The Ice King (A Witch Ways Whisper) (4 page)

Dr Laidlaw’s Destiny

Lachlan Laidlaw: age 25

Dr Lachlan Laidlaw worked out of a small office, in a Gothic fronted building, down a side street in the university town of Oxbridge. The ground floor was a bespoke tailor and gents outfitters, Todber and Murnhall, of such antiquity it could be considered time travel to step through their double doors. Jeffery Todber and Malcolm Murnhall ran the place and had been there forever amongst the beautifully carved and crafted shop fittings, the counter made from oak polished to a soft golden honey colour and beneath, the glass fronted drawers that held a vivid spectrum of cravats and ties, shirts and socks, handkerchiefs and pyjamas. The Duke of Wellington had bought all his campaign pants there.

When the great adventurer Henry Fitzharold-Pimm had conquered the Eiger, he had done it in tweeds and a gaberdine mackintosh purchased at Todber and Murnhull.

Jeffery and Malcolm owned the building freehold and rented out the office space and small flat above.

“You won’t be blowing stuff up will you?” they asked as Lachlan looked around the small spaces.

“No. I don’t practice that sort of science. “ Lachlan reassured them. He wasn’t entirely sure what sort of science he did practice these days. Boundaries were becoming smirched.

It had been a difficult interview, the faculty board room wheezed with beeswax polish and ancient traditions.

“We do not feel there is a justification for your presence in the university….” Professor Folds’ eyes were invisible behind the thin discs of his glasses, gilded by the afternoon sun.

“Adequate.” Professor Miflin interjected from his position at the far end of the room. He was perched at the edge of the vast mahogany table barricaded in behind a parapet of paperwork.

“I beg your pardon?” Professor Folds turned the gilded spectacles towards his colleague. Minion was the word that printed into Lachlan’s head.

“There is no ‘adequate’ justification. I am certain that Dr Laidlaw can provide his own justifications but we must reiterate the fact that such passions and enthusiasms, theories and methodology as Dr Laidlaw has been pursuing are not, in and of themselves, ‘adequate’ justification for the continuance of his research grant.”

Professor Miflin looked over his own spectacles, his eyes eager and bureaucratic. There was a prolonged silence and it would not have surprised Dr Lachlan Laidlaw to find a death ray emanating from Professor Folds eyes. It was, after all, rumoured all over the Oxbridge and Camford campuses that that was the ultimate goal of Professor Folds’ own research.

“You are an inordinately intelligent young man, Dr Laidlaw” Professor Folds looked directly into Laidlaw’s face “I am therefore sure that you can foresee this meeting’s inevitable outcome.”

An hour or so later and Lachlan was moving his belongings, few as they were, out of the small laboratory and smaller office which he had occupied on the Oxbridge campus since completing his PhD. He was surprised when there was a knock on the door and Professor Folds stepped in.

“Give this research up Lachlan. ” he was deadly serious “It will be the ruin of what could be a glorious academic career.”

Lachlan reached for a jar of pencils that wasn’t his and packed them into his briefcase.

“I can’t relinquish the research Professor. I am too close to finding the edges….”

“Poppycock.” Folds spoke with emotion “Balderdash. Twaddle. Pass by the English department on your way off campus and I’m sure they can furnish you with further adjectives such as woolly-headed and hare brained and folly-ridden.”

Lachlan could smell Professor Folds tobacco and the aftershave his wife bought for him at Penhaligon’s.

“The folly, sir, is to look away. This ancient knowledge has been lost to us, we looked away in the past and that loss could ultimately endanger our very existence. My research has already led me to….”

“It’s ghost hunting, it’s fairy tales…”

“It’s the edges of things…it is connection, lines of communication, links and possibilities of time beyond our current plane and exis…”

Professor Folds voice cut through the air.

“It is nonsense…”

Lachlan was disappointed. He had talked over various aspects of his research at several meals and teatimes at the Folds home to what had appeared to be a receptive audience.

“You know that is not so Professor Folds. You understand something of what I hope to achieve here. What I hope to bring to light.”

Professor Folds was shaking his head at every word. Lachlan fell silent.

“Possibly, there are reasons that such things have been locked away in the darkness, Laidlaw.” he looked more serious than Lachlan had ever seen him.

“Possibly.”

They were reaching their stalemate.

“You will not concede?” Professor Folds asked in the tone of a man who knew the answer.

“Not ‘will not’ Professor… I cannot.”

Dr Lachlan Laidlaw’s standing invitation to Thursday tea at the Folds residence was duly rescinded as Lachlan loaded his boxes into a wheelbarrow he’d borrowed for the purpose and moved in above Todber and Murnhall.

It was Todber who first noticed the black dog.

“Whose is the dog?” he asked, clearing the supper things into the kitchen one evening. Lachlan had been working on a haunting at a local pub, writing a report on the changes in temperature he had recorded on a recent field trip and researching the history of the building which was long and complicated. He was hoping to find where lines of time might cross.

“Mm?” Lachlan was only half listening, thinking of the lure of a whisky glass and wondering if tonight he would fall asleep in the chair again. Todber emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dishcloth “The big black dog in the yard. Did you let it in?”

Lachlan looked out of the window and down into the twilight below. As he did so a vast black dog lifted itself from the shadows and nosed its way out through the gate.

“Murnhall’s left the gate open again…that’ll be it. Murny?” Todber turned out of the kitchen, his voice echoing down the hallway as he headed downstairs. There was chatter and a few moments later Todber and Murnhall entered the yard, clattered about by the bins and could be seen arguing over the security of the gate.

The next morning, as Lachlan waited for the kettle to boil he glanced down into the yard. Once again the big black dog lifted itself from the shadow of the wall and, nudging gently at the gate, padded off. From his vantage point Lachlan could follow its progress down the back lane. He was wondering which other gate it might turn in at but it did not turn in, at the end of the lane it halted, looked back for a moment at Lachlan before turning into the street. The kettle whistled, insistent.

The next morning Lachlan was heading back to the haunted pub. He had suspected that the only reason the young landlady had called him in was because she rather fancied him. He had no proof other than an instinct but his field studies had yielded nothing useful. He had another new commission in place and he could not afford to waste his time. He was interested in the idea of the history of the place perhaps knitting incidents and memory into the fabric of the building, but he was not interested in the landlady and so, his studies there would have to cease. He was going to go over there and tell her so. There would be no more ghosthunting, at least not in that particular place. It disappointed him.

It disappointed her. Where Lachlan thought he was being polite and careful in his dealing with this matter, the landlady, Milly, was insulted and embarrassed.

“You calling me a liar?” she bellowed “How dare you?” the tirade went on, the landlady’s face growing redder and redder. If there had been no ghosts in the pub before then Lachlan felt sure she had certainly raised some with the sheer force of her outrage.

He returned his books to the library and after a desultory hour or two with his head in other volumes Lachlan was tired, packed up his notebooks and decided to head home.

He saw the black dog first in the reflection in the butchers shop window. He had glanced at the array of chops and joints on the white marble display and seen the black dog printed onto the glass. He turned. The street was busy, people crowded past on their way. There was no dog.

At the furniture shop the black dog’s reflected image was standing, ghostly, by an occasional table. Lachlan looked round. The street once again, was crowded with shoppers and passers-by, he watched and he waited for the crowd to thin but, there was no dog.

He didn’t eat his supper, instead he stood vigil by the kitchen window. Todber came up to clear the dishes.

“You not hungry?” he asked. Lachlan shook his head.

“You expecting someone?” Todber asked moving to stand on the opposite side of the window. He glanced down. “Only I’ve locked the gate.”

He looked at Lachlan, Lachlan nodded.

“Was it locked the other evening?”

Todber looked at him for a moment and before nodding.

“I could fetch you a dram while you’re waiting?” he suggested.

“I rather think I need a clear head tonight.” Lachlan confessed. Todber agreed and made a move to the kitchen door.

“You need anything, you give me and Murny a shout, eh?”

Lachlan listened to Todber’s footsteps as he made his way downstairs. At the last footstep the black dog lifted itself from the shadows below.

When Lachlan arrived in the yard, the gate was locked, and the black dog was gone.

The following evening Lachlan Laidlaw was waiting in the lane, hiding in the shadows himself. When the black dog emerged from the back gate of Todber and Murnhall, he followed it.

It was an interesting creature, the size of a wolf or a deerhound, it padded through the gate like an apparition and yet its form was solid in appearance, a muscular, meaty black hound, the sound of its breathing carrying back along the lane to Lachlan. At the end of the lane it turned left into the street as before. Passers-by stepped aside from the hound’s path without paying much attention. It was, to Lachlan’s eye, as if they did not see the dog. Lachlan hurried along on the opposite pavement, half running to keep up and then breaking into a run at the corner of The Close by the thin parish church of St Margaret Martyr. The dog trotted up the path and paused. As the doors opened to allow out a crack of light and the sound of the choir practising, the dog slipped into the church and out of sight.

Inside the old building Lachlan felt the chill of the stones. The church was lit by yellow lights in cheap-looking elaborate sconces. The organist was repeating a phrase of the psalm and the choirmaster sounded half despairing as he addressed his singers.

“Can you hear it? Reaching up to that last third before the step-and-step down to the minor key…?” at the back a young boy yawned and two of the older choristers had their heads bowed, chatting. There was no sign of the black dog.

Uncertain what else to do, and aware that he had been brought here, Lachlan took up a pew. He was once again, he knew, that boy perched on the five bar gate at the Goose Fair and as the thought struck him so his mind’s eye flew a pennant, a black wolf on a white ground. Lachlan knew, he must wait to see what would happen.

The man stepped out from behind the pillar and walked towards Lachlan. He was tall and broad shouldered, his hair slicked back and was wearing a heavy black woollen coat. He moved with confidence and purpose, sliding into the pew beside Lachlan. For a moment they listened to the choir until the psalm collapsed on itself and the organ ground to a halt. The choirmaster gave up at last and dismissed everyone. As the choir bustled out through the vestry and the organist put his music away Lachlan waited. The man in black leaned back into the pew, lifted his gaze to the lights. As he did so the choirmaster clicked several rows off, leaving just one, golden, glowing, enough to illuminate the man in black’s face.

It was squared, strong and masculine, the jawline stubbled with bristle, the eyes now staring at Lachlan Laidlaw, a green like a pine forest at midnight, the intelligence keen, the smile broad.

“You people are very tiresome. You have moved away from here…” he reached to touch Lachlan’s chest, Lachlan felt an icy cold fingerprint press itself into his skin beneath. “And now you exist too much in here…” the icicle fingers tapped at Lachlan’s temple. “But for all that, you cannot alter what is.” the man in black gave Lachlan a direct stare.

“Your dog is a splendid beast.” Lachlan spoke up out of his unease, trying to seem everyday and matter of fact and keep the waver out of his voice. The man in black laughed, a low, sad sound.

“Ha. Yes. My beast.” he gazed up into the golden light shed by the sconce above. “You understand, Lachlan Laidlaw, that there are no choices here. There is only what is?” Lachlan had felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the mention of his name. He nodded.

“There is an enemy in the Far North who outlives his time. This king brings conflict of every sort for you. ”

“Conflict?”

The man in black turned and looked at him full in the face. “Hearts will clash, bones will break.” he spoke in a matter of fact manner.

“Why is he my enemy?” Lachlan didn’t know anyone in the North, far or otherwise, the only people he knew who lived vaguely Northward were his mother and his aunt in Cumbria.

“Because you are his enemy, fated to take his time. You will take on the mantle that he was meant to have shrugged off. Fate owns you Lachlan.” the man in black made a little movement with his fingers, smiled his wide smile. “So she moves you like her little chess piece into the game.”

“I don’t understand.” Lachlan’s heart was pounding so hard he was certain that the man in black could feel it knocking against the wooden pew.

“Yes. You do. You have looked outwards all your life and this, Lachlan, is what you have been looking for. You must travel North.”

The thoughts lingered at the edge of Lachlan’s head.
Aurora borealis. Recognise him?

“I don’t have any resources. It will take me some time.”

The man in black smiled once more.

“There is no time.”

Lachlan’s mind roared like a storm and his heart felt cold without the benefit of the man in black’s hands so that it was some few moments before he realised that the man in black was gone and he was alone and the church was in darkness.