Free The Highwayman's Curse by Nicola Morgan Page A

terrible things happening to me, every night, as soon as it was dark and the shadows came. But now, I dinna know whether to believe or no’. By day, I dinna, but by night…” This I understood all too well.
    â€œAnd why does she say you are cursed?” asked Bess. I sensed a dislike in her voice, as though she had little sympathy for Iona.
    â€œShe said one o’ the soldiers cursed her, when he was taunting her mother and telling her to sign the oath. Then, many years later, the gipsies took her only daughter for a wife. And her youngest grandson, Hamish, my uncle – the one who would no’ have ye killed on a Sabbath – had a daughter who died only four days old and another is blind. My two other uncles, Red and Billy, have no children, nor wives neither, and nor does Mouldy. So she thinks the women o’ our line are none o’ us pure enough in God’s eyes, because the soldier made her impure by touching her as he did, and so we deserve our curse. And my father has one daughter.” At this, she pointed to herself. “So Old Maggie is waiting for something bad to happen to me. And if it does, she’ll no’ be weeping – she’ll be pleased to see her words come true.”
    Silently, I rinsed out the tankard in well water. It was a story with power and yet it had begun merely with the cruel and ignorant words of a soldier. And belief in those words had grown it into a story with the strength to hold for generations.
    â€œThe soldier merely used the words of a curse to frighten her mother so that she would give way,” I argued. “It has no power.” Bess said nothing and I could not tell her thoughts from her face in those shadows.
    â€œAye, but the women in her line have all come to a bad end,” said Iona simply. “It must have power. I try to tell myself that it means nothing, but I canna help but fear it.”
    The peat torch sent its smoke swirling around her head, lending her a ghostly appearance, sending black shadows across her face, and I shivered. It seemed to me that Old Maggie had lost her heart and held only onto her hatred. And her hatred was keeping the curse strong.
    A curse may be a powerful thing. I knew that much. It holds even the wisest man in its grip and in the darkness and the wavering shadows anything is possible.
    That is its power.

Chapter Thirteen
    I did not sleep easily that night. My head throbbed dully. Never had I slept with so many bodies in one room, and I do not think Bess had either. Tam, Jeannie and Old Maggie slept in the box-bed near the fire. Thomas and Jock slept at the other end of the dwelling, Jock on a pallet which they pulled from under a smaller box-bed, and Thomas on this box-bed, with Iona. I know not where they normally slept. I think perhaps Jeannie and Jock would have had the main box-bed. With Tam? Or Iona? I did not know about the others. I only knew that in my own home we had each had a separate bed and that in the homes of the poor there was much need to share.
    The corpse still lay at the other end of the dwelling, the trestle table pushed to one side.
    Billy sat hunched by the window, with the shutter a little way open – he watched, for what I knew not. Calum still had not returned from wherever he was. Mouldy and Red also were not with us – perhaps they had one of the other two cottages around the yard. And Hamish was at his own abode over the hill, I had learnt. Bess and I lay near the fire, the floor hard and lumpy beneath us, but we were warm enough under the thick, hairy blankets that Jeannie found for us.
    Iona had become silent again as we went inside. She would not look at Old Maggie. She had kissed her father, Thomas, good night, and Jeannie had ruffled her hair and wrapped her round in her big arms, but Iona seemed not to like this. She shrank away and looked cross, as though too old for such things.
    Jeannie bade us sleep while we could because we would be woken