Tales From The Dark Past - Books 4-5

Chapter 1-1

“Steady, lass!” The driver of the dogcart soothed his horse as it pulled to the right. “She’s always skittish here,” the driver explained to me. “She doesn’t like passing the old graveyard.”

We had reached a crossroads, where the Black Yett of Sidlaw, the main road, eased off towards Perth along the foot of the Sidlaw Hills. Our much narrower track headed north, up a pass between two green heights. The driver’s old graveyard was tucked behind a moss-furred dry-stane dyke, with a scattering of gravestones at different angles, as if each was trying to escape the b*****e of the soil.

“Why is that?” I asked. “Graveyards and such places don’t normally frighten horses.”

“This one does,” the driver said. “Something scared her here a whiley back, and she’s never been happy here since.”

“The graveyard doesn’t look well-kept.” I glanced over the wall with little interest.

“No.” the driver shook his head. He climbed off his perch to settle the horse, speaking gently, and lowering the beast’s head. “Easy lass, I’ll lead you. Steady, now.”

I remained in the back of the cart as the driver walked us past the graveyard, with its single yew tree dark green and the grass rank over the humps of neglected graves.

“Why is it so unkempt?” I asked.

“It’s a suicides’ graveyard,” the driver said shortly. He said no more until we were a hundred yards beyond the place, and he gave his horse a final caress and resumed his seat.

“Are there many suicides around here?” I asked as a smirr of rain slithered from the hills to wash some of the journey’s dust from us.

“Too many,” the driver said. “It can be ill land to farm.” He flicked the reins on the rump of his horse, and we moved slightly faster. The iron-shod wheels of the cart ground on the unmade road, deepening the grooves made by a thousand previous vehicles over ten centuries of use. People had inhabited this land for millennia, I knew. I could feel the history pressing in on me; I could hear the whispering voices of the long-dead and sense the slow tide of passing years.

To my northern eyes, the land was not ill-favoured. Grass and heather covered the hills, making excellent sheep country, with parks, or fields, where cattle grazed or lay together.

A colourful gypsy wagon passed us, with the driver lifting a hand in acknowledgement and a gaggle of tousle-headed children running behind. When they waved to me, I smiled and waved back.

“Aye, only tinkers and gypsies use this road,” my driver said. “Them and men who can’t afford to farm decent soil.” He shook his head. “We’d be better off without these tinker vagrants.”

I said nothing to that, being a bit of a vagrant myself. I watched the caravan lurch around a bend and heard the high-pitched barking of the dogs.

The hills rose on either side; not the craggy granite of my previous home, but softly smooth, specked with the white forms of hardy, black-faced sheep and redolent with patches of heather. I thought them friendly heights and hoped I had left my bitter memories behind me.

“Aye, it’s a dreich day.” The driver misinterpreted my thoughts, as people often do.

I nodded agreement. “It’s all of that,” I said, for the grey drift of rain obscured the sky and dulled the colours of the landscape. I did not mind that, for to me, rain is only another aspect of nature, and without rain, nothing would grow. I was still thinking of that lonely cemetery with the forlorn graves of men and women who lost their strength to live. I could understand them, and what had driven away all the attraction of life.

A whaup called, its cry one of the most melancholic of all bird sounds, and I saw it rise from the grass to my left. With its long, down-curving beak, the whaup was the centre of fear from the superstitious. I watched the hill-bird fly into the rain and knew the crunch of our wheels had frightened it.

“Only a whaup,” the driver said over his shoulder. “You’ve naething to fear from a whaup.”

“Aye,” I returned. “They’ve never done me any harm.” It was not the birds and beasts of the fields that frightened me; I thought and prayed again that I had left my tormentors behind in the North Country.

“Please, God, let them stay up there. Don’t let them follow me to this southern land of Strathmore.”

We turned around the spur of a hill, with an outcrop of heather nodding to the sky. The signboard creaked against its iron rings, wind-bucked this way and that as the driver pulled to a halt.

“There you are, Miss.” He gave me a sideways look. “It’s a gey lonely place this.”

I nodded my agreement as I surveyed the surroundings. “Aye, it’s all of that.”

The driver shook his head. “Are you sure you want off here, now, lassie? I could take you back in a trice.”

“I have a position at the farm,” I said.

“Aye, well, maybe the reputation is exaggerated.” The driver seemed reluctant to let me off his cart.

“I’ve accepted the position,” I said, clambering down onto the track. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“If you think so, Miss,” the driver said. “It’s a fair bit walk for you.” He handed me my case, his fatherly eyes concerned.

“I’m used to walking.” I favoured him with a smile and paid him with the scrapings of my purse.

“Well, good luck to you, Miss.” The driver cracked his reins over the rump of the horse and turned it in the road-end. He lifted a hand in farewell, opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and pulled slowly away.

I watched the dogcart jolting on the uneven road and turned my head towards the farm. The path was barely wide enough for a cart, with flat fields stretching on either side to the hills’ sweeping slopes. The name hung from a gallows-shaped cross-post at the track"s side, still creaking slightly in the biting wind.

Kingsinch, it proclaimed, and yet I never saw anything less like the road to royalty in my life. I did not know which king had been unfortunate enough to venture to this farmtoun in the back of beyond, nor why he should come here.

Kingsinch,I shrugged, king or commoner, it made no difference to me. I was here to work, not to speculate on long-forgotten royalty. Let the dead keep the dead.

From the road-end, the track seemed to disappear into the hills, with no sign of a farm-steading. I shrugged, prepared for a long walk. I lifted my bag and stepped onto the track. I say track, but it was more like a causeway, raised slightly above the fields of stubble, and seemed to sway as I walked. Shrugging off the illusion, I put my best foot foremost and stepped out for Kingsinch, with my boots sinking into the cart-ruts of the track and the wind scouring my face.

In one of the fields or parks, as we called them, a lone horseman was ploughing, with reins wrapped around his wrist and his two-horse Clydesdale team moving slowly. A trick of the wind sent the mesmeric hiss of the plough through rich soil to me, with the soft padding of the hooves on the dirt and the horseman’s muttered encouragement to his horses.

The horseman noticed me, lifted a hand in salute, and continued with his work. I waved in reply and trudged on, descending a long slope into the lower ground, with moisture gleaming from the newly turned earth and fail-dykes – dykes of turf rather than stone – separating the fields. A few hundred yards later, the track took a decided loop, with a post thrust into the ground on the left side. A lantern hung from the post, swinging madly in the increasing wind. After the dog-leg bend, the track descended steeply, yet managed to retain its height relative to the surrounding fields. I nodded, working out the lie of the land. The fields occupied a drained moss, a boggy moor, with the track built above it.

After a mile, I noticed a battered ruin of a building, or a rickle of a biggin, as we would call it in the north, crouching on a heather-knowe not far off the track. At one time it might have been important, but now it was tumbledown and forlorn with neglect, despite the stone roof that would hold out the rain. I stopped for a moment, wondering what it was and if it was related to the mysterious king who had passed this way. Perhaps it was the wind, easing from the surrounding hills, but I thought I heard somebody whistling at that building. The sound was not unpleasant, but I stopped to listen with the fear growing inside me.

“Oh, God no,” I said to myself. “Don’t let it happen again. Don’t let it happen here as well.”

I sighed with relief as a man appeared from behind the old ruin, whistling to three large black mastiffs. He gave me a glower, turned his shoulder, and stalked away, with the dogs at his heels. I moved on, with the farm steading now in sight amidst a group of gnarled trees.

I stopped to take stock of the farmtoun of Kingsinch, where I was to spend the next period of my life. The steading rose from the surrounding fields, like a mediaeval castle within its moat, yet the buildings were blunt, nearly ugly in their uncompromising functionality. Bare stone walls under sloped slate roofs, with small windows with white painted frames. The steading stood four-square against the weather, giving nothing away.

If buildings could speak, these would say, “Here I am, and damn you,” to the wind and rain. I could sense Kingsinch’s personality as dour, as it glowered at a pitiless world.

“Well?” the woman who stood at the front door was dark-haired, about thirty-five and not ill-looking. She viewed me with disfavour. “Are you coming, or are you going to dawdle there all day?”

I hurried forward. “I am Ellen Luath,” I introduced myself. “The new kitchen maid.”

“Aye.” The woman did not move as she eyed me up and down. “I guessed that.”

“Are you Mrs Lunan?” I asked.

“Aye.” Mrs Lunan spoke as if she grudged every word she had to release from her taut mouth. She might have been attractive if she smiled more, and men would undoubtedly have found her shape desirable.

“May I come in?”

Mrs Lunan shifted to the side, allowing me a grudging passage.

The farm-kitchen was as austere as the exterior of the building. A plain deal table and four wooden chairs stood on a floor of stone slabs, with a black range in one wall and a wooden worktop stretched along another. A large sink occupied half the third wall. An array of pots, pans, griddles, and other kitchen necessities hung above the worktop, gleaming in the light of the range fire. There was nothing else, no hint of refinement or comfort.

I had seen a lot worse.

“This is where you’ll work,” Mrs Lunan said. “You’ll also help with the milking, and mucking out the byre, and feeding the bothy-lads, and washing, and anything else I require you for.”