2.1 Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa

In which the Sinclair girls meet an old friend whom their mother does not know.

Jul 05, 2024

Mrs Sinclair was sitting in the parlour with Miss Warner, winding wool.

The governess’s clever fingers had contrived to clothe the girls in suitable mourning from a pair of old velvet curtains which Jessie had remembered were stored in the east attic. The girls were pleased.

‘I love my new dress. It reaches my ankles, Mama!’ Maria had said with delight, twirling in the drawing-room. Then she and Ishabel ran out of the room to practice walking up and down the stairs in their new long skirts.

Houlis House seemed a changed place. The windows sparkled, and the heavy draperies in the ground-floor rooms had been drawn aside to let the light in. It was too late in the year for a proper spring-cleaning, but Jessie and Betsy had been turning out the rooms one by one, and Mrs Sinclair was making a list of furniture that she wished to have removed. She was waiting for Oliphant and the estate carpenter to arrive with ropes so that the uglier pieces could be hidden from sight in the attics.

‘You must choose how to furnish the schoolroom,’ she told Miss Warner again, holding the skein of thin black Zetland wool wide apart in her hands for the older woman to wind off into balls of a convenient size for knitting. ‘We must use what we already have, but you mentioned that the girls need a schoolroom table that is better suited for their height.’

Miss Warner would have answered, but at that moment Maria and Ishabel ran down the stairs into the hall. The front door was hauled open, and then Mrs Sinclair could hear them shrieking and running away from the house.

Three-year old Anne looked up from her close study of Mr Sinclair’s geological specimens on the hearth rug. She scrambled to her feet, tugging at her short black skirts with her chubby fists.

They could all hear Maria and Ishabel yelling with excitement. Mrs Sinclair looked at Miss Warner who had jumped up quickly, looking panicked, quite unlike her usual composed self. The governess hastily thrust the half-wound ball of wool into the basket at her feet and ran, positively ran, to the parlour door. Before Mrs Sinclair could stop her, Anne too had scampered out of the room, and out of the open front door that Miss Warner had, quite uncharacteristically, left wide open.

The girls were crowing in delight, their voices growing fainter as they hurtled over the thick grass of the lawn. Mrs Sinclair, now staring out of the parlour window, the skein still in her hands, saw Anne running away over the grass. She was following the older girls in their headlong rush to meet a strange figure advancing across the lawn towards them from the south.

She heard an eldritch cackle that made the hairs at the back of her neck prickle in fear.

‘Bonny lasses! My bonny lasses!’

Beyond Miss Warner’s hurrying figure, Mrs Sinclair could see a short stumpy figure like a dwarf. It wore breeches the colour of buttermilk, a bright blue coat and a tousled grey wig that looked disquietingly familiar. It was now standing with arms akimbo, its rubicund face grinning up at the girls. When Mrs Sinclair caught a glimpse of the creature’s gleaming teeth she dropped the wool and ran out of the room.

‘Trow Tornost! Trow Tornost!’ Ishabel was chanting this with a regular rhythm and Maria was screeching like a barn owl. All three girls were now jumping up and down on the grass. Miss Warner had nearly reached them.

The creature made a low bow to the governess. Mrs Sinclair was glad to see that Miss Warner had recovered her composure. She approved of the neat curtsey the governess gave in return to the creature; polite, but not fulsome. The creature turned to regard Mrs Sinclair as she hastily crossed the lawn. As she approached, it made an even more magnificent leg, sweeping its skinny brown hand over the nodding seed-heads of the untrimmed grass in an exaggerated bow.

‘Madam Sinclair, your servant,’ it said, with an upwards leer.

Automatically she declined her head in answer, and looked at Miss Warner. The woman was standing now as stiff as a rake, her hands on the shoulders of her elder charges, who had subsided into fidgeting silence. Her face had paled so much that her skin was the colour of lawyers’ parchment. Anne stood apart, sucking her third and fourth fingers again as she gazed at the visitor, and automatically Mrs Sinclair stretched out her hand to clasp the child’s other hand.

‘Miss Warner, I see you are already acquainted with this person. Pray introduce me,’ she said stiffly.

Miss Warner did not flinch, and indeed seemed to stand even straighter.

‘Mrs Sinclair, may I present Trow Tornost, a resident of these isles?’ she said in a colourless tone.

The creature extended its grin, and its wet yellow teeth gleamed.

‘I am honoured,’ it said. ‘I came to make my annual visit to the master of the house. But I am charmed to encounter his lady.’

‘Papa is dead!’ screeched Ishabel, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘We have new clothes!’

The creature stepped back in mock surprise, turning its head to regard her, as if he had not yet noticed their new black dresses.

‘I have a black riband in my hair,’ offered Maria, twitching her black curls, ‘You can’t see it easily, but look!’

Anne said nothing but held out her black skirts shyly for the creature to see.

‘Charming! Quite charming!’ it said, and bowed again to the children. Then it straightened its back and turned back to Mrs Sinclair.

The Shetland Witch

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