The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3160 by Angharad Copyright© 2017 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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I sat quietly holding onto Danielle’s hand with its long fingers and painted nails, however could she have been seen as a boy? I excluded everything from my mind except the atmosphere in the castle and tried to latch on to the entity which had just visited us—I’d felt it rather than seen it—but was it still there?

It felt like months, not just minutes when I found myself standing outside my body dressed in a formal dress from a much earlier age. “Who are you?” asked a young woman who was standing opposite me in the great hall.

“I am the Lady Catherine, countess of Pitlochry and Stanebury and who might you be?”

“Dorothea, Lady Gowrie, this is my home, why are you here?”

“I come from a time in the future.”

“You talk nonsense.”

“Do I? You know that you are no longer alive.”

She laughed at me. “If that is so how come I can talk to you?”

“Because I have followed your spirit which wanders your former home, because you seek peace but seem unable to find it.”

“You followed my spirit—what poppycock. What are you, some sort of witch or sorceress? I’ll summon my father and have you cast into prison.”

“You know that he was executed for treason.”

“No, it’s not true, he was a good man.”

“That’s for history to decide. Now tell me, why are you here, you died two hundred years ago?”

She sat at the table and put her hands up over her face. “My mother, she disapproved of my marriage to Rab, she destroyed him just as certainly as if she had stabbed him.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why do you pity me?”

“Because I know how you died. It wasn’t the river which killed you was it?”

“I was already dead, my heart was broken and I couldn’t let her drag me back here, not after my father was gone. Yet here I am, doomed to walk these rooms for all eternity.”

I didn’t bother trying to point out that eternity on earth will only last three or four billion years as the sun will become a red giant and finally a white dwarf and earth will have long ceased to exist, which was a shame because it’s so interesting. I believe education is never wasted and every opportunity should be taken to share it, but I held my tongue.

“How can I help you find peace, there has to be a way?”

“No one can help me,” she cried.

“I can, Lady Dorothea. The well can help, can it not?”

“You believe in fairy tales and legends, do you, Lady Catherine?”

I was going to say that i could believe a dozen impossible things before breakfast but it would be wasted on someone who died in the sixteenth century. “The goddess whom I serve and who sent me here today, leads me to believe that the well has healing qualities which will ease your torment.”

“Goddess—what blasphemy is that?”

“A worship that long preceded your Christian kirk and which is part of the very land on which we stand and the rivers and seas that surround it.”

“Very well, fetch me a drink of the water from the well, but you must speak to no one either on the way to it or back. You must also pay the well for its gift.”

I nodded and told her I would do it. It seemed easy enough, take a glass or bottle with me, hop down to the well and trot back, give her the water and hey ho job done.

Danielle was still holding my hand as I sort of awoke back in real time. “You okay, Mummy?”

“Fine, I need you to stay here and wait for me—both of you.”

“Where are you going?”

“To lift your curse. As soon as I stand up I cannot speak to you, neither can I, when I return until I complete something.”

They looked at me as if I was talking double Dutch. “Do you trust me?”

They both nodded. I got up and ran out to the car where I had a bottle of water. Strathspey, so it said, but I needed some from St Gorval’s well. I emptied the bottle and rushed down to the well. There were a group of Chinese tourists standing around taking selfies of themselves, one grabbed me and I very nearly told him where to go. Instead I pushed him away and continued my task.

Collecting the water was the easy bit, tossing in the pound coin from my pocket to pay for the water, the hard bit was the two Chinese who tried to block my escape. I couldn’t reason with them given my temporary vow of silence. “Why you push my friend?” demanded one of them. So I pushed him and dodged between them, fleeing back to the castle and through the entryway, pursued by three Chinese and the woman from the desk.

I threw myself down on the bench next to Danielle and tried to will myself back into the sixteenth century. As I drifted away I could hear the fracas going on behind me and my two daughters telling people to leave me alone, I’d be okay in a moment.

Amazingly, I found my way back to Lady Dorothea who was sitting at the table with red eyes from crying. “You have returned, Lady Catherine, many have said they would but you have come.”

I put a finger to my lips uncorked the bottle, which somehow had come with me transforming into glass en route. Well polythene in the sixteenth century would be a step too far, wouldn’t it? I handed her the bottle of water.

“Pray for me, Lady Catherine, let me find everlasting peace,” she took a drink from the bottle and her body began to shine as if she had a light inside her. “Sweet Jesu, I am free, pray for me, Lady Catherine...”

As I watched she faded from my view and Shekinah appeared briefly. “I am impressed, Catherine, you can follow instructions—so why do you ignore mine?”

Unsure as to whether I could talk or not, I shrugged and she smiled then laughed loudly. As I woke in the present time, they thought they were having an earth tremor as the building started to shake. “You okay, Mummy?” asked Danielle.

It took a moment to focus myself but I said I was. The woman from the desk asked if I’d had a petite mal or something?

“No, she was releasing your ghost,” snapped Hannah.

“You can’t do that, she’s part of the legend here...”

“You can take her place if you like, she did four hundred years, what would you like to....”

“Never mind, it’s only a fairy tale after all.”

“It wasn’t was it, Mummy?” asked Hannah as we exited the castle.

I smiled back at her and squeezed her hand. A group of Chinese tourists were getting very exercised as they saw me coming out, pointing at me and jabbering in Mandarin. Of which I can’t even say orange in reply. Instead as they pointed their cameras and iPhones at me, I blew them a kiss—well actually a ball of energy and while they jabbered even louder and shook various electronic devices, we escaped in my Jaguar.

“What was that flash back there, Mummy?” asked Hannah as Danielle chuckled to herself.