Night Visitor Read Free Page A

suddenly that she was completely alone with one of the more colorful locals, and unable to resist the chance to advance her linguistic and folkloric education, Taffy lured him into further conversation by bringing up the subject of the newly discovered skeleton.
    “You said that these remains belong to a ghostpiper? I didn’t know that they had any ghosts at the castle.”
    “Oh, aye! A piper he was, a MacIntyre of a MacLeod mother, they say, and a Papist. He was left at the keep with a small band of soldiers by the MacColla, them not knowing that the Campbells were near tae hand. Slaughtered to a man they were, poor lost souls.”
    “MacColla? That would be the one they call Colkitto?” Taffy asked with genuine interest. This MacDonnell was either a folk hero or the devil incarnate—depending upon who you spoke to. The Irishman had fought under Montrose along with Patrick Ruadh MacGregor in the rising of the 1640s called The Year of Miracles. Montrose and his generals had come out in support of King Charles I rather than Parliament, and, had they had a few more months before Charles’s surrender to Parliament, many felt that he would have carried Scotland for the Stuart king and changed British history forever. Sadly, he had died in an ambush less than a year after his return to Ireland.
    The Campbells she’d met called Colkitto a ravaging butcher. There were others, however, mainly MacDonalds and MacGregors, who felt that if anyone deserved to be ravaged and butchered it was the merciless Campbells. They celebrated the Irishman’s brave memory.
    The warrior had lived nearly two hundred andfifty years ago, but Taffy had long ago discovered that the bloody history of the highlands was not relegated to seldom-read books, but lived clearly in the descendants’ memories, and in fable and song.
    “But this piper was a MacIntyre, you said, not a MacDonnell?” she questioned, seeking clarification. The pedigrees of the clans and their constantly changing loyalties were often confusing.
    “Aye. His chief, the MacIntyre of Glen Noe, had sent him with the MacColla tae help with the battle. The soldiers needed a piper, you ken? And he was the best, being half of MacLeod blood as well.” Jamesy cast a quick look at Taffy’s poorly concealed ears. “But when the Campbells retook the keep, all the MacDonnells were put tae the sword. The piper had his hands struck off with an axe for playing a warning to MacColla’s ship and sending him away from the trap they’d laid. But they had no bubbling pitch laid on and they couldna stop the bleeding. Very bad luck that is, killing a piper. Since then, he comes on stormy nights tae play his pipes upon the wall.”
    Taffy shivered, in spite of the sun.
    “My! What an extraordinary tale!”
    “That it is, and you’ll see his mortal bones afore long,” Jamesy said enviously.
    The trap lurched onto the narrow road leading to Duntrune, which was rather smoother than the track they had just abandoned. Closer now,she could see that there was a pair of dignified elk guarding the entrance to the castle, which was itself a relatively small affair, perched upon the rock promontory of the north side of Loch Crinan on the Sound of Jura. Like many of the medieval keeps in Scotland and Ireland, Duntrune had a slightly wild look in spite of being inhabited and well-kept.
    There was a curtain wall of what was called random rubble construction, a postern—though the seagate no longer seemed to be in use—and crow-stepped gables over the walls, which were made of peculiar green sandstone that gave the whole building an aspect of being underwater. It also had the feel of great age. The stones actually seemed weathered, like old brass verdigrised by the sea.
    As they passed by one of the outside cottages made of smaller ashlars, Taffy noticed another set of stag horns embedded in the wall over the door, which had been painted a faded robin’s-egg blue that harmonized nicely with the