She headed to the right first, looking for signs of Caishen’s body washed up by the tide, along with seaweed, shells, and dead wood. She walked for an hour and found nothing and no sign of the row boats either. Aihan turned back and retraced her steps, pausing occasionally to sip on her meagre water supply. The sun was warm on her back, although a breeze tugged at her garments and hair as she trudged.
Reaching her starting point, she set off to the left. This took longer because the terrain was more broken up by rocks and there were more places that a body might be wedged, but again after two hours, by the position of the sun, she had found nothing. She returned to the little harbour, her heart heavy.No sign of Caishen. She must conclude the water had taken him or beached him farther afield than she expected. And no sign of the row boats. But perhaps she could hire one to take her back out, if she found some trace of her brother....
This time she struck out for the buildings, conscious that she only had three days to find out what had happened to her brother before the ship would sail without her.
On the beach she had encountered no one, but venturing up into the village Aihan immediately began to attract attention. Her clothing, she noted, was very different from that of the other females she saw, who all wore long gowns with high waists under their cloaks. Her blue silk tunic and trousers attracted stares and whispers and frowns of disapproval. She clutched her pack where it was strapped to her front and strode on, her face flushing with embarrassment.
These foreign women were all fragile things, ignorant and weak; they would not last five minutes in a fight. She had to find this Mac Sceacháin—that was the name her brother had given her. If she could find him, she could find out what had happened to her brother.
The streets were lined with rude buildings made of stone with hard edges and rough surfaces. Ugly by comparison with the elegant lines and curves of houses at home. She trudged along, her stomach rumbling and her mouth dry.I need food and drink. Will those strange coins purchase me sustenance? If so, from where?
Winding her way through the streets of the village, she came upon a building that appeared to serve food and drink to passersby. They had a stable, too, where horses were accommodated. A sign with a spotted chicken above the door swung in the breeze, and she entered, ignoring the stares of those who stood about outside.
Inside there was a long, chest-high bench along one wall separating the man who stood behind it from the rest of the room. A fire burned in a hearth at the back, and the roomwas filled with tables at which an assortment of men and a few women sat with jars of liquor and plates of food before them. The general hum of conversation stopped dead when she entered, as everyone turned to stare at her. Aihan ignored them and strode over to the man behind the high bench. She had one of the coins clutched in her palm; she laid it on the top of the bench and said, “Food! Drink!” in Mandarin. The man just gaped at her. She dredged her mind for the few words of Eng-ish, the native language of these people, that her brother had taught her on the long voyage. She gestured towards her mouth, making chewing motions, and then lifted an imaginary pot to her lips and swallowed. “Food. Drink.” She enunciated slowly.
He nodded and said something she couldn’t follow. But the coin vanished, and some others replaced it, which she scooped up and shoved in her pocket, and soon after a plate and a pot appeared on the bench. The plate contained a slice of some kind of pastry filled with meat, a wedge of pungent yellow cheese and a slice of crusty bread smothered in butter. The pot contained some dark liquid. She nodded and thanked him politely, although he had no clue what she was saying. She took the plate and pot to a table in the corner of the room, where she sat with her back to the wall, keeping the whole room in sight.
She ate the strange food and found it odd but largely not unpalatable. The pastry contained some kind of jellied meat. The cheese was hard and had an odd flavour. The butter she scraped off the bread, finding it too fatty for her taste.
The dark liquor was bitter but refreshing, and she drank it all, being very thirsty. Wiping her mouth, she sat back against the wall, closing her eyes momentarily to let her stomach settle.Mac Sceacháin, she repeated the strange words beneath her breath as her brother had taught her to say it:Mac Skeehain. She rose from her place and went back to the high bench where the man was still standing, serving pots of drink to customers.She waited until he was finished with several customers and then boldly caught his eye and beckoned him over. He wiped his hands on a cloth and made a noise:Aye?Whatever that meant.
“Mac Skeehain.” she said.
“Huh?” The man frowned at her.
“Mac Skeehain,” she repeated.
He shook his head at her.
“Mac Skeehain! Mac Skeehain!” Frustration made her voice rise a bit. She took a breath and repeated slowly “Mac Skee-hain . . . ?”
“Aye!” The man nodded with a smile. “Laird Sceacháin.”
“Where?” she asked, spreading her hands.
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then disappeared through a door behind him. He came back in a moment with a piece of paper on which was a drawing. He pointed to a square on the paper and tapped the bench, then pointed at her and himself.
She nodded, pointing, “here!” She smiled.
He then pointed at a series of lines leading from the first square to another one. “Mac Sceacháin hoose.”
She grinned and bowed in thanks. She fished in her pocket and gave him back the coins he had given her in change earlier.
He gathered them up and nodded to her. “Guid luck, lassie.”
With the paper in hand, she left the building and tried to follow the directions in the sketch. It took her two hours and multiple attempts to communicate with the locals before she finally found the house that belonged to the Mac Sceacháin.
It was coming onto dusk, the sun dropping to the horizon, streaked across the grounds, catching the glazing in the windows and turning it to blinding gold. It was a big, solid building, made of grey stone, ugly to her way of thinking. Double story and double fronted, slate roofed. She circled it, examining it from all angles, keeping to the trees and shadows, careful not to bespotted. Not that there was anyone about that she could see. The house had a heavy, sad air about it.Bad chi, she thought.
She crept into the stable. The horses nickered at her; she patted them and looked about for somewhere to hide. The wooden building had a thatched roof and, above the horse stalls, a mezzanine floor, accessible via a ladder. She mounted the ladder and found some hay and an old blanket. It was enough. She raked the hay up into a pile, spread the old blanket over it and, using her cloak as a wrap and her pack as pillow, settled down to sleep.
Chapter Two
Malcolm Douglas Thornton, the Laird Mac Sceacháin, or Col to a few intimates, stuck a fork in the piece of mutton on his plate and wrestled his knife through the tough sinews. The fire behind him crackled in the hearth and the clock ticked on the mantelpiece, the only sounds other than those of his dinner companions’ knives wrestling with the meat. He sat at the head of the table as befitted the head of the house, and his sons—dark-haired Rory, twelve, and ginger Callum, ten—flanked him. Beyond them sat his elderly servant Fergus and Fergus’s grandson Willy, a freckled ginger like Callum, but darker. Such was the extent of his household.
The blessed silence suited his mood; the melancholy had been bad since his brother Merlow had left with his new wife, Hetty, after a fleeting visit of but a fortnight. Hetty’s presence, as wonderful as it had been, had stirred up all kinds of memories, and Col found himself plunged once more into the kind of dark fog he had not experienced for a year or more. The black melancholy had plagued him on and off in the six years since his wife’s death, but less and less in the last two years. Now it was threatening to come back and swallow him whole once more.
To have a pretty woman in the kitchen cooking delicious meals, cleaning the layers of dust off the furniture, putting flowers in vases, and singing—singing! Col shook his head to shake off the memory. It hurt too much.
