Tide (The Sarah Midnight Trilogy) Read online

  “You’ve seen that demon before?” Nicholas seemed deeply interested all of a sudden.

  Sarah’s voice was shaking. “It got me on the way to Sean’s cottage.”

  Nicholas winced.

  “I wounded it but I couldn’t kill it. The Midnight gaze didn’t work on it.”

  “It can’t be!” Sean exclaimed. “The Midnight gaze works on all demons!”

  “It didn’t seem like it worked on this one.” Sarah said bitterly. “I need to find it. And kill it,” she continued, her eyes hard.

  “That’s what I wanted to do, but you stopped me,” said Elodie to Nicholas.

  “I’d never seen anything like that. I just didn’t know what we were facing. I couldn’t let it kill you,” he replied. His words had a strange echo to his own ears. Like I really don’t want her dead.

  “I’ll do this. I think it’s the demon that killed my aunt,” said Sarah.

  “Sarah,” Sean began.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be stupid with it. I’ll take care, wait for the right moment. Come upstairs, Nicholas. I’ll get you cleaned up and show you your room.”

  Your room? No sharing, then? thought Sean. The knot in his stomach loosened a little.

  Sarah brushed past him on her way upstairs but wouldn’t bring her eyes to meet his.

  30

  Ghosts

  I remember the little wall,

  And the hazelnut trees

  And how your paintbrush

  Captured the scene.

  Were you the woman they said,

  Or someone we have forgotten?

  Sarah was sitting in front of the fire in what had been her parents’ room, and before that, her grandparents’. She had gathered her legs to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. The stack of brittle, yellowed letters was laid carefully on the rug in front of her. The faint sound of Niall playing the piano was drifting up from downstairs, a beautiful, wistful melody that fit perfectly with the island. Everyone else was in the music room, listening to him. But Sarah needed some time by herself.

  She had gone through her parents’ things. She’d found her mother’s clothes in the wardrobe, her father’s books in the bedside table. There were framed photographs of them on the mantelpiece, and Anne’s perfumes on the dressing table. It had been torture, and comfort, all mixed together.

  She’d gone through the drawers too, looking for a picture of Mairead, but there was no sign. It was as if her memory had been utterly deleted from her parents’ lives, from their minds. But why? In the many years she’d visited Islay with her parents, she’d never seen anything belonging to Mairead, or even hinting at her existence, and now she’d searched her parents’ room as she couldn’t have done when they were alive. Still nothing.

  Instead, Sarah had found a mother-of-pearl framed picture of Stewart and Fiona, Harry’s parents, and between them, Harry. Fair hair, serious eyes, a thoughtful, solemn look on his young face. In that picture he must have been no older than five. She’d run downstairs to give Elodie the picture for her to keep, and Elodie had accepted it gratefully, her eyes welling up.

  “I wish I’d known him,” Sarah had said.

  “You had so much in common, Sarah,” Elodie had whispered.

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes. He was very stubborn too.”

  Sarah couldn’t help laughing.

  Back upstairs, Sarah knew that now the time had come. She was going to go through her grandmother’s letters. She felt full of trepidation as she fingered the creamy paper. Something told her these letters weren’t going to be full of quaint memories and the kind of family stories that get repeated with a smile through the generations. Not many of those for the Midnights.

  Sarah was afraid. After what Cathy had said about her father that terrible day – that he’d left Cathy, his wife, because she couldn’t provide an heir – and how Morag Midnight had been involved in her repudiation, Sarah feared discovering anything more about the blood that flowed in her own veins. Still, she had to know. She took a deep breath and lifted the first page, only to put it down again at once, all determination deserting her.

  The fire was dancing in the hearth, and the earlier drizzle had turned to rain, tapping gently on the windows. Sarah could hear her own breathing, her own heartbeat, both getting faster. Anxiety was overwhelming her.

  She laid the first letter back on top of the stack then got up and straightened her bed, trying to make the covers as smooth as possible. Next she sorted her mother’s perfumes on the dressing table, aligned the picture frames on the mantelpiece with military precision, though they were already perfectly placed. She threw all of the clothes she’d brought out of the chest of drawers and folded them again, one by one, setting them back in the drawers in perfect order. Finally she sat at the dressing table and brushed her hair, looking at her reflection in the stained antique mirror.

  Exasperated with herself, she got up and stood in the centre of the room, scanning desperately for something else to tidy. She found nothing. She hid her face in her hands.

  I’ve got to read these letters. Someone left them for me for a reason.

  Sarah breathed deeply and sat down by the fire again. She lifted the letters into her lap. She couldn’t look away now. Her family was her history, no matter what. She tucked her hair behind her ears and started reading.

  That’s it, she thought. Now there’s no turning back.

  Islay, July 1971

  Dear Amelia,

  I hope all is well with you. You’ve ended up so far away!

  You’ve been gone three months now, and I miss you, as you can imagine. I’m not one to judge, and your family will not divulge what happened, but I’m sure it was Angus who made a mess of your engagement. A weakling, I’ve always said. And now it’s you having to be sent away. What a loss for us all. How short-sighted are Angus and his family!

  Anyway, nobody will say a word about what happened. As long as you know that, like I told you many times, I don’t blame you. I know Angus Fitzgerald is not the easiest of men. Much better to have broken the engagement now than to spend a lifetime of misery. I pray every day for you to find a suitable husband, so you can fulfil your duty: produce more Secret heirs. I know that there are quite a few Secret Families in New Zealand. I have no doubt you’ll be settled there soon, and everything will be as it should be.

  As for my news: it’s finished, at last. Mairead was born yesterday. She’s lying in her little cot and I can’t get enough of looking at her. She has soft, fine, baby blonde hair – will she remain blonde, like her brothers and me? She’s tiny – but all the Midnight women are, small and very, very strong. And strong she will be.

  When she started kicking inside me, I knew it was a girl – remember I told you that night you came down from Kirkwall? It had to be, with all the potions and herbs I took to have a baby girl. My boys are extraordinary, as you know – James, carrying the Blackwater, and Stewart, with his Midnight gaze. I’m very proud of them. James in particular is the one who takes after me the most. But it was time I had a daughter I could train in witchcraft and relinquish the power of dreams to at last.

  I’ve been carrying the power of dreams for seventeen years already. I want to pass on the burden. Only girls can be Dreamers in the Midnight family – so I did all that was in my power to have one.

  Labour took forever, which I was prepared for – what I wasn’t prepared for was dreaming through it, though I was awake. That never happened to me before. To have a vision of a sea demon while giving birth was … well, you know what it can be like, don’t you.

  I survived. I’m not one to complain.

  But there was something strange, and I can’t tell anybody else. Mairead was screaming as she was born, and I know that’s what babies are supposed to do, but there was something in her cry that chilled me. She didn’t stop for hours.

  I worry she’s seen something too, something from my dream.

  She exhausted herself crying and barely took an
y milk from me. She’s still so unsettled, sleeping in fits of an hour or two before waking again. In a way perhaps it’s good she was broken in so early – barely born, and she knows already what it’s like for us. On the other hand, I fear that the dream hurt her somehow. Damaged her.

  I hope I can undo the damage, if there is any – but if she has to live with it, well, that will be one of the many things she has to endure as a Midnight woman and as a Secret heir. You know yourself how strong we have to be, Amelia.

  When Mairead comes into her dreams, I’ll be able to go hunting with Hamish and my sons. I can’t wait for that day! It’s too dangerous now. I’m the only Dreamer in the west of Scotland, so we can’t risk my life. My mother left me to go hunting when I was barely three days old. That same night she was killed. I can’t remember her at all, but like her, I’m longing to do more than dreaming and witchcraft. I want to be the one holding the blade, I want to watch Hamish and James dissolving the Surari into Blackwater. Nothing can compare to that moment – the moment Hamish’s face changes as he disappears into that trance, the supreme joy of the Blackwater coming, and the way the bodies dissolve gradually, not at once – so we can see the terror in their eyes as they melt. I’ve hardly ever seen that – I have always been sheltered, ever since my sister died and I became the precious Dreamer – but I was trained anyway, for the day I could finally pass on the gift to the next Dreamer. And that day will come in thirteen years’ time.

  I know you don’t carry the dreams. It’s difficult to explain what it’s like. Dreaming is like nothing else. You must be strong. Yes, you must be strong and whatever you do, never complain. Because complaining doesn’t get you anywhere. I live with it. So will Mairead. It has its compensations.

  It’s sad that there’s nobody left of my family to meet Mairead. My parents and my sister are long gone. I watch Mairead sleeping, and I smile to myself thinking of what she’ll grow up to be. My blood is pure, that’s why my sons are so powerful, and why my daughter will be too. My sister Elizabeth – Eliza – was always weak, not like my mother and me. And she hated being the Dreamer.

  She took to going on long walks wearing silly summer dresses, or even her nightdress, come rain or shine – and being Argyll, it was more often rain – until she got what she wanted. She caught pneumonia, and even when my father and the doctors did their utmost to keep her alive, she defied them. I remember one night sneaking into her room and finding that she’d removed her drip and that it was hanging, drip-drip-dripping onto the floor, little drops of blood on the sheets where she’d yanked it out of her arm. I told my father of course, and they put it back in and employed a nurse to watch she didn’t spit her pills and choke up her food or pull out her drip again.

  No use. Two weeks later she died. I heard my father whispering with the doctors – the nurse had fallen asleep and my sister had dragged herself to the window, opened it and stood there, breathing the freezing night air, though she was burning with fever. After that, she burnt up for days, wheezing, her lungs full of fluid, and she died without waking again.

  I was relieved for Eliza because I knew that’s what she wanted, but I resented her for being so weak. Who was she to decide she could give up?

  I wasn’t frightened to be the Dreamer of the family now, not for a minute. I knew that unlike my sister I could take it. Yes, I tried to make them stop a few times when they were really terrible. I tried to stay awake day after day and ended up falling asleep during dinner, just like that, with my face on the table, or outside on the beach by the house, where I’d go hoping the cold would keep me awake. My father would carry me to bed so that I could fall properly asleep, and the dreams could come the way they’re supposed to. So there was no way out really.

  All this built my character and I’m grateful for it. Mairead will go through it the same way, and come out a true fighter like me. I know she will.

  I suppose it’s not that bad, really. Dreaming. One mostly gets used to it. It’s only when the demons kill me – I haven’t got used to that yet. To think that in my dreams I’ve died so many times, in so many different ways, and still I’m not used to it. The pain can be a bit much, even for me.

  Yes, it’s only when the Surari actually kill me that I see why my sister kept ripping that drip from her arm. But then, she gave up, and I won’t.

  In thirteen years’ time I’ll be free, and it’ll be Mairead’s turn. Perhaps it’s just as well she got a taste of it so early in life – the sooner you start toughening up the better it is for the Midnight women.

  Midnight Hall is silent and empty with Hamish gone. The boys are sleeping in their beds. From my room I can see the black, black sky over the cliffs …

  Sarah looked out of the window to the scene that Morag described. The sky was darkening slowly – winter was wrapping Islay in an eternal night, it seemed. Sarah could picture Morag at the window, her proud, straight back, her blonde, wavy hair gathered in a knot at the nape of her neck.

  … I’m listening to the wind coming off the sea. It howls all around Midnight Hall. Mairead has woken again. What a restless baby! Not like her brothers. They slept peacefully, hour after hour. I nearly had to wake them to feed them, they were so mellow. Mairead just won’t settle, she won’t stop crying – I have no choice but to leave her to it.

  I must stop now and go to my bed, in case a dream comes. She will stop crying, sooner or later.

  I shall write again soon. And remember, I don’t blame you for what happened with Angus.

  Yours,

  Morag Midnight

  Sarah laid the letter down and put a hand to her mouth. So Eliza wanted to die. She couldn’t take the dreaming. And poor Mairead, to suffer like that from the moment she was born! The full horror of the legacy swept over Sarah like a cold wave.

  Right at that moment she contemplated the idea of thrusting the letters into the fire, one by one, as she’d done with her dream diary. She didn’t want to know how the story unfolded. She didn’t want to be part of it. She didn’t want to be part of that line of women with such a burden. But she was, and there was no choice to be made.

  A knock at the door made her jump.

  “Sarah?”

  It was Nicholas. “Come in,” she called, trying in vain to erase the shock from her face.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just … reading about my family.”

  Nicholas wrapped his arms around her, his woodsmoke scent enveloping her once more. “Oh, family. Yes. Families can mess you up big time.” Wait until you meet my father.

  Sarah waited for the wave of dizziness to come, the one she so often felt when Nicholas was around – that sense of her thoughts disappearing and strength leaving her.

  It didn’t happen. It hadn’t happened for a while, she realized.

  “Do you want to be alone?”

  Sarah thought about it for a moment. “No. Stay. I want you to know.” She freed herself gently and handed him the letter she’d just read.

  Nicholas sat at the fire and read while Sarah studied the flames.

  “Poor girl,” he commented finally. “Elizabeth, I mean. She was broken.”

  I’ve seen a broken girl before, he thought. I broke her.

  “I just hope the same doesn’t happen to me,” said Sarah.

  Nicholas felt cold. “Why do you say that?”

  “I don’t know.” Sarah shrugged. “Just a feeling I’ve always had. That one day I won’t be able to take it anymore. That all this,” she gestured at the room around her, full of photographs of her family, “will end up destroying me. And you know,” she leaned her head on his shoulder, “I really want to live. Have a proper life, I mean. Like everyone else. Play my music …”

  “Yes. I understand.” Believe me, I do. Nicholas leant towards her and placed a soft kiss on the top of her head. And I’m going to take it all away from you. He felt ill, ill with the cruelty of it all. With the inevitability of it all. He held her tight once more. Too tight.

&
nbsp; “Nicholas, you’re hurting me.”

  “Oh, sorry,” he whispered, and loosened his grip.

  “Hey, you’re shaking,” said Sarah softly, looking into his face.

  “Am I? Well, it’s quite cold in here.” Nicholas avoided meeting her eyes.

  A sense of foreboding crept over Sarah, covered her like a black shroud. She sensed that the story about to unfold would be a terrible one, and that the ghosts of Midnight Hall were not going to leave her alone until she’d heard it all. Nicholas felt her anxiety rising and tried to distract her.

  “Look,” he whispered, and pointed at the fire. From red, the flames started turning blue, yellow, green and then all black, and red again. “Like your stained-glass window.”

  Sarah smiled. “It’s beautiful.” She touched Nicholas’s wounded cheek gently. “Does is still hurt?”

  “No. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about anything.”

  “Why did the ravens attack you, Nicholas?”

  “I don’t know.”

  You do. But you’re not telling. “Don’t keep secrets from me.”

  “Sarah,” Nicholas replied wearily.

  She waited for him to tell her he wasn’t hiding anything from her. But he didn’t.

  “Can I stay with you tonight?” he asked instead.

  Sarah drew in breath, softly. She wasn’t expecting that.

  “Nicholas …”

  He put his hands up. “It’s not like that, not if you’re not ready.”

  Sarah shook her head and looked down. She wasn’t.

  “I just don’t want to be alone tonight. And maybe you don’t want it either,” he whispered, lifting her chin tenderly with his hand.

  All of a sudden, a name crossed Sarah’s mind: Sean. It was like a stab in her heart, a loss too painful to bear.

  She looked Nicholas in the eye. “Yes. You can stay.”

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms, but it wasn’t long before Sarah woke. Nicholas was tossing and turning, moaning in his sleep. Repeating the same word over and over again, a word Sarah couldn’t quite make out.