At the Water's Edge

  "Was he frustrated when he called the courthouse? Because two policemen from Inverness came about half an hour ago to arrest Angus."

  Hank looked up sharply. "Ellis? Is that true?"

  "Why the hell are you asking him?" My voice, overtaxed, came out in broken shards. "Do you think he's suddenly going to start telling the truth? He lied about being color-blind to get out of the war, for Christ's sake!" My words echoed back to me, bouncing off the hills on the opposite shore.

  Ellis stepped over the middle bench. I saw his closed fist coming at my head, and the next thing I knew I was lying in water at the bottom of the boat, my vision filled with starbursts.

  "Jesus Christ, Ellis!" Hank shouted. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

  I lay huddled in the bow, waiting for my sight to return.

  "Get that fucking thing back here right now! Ellis, I mean it! Get back here!"

  "Gonna have a quick word with my wife first," Ellis called over, almost cheerfully.

  "Ellis, if you don't bring that boat back this very second--"

  "There isn't much you can do about it, is there?"

  I hauled myself up on my elbows, my head wobbling. We were a dozen yards from shore. Ellis was sitting on the middle bench, staring at me, smirking.

  "So it's true," I said.

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "You can see color."

  He shrugged. "So what? It doesn't matter."

  "It doesn't matter?"

  "No one else will ever know. But don't fret about your appointment, darling--the facilities are quite luxurious."

  "Ellis!" Hank bellowed from shore.

  "Once I get off this boat," I said quietly, "you're never going to see me again, except maybe in divorce court. You've got nothing left to hold over me."

  "Oh, but I do. You're incapacitated, which makes me your legal guardian. All I have to do is call the hospital."

  "The hospital can't take me away if they can't find me, and they won't."

  "Ellis! Turn around!" Hank roared.

  "Oh, and by the way, Angus couldn't be arrested for poaching at Craig Gairbh because he is the Laird of Craig Gairbh," I continued. "I suppose that makes you cousins of some sort, although I fail to see a resemblance."

  We locked eyes, as if seeing each other for the first time. The water lapped against the side of the boat, which was starting to bob.

  "Ellis!" Hank bellowed. "For God's sake, turn around!"

  "Leave us the hell alone, Hank! I'll bring the boat back when I'm good and ready!"

  "Look!" Hank screamed, and his voice was so guttural, so uncontrolled, we couldn't help ourselves.

  He was filming furiously. He stuck his other arm out from under the raincoat just long enough to point. "Over there! It was long and black and curved. It came up for just a moment--the wake has to be at least sixty feet long! Holy shit! This is it! I'm getting it! I'm fucking getting it! Ellis, this is going to be fucking spectacular!"

  Ellis's expression shifted and he twisted in his seat. I grabbed the edge of the boat and leaned over to look. Something large, dark, and rounded was moving quickly beneath the water. By the time I realized it was rising, it had rammed the bottom of the bow and flipped me into the air.

  My mouth and nose filled with water before I fully comprehended that I was beneath the surface.

  The cold was shocking. Thousands of bubbles, both big and small, rushed past me. It was air escaping from my clothing, and since I knew the bubbles must be going up, I must be facing down. I bucked instinctively in an effort to right myself.

  The bubbles slowed, which meant that my clothes were becoming saturated. My one and only thought was to get free of my coat, but while I could bring my hands together in front of me, my fingers were too cold to obey. I could find the buttons, touch the buttons, even feel the thread that kept them attached to my coat, but could do nothing at all about unfastening them. Eventually, my hands drifted helplessly away.

  I looked up at the surface and, as though through thick, wavy glass, saw Ellis standing in the boat holding an oar. It sliced through the surface and came to a stop against my chest.

  With enormous force of will, I managed to bring my hands back in front of me and locked my fingers around its shaft, just above the blade. I kept hold of it and, after what seemed like an eternity, wondered why I wasn't moving toward the boat. Bewildered, I looked up and saw Ellis's determined face through the millions of tiny strands of peat in the water.

  He wasn't saving me. He was making sure I stayed under.

  I tried to push the oar away, but it was futile. He moved it to the center of my chest and pushed me deeper still, until a final stream of bubbles escaped my nostrils. My consciousness flickered, the surface receded, and then there was silence.

  What happened next was like being sucked into an inverted waterfall. An arm swooped firmly around me and I was propelled upward, exploding through the surface with a deafening crash of waves. Then I was being hauled through the water, quickly, from behind.

  "Hold on, mo gradh, I've got you," Angus said directly into my ear. His free arm backstroked steadily, his legs pumped furiously beneath us. I tried to take a breath, but my chest wouldn't budge. I couldn't even lift my hands to hold onto his arm.

  My eyes drifted shut, and I fought to keep them open. One moment, I saw clouds churning and rolling above me looking for all the world like a living thing; and the next, nothing.

  Clouds, nothing. Clouds, nothing. And finally, just nothing.

  Chapter Forty-three

  The next thing I was aware of was Angus's mouth covering mine, followed by me vomiting water. He flipped me onto my side and a spasm ripped through my rib cage, sending another stream of water flying from my nose and mouth. I drew a hoarse, gurgling breath--my first since going under.

  Angus pulled me into a sitting position and wrapped his coat around me.

  "What the hell?" said Hank, ducking out from beneath his raincoat tent. "Jesus Christ--what happened? Maddie, are you okay?"

  "No, she's not okay," Angus barked. "She's half-drowned and frozen. Give me your coat."

  Hank struggled out of it and thrust it at Angus. "What happened? I didn't even see her go in." He looked at me again. "My God, her hands and face are blue."

  Angus wrapped me in the second coat and scooped me into his arms.

  "I'm taking her to the corn-drying kiln," he said. "It's the intact room in the opposite wall. Run as fast as your legs will carry you to the first white house to the north. It's the McKenzies' croft. Tell them what happened and have them send for the bobby. He'll bring his car."

  As Angus carried me through the Water Gate, holding my head against his shoulder, I looked back at the loch.

  Ellis was still in the boat, paddling like a madman with a single oar. The other was floating away from him.

  --

  Hank returned with Mhathair, the two of them bustling in with armfuls of quilts and blankets. Before I knew it, Mhathair had replaced the coats and swaddled me like a baby, depositing me on the edge of the ancient kiln and then sitting right next to me, pulling the edges of her own coat as far around me as they'd reach. I leaned against her, quaking with the cold, alternately drawing shallow breaths and coughing violently.

  Angus wrapped a blanket around his drenched clothes like a kilt and paced. Each time I was wracked by coughs, he rushed over to prop me up so Mhathair could thump my back.

  Hank crouched against the wall, pale. After a while, he climbed to his feet.

  "I suppose I'll go see if I can get that fool back on dry land," he said.

  "If I were you," said Angus, "I'd grab my camera and leave that amadain right where he is."

  "I know that was a pretty rotten trick he tried to pull on you, but surely you don't want him to drown out there," Hank said.

  "I would like nothing more," said Angus, "although I expect he'll find his way back, if only to take care of the evidence."

  "If you mean the camera
, I think it's pretty well protected by my raincoat."

  "I do indeed mean the camera. But it's not the rain it needs protecting from. In addition to anything else you might have captured on film was your friend's attempt to murder his wife."

  "What? No. That's ridiculous." After a slight pause, Hank jerked around to face me. "Maddie, is that true?"

  I managed to nod.

  He stared at me for a few seconds as understanding dawned. Then he turned and marched out the door.

  From my perch on the kiln, I had a perfect view of the Water Gate. Hank crashed through the weeds, paused beneath its arch, and looked down at the landing. Then he bellowed like a wild animal and tore down the hill. There were several minutes of angry shouting, amplified by the water but none of it comprehensible.

  When Hank reappeared, he was changed. He plodded back to the kiln room with his face pointed at the ground and his shoulders slouched. His arms didn't even swing. He looked like an upright corpse.

  He slid down the wall until he was crouching against it. He looked at the floor between his legs, resting his forearms on his knees and letting his hands dangle. They were bloodied and scraped.

  "He made it back before I got there," he finally said. "He threw the camera in the loch."

  The rest of us remained silent.

  He looked at me, his eyes bleak. "You tried to tell me and I didn't listen. I thought I knew him. Can you ever forgive me?"

  I remained huddled against Mhathair, not even attempting a response.

  "No, of course you can't," Hank continued. "I can't make it up to you, I know that. But I really didn't know--I don't even know when he found the time to slip off to the phone booth. We're almost always together. But I swear, if he called the hospital as well as the courthouse, I won't let them take you anywhere."

  "You!" Angus sputtered. "You won't even get a crack at the bastart who's fool enough to show up trying to take Maddie away. Someone's brains will get scrambled, I promise you that. And I'll scramble the whole of that coward at the bottom of the slope, brains and all, while I'm at it. He'd better hope Bob the Bobby locks him up right quick, before I get the opportunity."

  Hank watched Angus while he spoke, then dropped his head again.

  When Bob showed up, Angus carried me to the car, and Mhathair and Hank followed. No one suggested we get Ellis.

  --

  As we drove back to the inn, Bob said, "So you're telling me there was photographic evidence of the attempted murder, but it's gone?"

  "Aye," said Angus.

  Bob turned to Hank, who was in the passenger seat, staring out the side window. "And you're saying you didn't see a thing?"

  "Just the monster," Hank said despondently.

  "But you were right there!" Bob slapped the steering wheel twice for emphasis.

  "I was focused on filming."

  Bob glanced at him a couple of times in exasperation, then sighed. "Well, there's one eyewitness, and fortunately the intended victim is still around to testify. I can certainly arrest him based on that."

  We reached the inn and pulled up in front of it, the gravel crunching beneath the cold, hard rubber of the tires.

  Bob twisted around in his seat, watching as Angus lifted me from the car.

  "I'll fetch Dr. McLean," he said, "and then I suppose I should go collect the pathetic creutair. I canna remember the last time I had someone in my holding cell." He sighed again. "I suppose I'll be expected to feed him."

  --

  As soon as Angus carried me up the stairs, Anna, Meg, and Mhathair wrested me away and banished him with orders to get himself properly dried off.

  In short order, there was a fire roaring in my grate, they'd dressed me in a heavy nightgown, and placed me under so many covers I couldn't move. They tucked stoneware pigs by my feet, and Mhathair--after pressing her ear to my chest and shaking her head--disappeared for a while and returned with a steaming, smelly poultice that she shoved down the front of my nightgown. She put crushed garlic between all of my toes and wrapped my feet. When she replaced the quilts, she laid an extra one, still folded, across the bottom of the bed, weighing me down even further.

  I withstood it all without protest. When I wasn't coughing, my lungs rattled. I was too weak to move, and lay with my eyes aimed vaguely toward the fire, drifting in and out of a fitful trance, reliving what I'd thought would be my final moments--the weightless, almost leisurely rolling in the water, the deafening whoosh of bubbles bursting up from all around me, the knocking of the oars inside the oarlocks. The first moments, when I tried to figure out how to survive, and the final moments, when I accepted that I would not.

  Ellis had recognized an opportunity to get rid of me and seized it without a second's hesitation. My inheritance, his inheritance, his dirty little secret--all of it could be secured at once, with only a minute or two's effort.

  Ellis would deny what he'd done, of course, touting my mental condition as proof that my testimony was unreliable, and saying that Angus had misinterpreted what was going on. He would probably even frame himself as a thwarted hero, claiming he'd been seconds away from hauling me into the boat, and that Angus's interference had subjected me to being in the water even longer.

  I wondered how he'd explain the missing camera, or Hank's version of events, because while he might be able to cast doubt on my testimony, that was not true of Hank, and I doubted very much that he would be easily quieted.

  Was it really the monster we'd encountered? We'd never know. Because of Ellis, no one would ever know.

  Chapter Forty-four

  My fitful trance was actually hypothermia, according to Dr. McLean, although, with an appreciative nod toward Mhathair, he declared me sufficiently warmed up to be past danger in that regard. However, he said I had pseudopneumonia from taking in water, and the important thing now was to prevent it from turning into real pneumonia, which could turn deadly in a matter of hours. He pulled a bottle of bright green tonic from his bag and set it on the dresser.

  "This contains an expectorant. We want her to cough everything out."

  "What about castor oil?" Anna said anxiously.

  The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid it won't help."

  Anna sucked the air through her teeth in despair.

  --

  Over the course of the night, my temperature rose and fell, and I went from boiling to freezing in the space of seconds. I was wracked by terrible coughing fits, and in between, felt my lungs crackle whenever I took a breath. I was at the complete mercy of my body.

  I would clutch the covers to me, begging for someone to throw more logs on the fire. Then I'd kick the covers away from me, sometimes managing to hurl them to the floor. Mhathair replaced them every time, calmly, gently.

  She was in and out with poultices, alternating onion-and-vinegar mash with mustard plaster. When the unbearable heat rose in me, I flung them away. She replaced them in the same composed manner she did the bedclothes. She hovered in the background, doing mysterious things, seeming more like a pair of competent hands, a set of nimble fingers, than Mhathair the actual person.

  Angus never left my side. When I was sweltering and crying for ice, he mopped my brow and dribbled tiny bits of water onto my tongue. When my body bucked and heaved from the cold, he tucked the covers around me and stroked my face. There was not one moment the entire night when I could not open my eyes and immediately find his face.

  At one point, in the wee hours of the morning, when I was so wracked by fever that my jaw was clenched and aching, Angus laid a hand on my forehead and looked up in alarm.

  Mhathair also felt my forehead, then rushed from the room. Angus stripped the bedclothes back and held my limp body forward as he pulled my nightgown over my head. Then he wrung out cold facecloths and lay them all over my clammy skin.

  A few minutes later, Mhathair came back, and I found myself propped up between them, being forced to sip some kind of tea. It was full of honey, but not enough to mask the bitter taste underneath. As
they eased me back onto the bed, I was already slipping into a darkness as deep as the loch. The moment before everything disappeared, a pretty young woman with sad eyes appeared in front of me. She was floating, with her gown and hair billowing around her. It was Mairi--I knew it instinctively. She mouthed something to me and lifted her arms, but before I could make out what she was saying, she--and everything else--faded away.

  The next thing I remember was waking up and not being sure where I was. I blinked a few times, and found myself looking into Angus's blue eyes. He'd pulled the chair up to the bed.

  Mhathair reached over from the other side and laid a hand on my forehead.

  "The fever's broken, thanks be to Heaven," she said. "She's come through."

  Angus shut his eyes for a moment, then lifted my hand and kissed it.

  "Never scare me like that again, mo chridhe. I thought I'd lost you, and I've lost enough to the loch already."

  --

  Although my fever had broken, I was in no condition to get out of bed. The coughing alone was exhausting, as well as agonizing.

  Anna was knitting by the fire and I was resting my eyes when there was a rapping on the doorframe.

  "Knock, knock," said Hank. "Are you receiving visitors?"

  "I should think not," Anna said sternly. "Not when she's in this state."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be glib. Please, Maddie--may I have a word? Alone?"

  "She's recuperating, you fool," said Anna. "Whatever it is can wait."

  "It's all right," I whispered. My voice was nearly gone from all the coughing.

  Anna stared at Hank for a couple of seconds, then held up the splayed fingers of one hand. "Five minutes," she announced. "And not one minute more. I'll be in the hallway."

  She set her knitting on the floor and sailed out, throwing Hank a searing look as she passed.

  He hovered uncomfortably, fidgeting, as though he didn't know what to do with his hands. I was afraid he might light a cigarette. Finally he walked around the bed to the chair. He plopped into it, crossed his legs, and stared at the mantel.

  "Did he really try to drown you?" he finally asked. "I mean, are you positive?"

  Only after the words were out did he look at me. I stared straight at him. He dropped his gaze and took a deep breath.