The Bagpiper's Ghost Read online

  The dog sat on his haunches, refusing to move. “Stuff?”

  “Gravestones,” Jennifer explained patiently.

  “Pathways,” Peter added.

  “Bolt-holes, ye mean,” the dog said. “Yer looking for escape routes. Hah!” He made a strange sound through his nose. “Ye scared wee bawties. Rabbits. Conies. That’s what ye be. I had the right o’ it before. Cowards, as the boy says.”

  Peter put his hands on his hips and leaned over, speaking fiercely and directly into the dog’s uplifted ear. “If we’re going to come out here—sneak out here—in the middle of the night, dog, we’re going to be prepared, understand? We’re not entirely stupid, you know.”

  “Aye. Not entirely,” the dog admitted.

  “Or entirely powerless,” Peter added.

  “I’m counting on it,” said the dog.

  “What do you mean by that?” Jennifer demanded. “What do you know about this ghost that you’re not telling?”

  The dog snapped his jaws shut and shook his head, ears slapping madly at his nose. And though they begged and pleaded and finally threatened him, the dog stayed dumb.

  So they made their way through the wrought-iron gates and into the castle graveyard without any help or advice or even any teasing from the dog, which—Jennifer thought—certainly made for a happy change.

  The graveyard was very old, and scattered throughout with lichen-covered, rough gray stones from the sixteenth century on. Some of these stones stood upright, as if defying the weather; others tilted, as if they’d been defeated by the wind and by the years. And a few—thick and scarred—lay completely flat on the ground, as if they were the tops of casket lids.

  In between the stones, what grass there was had been worn down by visitors until it was the same color as the soil.

  A small church nestled amid the graves, its own stones a muted gray-and-yellow, the colors dulled even more by moss and lichen. Most of the stones in the church were deeply fissured by long weathering and the centuries, but a few of them seemed to have a different kind of covering, which stood in stark contrast to the rest.

  When Jennifer remarked on this, the dog grunted, sounding remarkably like a pig.

  “Harling,” he said. “Harling protects the soft stane.”

  “How do you know that?” demanded Peter. “Mr. Know-It-All-Tell-It-Ever.” It was one of his mother’s favorite phrases.

  “One of my masters was a stonemason,” the dog answered carefully, then went dumb again.

  “One of your masters? How many have you had?” Jennifer asked.

  “Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor,” the dog offered, his tail beating in rhythm.

  “And wizard,” Peter reminded him. “Michael Scot was your master, too. Till Jennifer fixed that.”

  The dog’s tail stopped wagging.

  The most recent gravestone they found was dated 1927 and said simply LOST AT SEA.

  “So no one is buried there,” Jennifer said.

  “Duh” Peter replied.

  Jennifer felt her face go hot. Peter never teased like that. Even at home, surrounded by his friends, he always defended her. Once he had said that was what brothers were supposed to do.

  Some brother you are now, she thought.

  The dog smirked but refrained from comment.

  Thankful for the dog’s silence, Jennifer turned back to the gravestones. She found a name she recognized.

  “Look, Peter—James Kirk, Captain, HMS Bountiful.”

  “So the great man was a sea captain long before he led the Enterprise!” Peter commented. “Wonder if the Star Trek crew knew that he died in …”—he checked out the date, which had almost been erased by time—“1774.”

  Jennifer smiled a little at his joke, and peace was restored between them.

  As if challenged by Jennifer’s find, Peter began to scramble around the gravestones until he found some names they both thought downright silly: Zenobia McManners, Miracle Morrison, and Anache Dunrobin.

  “Imagine going to school with them,” Jennifer said. “They’d probably beg for nicknames.”

  “Zenny, Mirc, and Ana.” Peter laughed.

  “Anache is a boy’s name,” the dog put in dryly.

  Right then the town-hall clock in the next street over rang out noon so loudly, Jennifer had to stick her fingers in her ears.

  The dog suddenly jumped onto one of the horizontal tombstones, sat up on his haunches, and began to howl, a sound so full of pain it made Jennifer want to howl as well.

  The dog’s howling went on and on until the last bell died away. Then he jumped down and tugged at the leash, pulling Peter toward the east gate and home.

  Peter tried to hold him back, but the dog—as if goaded by a hot iron poker—wouldn’t stop. Peter had to either go with him or let him off the leash. “Jen—” Peter began to say, but she wasn’t paying any attention. So, shrugging, Peter gave in and he raced away with the dog.

  For a moment Jennifer wondered if the dog’s sensitive ears had been hurt by the bells. But he had never complained before, and they had wandered through town when the clock had struck at other times. It was a puzzle.

  Then, at the dying fall of the last bell, she thought she heard something else. Something very much like the long final note of a bagpipe, that low skirl of sound that comes as the pipes wheeze into silence.

  She looked around but saw no one with pipes nearby, though, of course, she knew that bagpipes could be heard yards and yards—even acres and acres—away. The Devil’s horn, Da called bagpipes. He didn’t like them much.

  Her eyes swept across the horizontal tombstone the dog had just vacated. Besides a name with the dates of birth and death, there was a poem inscribed on the gray stone. She read the inscription:

  MARY MACFADDEN, GONE TO GOD,

  MARRIED ONLY TO THE SOD.

  IN THIS LIFE A MAIDEN BLEST,

  NOW IN HEAVEN TAKES HER REST.

  ERECTED BY HER LOVING BROTHER, ANDREW

  “Well, Mary MacFadden,” Jennifer whispered to the tombstone, “was it the bells that frightened the dog, the mysterious bagpipes—or was it you, you naughty dead lady?” She laughed out loud and then shivered, as if expecting an answer from beyond the grave.

  But, of course, there wasn’t any.

  It was broad daylight, after all.

  She hurried after Peter and the dog, finally catching up to them near Burial Brae.

  Four

  Safely Home

  They got home in record time. The dog kept the leash taut all the way and hadn’t stopped to investigate any interesting smells even once.

  When they turned into the lane at last and saw the cottage ahead of them, with its gray slate roof slumped like a farmer’s hat, the dog began to babble aloud.

  “By my fegs, I shouldna speak ill of the dead. I shouldna called her names in the boneyard. I shouldna—”

  Jennifer interrupted. “I don’t remember you calling anyone anything at all.”

  “Actually, he said the Lady in White was a ‘paidling maiden,’” Peter reminded her as he undid the leash from the dog’s collar. “Whatever that is. Sounds like a swimmer of some kind. Dog paddle, maybe.” He smiled at his own joke.

  It was so lame that Jennifer pretended not to notice and continued to stare at the dog.

  “You didn’t make much of a swear,” she said softly. “At least it doesn’t sound like much.”

  The dog had the grace to look down at the ground. “It means aimless and feckless,” he explained. “But still I shouldna called her any such.”

  “Aimless,” Jennifer repeated.

  “Feckless,” Peter said at the same time.

  The dog nodded.

  Kneeling, Jennifer took the dog’s head in her hands. “Well, how is that so bad?”

  “Och, child,” the dog moaned, “a ghost is never aimless. It remains here on earth for a purpose. Even someone as gormless as an old dog should ken better than to say otherwise.” He flopped down by the door and covered
his head with his paws. “Oh my tail, oh my teeth.”

  “Then what is her purpose?” Jennifer asked, as much to herself as to the dog.

  But the dog didn’t answer, just continued to groan and moan.

  It was many minutes before they could rouse him from his depression and get him to go into the house.

  Everyone else was up and about by now, it being past noon. The house had taken on the atmosphere of a party, with music and games and food.

  Gran and Molly were dancing on the thread-worn carpet in the Great Hall as Battlefield Band—a raucous Scottish rock-and-reel group—played on the radio. The sounds of bagpipe, electric piano, fiddle, and electric guitar filled the room as Molly twirled around and Gran clapped for her. The white cat lay on the sofa, its paws over its ears.

  By the big window, where they could catch the light, Pop and Da were in the final stages of a chess game. By their elbows, cups of tea grew cold while they pondered their next moves. As far as Jennifer could tell, they were equally matched, down to a king, a queen, one rook, and one knight each. Pop was playing with the black chessmen, Da with the white. Neither one was laughing.

  Through the window, Jennifer could see Mom in Gran’s herbal garden, grooming the horse, Thunder, with a large brown curry comb. Thunder seemed to be enjoying himself. She couldn’t say the same for her mother.

  “Hssst,” Peter said to Jennifer, “let’s get up to the attic while everyone is busy. We can make plans for sneaking out tonight without worrying about being overheard.”

  She nodded.

  Peter turned and went up the stairs, taking the steps two at a time and quickly outdistancing Jennifer.

  As Jennifer started up, the dog pushed in front of her. “Don’t leave me behind,” he howled as he scrabbled up the stairs after Peter.

  “Damn dog,” she whispered. Then she bit her lip. At home, swearing was a time-out punishment, but in Gran’s house, you had to watch what you said even more. Here words had real power.

  And power had a sneaky way of being tricky, as she had already found out in their first days in Fairburn.

  The attic seemed drab and uninviting after the party downstairs. Shadows crisscrossed the floorboards, and two flies buzzed at the windows. Old stuff was stored up here: worn-out clothes, antique books, broken golf clubs, parts of fishing rods, and lots of card games, none of which they’d ever heard of before arriving in Scotland—games like Patience and Happy Families and Bezique.

  At home, they played Monopoly or Scrabble or Clue, or games on the computer, all familiar and comforting. The Scottish games were not only unfamiliar—some of them were positively dangerous, for they could call up strange and awful magic, and wizards, like the horrible Michael Scot.

  Peter was already sitting on top of the old wooden trunk. Jennifer flung herself down on the tattered throw rug in front of him. The dog curled up by Peter’s feet.

  Suddenly the cat bounded up the stairs. It walked over to the dog and, as it passed by, lifted its tail.

  “Och, ye deadly perfumer,” the dog cried out. “Fowsome cat.”

  The cat smiled at him and walked over to Jennifer, then snuggled into her lap.

  “What time do we go tonight?” Jennifer asked. The whole idea was beginning to make her faintly queasy, and her stomach had a hard knot in it, only she’d never tell Peter that. If she backed out now, Peter would accuse her of trying to hog all the magic again, and then was sure to go off alone. That, she felt certain, would lead to disaster.

  “Everyone in the house should be asleep by ten,” Peter said. “They’re not much for late nights here.”

  The dog interrupted. “Never been out on a summer’s nicht, I see.”

  “We told you we don’t go out alone at night,” Jennifer said.

  “Och, weel, then yer not to ken aboot the licht,” the dog said, then quickly added in explanation, “To know about the light,” in an American accent that owed much to bad TV shows.

  “The light?” Jennifer and Peter asked together.

  The dog sniffed loudly and began cleaning between the toes on his right paw as if he’d said everything that needed saying. The air was thick with the twins’ impatience.

  The cat yowled, stretched, got off Jennifer’s lap, and bounded back down the stairs as if it had heard enough.

  Finally Peter couldn’t stand the wait any longer.

  “‘Ken aboot’ what light?” asked Peter.

  The dog looked up. “Summer’s licht,” he said, then went to work on the left paw. “White nichts.”

  “Oh, that!” the twins said together.

  “You mean how it’s light well toward midnight,” Jennifer said.

  “White nights in summer,” Peter added. “That’s what happens in Moscow. We learned about it in school.”

  “If ye tak a gud look at a map, laddie, ye’ll see where Fairburn is in relation to the Russias.” The dog’s face was incredibly self-satisfied.

  “What do you know about maps?” Peter began, leaning slightly forward and staring down at the dog. “It’s not as if you can read or anything.”

  “Er, Peter,” Jennifer reminded him, “the dog lived a long time with the wizard Michael Scot. And the wizard had a map, remember?”

  Peter seemed to blush slightly, though it was difficult to really be sure in the shadowy attic. “Sorry.”

  “No need, no need,” the dog said, though his tail told a different story, thumping against the floor as if he was delighted to have forced the apology.

  “So,” Jennifer said quickly, “maybe we should wait till later, when it finally gets dark. Er … darker. Next month maybe?” By next month Peter might have forgotten the whole ghost thing. Or Jennifer might have learned some control of her American-style magic. Or …

  “Weel after eleven,” the dog said. “Coming towards twelve. It will be dark enough then.”

  “Midnight!” Peter breathed.

  “How will we wake up?” asked Jennifer. “We don’t dare let the alarm go off.”

  The dog grinned, showing all his teeth at once. “I’ll wake ye both, my weans. Ye can be sure o’ that!” Without another word, he stood and trotted down the stairs.

  Jennifer looked at Peter. She knew what he was thinking, because she was thinking it herself: How on earth would the dog know the right time?

  But Jennifer was thinking something else as well, something she knew Peter had no inkling of. She was thinking: Why is the dog so eager for us to go find this Lady in White?

  Five

  Near Midnight

  Jennifer lay in bed fully dressed except for her shoes, and tried to fall asleep.

  The light kept peeping in from behind the gauzy curtains whenever they were stirred by the wind. Which was often. Gran believed in plenty of fresh air at night.

  How can I go to sleep with so much light? Jennifer wondered, though, of course, she’d had no trouble any of the other nights they’d been in Scotland, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, exhausted from their adventures.

  She worried about what lay ahead. What she had agreed to do. It’s stupid, she thought. And maybe even dangerous. There was something the dog wasn’t telling them. She promised herself she would not believe everything he said.

  In the bed across the room, Molly started tossing and turning. That was noisy enough. Then she started a series of sighs and snores. She sounded like the little engine that could, on steroids.

  I’ll never fall asleep! Jennifer thought.

  Then she thought, I’d better not fall asleep.

  And right after that, sleep grabbed her.

  She was just dreaming of a particularly nasty fall into a filthy, smelly river that splashed cold water on her face, when she awoke with a shudder.

  The dog was standing there, and right on time, sloshing a cold tongue across her face. The bedside clock said eleven-thirty.

  She wondered how long he’d been drooling over her. Sitting up, she scrubbed at her face with the sheet.

  �
�Is Peter awake yet?” she whispered.

  “He’s next,” the dog replied in a low grumble.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t …” she began, but the dog was already out of the room.

  As she grabbed up her shoes, she could hear the dog’s nails clacketing on the wood floors. Next came a slurping sound, then Peter roundly cursing the dog.

  Jennifer wondered briefly where he’d learned all those words, then worried about his swearing so much in Gran’s house. She couldn’t very well yell at Peter, though, not without waking up the entire house.

  So, ignoring the two of them, she tiptoed down the stairs, being extra careful not to step on the third step down, which tended to creak.

  A minute later, Peter and the dog followed.

  They weren’t so careful.

  The sound of the protesting stair was loud enough to wake everyone in the cottage.

  Or the dead, Jennifer thought, then shuddered, remembering where it was they were planning to go. She held her breath, listening hard.

  Luckily, no one else seemed to have heard anything.

  Down by the door, she put on her Nikes, kneeling to tie them quickly, as Peter and the dog came into the entryway.

  Jennifer rose and put her finger to her lips, like Mrs. Flight, their homeroom teacher, did at the beginning of each school day. “Shhh.”

  Peter stopped in his tracks and looked guiltily over his shoulder, but the dog growled a low rumble.

  “Dinna caution me, lass. Teaching yer granny to suck eggs.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Peter said.

  “I mean, ye toom-headit colonial, that I already know how to be quiet and need nae teaching. Any more than ye need to teach the auld besom of the house how to fix breakfast.” The dog’s indignant voice rose to a growl.

  “Shhh,” Jennifer said again, louder, and beckoned them to the door.

  They stood still for a moment and listened to make sure no one was coming to check up on all the noise, but the only sound they heard was the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

  And—Jennifer thought—the beating of my heart.

  Then Peter grabbed the leash from the umbrella stand and snapped it onto the dog’s collar. At the same time Jennifer pulled the great oak door open—another awful sound—and closed it quickly after them. The catch falling into place sounded as loud and as final as a bomb blast.