[12]. Marsail nic Ailpean is the Gaelic of which an English translation would be Marjory MacAlpine. Nic is a contraction for nighean mhic, “daughter of the line of.”
When Mànus asked Anne to go with him she agreed. The three brothers were ill-pleased at this, for apart from their not wishing their cousin to go so far away, they did not want to lose her, as she not only cooked for them and did all that a woman does, including spinning and weaving, but was most sweet and fair to see, and in the long winter nights sang by the hour together, while Gloom played strange wild airs upon his feadan, a kind of oaten pipe or flute.
She loved him, I know; but there was this reason also for her going, that she was afraid of Gloom. Often upon the moor or on the hill she turned and hastened home, because she heard the lilt and fall of that feadan. It was an eerie thing to her, to be going through the twilight when she thought the three men were in the house, smoking after their supper, and suddenly to hear beyond and coming toward her the shrill song of that oaten flute, playing “The Dance of the Dead,” or “The Flow and Ebb,” or “The Shadow-Reel.”
That, sometimes at least, he knew she was there was clear to her, because, as she stole rapidly through the tangled fern and gale, she would hear a mocking laugh follow her like a leaping thing.
Mànus was not there on the night when she told Marcus and his brothers that she was going. He was in the haven on board the Luath, with his two mates, he singing in the moonshine as all three sat mending their fishing gear.
After the supper was done, the three brothers sat smoking and talking over an offer that had been made about some Shetland sheep. For a time, Anne watched them in silence. They were not like brothers, she thought. Marcus, tall, broad-shouldered, with yellow hair and strangely dark blue-black eyes and black eyebrows; stern, with a weary look on his sun-brown face. The light from the peats glinted upon the tawny curve of thick hair that trailed from his upper lip, for he had the caisean-feusag of the Northmen. Gloom, slighter of build, dark of hue and hair, but with hairless face; with thin, white, long-fingered hands that had ever a nervous motion, as though they were tide-wrack. There was always a frown on the centre of his forehead, even when he smiled with his thin lips and dusky, unbetraying eyes. He looked what he was, the brain of the Achannas. Not only did he have the English as though native to that tongue, but could and did read strange unnecessary books. Moreover, he was the only son of Robert Achanna to whom the old man had imparted his store of learning, for Achanna had been a school-master in his youth, in Galloway, and he had intended Gloom for the priesthood. His voice, too, was low and clear, but cold as pale-green water running under ice. As for Seumas, he was more like Marcus than Gloom, though not so fair. He had the same brown hair and shadowy hazel eyes, the same pale and smooth face, with something of the same intent look which characterised the long-time missing, and probably dead, eldest brother, Alasdair. He, too, was tall and gaunt. On Seumas’s face there was that indescribable, as to some of course imperceptible, look which is indicated by the phrase “the dusk of the shadow,” though few there are who know what they mean by that, or, knowing, are fain to say.
Suddenly, and without any word or reason for it, Gloom turned and spoke to her.
“Well, Anne, and what is it?”
“I did not speak, Gloom.”
“True for you, mo cailinn. But it’s about to speak you were.”