he’d made it this far before turning back. A raised lantern the only available weapon, this time he determined to resolve the mystery once and for all and swept into the room, silently cursing the unknown relative who’d brought him to this.

His dramatic entrance ended anticlimactically. No skeletons hung from the wall in cages and no spectral beings rattled chains. In fact, all he found was a tiny, very plain room. The moldy remains of a bed sat crumbled against one wall, and rotted material clung to the disintegrating wooden pegs along another. A shutter drooped forlornly from a high window. One good gust of wind would send it crashing to the floor.

No footprints marred the layer of dust covering the floor. By all appearances, no one had been in there for a very long time. With a sigh and a quick glance to ensure his servant hadn’t retreated, Niall turned to leave the rundown tower for the more comfortable surroundings of the great hall.

“’Tis him,” the cook hissed, roving eyes wide and anxious.

“Who?” He sincerely hoped she wasn’t about to confirm his personal suspicions about his sanity. Indeed, an educated man hunting ghosts in the middle of the night!

Unfortunately, she was. “’Tis the ghost of Old Laird Callaghan.” She nodded in apparent agreement with herself. “We should leave ’im be.”

Niall fully agreed with her plan. Too bad the lovely Judith, waiting below, had other ideas. “Do you really believe the tales?” he asked, grasping at straws to find some logical explanation.