He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.
"I don't know about herring," he said absently.
"For mice, though, you hang bunches of Trembling Jock, and you'll never see a moose, you know. Bodies under the foundation, though—that's where a lot of the local ghosts come from.
You know Mountgerald, the big house at the end of the High Street? There's a ghost there, a workman on the house who was killed as a sacrifice for the foundation.
In the eighteenth century sometime; that's really fairly recent," he added thoughtfully.
"The story goes that by order of the house's owner, one wall was built up first, then a stone block was dropped from the top of it onto one of the workmen—presumably a dislikable fellow was chosen for the sacrifice—and he was buried then in the cellar and the rest of the house built up over him.
He haunts the cellar where he was killed, except on the anniversary of his death and the four Old Days."
"Old Days?"
"The ancient feasts," he explained, still lost in his mental notes.
"Hogmanay, that's New Year's, Midsummer Day, Beltane and All Hallows'. Druids, Beaker Folk, early Picts, everybody kept the sun feasts and the fire feasts, so far as we know. Anyway, ghosts are freed on the holy days, and can wander about at will, to do harm or good as they please." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
"It's getting on for Beltane—close to the spring equinox. Best keep an eye out, next time you pass the kirkyard." His eyes twinkled, and I realized the trance had ended. I laughed.
"Are there a number of famous local ghosts, then?" He shrugged.
"Don't know. We'll ask the Vicar, shall we, next time we see him?"
We saw the Vicar quite shortly, in fact. He, along with most of the other inhabitants of the village, was down in the pub, having a lager and light in celebration of the houses' new sanctification.
He seemed rather embarrassed at being caught in the act of condoning acts of paganism, as it were, but brushed it off as merely a local observance with historical color, like the Wearing of the Green.
"Really rather fascinating, you know," he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush.
Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Douglas at once settled down to the mating dance of academy, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions.
I shrugged and made my own way through the crowd to the bar and back, a large brandy-and- splash in each hand.
Knowing from experience how difficult it was to distract Douglas's attention from this sort of discussion, I simply picked up his hand, wrapped his fingers about the stem of the glass and left him to his own devices.
I found Mrs. Fiona on a deep bench near the window, sharing a companionable pint of bitter with an elderly man whom she introduced to me as Mr. Crook.
"This is the man I told you about, Mrs. Affleck," she said, eyes bright with the stimulation of alcohol and company.
"The one as knows about plants of all sorts.
"Mrs. Affleck is very much interested in wee plants," she confided to her companion, who inclined his head in a combination of politeness and deafness.
"Presses them in books and such."
"Do you, indeed?" Mr. Crook asked, one tufted white brow raised in interest.
"I've some presses—the real ones, mind— for plants and such. Got them from my nephew, when he come up from university over his holiday. He brought them for me, and I'd not the heart to tell him I never uses such things. Hangin's what's wanted for herbs, you can, or maybe to be dried on a frame and put in a bit on a gauze bag or a jar, but wherever you'd be after squashing the wee things flat, I've no idea."
"Well, to look at, maybe," Mrs. Fiona interjected kindly.
"Mrs. Affleck's made some lovely bits out of mallow blossoms, and violets, same as you could put in a frame and hang on the wall, like."
"Mmmphm " Mr. Crook's seamed face seemed to be admitting a dubious possibility to this suggestion.
"Well, if they're of any use to you, you can have the presses, and welcome. I did not wish to be throwing them away, but I must say I've no use for them."
I assured Mr Crook that I would be delighted to make use of the plant presses, and still more delighted if he would show me where some of the rarer plants in the area could be found.
He eyed me sharply for a moment, head to one side like an elderly kestrel, but appeared finally to decide that my interest was genuine, and we fixed it up that I should meet him in the morning for a tour of the local shrubbery.
Douglas, I knew, meant to go into Shetland for the day to consult some records in the town hall there, and I was pleased to have an excuse not to accompany him. One record was much like another, so far as I was concerned.
Soon after this, Douglas pried himself away from the Vicar, and we walked home in company with Mrs. Fiona.
I was reluctant to mention the cock's blood on the doorstep, myself, but Douglas suffered from no such reticence, and questioned her eagerly as to the background of the custom.
"I suppose it's quite old, then?" he asked, swishing a stick along through the roadside weeds. Lamb's-quarters and cinquefoil were already blooming, and I could see the buds of sweet broom swelling; another week and they'd be in flower.
"Oh Yes." Mrs. Fiona waddled along at a brisk pace, asking no quarter from our younger limbs.
"Older than anyone knows, Mr. Affleck. Even back before the days of the giants."
"Giants?" I asked.
"Yes. Fionn and the Feinn."
"Gaelic folktales," Douglas remarked with interest.
"Heroes, you know. Probably from Norse roots. There's a lot of the Norse influence round here, and all the way up the coast to the West. Some of the place names are Norse, you know, not Gaelic at all."
I rolled my eyes, sensing another outburst, but Mrs. Fiona smiled kindly and encouraged him, saying that was true, then, she'd been up to the north, and seen the Two Brothers stone, and that was Norse, wasn't it?
"The Norsemen came down on that coast hundreds times between 400 and 1300AD or so," Douglas said, looking dreamily at the horizon, seeing dragon-ships in the windswept cloud.
"Vikings, you know. And they brought a lot of their own myths along. It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here."
This I could believe. Twilight was coming on, and so was a storm. In the eerie light beneath the clouds, even the thoroughly modern houses along the road looked as ancient and as sinister as the weathered Pictish stone that stood a hundred-feet away, guarding the crossroads it had marked for a thousand years. It seemed a good night to be inside with the shutters fastened.
Rather than staying cozily in Mrs. Fiona's parlor to be entertained by stereopticon views of Perth Harbor, though, Douglas chose to keep his appointment for sherry with Mr. Bainbridge, a solicitor with an interest in local historical records.
Bearing in mind my earlier encounter with Mr. Bainbridge, I elected to stay at home with Perth Harbor.
"Try to come back before the storm breaks," I said, kissing Douglas goodbye.
"And give my regards to Mr. Bainbridge."
"Umm, yes. Yes, of course." Carefully not meeting my eye, Douglas shrugged into his overcoat and left, collecting an umbrella from the stand by the door.
I closed the door after him, but left it on the latch so he could get back in. I wandered back toward the parlor, reflecting that Douglas would doubtless pretend that he didn't have a wife—a pretense in which Mr. Bainbridge would cheerfully join.
Not that I could blame him, particularly. At first, everything had gone quite well on our visit to Mr. Bainbridge's home the afternoon before. I had been demure, intelligent but self-effacing, well groomed, and quietly dressed—everything the Perfect Don's Wife should be.
Until the tea was served. I now turned my right hand over, ruefully examining the large blister that ran across the bases of all four fingers.
After all, it was not my fault that Mr. Bainbridge, a widower, made do with a cheap tin teapot instead of a proper crockery one. Nor that the solicitor, seeking to be polite, had asked me to pour out. Nor that the potholder he provided had a worn patch that allowed the red-hot handle of the teapot to come into direct contact with my hand when I picked it up.
No, I decided. Dropping the teapot was a perfectly normal reaction. Dropping it into Mr. Bainbridge's lap was merely an accident of placement; I had to drop it somewhere. It was my exclaiming "Bloody fucking hell!" in a voice that topped Mr. Bainbridge's heartcry that had made Douglas glare at me across the scones.