Kiss of the Highlander

Besseta smoothed her coarse gray hair and angled her nose toward the thatched roof. “Don’t you have confessions to hear, Nevin?”

“You must not jeopardize our position here, Mother,” he said gently. “We have a solid home among fine people, and I hope to make it permanent. Give me your word.”

Besseta kept her eyes fixed on the roof in stubborn silence.

“Look at me, Mother. You must promise.” When he refused to retract his demand or avert his steady gaze, she finally gave a shrug and nodded.

“I will not harm the MacKeltar, Nevin. Now, go on with you,” she said brusquely. “This old woman has things to do.”

Satisfied that his mother wouldn’t trouble the laird with her pagan foolishness, Nevin departed for the castle. God willing, his mother would forget her latest delusion by dinner. God willing.

Over the next few days, Besseta tried to make Nevin understand the danger he was in, to no avail. He chided her gently, he rebuked her less gently, and he got those sad lines around his mouth she so hated to see.

Lines that clearly pronounced: My mother’s going mad.

Despair settled into her weary bones, and she knew that it was up to her to do something. She would not lose her only remaining son. It wasn’t fair that a mother should outlive all her children, and trusting God to protect them was what had gotten her into this bind to begin with. She refused to believe she’d been given the ability to foresee events only to sit back and do nothing about them.

When shortly after her alarming vision a band of wandering Rom arrived in the village of Balanoch, Besseta struck upon a solution.

It took time to barter with the proper people; although proper was hardly a word she’d use to describe the people with whom she was forced to deal. Besseta might read yew sticks, but simple scrying paled in comparison to the practices of the wild gypsies who wandered the Highlands, selling spells and enchantments cheek by jowl with their more-ordinary wares. Worse still, she’d had to steal Nevin’s precious gold-leafed Bible, which he used only on the holiest of days, to trade for the services she purchased, and when he discovered the loss come Yuletide he would be heartbroken.

But he would be alive, by the yew!

Although Besseta suffered many sleepless nights over her decision, she knew her sticks had never failed her. If she didn’t do something to prevent it, Drustan MacKeltar would take a wife and that woman would kill her son. That much her sticks had made clear. If her sticks had told her more—mayhap how the woman would do it, when, or why—she might not have been seized by such desperation. How would she survive if Nevin were gone? Who would succor an old and useless woman? Alone, the great yawning darkness with its great greedy maw would swallow her whole. She had no choice but to get rid of Drustan MacKeltar.

A sennight later, Besseta stood with the gypsies and their leader—a silver-haired man named Rushka—in the clearing near the little loch some distance west of Castle Keltar.

Drustan MacKeltar lay unconscious at her feet.

She eyed him warily. The MacKeltar was a large man, towering and dark, a mountain of bronzed muscle and sinew, even when flat on his back. When she shivered and nudged him gingerly with her toe, the gypsies laughed.

“The moon could fall on him and he wouldn’t waken,” Rushka informed her, his dark gaze amused.

“You’re certain?” Besseta pressed.

“ ‘Tis no natural sleep.”

“You didn’t kill him, did you?” she fretted. “I promised Nevin I wouldn’t harm him.”

Rushka arched a brow. “You have an interesting code, old woman,” he mocked. “Nay, we did not kill him, he but slumbers, and will eternally. ’Tis an ancient spell, laid most carefully.”

When Rushka turned away, instructing his men to place the enchanted laird in the wagon, Besseta heaved a sigh of relief. It had been risky—slipping into the castle, drugging the laird’s wine and luring him to the clearing near the loch—but all had gone according to plan. He’d collapsed on the bank of the glassy lake and the gypsies had set about their ritual. They’d painted strange symbols upon his chest, sprinkled herbs and chanted.

Although the gypsies made her uneasy and she’d longed to flee back to the safety of her cottage, she’d forced herself to watch, to be certain the canny gypsies would keep their word, and to assure herself Nevin was finally safe—forever beyond Drustan MacKeltar’s reach. The moment the final words of the spell had been uttered, the very air in the clearing had changed: she’d felt an uncommon iciness, suffered a sudden, overwhelming weariness, even glimpsed a strange light settling around the laird’s body. The gypsies indeed possessed powerful magic.