Читать книгу On the Edge of Darkness - Barbara Erskine - Страница 12

A few days later, to his surprise and delight, Adam found his old school friend, Robbie Andrews, waiting for him by the gate to the manse. The boy’s face split into a huge grin as he punched Adam on the shoulder. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been hanging around all afternoon.’

Adam shook his head. ‘I’ve been up on the hill.’ Mooching aimlessly around the stone. To no avail. There was no sign of Gartnait or Gemma or the cottage. He grinned back at Robbie, snapping out of his depression. Robbie, the son of the factor on the Glen Ross estate, had once been his best friend, but when Robbie’s mother had died Robbie had gone to boarding school and stayed with his grandparents in Edinburgh. Robbie had, he now discovered, come to spend the summer with his father up at the factor’s house on the estate.

‘I’ve got a message for you.’ Robbie glanced round conspiratorially. He was a tall thin boy with startling red hair, and at seventeen was a few months older than Adam. ‘Come over here.’ He ducked down out of sight of the manse’s study window and led Adam back down the street and towards the river. Only when they were in the wood by the burn did he stop and find them a fallen tree trunk to sit on, out of reach of the spray from the waterfall. He reached into his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. ‘Here. It’s from your mother.’

Adam stared at him. His mouth dropped open and he found he was having to fight a sudden urge to cry. It was two years, almost exactly, since his mother had left home and he had long ago given up hope of hearing from her ever again.

He put his hand out for the envelope and sat staring at it. It was her writing all right. Every thought of Brid and Gartnait fled from his brain as he turned it over and over in his hands.

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ Robbie was eager to know what it said.

Adam shook his head. He shoved it into his pocket and leaning forward, elbows on knees, picked up a moss-covered stone to throw towards the burn.

‘She came to see my grandmother,’ Robbie prompted him. ‘She said she had written to you and you never bothered to answer. She said she understood that you must be very angry with her.’

‘She never wrote.’ Adam’s voice was strangled. ‘Not once.’

Robbie frowned. ‘She said she did.’

There was a long silence. Adam was struggling to control his tears. When he managed to speak at last it was in a croak. ‘How was she?’

‘Good. She was looking very pretty.’

‘Pretty?’ Adam picked up on the word sharply.

Robbie nodded. ‘She had a blue dress. And pearls round her neck. And her hair was kind of long and curly. Not like it used to be here.’

Adam bit his lip. The description did not fit the repressed, meek minister’s wife who had been his mother. Perhaps his father was right. She had become a whore.

Miserably he stared at the narrow tumbling glitter of the water in front of him. He said nothing.

‘Are you still planning to be a doctor?’ Robbie threw his own stone at the water, angling it so it skittered over the rocks and disappeared over the edge into the whirling brown pools.

Adam nodded bleakly.

‘Are you going to Aberdeen medical school or Edinburgh next year? Tell your father you want to go to Edinburgh. We could have some wizard fun together. It’s great there, Adam. I’m going to read Classics.’ The boy’s face had lit up with enthusiasm. ‘And I’m going to fly. They all say war is coming. If it does I want to be in the RAF.’

Adam shook his head. Talk at the Academy was all of war too. ‘Then I hope they see you coming. You can’t even ride a bike, if I remember, without pranging it!’

‘That was a while ago, Adam. I can drive a car now! Grandfather taught me. He’s got a Morris Cowley. And I’ve a licence to ride a motorbike. I can take you on the back!’ His enthusiasm was beginning to cheer Adam up.

‘What does your father say about all this?’ Adam had always rather liked the factor, who used to take him and Robbie on bird-watching trips up in the hills when they were too young to go on their own.

‘Och, he’s fine about it. He doesn’t care what we do.’ He sounded just a little too casual. ‘What about you, Adam? What about the minister?’

Adam grimaced. ‘I can’t wait to get my Highers and go.’ It was true, he realised suddenly. Without Brid and her family, what had he to stay for?

It was nearly dark when Adam sat on the window seat of his attic room and took his mother’s letter out of his pocket. He turned the envelope over several times and looked down at it. It had the one word Adam written on it. The sight of his mother’s handwriting made him feel strange. First he thought he might cry; then he felt angry. He crumpled it up and threw it in his waste paper basket, overwhelmed by a feeling of lost betrayal, then as suddenly he dived on it and tore it open.

My darling Adam,

I have written to you several times before, but I don’t know if you ever got my letters. It may be your father didn’t pass them on.

Please try and understand. I could not live with your father any more. Why need not concern you now, only believe me, I had no choice. I had to come away. I know how hurt and angry you must be with me. Please, let me explain. Your father won’t let you come and see me now, but when you leave school, if you would like to, please come then. I love you so much and I miss you dreadfully. Your loving Mother.

Adam put down the letter. His eyes were full of tears. No, of course his father had not given him her letters. He looked at the piece of paper in his hand again. She did not say if she was alone or what she was doing. There was just an address, in Edinburgh, and those few impassioned words.

The light was on in his father’s study. Pushing open the door without knocking Adam thrust the letter across the desk. ‘Is it true? Did she write to me?’

Thomas stared at the letter. There was no anger in his face when he looked up at Adam, only a terrible haggard sorrow.

‘And what was the sin you told me she had committed?’ Adam wasn’t sure where the courage had come from to allow him to speak to his father in this way.

Thomas’s face darkened. ‘That is not your business, boy.’

‘Was it another man? Wee Mikey said she ran away with a Frenchman.’ The question he had wanted to ask for so long burst out of him. ‘Did she? Weren’t we good enough for her?’ Tears were pouring suddenly down his face.

His father stared at him without expression for several seconds, then at last he shook his head. ‘I do not know, Adam, and I don’t want to.’ And that was all he would say.

The stone was silver in the moonlight, the old symbols showing clearly, their deep incisions darkened by lichen, their design as clear as the day they were cut. Adam stood looking at them miserably. The serpent, the crescent and the broken rod, and there, at the base, the mirror and the comb. He frowned. Gartnait had never copied the mirror on his stone. The designs had been finished last time he had seen him but that small corner of the stone was empty. He bent and touched the outline with his fingers. The mirror on his mother’s dressing table, with her brush and comb, had been burned with all her other things on his father’s bonfire. He had found the blackened ivory and splintered glass next to some charred pieces of brown fabric which had once been his mother’s best dress.

He would see her again. Whatever she had done, she was still his mother. She wouldn’t have gone if his father hadn’t driven her away. Even if she had found someone else – his mind slid sideways around the thought, not able to confront it – she still loved him, her letter had said as much. And she missed him. His mind made up, he found himself smiling in the moonlight. He would go to Edinburgh next year, to study medicine as planned, and he would go and see his mother. And in the meantime he would write to her and tell her his news.

Chastened and obedient, Brid learned the names of the thirty-three kings. She learned the rituals of fire and water. She learned divination from the flight of birds, from the clouds and the stars, from the trees and the falling of the fortune sticks. She learned spells and incantations and healing. She began to learn the nature of the gods and goddesses and how to intercede with them and about the sprinkling of the blood; she learned about the soul which dwells within the body but which can fly free as a bird, to travel, to learn, and to hide and she learned how she too by dint of study and dreams and the use of sacred smoke could enter the dream and travel through the layers of time to the worlds beyond the world.

Her special study was the wildcat. She left the school as did the other women from time to time, completely alone, and followed the animals’ secret trails into the hills. She studied their hunting and their killing. She studied their sleeping and their lazy washing on a hidden sunlit ledge amongst the rocks and cliffs. She studied their meeting and mating and the secret places where the she-cats raised their mewling kittens. She learned how to read the mind of the cat and then at last she began to walk in the paw prints of the creature, feeling its skin as her skin, tearing her prey, eating the sweet raw meat of hare or vole or game and licking the rich blood from her paws.

And back at the school in the evenings sometimes she spied on Adam in her dreams. Secretly she remembered the strength of his arms, the passion of his kiss, the soft boy’s cheek above the newly rough man’s whiskers, the deep thrust of his manhood, and she slipped from her meditation out into the plane where there is no time or place and all things are one, and she crept close to him to touch his lips with her own as he slept.

It was a few days after Adam took his final exam the following summer that he saw Brid again. She was waiting for him, as she had once before, near his house, and she dived on him as he climbed off his bicycle after a visit to Robbie to celebrate the start of the holidays.

‘A-dam! A-dam! Where have you been? I have come for three days!’ She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the mouth, then she pushed him away and punched him gently in the stomach. ‘You forget Brid?’

‘No.’ Recovering from the shock of seeing her, his face broadened into a smile. ‘No, I never forget Brid. How did you get back? What about your uncle?’

She smiled, and put her finger to her lips. ‘I have persuaded him to be nice. I will tell you later.’ She glanced round. ‘Is it safe for me here?’ She looked nervously up the street. She would never tell him the fear she had felt when she saw her first car, a black Alvis belonging to James Ferguson from Birnam, roaring along the narrow road leaving a trail of blue smoke.

Adam followed her gaze and then glanced back at the house. Behind him the manse would be empty. Jeannie Barron would have gone on the bus into Perth as she usually did on a Wednesday and his father would be visiting the cottage hospital. He nodded. ‘No one will see us.’ He smiled at her, still holding her hand. ‘I tell you what, shall I fetch some cake?’

‘Chocolate cake?’ She looked at him archly.

‘Maybe.’

She followed him nervously around the back of the house and even more hesitantly in at the back door.

‘It’s all right. There’s no one here.’

He beckoned up the passage towards the kitchen.

‘It’s big. Like a castle.’ She tiptoed over the flags in awe.

‘No it’s not.’ He flung open the kitchen door and stopped in surprise. Jeannie Barron was standing at the table, up to her elbows in flour, rolling pastry.

It was too late to turn back. She had looked up and seen him. ‘Well, young man. Did you have a good visit with Robbie? Did you remember to tell him to say hello from me to his grandmother –’ She broke off abruptly as she saw Brid hovering behind him. ‘So, who is this?’

Adam watched her eyes move quickly up and down, taking in Brid’s long hair, her embroidered tunic, her soft leather skirt and her laced sandals. Her frown was so quickly hidden he wondered if he had imagined it.

‘So, lassie, come in and let’s be seeing you.’

Brid hesitated and Adam, turning, took her hand with a reassuring smile. ‘This is Brid. Brid, this is Jeannie who makes chocolate cakes.’

Brid’s face lit into a smile. ‘I like chocolate cake.’

Jeannie nodded. ‘I thought he couldn’t have been eating them all by himself. Well, if you look in the pantry you’ll find a new one I made specially for him.’ She turned back to her dough. ‘And what kind of a name is Brid, if I may ask?’ Like Adam she had pronounced it Breed.

‘It’s short for Bridget,’ Adam put in hastily. ‘Sort of a nickname.’

‘I see. And where do you come from then, lass? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.’

‘She lives in a village the other side of Ben Dearg,’ Adam answered for her again. ‘Her brother is the stone mason there.’

‘I see. And you’ve no tongue in your head?’ Once more the quick shrewd glance. Jeannie Barron had summed Brid up at once. A pretty tinker child, or perhaps foreign. More likely the latter in view of her silence. And besotted with young Adam, if she were any judge.

Adam had emerged from the pantry with the plate.

‘Greaseproof is over there.’ The floury hand waved towards the dresser. ‘Then get you both from under my feet, if you please. I’m here today so I can have Friday off and stay with my sister the whole weekend, and I’ve a lot to do before I’m away.’

Outside Brid rounded on him. ‘I thought you said it would be safe. That is not your mother?’

‘No. I told you. My mother’s gone away.’ Adam was fairly sure Jeannie would not mention the visit to his father.

‘So, it is the woman who looks after the priest?’

He frowned. ‘I wish you wouldn’t call him a priest. It sounds so papist. I told you. He’s a minister.’

‘Sorry, A-dam.’ She looked contrite. ‘She makes nice cake.’ Then, as she did so often she changed the subject, abruptly and without a second thought, dismissing Jeannie as no longer worthy of interest. ‘Come. We go find Gartnait.’

They did, but not before she had pounced on Adam in the shelter of the lonely screed valley on the north side of the waterfall and laughingly begun to pull off all his clothes.

‘A-dam! You are tall and big!’ Her glance was deliberately provocative. She stood in front of him and slipped her tunic up over her naked breasts. ‘Me too. I am big now.’

‘Indeed you are.’ He smiled. In the twelve months since he had last seen her, her breasts and hips had rounded and her slim child’s legs had become more shapely.

They made love again and again and then after a respectful handful of cake had been given to the Lady in the waterfall they swam under the icy cascade. Afterwards they found a sheltered patch of sunlight where the wind couldn’t chill them, and lay on the flat rocks to dry.

‘I have studied the omens.’ Brid was staring up at the sky. ‘You and I will be together forever. I read the entrails of a doe before I ate her flesh as a cat. She told me so.’

‘Brid!’ Adam sat up. ‘You are joking? That’s disgusting!’

‘No.’ She smiled at him and pushed him back, her fingers playfully clawed as she raked them gently over his chest. ‘I not joke.’

He stared up into her eyes and for an instant he was appalled by what he saw there. ‘Brid –’

‘Quiet, A-dam.’ Her lips came down on his, and for a while he was silent, distracted from his thoughts by her hands.

When she at last lay back next to him, sated, he turned a sleepy head towards her. ‘I thought you said you weren’t allowed to talk about your studies?’

‘I’m not.’ She looked defiant.

‘So you made all that stuff up? About the entrails?’

‘I didn’t make it up.’ She sat up, her legs crossed, and looked down at him. ‘Do you want me to show you?’

He looked at her and suddenly he was afraid again. The hardness he sometimes saw in her eyes was at such variance with her passion. He was confused. ‘No!’ He spoke sharply. ‘It didn’t really say you and I will be together forever?’

‘It did.’ She smiled, and he saw the small pink tip of her tongue flick across her lips. ‘You and I make love together forever.’

He frowned. He had not thought about Brid and the future. The future contained university and medicine and a shining array of new opportunities. He wasn’t at all certain yet how Brid fitted in, if at all. He shifted uncomfortably, watching her through narrowed eyes as she sat beside him, silhouetted against the brightness of the sky.

I told you to beware my sister, A-dam. She is a daughter of the fire and her power will kill. Forget her, A-dam. She is not part of your destiny.

Gartnait’s words echoed in his head suddenly, and he shivered. ‘You haven’t told me yet why your uncle let you come back.’

‘He has come to visit my brother and to see the stone. It is nearly finished.’

Adam sat up. ‘You mean he’s here too?’

‘No. Today he rides to visit my other uncle, my father’s brother …’ She worked out the relationship on her fingers. ‘Then he comes back from Abernethy in two, three days. And then I am staying here with Gemma until the snow comes. We can see each other all the time!’

She leaned over him and kissed him on the lips again.

Adam frowned. A shadow had drifted across the sun. ‘Not all the time, Brid.’ He raised himself onto one elbow. ‘You remember I am going to be a doctor? I am going away to university in October.’

‘To university? What is university?’ She sat up and scowled.

‘It’s a place you go to study. Like school, but more difficult.’ His voice rose with enthusiasm. ‘Like you do with your uncle.’

‘But I see you after you finish study. In the evening.’ Her eyes were very intense, holding his.

He felt uncomfortable. ‘No, Brid. We can’t do that,’ he said gently. ‘I’m going to Edinburgh. It’s a long way from here. I shall be staying there.’

‘But you will come back? To see your father? Like I come back to see my mother and Gartnait.’

He looked away. The sun reflecting on the water made him screw up his eyes against the glare. ‘Yes. I’ll come back.’

He wondered if that was a lie. He never wanted to come back to the manse. Not if he could help it. But what if that meant he would never see Brid again? He looked back at her and gave her a reassuring smile. ‘We’ve plenty of time, Brid. I don’t go for weeks and weeks and weeks.’ It still seemed like forever. Taking her hand he pulled her sharply so she tumbled forward into his arms. ‘Let’s make the most of now, shall we?’ The future could take care of itself.

They never got as far as the stone, that day or the next. Adam went back to the manse and collected his camping things. He knew Jeannie probably suspected that he would not be sleeping in his small tent alone, but she said nothing, giving him a huge bag of food to keep him going while he watched the birds. Loaded with tent and sleeping bag and groundsheet, a Primus stove, saucepan, food, bird book and binoculars, he could hardly walk as he set off once more towards the hill. The weight did not matter. Brid was waiting for him, and anyway they were not going far.

They camped only a hundred yards from the falls. There, to his intense embarrassment, she gave him an intricately worked silver pendant on a chain, hanging it herself around his neck. ‘For you, A-dam. Forever.’

‘Brid! Men don’t wear things like this!’ He flinched uncomfortably as it nestled against his chest.

She laughed. ‘Men in my world wear this with pride, A-dam. It is a love token.’ She pulled the edges of his collar across to hide it and kissed him firmly on the lips. Before very long he had forgotten it was there.

Two evenings later, with the dark blue velvet of the sky sprinkled with pale stars, Gartnait found them.

‘How long have you been here?’ He looked furious.

‘Not long.’ Brid glared at him.

‘I look for you everywhere. Everywhere!’ he repeated. ‘Broichan is at our mother’s house. He is angry!’ The emphasis he placed on the last word spoke volumes.

‘I have a holiday.’ Brid looked mutinous.

‘Holiday?’ Gartnait repeated the word puzzled. Then without waiting for elucidation he grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. ‘You have been here with A-dam?’ His face betrayed a succession of emotions: anger; fear; suspicion. ‘Brid, you have stayed here? Here? On the other side?’

Brid’s chin rose, if anything, a little higher. But there was a touch of colour in her cheeks. ‘I like it here. I saw A-dam’s village; I saw his house,’ she said defiantly.

‘And what will you say to our uncle?’

‘I will say nothing. I came to see our mother.’

Adam had not dared meet Gartnait’s eye. He knew what they had done was wrong. It was his fault. He was the man. He should have said no. He should have sent her away. Only they both knew that was impossible. Even now, as he looked at Brid and saw the heightened colour in her cheeks, the silky sheen of her hair, still dishevelled from their love-making in the tent only minutes before Gartnait had appeared, and the line of her long slim tanned thigh beneath her skirt, he could feel his desire running rampant through his veins. Clenching his fists he looked away from her. ‘Can’t you say you couldn’t find her?’ he said to Gartnait.

‘You want me to tell my uncle lies?’ Gartnait looked at him disparagingly.

‘Not lies.’ It was Adam’s turn to blush. ‘Just say you looked everywhere.’

‘He knows I looked everywhere,’ Gartnait replied bitterly. ‘He knows there was nowhere else to look.’

‘He must not know you have come here,’ Brid put in anxiously.

‘Nor you, little sister.’ Gartnait shook his head. ‘Or he will kill us both.’

There was a moment of silence. Adam felt the small hairs stand up suddenly on the back of his neck.

Brid’s huge grey eyes were fixed on her brother’s. It was as if they had forgotten he was there.

Adam swallowed hard. ‘Look, I know he’ll be angry, but I’ll explain …’ His voice tailed away. He was remembering his previous encounters with Broichan.

Brid was very pale. ‘A-dam. You stay here in your tent. I will go and see my uncle. Then I will come back.’ She sounded very confident.

‘But I should come with you.’

‘No, you know that is not possible. Better he does not know I have ever seen you again, my A-dam.’ Her voice softened suddenly as she saw his stricken face and she darted over to drop a kiss on his forehead. ‘I will come back soon. You see –’ she broke off abruptly and he saw her gaze pass to the edge of the clearing.

Adam craned round in sudden terror and saw to his intense relief a familiar face staring at them over the rim of the bank. His friend, Robbie, was scrambling towards them, grinning broadly, when he stopped abruptly, his whole expression frozen into fear. Adam looked round and saw that Gartnait had drawn the knife he wore habitually at his belt.

‘Gartnait!’ he cried, alarmed. ‘He is my friend. It’s all right.’ The whole afternoon was turning into a hideous nightmare. ‘Put it away. He’s my friend.’

Reluctantly Gartnait sheathed the knife, but his face remained sullen and hostile as Robbie, after a moment’s hesitation, came forward.

‘Adam, you old devil, I didn’t know you were going to camp.’ He recognised the tent. He had one just like it and in the past the two boys had often camped side by side. He was staring first at Brid and then at Gartnait. ‘Who are your friends?’

Adam frowned, reluctant to introduce them. Gartnait and Brid were a part of his own private world, his secret world, which had nothing to do with home. He repeated their names without enthusiasm. ‘They were just going,’ he added as the two young men bowed at one another stiffly.

Brid reached up and unself-consciously kissed Adam on the cheek. ‘I will see you soon.’ She smiled at him and touched his face with her hand. For a fraction of a second she clawed her fingers and he thought he heard a gentle purr. Then she and Gartnait had gone.

Robbie whistled. ‘Who on earth were they?’ He sat down next to Adam and stared at him hard. ‘They’re not from round here. What weird clothes!’

Adam was shivering. Not for the first time he realised that something about Brid frightened him intensely. ‘I met them over the other side of the hill,’ he said slowly. ‘Gartnait is a stone carver. He travels around.’

‘And the beautiful young lady?’ Robbie’s eyes were alight with intrigue.

Adam forced himself to smile. ‘She’s his sister.’

Robbie punched him on the shoulder. ‘You randy old devil! How did you manage to get yourself a girlfriend like that!’

Adam flushed painfully and he felt a shock of annoyance go through him as well as fear. In spite of himself he glanced round. But they were alone in the centre of the huge bowl of the surrounding hills. ‘Don’t be daft. She’s no one. Just someone I met.’ Even as he said it he felt he was betraying her, but Brid and Gartnait and Robbie were worlds apart and he intended to keep them that way. He felt the cold weight of silver on his chest suddenly and shrugged the open neck of his shirt closed, surreptitiously fastening the button. He had no intention of letting Robbie see the pendant round his neck. As soon as he was alone he would remove it.

He stayed alone in the tent that night, but she did not return. Nor the next, and on the Saturday Adam packed up his gear and took it back to the manse.

With something like relief he put her out of his mind. Three times the following week he cycled over to Robbie’s and together they planned what they would do when they got to Edinburgh. It was finally beginning to dawn on Adam that he was actually leaving, and his thoughts turned to Brid less and less often, visiting him only at night in his dreams. Her silver charm was hidden in a box in the bottom of one of his drawers.

His results arrived; his grades were excellent and his place at medical school was confirmed. Numb with shock and excitement he received the news in his father’s study and stood looking down at the letter in his hand.

‘Congratulations, Adam.’ Thomas smiled at him. ‘I am very proud of you.’

Adam was speechless for a moment. He read the letter again. There was no doubt; there it was in black and white.

‘A great step,’ his father went on. ‘You’ll make a fine doctor one day, son.’

‘Thank you, Father.’ At last Adam found his tongue.

In half an hour it hit him with dizzying force. He was on his way. He was going to the city. He was leaving the manse forever. He did not intend to come back, even in the vacations. He was going to be a doctor.

This time he did not give Brid a second’s thought.

Broichan was waiting when Brid returned to the bothy with Gartnait, seated in front of the fire. There was no sign of Gemma.

‘So, you have been trespassing beyond our world. You have lied and cheated and broken your vows!’

‘No!’ Brid faced him, her cheeks flaming. ‘I have betrayed no one!’

‘You have betrayed me. And you have betrayed your gods.’ Broichan had not raised his voice. ‘On your horse. We leave now for the north.’

‘But I’m staying here –’

‘You are staying nowhere!’ Broichan stood up, towering over her. ‘You have betrayed your brother and your mother. You have betrayed the blood that runs in your veins. You have betrayed your calling –’

‘You have no proof of any of this! You are guessing –’

‘I have proof enough. I have watched you in the fire and in the water. I have seen you lying like a drab with the boy son of the Jesus priest.’ He moved towards her and Brid flinched backwards. ‘Collect your bags and come now, or I shall tie you like a slave and drag you behind my horse!’

She had no choice. Trembling, Brid collected her belongings, kissed Gemma, who had been waiting silent and afraid inside the bothy, and climbed onto her pony. Somehow she managed to keep her head high, the colour still strong in her cheeks, as Broichan led the way up onto the track where his servants and his escort were waiting.

The sun had barely moved a hand’s breadth across the sky when the riders crossed over into the next glen and were lost from sight.

Once back at Craig Phádraig, she settled into the routine of the seminary, avoiding Broichan as much as possible, her defiance secret, her anger against him simmering, comforting herself in the lonely evenings with the knowledge that Broichan was jealous of her power and by watching Adam from afar. When he joined Robbie for bicycle rides or hikes in the hills she could see them from the body of a skylark, high above the fields; when he lay at night in bed, dreaming of her, she knew it and crept to the window sill in the body of a village cat, purring with secret delight, and when he swam in the burn up on the hillside, relishing the last of the summer’s heat, she thought herself into the slim brown body of a mountain trout and flicked her tail against his naked thighs.

It was while she was watching Adam in her quiet cell one stormy autumnal night that Broichan walked in and caught her.

‘So, little cat, you have learned to spy on your lover.’ Broichan’s voice was a silky murmur.

Brid jumped with fear. The small room, lit only by the smoky flame of an oil lamp, was full of leaping shadows.

Watching her, Broichan smiled. ‘Such a waste. You have great gifts, my niece. You could have been a priestess, a seer, a bard, who knows, even a queen.’ He folded his arms under his cloak. ‘But you choose to betray me. You cannot be trusted with your talents – you waste them on a village boy and sully your initiation vows. Only one thing can redeem you, little Brid. Your blood shall be given to the gods with your brother’s when the time comes to dedicate the stone, so that your soul can be born again in a fresh guileless body –’

‘No!’ She made to stand up, her face as white as alabaster, but he raised his hand and held it in front of her.

Between his fingers, swinging at the end of a fine gold chain, was the egg-shaped polished red stone, its translucence gleaming in the light of the flame. ‘Don’t move, little Brid. Don’t even blink your eyes. You see, I can enchant you with the magic sleep and hold you here until I need you.’ He laughed softly. ‘Poor little niece. So clever, but not quite clever enough.’ He reached into the depths of his clothes and brought out a long-bladed knife. He held it for a moment in front of her unblinking eyes, letting the light of the flickering flame play on the gleaming blade. Gently he pressed it flat against her cheek. She did not flinch and he chuckled. ‘You will remember nothing of this, little Brid. Nothing at all when you awake. You will obey me and you will stay quietly here, to await your fate.’ Tucking the knife away again he leaned forward and snapped his fingers under her nose.

She jumped and stared at him, blinking. ‘Uncle –’

‘You work too hard, Niece.’ Broichan gave a cruel laugh. ‘Sleep now. I have great plans for you, my dear.’

He walked out of the small room. Behind him the flame on the lamp flickered.

The evening before he was due to go to Edinburgh Adam walked up one last time towards the stone. His trunk was packed and strapped, ready to go, in the hall. Tomorrow the carter would pick it up and take it to the station.

He was feeling a little guilty as he climbed the hillside. Overwhelmed with excitement about the future he had spared practically no thought for Brid and Gartnait at all over the last month. In his knapsack was a chocolate cake. A peace offering and perhaps a farewell.

The stone was in shadow. Panting slightly he stood as he had so often, running his fingers over the intricate designs carved on it. Below him, the hillside fell away into the velvet night. High above, on the west-facing slope, the sunlight still reflected pink onto the blackened heather and the rock. The evening was very still. He could hear no birds. Even the wind in the sparse grasses had died. He slung his bag off his shoulder and dropped it, then he stepped away from the stone. The Z-shaped cut – he thought of it as a lightning bolt, though Gartnait called it the broken spear – threw a hard narrow shadow across the smoothed surface of the granite. Beside it the carved serpent writhed unfinished, the tail only half drawn. It was the only incomplete carving on the stone. Under it the mirror looked as though someone had been scraping at it. The lichen had been rubbed away. He frowned. That was strange. As far as he knew he was the only person in the whole world, apart from Brid and Gartnait, who ever came to this lonely spot.

He walked slowly round, mentally recording each detail of the place that had meant so much to him, as though already he knew he would never come back. His plan was to leave the cake behind. He was pretty sure that Brid would not find it, but the birds and animals of the high screes would.

The sound of Brid’s voice behind him made him leap out of his skin. ‘A-dam! I knew you would come. I sent a message in my head to bring you here.’ Suddenly she was sobbing. She threw her arms around his neck, then, uncharacteristically she drew back. ‘I must come with you. My uncle plans to kill me.’ The statement, so flat and unemotional, stunned him into total silence. ‘He put me into a magic sleep, and he told me what he was going to do. But I have more power than him!’ She let out a wild burst of laughter. ‘I pretended to sleep, but I heard him. I did not make a sign. I did not move my face, but when he had gone I made my plans. I took one of his best ponies and rode in the middle of the night, and I rode until I came home.’ She smiled wearily, a humourless, cold smile which chilled him. ‘He plans to kill my brother too when the stone is finished. He knows now that Gartnait and I know what the stone is for. It marks the gateway to other times and to knowledge that is forbidden to all but the highest initiates, so we must both die. You see the mirror? That is the sign that from here you can see through the reflections into other worlds. That is how I have come to you. I am not going back. There is only a small part of the work left. When the serpent is finished Broichan will give orders that we are to be buried under the stone – a sacrifice to the gods.’ The hardness vanished and she kneaded her fists into her eyes like a child. ‘Gartnait has gone. He has gone south with my mother three days ago. He wanted me to go too, but I stayed. I waited for you.’

Adam had a strange cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘Brid, what are you talking about? Your mother and Gartnait would never leave you. Your uncle would never kill you. This is nonsense. All of it.’

‘Nonsense?’ she echoed wildly. ‘Broichan is the chief priest of this land. His word is the law. Even the king would not defy him if it was over a matter of the gods.’ Her eyes hardened again and he recoiled. ‘A-dam, don’t you see, you have to save me! I have to live in your world now. I am going to come with you. To your school in Edinburgh!’

‘No!’ Adam stepped back further. ‘No, Brid. I’m sorry, but you can’t. It’s impossible.’

‘Why can’t I?’ Her eyes were fixed on his face.

‘Because you can’t.’ He was filled with horror at the idea.

‘You can’t stop me! A-dam, I have nowhere else to go.’

‘Go with Gartnait and Gemma. You belong with them.’

‘I can’t. They have gone to the south.’

‘Then you must follow them. This is nonsense. Brid, I can’t take you to Edinburgh! I’m sorry.’

‘But you love me, A-dam.’

‘Yes …’ He paused. ‘Yes, I love you, Brid.’ It was the truth, but at the same time, he realised suddenly, there was a part of him which would be quite glad never to see her again. Her angry outbursts and her possessiveness, her wild declamations, had become alarming. And at the same time there was a part of him which had already begun to separate itself from Pittenross and everything there. He softened his voice. ‘Our love is for here. For the holidays. There is no place for you in Edinburgh. None at all.’ He hesitated. ‘Brid, women are not allowed where I’m going.’ He did not like to lie but in a way it was the truth. Robbie had found them digs to share off the High Street and one of the landlady’s conditions was, ‘nae young women’. Sharing the digs there would be only one other, a skeleton Robbie had bagged for him from a newly qualified doctor. The story was that the skeleton, known as Knox, had been divested of its skin and flesh by the young man himself who had now headed south for London to become a dermatologist.

‘Brid.’ Adam took a deep breath and caught her hands gently in his own. ‘You have to go back. I’m sorry. You know you aren’t really in danger.’ He deliberately closed his mind to the picture of Broichan with this cruel eyes, wild hair, and savage, tight-lipped mouth. ‘That was all a wonderful fantasy. A game we played when we were children.’ He frowned. ‘Brid, there’s a war about to start. I’m going to be a doctor. Please understand.’ He touched her face gently. ‘It’s just not possible.’

‘A-dam …’ Her face was ashen. ‘War does not matter to me. I will help you with the wounded. Please. I love you.’ She grabbed the front of his sweater. ‘If I go back I will die.’

‘No, Brid.’

‘A-dam. You do not understand.’ She was clinging to him, her face hard.

‘Brid, I do. Listen. You have to go back to find Gartnait and Gemma. Next holidays we’ll meet and we’ll compare notes, all right? You must understand. You cannot come with me.’

She let go of him so suddenly he staggered backwards. Through her tears her eyes were blazing. ‘A-dam, I will never let you go. Never!’ Her voice was almost vicious.

Adam stared at her, shocked. The skin on the back of his neck was prickling suddenly, but he managed to remain calm. ‘No, Brid, I’m sorry.’ He stepped away from her. ‘Please, try and understand.’ He could not bear the look in her eyes any longer.

He turned and began to run as fast as he could down the hillside, away from her.