On the Edge of Darkness. Barbara Erskine

see you again!’ He had been terrified for her after he had fled from her village, his memory of the tall, angry man and the gleaming knife-blade haunting his worse nightmares.

      ‘A-dam, shortbread?’ She sat down beside him and, reaching for his knapsack, rummaged through it hopefully. It contained his bird book and field glasses, the notebook and an apple.

      He shrugged. ‘No shortbread. Sorry.’

      ‘No shortbread. Sorry,’ she repeated.

      ‘Have the apple.’ He picked it out and handed it to her.

      She looked at it doubtfully.

      ‘Surely you know an apple!’ He shook his head in despair and taking it back from her took a huge bite to demonstrate.

      She laughed and nodded and taking it back from him followed suit, displaying her small white teeth. Like him she had grown taller in the intervening months.

      ‘Apple good.’ She nodded.

      ‘Brid, why was that man so angry when I came to your village? Who was he?’ He was trying to mime the question.

      She looked at him and for a moment he thought she understood. The quick intelligence in her eyes, the sudden tension of her shoulders betrayed her, but she shook her head and smiled. ‘Apple good,’ she repeated.

      Frustrated, he shrugged. Then he had an idea. ‘I’m going to teach you some more English,’ he announced suddenly. ‘Then we can talk properly.’

      His lessons went on all through the summer. Adam, his knapsack laden with shortbread, or scones or chocolate cake – immediately popular with Brid – met her on the long evenings and at weekends and then in the vacation. Most of the time they stayed on the southern slopes of the hillside, making no attempt to go to her village. He had pushed Brid on the subject of the man’s identity, but she had changed the subject with a shrug. One thing was clear however: whoever he was, she was very afraid of him. A couple of times they visited the cottage where her mother lived, just for the summer, he discovered, so Gartnait could be near the carving, for carving the slab seemed to be his full-time occupation. In the winter it appeared he had a workshop and men to help him but there was something special about this carving, something special about this stone, so that he had to work on it in situ. Sometimes they would sit and watch him for hours and he too would join in the language lessons while he worked, his chisels, hammers, punches and polishing stones laid out neatly in a row beside him.

      Brid was a very fast learner and talkative and it was not long before she had overcome the frustrations of not being able to communicate with her companion. Adam for his part had already found out from his lamentable marks in Latin and French at school that languages were not amongst his strengths. His tongue tied itself in knots around the words she tried to teach him and he could remember few of them though he loved the way she laughed till she cried when he tried. Her fluency though made it easy for her to avoid his questions when she wanted to, and eventually he gave up asking about her village and her people. Gypsies, he supposed, must be naturally secretive, and with that conclusion he had to be content.

      Jeannie Barron, discovering that chocolate cake was one of the ways to make Adam happy, made them more often and the two young people grew brown together in the sun as they picnicked and paddled in the burns through the hot spell. Adam made no effort to see the boys who had once been his friends. He no longer knew or cared if they avoided him. He seldom saw his father, who himself stayed out late more often. If he had known that Thomas was spending more and more time in agonised prayer, locked alone in the kirk, he might have felt a glimmer of sympathy, he might have sensed his father’s turmoil and loneliness and confusion, but he did not allow himself to think about his father at all. There were only three adults now in his life whom he trusted: Donald Ferguson, one of his science masters at school, Jeannie Barron, and Brid’s mother, Gemma.

      ‘A-dam, today we go see eagles.’ Brid adored his bird book. She pored over the pages and told him the names of many of the birds in her own tongue – names he could never remember. To his surprise she couldn’t write, so he had added that skill to his lessons, reassuring her when she fumbled with pencils, praising her when they found to the surprise of both of them that she could draw.

      The eagles had an eyrie high on the side of Ben Dearg. To reach it they had to walk for a couple of hours, scrambling over increasingly steep rock and heather before stopping and sliding down the first of the deep corries that ran from east to west across the high moor. Halfway along, near the foot of the rockface, a torrent of brown burn water cascaded over a cliff some twenty feet or so into a circular pool before racing on down the mountainside. As they came to the edge of the cliff, several deer looked up startled and stared at them for a moment before bounding away out of sight.

      Adam smiled at her. She was wearing as she always did a simple tunic, this one dyed in soft blues and greens, tied at the waist with a leather girdle in which she wore a serviceable knife. On her feet she wore sandals, not buckled like his but fastened round the ankles with long ribbon-like thongs. Her long hair she had fastened back with a silver clip. ‘We gave them a fright.’

      She nodded. She had reached the pool first and she stopped and waited for him. Adam fell to his knees and bent over the water, splashing it over his hot face. ‘We could swim here.’ He grinned at her. ‘It’s deep. Look.’

      She looked at him doubtfully and then at the dark water. ‘Swimming not allowed here.’

      ‘Why not? You paddle in the burn. It’s not that deep. I’ll show you.’

      Before she could stop him he had pulled his shirt over his head and kicked off his shorts. Dressed only in his underpants, he leaped into the brown water.

      It was much deeper than he expected and ice cold. He swam a few strokes under water, reached the vertical rock wall on the far side, ducked into a turn and rose to the surface gasping.

      ‘A-dam!’ Brid was kneeling on the rock at the edge of the pool. She was looking furious now. She held out her hands to him. ‘Come out. You must not swim.’

      ‘Why not?’ He shook his wet hair out of his eyes and struck out across the pool towards her. He was there in four strokes. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?’

      She was pulling at his arm. ‘Get out! Get out! Get out quickly!’ She stamped her foot.

      ‘What is it, Brid? What’s wrong?’ He levered himself out beside her. ‘You’re not afraid, surely?’

      ‘A-dam! The lady in the pool. You have not paid her!’ Brid was whispering angrily.

      ‘The lady?’ He stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

      ‘The lady. She lives in the pool. She looks after it.’

      Adam looked puzzled for a moment, then light dawned. ‘Like the cailleach, you mean? The old witch. A spirit. Brid! You don’t believe that? That’s wicked. That’s against the Bible.’ He was shocked.

      She shook her head, not understanding him. Going to the knapsack which was lying on the ground in the shade of a rock, she rummaged in it until she found the greaseproof-wrapped cake. Opening the paper she drew her knife and carefully cut the wedge of cake into three. ‘For A-dam. For Brid. And for the Lady.’ She pointed to each slice in turn. Picking up the third piece she walked with it to the edge of the pool and climbed carefully out onto the rocks, which were slippery with spray, until she was as close as possible to the waterfall. Crumbling the cake between her fingers, slowly she dropped it piece by piece beneath the cascade, chanting some words under her breath as she did so.

      When she had finished she stood still for a moment, staring round anxiously as though waiting to see if her offering had been accepted.

      ‘Brid!’ Adam was appalled.

      She silenced him with an abrupt gesture, still scanning the water, then she pointed. He saw a small shadow flash past and it was gone.

      ‘That was a trout,’ he said indignantly.

      She shook her head. Then