“Time ye were awake, sleepyhead!” Lorna chided her. “’Tis halfway tae noon!”
Minna sat bolt upright at once. She had only meant to put her head down for a few hours, but as she looked outside she saw that the sun was high in the sky. She screwed her eyes up against the bright daylight and accepted the cup of warm tea that Lorna handed her.
“I can't believe I slept so long,” Minna said, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.
Lorna sat down on her bed, scowling. “I heard what happened last night,” she remarked grimly. “Your brother is a menace, Mistress.”
“I can't disagree with you,” Minna replied. “He is letting the estate go to rack and ruin and the staff are all terrified of him, especially the young women.” She sighed. “We have to do something about him - but what?”
“I fear there is an evil spirit in him, Mistress, an’ I fear he got it from your father.” Lorna’s face was grim as she spoke. “He is drunk most o’ the time, an’ even when he is no’, his temper is foul. Do ye know what young Katie said this mornin’? She said she would never trust another man again in her life, an’ I dinnae blame her. Poor wee soul. She will likely have nightmares for years.”
“Neither do I,” Minna said, sighing. “He has all the female staff on edge. No-one wants to go anywhere alone in case he catches them and overpowers them. Rape is a disgusting crime, and as well as being dangerous to their minds and bodies, women that age are in danger of becoming pregnant. Then what do you think Jamie would do? He would likely throw them out, even if they could prove the baby was his, and I can't think of any way of doing that. As you say, Lorna, he is a menace, but I have no idea what to do about him.”
“There are potions, Mistress,” Lorna suggested slyly.
Minna stared at her friend in disbelief. “Are you suggesting that I poison him, Lorna?” She was horrified.
Lorna shook her head, laughing. “No, mistress, but maybe ye could give him somethin’ tae calm him down. A sleepin’ draught in his whisky, like.”
If the situation had not been quite so serious Minna might have laughed, but now was not the time. “Calm him down?” she asked through gritted teeth. “Nothing will ever calm him down, Lorna. I am beginning to despair of him.”
6
Gowan Hepburn was tired of merely existing. He spent most of his time hiding in the woods trying to survive, living off rabbits and birds that he managed to trap or hunt, and fishing in the loch for trout. He foraged for wild mushrooms and kept a tiny vegetable garden and a few hens for eggs. Occasionally he traded for goods with an itinerant peddler, but otherwise he spoke to nobody.
Once in a while, when the chestnuts and hazelnuts dropped in the autumn, he was able to eat something sweet and flavourful, but his diet remained bland and uninteresting. It did, however, contain plenty of meat and fish, which kept him satisfied, and for that he was thankful. It was more than many people had. He had become a complete recluse, however. He had no wish for anyone to see his disfigurement and pity him because of it, and neither did he wish to become involved with them again. Yet strangely, although he was by nature a quiet and secretive person, he missed their company.
Although he did not seek human companionship, he enjoyed listening to people. It had been a long time since he had spoken a word to anyone, and sometimes he had long conversations with himself just to make sure that he could still talk. On fine evenings he often crept into the village to hide in the shadows and watch the villagers as they sat around a big fire just to hear their gossip, opinions, and concerns. Two things were discussed more than anything else; how evil the Laird was, and by contrast, how kind his sister was. They were very thankful when she came to visit them, and called her ‘their savior’.
One evening towards the end of summer he was hiding in his usual spot in the woods when he came upon a group of people sitting around the fire in the middle of the little town square discussing Jamie Darroch’s latest escapade.
“The Laird is a nasty bit o’ work,” one old lady said, as she sipped her ale. Her face was marked with lines of not only age, but anxiety, and she shook her head slowly, frowning. “I dinnae know how I would have survived without his sister. I cannae believe those two came fae the same family.”
“Aye, but I dinnae know how much longer she can keep daein’ it,” another, much younger woman said regretfully, sighing. “She must be gettin’ some help from somewhere, an’ I am always afeart for her, but she is a very brave lady.”
“An’ beautiful,” said a strapping young man, smiling as he raised his eyebrows and laughed, holding up his cup of ale in a toast. His wife, who was nursing a baby beside him, frowned at him and nudged him in the ribs. “Ow! I was only jestin’!” he cried.
There was a chorus of laughter before another gray-haired man in his middle years said grimly: “my young Agnes is just o’ the age when she needs tae find some work. We need her tae start earnin’ for the household, but I am no’ sendin’ her up tae the castle. That Laird is an evil man, an’ I dinnae want my innocent daughter tae become his prey. She says she can look after hersel’, but that is what they a’ say. I thought that last Laird, his father, was bad, an’ he was a mean old swine, but at least he left the lassies alone.” He shook his head despairingly.
For a moment there was silence, then the first old lady spoke again. “I wish we could get past that creature in the woods, then we could maybe hunt some rabbits, but -” she broke off, shrugging and sighing. “I dinnae know what tae dae any more.”
“Dae ye think it is really the devil?” another old lady asked. She looked less gentle than the first, almost witch-like in appearance, and Gowan grinned as he saw a gray cat coming up to rub itself against her. It was lucky not to be black, he thought, laughing inwardly, or it might have been accused of being the devil itself.
“I dinnae believe that,” one of the men said. “Them devil shapes are just piles o’ stones.”
“Aye, well if you are sae brave, you go in there an’ get some rabbits!” the old woman urged.
The man fell silent. A few days after Gowan had fled from his attackers he had placed stones arranged in pentangle shapes every few yards around the forest to keep the extremely superstitious villagers away. After that he had been left alone.
However, from time to time one of them would claim to have seen a figure with no face clothed in a dark hooded cloak. This was what Gowan wore when moving around the forest, and the sight of the apparition added to the villagers’ fear. His strategy seemed to have worked. No-one would come near the woods now.
Gowan was not sure how long he had been living like a savage in the woods, since he had lost track of the days, but he knew it must be some years. He had found a little ramshackle wooden hut among the trees that might once have been used as a storeroom for firewood. Its thatched roof had collapsed, but he had mended it straight away, and although it was only big enough for him to sleep in, the little cabin kept him warm and dry, and there was always plenty of fuel for his fire. He slept on the ground on a carpet of fir leaves, and despite it having taken him a few weeks to become used to it, he now found it to be as comfortable as a mattress.
Clothes were a different matter. He knew he had grown, since he had been a youth when he had been forced to run away. After a while, the one set of clothes he possessed were too small for him, as well as being ragged with constant wear. He could have stolen from the villagers, but he could not bear to deprive them of what little they had.
After a few days of debating with himself, he decided to walk into Dundee and find a job as a laborer for a while. He had grown his hair long so that it hid his scar sometimes, but he could not keep it concealed all the time, and he was often the object of much ridicule.
He slept in a stable and worked among a group of half-a-dozen men. Most of them were decent enough fellows, but there was one who taunted him constantly and made his life a misery.