The Pictish Child (2 page)

He looked away from her and sped up till he was several steps ahead.

“Peter is maaaad,” Molly started to chant. “Peter is maaaad.”

The dog snapped out, “Little tongues, big wounds,” then trotted ahead to Peter's side.

“You may be right, Jennifer,” Gran said. “But he is nae ready to hear such wisdom. So let it lie, lass. Let it lie.”

Jennifer bit her lip. The one thing she didn't want to do was fight with Peter. A twin fight was always devastating. It hurt worse than anything. She hurried to catch up with Peter. Gran and Molly came right after.

“Remember what I told ye several days ago about magic,” Gran said, ignoring Peter's long face. “Here in Scotland, the Major Arcana consist of earth magic, air magic, fire magic, and water magic. The Minor magics are colors, numbers, and riddles. White magic is the proper use of the gift, and black magic is done by the wicked. And Tartan magic is—”

“—old woman's blether,” muttered the dog.

“You can say that again!” Peter agreed. He grabbed the leash from Molly, and side by side the dog and boy ran up ahead. Whatever else Gran had to say about magic after that was lost to them.

At the end of the lane Peter stopped suddenly, pulling the dog up short as a car whizzed down the cobbled road on the left side.

“Oof!” Peter breathed. “I always forget which way to look. I'm still thinking cars drive on the right, like in America.”

“Ye great gomeril,” the dog said. “Don't yank my neck aboot.”

“Call me another name,” Peter said, “and I'll do more than that. I'll—” But as he could not come up with anything horrible enough, he ran his hand through his lank brown hair as if that were some kind of response.

The dog sat down on its haunches, pink tongue lalloping from its mouth, and stared fiercely and silently at him.

“So what's a
gomeril?”
Peter asked at last.

“Ye dinna want to ken that.” The tongue slipped back into the dog's mouth, as if it had a mind of its own.

“Oh, but I do.”

“A loud-talking fool is what it is. And what ye are, too,” said the dog, now scratching behind its right ear with its hind leg.

“Ah,” Peter said, then shut up, as much because the others had caught up to them as in reaction to the name the dog had called him.

“Turn left here,” Gran said, “and then ahead toward Fairburn.”

“How far?” asked Molly.

“A hundred steps,” said Gran. “Can you count that high?”

“I'm four,” Molly said sternly.

“Then of course you can.” Gran smiled. “Start now.”

“One, two, three …” Molly began.

They went along the cobbled Double Dykes Road and then up Burial Brae, passing a little cemetery where ancient stones leaned at odd angles. All the while Molly counted aloud—“thirty-six, thirty-seven …”—and the rain kept up its own count on the tops of their umbrellas.

“Dreech,” Jennifer whispered. But only because she had come to like the sound of the word.

“Sixty-four, sixty-five …”

On their left a high grey stone wall snaked along the road. Occasional yellow flowers poked through chinks.

“Wallflowers,” Gran said, pointing to the little blossoms.

Molly ran her fingers across the stones. “Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine,” she said, quite pleased with herself, having really only just mastered the long count.

At “One hundred!” they came to a gap in the wall. Set into the gap was an ironwork gate with intricate Celtic knotwork designs.

“It
is
a hundred, Gran. It
is
exactly! Number magic!” Molly cried.

“Nae magic, child. Except that yer fair young to count so far,” Gran said.

Molly made a face, and her bottom lip began to stick out. Jennifer added quickly, “I couldn't count that far till I was five.”

The tantrum was averted and Molly's sunny disposition returned. She pointed to a plaque, quite mossed over and a bit difficult to make out. Standing on tip-toe, she spelled out the words. She did not get them all right, but enough. Jennifer helped.

THE MCGREGOR HOSPITAL

FOUNDED AS AN EVENTIDE HOME

BY WILLIAM MCGREGOR

OF PITTENWEEM 1882

“Eventide Home!” Molly clapped her hands. “This is it!”

“This is it, indeed,” Gran said.

“But, Gran,” Jennifer said, looking through the gate and into the window of the great stone house, where she could see an old woman in a wheelchair staring out at the rain. “Gran—it's a nursing home.”

“Not exactly,” Gran said. “The residents here must be able to cope on their own without fulltime nursing. It's what we call a registered home for the elderly.”

“Elderly? Like you, Gran?” Molly asked.

Gran laughed. “Not exactly.”

“Older
than you?” Molly's voice held something like astonishment.

Gran laughed again. “Much older. And much less able.”

“But
Eventide
…” Jennifer mused. “I thought it sounded like something magical.”

Gran smiled. “You never can tell.” Then she pushed through the gate and walked up the path.

Molly skipped along beside her, curls bouncing, and Jennifer trailed behind. Peter and the dog hung back.

Once at the front door, Gran, Jennifer, and Molly walked up the ramp and disappeared inside.

“Old people,” Peter said with a shiver to the dog. “I dunno. Old gives me the jeebers.”

“Consider the alternative,” the dog told him.

Casting a quick glance to the side of the house, where he could see the tops of some gravestones, Peter nodded in sudden solemn agreement. Not to be left out in the rain, he walked quickly to the stone house and up the stone steps, hauling the dog with him.

Three

Weird Sisters

A young woman in a plaid skirt, white blouse, and blue cardigan sweater greeted them at the door. She had a foxlike face, long and sly looking. A metallic name badge on her collar identified her as Fiona, and she wore a pair of tiny silver scissors around her neck on a ribbon.

“Hello—Mrs. Douglas, isn't it? Have you come to see the girls?” She spoke only to Gran, ignoring the children and the dog entirely.

“I though you said they were
old
people,” Molly piped up. “Not girls.”

Fiona laughed—a yippy sort of sound—and only then deigned to look down at Molly, as if just noticing her. “A little American, I see.”

Gran made a
tsk
ing sound with her tongue and Fiona stopped laughing, but a smile still played around her mouth.

“The girls are in the Garden Parlor,” Fiona said. “Though heaven knows why. On such a day I'd rather be nearer the fire myself.”

She took the wet umbrellas and put them in a ceramic umbrella stand.

“Follow me,” she said to Gran, once again acting as if the children and the dog did not exist. Then she led them through two sitting rooms crowded with heavy stuffed chairs and sofas upholstered in floral prints. Ugly wooden floor lamps with knotted-fringed shades sat beside each chair, while wooden end tables butted up against the sofas.

In the first parlor a few old women sat on a sofa, chatting in a language Jennifer could not understand. In the second a bald man in a wheelchair, fringed lap robe over his legs, dozed by a fire, his breath spurting out noisily. The old woman Jennifer had seen through the window was also in the second parlor, still staring out at the gate. She had a crocheted shawl over her shoulders and a peculiar lacy cap, like a baby's bonnet, on her head.

“Did you magic the lady, Gran?” whispered Molly. “Is that why she stopped laughing at me?” She tried to make the same
tsk
ing sound and failed.

“I shamed her,” Gran whispered back. “For some it comes to the same thing.”

There was a smell in the rooms that Jennifer could not put a name to, a kind of musty, flowery, lemon-and-pine-sachet smell. But beneath that odor was something darker and heavier, something uncomfortable and edgy, something that made Jennifer's throat ache as if she had strep. She wondered if that darker, heavier smell was old age. Except Gran didn't smell like that. Or Da.

And then they were in what could only be the Garden Parlor. It was an all-over-glass room full of green and flowering plants sitting in heavy ceramic jardinieres. Rain pattered away on the glass roof and against the windows. The chairs here were wrought iron, painted white, with cushions covered in tartan plaids. Little lace doilies, looking terribly out of place, lay over the back cushions.

Three old women—each clearly much older than Gran, though none of them had hair quite as white as hers—were playing cards around a glass-topped table. One had set out the pattern and the other two were busy commenting on it. A fourth chair at the table stood empty. Teacups were at each place and a tea service—pot and creamer and sugar bowl—waited on a small table nearby. The three were so engaged in their game that they didn't notice that visitors had come in.

“It's Patience!” Peter said, the first words he'd spoken since entering the Eventide Home. “Look, Jennifer, they're playing Patience.”

His voice was surprisingly loud in the glass room, and the three old women looked up slowly.

“An American! And a boy!” said one, a lady with pink-tinted glasses pinching her sharp nose and a face like a dried-up apple.

“Canna be American if he kens the game,” said the second. “There's nain in America still kens it.” She was round and soft, and looked as if she were as upholstered as the parlor chairs.

But the third, imperious as a queen, with hair dyed an improbable shade of orange, threw down the cards. “Here at long last, Gwennie,” she said loudly. “And what has taken ye so long? The place is dull and boring wi'oot ye!”

“The girls,” Fiona said unnecessarily, and fled the room.

Sniffing loudly, the dog walked stiff-legged over to one of the windows, where he gazed out longingly. Peter joined him there and they stood silently, hip to shoulder, staring out at the sodden garden as if it were their only hope of escaping the awful regiment of women.

“Dinna be afraid, dearie,” the soft woman called to Molly, who, suddenly overcome with shyness, had hidden behind Gran. “Come and let me see ye.”

Molly refused to budge.

But Jennifer threw caution to the winds. “Are you all part of Gran's coven?” She knew that witches gathered in covens.

“Do ye mean, are we Weird Sisters? Hags? Crones?” asked the pinched-faced one.

“Carlines?” added the soft one. “Cummers?”

“All of the above!” declared the orange-haired old lady happily. “But in this day and time, so as not to disturb the populace, we call ourselves a sewing circle. After all”—and she winked heavily at Jennifer, a long, slow lowering of the left eyelid—“they burned witches here in Fair-burn up through the middle of the nineteenth century.”

The dog whispered to Peter, “Sewing circle, my left hind leg!”

“Maybe they should call it a
spelling
bee!” Peter whispered back.

“Spelling bee!” The dog shouted with laughter.

“It talks!”
the orange-haired weird sister cried. “Gwennie, how did ye? Where did ye?”

“When did ye?” asked the other two.

“Not I,” Gran said. “Not at all. It were these three found him. My granddaughter's bairns. And Americans, as ye have observed. There is some magic across the water, though neither they nor we ken what it is yet.”

Jennifer explained carefully that Gran and Da weren't
exactly
her mother's grandparents. They were older cousins who had taken care of Mom's mother during the war, when all the rest of the family had perished in one way or another—parents in the buzz bombs in London, real grandparents in a train trying to escape afterward.

“Kin is kin and clan is clan,” pronounced Gran. “And these three”—she pointed to the card players—“are my friends, but the four of us are as close as sisters.”

The three old women each raised a teacup at that.

“To friendship,” said the orange-haired one. And they all drank.

After that, of course, there were introductions all around, as the old ladies peppered the children with questions about where they were staying and for how long they planned to visit and the like.

The soft, round lady was Mrs. Campbell; the pinched-faced one was Mrs. McGregor.

“Like the man on the plaque!” Molly cried, coming from behind Gran at last and clapping her hands. “Mr. McGregor's Eventide Home.”

“What a lovely child!” said Mrs. McGregor. “And so bricht.”

“Oh!” Molly said.

“What is it, child?”

“And there's Farmer McGregor in
Peter Rabbit!
Peter ate all his lettuces.”

The old ladies beamed at her.

Peter muttered down to the dog. “And Rob Roy was a McGregor, too. I saw the movie. So what?”

Everyone ignored him, including the dog.

“Well—I am Maggie MacAlpin,” said the orange-haired lady. She looked very serious. “It is very special that I tell ye my true name, ye ken that? Not just my married name, which is Maggie MacAlpin Morrison. But Morrison being long dead, I've gone back to my own name.”

Jennifer remembered Gran mentioning the power of names. And she remembered, too, that in one of the fantasy books she loved—it might have been
A Wizard of Earthsea
—the author spoke of the importance of naming. She kept her mouth shut, to keep from asking the impolite question.

But Molly—with the innocence of a preschooler—had no such qualms. “Is Maggie your whole name? Or is it just some of it? My
whole
name is Molly Isabelle—”

“Molly!” Jennifer said, almost as a warning.

Maggie MacAlpin threw her flame-colored head back and roared with laughter. Then she leaned over and gathered Molly up, letting her sit on the glass-topped table.