Whistlers Of The Dark (Tales From The Dark Past Book 4)

Book summary

Set in 1899 Scotland, "Whistlers Of The Dark" follows Ellen Luath, a young orphan who becomes a kitchen maid at the remote Kingsinch farm, seeking refuge from her past. However, Ellen soon confronts unsettling supernatural forces that resurrect ancient hauntings. As her reality warps, threatening her sanity and life, Ellen must navigate a bewildering world where time and place shift unpredictably. This tale weaves a gripping narrative of a struggle against the encroaching shadows of the unknown.

Excerpt from Whistlers Of The Dark (Tales From The Dark Past Book 4)

Kingsmoss Priory, Scotland, autumn, 1252 AD 

The bell rang for Matins, with the harsh clamour sounding from the small, squat bell tower across the dark mists that clung to the low damp-lands of the Kings Moss.

The monks rose from their hard beds, some eager, most groggy with sleep, and made their way to the chapel on its inch, the raised island within the Moss.

Brother Matthew shivered, pulled his hood over his head, remembered the dry heat of Outremer, and said a short prayer for strength in this northern chill. A raised timber causeway connected the monk’s dormitory to the chapel, with a rudimentary handrail to prevent the monks from slipping into the treacherous peat moss on either side.

“What a place to build a holy site,” Brother Simon grumbled.

“God is here as much as anywhere.” Brother Matthew tried to sound convincing as the raw cold bit through his woollen habit. He remembered the labour in constructing that causeway, with the monks hewing the wood by hand and carrying it from the Sidlaw Hills’ forests to this lonely place. Brother Matthew knew that a long-gone king had founded a religious site here but wished his Grace had chosen a more salubrious spot, away from the miasmic moss and the steep slopes of the hills.

Now the monks filed across the causeway, their sandals slapping on the greasy timber and each man huddled in his black habit. Brother Matthew looked back over the procession, twelve Benedictine monks, which was the entire complement at this small establishment. They moved in silence under the soft rain, for it always seemed to rain here, which was one reason it was the most unpopular of all the Benedictine sites in Scotland. Brother Matthew slipped on the already-green slimed planks, recovered, and smiled. For a moment, his thoughts drifted away to his previous life, and the girl who had not waited for him.

Adelina had been beautiful, with wide blue eyes and a straight nose, and her hair! Her hair would cascade from her head in soft golden curls, scented with birch-water. Brother Matthew shook his head, chasing the memory away. When he returned from Outremer, she was already married to another knight, taking Matthew’s joy with him. That life was gone, and women were no longer important in this life of sacrifice, prayer, and work.

An owl hooted from the hills that overlooked the chapel, beyond the black peat of the moss. Another owl answered, and then a low, undulating whistle that Brother Matthew could not identify.

“What kind of bird makes that sound?” he mused, pulled his hood tighter around his head and tried to think of more spiritual matters.

That low, undulating whistle sounded again, vaguely irritating. Brother Matthew could not judge from where it came, which was unusual, for before he took Holy Orders, he had been a Crusader and was well-versed in seeking out potential danger. Not that there was any danger here, in one of God’s religious communities.

Brother Matthew thought he heard Brother Paul chanting as he walked and felt glad when he saw the chapel loom ahead, a sanctuary from the cold. The site was ancient, with a Celtic church founded here many years before the Benedictines arrived. It was the Celtic Church that the old King had founded, nearly two-and-a-half centuries ago. Brother Matthew touched the birthmark on his cheek, the mark that people had always ridiculed until he took Holy Orders and joined the Church. The Benedictine monks accepted him for what he was, not for how he looked. And the Benedictines would not replace him with another, unlike the faithless Adelina.

The brothers filed into the small, stone-built chapel, with the tolling of the bell drowning out the rustle of clothing and scuff and shuffle of sandals on the stone-flagged floor.

Only when the bell stopped did the service begin, with the elderly prior taking the lead and the sonorous Latin words echoing from the chapel’s austere stones. Brother Matthew tried to concentrate, but his mind slipped away elsewhere, to a land more colourful than grey Scotland, and a place where men and women danced and sang together. He knew it was not the East, where he had seen hard fighting, but somewhere even brighter.

He shook his head, fighting the images that had been so prevalent recently. The Chapel was no place to allow his mind to drift to musicians and dancing, particularly as half the dancers were women, some very shapely and with infinite promise in their eyes. Brother Matthew saw Adelina among the dancers, all alone and with her hands stretched towards him.

“Adelina!” Matthew said, yearning to hold her white hands.

“Brother Matthew!” He heard Brother Paul say his name, yet moved away, with the lure of Adelina and the dancers too strong to ignore.

The brothers watched him, with some attempting to prevent his leaving and the prior stopping his sermon in mid-sentence. Ignoring them all, Brother Matthew walked out of the chapel. He saw the land ahead, bathed in a soft green light, with a host of people waiting for him with open arms, smiling as they played musical instruments.

“Join us!” the musicians invited without saying a single word. “Come and join us!”

The monks were behind him, their voices harsh in comparison to the whistles of the musicians. “Brother Matthew! The moss! Be careful of the moss!”

“It’s all right! We’ll look after you!” The young blonde woman stood in front of the musicians, beckoning him over. “Come to me, my love.”

Brother Matthew smiled. “Adelina! It’s you! You married somebody else when I was out East! You said my birthmark made me ugly.” He touched his face.

“It was all a mistake,” Adelina said. “I don’t mind your birthmark at all. I’ve been waiting here for you! Come and join us.”

Leaving the Causeway, Brother Mathew stepped towards Adelina, laughing, with Adelina’s acceptance cancelling out all his vows.

“Look!” Brother Paul shouted from the causeway. “Look who has come to visit us! It is the Holy Father himself! That’s who Brother Matthew saw.”

“You’re right,” the prior said. “Imagine the Holy Father coming all this way. We must greet him. Follow me, brothers.”

With the prior in the lead, the brothers left the causeway and strode into the moss, shouting out their welcomes. Within five minutes the chapel was empty, with only the wind left to toll the bell. Eventually that, too, eased, and silence descended, broken only by the gentle hiss of rain on the surrounding moss. A single sandal floated on the peaty surface, a reminder of the men who had once worshipped here, and somebody whistled, the undulating sound lonely in that deserted place.

Chapter One

The Black Yett, Forfarshire, Scotland, September 1899

“Steady, lass!” The driver of the dogcart soothed his horse as it pulled to the right. “She’s always skittish here,” the driver explained to me. “She doesn’t like passing the old graveyard.”

We had reached a crossroads, where the Black Yett of Sidlaw, the main road, eased off towards Perth along the foot of the Sidlaw Hills. Our much narrower track headed north, up a pass between two green heights. The driver’s old graveyard was tucked behind a moss-furred dry-stane dyke, with a scattering of gravestones at different angles, as if each was trying to escape the bondage of the soil.

“Why is that?” I asked. “Graveyards and such places don’t normally frighten horses.”

“This one does,” the driver said. “Something scared her here a whiley back, and she’s never been happy here since.”

“The graveyard doesn’t look well-kept.” I glanced over the wall with little interest.

“No.” the driver shook his head. He climbed off his perch to settle the horse, speaking gently, and lowering the beast’s head. “Easy lass, I’ll lead you. Steady, now.”

I remained in the back of the cart as the driver walked us past the graveyard, with its single yew tree dark green and the grass rank over the humps of neglected graves.

“Why is it so unkempt?” I asked.

“It’s a suicides’ graveyard,” the driver said shortly. He said no more until we were a hundred yards beyond the place, and he gave his horse a final caress and resumed his seat.

“Are there many suicides around here?” I asked as a smirr of rain slithered from the hills to wash some of the journey’s dust from us.

“Too many,” the driver said. “It can be ill land to farm.” He flicked the reins on the rump of his horse, and we moved slightly faster. The iron-shod wheels of the cart ground on the unmade road, deepening the grooves made by a thousand previous vehicles over ten centuries of use. People had inhabited this land for millennia, I knew. I could feel the history pressing in on me; I could hear the whispering voices of the long-dead and sense the slow tide of passing years.

To my northern eyes, the land was not ill-favoured. Grass and heather covered the hills, making excellent sheep country, with parks, or fields, where cattle grazed or lay together.

A colourful gypsy wagon passed us, with the driver lifting a hand in acknowledgement and a gaggle of tousle-headed children running behind. When they waved to me, I smiled and waved back.

“Aye, only tinkers and gypsies use this road,” my driver said. “Them and men who can’t afford to farm decent soil.” He shook his head. “We’d be better off without these tinker vagrants.”

I said nothing to that, being a bit of a vagrant myself. I watched the caravan lurch around a bend and heard the high-pitched barking of the dogs.

The hills rose on either side; not the craggy granite of my previous home, but softly smooth, specked with the white forms of hardy, black-faced sheep and redolent with patches of heather. I thought them friendly heights and hoped I had left my bitter memories behind me.

“Aye, it’s a dreich day.” The driver misinterpreted my thoughts, as people often do.

I nodded agreement. “It’s all of that,” I said, for the grey drift of rain obscured the sky and dulled the colours of the landscape. I did not mind that, for to me, rain is only another aspect of nature, and without rain, nothing would grow. I was still thinking of that lonely cemetery with the forlorn graves of men and women who lost their strength to live. I could understand them, and what had driven away all the attraction of life.

A whaup called, its cry one of the most melancholic of all bird sounds, and I saw it rise from the grass to my left. With its long, down-curving beak, the whaup was the centre of fear from the superstitious. I watched the hill-bird fly into the rain and knew the crunch of our wheels had frightened it.

“Only a whaup,” the driver said over his shoulder. “You’ve naething to fear from a whaup.”

“Aye,” I returned. “They’ve never done me any harm.” It was not the birds and beasts of the fields that frightened me; I thought and prayed again that I had left my tormentors behind in the North Country.

“Please, God, let them stay up there. Don’t let them follow me to this southern land of Strathmore.”

We turned around the spur of a hill, with an outcrop of heather nodding to the sky. The signboard creaked against its iron rings, wind-bucked this way and that as the driver pulled to a halt.

“There you are, Miss.” He gave me a sideways look. “It’s a gey lonely place this.”

I nodded my agreement as I surveyed the surroundings. “Aye, it’s all of that.”

The driver shook his head. “Are you sure you want off here, now, lassie? I could take you back in a trice.”

“I have a position at the farm,” I said.

“Aye, well, maybe the reputation is exaggerated.” The driver seemed reluctant to let me off his cart.

“I’ve accepted the position,” I said, clambering down onto the track. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

“If you think so, Miss,” the driver said. “It’s a fair bit walk for you.” He handed me my case, his fatherly eyes concerned.

“I’m used to walking.” I favoured him with a smile and paid him with the scrapings of my purse.

“Well, good luck to you, Miss.” The driver cracked his reins over the rump of the horse and turned it in the road-end. He lifted a hand in farewell, opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and pulled slowly away.

I watched the dogcart jolting on the uneven road and turned my head towards the farm. The path was barely wide enough for a cart, with flat fields stretching on either side to the hills’ sweeping slopes. The name hung from a gallows-shaped cross-post at the track's side, still creaking slightly in the biting wind.

Kingsinch, it proclaimed, and yet I never saw anything less like the road to royalty in my life. I did not know which king had been unfortunate enough to venture to this farmtoun in the back of beyond, nor why he should come here.

I shrugged, king or commoner, it made no difference to me. I was here to work, not to speculate on long-forgotten royalty. Let the dead keep the dead.

From the road-end, the track seemed to disappear into the hills, with no sign of a farm-steading. I shrugged, prepared for a long walk. I lifted my bag and stepped onto the track. I say track, but it was more like a causeway, raised slightly above the fields of stubble, and seemed to sway as I walked. Shrugging off the illusion, I put my best foot foremost and stepped out for Kingsinch, with my boots sinking into the cart-ruts of the track and the wind scouring my face.

In one of the fields or parks, as we called them, a lone horseman was ploughing, with reins wrapped around his wrist and his two-horse Clydesdale team moving slowly. A trick of the wind sent the mesmeric hiss of the plough through rich soil to me, with the soft padding of the hooves on the dirt and the horseman’s muttered encouragement to his horses.