She sat without moving for several seconds, frozen with terror before it dawned on her that the picture looked nothing like her. It was an invention. The woman staring back off the front page had a wooden, fixed expression, wispy light-coloured hair, weird straight eyebrows. She smiled as she lowered her lips once more into the froth. No one in a million years would identify that desperate-looking loser with the smart, vibrant woman with intensely deep chestnut hair and designer jacket sitting here in a West End coffee shop. Even so, she had to force herself to stay put as she finished her cappuccino, trying to look casual as she pushed the cup away and extricated herself from the table. As she eased past the man with the paper he looked up and seemed to stare at her for fully three seconds. She held his gaze, paralysed with fear, then managed to smile and moved on. He went back to his paper without any sign of recognition.
‘I am so sorry to have inflicted all this junk on you.’ Ruth was standing in a ground-floor room in the Tower House, with Malcolm at her shoulder. They had made a trip back to the Old Mill House that morning to collect the boxes and cases from Fin’s cupboard, unwilling to leave them in the empty house, a house that seemed forlorn and very quiet as the police constable on duty waited on the doorstep for them to lock up and leave. What Mal referred to as her treasure was now piled on the floor in front of them in a mostly unused sitting room.
‘It’s dry and safe here, and I never use the room so you can leave it as long as you like,’ he reassured her yet again. ‘My mother used to entertain unwelcome visitors here, like the poor women from the Mothers’ Union and the WI.’ He laughed at the memory. ‘She was a feisty soul. Unclubbable.’
‘She was the laird’s wife, presumably, and therefore a great prize.’ Ruth was bending over one of the boxes, pulling back the flaps to see what was inside.
‘She was the laird.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘As far as the local ladies were concerned, my poor father was just an add-on. They weren’t interested in him, they didn’t even notice when he died, poor guy, but I don’t think they ever gave up trying with Mum.’
‘So, are you the laird now?’ She stood up and looked at him quizzically.
‘For my sins.’
‘What does that mean. Being a laird?’
‘It means those same women flutter their eyelashes, but from a safe distance, and send their husbands, who are on the PCC or the committee of the golf club, to see me instead, and I ask them upstairs for a dram.’
‘Wow. Overwhelmingly hospitable.’
‘I try,’ he sighed. ‘But I expect word will get round now about the tweets and even the husbands won’t dare come any more. I’ll be identified with Dracula, or worse.’
‘Is there anyone worse than Dracula?’
She held his gaze. Again, that strange feeling of warmth. And longing. They were standing very close to each other in the semi-darkness of the room and she found herself reaching up to put her hand on his chest. ‘Mal—’
The kiss was brief and she pulled away almost at once.
‘Why, Miss Dunbar, I do believe you are trying to seduce the laird?’ His voice was strangely husky.
She laughed awkwardly. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking of.’ She was trembling, she realised. ‘Perhaps I should go back to the top of my tower before I get carried away.’ She turned hastily back to the box. ‘But before I go, I just wondered what this was.’ She dived in to cover her embarrassment and came up with a bundle. ‘I was going to ask you about it.’
‘Let’s take it up to the kitchen.’ He had turned away a little too quickly.
She took a deep breath and followed him.
Putting the bundle on the kitchen table she began to unwrap it. ‘I thought you might know what it is.’
In the bright lights the crudely woven doll with its beads and feathers looked like a moth-eaten scrap of rubbish. Over by the stove the two dogs sat up. Pol growled in his throat. Malcolm glanced at him and back at the doll.
‘Can you feel it? This has power,’ he said softly. ‘What an extraordinary find. This is very special. It was created for the purposes of magical manipulation.’ He pushed back his sleeves and reached out tentatively. ‘Do you know where it came from?’
‘Thomas brought it back from the West Indies.’
He glanced up sharply. ‘So this is eighteenth century?’
‘It is.’
‘Part of the slave culture of the time.’
‘Voodoo?’ she whispered.
‘Possibly. It depends which island it came from. But not all voodoo was bad. I have a feeling this one is protective.’
‘He refers to it as a fetish. I know how he got it. He went to a black woman doctor when he was ill. His lieutenant took him and I gather a lot of the men on the navy ships held her in great esteem. I don’t know if she was what we would call a witch doctor, but she knew her stuff with herbs and things.’
‘Probably a great deal more efficient than a British doctor. At that time in Britain they were peddling lethal stuff and trying to get old women herbalists if not burned as witches, then mocked and derided, to protect their monopoly on new medicines like arsenic and opium!’ He gave a resigned sigh. ‘Typical men, taking over something that wasn’t broken and deciding they could fix it by making new rules.’
She gave a reluctant smile. ‘Shouldn’t that be my line?’
‘Probably.’ He was still looking at the doll. ‘Can I ask how you know about all this?’
‘His letters home.’
‘Of course.’
She waited for him to ask again if he could see them, but he didn’t. He carried the doll over to the lamp in the corner and examined it more closely. ‘This is a fascinating thing. Beautifully made. I’ve come across such things before but they’ve always been modern. They tend to give off an unpleasant aura and people are frightened of them.’
‘How on earth do people get hold of them?’
‘Tourists bring them back from the West Indies or Florida, places like that, as souvenirs from voodoo and Santeria shops, then they don’t dare throw them away. But this is an old one, the real thing, and I would definitely say it is protective rather than imbued with hatred. You can see here, the typical mix of traditions: tiny crosses, little carved figures that represent the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus, then other figures and gods – totems from her African background. My guess is that the old woman who made it for Thomas did so in order to keep him safe. Perhaps she fell for his charms.’ He smiled.
‘So, what do I do with it?’
‘Oh, keep it. You are one of his descendants, one of his children, in a manner of speaking, and I suspect she included you all within its magical remit.’
‘So, we are talking black magic here.’ She couldn’t quite keep the incredulity out of her voice. ‘Doesn’t it scare you?’
‘No, it doesn’t. On the contrary. This is a wonderful thing.’
‘But the dogs don’t like it.’ She looked towards them. They had gone back to sleep.
‘They can feel its power, but it isn’t disturbing them now.’ He touched it tentatively again then rested his hand over it, his eyes closed. ‘It is amazingly strong, though I sense it has been asleep for a long time. See if you can feel it.’ He pushed it towards her.
She pulled a face. ‘You know me, I don’t feel things!’ She touched it with a finger. ‘I think Fin could though. He was there when I first found it.’
‘Ssh. Stop talking. Stop thinking. Close your eyes,’ he remonstrated.
Reluctantly she obeyed his bidding, trying to empty her thoughts. The doll felt icy cold beneath her fingertips then slowly she realised she could feel it growing warmer. She withdrew her hand abruptly, her eyes flying open.
He was watching her. ‘You felt it?’
‘Only that my hands were warming it up.’
He smiled at her. ‘You know, I can’t help wondering if this wasn’t made to keep our friend Andrew Farquhar at bay.’
Ruth nodded. ‘Thomas kept it for that reason.
He had great faith in it.’
‘Rightly. I’m inclined to think that as long as you have this with you, you might be safe from Farquhar’s attentions as well.’
‘But if that’s true, why didn’t it work before? It was there all the time, in my mother’s stuff.’
He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Perhaps it needed you to wake it up; to acknowledge its presence in your life. Perhaps it needed to be near you.’ He glanced up at her. ‘Just think of it as something that brings you luck.’
‘But it’s—’
She was going to say horrible, but she changed her mind. She was looking at it more closely. It was partly carved wood, partly some kind of fabric, but it had so much else in its make-up: sticks, dried berries, red thread, little bits of black wire, fragments of what looked like leather and, as Mal had seen, tiny crosses and carved beads and what looked like icons.
‘Touch it again. Let it know you acknowledge it,’ he said quietly, ‘then take it upstairs and put it somewhere in your room. Look after it carefully, it’s very fragile.’
‘And it will keep me safe?’
‘There’s a good chance it will.’
‘Even from marauding lairds?’ She smiled.
‘Ah, now that depends on whether you welcome their marauding or not.’ He gave a cautious grin. ‘Now, away you go and put it somewhere safe while I, in the tradition of your English compatriots, hastily put on the kettle.’
She went upstairs, carrying the doll, and tucked it tenderly in the drawer of the little table beside her bed. She preferred to think of it as a doll rather than a fetish. Horrible word. It was rubbish of course to think it had any more power than a mascot of the kind they all used to carry at school when it was time for exams.
Nevertheless, mascots worked. Just carrying them gave one confidence.
As she pushed the drawer closed she smiled to herself. That was not what was happening now. She wasn’t stupid. The strange breathless excitement she felt, a tingling all over her body, was less to do with the power of the precious thing she had hidden away in the drawer and more to do with the man downstairs in the kitchen with his teapot and the fact that she was aching to kiss him again.
Thomas
In spite of my passionate defence of Paine’s right to freedom of ideas and his right to express them, he was found guilty of sedition by a rigged jury. King and government clung to their right to maintain control on society.
Those were exciting times and I was in the thick of them. The country, with its eye on revolutionary France, was in a ferment of unrest, with terror and anger finely balanced in the streets of London.
At the same time Fanny and I were saddened by the death of my old friend and mentor, Lord Mansfield. The subject of slavery was one which engaged all thoughtful people, and he had raised it again and again in the House. With no children of his own, he left a substantial amount of money to his niece Elizabeth and a further amount to his ward, Sir John Lindsay’s daughter, Dido Belle, who had lived at Kenwood as part of the family for nigh on thirty years. Philosophically, the idea of one man owning another was insupportable in an enlightened age. The slaves on the plantations of our relatives had seemed happy. They danced, they sang. I did not, when I had seen them as a boy, understand the loss and yearning in their hearts for a homeland they would never see again. No one is morally justified in removing a man from his own soil, taking him to a faraway country and keeping him there by force. And no man is morally entitled to own another. But each time I held my talismanic doll in my hand I remembered the old slave woman who had given it to me. If she had not been there I might long ago have fallen victim to the malign curses of Andrew Farquhar.
Oh yes, he still haunted my dreams. Every time I looked into the crowds I was subconsciously searching for that bloated, hate-filled face. Somehow I knew he was there somewhere, waiting his chance. But his chance to do what? And how long could I hold him at bay?
66
For a moment Ruth couldn’t think where she was. She stretched out, feeling for her pillow, and her hand touched a shoulder. Her eyes flew open. She was in Malcolm’s bedroom.
‘Good morning.’ He turned to smile at her.
She groaned. ‘Please tell me I didn’t.’
‘You did.’ He raised himself on his elbow. ‘See what happens when you take a fetish to your bedroom. All your inhibitions fly out of the window. And I’m very glad they did.’
‘I came downstairs looking for you?’ She was beginning to remember. She pulled the duvet over herself, covering her face. ‘What must you think of me?’
‘I think it’s wonderful.’ He sat up, leaned over to give her a lingering kiss before reaching for the dressing gown that was lying on the floor beside the bed. ‘And I wish we could start all over again, but I have just realised what the time is and that my esteemed agent will be arriving in about half an hour from now. Too late to put him off alas, so we’ll have to take a mutual rain check, and resume our very enjoyable encounter later. Agreed?’ He did not wait for an answer. In seconds she heard his bath running.
Slipping out of bed she headed for the door. In her own room she found her bed hadn’t been slept in. The light was still on. She gave herself a little hug. She felt extraordinarily happy.
When she was showered and dressed she found Max and Fin with Malcolm in the kitchen. The room smelt of coffee, there was a plate of croissants on the table, and an armful of Sunday newspapers lay on the chair.
‘No further news about the Bradfords,’ Fin said as he saw her. ‘The police have confirmed that April wasn’t in that burned-out house.’
‘Thank goodness.’ Ruth slipped into the chair at the head of the table.
Malcolm passed her a cup of coffee, his face solemn. ‘Did you sleep well?’
‘I did, thank you.’ She managed to keep her composure.
‘It means,’ Fin went on, oblivious to the exchange, ‘that they are probably together again, working as a team.’
‘What is happening at the Old Mill House?’ Ruth asked suddenly. ‘Are the police keeping an eye on it?’
‘There was a guy there yesterday,’ Malcolm put in, ‘when we went to fetch Ruth’s treasures. But then we did tell them we were coming.’
‘Well, Lachy’s there now. He moved in last night with his family and his very large scary brother, just for the time being.’ Fin grinned happily. ‘Max has kindly offered me his spare room for as long as I need it and I take it Mal will allow you to stay here for a while.’ Fin met Ruth’s gaze straight on.
‘Of course she can,’ Malcolm put in.
‘So,’ Fin went on, ‘all we have to do is keep our heads down till the police catch them.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not sure whether you want to know what’s in the papers. There are several articles about you, Mal, I’m afraid. Not all bad. Not all mocking.’
‘Which implies that some of them are?’
‘You weren’t expecting anything else, were you? We thought it better you know about it.’
‘There’s nothing there that will do you any damage,’ Max put in. ‘I think it will all blow over. So, how are things on the Internet? Have you checked this morning?’
‘I haven’t had time to look,’ Malcolm responded cheerfully. ‘Better things to do.’
Ruth kept her eyes determinedly on the coffee mug in her hands.
‘And unless my publisher decides to pull my contract for conduct unbecoming, I shall concentrate on my writing,’ Mal went on. ‘And I shall continue to do so.’
‘There’s no way Timothy could find out I’m here, is there?’ Ruth asked suddenly.
‘I don’t see how. Unless …’ Max stared at her thoughtfully. ‘Harriet wouldn’t put it online, would she?’
Someone had.
Supernaturally inspired biographer #Malcolm Douglas has been consulting about haunted houses with celebrity chef’s friend, Ruth Dunbar.
‘Shit! How could she!’ Ruth cried out in despair as they all stared at the screen. ‘She must realise h
ow dangerous this is.’
‘She’s out to hurt us, I’m afraid,’ Malcolm said sadly.
‘If it is Harriet,’ Fin put in.
‘Who else could it be?’ Ruth looked up at him wildly. ‘Who else knows? Look, here’s another one.’
I wonder if historian Malcolm Douglas has company in his lonely tower. Eagles and ghosts witness what’s going on under his ancestral roof.
‘Poetic.’ Malcolm’s tone was dour. ‘What are the chances of Timothy seeing this?’
‘It’s unlikely he’d follow Twitter, isn’t it?’
‘If he does, it pinpoints your possible whereabouts. Where I live is not exactly secret,’ Malcolm sighed. ‘Not that it matters if we keep the door locked. She is one bitter lady, Harriet. My own stupid fault.’
And her phone was still switched off. Ruth left a message. ‘I’m not sure what you’re playing at, Hattie, but you’re putting my life in danger. Is that what you intend?’
The others were listening. ‘That’s telling her,’ Fin commented.
‘Sorry. I’m fed up with sitting here and taking whatever she cares to throw at us,’ Ruth defended herself. ‘I know. I should be dignified and silent.’
‘No way. Dignified and silent is for Mal,’ Max put in. ‘You go for it. If you’re sure it’s her, keep texting her and remind her how stupid this is. She must know by now what these people are capable of. She needs to think what she’s doing. And tell her to switch on her phone and speak to you.’
Thomas
My eldest son, Davy, progressed to Cambridge, and to Lincoln’s Inn, and was admitted to the bar; then, as had been his dream since he was a little boy, he went to America to seek his fortune and there he found a wife in his cousin, Frances Cadwallader, Caddy, he called her, there being already too many Franceses in the family.
Our two eldest daughters, Frances and Elizabeth, went up to Scotland and learned there to love the country of my birth and of their heritage. My brother, David, made them welcome at his newly built house beside Dryburgh Abbey and Elizabeth fell in love with David’s son. David never had legitimate children, alas, but this young man was as dear to him as an heir would have been. Fanny and I travelled north for the wedding and gave them our blessing, unaware when we returned south with Frances after our joyful visit that we would never see our darling Lizzie again. She had never been strong and became increasingly ill. Her husband and her father-in-law cared for her with every ounce of their love but could not save her; she died in August of the year 1800 and was buried in St Monan’s chapel within the walls of the ancient abbey. Fanny and I were devastated but I had too heavy a workload to travel north for her funeral. All we could do was weep and pray that she rest in peace in the country of her ancestors she had come to love so much.