The News And Views

Black Ian Walks Again

Chapter 3

Greg goodnaturedly submitted to a feature by feature comparison with the portrait. "Not a feature corresponds," I said disgustedly. "and yet you're as alike as twin brothers!"

"He is heavier and coarser," said Iris, quietly, as we moved on to the other portraits.

"Hasn't my room in the tower a history?" I asked after we had finished the tour.

His brow puckered. "Let's see. The one directly above mine? Yes. It was in the room that Sir Peregrine killed his brother Anthony in a duel over a girl. That's Sir Peregrine there in blue velvet with Anthony next to him. The ironic part of it is that at the precise moment that Anthony breathed his last, the girl was being married to another, five miles away. It is supposed that on moonlight nights the duel is reenacted, with the girl weeping over the dead body of Anthony. I haven't seen it, so I can't vouch for it. Let me know if you do, won't you?"

I looked at him sharply. His eyes glowed with enthusiasm—the enthusiasm of the true hobby rider mounted on his favorite hobby.

After all, who could say whether there were certain sensitive types of people who could see spiritual things not visible to the more materialistic and earthbound of us?

If there were such people, then Greg should certainly be one of them, for he had all the mysticism of the Scot and the early Scandinavian mingled in him—people for whom every furze bush conceals a wee mon, and every stone has some mystic, runic meaning.

"If you feel nervous about sleeping in a possibly haunted room in a certainly haunted castle, just come to my room," he invited. "I was hoping Iris would put you there for old time's sake, but it seems I've picked up a most abominable habit of sleep-walking lately. I never used to do that, did I?"

The next morning, I followed Iris' suggestion and dipped into some of the manuscripts in the library. Iris thought I would be most interested in Black Ian, and had collected some of his diaries and data referring to him for me to start on.

Ian was a good diarist. He began at the age of ten and even at that age wrote clearly and forcefully.

He seemed to be a dreamy youth, considering the wraiths of the castle as his friends rather than being afraid of them. Now and then briefly he told some bit of folk-lore: werewolves, changelings, boys who died after being forced to play witches' steed all night—typical old wives' tales.

When he was about eighteen trouble descended upon him. His father died, and his older brother Angus inherited. Ian, who loved the castle and his family with the same passion that Greg had for them, felt resentful that Angus, who cared only for its income, should be its sole possessor. On the night of his eighteenth birthday, they quarreled bitterly, and at the end of it, Angus ordered Ian to leave the castle.

Ian made his way to London where he joined the crew of a sailing vessel which turned out to be a pirate ship. It was not long before he had his own ship, and his pages were interspersed with accounts of sea fights, colored with blood and fire, and enriched by descriptions of chests of treasure.

While in India he became a soldier of fortune under a powerful Maharajah, receiving much treasure for his services, and also a mysterious gift to which he referred again and again as "that treasure not in chests." It was the story of a dashing, swashbuckling, unscrupulous man, with mutinies, executions, and abductions of women, on every other page, hair-raising in the very restraint of its telling.

When about forty, he returned to Castle Quayle. Angus having died childless, and for a while he lived the life of the average Scottish landowner of the time. But the life was too tame, and he had the stairway cut from the tower to the cave, and began a coastwise smuggling and plundering which he carried on for the rest of his life.

The year of his return he married the daughter of a neighboring nobleman, and the same year his only legitimate son was born, Malcolm, direct ancestor of Greg.

Apparently neither Malcolm, nor Ian's wife, knew of Ian's past nor of his continued marauding. If they did, Malcolm made no mention of it in his own diaries in which he referred to his father in terms of deepest affection and respect.

After Ian's death there was no further incentive to pursue Malcolm's narrative, so I laid it down and turned to another. Iris, or someone, had marked passages referring to Ian in other books, so that I did not have to wade through irrelevant matter to find mention of him.

The comments were pungent and illuminating. The later diarists spoke out their minds concerning him and called him a pirate, smuggler, and despoiler of women, and far worse—a sorcerer!

Now and then references were made to having seen Ian's ghost walking the countryside, and ways after such appearances someone had lost a sheep or a calf, and the carcass was found drained of blood some place near that in which Ian had been seen. After a time, he began to be openly called Black Ian, or Ian the Undead. There were scattered references to him over a century:

"There are tales through the village that Black Ian is walking, and many of the folk are afraid to stir out of their houses after dark..."

"Things have come to such a state that something must be done about laying the spirit of Black Ian. He does not seem to annoy us at the Castle as much as those of the village. Meg Gilbirnie saw the shape of a man wrapped in a dark cloak as she crossed the bridge. Whilst she stood afraid to cross, he disappeared. Travelers along the cliff road report having seen him, and lately, even of having been attacked by him..."

(To Be Continued)