The idea is not to produce a finished, ready for the presses novel. Writers are advised not to worry about editing or research--that can come later if the product warrants it. So here is a glimpse at my historical paranormal mystery, The Green Woman. The copy is raw, but what follows gives you an idea of what can be produced in less than a month if you neglect everything else.
THE GREEN WOMAN
a novel by
Fashion
by Josie Natori
LINDA
ROOT
ancestry images.com
CHAPTER
ONE: Once Upon a Time…
The host who had taken my credit card and checked
me into the castle that afternoon had not mentioned a costume party being held
on the premises that evening, but I should have been forewarned. I knew that
Ferniehirst Castle was a popular wedding site and often hosted private parties. I had read the brochure.
My
publisher had the entire site reserved for a book launch party on Sunday in the
Great Hall, and I had understood that the castle was closed until the weekend,
and I had mistakenly assumed that there were no intervening private bookings. My entire reason for groveling for an early
check-in was a chance to explore the castle without interference from my
friends. While I had no intention of haunting the corridors with a candle to
light my way as if I were Lady Macbeth, I would have appreciated a word of
warning before sauntering to the guest kitchen in something as clinging as my
favorite green Natori caftan. It was not
quite Victoria’s Secret, but hardly something I would have worn to an audience
with the Queen.
When
the porter delivered my bags to the en suite accommodations in the afternoon, I
had already been told that of the six newly appointed guest rooms, mine was the
only one occupied until Friday when the others in my party began to trickle
in. Their late arrival was enough to
make me stand up and cheer. I had looked
forward to visiting the castle for a long time and I was not the least bit keen
on sharing my experiences with a group of people I loosely claim asfriends
Colleagues would be the better word. If
truth be told, with the exception of my editor Katy Wjocik, I could barely
endure riding an elevator with the others in the group.
Traveling
as a part of the group that my publisher Simon Dirst referred to as ‘The Team’
was about as popular with me as riding in a closet casket with a flatulent
corpse. But on this trip, the Fates were with me, because my publisher Simon
and his administrative assistant Elle, who was the only person I had ever met
who had been named after a magazine, were stopping off in London to cut a book
deal with Princess Michael of Kent or some other lesser royal, and the
photographer they had engaged to cover the launch had been invited to take
photographs at a party being thrown by Wentworth Miller. That left my agent Carol whose star chart had
advised against flying from Sunday night through Thursday, and my editor and
soul sister Katy, who as much as she loved me, refused to spend a single extra
nanosecond in Simon’s company and was coming late and leaving early. She would
not have come at all if I hadn’t promised to let her raid my shoe rack of my
several pairs of Swedish Hasbeens and fix her up with my athletic younger
brother when we got back to California. To pull it off I would probably have to
confess to Iain exactly where I had last seen his autographed 2013 Red Sox
Series Series ball, even though it would mark the very last time that Iain
would agree to dog sit my Giant Wooly Alaskan Malamute puppy who call name was
Max, short for Max Headroom.
The
castle did not open to the general public other than during July and only
accommodated private parties by prior arrangement and a fifty percent advance.
The deal Simon had cut with the site manager had been from Friday noon through
Tuesday. Because I was flying into Edinburgh on Tuesday, his salve girl Elle
had booked me into a hotel on the Royal Mile. But once I realized the extent of
my good fortune and that the others were not expected until Friday night, I saw
no reason to plant myself in a hotel room in Edinburgh if there was any hope of
talking the site manager into an early check-in. Once my colleagues showed, I would belong to
them, but until then, I had been given an unanticipated opportunity to explore
the castle and the grounds on my own time just as the protagonist in my books
had done. The launch may well have been my excuse for coming, but it had never
been my reason.
I
rang up the number on my printed itinerary, and I spoke with the man who seemed
to be in charge. At first he had been reluctant to agree, citing something
about insurance and the fact that the kitchen in the guest wing was not
equipped to serve meals until the weekend and there would be no maid service
until Saturday. I was not that easily
discouraged. I assured him that I was an
able bodied American woman accustomed to fending for myself and totally capable
of making a bed and navigating the short drive into Jedburgh to take my
meals. As long as the kitchen facilities
in the guest wing had a fridge, an ice bucket and a teapot, I would be
fine. Besides, even though the launch
had been Simon’s idea, ultimately I was the one who would be paying the
substantial bill. Or maybe the man just
liked my voice and my book jacket photo.
Whatever had convinced him, he finally agreed. I charged the one day
rate cancellation penalty at the Edinburgh hotel on my American Express card,
collected my rental car from the hotel car park and headed for the Borders.
After
the ministerial act of checking in, I spent the remainder of the afternoon
exploring the Riverwalk. I knew the
history of the place so well that when I stood on the bank above the Jed Water
I could imagine a band of reivers crashing out of the woods. I am one of those people prone to develop a
romantic attachment to certain specific places. When I was a child it was the
field I cut through on my way to public school in order to avoid the group of
feisty Irish Catholics headed for Christ the King. When in college it was the
abandoned orange groves that the college was holding for future growth. In its wild unkempt state the defiant grove
continued to blossom and bear fruit.
While much of the timber in Northumberland and on the Borders had been
cut and much of the forestland was gone, there was a similar defiance in the
lush woodland along the banks of the Jed Water. I felt as if I had always been
here.
I
recalled what Sir Walter Scot had written about this wild, compelling land: ‘Every valley has its battle and every stream
its song.’
Scotland in late June is in twilight until near midnight, although by my standards, the evenings are far from warm. Even in high summer, there is no such thing as a balmy evening on the Borders. I bundled up as I would for a March evening drive into the SouthernCalifornia high desert town where I live, and I headed into Jedburgh. I arrived in the city hours after the closing of Jedburgh Abbey and the Queen of Scots House, which is now a popular museum, but I had not planned to tour them until the following day when I could take my time and savor what I found. There would be time to visit the tourist’s haunts after the book launch was out of the way. What I needed now was food.
I was not in the mood for a hotel restaurant. Sitting alone in a well lighted dining room
watching lovers gaze into one another’s eyes while I pretended to be reading an
unbearably dull book would be exceedingly depressing.
I
went hunting for a friendly pub.
If
at first the crowd seemed unaccustomed to sharing space at the long mahogany
bar with a lone American woman while they watched World Cup Rugby on the HDTV
mounted above the bar, they were fine with me after I announced that my brother
Iain played on the Eagles, the American member of the International Rugby
Union. I had not known that Rugby was to Jedburgh what American football is to
South Bend, Indiana and Starkville, Alabama, home of the Crimson Tide. My self-introduction led to an enthusiastic
offer to join me in a comparative analysis of the local ales in appreciation of
my familiarity with the Rugby term ‘scrum half.’ I was treated as a celebrity. I wished I’d worn my Eagles Supporters polo
but my new friends seemed to like my cashmere tank just fine.
We were boisterous enough to
have driven the brooding guy in the blue on white Societa Sportiva Calcio tee
shirt back into the streets. My luck, I
thought. There he was, brutally
handsome, in a youthful Marcello Mastriani sort of way, and I had to go drive
him off with my vestigial Cleveland Sports fan manners. Or maybe he was just so far into Napoli
soccer that he couldn’t stand to watch a rugby match. Another pint and I had
forgotten what the Italian footballer had looked like. One more and I had forgotten what I looked like. Then it was time to go.
Four
pints of ale, two propositions and a proposal of marriage later I was ready to
go back to the castle. The food had been
excellent, the company entertaining, and I would have stayed longer had I been
booked into the Spread Eagle Inn where the Queen of Scots had stayed in the
autumn of 1566 or some other spot within staggering distance of the pub.
I promised the lads to stop
by again before I left the Borders and invited the lot of them to drop in on my
Sunday book launch. They did not seem
the type to be that interested in historical novels, but free food and drinks
seemed to win them over. I left the pub
with a fuzzy glow. It was most fun I’d
had in a bar since the Indians made it to the Series—well, perhaps not quite that
long ago.
I
headed back to Ferniehirst well before dark, which, of course, leaves a
somewhat misleading impression of my time spent belly-to-the-bar. When I left
the pub and walked to my car, the sky said eight but my watch said ten-half,
which is Brit-speak for a long time past the witching hour. Had I been stopped by the polis, my performance on sobriety tests would not have been
pretty.
A
monster SUV, I think it was a Land Rover, pulled out of the car park right
after I did and I considered moving to the roadside to let him pass so I would
have a set of tail lights to follow, but since had no idea where the SUV was
headed, I decided against it. I had only two miles to travel and the road to
Ferniehirst was not exactly bumper to bumper at close to midnight on a
weekday. The final leg of the journey
was on what property owners in Scotland call a limited access road, which means
that the right to pass and the duty to maintain the roadway are within the
discretion of the land owner. A few potholes here and there announced that the
farmers near Ferniehirst coveted their privacy.
In spite of the fact that this was a road I
had only traveled once and therefore I should have been paying attention, I let
my mind wander from the driving task, which was not particularly prudent since
I had a belly and a bladder full of the local ale and a nasty dose of jet
lag. I did not recall turning off the
highway until I reached the grounds without the slightest clue of how I got
there. But driving in some sort of dissociative state is not a rare
occurrence. It even has a name—cognitive
distracted driving.
I had looked it once up on Wikipedia. However,
it was one of life’s experiences taken best when sober.
When
I reached the car park at Ferniehirst, I did not waste time scouting my
surroundings because by then I badly needed a lavy. But although my nature call was inspiring me
t rush right along, I am certain there had been no cars in the car park when I
returned, and there had been no hint whatever of a party going on: thus, - when I settled in my room with my
very marked-up copy of Steel
Bonnets by G. MacDonald Fraser, I
was surprised to hear laughter wafting
up the stairs, from the direction of the Great Hall. The noise from below was not so raucous that
it would have kept me awake and I would have ignored it altogether had I not
decided to brew a glass of herbal tea. And yes, American brew ‘brew’ and Brits
brew tea.
The
kitchen in the guest quarters is for the exclusive use of the occupants of the
six guest rooms, five of which I knew would be vacant for at least three more
days. I was not the least concerned
about heading to it in my green Natori gown.
I had no intention of venturing down the stairs to crash someone else’s
wedding. My own had been mistake enough.
But
in retrospect, I should have known myself well enough to have grabbed a robe or
wriggled into a pair of jeans, because while the tea was brewing, my curiosity
overcame my prudence and I made my way to the head of the stairs. I was aware of two separate sets, one
opposite the entrance to the kitchen and the other down the hall near the
longue. I am one of those people who
actually studies the floor plans posted in my doctor’s office displaying the
exit route in event of fire, floor or earthquake in a parade of little green
arrows. I like to plan my physical
escapes in advance. The emotional
escapes are a bit trickier.
According
to the floor plan I remembered from the webpage, the narrow flight of stairs I
had selected did not reach the ground floor. They opened into a corridor on the
First Floor, where a wider set of elegant stairs accessed the ground floor near
the entry to the Great Hall. I descended
far enough to confirm that indeed there was a function of some sort going on
downstairs.
But
as I peeked down the stairwell, I was utterly confused. Either I had become disoriented and taken the
wrong staircase or there had been something hallucinogenic in my ale. Nothing was where I expected it to be.
From
what I could observe of the function in the Great Hall, the group congregated
there hardly warranted so large a room.
I guessed the crowd to number less than thirty, and while it was not a
large group, it certainly was a strange one.
When I saw the mode of dress, I at first assumed it was a Scottish theme
wedding without kilts. Then I looked
closer. If it was a wedding, someone had
forgotten to invite Romance, Joy and Conviviality. I had seen happier faces at
gravesites. I also noted far fewer women than men, and the group seemed sexually
segregated. I did not stop to ponder who
was getting married. I was wondering who
had died. Even Nathaniel Hawthorne would have written a happier scene.
The room décor seemed more rustic that I had
remembered it and the sconces were not lit.
The only light came from candelabra on the banquet table and sideboard.
The women hovered together at the far end of the room and from my vantage
point, it looked very much as if they were busy with needle work, no small
trick in so dim a light. There was no
music or dancing, and it was definitely not my idea of a celebration. If
anything, it was a complete anachronism.
And
then it struck me – an anachronism. Anacronism
was indeed the operative word, and it thoroughly explained what I was
witnessing. I felt both foolish and
relieved.
There were countless
sub-groups of the Society for Creative Anachronism scattered around the world,
and many of them were in the UK. I had
given a lecture and reading at an event at the U.S. headquarters in Milpitas,
California and the members were every bit as committed to historical accuracy
as the group in the Great Hall. They were just a great deal happier. California sunshine has that effect, even as
far north as Milpitas. What better venue
for a chapter meeting of the SCA than a site as culturally rich as
Ferniehirst. Had I not been tired and a
wee bit drunk, I would have recognized the meeting for what it was immediately
without the drama and uncertainty. From
the appearance of the costumes, some tailor or seamstress in Jedburgh of Kelso
was making a fortune selling Jacobean costumes as authentic as anything I had
seen in the museums of Edinburgh and London.
I
was confident that I had solved the mystery, but I was still curious as to how
the participants had arrived without leaving cars in the car park. Then I recalled an enterprise in the Desert
called Brenda’s Bingo Buss which specialized in hauling Soroptimists and
members of the Republican Women’s Club to Laughlin, Nevada for an occasional
day of wrestling with the one arm bandits in the casinos along the Colorado
River. The group I had observed had no doubt arrived by chartered bus from
Jedburgh, and the bus was probably hidden from view and parked behind the
barn.
With
all of my nagging questions answered, I headed for my room. My first problem was that I hadn’t the
slightest idea of how to get there. And
then it all went weird again.
Somehow I had gotten myself
totally turned around. There were
clusters of men about, but either they had chosen to ignore me because of my
state of undress, or they simply had not seen me. I definite was not suitably attired to go
sashaying up to one of the somber women in the Great Hall to ask directions. But obviously I had not been thinking
clearly.
All I needed was to take a
minute to get my bearing and the solution was apparent. I meandered back toward
the entrance to retrace my steps. I
found the stairway near the entrance and hurried to the second floor.
Scottish
and English houses number the floors in their multi-storied buildings
differently than Yanks do. One enters on
the ground floor and climbs or takes an elevator to the first floor. Our accommodations were on the second floor,
which is three flights up. It apparently
makes perfect sense if you happen to be British and none at all to an American.
At any rate, after I negotiated the wide
stairs as far as the first floor landing, they went no further, and only when I
saw a doglegged short hallway did I find
the next flight up. The stairwell was
much narrower than I expected which is probably why the luggage laden porter
had avoided it, but according to the floorplan I had perused, it would deliver me quite nicely to a hallway that
accessed the second floor kitchenette where I had left my tea.
I
only made it half way up when I saw a man heading down. He had a quick, determined step and we might
have collided if I hadn’t announced my presence with a cough. He
stopped short and so did I. We
faced one another like two drivers going in oppositie directions on a one lane
bridge. He looked to be in his thirties
and was taller than most Scots. His hair was loose and long, and in the dark
corridor seemed almost black. His stance
exuded confidance and something else—the current American slang for it was attitude. He wore a quilted jack of ruby velvet styled
like something that the Scottish rock star Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull might wear in concert. He had a
long face with chiseled features and while I was too far from him to see the
color of his eyes in the diminished light,
I felt them boring into me.
Then
he spoke.
“When
Ah first saw ya climbin’ up ah though ya
were an apparition, you being near naked and a wee bit greenish just like in
the ghost stories my da used tae tell
and all, but closer up ya seem real enough,” he said. “Plenty a’ room to
let ya by,” he added, resting against the stairwell to make room for me to
pass.
Did
he think I had been born yesterday?
There was not a chance in hell that I would put myself within his
reach. I had no intention of capping off
my first night on the Borders in a skirmish with an arrogant drunk in a
stairwell—and not just a drunk. His comment on my clothing had been inappropriate
and rude. In any other setting I would
have been confrontational. If this had
been in an elevator in a public building I would called him on it, or at least
responded with a snappy retort, but this was not an ordinary night. I had no intention of squeezing past him on the narrow staircase,
so I a spun on my ballerina
slippered feet and ran. With him standing near the landing I had no
choice but down, and as I descended, I heard him laughing at me.
When I reached the ground floor, the double doors into the Great Hall were
opened to an interior nothing like I had remembered it. I ran past the doorway
without a thought of entering. I tried
to recreate the path taken by the porter on my arrival and chastized myself for
not paying more attention instead of
trailing after him as if I were a grand dame boarding the Lucitania behind a
servant with a cart of streamer trunks.
I
was not alone in the corridor. Men had
gathered in clusters and as I rushed by them,
they seemed to be.speaking Scots. Since this was rural Scotland there
was nothing the least bit strange in that. Although I did not speak it, I had assimilated enough of it when I was
doing my research to know it when I hear it.
I nearly collided with a pair of costumed men who were absorbed in
animated conversation as I scurried
past, but they did not seem to notice.
If truth be told, it was as if they could not see me.
The
confusing floor plan and left me stymied. I had made Ferniehirst into a research project while I was writing my last two novels and thought
I understood the layout and the changes produced in the recent
restoration. But I could not find access
to the wings, and I ran into a hallway
that ended in a ‘t’ that should have been an ‘l’. A room that I was certain opened into other
rooms had no egress. I even checked
behind the curtains and tapestries for hidden doors. Not all of the inconsistencies could be
blamed on pamphets I had read or webpages I had visited.
I
was certain I would be able to recognized the entrance to the turret
library. Even in my haste to reach my
suite that afternoon I had stopped to take a peek inside. For someone who is a writer, a library is a
treasure room and the books inside are precious jewels. However,
the entrance to the library was not where I had remembered it to be, and
I could not blame that on the ale I had consumed. I had been completely sober when I arrived in
the afternoon, and after my encounter on the stairs, I was entirely sober now. It was the library
that was off kilter.
When
I did find the library door it appeared to access the circular library on a
tangent when I had been certain that it
had opened into the room where the circumference of the turret protuded into
the hall. I was also surprised to find
it locked and latched. That afternoon
the man who greeted me explained that the turret library was usually locked at
night because of the value of its contents,
but he offered to make an exception and
keep it open since I was the only guest. It was to be the site of the
private reception the laird was hosting after the book launch and I would be
welcome to peruse it at my leisure to see if there were materials I might find
useful in my remarks. It seemed that I
was expected to make a speech. At
least I had not impressed him as a
likely book thief.
Obviously
he had forgotten about the party booked into the Great Hall when he made the
offer and later thought better of
leaving the library unsecured when there were outsiders on the premises. Libraries and studies in British properties as old as Ferniehirst
are often filled with first editions and their walls adorned with painting of
long dead ancestors, which is probably why so many of them are rumored to be
haunted. I had read that the library at Ferniehirst was full of first editions
of celebrated tomes on the history of the Borders and decorated with a parade of portraits
of famous and infamous Kers. I also knew that was a thriving clandestine
market for anything elegant, old and
large enough to make an impressive wallhanging or coffee table book, and there
were plenty purchasers who lacked regard for such triviliaties as provinence, something conveniently blamed on
the Russian nouveau riche. No wonder it
was locked. I was making far too much
a mystery of matters that were simply explained.
At
least I seemed to have evaded the party guests and escaped any further
unsolicited comments from the man on the
stairs. I slowed my pace to something resembling a power walk
and tried togive theimpression of someone who knew where she was going, in case anyone was looking. I ventured into an alcove and found a strange
staircase that appeared to curved back toward the turret, and after a few cautious steps upward, I was
numbstruck. I had discovered one of the counterclockwise staircases that made Ker houses unique—a
staircase with a counterclockwise spiral that had given an advantage to left-handed
defenders--kerry- fisted men, they were called.
After
my encounter with the man on the other set of stairs I felt more in need of protection from those
coming down that from intruders headed up, and what common sense I had gave
notice that this was not a good night for me to venture into narrow
stairways. But I had never let prudence overcome curiosity,
and I could not resist the urge to explore. This was one of the features of the castle
that appears prominently in my
novels, and it was the castle’s history that had drawn me here—a symbol of
theuniqueness of the castle’s
inhabitants and the wildn nature of the Border Reivers.
A
left-handed man with a Jed Axe on a counterclockwise staircase had a decided
advantage in a closed-quarters fight.
Walter Laidlaw had written a poem about it that is read aloud each year
at the beginning of the Jed Heart Festival.
It commemorates with pride the occasion when the Fernirhirst Kers purged
the castle of its English invaders and after butchering them decapitated them
and played football with their severed
heads.
There
were similar stairs in the museum called Queen Mary’s House in Jedburg, which I
had planned to visit in the morning. The
house had never belonged to Marie
Stuart, the tragic Queen of Scots. It was
a residence the queen had leased
from her friend and supporter Sir Thomas Ker of Ferniehirst after her
lodgings in the Spread Eagle Inn caught fire.
She had been in Jedburgh for the assizes in the autumn of 1566, to
establish her authority on the Borders and to escape the bizarre misconduct
of her syphyllitic husband Henry Stuart,
the notorious Lord Darnley who was briefly her consort. When she had refused to peititon Parliament
for a grant of the crown matrimonial, his
debachery had sunk to
the depths of hell and the queen began to fear for her life, or so the
legend goes. In any event, the queen of Scots became very ill while
lodged at the Ker house in the
town. At one point, her attendents and
physician believed that she had died and
her chambermaids opened the windows of
her bedchaber so her soul could escape to the heavens. Fortunately a French surgeon who name was Arnaud was
travelling in her party and he was not
convinced that the queen was dead. He ordered the servants to close the windows
and he commanded the queen’s
ladies-in-waiting to massage her extremeties. They he had called for mirror and
when the queen’s faithful Marie Seton held it before the queen’s face, a fine mist condensed upon the glass, coming
from Marie Stuart’s mouth and nose.
After the surgeon forced some watered wine down her gullet, the semi-conscious queen suffered a spell of projectile vomiting
during which she expelled evil smelling
green bile, which some folks in her party considered evidence of poison.
No one has isolated the nature of her
illness. Like most events in her life, it is still debated. Modern diagnosticians suspect pneumonia and nearly all romantic
writers think of arsenic.
Elizabeth’s spymaster
Walsingham, a radical anti-Marian, had
bragged of poisoning women by dusting
the drapes of their beds with
arsenic. The other popular suspect was
the queen’s husband Henry, who arrived
in Jedburgh after the worst of her illness had passed, made a few
obsequeous gestures and rode north
again, and thus, the mystery remained
unsolved. But then, Marie Stuart’s life was a series of who-dunnits.
There
also are similar counterclockwise stairs to the ones in Jedburgh at the ruined
fortress of the Cessford Kers near Roxburgh. Left-handedness is a family trait.
I had read that there was a higher incidence of lefthandedness in the various
branches of the Ker family than recorded
anywhere else other than in the ancient Biblical tribe of Benjamin. That eliminated two possible lines of genetic
research from my family tree. I could
barely hold a pen in my left hand without it fumbling, let alone use it to
wield an axe.
Since I was more fascinated by the staircase
than frightened of the man in velvet who had startled me, and no one seemed to
be in hot pursuit, I sat on the stairs
and held out both hands to touch the walls in some sort of ritual that I hoped
would bind me to this ancient place, a declaration that I had finally made it here. If I had been less responsible I would have
carved my initials into the rock with a fingernail or hairpin.
Visiting
Ferniehirst had been number one of my list of things to do before I die for many
moons. The counterclockwise staircase was among the features of the castle which had drawn me here.
When
I closed my eyes and looked inward , I could sense the presence of the
Ferniehirst Kers descending the stairs with Jed Axes swinging free, vanguishing
the more restricted right-handed Scotts of Bucchleuch, and yelling the battle cry ‘A Ker’ as they went about busting heads and
severing limbs. As gruesome as it must
have been, in a strange way I saw an
element of romance in the old stories.
In
spite of my fascination with the stairs, I could not escape the thought that
they should not have been accssible from the spot where I had found them. My
study of the various renovations at Fernehirst had mislead me into believing
that the lower levels of the kerry spiraled staircases such as this one had
been blocked off or removed in a remodel
during the middle of the twentieth century during a period when the castle had
been converted for use as a hostel. I had read the the stairs upon which I sat
wasonlu accessible from an obscured passage not much bigger than a crawl space
opening into a higher level of the library.
Obviously the account I had read was dated before the recent renovations
performed after the present owner reclaimed the residence from the Scottish
Land Trust that had been operating the
hostel. I laughed at my attempt
to attach a paranormal explanation to a mystery I was certain I could solve
with an updated set of blueprints and some architectural drawings more recent
than the ones printed in the materials I had studied when I wrote my
books.
No
matter how interested I was in my surroundings, I could hardly spend the night
hunkering in a stairwell. I had not
recovered from my strange encounter with the man in the ruby velvet coat waistcoat
but I was convinced that he was no more sinister than the placement of the
stairs—I pegged him as a club
member looking for a Men’s Room. I decided to forego this particular flight
for fear it would abruptly end when it met up with the newly rehung first floor
ceiling. When I reached the ground
floor, I walked quickly through the gallery to the stairway used by tourists
during the month of July when the castle was opened to the public. There was no one else in sight or sound. The interior seemed familiar, right down to
the floral arrangements in the
foyer. On a sideboard I
found a placard displayed, announcing my
Saturday book launch. I judged that it
had provided little enticement to the
standoffice group of anachronistic Scots
who had apparently called it an early night and left.
Thanks
to my fertile imagination, my first
night at Ferniehirst had been an adventure I would lookback upon with amusement. I remember my
childhoodbelief that there were lions and tigers living in our basement, a fear
I carried with me until we moved to
Southern California where the only basements were the bargain basements
at the high tickets department stores in the malls. I thought I had outgrown the childhood
fantasies, but then, I was a writer. No matter how much a slave I was to
historical accuracy, I had chosen
fiction for a reason.
Luck
was with me. Everything about the place seemed familiar and my sense of control
returned. I climbed the proper stair
case and easily located my room. I locked myself inside and helped myself to a brandy from the
bottle I had stashed inside my
suitcase. I had no interest
whatsoever in a glass of tea, hot or
cold, and I had done enough wandering
around the castle to last at least until
mornining. I was slightly chilled but the brady would do a better job of
warming me than anything plucked from a tea tree. I draped a shawl on my shoulders as much to
cover me as to warm me and I walked to the window. Night had finally descended
on the Borders, but it was not entirely
dark. There was a moon. I could see the archery field in the distance where the
owner kept a herd of Icelandic sheep.
They were as white as new snow. The only car in the car park was mine.
The house had become sepulchral, as
silent as any tomb. The only unnatural
light was from an electric fixture by the entrance. It was as if I were the only living thing on
the castle grounds.
Sleep
was out of the question and I had lost my
desire to revisit MacDonald Fraser’s fine history of the Border Reivers, even though it is one of my favorite
books. I put his account of the steel bonneted warlords who had inhabited this wild land aside to enjoy
on another day. Reading of reivers
seemed superfluous when I could not shake off the inane thought that I had
encountered the ghost of one of them. He had a commanding presence, and an air
about him. That did not disqualify him
as a Borderer. The aristocrats among
them had often been the most vicious of the lot, a list replete with Kers and
Scotts and Maxwells. Kers had served as
wardens of the Middle March, often rustling livestock at night and tracking the
rustlers in the morning. There was a popular joke making the rounds when they
were serving as wardens noting that the
Kers had a very poor record of catching
themselves.
I reflected on at the bizarre events of the evening and decided that there was a logical explanation for each of them , but I still could not relax. It had nothing to do with having been lost in the castle. It had to do with the man.
The story develops along several lines, and the reader is not quite certain how much of my protagonist's adventure is real and how much is a creation of her fertile mind. One thing does become obvious early on --the man in the stairwell suspects that she is the one who is the ghost, the legendary Green Woman of Ferniehirst. Writing this one was great fun.
I reflected on at the bizarre events of the evening and decided that there was a logical explanation for each of them , but I still could not relax. It had nothing to do with having been lost in the castle. It had to do with the man.
The story develops along several lines, and the reader is not quite certain how much of my protagonist's adventure is real and how much is a creation of her fertile mind. One thing does become obvious early on --the man in the stairwell suspects that she is the one who is the ghost, the legendary Green Woman of Ferniehirst. Writing this one was great fun.
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