Her place was in the very back, among the meanest of the servants. Ahead, the bowed backs graduated in rank, with Mrs. MacKellar far up front, just behind meek Lady Argyll, Lord Lorne, and Ewen Cameron, whose red kilt blazed sharply alien amid all the blue and green of the Campbell tartan. And before them all stood Mac Cailein Mor’s long, stooped figure, telling of the anger, jealousy, cruelty of a God who could surely have nothing to do with the opal world outside. With cold satisfaction and in grim detail he described God’s will (which seemed indistinguishable from Argyll’s will); and his pale eyes were most disconcerting, for if one seemed fixed upon Siubhan or Peigi, the other seemed to stare straight at Kelpie, and who was to know what himself was really looking at, whatever?
“Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it,” said Argyll. “He shall destroy the minions of Satan, those evildoers who are not of the Kirk, who blasphemously question the Covenant. For all those who are not with the Covenant are against the Lord and vile in His sight. They shall burn forever in Hell, and above all shall burn all witches and that servant of the Devil, Montrose. They shall be tormented—”
Kelpie felt the presence of the messenger in the open door behind her, but dared not turn to look. She saw Argyll’s eye flicker briefly in that direction and noticed the slight pause before he went coldly on with his orders to and from God. And something inside Kelpie stirred, and she knew that something was about to happen which would be important to her.
Dropping her dark head over clasped hands in an attitude of great reverence, she tried to think what it could be. There was nothing she had done. Unless—Had Ewen Cameron said something about yesterday?
For yesterday Kelpie had found her first opportunity to get away over to the wing which held the chambers of Mac Cailein Mor and his family. She had actually reached his door, and as she hesitated there, heart beating quickly, another door nearby had opened, and through it came a lad of about fifteen.
Kelpie had not needed to look at the oddness of a Cameron tartan in the Campbell stronghold to know that this was Ewen, the grandson of Lochiel. Ian had told her about him, and she had seen him now and again about the castle. And Peigi had told her proudly how fine it was that Mac Cailein Mor was taking on himself the education of his nephew, for fear it should be neglected or his own family should teach him to believe the wrong things.
Kelpie had hidden a cynical smile at the time, but now, when the grave, clear-eyed lad stood regarding her in the hall, she wondered briefly how much this “education” would really mean. For he had about him the air of one with a mind of his own.
“You’ll be Sheena, will you not?” he asked as Kelpie belatedly made a stiff bob. She nodded. “Best not to linger here,” he went on. “If my uncle should see you—”
“Aye,” Kelpie had murmured, and slipped away back to her own territory with the odd feeling that he had seen through her mask—not, perhaps, that he knew exactly what was under it, but that he knew she was alien to this world of Inverary.