Beltane night, when it grows dark and eerie, is a night like no other. Celebrated across Scotland for centuries, reaching back to lost times, when a spark in the dark became a pyre sending flames up to the vaults of the heavens, a call to folks to gather together and beseech the thawing earth to be bountiful and for the rivers to teem with life, and for the last days of spring to carry away with them the nip ofreòthadhfrom the land, being the word for winter frost in the old language.
Tonight, on the Knowe, the spirit of all these past celebrations returned, while the school bairns flitted about astride their witches’ besoms of gorse sticks, skirting their parents’ reach, ignoring finger taps on watches and calls of ‘time for bed’. No one was leaving yet, not when the party was only just getting started.
Everyone could feel the change. The food stalls were selling out and every belly was filled and each thirst slaked; some too well slaked for Carenza’s liking, but what could she do now that she’d lost all control?
The sky had been jewelled with pyrotechnic bursts for an hour already, and the police kept their eyes on the ground like they’d no notion of the bangs and flashes. Sachin and his pals were mid-set and surrounded by dancers, some birling in a traditional reel, others throwing themselves around like this was a rock festival.
The Dhol drum and the bodhran set a pacy beat, the pipes bellowed and the keys sounded a wild melody nobody could resist, and in the perfumed breeze coming down off the mountains, the bonfire smoke swirled, wrapping around ankles and swishing in kilt hems.
A new droning sound arose amongst it all, and Carenza watched as the crowds parted. A cheery horn sounded and there was a burst of applause as a motorbike parted the crowds, going at a crawl, and Euan delivered up a grinning Peaches to the party.
She had a summer bloom about her that reminded Carenza of when her daughter was tiny and the return of the warm weather seemed to bring about a spurt of growth and vigour in her child. She had the same roses in her cheeks now.
Euan left his bike for the kids to clamour around, and Peaches led him into the dancing, getting lost to her mother’s sight.
Everyone was happy.
‘Scuse me,’ a voice sounded beside Carenza.
‘You frightened me, sneaking up like that!’ she said scoldingly, but on realising it was Senga Gifford and that perhaps she’d given that woman enough stick for one year, she whispered a sincere ‘sorry’.
Senga smiled like she might not mind her brusque ways, on this one occasion. She held something in her hands.
‘Come a ways off with me,’ Senga said, and she was gone, round the back of the first aid tent.
Trying not to let her grouchy impulses rule her, just this once, Carenza followed, only to see the older woman melting into the patch of trees at the edge of the rec.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked as she found her, so obscured by the dark they could barely make one another out.
‘Shh!’ Senga hushed her.
It was hard holding back her annoyance, but if Carenza was going to try and keep better boundaries she really ought to practise with one of the people who so often tested them.
‘It’s time,’ Senga said.
‘I’m sorry, what is?’
Senga removed a bundle of dark fabric from a Scotmid supermarket bag with what felt like unnecessary reverence. ‘No one knows who the elders are until one hands over the mantle to their chosen person. And I choose you, Carenza.’
‘You’re an elder?’ Carenza had never known the identities of the Walpurgisnacht elders, only that they numbered seven. That was how many votes she’d collected up from inside the tree knot this morning. She’d been told by the committee members (before she’d driven them all away), that as chairperson, she wasn’t allowed to open the slips of paper until nine o’clock tonight when the crowning would take place. They were inside her blazer pocket now.
Senga spoke on. ‘My mother passed on her robe to me when I was about your age. Even Rhona doesn’t know about it. Not about Ma, not about me. It is a sworn secret you must never breathe to anyone, and now that I have picked you, you must swear as well.’
‘But I… Why me? You hate me.’
‘I don’t hate any of the earth’s creatures, but I must say you do carry on so, upsetting folk, barging around like you own the place. It’s too much, Carenza, really!’
Carenza didn’t have the gall to protest this. ‘There may be some truth in that. So why would you want me to take over from you?’
‘Neither Rhona nor I have any children, never had the chance, though Rhona would have liked to, I think.’ The moonlight filtering down through the budded canopies of the trees showed Senga losing herself in a moment’s thought. ‘My sister’s heart’s always been a mystery, even to me.’ She shook away this thought to focus on her task. ‘I chose you, not because I think you’re all that wise, or all that discreet neither, but because you love us and our community, even if you carry on like we’re nothing but a bother to you. I see it in you. The way you care about us and our town.’
‘You do?’ Carenza wasn’t sure why she suddenly wanted to sob and hug the old woman. She stiffened her spine and clamped her jaw to stave off the impulse.
‘That’s part of an elder’s job,’ Senga said. ‘To see everything. I spend my year watching the town folk, catching on to every last little piece of news, every detail. I know when a couple’s falling in love, even before they do.’
‘I see.’ Carenza thought of the sisters and their café, and the way they’d positioned themselves right at the heart of their community. From behind those Perspex display cases, Senga had a view of everything. Around those café tables, serving up the tea and scones, she must hear snatches of every whispered conversation doing the rounds. She’d be privy to the comings and goings of everyone in the town who presented themselves at the repair shop in need of fixing.
‘I think you must have made an excellent elder,’ Carenza found herself saying. ‘Well done,’ she added awkwardly, considering patting the woman’s arm, then remembering she wasn’tthatchanged.
