Lady of Magick (37 page)

Joanna whimpered almost inaudibly, curling herself more tightly towards Sophie in the narrow bunk they shared.

“Ssh,” Sophie murmured, smoothing a hand over her sweat-damp hair. “Hush, now, I shan't leave you.” Joanna had seemed a little better this evening—at any rate, the vomiting seemed to be over and done, to the great relief of all concerned—but now the physical symptoms appeared to have been succeeded by a terror of Sophie's abandoning her to . . . to, Sophie supposed, whatever horrors were plaguing her dreams.

I wish I had been born a healer,
she thought, not for the first time, but perhaps at least she might do something about the dreams.

She reached gingerly for her magick, and found it sufficient for her purpose; leaning close to Joanna's ear, she began to croon the spell for dreamless sleep which Gray had taught her in the midst of a very dark night of her own, some years ago.

Gradually Joanna's limbs relaxed and her breathing slowed as she slipped deeper into sleep. And at last, though not for some time, Sophie succeeded in joining her.

*   *   *

The
Muireall
was hailed early one morning, as she emerged from a narrow channel between two islands, by a trio of young men in what looked very much like a fishing-boat, and shortly thereafter boarded by two of the same. They spoke Gaelic with the same half-impenetrable accent as the islanders whom Sophie had met in Dùn Breatainn; they swaggered and glared, demanded payment from the ship's captain for her passage into “the domain of Ailpín Drostan”—from the gobsmacked expressions of the crew, this was by no means
usual—and commanded that all the passengers identify themselves and explain what business brought them to Mull.

Joanna was up and about once more, if a little thinner and paler than was her wont, and for some days now Sophie had felt the welcome flicker of her own magick reasserting itself, bit by infinitesimal bit, over the ebbing traces of Lucia MacNeill's gifting. She was better equipped than she had feared, therefore, to encounter a pair of large, impatient Albans desiring to know her business—though nevertheless thoroughly terrified by the experience—and by means of a wistful smile, the interminably rehearsed and therefore reasonably glib tale of Elinor Graham's mama, whose last wish it had been that her daughter should visit the birthplace of her grandmother, and the judicious use of her own mother's magick, she succeeded in persuading them to move on to the next party of passengers with no more comment than a gruff injunction to take care and to go nowhere unescorted. If, afterward, she leant rather heavily upon Gwendolen's arm, she hoped that this might be attributed to her own recent bout of sea-sickness.

*   *   *

Joanna had been expecting some sort of port—not one so large or so busy as London or Portsmouth, naturally, but something like the port of Douarnenez, where fishing-boats, traders' vessels, and private craft put in with some regularity, and a modest selection of inns stood ready to feed and house those newly arrived to the town or awaiting passage elsewhere. She had been ill for days and days, or so it seemed, and for much of the voyage she had longed for a proper meal, a proper bed, and a proper floor that did not rock and sway beneath her feet, to the exclusion of all else.

Instead, however, the
Muireall
stood off from a shallow bay on the south shore of the Ross of Mull, and those passengers whose destination this was were sent ashore in the ship's boats.

“Look,” Sophie whispered, as she and Joanna leant their elbows on the taffrail, awaiting their turn to climb into the swaying boat. “There it is.”

She pointed with her chin to the southwest, where a stone fortification—it looked tiny from this distance—perched high above the sea. Castle MacAlpine, then.

Joanna nodded.

Gwendolen, as Morgan Prichard, took a turn at the oars—acquitting herself rather well, and preening only a little at Joanna's pleased surprise—and as they approached the shore, she hopped nimbly over the gunwales to help one of the sailors run her up onto the stony beach, so that the ladies might disembark onto relatively dry land. Joanna remarked, with a pang of guilt at not having done so before this, that not since that first unauthorised gallop in London had Gwendolen looked so uncomplicatedly happy.

The three of them hung back to watch the rest of the disembarking travellers—a shopkeeper and his wife from Glaschu, come to visit the latter's elderly and ailing parents, and two sandy-haired brothers, island-born, who had gone to Din Edin to seek employ and found it did not suit them—make their way up the beach. To their left above the flat waters of the bay, a hill rose precipitately, rocky and rough, with turf and heather beginning to green over it and thin cloud drifting lazily across its seaward prow. As Joanna watched, a tiny figure appeared over the brow of the hill, followed at once by a greyish mass that ebbed and flowed around it, which after a bemused moment she recognised as a flock of sheep.

“Come along, Harriet,” said Sophie, tugging at her elbow. “Look.”

Joanna looked round and followed the direction of Sophie's gaze to where the shopkeeper was solicitously helping his wife along a steep, narrow footpath leading upward and inland from the rocky beach. Each of them carried a large valise in one hand, which made their progress slow and ungainly. The sandy-haired brothers were well ahead of them, and widening the gap.

She looked behind her; the little boat and its crew, rowing steadily, were already more than halfway back to their ship.

With Sophie and Gwendolen, at their own insistence, carrying all of their scant possessions, they turned their faces to the northeast and made for the path.

There was no
inn at Carsaig.

A public-house there was, at least, denominated the Drovers' Drum, and here Joanna and Gwendolen inhaled vast helpings of roast mutton and vegetables while Sophie, who was too tightly strung even to think of eating, sought the assistance of the publican's taciturn wife and rather exuberant daughter, nursing the mug of porter which the latter had pressed upon her.

“There's Rose Neill MacTerry,” said the daughter to her mother, whose sole contribution to the discussion thus far had consisted in attempts to persuade Sophie to eat something. “Her youngest married an Arrain-man last summer and she's all alone now. Or Malveen MacUsbaig—but she's a Hearach, you know.”

Sophie did not see in what way Malveen MacUsbaig's coming from Na Hearadh—what the British called the isle of Harris—could have any bearing on her own present difficulty, but it seemed impolite to say so. And perhaps she had misheard; the Gaelic of these islanders was not that of a Din Edin drawing-room.

The publican's wife looked directly at her, frowning. “You are Sasunnach,” she said.

“My father was,” Sophie said easily, thinking
I am Elinor Graham
as hard as she could. “Or half a Sasunnach at any rate, on his mother's side. I was born in the Borders. My mother was born in Glaschu, and her mother at Pennyghael.”

“Oh!” said the daughter. “MacGille, was she?”

Sophie knew not how to reply to this; would it be the more suspicious to answer
yes
, or
no
? Pennyghael, on the far side of the narrow neck of land that was the Ross of Mull, had seemed the safest decoy destination—near enough to account for their wishing to go ashore where they had done, but not so near as to make a long stay in Carsaig convenient for their alleged purposes.

Fortunately the publican's wife ignored her daughter's question entirely. “But your cousins”—she gestured at Joanna and Gwendolen—“have not even so much claim as yourself to Alban blood. This is a bad time for Sasunnach strangers to be coming here. Have you not heard that Cormac MacAlpine is trying to raise the clan-lands against the chieftain Donald MacNeill, because Donald MacNeill is bent on selling his own daughter to the Sasunnach King, and Alba with her?”

Sophie blinked.
Cormac MacAlpine is trying to raise the clan-lands.
Was this useful intelligence, or yet more unsubstantiated rumour?

Behind her, the quiet sounds of Joanna and Gwendolen working their way through their luncheon continued unabated.
They did not hear that,
she reminded herself,
and could not have understood it if they had.

“I had heard that there is to be a marriage between the heiress of Alba and one of King Henry's sons,” she said, feeling her way slowly through what was abruptly become a sort of conversational fenland, liable to sink her to the neck in stinking mud at the least false step. “I have not heard any of the rest, and I confess I do not know what it means to
raise the clan-lands
.”

“It is Alban magick,” said the publican's wife, “old magick and deep. Not for strangers' ears, or strangers' eyes. You had better have stayed at home, child of the Borders.”

At this point her daughter intervened, feeling perhaps—as Sophie did—a little taken aback by her vehemence.

“I'll just take you up to see Rose Neill MacTerry, shall I?” she said, smiling brightly at Sophie. “Will your cousins come, also? Or will we come back for them later? It seems a pity to interrupt their dinner.”

Sophie smiled absently in return.
Cormac MacAlpine is trying to raise the clan-lands. Old magick and deep—might that be Ailpín Drostan's spell-net, or Cormac MacWattie's magick of the land? And five powerful mages vanished without trace . . .

“I thank you, yes,” she said.

*   *   *

Rose Neill MacTerry, it appeared, lived halfway up the side of a mountain; at any rate, Sophie was feeling achy, dishevelled, and sluggish by the time she and her companion reached the gate of her small stone-built house.

The woman who opened the door to their knocking was a very little taller than Sophie, straight and slim despite the four grown children about whom Sophie had heard endless anecdotes in the course of the journey from the Drovers' Drum. “Teàrlag MacAlpine!” she exclaimed, prompting a very belated recognition on Sophie's part that she had come all this way with a girl whose name she did not know—and, it now transpired, a daughter of Clan MacAlpine.
Tread carefully.
“What brings you?”

Sophie caught Teàrlag MacAlpine's brief frown at Rose Neill MacTerry and wondered what it meant. A faint itching sensation tickled the bridge of her nose; she knew very well what
that
meant but could not deduce its source.

“Elinor Graham of the Borders,” said Teàrlag MacAlpine, gesturing at Sophie.

“Are you so indeed?” Rose Neill MacTerry smiled pleasantly, but she studied Sophie in a way that Sophie did not altogether like.

“She has two Sasunnach cousins with her,” Teàrlag MacAlpine continued; “my mother is giving them their dinner at the Drum. Elinor Graham asked our help to find a bed for the night.”

“We did not know that Carsaig had no inn,” Sophie put in; she was conscious that the admission made her seem careless and
irresponsible, but the circumstances seemed to demand some sort of explanation. “It is only for the night; we must be on to Pennyghael tomorrow.”

Ought she to mention payment? Would Rose Neill MacTerry welcome the notion of compensation for her trouble, or would it be an insult to her hospitality? Impossible to say.

Rose Neill MacTerry smiled again. “There was an inn, once,” she said, “in the days of the MacAlpine chieftains. 'Twas named the Sasunnach's Head.”

Sophie shivered. At the same time, incongruously, she had to stifle a yawn.

“Do you come in, then, Elinor Graham,” said Rose Neill MacTerry, holding wide the door of her little house, “and sit you down a little.”

Sophie could never afterwards remember exactly what happened next.

*   *   *

“Sophie has been gone a very long time with that girl,” said Joanna, frowning.

Gwendolen blinked at her in the dim light of the taproom. “Where did she say she was going?”

“I . . .” Joanna thought hard.
I am just going to see about a bed for the night,
Sophie had said, surely more than an hour ago;
stay here and finish your meal, and I shall be back directly.
It had not seemed suspicious at the time, but it certainly seemed so now. “She did not say
where
, at all, and she meant to be back directly. Which she is not,” she added unnecessarily. “And we do not even know that girl's name!”

The publican's wife had vanished at some point during their prolonged (and, it must be said, very welcome) meal. Joanna and Gwendolen went in search of her, and failing to find her, or anyone at all, in any of the public rooms, behind the bar, or—to judge by the lack of any answer to their repeated knocking—behind the door that led to the private part of the house, they gave up on the interior of the house entirely and circled about the outside of it, looking for any sign of human life at all. The afternoon was well along by now,
though there would be several more hours of daylight yet, to judge by the angle of the sun, yet the village seemed sleepy and unpopulated.

When at last they ran their quondam hostess to earth, it was by the sound of water sloshing from bucket to bucket; she was filling the water-trough for a pair of huge and weary-looking horses pastured at some distance from the public-house.

Gwendolen chirruped softly to the horses and slipped fearlessly between them to scratch at their shaggy manes. The publican's wife regarded this spectacle with some alarm, but upon seeing that the horses only whickered and nuzzled at the strange young man's shoulders, she appeared to decide that neither party was in any danger from the other, and went on emptying pails of water into the trough.

Joanna took hold of the last full bucket.

“
'S mise
Harriet Dunstan,” she said determinedly, gesturing at herself with her free hand;
“dè an t-ainm a tha oirbh?”

The woman frowned at her, and was silent for a long moment. “Morag MacGregor,” she said at last, in a grudging tone.

“Morag MacGregor,” Joanna repeated; and then, her meagre fund of Gaelic exhausted, she said, “will you tell us where my cousin and your daughter have gone?”

Morag MacGregor spread her hands and shook her head.
“Chan eil mi a' tuigsinn,”
she said. Joanna could not tell whether this meant
I do not know the answer
or
I do not understand the question
; but, she supposed, there was little to choose between the two, as in either case she should get no useful answer.

It was only a little longer, however, before Sophie and Morag MacGregor's daughter appeared in the distance, descending the steep hill behind the village.

“There, you see?” said Gwendolen, clasping Joanna's shoulder. In a lower voice she added, “How should you like to borrow these horses? I think one of them might easily carry any two of us.”

Joanna controlled her initial startlement to give this notion serious consideration. “They do not look as though they should go very fast,” she said doubtfully.

“No,” Gwendolen conceded, “but they will know the lay of the land, and will not panic or put their feet in rabbit-holes.” She looked doubtfully about her. “Are there rabbits on this island, do you suppose?”

“I should imagine so,” said Joanna vaguely; most of her attention, now, was on following Sophie's progress down the hill.

She and her companion had now reached the foot of it and briefly disappeared behind the clutch of little stone houses that constituted the village of Carsaig; when they reappeared, they were within hailing distance, or near enough, and Joanna called, “Elinor!” and waved one arm wildly in the air.

“Harriet!” Sophie's voice came faintly back, caught on the rising breeze.

A little nearer, and Joanna's heart leapt, then plummeted; the woman striding along beside Morag MacGregor's daughter was not the buxom, auburn-haired Elinor Graham, but unmistakably Sophie.

“Mother Goddess,” Gwendolen breathed, going very still. “This is a right balls-up.”

“It is that,” said Joanna, too poleaxed even to demand where Gwendolen had learnt such language.

She wished very much, at the moment, to swing up onto one of those enormous horses, kick it into a gallop, and pull her sister up behind her on the way to . . . well, to somewhere very far from this gods-accursèd village, at any rate. None of this was possible—quite apart from anything else, she should need a mounting-block the size of Glastonbury Tor to get aboard either of those beasts—but her pulse pounded with the need to
do something
, and her feet carried her towards Sophie as if pulled by one of Sophie's drawing-spells.

“Elinor,” she said cautiously, as they drew level with one another, “are you quite well?”

“Very well,” said Sophie. Her voice was even, her lips curved in a smile, but her dark eyes held Joanna's, wide and frantic.

Gwendolen stepped up behind Joanna, one hand splayed across her back. Half an hour ago, she should have shrugged it off with
sharp annoyance; now she had to fight the temptation to lean closer, into the comfort of the known.

“Rose Neill MacTerry will give us a bed for the night,” Sophie said. “Two beds, that is. And our supper.” She half turned, gesturing towards the hill. “Her house is up there.”

Squinting, Joanna could indeed make out what might be another of the little village houses, high up on the brow of the hill.

“Yes?” she said.

Sophie's brisk nod said
yes
; her anguished eyes cried
no
.

What did it mean that Sophie had let go the masque of Elinor Graham? And what did it mean that Morag MacGregor and her daughter were pretending not to have noticed the transformation?

Joanna gently took her sister's hand, ignoring the Albans as steadfastly as they were ignoring her, and turned to walk back towards the public-house, and their modest carpet-bags waiting under the shelter of the overhanging roof.

“Sophie,” she said, low, as soon as she judged them to be out of earshot. “What has become of Elinor Graham?”

Sophie looked down at her, and once again Joanna's mind swam briefly as she struggled to reconcile the baffled expression on Sophie's face with the desperation in her eyes.

“She is bespelled,” said Gwendolen, her voice low but sharp with impatience. “Obviously.
Why
, I have no notion, and I believe I had rather not. I think we must get away tonight, if we can.”

She collected the carpet-bags and turned expectantly.

“Well?” said Joanna to Sophie. “Do we go?” She did not see that they had much choice; they must sleep somewhere, or, at any rate, they could not
borrow
Morag MacGregor's horses and ride away in broad daylight.

“Of course,” said Sophie, smiling. Her fingers gripped Joanna's elbow so tightly that Joanna expected bruises in the morning.

“I know,” she murmured. “I understand.”

Sophie's eyes closed briefly, and when she opened them again the sharp desperation had eased a little.

*   *   *

They trudged up the hill to the house of Rose Neill MacTerry. It was small, stone-built, with a heavy front door whose hinges creaked as it opened; Joanna reflexively looked for and marked all other possible means of egress. It was not immediately apparent why, as between this diminutive dwelling and the much larger one which housed the Drovers' Drum, Rose Neill MacTerry's house should be the one offered to guests; was Morag MacGregor hiding something, or someone?