Rain swept in from the sea, propelling us up the slope we had come down in such happy curiosity, dampening the leaves of the lonely palm, and beading on the dead bodies of the men we left behind.

  'The domination of men has passed,' Charlie said. 'The time for women is about to begin.'

  'Now there's a good quote for your article,' Lorna was tackling the slope long-strided with her rucksack high on her back, her climbing rope looped at her waist and her boots clacking on the stony ground.

  However energetic Lorna may have been, Kate was well in front, marching up the hill with her hips and shoulders swaying and her head out-thrust. Without a doubt, she was the most determined woman I had ever met.

  I watched Kate for a while, wondering what made her as she was. Perhaps she had inherited her drive from generations of achieving ancestors, with the ruthlessness necessary to rise up the social scale, grab tens of thousands of acres of land and hold onto it through the rollercoaster of history. Maybe it was merely part of her personality, forcing her on, proving herself or testing herself. I did not know.

  I did know that I admired her, whatever her faults. I also knew that we were not alone on that hillside. I had accepted An Cailleach's challenge, and now she beckoned me on. That woman was in front of Kate, matching her pace for pace and occasionally looking over her shoulder, holding me with her gaze, enticing me onward and upward.

  'Who are you?' I mouthed the question, knowing that she would hear me.

  The woman gave a small, enigmatic smile, turned her head away and drifted into the increasingly heavy rain. Although I had a clear view of her face, the second she turned away I forgot it. I could not describe a single feature except the dark intensity of her eyes.

  'We should not have delayed so long at the beach,' Lorna had to raise her voice above the hammer of the rain.

  'If we hadn't' I said, 'we would not have found these men and An Cailleach would have another mystery.' Strangely I was not upset about finding the dead climbers. Unlike Charlie I was not overly concerned about being first up the mountain, so had no feeling of triumph to tamper any true sorrow over a death. I just accepted the fact that these two men had been alive and now they were dead. I had not known them, I would not mourn them, and I did not think their deaths made my journey any more perilous.

  Does that sound terribly selfish of me? I think it does, but I am resolved to write the truth and so I shall.

  'Come on, girls!' Kate stopped to encourage us. I will never forget that image of her, standing on a prominent rock above us with her legs apart and the wind tossing her raven-black hair. Ignoring the rain that dripped from her bare head and the ends of her jacket, she leaned on her long stick and smiled down on us, like an elder sister or a benevolent Girl Guide leader. That was the best side of Kate, our leader.

  'We're coming.' Lorna said.

  'We're going to the Shelter Stone,' Kate told us.

  'We would be faster going directly up the hill,' Charlie said.

  'There's no need for speed,' Kate said. 'We're the only people here.' She lowered her voice. 'We're the only people left and better to go slow and get there in one piece than rush and end up like these men we left under the palm.' Kate glanced at Christine. 'Under the cabbage palm.'

  The reminder sobered us.

  'Besides, I wish to visit the Shelter Stone,' Kate said. 'We might never be here again, and it would be a shame not to see all we can.'

  'I've already seen enough of this mountain,' Lorna said softly. 'It kills people.'

  Nobody else dissented. Kate had that effect on people. We followed her like religious devotees, trudging up an increasingly steep slope with the wind now howling around outcrops of broken rock, driving rain against our backs and blowing our hair into mad tangles over our eyes.

  'It's over here!' Kate still strode ahead, her boots crunching on the fragmented stone and her stick clicking rhythmically. 'Here we are, girls,' she shouted. Her voice echoed hollowly on that grim slope. 'In we go.'

  The Shelter Stone suited its name. It was little more than a shelf of granite leaning at an angle from the face of the mountain, with space beneath which a dozen people could sit in relative comfort.

  We followed Kate under the stone, touching the cold granite and searching for a comfortable place to sit. 'This is cosy,' Lorna said as she slid down at the furthest corner.

  The stone did its job, immediately stopping the blast of wind and rain. I took off my cap comforter and wrung out the water. Pushing aside the memory of the two dead climbers, I grinned to Lorna.

  'Somebody's been here before us.' Mary kicked at an empty bottle that lay on the ground.

  'Probably an earlier climbing expedition,' Lorna said. 'Another one that failed or they would have told the world that they defeated An Cailleach.'

  'They've left their mark on the wall,' Mary pointed to a spot directly above her head. 'You'd better see this Kate.'

  The names were beautifully carved into the granite. Mike. Bill. Adam.

  Kate joined Mary. She traced Adam's name with her finger. 'They got this far.' She said.

  'We're following their footsteps,' I agreed as Charlie scribbled notes down.

  'I wonder,' Kate spoke so quietly that I could hardly make her out. 'I wonder if maybe he's still alive somehow. Maybe trapped here or living as a hermit.'

  'Not after this length of time,' Charlie said. 'This is Scotland, not the far Pacific or Africa or somewhere. Robinson Crusoe was only a story.'

  'You're right,' Kate said. 'I was being a silly, and that's Chrissie's job.'

  I caught the anger in Christine's glance. 'Are we staying here all night?' I had no desire to hear Kate reminisce about perfect Adam, 'or shall we push on for the summit.'

  'I say we push on,' Charlie said. 'It's only three o'clock. There's plenty of daylight left, and we're over the worst. We can be up and back here before it's fully dark.'

  'It's been easy so far,' Lorna said. 'The only slightly awkward parts were the cliff face with the overhang and the Witch's Step, and we managed both without any drama. I can't understand why nobody's done this before.'

  'Maybe somebody has,' I decided to be provocative. 'Maybe they just didn't talk about it.'

  Charlie looked daggers at me. 'We'll be the first to scale An Cailleach and return to talk about it,' she said. 'People will name this route after us. Women's Triumph, we'll call it, and show the world that we are equal to any man.'

  'How about Suffragette's Success,' Lorna said. 'Or simply, Kate Gordon's Route. After all, Katie is the mainspring here so naming it after her is the only proper thing to do.'

  I intercepted Kate's smile. Well said, Lorna, I thought. It must have been a shock for Kate to see her brother's name carved into the rock.

  'We'll have to get back soon,' I said. 'I've only got half a dozen sandwiches left, and I get cranky when I don't get my marmalade.'

  'Oh, we can't have you without marmalade,' Lorna was laughing. 'Now we will definitely have to crack on.'

  'No.' Kate said. 'We've done enough for one day.'

  'You want to stay where Adam was,' I felt as if I could read Kate's thoughts, or was it her feelings? My powers of empathy had increased since we crossed the ford.

  'I'm only thinking of the group,' Kate said. I knew she was lying. 'Chrissie got a fright climbing that cliff. I think she needs to rest for a while.'

  'Resting is fine but how about our food supplies? How about poor Brenda's marmalade?' Lorna asked.

  'We've plenty for tonight,' Kate said. 'If we get going early tomorrow we can get up and back. It will be a long day, but knowing we've conquered An Cailleach will buoy us up.'

  'Or girl us up,' Charlie smiled to hide her disappointment. 'We will still be first to conquer An Cailleach.'

  'Adam might have been first,' Kate reminded quickly. 'We know he got this far and I can't think of any reason why he would turn back. He was not the sort of man to give up.'

  'Well either he did, or he died,' Charlie said. 'Either way, we'll be first to conquer An Cailleach and return to claim the hill, It's a big success for women, Kate and you should be proud to be part of it, rather than bleating about some man who happens to share your biological parents.'

  I heard Kate's sharp intake of breath and wondered if she would slap Charlie. I would have.

  I tried to like Charlie, I really did. I certainly admired her for her thrust and determination, for her desire to be successful in a career dominated by men. But I did not like her. I found her constant anti-male tirades tiresome and her refusal to grant any man credit pointless.

  'Are you scared of men, Charlie?' I regretted the words as soon as they left my lips.

  Charlie stiffened. Her look was poisonous. 'No, Brenda. I want to make men scared of me.'

  'Why?' I knew I was damaging any chance of friendship with Charlie, but some perverse streak within me insisted that I continue. Besides, my interference gave Kate time to plan her retaliation.

  Charlie was ready with a quick reply. 'I want to pay them back for centuries of male oppression. Men have enslaved us for too long. It's our turn now.'

  'I don't want to enslave any man, or anybody else,' I said. 'I doubt that Lorna does, either, or Mary or Christine.' I winked at little Christine to show I was not insulting her. 'I'm not sure about Kate though.' I gave a slow smile as if I had intended to be humorous all along.

  'Oh, I'd love a man as a slave,' Kate deliberately turned her shoulder to Charlie. 'Imagine what fun I would have with him.' She gave a big grin that made me smile and brought colour to Christine's face.

  'And here's me thinking that Christine was your only slave,' Lorna said.

  'Oh, no, Chrissie and I are the best of friends,' Kate said. 'If anything, I am her slave, always helping her through life when she can't cope.'

  I added no more to this conversation that I had started. Christine looked down at the ground until Lorna touched her shoulder.

  'It's all right, Christine,' Lorna said. 'We know you're not a slave driver.'

  'You don't know her as well as I do,' Kate jeered.

  I was watching closely as poor Christine shook her head. At that minute I wanted to give her a hug. She seemed as friendless as I was myself.

  'Come on, Brenda,' Mary took me by the arm. 'Let's leave these women to their silly games. I want to see something of this An Cailleach. After all, my family should still live here.'

  Wondering if there would be bloodshed in my absence, I allowed Mary to take me outside. The rain had eased to a succession of drizzly showers, leaving the ground sodden and running with excess water through which we splashed. As so often happens in the west, the rain cleared abruptly so I could see the Shelter Stone in its own context. We were part way up a gradually steepening slope, with what appeared to a vertical cliff between us and the summit and half Scotland spread out below.

  Drifting on vibrating wings, a whaup called, the sound enhancing the feeling of desolation more profound than anything I can describe. I took a deep breath, started when I saw a pair of wild goats observing us from a ledge a hundred feet above and wished I were somewhere else. I had never felt more unsettled than I did at that moment.

  'This is an uncanny place.' I said.

  'What do you mean?' Mary looked sharply at me.

  'I did not like Tigh-na-Beiste.' I said. 'And this place,' I hesitated, 'there's something very wrong here.'

  'I like it here,' Mary said. 'I belong here.'

  'I'm not sure that I do.' I habitually sought out the wild places. I preferred them to urban centres where I was a stranger among groups of friends. In the desolation of the hills, nobody cares about a solitary walker yet here, the atmosphere was wrong. I could not say why; there was not the malevolence of Tigh-na-Beiste, there was no sense of oppression, it just felt out of kilter as if it did not belong to the rest of Scotland or even to the rest of the world. An Cailleach was as out of place as I was myself. Can a hill be a stranger?

  'Even you can't deny that the views are spectacular,' Mary pointed downward. 'That is utter beauty.'

  I had not noticed the small loch before. It lay in a corrie, shadowed by the surrounding stony slopes and lonely under the rain-laden autumnal sky. Flurries of wind lifted ripples across the surface. Impressive it certainly was, but at that moment I did not see any beauty.

  'I cannot deny the drama,' I agreed. 'There is an amazing majesty here.'

  'You see?' Mary was prepared to be magnanimous now that I had agreed one point with her. 'It's not so bad.'

  'What do they call this place?' I looked down at the lochan, the small loch, with the gushing outflow that gurgled down the rocky slope to the dark depths below.

  'Poll nan ban,' Mary spoke without consulting any map. 'It means Pool of the Women, so it suits us.'

  'It's very inviting,' I said. From where had that come? I had no inclination to venture to that forbidding place.

  'Oh, you like it now?' I was not sure if Mary was sarcastic or genuine. There seemed to be two Marys here, the modern woman who I had known in Edinburgh and the woman who reverted to speaking and possibly thinking in Gaelic.

  I studied the lochan. From up here, it appeared innocent, virgin water surrounded by slender beaches of either white sand or small pebbles, I could not be sure. Yet there was something wrong. I did not know what. 'I don't think I would like to go there.'

  'Don't worry, you won't have to,' Mary said sharply. 'It's not on our route. The old folk, before the Clearances, avoided it as well.'

  Mary walked away. For one minute she was silhouetted against the dying sun, a long-haired woman with the pride and long memory of the Gael. Seen like that, Mary was timeless, only her mode of dress belonged to this 20th century. Her attitude and appearance would fit into any age.

  That strange woman returned, standing between Mary and me. She turned to face me, fixed me with those intense eyes and then stepped back.

  I saw Mary falling into space, falling toward greyness. I heard her scream and stretched forward to help. I could not reach her. Mary was falling, falling forever into a damp abyss. I could not move. I could not help. I could only stand and watch. The strange woman reappeared, and Mary was back on the skyline, safe as if she was walking in her own front room, which in a way she was.

  What was happening to me?

  I heard the sound twice before it registered and even then I was not afraid. 'Did you hear that too?' Mary called out to me.

  'I did,' I said. 'Like somebody crying.'

  'It was that,' Mary's accent had altered over the last few days. She always had a twist of Gaelic within her words. Now it was pronounced.

  'We'd better go and see,' I walked across to Mary, wondering if that strange woman was responsible for the weeping.

  'We'd better not!' Mary took hold of my arm. 'That sound was nothing human.'

  For some reason, Mary's words did not surprise me. There were too many mysteries here, too many unexplained events that pulled at my reason. 'What do you think it was? Was it a vixen perhaps?'

  'It was a caoineag, what the Irish know as a banshee.'

  'I've heard of banshees,' I said. 'I thought they were only in tales.'

  'You thought that about the washerwoman at the ford as well,' Mary said.

  'I think there is too much happening in this little peninsula.' I said. 'I'll be glad to get back to reality.' Yet at the same time, I wanted to unravel the secrets and find out what was happening here. In particular, I wished to know who that mysterious woman was and if she, the washerwoman and the caoneag were one and the same.

  'We know the caoneag as the weeping one,' Mary said. 'She wails and cries on the hillside through the hours of darkness.'

  The cry came again, a low, long-drawn-out howl that ended in a bout of bitter sobbing.

  'I have to look,' I stepped away from Mary with my curiosity overcoming my unease. The rational side of me denied any possibility of a caoneag, as it shied away from the washerwoman at the ford. Yet I had seen the image of the Clearance victims and that strange woman who slipped in and out of my life or my mind. From where had that wailing come?

  A thousand stars accompanied the scimitar moon, reflecting on Poll nan Ban far below and spreading faint light across the rugged landscape. I followed our route of the previous day and looked forward to the climb we faced on the morrow. An Cailleach loomed over us, her bulk more impressive now we were sitting on her lap, so to speak.

  The caoneag wailed again, the sound seemingly wrenched from a soul in torment. The hairs on the back of my head stood up in sympathy, yet now I was not afraid. I knew that this creature, whatever it was, meant no harm to me.

  'Who are you?' I called. 'What do you want?'

  There was no reply. I had not expected a reply.

  'Is there anything I can do to help?' I did not shout the words but allowed the wind to carry them to their destination. 'You sound upset.'

  The wailing sounded again. Long drawn out and low, it bubbled across the desolate hills and from the lochan far below.

  'Come back in,' Mary had followed me. 'It's not wise to search for the caoneag.'

  'I don't think it will harm us,' I said.

  'I have not heard of anybody ever looking for it,' Mary took hold of my sleeve. 'It's a creature of the night, something supernatural, rather like a vampire or such like. It's best to leave these things alone.' She lowered her voice. 'Please Brenda, leave it alone.'

  Mary was so sincere I could only assent. 'All right then, Mary.' I looked around the landscape. Clouds now obscured the moon, so only faint starlight reflected on the lochan far below. Looking down, I shivered. 'Now I am not sure if I really like this place,' I said, 'or if I really dislike it.' Something had happened to me during the last ten minutes. I did not know what it was.

  'My blood is here,' Mary took hold of my arm. 'Or at least my blood is in Penrioch. Generation after generation of my family farmed and lived here.' She took a deep breath. 'My grandmother asked permission to be buried here when she died. The landowner refused.'

  'That was unkind,' I said.

  'I thought so, too.' Mary took a deep breath. 'I want to die here,' she said. 'I want to die where I should live, where my ancestors lived for centuries.'

 

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