The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  At midnight, under a hazy, half-lost moon, she came to the grey barn door. Rory heard her, scratching at the hickory wood, like a fierce little mouse. He did not open the door, and he did not answer when she called his name, but lay still and cold and angry in his straw bed. The cows stirred and the bay mare whickered.

  The door creaked open, and she was within.

  She had brought a tallow-lamp into the barn. Unwise and unnecessary, with the dim moonlight. But she had her reasons. She set it on the broad wood of the door of an empty stall. Then she looked up to Rory, sitting up now, in the loft-straw, tense and angry.

  ‘Away girl, what do you bring fire in here for? Surely your father has told you better.’

  ‘Reckon he has,’ she said with backwoods disdain. The white nightgown was fastened up tight under her chin, with a bit of silk ribbon, and its white hem trailed on the floor. She stooped down and caught the hem and straightened and then raised it slowly, daintily like a little girl lifting her petticoats. She lifted it clear up to her chin, without a word, and showed him her body.

  ‘Ain’t I a pretty sight, Rory, ain’t I?’ she said then.

  ‘Go away, girl,’ he whispered bitterly. ‘The shame of you.’

  She came closer yet, holding the nightgown high, right to the foot of the old loft ladder. He half started up, got to his knees, but she just laughed, ‘Sure enough, you ain’t comin’ down this ladder here, ’cause I’m comin’ right up.’ She giggled, girlish and triumphant. Then she let go the gown with one hand and gathered it above her knees with the other and scrambled barefoot up the ladder. ‘Oh Rory, I love you so.’

  ‘Children don’t love. Go back to your bed, little girl, and back to your mam.’

  But she wouldn’t take insult, or shame, even though he’d stood up under the low barn eaves and wrapped his one rough blanket around him, shy and shamed, though she was neither.

  ‘Oh I ain’t a child no more, Rory. Jest you look.’ And she lay down then, in his straw bed on her back, pulling up the white gown as she did. She ran her little white hands up and down her body, pleasuring herself, and then stopped, with them half crossed across her pale, high breasts, sharp with youth and cold. She lay there, like a little perverse saint, carved of stone, parting the fingers then so her nipples showed.

  ‘My God, girl, who taught you to behave like that?’

  ‘I learnt myself, Rory. Now, come, see what I’ve learnt.’ She clutched out for his hand and took it and pulled it hard against her, half unbalancing him. She held it tight against her breasts and then drew it down the soft length of herself to the warm hair between her parted legs. She pressed his fingers tight there, straining her hips against his hand, the little girl he’d played with.

  ‘For the love of God, woman.’

  ‘You cain’t say no, now, Rory. I know you love me too.’

  Rory cursed softly and shook his head, but his hand found its own way then, in the warm wetness there, and she moaned and gasped and cried and worked her whole body against his. He whispered softly, turning to her, and upon her, ‘Lass, lass, it is not love.’

  So he did the thing, and it was not the first time for him, nor would it be the last. She cried and screamed and wriggled under him like a wild beast, with pain or with pleasure. In his anger with her, he could scarce care. He ended with his mouth over hers, swallowing her cries and her breath, and his hands fierce in that soft child’s hair.

  Then he fell back onto the straw, his eyes closed, hating the whole beautiful thing in the flickery lamp-lit dark. For his hands in her hair had made him think of Marsali, whose mouth he had never once kissed. ‘Och we were children, children.’ He said, half-aloud, to himself.

  ‘I ain’t a child now, am I?’ Charlotte demanded. She was sitting up, hair wild, body sweat-gleaming, triumphant. She was utterly without shame or repentance, her eyes shining, strong and clear. She sat cross-legged, looking down at herself, the wet hair matted with his seed.

  He turned away, shocked by her, and said, ‘Get away, girl, you’re scarce natural.’

  But she gingerly touched herself there, half-wondering, at the place where he had entered her, and then rubbed her damp thighs. Her fingers came red, bloodstained, and she held them up in the dim light, with again that triumphant smile.

  ‘Now you’re mine, Rory, forever, you cain’t ever leave me no more.’

  At that he whirled around to face her, naked and not caring now. He took her face in his hands and said, in his low fierce whisper, ‘You wicked, conniving bitch. To think a one as young as yourself, and as dear to me … och God forgive you.’ He tightened his grip as if he’d break her neck, as he longed to, but she looked straight back in his eyes, unafraid of him. Then he calmed and said slowly, ‘’Tis a foolish little girl you are then. I keep my bargains, well; I’ve kept my bargain with your father. But I made no bargain with you. It was a gamble, pretty Charlotte, and you’ve lost it.’

  ‘I’ll tell my father.’

  ‘Oh lassie. Tell him what you please. If I were a free man, I’d marry you with pleasure. But I am not free.’

  ‘But my father will free you,’ she cried happily, ‘and then we will be married.’

  ‘It is not your father I am bound to, lass, but my far country, and my far king.’

  He stood up, pulling on his britches, knowing there’d be no peace in the straw loft that night. Charlotte watched him, and her beautiful, innocent face grew cold, and sharp, and she said in the smallest of voices, ‘It’s not your king. It’s a woman. That’s what you’re pining for, all the long day. Some pretty woman across the far sea.’ She looked sad, almost defeated, then flared up in anger. ‘It’s a woman, ain’t it?’

  ‘It is King James, little girl. No bonnie creature he.’ He half smiled, as if to joke, because his thought of Marsali as he lay on her body had shamed him, for both of them.

  ‘It’s a woman.’ She flopped her head, dejected, like a child over her naked body, so the white-blond hair trailed like lace over her knees. ‘I hope she’s dead. Or married and grown old and fat.’ She cried out, petulant, ‘I hope you’ll never see her again.’

  ‘Och, most like I never shall,’ Rory said softly, and then looked up, astounded, and their eyes met. She leapt up and clutched up her nightgown and scrambled naked down the ladder.

  ‘Charlotte.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Rory MacLeod. A liar and a cheat. You’ve tricked me and ruined me.’

  ‘Bitch. You’ve ruined yourself.’

  She stopped and scrambled into the nightgown, breaking the heart of him with her childish clumsiness, she who had been half his sister.

  ‘Och, Charlotte, I am sorry.’

  She turned to face him, cool and careful. ‘What if you’ve got me with child?’

  Rory crouched on his knees in the straw of the loft. He brushed his straw-tangled hair out of his eyes and said quietly, ‘Then God pity you. I did not ask you to come.’ She went out alone without another word. The door closed with a whisper behind her. Then he sat alone, with her tallow lamp, like the ghost of her, left behind.

  In the morning Jean Dubois came to the barn door, while Rory was yet lying, clothed and without rest, on the straw bed where Charlotte had lain. He jumped up and scrambled down the ladder. Jean let himself in and closed the door, all but firm behind him, letting in only a thin bar of dawn light.

  He brought coffee and bread and without a word handed the pewter plate and mug to Rory, and Rory knew he was not to enter the house.

  Jean sat down slowly on the tongue of the hay wagon and put his hands on the grey knees of his trousers. ‘You may go,’ he said.

  ‘Go?’

  ‘To Scotland, to hell, whatever, oh damnit Scotchman,’ Jean dropped his big, shaggy head onto his hands, ‘I will not keep you if my daughter cannot. I will not shame her so.’

  ‘I have not served my time. The bargain is not completed.’

  ‘Scotchman,’ Jean said slowly, not looking up, but tightening his fingers claspe
d against his forehead, ‘Scotchman, I am a patient man, but tread careful. The bargain is over. I say you may go. Go quickly.’ Rory saw that the locked fingers were trembling. Jean said, ‘She told me that you forced her.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Oh, I know. I know.’ Jean looked up sharply. ‘You would have woken up dead, Scotchman, if I thought otherwise. I know my daughter.’ He looked away, to the thin light at the door and said quietly, ‘I have taken the musket and locked it in the tool shed. Louisa was going to shoot you.’

  ‘Louisa,’ Rory whispered. Louisa with the soft, sweet cheeks, and flour, powdery on her hands and hair. Louisa.

  ‘A mother is not a reasonable creature,’ Jean said simply. ‘Oh I know my daughter. God help me, if I’m not finding her a man soon, she will be laying with the beasts. God help us all,’ he said softly. Then he looked back to Rory and said calmly, ‘But you are not the man. If you take the west trail, by the cornfield, and follow for six miles, and turn south at the spice bush hollow, you will come to a river landing. There will no doubt be a flatboat in time. The river will take you to Charleston, and Charleston, to the sea. Eat now, and leave when you are done.’ He reached down into his coat pocket and drew out a handful of coins, extending the hand to Rory.

  ‘I do not want your money, Jean Dubois.’

  ‘Because you have had my daughter? I would not sell her so cheap. Take the money, and leave me what remains of my honour.’

  He stood up, slowly, weary in the grey morning, with the cocks crowing and crowing, triumphant beyond the door.

  ‘Good-bye Scotchman,’ he said, with his back to Rory. But he swung around on his heel, on the straw-strewn floor, and grasped Rory about the shoulders and embraced him in his great arms, with love and anger, his eyes full of bewildered tears. Then he let him go and strode off to the door. Light flashed into the barn as he swung it open. He stood still, a black shape against the light, and laughed suddenly and shouted, ‘Remember me, Scotchman, to your Alligator King.’

  The door slammed the barn back into darkness. He was gone. Rory never saw him again. Nor Louisa. He left the bread and coffee untouched, sitting on the barn floor, and took from the hayloft his spare shirt, his only possession, and with Jean Dubois’s coins unnatural in his pocket, went out of the barn into the swampland morning. The house beneath the cottonwood trees was still and silent, not a living thing in sight. He walked west, across the field they had ploughed and across another, then past the last cornfield, and onto the woodland trail.

  Charlotte was waiting for him by the bend at the cypress swamp.

  She came out of the darkness of the trees, like some elf-light creature of his own land. When he saw her, full in the light, he cried out aloud. Her white-blond hair hung all about her yet, like a brides veil, but her face was grey-brown with bruises and the stain of dried blood. Her lips were swollen and parted over one broken tooth. There was a long bloody cut above one half-closed eye. She had not even washed the blood from her, waiting there in the swamp for him.

  ‘Charlotte, what did this?’

  ‘Papa.’

  ‘Your father? Jean?’ Rory’s hand recoiled from its reaching to touch her. Surely she lied.

  ‘It was a’ cause a’ what we’d done, Rory.’

  ‘Why did you tell him?’ Rory cried suddenly. ‘Did he see you come, why?’

  ‘No. I woke him an’ told him, all myself. I was powerful angry, Rory.’

  ‘You told him I was to blame, that I forced you. It was a lie.’

  She shrugged, rubbing her battered face. ‘He didn’t believe me, nohow.’

  ‘He would have killed me, if he had.’

  She shrugged again, twisting back and forth on her bare feet. ‘I was powerful angry, Rory.’

  Rory turned away from her, looking into the dismal water of the swamp pools. He said, ‘Lassie, ’tis an evil thing your father’s done to you. But I am thinking maybe I understand.’

  She seemed not to hear, or not to care, but stood still, rubbing her hand on the deep cut on her eyebrow. ‘It’ll scar,’ she said calmly. ‘Bone cuts always do. I’ll be just alike to you then. Like twins we’ll be.’ Then she grasped his hand in both of hers and cried out, ‘Oh Rory, take me along a’you, please, please take me along too.’

  Her voice was low and strong, but her eyes without feeling. She knew well enough he would not. Like a wistful child, asking the impossible, for the pain of hearing no. He shook his head and she dropped his hand and scuffed her toes in the mud. Then she looked up at him, with a new look. She stepped closer and reached both hands now to his body, low, linking around his slender hip bones and drawing him near her, her bloody face against his shirt. ‘Who’ll know, now, Rory, you’re goin’ away anywise. Do it to me again. Please.’ She drew him yet closer, rubbed her thighs against him, one and the other, like a cat. ‘Just once more, Rory, please.’

  But he tore himself free of her, fighting not lust, but anger, lest in hatred of the thing she’d made of the pretty child he loved he’d turn on her and add his own blows to her father’s. ‘Oh lassie, lassie, somewhere, God willing, there’ll be a life for you. But not with me.’

  He walked off down the trail, not fast not slow, calm, like a dreamer, fearing to turn. But he could not resist.

  She was standing yet at the bend in the trail. He would remember her always, in her blue frock and bare feet, the sun making a glory of her white hair; the price of his freedom.

  A flatboat on the Ashley River brought him to Charleston, and a meeting with an Irish muleteer brought him to a small, cheap wood frame inn beside the harbour. It was a resort of seafaring men, and within half an hour over ale tankards he had work as a deckhand on the Sweet Eloise, a tobacco ship, bound for Port Glasgow.

  She would sail the next day. Rory spent his last night in the New World in the high-eave room of a neighbouring brothel in the arms of a Charleston whore. It was for nothing as sweet and simple as youthful lust; but a fire-with-fire washing of Charlotte from his mind and body and soul.

  He rose beside her in the morning with the first peace in a week. She was a broad-beamed smiling lass, fifteen years his senior. As he dressed, she sat at the window high over the street looking out through the black forest of ships’ masts, spider-webbed with rigging. The morning sun was red beyond. She stretched booted legs out beneath her white petticoats and said, ‘You’re no sailor-man, what makes you take to the sea today?’

  Rory grinned, buttoning his shirt, looking past her to the ships’ masts. They reminded him of Loch Arkaig and the black Scots pines, high on the hill ridge against the sun. ‘I’m away home,’ he said softly. ‘Away home.’

  ‘You’re a Scotchman, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am that.’ Then he said softly, ‘I call it Scots.’

  She looked out east over the masts and the sea. ‘A far funny place, that must be,’ she said. ‘What ship will you sail to Scotland?’

  ‘A tobacco ship. To Port Glasgow. She sails today.’

  She was very quiet, then she leaned forward and pointed down to the dockland below her. ‘You see that ship, sweetie?’ she said.

  He stood and leaned over her, the perfume of her hair heavy beneath his face. ‘Aye, the near one.’

  The ship was just below their window, and they looked out into the upmost mastheads, and the high, dizzy top-gallants above the very roof. The masts swayed, arcing slightly at their high tips with the dim, gentle sway of the sheltered tide.

  ‘A slaver,’ Rory said softly. Along a plank stretching from deck to shore, a long chained troop of black men and women, half-naked, wrapped in rags, clambered with shaky steps. Once on the shore they clustered numbed, not noticing the two gentlemen in riding boots who surveyed them carefully, pointing now and again to one or another. A tiny black child ran loose round and around the group, perilously close to the dock edge. It wailed, thinly, the sound rising to them. It had lost its mother.

  Rory’s whore said gently, ‘Poor thing. Oh poor thing.’


  Rory turned his back to the window and said, ‘Oh a far funny place, Scotland. A far funny place. God preserve her from a funniness like this.’

  ‘But that’s your ship, sweetie.’

  ‘Surely no.’ Rory spun around.

  ‘But she is. She’s sailing for Glasgow, with tobacco.’

  ‘The Sweet Eloise?’

  She laughed suddenly aloud. ‘Oh no, honey. No sweet nothing there. It must be another, after all, your tobacco ship. That’s the Sea-Harrower. And the devil’s own they say of her. Don’t you go sailing on her, sweetheart, no matter what they pay.’

  ‘To be sure, I am not about to,’ Rory said softly. She smiled gently and stood up and kissed his scarred cheek. He returned the kiss, solemnly, with respect and said very quietly, ‘Beannachd leat,’ a blessing.’

  ‘What funny tongue are ye speaking now?’ she laughed, blushing a little, and turning away.

  ‘A tongue I’d thought to have forgotten,’ Rory said. ‘From a land I had tried to forget.’

  Chapter Five

  ‘Antoine.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Antoine. I am thinking we may make a bargain, you and I.’

  Antoine looked up over the dim glow of the dying fire. It was late, the peats burning low. Marsali sat in the dim of the wooden bench by the wall, playing softly on her clarsach. They had all been singing together, and the night had been sweet with friendship. But now James must bring the old intruder in, once more.

  Antoine said softly, ‘What have I to bargain with, James? Even the clothes I am wearing belong to your son.’

  ‘It is not that kind of a bargain that I was thinking of.’ Marsali watched the low firelight playing on her father’s face, making the crags and lines sharper and the white hair more wildly glistening. There was not a softening touch about him, for all his years. She knew already what his bargain would be.

  It was a still, cold, starry night in February. The weather had closed in upon them, with driving sleet in the days and frost in the nights. James MacKinnon had refused to allow Antoine to leave them until the days were kinder.