Chapter 19: The Plan

Hamish kept the lodge shuttered through all of December, and on Hogmanay eve the snow lay a foot deep on the glen.

Before dusk I went to the chapel yard with Morag's cold chisel.

The iron ring still sat in the old seer's slate, sunk in its ring of lead.

I chipped the lead away in a quarter of an hour.

I wrapped the ring in a wool glove and put it in my pocket.

Seers' graves have rings so that we can ask the dead a question.

I meant to ask this one in front of a kirk full of people.

Niall came up from the cellar at the first star and found me at the gate.

He stopped a few paces away, and his nostrils flared.

"You have iron on you."

"In my left pocket."

"I will walk on your right."

We went down the glen road together in the dusk, with his sleeve brushing my sleeve and the snow squeaking under my boots.

He walked bareheaded, with his hair loose on his collar.

The first house we passed had a light in the window, and a woman at the glass.

She stood very straight when she saw him.

Then she lifted a hand, and held it up till we had gone by.

The manse was a square stone house beside the kirk.

The minister opened his own door with a candle in his hand and a face the colour of tallow.

He saw Niall on his step in the snow, and he tried to shut the door.

Niall put two fingers against it.

The door stayed where it was.

"Good evening," he said.

He stepped over the sill.

The minister backed away from him into the hall.

We stood in his parlour.

It had a Bible on a stand, a clock, and two small pairs of boots drying by the fire.

The minister held on to the back of a chair.

"Hamish Gow has sent word to every elder," he said.

"The service is to be held at midnight, with the doors open, and you are to be present."

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