hole of a mouth displaying three yellow teeth. She was looking at them curiously, with eyes of the oddest whitish-green colour; little eyes they were, like chips of pale stone in her worn mahogany face, eyes that missed nothing.
The old woman had hardly any hair. What was left strayed out from under a little knitted cap and, in spite of the fire, she sat swathed in layers of woolly shawls. She wore grey mittens and her fingernails, greeny-white like her eyes, had grown so long they curved right over, like something in a horror comic. If it hadn’t been for the television in one corner, and the fact that her stout little legs were encased in trendy striped warmers, Oliver really would have said she was a witch.
Colin and Prill were thinking of witches too, Colin of his grandmother’s Arthur Rackham fairy book which he’d always had to read with very clean hands, and Prill about Hansel and Gretel and the witch roasting children in her oven. She wanted to give the old woman her dinner and make a quick exit. The pretty cottage, approached across a burn through a small grove of rowan trees, was much less appealing inside, and as for Granny MacCann herself …
“Come to your grannie then,” the old woman whispered to Alison, and to everyone’s amazement the little girl toddled across the filthy floor, climbed up into the woolly lap, and buried herself in the shawls. Prill was staggered. Alison was rather a difficult child and very particular about her likes and dislikes. She disliked quite a few people, and getting her to stay anywhere for longer than five minutes was a real pain. Granny MacCann was talking some unintelligible Scottish gibberish to her, through great mouthfuls of food, and Alison was listening, and stroking a large cat.
It was a moth-eaten, black and white torn, an ugly creature with only one ear and a vicious look in its greenest of green eyes. The old woman introduced it affectionately as “ma wee Dandy”. It spat at Jessie, and arched its back, but instead of going for it, the big dog cowered away whining, rubbing herself against Prill’s legs. Jessie was six times as big as Dandy, but she seemed frightened of him.
The old woman knew all about their stone-moving, up at Lochashiel, and she obviously didn’t approve. “Ye’ll stir things up, laddie,” she said, wagging one filthy finger at Oliver who’d crept up close, for a better view. “Young Aggie Ross’ll be oot after ye, that she will …”
Oliver started when he heard that, and a sudden wave of cold swept over him. “Who’s Aggie Ross?” he said, in a hoarse whisper.
The cottage was smelly, and Prill had backed away to stand near the open door. She was looking out into the garden, longing to get away, but Colin was standing near Oliver, and saw everything. When his cousin nearly jumped out of his skin at the name of Aggie Ross their eyes met, just for a moment, and in that moment they both saw the same thing, the barrow going over, and the huge heap of stones, and they heard the spiteful laughter echoing through the woods.
“Aggie Ross,” Oliver repeated, touching the old woman’s skirt. “Who is she?”
If Granny MacCann had heard she pretended not to. She crooned over Alison and stroked the mangy old cat and pressed her shrivelled lips together very firmly. But Oliver, staring very hard at her, in that maddening way of his, saw fear in the ancient face, and perhaps a regret that she’d ever mentioned Aggie Ross.
It felt different in the cottage now, the fire had guttered to a single flame and the old Scots lullaby had stopped abruptly. Outside the sun had gone behind a cloud and the low room was suddenly dark and wintry. “She’ll be oot after ye …” What could it mean?
As usual Oliver’s busy brain was racing ahead but he must go one step at a time. Aggie Ross could well be some distant relative of Angus and Duncan; on the other hand she may be just a local busybody, someone who occasionally rented Lochashiel and didn’t want a troop of kids messing up her garden. They’d have to ask Duncan next time they saw him. After Granny MacCann the Rosses knew more about Lagg Castle and its estate than anyone else around, even though they’d lived in England for a year or so. They’d come back after old Mrs Grierson had died. She’d promised Lochashiel to them, on her death bed, but there was no will. So everything had gone to her son Hugo. Angus Ross hated him for that.
As for moving that heap of stones, Duncan had made nothing of it. So if there was a sinister story attached to the cairn he obviously didn’t know a thing about it. His father might know though.
Prill was signalling wildly for the boys to grab Alison and say goodbye, but Oliver wouldn’t budge. He was fascinated by the cottage. The smell and the filth didn’t bother him at all, he was used to very old people. They hoarded all kinds of rubbish in their bedsitters at home, and old rags and bones were bound to smell a bit if you couldn’t get in to clean properly. There were bones too, all along the window ledges and on the mantelpiece, the skulls of badgers and sheep and mice, the rib cages of birds and what looked like the backbone of a deer. For the old woman to have bones littered round the place struck him as distinctly peculiar until he remembered that Granny MacCann had got seven children and fifteen grandchildren. At various ages they must have often wandered in to this cottage with their treasures from the woods. These were the remains.
Over the fireplace some tiny bones were fanned round in the shape of a star and underneath there were strings and strings of withered red berries. The old woman wore a similar string round her neck. “Tis to keep the de’il awa frae the hoos, laddie,” she croaked, as he fingered the dusty necklaces that hung from the mantelpiece. “Plant rowans and the de’il’ll no’ come near ye.”
Prill and Colin went outside, muttering their goodbyes, followed by a grizzling Alison who would have obviously stayed with the old woman all day. Prill couldn’t understand it. Granny MacCann’s was a face she would dream about in nightmares.
As they waited for Oliver, a fat, untidy-looking woman with a baby in her arms pushed past them, into the house. “And how are ye today, Grann?” she said, in a loud harsh voice. She paid no attention whatever to the three children. Perhaps, in these parts, you were always avoided if you were known to be guests of Hugo Grierson.
They were trailing back along the track towards the road when an awful noise behind made them all whip round. It sounded as if a mad dog had been let loose in a home for stray cats. There was a screaming and a spitting, and a series of ear-splitting howls, and they saw Dandy in the cottage garden, his fur all prickly like a black and white porcupine, tearing up and down the patch of grass, then round in mad circles, faster and faster, chasing his own tail, then racing up a tall birch by the gate, absolutely vertical, like something shot from a gun. They couldn’t see the cat now but they could hear it only too well. It was howling and screeching wildly, shaking all the branches as if every devil in hell was after it.
“What on earth—” began Colin. Alison was frightened and grabbed Prill’s hand, and Jessie was tugging on the lead, nose to the ground, trying desperately to get away towards the road.
“It’s having a fit,” Oliver explained coolly. “I saw the same thing happen once, to one of our resident’s cats. I know it looks frightening but that’s honestly all it is. Animals do have them. The poor thing may have a tumour on its brain or something. I expect that’s how it lost its ear.”
“How?” said Prill, horrified.
“It must have scratched and scratched and reduced it to shreds with its claws. That’d be my guess anyway.”
“It looks bewitched,” said Colin, laughing uneasily. “Just the kind of thing an old crone like that would have. Heavens, I’m not going back there in a hurry.”
Oliver walked ahead of his cousins, on his own. He wanted to think. His carefully reasoned explanation of the cat’s crazy behaviour was only half the truth. The wretched animal may well have something wrong with its brain, but the question was, why? Did these fits happen all the time or had something made it happen? And had Colin’s fall in the woods been just an accident, or was it something more?
Aggie Ross. She was the key. It was all very well for Colin to joke about the old crone and her cat but there’d been an awful silence when that name was mentioned. Silence you could have cut with a knife.