We walked down the hill, into a narrow valley where a stream flowed through a copse of beech trees. We followed the stream for more than a mile in silence, until we came to an unpaved road marked by a massive stone cross carved with intricate Celtic designs. Normally I’d be fascinated by an ancient monument such as this one, but I was cold, wet, and confused.
“Do you recognize where we are?” I asked William, whose teeth were chattering even more than mine were. Despite his cold, he’d offered twice to give me my plaid shawl back, which he’d craftily wrapped like a kilt around his waist with one end draped over his chest. I’d refused on the grounds that being seen walking with a naked man wouldn’t help my reputation any in the seventeenth century.
“Aye,” he said, “that stream is Boglie Burn. It runs into the Tweed, just beyond Ballydoon. And the forest we came out of is the Greenwood, an ancient enchanted wood. That castle on yonder hill is Castle Coldclough, but nobody lives there and it’s haunted. But that wee croft up there belongs to a cousin of my auntie’s, Mordag MacCready.”
He pointed up a hill that rose to our right. All I could see was a stone outcropping, but when the clouds cleared from the moon, I made out the shape of a stone cottage built up against the hillside. Its windows were dark, but that could be because its inhabitants were asleep.
“Do you think she’d put us up for the night?” I asked.
“No Christian soul would turn us away,” he said, already climbing the hill. There was a narrow dirt path between the bushes, clear enough to indicate that it had been in use recently. I caught up to him, wondering what Mordag MacCready would make of a naked man knocking on her door in the middle of the night, cousin or no. Would she think he was one of the boggles or haunts that everything around here seemed to be named for? As we approached the house, though, I began to doubt there was anyone home. The place had a forlorn, derelict look to it. A gate had been left open, swinging on its hinges, an empty bucket lay in the yard, and there was no smoke coming from the chimney.
“It looks deserted,” I commented to William.
“Aye, maybe Mordag is pasturing her sheep in the hills overnight, although it’s getting late in the year for that.”
Now that he mentioned sheep, I could detect the not-unpleasant aroma of manure mingled with hay and wet wool coming from an empty stone-walled enclosure beside the house.
“How do you know so much about sheep?”
William snorted. “As a wee lad, I watched the flocks—before I ran away to the city.”
“If you were living in the city, how did you get kidnapped by the Fairy Queen?” I asked.
“Och, I’d come back,” William answered. “Do ye want to know my whole life’s story standing here freezing on the doorstep, or would ye mind if I continued the tale inside by the fire?”
“Do you think we should break in? Won’t Mordag think we’re burglars?”
But William had already opened the door. I stood nervously on the threshold until William found a lantern and lit it by striking something that looked like a primitive lighter. With the lamp lit, I saw that the cottage was plainly and sparely furnished but clean. And cold. It was hardly warmer than it was outside.
“Are ye going to stand there all night letting in the cold air?” he asked, holding the lantern up. “Or are ye afraid of me? I’ll no’ turn into a lion again.”
With the coarse wool shawl draped over one shoulder and his long hair bushing out around his face, he resembled one of the wild men that peasants believed roamed the woods of medieval Europe. As I looked at him, it came home to me that I really didn’t know him. I knew the man—or creature—that he would become: the incubus Liam, who came to me as moonlight and shadow and became flesh through my breath; then Bill, who came back to me to make amends and died when my love made him human. But this man—William Duffy—I had dreamed of him, but I didn’t know him. Could he be trusted?
A cold breeze brushed against my back, insinuating itself down the neck of my damp blouse. I shivered at its touch … but then felt it warm as it crept down my back. It felt like a hand, as if the breeze had turned to flesh as it met my flesh—as Liam had gained flesh with my breath. And as the warm breeze coiled around my waist, I smelled heather.
William lifted his head and sniffed the air. His eyes met mine and I felt a spark of recognition. Pulled by that spark—and the invisible hand at my back—I stepped over the threshold.
While William went to work lighting a fire, I looked around the cottage. The central room contained the fireplace, with a settle and two chairs set before it. A spinning wheel had been knocked over, the wool from its bobbin strewn all over the floor. There was also a rudimentary kitchen consisting of a cupboard, an iron basin, and a cast-iron stove. There were two small rooms in the loft upstairs, one with an antique brass bed covered with wool blankets and a sheepskin, the other with a loom, more trunks, and piles of blankets and sheepskins. Mordag was a weaver as well as a shepherd, which made sense.
I grabbed an armful of blankets and sheepskins, then came upon a trunk full of clothes. I put the blankets down and stripped out of my wet clothes, carefully spreading them out over the loom to dry. I put on a long white cotton shift and picked out a nightshirt for William—there were no pants—then carried the blankets down the stairs. I found William crouched on the stone hearth in front of a roaring fire.
“Here,” I said, tossing him the nightshirt. “Put this on while I see if there’s any food.”
“There isna but a stale bannock or two, but I did find this.”
He held up an earthenware jug. I took it and smelled the peaty aroma of malt whiskey. Good scotch had been Liam’s weakness. Some things never changed, I supposed. Certainly the golden skin of the man before me …
I took a swig of the scotch to keep from looking at those long golden limbs. Turning away, I felt unaccountably shy. I’d been making love to this man in my dreams for weeks now—I’d made love to his incarnations for longer than that—but I didn’t know him. He looked at me as if he knew me, but that was because he thought I was the first Cailleach. He’d never met me—and he wouldn’t, I suddenly realized. I’d saved him before he became the incubus, so he would never come to me as Liam or Bill. I felt a sort of hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, but perhaps that was an aftereffect from emptying myself out to become the door. Certainly I should feel glad that I’d rescued William Duffy before he could become the incubus, but I didn’t. The man I’d fallen in love with—whatever combination of Bill and Liam that had been—had never existed. I’d rescued a total stranger.
A hungry and cold stranger.
I searched the cupboards for food. I found a number of glass jars full of dried herbs and a covered earthenware canister half full of oatmeal and another with hard biscuits—the bannocks William had spoken of, no doubt, although they didn’t resemble the warm, flaky biscuits my father used to make. Either seventeenth-century fare was spare or Mordag had planned to be away for a while and hadn’t stocked her kitchen before leaving—although I noticed that there was a bowl on the table half full of dried oatmeal, a wooden spoon congealing beside it. It looked as if Mordag had been having her morning porridge when she’d been interrupted and left suddenly.