Chapter One
TlU
September 30, 1825
Glenscannadoo, Scotland
“Did you wear it betwixt yer bosoms, as I instructed?” Mrs. MacBean’s squint was an accusation of imbecility—one Annie Tulloch did not appreciate.
Annie tossed the foul linen pouch on the old woman’s table. “I could tuck it betwixt the cheeks of my arse, ye daft crone, and the result would be the same. It doesnae work.” She planted her hands on her hips and nodded toward the silent, pale boy by her side. “He’s nae better.”
Mrs. MacBean shook her peppery head and pursed crinkled lips. “The sage mightn’t have been strong enough. ’Tis best to harvest during a new moon.”
“It smells like stew cooked in a chamber pot.”
“Aye. The mushrooms are a wee bit pungent. Mayhap I used too many.”
“Mayhap ye ingested too many.”
“Och, I havenae done that in ages, lass. The first time ye wake up naked with a goat, shame on the devil. The second? Shame on ye.”
“You havenae the foggiest notion what you’re about. I’d have better luck beggin’ a remedy from Ronnie Cleghorn.”
“The simple lad who gnaws rope when his father isnae looking?”
Annie raised a brow.
Ordinarily, Mrs. MacBean’s milky left eye tended to wander. Now, it twitched with annoyance. “Listen well, lass. I’ve lived three of your lifetimes in the mists of these lands.” She swept an arm around her dingy hovel strewn with old books and dried weeds. Slapping a cobweb from her sleeve, she continued, “Ancient knowledge runs in my blood. My mother’s mother’s—”
“Mother was a seer,” Annie finished, rolling her eyes. “Aye. So ye’ve claimed. Over and over—”
Sniff. “’Tis true.”
“—and over until I’d prefer to eat whatever foul substances you stuffed in that pouch than to hear the tale again.” Annie glowered. “Perhaps after four generations, your blood’s weaker than an innkeeper’s whisky.” She glanced down at Finlay, who hid behind her hip. His blue eyes were shadows. His wee hand clutched his middle. Her own middle twisted as dread gripped hard. “But it’s plain you cannae help him. Nor me. Just admit it.”
The old woman’s glare gentled into sympathy as her good eye roamed Annie’s expression. “Ye mustn’t fash yerself, lass. We’ll discover the cause of the laddie’s affliction.”
“He needs a cure. I’m wastin’ my bluidy time with ye.”
“And who do ye suppose would offer better, eh?” She scoffed and blew her nose on her woolen sleeve. “Go on, then. Beseech the laird’s surgeon.” The old woman’s sarcasm burned Annie’s aforementioned arse. “See how much he can tell you about it. ‘Course, he’d have to acknowledge the lad’s existence first. Trouble, that. Mayhap the priest—”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
The old woman’s expression darkened. “Precious little that priest does for God’s sake, lass.”
Annie turned and paced to the open front door of the cottage, her chest squeezing. Something was wrong with Finlay. He’d grown increasingly silent over the past year, shadowed and absent and frail. Annie had tried to coax answers from him, but he couldn’t explain what was wrong. The only one who might know how to fix him was a woman whose sanity was in greater doubt than Annie’s.
The old crone was an outcast. She’d been forced from her home by her former laird to make way for more profitable tenants—namely, sheep. Several years past in a fleeting mood of generosity, Glenscannadoo’s laird, Gilbert MacDonnell, had welcomed such castoffs as Mrs. MacBean.
The foolish popinjay could scarcely pay his own mortgage and had long ago sold most of his lands to settle debts. But the Laird of Glenscannadoo fancied himself quite the paragon of Highland courtesy, so he’d invited Mrs. MacBean to live at the edge of the village in a cottage no one else wanted, a castoff woman in a castoff house doling out herbs and midwifery to villagers who called her a witch.
That woman was Finlay’s last hope—the only hope.
Annie’s stepfather and two of her stepbrothers had helped repair Mrs. MacBean’s roof, rebuilt the hearth, and reattached the door. In return, Mrs. MacBean routinely made liniment for Annie’s stepfather’s aching joints, and carved ugly trinkets she swore would bring Annie’s stepbrothers “wives to please yer very soul.”
Mrs. MacBean owed a debt to Annie’s family, and the MacPherson men tolerated her gestures. Annie was not a MacPherson. The woman owed her nothing. And yet, she’d been kind. She’d seen Finlay, acknowledged Finlay, when no one else did.
Feeling the laddie’s cool, dark hair slide through her fingertips, Annie sighed and leaned against the open door, trying to stifle the fear that clutched with a cold, relentless grip.
At midday, the sky was like iron. Drizzle had started up again. Had it ever stopped?
She gathered her plaid tighter around her, folding her arms across her chest and watching mud deepen along the lane. “Have ye enough bread to see ye ‘til Wednesday, Mrs. MacBean?” she asked over her shoulder, eyeing the basket of loaves she’d brought.
“Oh, aye,” came the vague reply. “I’m obliged to ye, dear.” The chair near the fireplace creaked its familiar groan as the old woman sat. “The brown book with the acorn on the spine might say somewhat about spiritual afflictions. Now, where did I bury that one?”
Annie caught Finlay’s gaze and crossed her eyes. He glanced toward the muttering Mrs. MacBean and smothered a laugh.
“We’ll return in a few days, then,” Annie said, plucking her hat from the hook.
The old woman scratched her head. Then her leg. Then her elbow. She stood and searched beneath her cracked wooden chair.
Annie raised a brow at Finlay, who shot her a crooked grin. She was pleased to see it. He’d been so unwell of late she’d begun to despair of ever seeing that Fin Grin again.
Perhaps this would be one of his better days.
As she left the cottage, he remained tethered to her side. She tugged her hat lower, cursing the sullen rain and the wilting brim. She’d inherited the worthless thing from her stepbrother Broderick, who’d inherited it from her eldest stepbrother, Campbell.
Blasted MacPhersons had heads the size of washtubs.
Huffing as she resettled the hat on the back of her head, she added four strapping stepbrothers to her silent cursing and tromped through deepening mud.
Down the lane that ran from the foothills along the loch toward the village, two MacDonnell women lingered outside a tidy cottage. The younger Mrs. MacDonnell resettled a bairn on her broad hip and grumbled to her mother-in-law, “Cousin Dougal says work at the kelp beds has dried up. Next, I expect he’ll be bletherin’ about Canada again. That wife of his, no doubt. Glaswegian tart.” The bairn fidgeted until his mother pinched his leg. He whimpered but stopped squirming.