Picking the Ballad's Bones (28 page)

"But that will keep draining me
indefinitely, boss," she complained.

"Only for seven years, dear, at which
time you fork them over to us—"

"Fork 'em over?" the Stupidity and
Ignorance Devil chuckled. "That was a good one, boss. Yeah, fork
'em over right in the—"

"I got it, dammit!" DD
snapped.

"I think you've been a little too
indiscreet lately, DD, pushing your minions and victims until they
expose themselves to the world. I think it's about time we kept our
minions staunch and righteous and free of drink and drugs and
sexual exploits—it always makes them deadlier anyway when they can
feel pure about doing as we like. Then you can come back in, after
the seven years, when people are no longer so cynical about looking
for the connection between our works and your substances. You're
getting a little trite. So I want you to handle this. Have your
minions destroy that twanging talisman of theirs and then we'll see
how badly you're needed."

* * *

Gussie drove toward Drumlanrig Castle,
clan seat of the Scotts and home of the Duke of Buccleuch. Walter
Scott was telling her about the Duchess who was once accused of
witchcraft, when all of a sudden Gussie felt something ringing
under her bottom.

What with everything that had been
happening, including living the last few months possessed by the
ghost of Scotland's most famous novelist, she didn't wonder for a
moment if she was imagining things. First she said, "Did you do
that?" to Scott and when he disclaimed any knowledge of it, she
pulled over into the broom by the side of the road. By then the
ringing had occurred twice more, again coming from beneath the
driver's seat. She stuck her hand under the seat and fished around
until she touched smooth plastic. "Gotcha," she said to the
cellular phone, answering it by the fourth ring.
"Hello?"

"Hi, there. Who's this?" asked the
voice on the other end.

"Gussie Turner. I think you have the
wrong number. Who were you calling?"

"Aren't you the lady that came with
the Randolphs?" the pleasant male voice asked. "Remember me? Dan?
It's Terry's and my van you're answering."

"Oh! Oh, Dan. Where are
you?"

"In Polar Circalen. Above
the Arctic Circle. We're on
our way to the
airport and were hoping you would bring the van and pick us up.
We've got some people we'd like you to meet."

"How was the African
festival?"

"Fantastic. We met the
coolest guy from Kenya who's
into
Icelandic music and we thought maybe he could
help you guys with your problem."

Gussie had a vision of Terry and Dan
standing astride a band of ice, accompanied by an African in yellow
Kente cloth tribal dress and carrying an accordion, or whatever it
was Norwegians played. Walter Scott, however, was excited. "Many of
the magical ballads had roots in Norway and Iceland," Wat told
Gussie. "Ask them if they found any Norwegian variants of our
ballads while they were there—there's also a German named Grundtvig
who found German songs that were at least parallel to the ones we
sing here in Scotland."

Gussie relayed the message
and Dan said,
"
Yeah
,
yeah,
Gachero knows all that stuff and besides, we've got some pals from
Iceland with us who know
all
the old stories and songs. You have just got to
see the way they usually perform them. I wish we could have gotten
the whole crowd together, but there's only three who can come, plus
Gachero and a couple of other Scottish guys from the band Terry
used to be in. How're Ellie and Faron?"

"They're up in Edinburgh researching.
Wat—my friend—was showing me some of the historical sites of border
ballads and so on. He's an expert on the reivers and such. But
Ellie will want to know, were you able to replace your
instruments?"

"Sort of. I convinced Terry that
instead of a new guitar and fiddle we needed a bunch of African and
Norwegian instruments for the same price. Like you said, the clerks
never checked the signature and saw we weren't named Curtis. I'm
sure Terry can repair her guitar and fiddle when she gets home. One
of the guys coming with us is a luthier and he could probably do it
for parts."

Dan seemed to be in no
hurry to get off the extremely long-distance call and wanted to
chat awhile. Frankly,
Gussie was glad of
the company. "It's good to hear from you," she said. "The others
have—uh—gone off researching too so there's nobody here most of the
time but Wat and me."

"So who's this Wat guy, Gussie?" Dan
asked jovially. "New boyfriend?"

"You might call him a
'soul mate,'" she said.

"Uh-huh. Well, we're going to be
flying back in the morning. So, what do you think, can you pick us
up? If not, maybe we can rent a car and meet you. Where you
staying?"

She gave him the address and he said,
"If we do have to rent a car, is it okay with Ellie's dad if we use
the card again?"

"I'll ask her. Can you call
back?"

"Sure. When do you expect the
Randolphs and those other folks back?"

"I'm supposed to pick up the Randolphs
tonight but it will be—a while—before the others return. I'll tell
you about it when you get here," she said.

"Cool," he said, and gave her the
airline information, then rang off.

"Engaging young man," Sir Walter said.
"In bygone days, minstrels were not so ready to share their songs
or their territory for fear of losing their livelihood."

"Were minstrels still around when you
were alive?"

"Not your traditional sort of
minstrels. But we had many of their descendants here on the
Borders, beneficiaries, I'm sure my ancestor the Wizard would say,
of the fission of souls."

"Is that so?"

"Indeed. Some of the ballads—'Kinmont
Willie' and 'Jock o' the Side'—were written aboot business
associates of my ane ancestors, the Bold Buccleuch and Auld Wat,
for whom I'm named."

"Is that so?"

"Aye, they were bonny men. Bold and
daring, brave as bears and honorable—did you know they scorned to
kill anyone unnecessarily?"

"No, really?"

"Aye, it was part of the Borders
code," he said, and she felt his pride swelling her own
breast.

"Sounds like the Code of the West,"
she said.

"Oh, aye?"

"Yeah. You never got a chance to see
the American West, did you, Wat? You'd have liked it. Or at least,
you would have liked the movies and books about it. Knowing you
now, I wonder if maybe Zane Grey and Louie L'Amour might not have
gotten a bit of you when your soul fizzed, if the Wizard's theory
is right. You bein' a sheriff and all, I think you would have found
it real interesting."

"No doot. But we've a wee drive still
if you're tae see Drumlanrig and return in time to collect the
Randolphs."

"Y'all drive as much around here as we
do in Texas, 'cept the roads aren't as good."

"They were worse in my day," he
reminded her.

Drumlanrig was a very long way,
southwest of Galashiels, and the phone call had come shortly after
Gussie left the Carr estate.

"Yarrow," she said, "is that the same
as the Dowie Dens?"

"None other," he responded. "These
hills are full of ballads, full of murder holes and the lairs of
the reivers where they'd hide during the day on their way back from
a raid, avoiding the hot trod."

"I thought you didn't have cars in
those days," she said.

"Of course we do, woman. We've been
staying in the home of Carrs, who were, by the way, off and on
ancestral enemies of the Scotts."

"Now you tell me," she said. "Anyway,
Janet doesn't seem to hold any ancestral grudges. She's been very
neighborly and helpful."

"Aye," he said. "Would you like to see
some of the places I'm talking aboot then?"

The banjo began playing a song, "The
Rolling Hills of the Border."

"What's that tower over
there?"

"'Tis a Peel tower,
fortification for the Border barons against the English and
sometimes against each other."

He told her how the towers could be
seized by burning the doors or taking the roof but that otherwise
they were impervious to assault, which was why there were still so
many standing.

They reached Drumlanrig by
midafternoon. Gussie admired the great circular staircase out front
and the great circular staircase indoors with the old masters
lining the stairwell and the silver chandelier with nineteen stone
of silver dolphins hanging from the ceiling. She splurged on a
scarf in the Scott tartan, which pleased Sir Walter, who was much
better than any tour guide whispering stories and song lyrics to
her all through the day.

He was telling her the story of
"Armstrong's Farewell," which she knew as "The Parting Glass," when
they reached the intersection at Elvanfoot. She thought the sign
said to go south for a while to reach the turn back north toward
Edinburgh, but the farther she drove, the darker it grew and still
no turn until they found themselves at Moffat again.

"Damn," she said. "Faron and Ellie are
going to think something's happened. Let's call the library before
it closes and have them meet us somewhere that will be open." She
stopped the car and got out and fished for the phone again, since
she had dutifully hidden it to prevent theft when she stopped at
the castle.

The librarians were not all that happy
to receive phone calls for patrons, but they relayed the message to
meet at the pub near Sir Walter's memorial, the tallest structure
in Edinburgh. It looked a little like a Siamese shrine, Gussie
thought.

She was insisting to the
librarian that there
was
such a shrine when the sort of vehicle that's
called a Winnebago in the U.S. regardless of make and a caravan in
Britain drove past the parked van, put on its brakes, and stopped.
Gussie looked up in time to see rough, swarthy-looking men piling
out while the banjo twanged loudly.

"Hold!" Wat said. "What's this the
banjo's playing?"

"I don't know, Wat, but I
don't think those are Pakistani tourists coming to ask directions.
Let's blow this joint." She jumped back into the van, flipped the
key in the ignition, and gunned the motor. That was fine in a James
Bond movie but the van didn't take it very well and by the time it
coughed and sputtered its way
into
motion, the Gypsies had piled back into their own
vehicle and caught up with Gussie. As she passed the Ettrick
Forest, the Gypsy vehicle hogged the little road beside the van,
trying to run it off the road.

Unfortunately, at that
moment an oil tanker bore down upon both of them from the opposite
direction.
This
was not a four-lane highway the three vehicles fought over;
this was a one-and-a-half-lane cowpath. Gussie kept driving off the
road and down an embankment into the forest, where the van stopped
a hairbreadth from the tree fixed in its headlamps like a
moth.

Brakes squealed and tires screeched
from the road. No explosion. The tanker hadn't hit then. Gussie
rammed the van into reverse and hit something with a crunch of
metal and plastic.

Through the trees, headlights jiggled
crazily.

"The hell with this," she said,
grabbing her basket bag with the banjo inside and the keys to the
van and taking off through the trees. "You said there were all
kinds of hiding places around here, Wat. Do you know where they
are?"

"Well—er—no. I know they're here
because they were once used, you see, but when I needed sich a
place for my stories I moved it aboot to wherever I needed
it."

"Well, move one this way," she said,
running deeper into the forest, which was better than the Christmas
tree farms they'd seen in other places, though not by
much.

"You're spry for
an auld
lass," Wat
observed. "Wait! Hark!"

"What?" She paused, holding her breath
to hear beyond the trees bobbing in the wind and the tall grass
swishing back and forth. From the direction of the road, a set of
headlights beamed down to the right of her present position. She
zigzagged farther away from them, tripping over a stone and falling
headlong against one of the tree trunks.

"That. Listen."

Somewhere in the distance she heard a
call, like an Indian war whoop, "A', a', a', a'."

And at that sound, though she didn't
remember bending her knees or rising to her feet, she was suddenly
up and moving fast, closer and closer to the sound, which she heard
repeated again, this time with words before it. As she cleared
several trees she saw something cheering—a fire—campers! Maybe even
folk song-singing campers, because as she ran closer, she made out
more of the words.

The refrain was a cross between a
banshee's lament and a battle cry: "Fy, lads! Shout a'a'a'a'/My
gear's a' gane!"