Ghosts of Culloden Moor 01 - The Gathering Read online

  If I had been alone, I might have wept, I was that sorry not to see her. Even if she would have spent the day walking about holding 79’s hand, she would have spared us a moment or two. A little jolt of electricity, or whatever magic it was, always perked us up when she looked our way or passed her hand through ours.

  As if they had given up hope, the clouds that had been dripping all day decided to greet like no one was watching. Perhaps they, too, felt the despair consuming Culloden’s 79.

  Slowly, reluctantly, men got to their feet and looked to their resting places. I lifted my face to the downpour and let my despair slip away. With no clear images in my head, I knew I would return to where my body had fallen that April day in 1745. And I would sleep almost peacefully until my mind began to fidget again. Until I woke, however, I would forget that I was face down in the mud with Alan McHenish draped over the backs of my calves. It never bothered me while I slept.

  Peace. Give me a little peace—

  The prayer was cut short by the flash of headlights. My heart jumped with hope that Soni had come at long last. After all, there had been only that one year we’d had to make do without her, when she was six…

  But it wasn’t our lassie. It was the security guards toodling about the grounds on the large ATV. They took a rise too quickly and the vehicle bucked, sending the rain between the small windshield and the roof. The men groaned as the water soaked them through. I smiled and thought their discomfort a small price to pay for getting my hopes up for no reason.

  I faced the sky again, intent on finding my peace before the guards made their way back from the west end of the field. Another light caught my attention, however, and I looked to the small car park near the entrance. A truck had parked there.

  Teenagers or tardy Wickens? I wondered.

  Too late for Solstice.

  Teenagers, then.

  But suddenly the air stirred around me, and my brothers rose to face the same direction. 79 present and alert. It meant one thing.

  Soni has come!

  I took a step, then stopped. Something was wrong. The pull that had tugged at my breast was gone. And in its place, opposition. Stay back, it insisted with no voice at all.

  I found 79 beside the Memorial Cairn, standing before the wood bench upon which he’d been moping a few moments before. A fierce storm raged in his eyes as he watched the truck and I wondered if some demon were trying to keep us all from our lass. Or was our lass even there? Was something else able to bring us all to attention as she did?

  Others began to back away, no doubt forming the same fears in their minds. Demons were nothing to trifle with. We were safe on Culloden soil. It was hallowed ground, dedicated and consecrated by a dozen different religions. And even if it hadn’t been, we’d consecrated it ourselves a hundred times over. We’d been God-fearing young men, all. Nothing much could cause us dread.

  But still, we were wary.

  The driver’s door opened and a woman stepped out into the rain wearing a long dark cloak. Her head was covered with a hood, but the steady rain didn’t affect it.

  She moved to the rear and opened the tailgate. With her back to us, we couldn’t tell what she was unloading until she moved to the far side of a large trolley and began pushing it toward us.

  Wood logs, piled high—a weight no small woman should be able to push, but she did.

  We waited, breathless, resisting the mild, invisible force that pushed us back, still hoping our lass was near.

  The cart caught on the edge of the walkway and the small woman stopped short. She waved one hand, rolling her fingers as she did so, and the cart moved of its own accord. When many of us gasped, she looked up and grinned. A fine wide smile full of mischief. There was no need to see the rest of her face. This was our Soni!

  She’d come! I looked around to share relief with my brothers. 79’s shoulders relaxed, but his face bore only worry. I wondered what he knew that the rest of us did not.

  He took a step forward and raised his hands toward her. “No!” His head shook furiously. “Don’t do this!”

  Even from a distance, we heard her clearly. “I must.” Her voice carried easily enough through the curtains of rain.

  79 turned in a circle and swung his arms at us, shooing us away. “Go! Be gone! Stay away from her!” There was something in his voice that made us obey. The man was terrified. And if he was terrified, so then were we all.

  He could have no true peace from us, however, and our only recourse was to flee to the distant edges of the battlefield. None would step beyond hallowed ground, but we would go as far as we could.

  I walked backward for a piece, watching as I went. The lass continued toward the monument pushing her cart before her with nothing but the wave of her hand. Once she stood in the center of the space, she unloaded the wood and began to stack as if for a massive fire.

  A low whirring came from behind me. The guards were returning. No doubt the lass would be in serious trouble for even considering making a fire on National Trust property, but there was little I and my brothers could do about it, even if there were 79 of us…

  CHAPTER FIVE: The Gathering

  The ATV came up from the lower field with bright lights piercing through the still-heavy curtains of rain. I watched the faces of the two guards, waiting for their reaction at finding a civilian on the property so late. But surely they expected some trouble on Solstice. They were prepared, after all.

  “Don’t see her. Don’t see her,” I chanted. Dread and rain slashed through me as the vehicle started up the path toward the monument. Impossible not to see her. Impossible.

  The lights shone directly on the lass as she continued to pile the logs. And all for naught. I waited for the red flash of brake lights, but they never came.

  The headlamps moved on, shining along the path, turning toward the cottage. The ATV’s small engine whirred along without slowing.

  Perhaps they are drunk. For how else could they have driven by her unseeing?

  The vehicle stopped at the old Leanach cottage and one man got out. With an umbrella opened over his head, he walked around the house. Perhaps he needed to relieve himself before coming back for a confrontation.

  But the man did no such thing. He aimed his small torch through the window and took a look. He continued around the building and peered through another pane of glass. A moment later, he climbed back into the ATV and shook the water from his umbrella. The engine roared to life once more and the guards turned toward the car park as if it were just another night on the moor.

  79 tilted his head at Soni. “What do you intend to do with a rain-soaked pile of logs, then?”

  She smiled and shrugged her shoulders but continued her task.

  “Don’t do this,” he begged. “We can continue as we have, surely.” He moved close to her and she straightened. With his head bent, their faces were inches apart. “Please.” He suddenly placed a hand on each shoulder and pulled her to him. Her hood fell back, but caught on the top of her head.

  She looked into his eyes for a moment, then closed her own. Her chin lifted slightly.

  Don’t do it!

  The big blond lowered his mouth to hers and I realized they could feel each other. His hands had pulled her shoulders. His lips stopped where hers began!

  But how could that be?

  I thought back to all those visits. Why had I never noticed before? She’d taken his hand any number of times. They’d walked every inch of Culloden and 79 had held tight to her.

  How? Did he feel so strongly for her? For when my emotions ran high, I was more substantial. Even Alan McHenish was able to give me a shove now and again.

  How strongly 79 must be feeling at that moment, then, to have a living lass feel his touch!

  The kiss ended, but neither of them stepped away.

  “Please,” he said again. “It’s too soon.”

  She shook her head sadly. “Our time has run out.”

  He straightened but didn’t release hi
s hold. “I won’t allow it—”

  “Ye cannot stop me.” Her chin quivered as she lifted her hands in the air.

  His grasp slipped from her shoulders. Her sleeves billowed around her arms and a green light followed the path of her hands. Swirling. Twisting. The pile of wood combusted—a fire with oddly white flames. And between Soni and the warrior, the green light grew into a wide, slow moving ring. 79 jumped back as if the circle might consume him.

  I stood rooted to the heather-covered ground. Our somber leader had ordered us away, but my willingness to flee was forgotten as shapes began to form in that green light. Shapes that moved separate from each other, but continued in the same direction. Shapes that walked, that glided, that stumbled…like people.

  “Ye will not stop me,” Soni repeated.

  He put his hands to his hips and glared. “Ye’re a witch, then?”

  She only smiled. “Ye’ve always known it, Simon McLaren.”

  He started at the sound of his name and began to back away from her. After a defiant shake of his head, he turned and began to vanish, but he never made it.

  “Come,” she whispered. Then that whisper became a wind that swirled around the edges of Culloden and pushed me and the rest toward the monument. Come. The force that had nudged me away while she set about lighting her fire had turned, and now it pressed at my back, reinforcing the summons of the wind. “I gather the seventy-nine of Culloden to me,” her voice boomed. “Come!”

  And one by one, we gathered. All.

  CHAPTER SIX: The Bargain

  Out along the English line, there stands a small square of layered stone topped with bronze—a marker for Clan Cameron. It was a good piece away and yet that was where 79 took a seat. Soni’s summons kept him visible, but he was able to defy her enough to reach the formation. Whatever winds buffeted him, they could not move him. He faced southwest and became as immoveable as that memorial. Eventually, the winds died down as if Soni recognized the futility and had to settle for the man being present, if only from a distance.

  The rest of us knew no good reason to resist, I suppose, and so we did not.

  We filled the clearing from the Cairn to the path and then to the clan stones in the grass beyond, there were that many of us. Since we rarely gathered together in one place, it surprised me how much space we filled. 79 is no small number. A significant assembly of young warriors who still, over two hundred and seventy years later, could only guess at the bonds that connected us.

  “Welcome,” Soni said, warm and friendly as the smile on her face. Her eyes were wide with excitement in spite of the exchange she’d had with 79. She pulled the hood from her head and laid it on her shoulders. Still a short lass at sixteen years. Still our precious lass that could see us clearly without effort.

  Of course she was a witch. And like she’d told 79, of course we’d known it all along. But I’d never thought of her that way. She’d never done the odd things that self-proclaimed witches did when they walked across our hallowed fields. Soni was simply our tether to the living world, a deep breath of fresh, life-giving air we were allowed to inhale but twice a year.

  Her earlier words suddenly repeated in my head. Out of time, she’d said. Then, as if there was a viable, beating heart in my breast, it felt near to bursting at the thought of never seeing her again.

  I couldn’t resist calling out. “Are you ill, lass?”

  She searched for my face, then smiled and swallowed. “Not ill, no.”

  Every one amongst us relaxed a bit. Apparently I hadn’t been the only one to overhear her conversation with 79. I hadn’t been the only one to worry.

  “Then what time is it, that it has come,” asked Number 8. We called him 8 because it had also been his age when he fell on the battlefield. The lad’s dog had followed his father to Culloden and the child had followed the dog, to bring him home. There’d been no time to send him away before the cannons fired. Now that he would never be going home again, his dog remained at his side, comforting him on the rare occasions the boy awoke.

  8 was another mystery among us. What could he possibly have in common with the rest? What could have tied him so surely to our assembly?

  He knelt on one knee at the front, one arm around the straggly dog and one fist grinding the sleep from his eyes. Soni took a step toward him, leaning down as she did so, but the ring of green kept her from reaching the laddie.

  “It’s time to go home, Rabby,” she said. Then she addressed us all. “It’s time for ye all to go home. And I have come to help ye on yer way.”

  We couldn’t stifle our collective groan of disappointment. Though no one would have spit in our lass’s direction, most men shook their heads and turned away. Our wee witch was just like the rest of them after all, telling us to move on, that loved ones were waiting if we’d just look to the light.

  I glanced back to see how Soni was taking her rejection, but there she stood in her great swirling ring of green, smiling patiently as if she’d expected nothing less. And to the west, 79 was watching too, his concern for her as clear as ever.

  “Why do ye go?” she called. “Ye still want yer revenge, do ye not?”

  The grand exodus ended abruptly and all shoulders turned back.

  She opened her arms. “A private word with the bonnie prince, perhaps?

  Fraser was the first to reach her and we all hurried back to listen. “Name yer price, lass.”

  “Auch, now,” she chided, shaking her head and tucking her hands beneath her cloak to rest on her hips. “Doona be offering yer soul to the devil when ye ken he’s in the market, aye?”

  Many heads nodded, including my own. The lass was wise beyond her years and I wondered where she’d acquired that wisdom. A grandmother, perhaps. A grandfather? For it was a fact we didn’t hear such phrases from the younger tourists these days.

  “Are ye sure it’s not the devil ye’ve made your bargain with, Soncerae?” 79’s voice rang out around us even though his form lingered on the Cameron marker.

  “He knows I haven’t,” she muttered to the rest of us. Then she shouted over our heads. “Ye ken I haven’t!”

  The forms in the green light paused and took notice of us all. Their faces turned menacing like dogs sensing danger. Soni quickly waved her hand and they went back to their circling. Now that I was closer, I noticed their mouths moving. Chanting?

  I took a step back and Soni laughed.

  “My ancestors, Lachlan. Nothing to fear. My da thought I shouldn’t come alone, though my biggest threat would have been a drunken driver on the A-9. I tried to tell my parents I had nothing to fear from you lot, but they wouldn’t listen. I had to sneak out of the house… Well, let’s get started.”

  With another wave of her hand, the large white pyre expanded and the light of it illuminated the faces of her attentive audience. She murmured something we couldn’t understand and we waited.

  “This is why she was brought to us,” Mackay whispered. “I’ve always wondered.”

  “Oh, aye,” said another. “To bring us our revenge. I knew if we only waited long enough—”

  “Shut it.” Number 32 pushed his way closer to the lass. He was hard of hearing even after he was dead. On the few occasions we’d spoken, I quickly wearied of repeating myself and tried to tell him the defect was probably just in his mind, but he wouldn’t see reason. He’d been standing too close to a cannon when it had fired, and sometimes, when he woke, half his head was still missing.

  “We’ll strike a bargain here, this first night of summer,” Soni said. “If ye agree to the terms, ye shall have yer heart’s desire. A tête-à-tête with bonnie Charles Stuart himself, or, if ye like, a few moments alone with him in a room where ye can speak with yer fists.”

  The last suggestion was met with more than a few enthusiastic grunts.

  “And what if he’s beaten to a bannock before I have my turn?” shouted Number 68.

  Soni smiled but I could tell she was uncomfortable with the idea of men beating e
ach other bloody. Her generation seemed a squeamish lot, though, so it wasn’t the lass’s fault.

  “Each of you can face a hale and hearty prince,” she said, “if that is what you wish.”

  Did she suppose we would want something else? If so, she’d be disappointed. From the reactions all around, it seemed our anger with Charles Stuart was indeed what had united us. And it sounded as if we would, at last, be heard.

  “I suppose,” said Fraser, “we have to promise to move on if we’re given this boon? We must give up our field?”

  Soni shrugged the shoulders beneath her cloak and I realized the lass was no more wet than we were. The rain falling from the dark heavens never arrived at her head though it splattered noisily at our own feet.

  “Ye will move on, after yer boon. But first, ye’ll have to earn it.”

  Wyndham snorted. “What’s it to be, lassie? A joust with prickly gorse branches? Or are we to play with the old weapons inside the Centre? Will only the champion enjoy his revenge?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No. I have a particular test of honor for each man.”

  I grinned at this, as did the man to either side of me. A chance to prove myself, after centuries of trodding the moor or sleeping face down in the mud. It sounded grand whether or not I got my revenge, but I wasn’t fool enough to say so.

  “What if we choose not to face this test?” asked young master Rabby.

  Soni bit her lip and winked at the lad. Then she moved back toward her fire with her hands spread before her, as if the weather were chilling her to the bone. But since the rain couldn’t touch her, or any man among us—other than 79—I surmised that any chill she felt was from her own thoughts.

  Finally, she faced us again. “Ye’ll face no test, Rabby. Nor the beast at yer side. As for the rest of ye, I’ll not compel ye to prove yerselves. That’s yer choice. But it will be yer only choice. I’ve already made the bargain on your behalf. You’ll all be moving on, regardless.” She ignored the grumbling.