Читать книгу The Ghost Tree - Barbara Erskine - Страница 17

Thomas

It was the sennachie who first told me I was special. He had come to teach my eldest brother, David. The sennachie is the holder of the family story, the keeper of the genealogy, the remembrancer of all that makes a clan or a family great. We, the Erskines, he said, are both a Highland family and a Lowland clan. That is strange and special and he told us that our name comes from the skein, the little knife that appears on the family crest.

I was there, listening, only about five years old at the time, as the old man talked to my brother of traditions and legends of the earls of Buchan and of their forefathers the earls of Mar, going back to time before time.

There was another boy watching and listening there with us. Not Harry; he had gone out with Mama, and I asked the boy who he was. He said his name was David and he was my brother, the eldest, and he was six.

The sennachie frowned when I mentioned the boy and my big brother told me to be quiet as he could see no one there. The old man reprimanded him and said this other boy, who had joined us so silently and so suddenly, was the eldest brother to both of us, another David, who had died as a wee boy of six and who had come to hear the story of his ancestors.

The sennachie said I had the gift of second sight.

Later Mama told me we had indeed had a brother who had died; as the oldest son he had been named for Papa, but after he had died Papa had given David, our David, who had been their second son, his name and his title as the eldest son of Lord Cardross; before that David had been called Steuart after Mama’s family. I was confused. I didn’t understand any of this and my brothers were angry with me. They had both known the first David when they were all little together and missed him after he died and David was cross because he felt his name was not his own.

Mama said I must not tell anyone that I could talk to those who had died.