she asked, `have you heard of a new golf course being built just outside Aberlady? It's called Witches' Hill.'
Aye, they were talking about it at Easter-time, when we were home last. When I heard the name it gave me a turn.'
OK. Well, on Sunday one of the developers of the course was murdered, in his bath, in the changing room. His throat was cut. Next day, this was handed in to the Scotsman newspaper, addressed to the editor.' She handed over the cutting.
The woman-child read it in silence, and her face grew grim. 'That's awful. Who'd have written that?'
`That's what I was hoping you could tell me,' said Rose. Did anyone else in your family know the story?'
`No, no one at all. That's not the way it works.'
Did you ever tell it to anyone else, a school pal for example?'
After the row ma nana gave me ah never even spoke it out loud, in case someone would hear me.'
`What did you mean when you said 'That's not the way it works'?'
Lisa sat forward on her chair and pulled her knees up to her chin. Ah don't know if I should tell you even that.'
Rose looked at her earnestly. 'Lisa, it's important. I promise you that no one will ever know more than they need.'
Eventually the woman loosened her grip of her knees. She nodded. 'All right. I trust you.' She sat back in her chair and took a deep breath. 'Remember I said that it was our family's story?'
Maggie nodded.
`Well it was even closer than that. Even within the family, very few of us knew about the curse. It was passed on through the women, but only through those women who were blood kin, There were no females in the blood line between ma nana and me. She passed the tale on to me when I was nine. She said I was far too young, really, but that she was so old that she couldna' take the chance of waiting any longer. So she told me the curse and the story of it, and made me swear to tell my daughter in turn, or my granddaughter, or if it came to it, my great-granddaughter, like she was doing.' She nodded towards the child on the floor. tell wee Cherry there, in good time, when she's old enough. She'll think I'm daft, no doubt, clinging on to a four-hundred-year-old family tradition, but apart from her, it's all I've got.’
‘Do you understand that?' There was a sad, plaintive tone in her voice. 'The story of the curse is the only thing I've ever had that makes me feel I'm worth anything. Now I see a bit of it in a paper, it's like a part of me's been cut off and put on public show.'
`Maybe it's the best thing that could happen,' said Rose, 'if it makes you value yourself again.
You're worth a hell of a lot more than the story, you know.'
`You should tell that to my fine husband. Useful for cooking and the other, he says to me, but not very good at either.'
The Inspector looked at her sadly, appalled that a man could voice such a thought. She forced herself back to business.
`Through all this time, Lisa, was the story handed down simply by word of mouth?'
'Aye.'
And it's not written down anywhere.'
The woman hesitated, as if weighing a heavy question in her mind. Suddenly she jumped to her feet. 'Hold on.' She rushed from the room. Rose heard her footsteps on the stair, case, then a noise, as if something heavy was being dragged across the floor above. A few seconds later she descended the stairs, slowly and steadily, and reappeared in the living room, carrying a massive black-bound book. She placed it carefully on the laminated table.
`This is where it began,' she said softly, 'and this is where the line is kept.'
Maggie looked at the book's leather binding. It bore no title. It's the old family Bible,' said Lisa Soutar. 'It's earlier than the King James version, so it must be very rare. God himself alone knows where it came from. My nana gave it to me, with the curse. Her grandmother gave it to her, and so on and so on. Look here.'
Gently, she opened the book, holding the cover carefully, lest she break the spine. Maggie leaned past her. She gasped in amazement, her mouth dropping open, as she saw, written in the fly-leaf, thin and spidery but still legible, the story of Aggie Tod's curse, virtually word for word as Lisa had recited it on the tape. There was a scrawled signature at its end.
She peered at it and read aloud. 'Matilda Tod, sister. A witness in the year of Our Lord 1598.' Good God!'
Lisa smiled. Now look at this.' She set the book on its face and opened the back cover. There on the back leaf, in many hands, some thin, some strong, some clear, some barely legible, and in many shades of ink, a family tree grew.
`See how it goes. Here am I, Lisa Soutar, born 1967.' Her finger traced down the page. 'Go back and here's Rosemary Baird… that was my nana's maiden name… born 1883, the last in the female line before me. Back again, and there's her grandmother, Lorna Grieve, born 1815. Her mother, Mary Brown, born 1787, and hers, Anne Ross, born 1760. Then back two more generations to Mary Aitken, born 1689. We're getting close to the beginning now.
Mary's grandmother, Frances Tullis was born in 1623. Her mother, there,' she pointed to the foot of the tree, 'was Elizabeth Carr. It doesn't say when she was born, but she was given the tale, and the Bible, by Matilda Tod. That's where the tale began, and where it came into my family's keeping.
`You'll see from that that our menfolk havena' been very good at siring women, but that those they have produced have tended to live for a long time… long enough for the female line to have passed on the tale, and its beginnings, through almost four hundred years.
She closed the book. 'All these women were the Tellers of the Tale. We've kept it, secret but still alive, and guarded the Bible where it's written down, for all that time. Ever since Matilda Tod, Aggie's sister, wrote down the curse in 1598.'
Rose, normally phlegmatic and practical, was awestruck. `Lisa,' she whispered. 'Do you have any idea of the value of all this? The historical value of the story, and the potential worth of that Bible?'
The woman smiled, grimly. 'Aye, of course I have. But it's worth more to me to keep the secret. My nana thrashed that into me. There are bits of the story that aren't written down; the bit about revealing the curse only to a Kinture or to the King or Queen, and most of all, the bit about what Aggie Tod's Master will do to any Teller who betrays the tale.
After that article in the paper, I feel like putting an advert saying 'To whom it may concern: honest, it wisnae me!' in tomorrow's Scotsman!'
`Do you know who Elizabeth Carr was?'
Only that she was my blood relative, and the second witness, the second bearer of the tale.
I'm the ninth. But I don't know why Matilda Tod chose her, and us, to keep the curse, and the secret.'
She paused. 'Come into the kitchen, and I'll make us some more tea.' Maggie followed her into a small room which was as poorly furnished as the other. Lisa refilled the stainless steel kettle and switched it on. 'How does all that help you, Miss Rose?'
`Call me Maggie, please. To be honest, I haven't a clue. We've got a body, and we've got an anonymous letter which claims that Aggie Tod's curse is being fulfilled. There was a hint of the existence of the curse over a hundred years ago, but it's been forgotten by everyone bar a few historians. So, given what you've told me and since you didn't do it yourself, I'm all the more anxious to know who wrote that Scotsman letter.
The idea of a connection may be far-fetched. But then so is the idea that a story can be kept alive in secret by the women of a single family for four hundred years. It gets more confusing by the minute, but more fascinating too.
`Lisa, is it all right if I copy out that family tree, and take some photos of it and the Bible?
We'll keep the secret for as long as we can, but I'd like to do some research into the origins of the story, and there's a man who can help me. I know that he'll be as amazed as me at the idea of the Devil riding out on a golf course in East Lothian.'
