for a moment even the daybreak seemed to pause over the highlands. the thin sky of morning lighted a wan world of muted gray and white and purple with an eerie, ghostlike tone. there was no sound outside the ruined shelter with its circle of sickly firelight, and for just an instant there was no sound even there.
alex’s face seemed carved in an odd expression of exultation and anguish combined, and his eyes fixed upon her as if they would never leave. but kelpie did not see this, for her own eyes were fixed defiantly upon argyll, waiting.
she had not long to wait. “the witch!” he whispered, and his eyes blazed in pale fury. “and in her ladyship’s stolen clothes!” he added with new outrage.
alex laughed, and his laughter was delighted, exasperated—and somehow sad. he moved to stand beside
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kelpie. “och,” he said, “and isn’t it just the way you will be overdoing things? i would have had you remain unprincipled and live. i would have called you liar and saved you yet. but you must appear in lady argyll’s stolen clothes and seal your doom—and knowing it!” his eyes were stricken, exultant, tender; but kelpie only looked at him dazedly. all of it was beyond her understanding, except that she had doomed herself irrevocably by her own madness, and the thing inside said it must be so.
argyll was breathing hard, taut with hatred; his menace was overwhelming. “shoot the man now,” he said between his teeth, “but bind the witch and take her aboard the galley. i will try her and burn her when this business with montrose is over.”
and then all lochaber seemed to explode at once. shots echoed from ben nevis just as alex went quite berserk. his face was as she had seen it in the witch-hunting town, jutted with sharp angles of rage. he hurled himself against argyll, the full force of his hard shoulder driving into the campbell’s midsection; and down they went. the others rushed forward with yells, and from the castle came more yells and a new volley of shots.
hamish was pulling his chief from under alex and shouting, “the battle has started!” someone kicked alex brutally in the head, and kelpie flung herself at the culprit, using both teeth and nails, and was herself flung to the
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ground, while still another voice shouted, “get you to the galley, mac cailein mor!”
kelpie, dazed from her fall, saw argyll, staggering and winded, clutching his shoulder and croaking contradictions. “shoot them! take the witch on board! i’ll burn them both! shoot them at once!” alex struggled up and tried to shield kelpie with his own body as someone raised a gun. she heard a wild shriek of pipes from the direction of ben nevis, more shots and more yells. and then came a blaze of pain, and nothing at all.
she lay for a while without opening her eyes, trying to decide whether she was really alive. it seemed quite unlikely. but on the other hand, except for a sore pain in her head and a hot, smoldering one in her body, this did not seem like hell. for one thing, she seemed to be in a soft bed with sheets, and surely hell would never provide such things. she decided to open her eyes and find out.
opening her eyes did not help much, but only added to her confusion. for was not this one of the bedrooms at glenfern, which she had helped often enough to clean? and whatever could she be doing here at all? clearly she could not be here—but how was it that a stout and smiling marsali seemed to be feeding her beef broth? och, it was too much effort to worry about it! she swallowed the broth, closed her eyes, and slept again. the next time she awoke, it was to morning light, and she felt much stronger.
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there was a small movement to the left of the bed, and kelpie slowly focused her eyes toward it. a flower face lighted and moved closer. “och, my kelpie!” whispered wee mairi, radiant. “you’ve come away back to me!”
hot tears stung kelpie’s eyes. she closed them and moved her left hand gropingly and felt a small warm one creep into it. och, the wee love! the tears slid down her cheeks.
there was more movement presently, and then ronald’s voice asking with deep interest, “is she awake yet?”
“of course she is, or how else could she be weeping?” demanded his twin scornfully. “kelpie, is it hurting you are? can you open your eyes, kelpie? fiona, will you run to tell mother she is awake?”
kelpie opened her eyes mistily and saw the rosy, concerned faces over her. fiona, crossing herself as usual, appeared beyond them and then disappeared again. donald vanished too, while kelpie—still gripping wee mairi’s hand—closed her eyes again and tried to sort out the confusion of her thoughts. presently there was a slight denting of the bed near her elbow.
“i’ve brought dubh,” announced donald cheerfully. “we decided before that you were not a witch, but now alex says you are, but a nice one; and i was thinking, if dubh is still liking you, perhaps alex is right.”
kelpie wrinkled her forehead as dubh spat nastily at donald. alex? alex at glenfern? dubh regarded her with
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slitted yellow eyes and then draped himself in a scraggy, purring fur piece across her shoulder. “alex?” said kelpie aloud, puzzled.
“ou, aye, and he sore hurt, too.” ronald nodded. “but he is better now. kelpie, when you are well, will you tell us about your adventures? why were you leaving glenfern at all, kelpie? do you like your grannie witchie, or was it that you were afraid of her, as father said? is she truly a witch, kelpie? where is she the now? are you going to stay with us? wee mairi says you love her. do you, kelpie?”
the small hand in kelpie’s stirred. “aye so!” piped wee mairi indignantly. “my kelpie does love me!”
“aye,” confessed kelpie, her defenses quite down. “but,” she went on incredulously, “is alex truly here? at glenfern?”
“of course,” said donald. “he has been telling us of his adventures too, and how montrose was sending him on a special important mission to talk to clan chiefs and see if lochiel would join the army, and all; and that was why he was alone and caught by the campbells. but we do not know why you were there at all.” he paused, head tilted hopefully to one side.
but kelpie, more and more bewildered, was in no state to tell stories. “alex?” she repeated stupidly.
“himself.” it was his voice, with something new in the laughter of it. suddenly the room was full of people.
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eithne and lady glenfern smiled at her from the foot of the bed, and alex himself was coming slowly across the floor. there was a bandage round his head, and he leaned heavily on glenfern and ian.
och, it made no sense at all! kelpie closed her eyes again and moved her head fretfully.
“alex has told us what you did,” said glenfern. “it is at such times that a person’s true character comes forth.” he smiled down at her warmly. “let you know now, kelpie, that you will always have a home at glenfern, and our love; and for saving alex we owe you a debt that we can never pay.”
kelpie’s puzzlement deepened. dhé! it must be that ian had never known that it was alex who struck him down! in the confusion, perhaps herself was the only one who had really seen it. it must be so, for no other explanation made sense. perhaps archie hadn’t known either, and she had merely read meanings into his words that evening in the camp. her blue eyes flew open and met alex’s quizzical ones. what an actor he was, then, behaving as if nothing had happened! but she could tell them what had happened, and alex knew it, and yet here he stood quite at ease.
they stared at each other for a long, searching moment, and a look of baffled frustration came to both faces. and then kelpie closed her eyes once again, too weak to cope
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with such a puzzle or even to decide whether or no she should tell ian what his foster brother had done.
“dhé, and she’ll be confused enough, poor water witch!” the old teasing note in alex’s voice overlaid a new tenderness. “just be settling me in a chair by the bed, and then away out, the rest of you, whilst i tell her the end of our adventure.”
presently the room was silent again, except for dubh’s purring. conscious of a presence beside the bed, kelpie opened a cautious eye again after a minute and found the hazel eyes fixed on her broodingly.
“och so,” he murmured, shaking his head sadly. “i had thought my cousin cecily unpredictable and you an open book, with your devious wiles, and so candidly unprincipled. and then—you put a spell on me, with the ringed witch-eyes in your head. you baffled me, you haunted me, you eluded me, leaving me forever two jumps behind and never knowing what to think at all. aye me, i suppose i shall never understand you at all, and that is my fate and destiny.”
kelpie slowly progressed from bewilderment to indignation. only the last words had any meaning whatever, and that was little enough.
“i!” she fumed, causing dubh to dig in a protesting claw. “it is you who make no sense at all, and i never knowing what to think!”
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alex grinned ruefully. “at least we are even, then. are you wanting to know what has happened since argyll’s men put bullets in the both of us?”
kelpie nodded.
“well, then, were you hearing the start of the battle, just as our own wee war was getting exciting?” asked alex. she nodded again, content to lie still and listen. “well,” he went on, “it was the battle that saved us, for argyll rushed off to the safety of his galley, and his men left us for dead—and very nearly right they were. and so we lay unknowing while montrose won a great victory over an army twice his size. it was another tippermuir, and this time the fighting force of the campbells is crippled for years to come. some say as many as fifteen hundred were slain, and the rest taken prisoner or chased back to their own country, and our men on their heels all the way to lundavra. i think it will be another generation, kelpie, before clan campbell can come raiding other clans again—and a good blow for the king’s cause as well,” he added, almost as an afterthought. loyal to the king though he was, alex was a highlander, and highland affairs were his closest concern.
kelpie found herself wondering suddenly about morag mhor and rab, archie, and the others. “and had we many killed?”
alex shook his head. “it was a rout,” he said. “they tell me there are some two hundred or more wounded, but
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scarce over a dozen killed outright. it seems fair unbelievable.”
kelpie assimilated this and then returned to another matter of interest. “what of mac cailein mor?” she demanded vindictively. “and what was happening to us, after all?”
“och, the great general campbell was away down the loch in his galley before the fight was yet over, hero that he is!” scorn was bright in alex’s voice. “but as for us, we lay until some of our men found us and recognized my tartan, so they took us up to the castle with the other wounded. there were plenty of the army who knew me—and you, too, it seems, for there was a hulking great man named rab and a huge fierce woman called morag mhor nearly come to blows over which could be doing most for you.” his eyes crinkled at her with approval and amusement. “so it was soon enough that my brother and ian both found us. and when we were fit to be carried, they brought us here.”
“here!” echoed kelpie, renewed bafflement upon her. forgetting her wounds, she tried to sit up and then changed her mind. wincing, she lay back again, and her ringed eyes stared beneath lowered brows at alex. dubh, his nap disturbed, glared with equal fierceness, and alex found the combination disconcerting.
“you would be coming here?” kelpie spat. “you, with all your prating of loyalty and the laws of hospitality
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and this principles thing? and you have not even good sense, for here am i, and whatever makes you think i will not be telling? and yet you have not even tried to threaten me.”
complete bewilderment was on alex’s face. “either your wits or mine are wandering entirely,” he said. “what are you talking about? tell what?”
“that you tried to kill ian!” answered kelpie.
“what?” he was utterly dumfounded, and kelpie’s conviction wavered, but only briefly. she knew what she had seen!
“do not be denying it, for i saw it myself, and twice over—once with the second sight, which never lies, and again when it happened.”
alex’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully, as if he had begun to see a clue to some deep puzzle. “you were saying something of the sort back at yon cave,” he said. “it made no sense, but i had already given up expecting to understand you, and there were other urgent matters on my mind. tell me now: what was it that you saw twice over? tell me exactly, for although the second sight never lies, sometimes the reading of it can be wrong. what was it you were seeing, water witch?”
kelpie frowned. “it was the crowd of witch-hunters, although the first time i did not know who or where, or that it was me they were going to burn. but i saw ian
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coming through them, and you after him with a black anger on your face. and when you reached him, you raised your sword and brought it down on him, and he dropped like a stone and out of sight.” she glared at him defiantly.
a whole series of expressions chased one another across alex’s face, but they were not quite the ones kelpie had expected. wonder and relief and joy surely had no place there!
“my sorrow,” he whispered, closing his eyes for an instant. “and is it for that you’ve hated me so darkly this long while? no wonder!” he looked at her suddenly with new delight. “and for ian too, though you tried so hard to admit no loyalty or friendship, and i believed you! think carefully,” he commanded as kelpie was about to burst out at him in frustration and fury. “were you actually seeing my sword strike ian?”
“aye so—” began kelpie hotly, and then paused. “well, and there was a head in the way for a wee moment,” she conceded, conjuring up the vivid picture and looking at it carefully. “your sword is striking him just behind the head—the other head, i mean—but now ian is falling straight away, and so—”
“look again!” interrupted alex. “look closely, kelpie, and do not judge too quickly. for my sword was falling on the man who was in the act of dirking ian, and they
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went down at the same moment. little amadain, how could you be thinking i would turn on my foster brother, dearer than kin, for whom i would give my heart’s blood?”
kelpie scowled in sudden, unreasoning resentment, but he leaned forward to place his hand on her arm where it lay outside the covers. “look in your heart for the truth,” he commanded urgently. “ask it of your reason as well. you must know that i did not do it.”
it was true. she did know it. she felt slightly dizzy, as if the sun had spun round suddenly and begun rising in the west. and was it a mistake that she had hated alex this long time? och, no! had he not always infuriated her with his mockery and scorn and his uncanny knowledge of what she would think and do next? but whatever had possessed the both of them that dawn in the shelter, each offering his own life to save the other? she could hardly believe that it had really happened.
the eyes she raised to alex were night-blue with wonder. “you knew i was hiding behind the wall! why didn’t you save yourself by telling mac cailein mor it was i sent the message? and especially when you thought that i had betrayed you to the campbells? why?”
there was sudden gladness on alex’s lean face. “kelpie!” he fairly shouted. “you didn’t betray me, then?”
she shook her head irritably and immediately wished she hadn’t. “i told you i did not dare! and now you know why, with mac cailein mor already wanting me for a
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witch, and i with his wife’s clothing on my back. ’twas the smoke from your fire betrayed you, fool that you were!” she glared at him. “but you were believing it was i, and you needing only a word to save yourself and settle all accounts. why did you not tell?” she demanded angrily.
alex grinned flippantly at her, but the angles of his face seemed softened, and his voice as well. he seemed to be laughing at her and at himself too. “perhaps, mo chridhe, it was for the same reason that you spoke out when you needed only to stay still. can you answer me your own question, kelpie? why did you come forth?”
“i was daft, just!” she retorted promptly. “and,” she added, remembering, “there was a thing in me pushing where i was not wanting to go.” she frowned.
“there has been a thing in me too, this long while,” said alex softly, and for an instant he saw her as she had appeared from the shadows to face argyll—intense then too, but heartbreakingly brave, nearly tearing him apart with joy for her gallantry and with despair for its result. and he had not known, then, the full horror of what she was facing, that she was giving herself up to be burned as a witch.
she was regarding him with annoyance. “i think it was a spell, whatever,” she announced accusingly.
alex looked at her oddly. “aye so, a spell,” he muttered with a wry twist to his mouth. “and i with a fondness for merry, fair-haired lassies, like my sweet cecily in oxford.
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and now she will have to marry ian, just, though perhaps neither of them will mind much. i have never cared for witches!” he told her plaintively. “and especially not black-haired ones, with dark, pointy faces, all uncanny eyes. it’s never a moment’s peace i shall have again; but ’tis a terrible, strong spell you have put on me, and i cannot break it. och, there’s no way at all out of it, but i shall have to marry you, just!”
“marry me!” kelpie’s shock reached to the very soles of her feet.
“ou, aye,” answered the outrageous lad, wagging his head sadly. “and a dreadful life it will be, never a doubt of it, wed to a wild wee water witch. but marry you i must, for i cannot help myself.”
“i can, then!” kelpie sizzled with outrage. “did you never think of consulting me? were you thinking i would—dhé! i’d sooner be wedding the sea horse in loch ness, or argyll himself! and the very conceit of you to be thinking it! ’tis a spell indeed i’ll be putting on you! wait until i learn the evil eye, and then see will you not be begging my mercy, and with the horrid spots all over you, and—”
alex silenced her by the simple expedient of putting his lips firmly over hers. when at last he lifted them, it was to laugh into her startled and indignant eyes with the old mockery.
“i’m thinking,” he said, just as if she had never uttered a word of her last speech, “that i shall have to be taking
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you out of scotland altogether, or sooner or later it would be to the stake with the both of us. and in any case, what else could i be doing with the gypsy wanderlust in your feet?”
“the gypsies stole me, i tell you!” retorted kelpie automatically.
he raised a quizzical eyebrow. “and did they so, truly? well, and what does it matter? you could never be finding your parents now, nor fit into their life if you did. and in any case, you’re going to marry me, and we’ll away to the new world. a grand wilderness it is, they say, with all the space needed for wandering in and out of trouble.”
he bent toward her again, and reached for her hand, as kelpie opened a mutinous mouth. dubh, who had patiently endured the last disturbance of his nap, opened one yellow eye, saw alex’s hand approaching, and slashed it. then he rearranged himself across kelpie’s neck and went back to sleep.
kelpie laughed at alex, who was also laughing and sucking at his torn finger. “you see?” he said. “the red indians and wild animals will never have a chance against you with your dark power over man and beast, witch that you are. i wonder, would next week be too soon for the wedding?”
“sssss!” said kelpie contentedly.