‘Ye called?’ she asked.
‘I did that. Pop this water-kelpie in the bath-tub and then bed her with two hot bricks, a dram and a basin of broth. Dry out her clothes. She dines with me tonight. Send her down at three-quarters after eight, and put out sherry on the sideboard and a bottle of champagne on the dining-table.’
Having given these orders, he pushed Laura towards the woman and went out by a door at the far end of the hall. The woman waited until he had slammed this door and then she relaxed her expression and grimly smiled.
‘Dinna fash yourself,’ she said, ‘about that one. There’s them that think him a wee bit wrong in the head and his talk, times, is wild, but use him wi’ sense and civility and dinna cross him, and he’ll eat out o’ your hand, as they say.’
‘Do you come from Glasgow way?’ asked Laura.
‘Kirkintilloch. My man, too. Come wi’ me. Ye’re soppin’ the floor.’
Three-quarters of an hour later, having soaked herself in a portable zinc bath which was so long and so deep that she concluded it had been fashioned to the individual specification of her host, Laura was between warmed sheets and also in the comfortable company of two hot bricks wrapped in flannel, a whisky toddy of almost frightening potency and a huge bowl of Scotch broth. Outside the bedroom window the rain still pelted down. Laura pulled a black woollen shawl more closely about her shoulders and breathed a short, heartfelt prayer of thanks for the situation in which she found herself.
She was left in peace until a quarter past eight, and had dozed off, when the housekeeper came in and informed her that she could not get her sodden clothes dry in such a short time, but that, although she had explained this, ‘that one’ was still determined that Laura should dine with him.
‘What’ll we do?’ she enquired. ‘He’s a gey ill chiel to cross.’
‘You had better lend me a pair of your man’s breeks,’ said Laura.
‘Awa’ wi’ ye!’ shrilled the housekeeper, highly diverted by this suggestion.
‘Well, speir at the gentleman will he lend me his dressing-gown, then.’
To her amusement the woman took this suggestion with all seriousness, went off and soon returned with the garment in question. Laura was tall and well-built, but, even so, she had to gather up trails of the blanket-cloth from which the dressing-gown was fashioned in order to make a stately descent of the stairs.
The man, it appeared (indeed, he stated it), preferred to take his meals in silence.
Laura was allowed and even encouraged to converse with him while each of them drank two glasses of sherry, and then, as he offered his arm to her to conduct her from the sideboard to her seat at the table, he gracefully observed:
‘And now, no more babbling until coffee!’
So they sat in complete silence at opposite ends of the table and consumed hare soup, boiled salmon, gigot of mutton followed by treacle tart. The man had changed his mind about the wine. Instead of champagne two bottles of Clos de Vougeot had been placed upon the table, one beside Laura and the other at the disposal of her host. They were waited upon to the extent that a grey-haired man brought each dish in and put it on the table. Her host served it, carried Laura’s plate to her, collected it when she had finished and then bellowed for Corrie. At this, the grey-haired man came in with the next course and took out the empty plates.
The dinner was a good one, beautifully cooked, and Laura, always a hearty trencherman, enjoyed it. At last the pudding plates disappeared and the man pushed back his chair and stood up.
‘There’s a kebbuk of cheese if you want it. If not, there’s coffee beside the fire, and then you may loosen your woman’s tongue,’ he said. ‘Tell me, are there werewolves in your part of the country?’
‘No. They live in the Hartz Mountains,’ said Laura.
‘They live in the Grampians; they thrive in the Cairngorms; they have been known at Leith and now they are here.’
‘So is the basilisk,’ said Laura, grinning.
‘Do you tell me that?’ He looked at her with a keen interest which caused her to wonder whether he was something more than a mere eccentric.
‘And what about the cockatrice?’ she asked.
‘But, my good lassie, they are the same creature! Where’s your education? The crowned serpent hatched from a cock’s egg, that’s the basilisk—basil, a king, you ken. And the crown is like a cock’s comb. I’ve seen it. I know.’
‘Pardon,’ said Laura, now convinced that she was in the presence of a madman. ‘A slip of the tongue. I should have asked about the salamander.’
‘I had one once as a pet, and a dear wee beastie he was until he fell into the fire—jumped into it, you might say. Then — losh! There was a blaze. It nearly had my house burnt down. One of these days I will show you. They love the fire, as you know. Born and bred in the secret, incredible heat of mid-earth, half-way to the Golden Gate—I mean to the Antipodes – is the salamander, and on fire he feeds. Ay, on fire he feeds and grows. Why, this one—Loki I call him—my ancestors came from Scandinavia, you ken – he grew like Yormungand.’
Laura, closely regarding the red beard and the tall figure of her host, had no difficulty in believing some of this.
‘Then you come from the east coast or, possibly, the Orkneys,’ she said. He looked pained.
‘Not necessarily. Not necessarily at all. Is it unknown to you that the Vikings sailed as far west as Ireland? However, be that as it may, this salamander grew as big as a boa-constrictor that time the house was on fire and he was used to spitting — like this!’ He leaned forward and expectorated into the heart of the glowing peat. ‘Ay, and woe betide the chiel on whom he would be voiding his rheum. Wait until I shew you.’
He rose and went over to the sideboard, a massive affair in bog-oak on which the tray and the glasses which had held the sherry were still standing. There was a key in the cupboard drawer. He turned it and pulled open the stout door. Putting in a huge and hirsute hand, he took out a couple of small ornaments, placed them on the floor and then dived in for a couple more. These objects he brought to the table, which still bore its white, beautifully-laundered cloth.
‘I say! They’re nice,’ said Laura. They were beautifully modelled, inches only in height and length, and they represented the fabulous creatures of which she and her host had been talking. They would have made wonderful chessmen, she thought. When she had sufficiently admired them the red-bearded man put them away, and then returned to his chair.
‘Did you ever meet Shakespeare?’ he enquired.
‘Only once,’ said Laura, ‘and then I wasn’t sure who it was.’ Better humour the madman, she decided.
‘Ay, meeting him on the Cam instead of on the Avon must have been very confusing. Yes, yes, your mind would have been confused,’ he observed. Laura thought it was time to depart.
‘It’s confused now, too,’ she said, ‘because I’m most terribly tired. Will you excuse me if I go? I’ve had a long day.’
‘Surely, surely, lassie. Up you go to your bed. How long are you staying?’
‘I have to get back to Freagair,’ said Laura. ‘I am staying there at the hotel. I’ve booked a room.’
‘Oh, never fash about that. You must stay a week here. I insist, now.’
‘You’re very kind,’ said Laura, ‘but…’
‘Havers! Havers! Off to your bed. Breakfast will be at nine.’
‘Good night, and thank you ever so much for your hospitality. I’ll leave your dressing-gown on the banisters, shall I?’ she asked, anxious only to be out of the house.
‘That will be fine. Good night.’
She discovered, when she gained her room, that the rain had stopped and that a watery moon was riding in a sky half-clear, half-cloudy. Laura decided that her clothes would have been laid out or hung out in the kitchen and that in a house the size of An Tigh Mór there would be a back stair leading to the servants’ quarters. Kilting the borrowed dressing-gown, which she was wearing over a petticoat belonging to the woman, and kicking off borrowed slippers, the property of the manservant Corrie, she set out to explore.