Graham's wife was dead. He'd been a married man when he'd gone south to barter sheep and barley for provisions enough to last the keep through the hard winter. Joking, he'd told one of his men, "A had to get oot. She's been nippin ma heid a' week." And on his return, he'd found himself to be a widower. Dead from a miscarriage--she'd had no hold on his heart though he'd wanted to love her, a remote, nondescript woman, a marriage arranged by his father when they were both barely grown. But it made a man think, even a man like him, a man as unlikely as to find his way to heaven as the deil himself.

A morning later he'd left it all behind--his infant son, his cliff-side keep, his cadre of men, and was off wandering who knows where who knows why. He'd always had the wandering bug. He spent a week or two with a wee bauldie crofter nattering on about some cheeky town besom in his past but after a couple of heavy bevveys and waking a few mornings with a heavy head, he made his way back to the coast, sleeping in bothies and following a smattering of wayfarers making their way--so to speak--to a fair.

He was gladdened when he came to it--the cluster of tents and booths. There was a friendly bustle of a crowd not that strange to his eye. After all, the lack of such a crowd at McDermitt was why he was rarely there to suffer its bleak bucolic splendor. He had a mind to search out an alewife, drink till he was blootered and fall into a dead sleep. But first perhaps a meat pastie would soothe the hunger pangs. Fogged with ale, his last meal wasn't even a memory.

She was standing at a food-seller's booth eating a potato wrapped in a cloth.

He forgot all about feeding himself, forgot his maudlin self-pity, forgot everything. He crept behind a tent and crouched in the mud just to watch her. White skin, startling sky blue eyes and dark red hair. It was a picture that burned straight through to his brain. She wore a blue cape and carried a basket which she handed to the woman behind her.

Feeling more boy than a man with two score years he'd never see again, he walked intrepidly to the booth, then turned to the woman and was, of a sudden, tongue-tied. She was engaged in conversation with the rather grimy seller--a farmer by trade by the look of his begrimed nails. He could smell the heather scent that wafted from her hair. The farmer turned food-seller gave him a glance, and much to Graham's discomposure, turned the topic to him in a lowland scots cant.

"Jiggered as ye be, I cain see ye're a lad o' pairts," the shopkeeper said to him, "Ye're jist no aucht day kinna body ane sees here-aboots. An' by the look of your awfy untidy bogans ye've had a long dander. Your intimmers is empty but they can bide a wee as I'm talkin wi the lady. "

Belatedly, Graham looked at his closed fist and put down a coin for the food. The shopkeeper, never missing a syllable of his ongoing cant, snatched it up and bit it between a minority of crooked yellow teeth. With those mucky hands, he shoved a hot bit of food into Graham's palm. Now the seller was talking of his wares, a sample of which came close to burning Graham calloused hand before he paid attention to what exactly had been laid into it.

"See's two pun o' ingins and tatties. Now there's a lad a ways down selling flakey Forfar bridies. Awa wi ye mannie."

Now he'd seen the girl, he had no hunger for Forfar pasties, flakey though they might be. He made a habble of that a'right but he could tag along and meet her again. His hunger forced him to recall the food he'd just bought. The potato was stuffed with skirlie--a dish made of fried onions and oatmeal. He stepped away from the booth took a bite, shutting his eyes as if it were ambrosia. It wasn't really that good. It was hot and filling and his stomach growled. He wolfed it down, then caught the girl's gaze on him, a merry face but a strangely sober look. She did not glance away as a modest young village girl would, but kept up that steady gaze.

He made a leg as if he were at court. The lass smiled at him, and gracefully curtseyed in the mud as formally as if she were in a ball room. No peasant lass, this.

"He's been weel brocht up, he has," she said loudly to the next shopkeeper down the way. Her retainer followed her carrying a basket of purchases.

He breenged his way through the crowd to follow her. She was small, and as he was not a large man himself, it was a chore to keep sight of her. And yet he seemed to almost feel her with his skin--she radiated a quiet joy, as if a light shined from her very soul. He saw her in deep conversation with the sturdy woman who was attending her. The servant glanced around nervously as if she too were looking for him, and he ducked behind a large dark man resembling a cateran making a deal with a cadger selling dried fish.

He took himself to an open air tavern to gather his thoughts. With the help of a pint, of course.

"Care to pass some time wi a lonely widow?" a woman asked, jarring him from his thoughts.

He drained his cuach and considered her. She was comely enough, probably his own age, and if this were any other time, he'd have said yes. "If I weren't love-struck," he told her," I'd take you up on it." He slammed the nearly empty cuach against his heart in a big gesture. "Alas."

"Alas indeed," she said, in no way deterred. "I'll be looking to turn up my heels wi ye at the ceilidh." She sashayed away, throwing him a last saucy look.

A little reconnoitering revealed that her party was staying in opulent tents set up outside the selling ground. It turned to evening, and he hovered near their tents waiting for her to emerge. The musicians started playing, and soon there was a cheery if a bit raucous throng making as merry as if their lives depended on it.

He felt when she came out of the tent. She talked with a sober older man who looked vaguely familiar. Gordon knew he'd seen him at court some time, but he'd never favored court. The older man pointed his hand at the tent and she folded her arms over her chest in defiance. Neither of them moved, but then finally she turned in a huff and slammed into the tent. He walked off shaking his head. Not an instant after he was gone, the girl stuck her head from the tent, looking after him, her joy extinguished. Tears were running down her face, but she stepped out, not at all stealthily, carrying a number of bundles with her. She milled through the exiting crowd moving directly to Graham. Just like that, his heart pounding, he grabbed her hand and pulled her on to his horse.

"Are you from my Da? Where are we going?" she laughed, shaking away her tears. "Oh, it is you. I remember you." She continued in her musical voice, unalarmed. "What are ye called?"

Graham turned in the saddle and she laughed again at the surprised look on his face and at the fine adventure of it. "I'm abducting you." He said shyly.

"Aye. "

The noise and singing of the ceilidh rang in his head. The night was a mass of teeming revelers. The beat of the drums translated into the beat of his heart. He could hardly think. They would be looking for her. She was too calm. Suddenly he didn't want to delude her.

Gordon gulped. Even he had some scruples. "I'm not from your house. "

"Ah," she said wisely, "Ye are my lover then, come to take me away. I kenned you'd come for I dreamed on it a fortnight gone. Let us be off then before they note I am lost." She kicked the stallion hard before he'd had a chance to introduce himself. It was mighty peculiar.

"A short life and a merry ane!" she yelled.

"Graham Gordon," he introduced himself as they rode through the night. "Laird of castle McDermitt, clan Gordon."

"Heather Balloch," she replied. "Ceud m’le fa’lte."

"A hundred thousand welcomes to you too, Heather Balloch" he replied. "Balloch?" he asked, "Of the Isles?" He put the name to the face of the man outside the tent. Yes, he had a passing acquaintance with her father but could not think of why he knew her name.

"Aye," she hesitated, "Dinna think I'm barmy but...I have the sight."

Ah. That was what he'd heard. That Alissander had secreted away his daughter because of her gift, refusing to bring her to court or let her have suitors. It was generally thought that she must be homely and graceless, and the supposed gift was a generous lie behind which an ugly daughter might hide. Clearly this was not the case. Maybe it was her mind that was weak. He began to have misgivings.

"And your da dinna take you to court."

"I went before," she said defensively. "I dinna like it. Though once I spoke with a royal lady with kind eyes."

Before dawn they stopped in a cow byre where she read the runes and saw their future. He waited, feeling only disbelief and impatience, but sat attentively, humoring her. She shook out her blue cloak and put it on, then directed him to hold the stones and pour them out onto a cloth spread on a bale of hay. The feel of the carved bits was unnerving, as if they were sentient and alive. They tumbled to the cloth and he waited as she interpreted them.

"I will bear your child and die in a year's time." She looked up at him. "This will happen."

"No," he disagreed. The whole ritual with the blue cape and her bag of stones---it disturbed him. He didn't give a fig for witchery, auld ladies wi herbs and incantations. But this...what was this all about?

"If you are wondering why I am not surprised, what is happening," she told him, "is what I have already seen in my dreams a hundred times. I have been in love with your shadow all my life. " She whispered to him, "Having you here is the fulfillment of a dream."

He drew away from her.

"You do not believe me. I don't need to be a mindreader to see you think me barmy."

"Aye, " he said, as kindly as he could, "I do. An' I am thinkin' if it were a kindness to take ye back to your kin."

"My kinswoman Meggie will come after us. She'll feel her way to me." she laughed suddenly, "My da will ha a canary when he hears of this. He's a carnaptious auld deil. I told him goodbye tonight--no the words straight out or he'd ha put a guard on me. He dinna want to listen either. I'll no' see him again, not in this life. I couldna' live in the cage he made for me."

Graham thought of that last meeting, at the tent. He remembered the tears that had been on her face. Could she have really been saying goodbye to her da? He felt a wave of irrational fear. Who was she really? Was this venture more than a thoughtless Scot gone a' reiving for a bride?

"It's struck ye how passing strange it is that I climbed on your saddle to ride away wi scarcely a word betwixt us. It's all new to you but I've known ye all my days."

He hated to dissuade her of her maidenish fancy. Being on a pedestal was new to him. The rest--he just could not believe it. Though clearly she believed.

"First," she said, "ye will think me a bit of a queerie. Then ye'll be afeard. Then we will ride up to your castle McDermitt on the mount and a boy will greet us--Roland is his name. And that moment you will cease to fear me and begin to fear the passing of time."

After she spoke, a smattering of fear bolted through his unreasonable attraction to her. He had not told her of the mount. He had surely not told her of the lad's name--the son of one of his retainers. But he was a man, and a Highlander at that, not one to quiver in fear at a maiden's tale.

"I've a son too," he said, "a wee motherless lad named Brian." When she made no reply, he got cheeky. "Gie's a bosie," he said, as if driven by lust.

"I'd sooner hug a bear," she told him. "Ye need a bath."

"Dinna get your birse up. Ye're chitterin' wi cauld."

She rolled her eyes at him and settled into his arms, and he did his best to keep her warm. They did not tarry long though, and were soon on horseback, making more distance between Heather and her powerful kin

Crazy or not, he was that taken with her. Maybe they were both barmy. Mid morning when they saw a kirk, Graham bullied the priest into marrying them. No banns were read, but the priest came away a few trinkets richer. Later when they stopped at an inn, Heather had taken ash and herbs and darkened her hair so no one who saw them would realize--later when the news got out--that she was the missing red-headed Balloch.

He slept on the floor.

It happened as she had predicted. Graham dwelled on his fears of her gift, nearly turning to take her back a dozen times, but always in the end, heading home.

As if he were testing her, he hadn't told her they were on his land. Not once had she asked about their direction--strange for a woman. She contentedly lolled in his embrace, riding--now that they were married--crossways across his lap. But newly wed, they were still strangers to each other. They had yet to share a bed. You just didn't take a woman like Heather in a cow byre or a but-and-ben. Like a fledgling boy, he hoped she would like his castle. It took some getting used to. But it had a nice view. He wanted to boast that the forest they were riding through was his but he wanted to prove to her that her notions that she had the sight were just that--girlish notions.

They passed a monstrous yew growing from a creek bed that led to the loch. He had played on that tree when he was a boy. She eyed the yew as if it were an old friend. He wanted to tell her of the time he fell from it and had broken his arm.

"Around the bend," she said.

"What?" So startled was he that if she hadn't been caught in his cloak, he might have tossed her off his horse. She couldn't know they were here, that home was around the bend.

"As we come from the forest you'll turn left toward the mountain and the boy Roland is there, brambling."

He felt again that unreasoning terror at her prescience. She had to feel the thundering beat of his heart.

He felt her cool hand over his as they emerged from the wood, and there he was, Roland, up to his neck in berries, eating more than he had saved. He was such a comical sight they both laughed. Just like that, the fear was gone.The berry-dyed boy made a quick whispered obeisance, took himself out of the vines and made a mad dash toward the village, screaming wildly that The Gordon had arrived.

As she had predicted, his fear of her gift fell away, and his fear for her took its place. In that instant he knew with a certainty he would only have her with him only an instant in time. It engendered a latent terror that shook him to his bones. He clutched her to him.

"It will be all right," she said. And for a while, it was.

A small group of Ballochs, her woman Meggie among them, had found their way to McDermitt. They brought her news of her father, not reconciled to their wedding. Alissander had gone to complain to the Regent, but Graham knew the Duke of Albany's bent and had got there first, and bribed him with every penny of his gold. He had bought his year of peace. It was a year of joy, the like of which he could never have imagined. The like of which he would never see again.

A year later as Heather had predicted, the midwife was cackling over her failing charge.

The rolling thunder of the surf far below was muted, a whisper against the pounding of his heart. Here on this remote Highland mountaintop, night was deathly quiet, or so it seemed to the exhausted man bracing himself against a high wind sleucing through the tower's winnock. Perhaps it was that his ravaged senses refused to hear. Convulsively, he tightened his grip on the casement, leaving a trail of red on the dark granite. Graham Gordon had become a man inured to physical pain yet he turned his face into the wind and yelled a different kind of pain into the night. The tormented bellow boomed across the seascape and settled into silence. Folk down in the village and crofters beyond crept a little closer to their cooking fires and thanked the powers that be not to be out on a night like tonight.

"Da?"

Graham became aware of a tugging at his hem of his saffron shirt, and looked down to see the small, copper headed boy, his firstborn. He knelt until his face was at the level of the child's own, and awkwardly wiped at the lad's face.

"Crying, Brian Gordon? Is tha any way for my brave laddie to be?" As if there were no tears on his own face.

The child snuffled, and wiped his red nose on his sleeve, but his lip quivered bravely. Graham swept the child into his arms. He was still a slight man but his shoulders were broad.

"They want me below?"

Brian nodded into his father's shoulder. They descended down the tortuous tower stairway past grim-faced men-at-arms and lamenting women, his footsteps echoing hollowly. At his chamber, the Gordon pried loose of Brian's clinging arms, and handed his son to a serving woman. Brian fought his way free.

"It be no use, she's dying. Lord knows I mean no ill to anyone but it be good riddance and more to that one and her strange remedies." The midwife was a thin, complacent woman, and the only thing that moved her was a threat to her security--Heather. "Her deil-sent cures will die along with her. T'would be a mercy if her get would die too."

At that low blow, Heather's kinswoman Meggie had nearly taken off the midwife's head.

She and Meggie had fought bitterly over Heather, and even his son, young Brian had come to be at her side. Heather had made a deep impression on him in her year among them. She had murmured something to the boy she had thought of as her own son; she had Meggie introduce him to his little sister. But Graham had no eyes for the infant.

"Take your quibbling somewhere else," Graham chased out the women, "Give her peace at least, if nothing else."

"Heather, my dearest, dinna leave me!" He had pleaded with her, beside her on the bed.

He could not leave her side. If only there were something he could do to ease her agony. His calloused hand stroked the bloodless, pale cheek. The comforting gesture helped him more than her for she was nearly gone. Pain clutched at his heart. Scarcely had he had her and she was leaving him already.

"And so it comes to pass."

"What is it my darlin? I canna hear ye. "

"Branwyn. Call her Branwyn for my mother. The Goddess," she said so softly he could barely hear, "showed me. Oh Graham, I would that we had had more time."

Then she was gone. Light was gone from the world and it would never shine again. He cried his last tears at her bedside, turned his back on his new born daughter and his brave little son and walked out. There was no way he could stay here. The place was deid.


aucht day-every-day or ordinary
bauldie-bald
besom-derogatory term for a woman
bothy-a hut used for shelter
binger-losing bet
birse-bristle. To get your birse up is to get angry.
blatherskate-someone who talks alot but says nothing of importance
blether-to talk
blootered- very drunk
bosie -a cuddle
breenge-a clumsy forceful rush
but-and-ben-rural two room cottage
byre-cow shed
callant-young man (from dutch-kalant-customer)
carnaptious-grumpy, bad tempered, irritable
cateran-bandit, derived from ceathairneach
ceilidh-social gathering
chitter-shiver with cold
cuach-cup
dander-a stroll
deil-devil
habble-mess
heavy bevveys - drinking session
ingin-onion
intimmer-insides, (like inner timbers)
have a canary-throw a temper tantrum
how no-why
jiggered-exhausted
mannie N.E. cant for man in charge
nip someone's heid-nag, irritate
queerie-an odd or strange person
tatties-potatoes