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The Bagpiper’s Ghost
Jane Yolen
To Debby and Bob, Scottish hosts,
without whom, of course
and to Joanne Lee Stemple, who is a MacFadden
Tartan:
Plaid cloth.
In Scotland each clan
has its own distinctive pattern.
One
Belief
“I don’t believe it!” Peter cried. His body showed his astonishment even more than his face, for his arms and hands were raised, and his feet did a noisy jig under the kitchen table. It was the most animated he’d been in days, even though he was clearly putting it on.
Spoon half lifted, Jennifer looked up from her porridge and stared at her twin. “You don’t believe what?” Given that they had already had days of magic, it wasn’t an idle question.
“Sun,” Peter said, pointing out the window. “And no clouds, not even a hint. Must be my doing. I—Peter the Great.” He waved his right hand as if he were royalty, something he’d just started that morning.
“I can believe sun,” said little Molly, nodding so hard her little dark curls bobbed like Slinky toys. “It’s easy. Sun, sun, you’ve just begun. See?” Molly was in love with rhymes and repetition just now.
Peter turned on her. “Not in Scotland, it isn’t easy,” he told her. “Our sixth day on vacation here, and it’s the first without a cloud in the sky. So I don’t believe it. No—I take that back. It’s beyond belief.”
Jennifer shook her head. Sometimes Peter’s sarcasm was over the top. Especially since they’d turned thirteen. It seemed impossible for one twin to hate the other, but lately Jennifer found Peter exasperating. Like the royal hand-wave thing. Exasperating. That was one of her mother’s words, but useful.
“Nothing’s beyond belief in Scotland,” she reminded him, “now that we’ve found magic.”
“We haven’t found magic,” Peter said. “There aren’t bits of magic lying around that we just stumble over. No, wait a minute. I’m wrong. You just find magic, but it seems to avoid me. Maybe I have M.O.” He glared at Jennifer, which made her feel uncomfortable.
“What’s M.O., Peter?” asked Molly.
Jennifer was glad Molly had asked, because there was no way she herself was getting suckered into Peter’s bad mood. Not with the sun shining and all.
He lifted his arm and shoved his pit toward his little sister. “Magic odor. Like B.O., only worse. Smelly as well as repellent. Magic stays away from me.”
Gran’s white cat walked through the room and stopped to stare at Peter’s uplifted arm.
Peter stared back and gave the cat the royal wave.
Jennifer sighed. “It’s not like I’m looking for magic,” she said. “Not like someone is leaving it on the ground …”
“My Pict stone was on the ground,” said Molly, remembering their last adventure. She spoke with the flat-footed assurance of a four-year-old. “And it was magic.”
“It called magic,” Peter said, determined not to be outwitted by his baby sister. “It wasn’t magic on its own. And Jennifer got to do all the cool stuff while we were out cold.”
“Peter, why are you so determined to be a pain?” Jennifer asked.
“Pain in the rain. Pain in the rain,” sang Molly.
She’s exasperating, too, thought Jennifer. She watched as the cat gave them all a disgusted look and went through the cat door and out into the garden.
“But that’s just what I was saying. It’s not raining!” Peter declared. “So you are all wrong, as usual, and I—Peter the Great—am not.” This time he waved his arm grandly.
There was a roundness to his conversation. A great circle with no end. Jennifer recognized it just in time and bailed out.
“I’m going downtown,” she said. “After breakfast. To Fairburn Castle.”
“Me, too,” Peter said.
“Me, three,” added Molly.
“Mom!” Jennifer and Peter cried out together, their voices eerily similar. Mom, who had been reading a magazine in the other room, came in.
“We want to go for a walk,” Jennifer said.
“Without the kid,” Peter added.
“Jennifer and Peter want some twin time,” Mom said to Molly. She opened her arms wide. “Besides, I need some Molly time, myself. After all, I scarcely saw you at all yesterday. And I missed you dreadfully.”
“You mostly missed the excitement,” said Molly. “And the magic. You went to Edinburgh. Without me. Me, me, me, and Mommy makes three.”
“Two,” Jennifer and Peter said together, but Molly ignored them, preferring her rhyme to reason. Or at least to math.
“That I did,” said Mom. “Better tell me again.”
“You missed the Pictish girl and the tallyman and the …”
As Molly began the whole story, interspersing rhymed words in the telling, Jennifer and Peter slipped out of the kitchen.
In the living room, Jennifer turned on her brother. “I don’t need twin time, and I don’t want you with me,” she said. “You’re in a foul mood, and you’re determined to ruin my day, too.”
“But I’m in a good mood, Jen,” Peter protested. “I am Goodness in person.”
“No, you’re not, Peter the Great.” Jennifer put her hands on her hips. “You don’t even sound like you anymore. So even if we go out the front door together, we are going to split up at the corner of Double Dykes Road.” The tone of her voice gave him no room to argue.
She immediately felt bad about coming down so hard on him. After all, before they’d become teens, they’d done everything together. But now it was boy stuff and girl stuff, Peter stuff and Jennifer stuff. She wasn’t entirely used to it and didn’t entirely like it. The best thing about twins was being a single unit. Forever. But with Peter acting so awful …
“Nah—I’m sticking with you, kid,” he said. “You seem to get in the thick of things here, and I wouldn’t want to miss any of it. This time.”
Jennifer wasn’t sure he meant that admiringly. Lately it had been getting harder and harder to tell what Peter meant.
“Oh—all right,” Jennifer said grudgingly. “But only if you lighten up.”
“I will be lightness entire,” Peter replied. “As light as—this sunny day!”
“There you go again,” she told him.
He grinned at her, his old familiar grin, and suddenly all her anger disappeared.
Maybe, she thought, I’m overreacting. Maybe Peter isn’t moving away from me. Maybe I’m the one who is the problem.
Just then a slim dog the color of ash pushed between them.
“Yer nae leavin’ me behind. A day like this, the sun oot and all. That garden’s nae big enough fer me. I want to spend the forenoon going my dinger.”
Peter looked down at him. “Going your dinger? And what’s that when it’s in English?”
“I’ll give thee English, laddie! Yer American language is nae English. And I am nae English, either. A Scot’s a Scot fer a’ that! ‘Going yer dinger’ simply means to go oot and aboot with vigor, ye young daftie.”
Peter looked at Jennifer and shrugged. “Maybe we should all go our dinger!” He laughed. “And stumble over some magic while we’re at it.”
“Och, nae learned ought yet?” asked the dog, lying down and crossing his paws. “Dinna ye call for magic. It’ll nae be pleased wi’ the summons.”
“Which,” Jennifer pointed out, “is just what Gran would say if she were here.” Gran wasn’t Mom’s real mother or grandmother. She and her husband were actually some older cousins who had helped raise Mom after her
own parents had died in a car crash.
“And where is Gran?” Peter asked, attaching the dog’s leash to the collar.
“The auld carlin is awa,” said the dog. “Gone to Edinburgh, the auld gray toon. Something about a capped tooth.”
“Or a gapped tooth,” Peter said, winking at his sister. “Our gran being a witch, after all.”
“White witch,” Jennifer and the dog said together.
“Whatever.” He shrugged, the smile gone from his face, and lifted the latch to the front door.
Jennifer’s uneasiness returned, seeming to cloud what would otherwise have been a lovely day.
Two
Going Their Dinger
The door shut behind them with a satisfying snick, then Peter held out his hand as if expecting rain. He looked up, then grinned at Jennifer.
“Nae rain, nae haar,” he said with an atrocious Scottish accent.
“Och, stick to the American,” the dog said, disgusted. “No rain, no fog. Have a nice day.” His broad American accent was just as bad as Peter’s Scottish.
Jennifer ignored them both. If the two of them wanted to fight, she’d let them. She doubled the size of her steps and soon left boy and dog far behind.
Turning onto the cobbles of Double Dykes Road, she never looked back, though she could still hear them sniping away at each other. She liked going along on the uneven cobbles rather than the sidewalk. It suited how she felt.
Behind her came snippets of conversation.
“You wouldn’t know a good day if it bit you,” Peter was saying.
“Dinna talk to a dog aboot biting,” came the response. “It might provoke mair than ye’d like, laddie.”
“Try me, big nose.”
“Two leg.”
“One brain.”
“Better than none, ye gormless American daftie …”
Just my luck, Jennifer thought. Peter in an awful mood and a talking dog with an attitude! She laughed out loud. “Now I’m rhyming like Molly” She began to walk faster.
The cobblestone path opened onto the road called Burial Brae and then onto the main street, and soon Jennifer was striding along. It almost seemed that by putting distance between herself and Peter and the dog, she could pretend she didn’t know them. She even began to hum as she walked.
But at the first light, they caught up with her, still arguing.
Jennifer rounded on them both.
“Shut up or get away from me,” she snarled. “Far away.” She was sure her face was as fiery red as her hair.
They fell quiet at once, almost as if silenced by a spell.
Of course, she knew no such silencing spells. As Gran would say, magic takes a lot longer to learn than six rainy vacation days in Scotland.
But, obviously, sometimes a snarl can serve just as well, she thought grimly.
The light changed, and Jennifer and Peter looked carefully both ways for oncoming cars. Magic gone awry was not the only danger here. Traffic in all of Great Britain drove on the left side of the street, not the right. Mom had drummed and drummed that into them. For their safety, they needed to check both lanes before crossing, even though they were teens and not Molly’s age.
The road was clear in both directions. Jennifer bounded across, and Peter followed, yanking the dog along behind. No sooner were they all on the other side than boy and dog were at it again.
“Ye have a hard hand, laddie. Be careful I dinna bite it off.”
“There’s always muzzles, dog breath.”
Jennifer turned and said very quietly to her brother, “Peter, only someone who’s got magic will even have a clue that the dog can talk. But everyone else will certainly wonder why you’re holding such a one-sided conversation. So will you kindly please shut up.” She glared at him. “You’re embarrassing me.”
Peter closed his mouth. His lips made a sharp, thin line, like a long dash in the middle of a sentence.
The dog, however, gnashed his teeth and growled, “Wee, timorous, sleekit, cowerin beastie,” under his breath. He was caught up short when Peter gave his leash an awful yank.
“I’ll coward you, you snot rag …”
After that, they were both silent.
And away from that trembling silence, Jennifer stalked stiff-legged, followed closely by her twin and the dog.
None of them said another word until ten minutes later, when they were in sight of Fairburn Castle, an impressive stone ruin with a couple of standing towers, and below ground, the remnants of a repulsive dungeon in the shape of an old bottle.
The dog spoke a careful, quiet sentence. “Do ye ken it’s haunted?”
“What’s haunted?” Jennifer asked.
Peter remained sullenly silent.
“The castle, ye doited lass,” the dog began, before Peter yanked the leash again.
The dog growled, and a local woman and her two children stared at Peter.
He stared back.
Kneeling, Jennifer loosened the leash, and the dog grinned his toothy, slobbery grin at her.
“Aw, Jen …” Peter began.
“It obviously hurts him,” Jennifer said. “And someone’s likely to arrest you for animal abuse. They take that sort of thing very seriously here.”
“Right on,” the dog said in his bad imitation of an American accent. Then he gave Jennifer a long, slow, aggravating slosh across her lips with his tongue, laughing as she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth in disgust.
“Obviously it didn’t hurt him enough,” Peter grumbled.
Paying no attention to Peter’s grumble or the dog’s laugh, Jennifer stood and said, “You are both impossible.”
“We only aim to please, Jen,” Peter said, and winked at the dog, who—strangely enough—winked back.
“You … you …” Jennifer began.
“She likes us, dog,” Peter said.
“She likes me better,” the dog added.
“Does not.”
Jennifer put her hands on her hips and leaned down till she was nose to nose with the dog. “You said a haunting. What … is … doing … the … haunting?” She separated each word in the careful way one talks to a child or a foreigner.
The dog turned his head and began scratching under his chin with a back leg. It was an insulting sort of scratch. He kept it up for a very long time.
“He doesn’t know,” Peter said. “He’s made it up.”
“He does know,” said Jennifer.
“Doesn’t.”
“Does.”
“Doesn’t.”
Another woman, with a redheaded child in tow, glared at them.
This time it was Jennifer who glared back.
“Before ye start up on World War Three,” the dog said, his scratching over, “I’ll tell ye what haunts Fairburn Castle, if ye like.”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “We like.”
Peter nodded. “So speak, dog.”
The dog’s face got a sly look, and he shut his eyes.
Peter and Jennifer knelt, one on each side of him.
“Please,” they said, one after another. “Please.”
The dog’s eyes snapped open. “Put that way, how can a bodie resist?” He grinned toothily. “The ghost’s a lady in white. White dress, white hat with a veil, white gloves, and a white face, too. She bairges aboot the graveyard behind the ruins as if she’s at some fancy-dress garden party, and not moldering in her grave.”
They turned to him together.
“Have you—” Jennifer began.
“Seen her?” Peter finished.
Then they smiled at each other.
Still twins, then, Jennifer thought, enormously pleased.
Three
Castle
“Of course, I’ve seen her, that paidling maiden,” said the dog. “Any true Scot can see her. And any other ghost. But if yer an Englishman or a villain—or a Campbell, of course—ye canna even get a glimpse.” He shook his head, which made his ears flop.
Peter laughed.
“Ah well, we’re not English and we’re not Campbells …”
“Or villains,” Jennifer added.
Peter nodded.
“So …” Jennifer said carefully, “will we be able to see her?”
The dog shook his head from side to side again, ears flapping like wings.
“Pretty please?” Jennifer added.
The dog cocked his head to one side. “Not now, ye gormless lass.”
The more the dog put her off, the more Jennifer suddenly wanted to see the Lady in White. “Why not now?”
Peter put out a cautionary hand. “Jen …”
But something—Maybe something magic, she thought—compelled her to ask again. “Well, why not?”
The dog grinned, as if in on some great joke. “Because it’s daytime, ye coof.”
“And ghosts don’t come out in the sunlight,” Peter added for good measure. “Only at night.”
“Weel, of course at night. Dinna ye ken that she’s a ghost, lassie?”
“We’re not allowed to go out by ourselves at night,” Jennifer said. “Not even at home.”
“Especially not at home,” Peter said.
The dog’s toothy grin grew wide. His great pink tongue lolled out of his mouth like a dare.
“We could sneak out, I suppose,” Peter said slowly.
“Peter!” Jennifer’s voice registered shock. It was such an un-Peter thing to suggest. But she’d already thought the same thing.
Twins do.
“Tonight,” they both breathed together.
“Good, then that’s settled,” the dog said, and began sniffing the curb, where other dogs clearly had been before him.
They let him do his business, then Peter pulled at the leash again, hauling the dog away from further investigations on the sidewalk or in the road.
“Come on,” Peter said. “Let’s check out the graveyard.”
“For what?” the dog asked. “It’s daylight, ye daftie.”
Jennifer understood what Peter meant and—as usual—tried to explain it. “We need to see everything. Get the lay of the land. Figure out where all the stuff is.” Her hands described large circles in the air. “For tonight.”