The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  ‘Are you knowing, lass,’ Ishbel said, watching her closely, ‘why he chooses to sleep in the tavern?’

  ‘Surely he is fond of his privacy, a haughty right of men like himself. On the ship, I never was knowing where he slept.’

  ‘On the ship, girl, it did not matter,’ she said impatiently, then added sharply, ‘By all that’s holy, girl, you’d think you were a child.’ Then she set her mouth firm and said, ‘He is liking the privacy of his bed in the tavern, Marsali, so that he may have Mistress Grant in it. That prize he set his eye on the day we entered this house. And it took him no long time to win it. ’Twas herself I saw creeping away down those stone steps,’ she gestured to the window and the courtyard, ‘yon, that lead from her balcony. And in the morning, she made her way back, the same, and need I be telling you who it was watching her home by the courtyard gate?’

  ‘You need not. ’Tis grand being an old wife, now, with nothing to do but watch the scuttling to and fro of lovers to their trysts,’ Marsali said bitterly. ‘’Tis no business of yours, wifie, and none of mine, where he goes and who he sleeps with, and nothing that I can do about it. So I will be thanking you to keep your spying to yourself now.’

  She sat cold-faced and dry-eyed, humiliated and furious.

  Ishbel said firmly, ‘It is not for my own curiosity, lass, that I watched them, nor for cruelty that I tell you. I am thinking there is something you may well do.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Marsali said quietly, ‘I may leave him here and away to Rome without him. I have sworn to my father I will find Prince Tearlach. I do not need Antoine for that. And though it was himself saying we would be wise to go there, I am not seeing him stirring himself o’er much to be away.’

  ‘Do you wonder? A warm bed and a red-haired lass who has nothing but worship in her eyes. Would you have him leave that for a pony’s back on the long empty road to Rome? And yourself with scarce a kind word for him?’

  ‘I give him all the kind words he deserves.’

  ‘And nothing more.’

  ‘And are you saying,’ Marsali cried angrily, ‘that I should coax him away to Rome with the promise of my bed?’

  Ishbel knotted her gnarled hands on top of the counterpane and said contentedly, ‘Och but ’tis a grand place this; warm sun and warm wind. Content I would be to stay always.’

  ‘And was it not yourself always warning me, in the first days at Skye, that he was a devil’s child, and a sea-changeling, and I must never go near him?’

  ‘’Tis a long way away, Skye and the Old North,’ Ishbel said sleepily. ‘Are you thinking now the glaistig yet comes to your father there?’

  ‘I am thinking your illness had addled your mind.’

  ‘No lassie,’ Ishbel said calmly, ‘my mind is clear and ’tis not illness, anyway. It is age. I am old. Your father is old. Murdoch has yet his own life to live, and Rory, surely, is no more. You’ve a life ahead of you, lass, and the world you were born to live it in, is gone. I am thinking that is a rich and handsome lad, who would no doubt make a fine lover, and perhaps, in time, a husband and father as well.’

  ‘I have never heard you talk so,’ Marsali said. ‘’Tis fearful blunt, like Mistress Cameron.’

  ‘I am running that wee bit short of time, lass, and what will become of you is much on my mind.’

  ‘You need not fear. I will look after myself, well enough. But I will not wed Antoine,whatever befalls us, for he is heartless and cold fer all his fine looks and his gold.’

  ‘He is not heartless to Mary Grant.’

  ‘No wonder, with the creeping away up and down the steps,’ Marsali mocked, ‘all the night long.’

  ‘No lass. She treats him kindly, like he were just an ordinary man. You scorn him because you think, for his rank, he scorns yourself. Though he waits patient on your words, if only you’d listen. But he is young, and I daresay hot-blooded, and will not wait forever.’

  ‘He may wait till the end of his days, for all I care. I have other things on my mind.’

  Ishbel gave up then, and closed her eyes and lay back on the pillow. She was thinking on the road to Rome, and how weary a road it would be. She said suddenly, ‘Is Antoine in the house the now?’

  Marsali shrugged, as if she did not know and did not care. But she said grudgingly, ‘I am thinking I saw him come creeping in, as you would put it, some late hour in the morning.’

  Ishbel laughed raucously at that and said, boldly, ‘Och poor thing, he must be weary.’ Then she said, ‘Send him to me. I would see him, now. Alone.’

  Marsali went away down the long, polished darkwood staircase and went from room to room in the old French mansion house, until she found Antoine sitting on a rug before a fire in the library in stocking feet drinking Robert Cameron’s brandy and reading one of his books.

  ‘You’re well at home here,’ she said, by way of greeting.

  ‘My host is most generous.’ He answered in French, not Gaelic, which annoyed her, with its deliberate distancing of them. But truth was, he was thinking in French, once more in his own country, though she would not understand that.

  She replied, in Gaelic, and for spite, ‘They are a generous-spirited lot, the folk of this house.’ Then sharply, for his very insolent comfort annoyed her too, ‘Will you away up to Ishbel? She is wanting you.’

  ‘She is no worse?’ he said quickly.

  ‘I am thinking she is no better. But that is not the reason. She wishes to speak with you. I am thinking it is about Rome.’

  Antoine stood up and set his book down and said solemnly, in Gaelic now, ‘She will not be going to Rome.’ Then he went off towards the stairs, padding silent yet, in his stocking feet, and when she made no effort to follow, went on alone.

  He rapped gently on the door and went in when Ishbel called and came and stood rather solemnly at the foot of the bed.

  Ishbel said, ‘’Tis not a wake yet, laddie, so we will have one of your pretty smiles, and none of this formality from you. I think I am knowing you well enough for a kiss.’ He grinned at that and leaned forward and kissed her wrinkled forehead and then sat easily on the foot of the bed.

  ‘You’ve been liking your stay in Avignon,’ Ishbel said.

  ‘I have that.’

  ‘’Tis a fine warm place,’ she said noncommittally, ‘and I am seeing that the climate or whatever suits you; I have ne’er seen you looking better.’ She smiled dryly and then said, ‘And are you preferring the lassie to Marsali?’

  Antoine laughed softly. Drawing his stockinged feet up on the bed, he sat there cross-legged, leaning easily against the brass railing at the foot. ‘No. I am not. But I have lived long enough to learn to take the flower at hand, and leave for others the one wrapped up in brambles and thorns.’

  ‘You’re no fool, Antoine,’ Ishbel said quietly. ‘I am hearing from Marsali that you think her wise to be going to Rome.’

  ‘I am thinking that in Rome we will find, if not the prince, then surely his father, who is always there and not yet taken to roaming the countryside like a beggar. He will know where bonnie Tearlach is.’

  ‘I am hoping his son is that wee bit more dutiful with his letter writing than your father’s son, or poor Dark James will be knowing nothing of the sort.’

  ‘Aye well,’ Antoine said without feeling.

  ‘And are you wishing to be off to Rome with Marsali?’

  Antoine looked down at his fine, slender hands and said, ‘We must, Ishbel. And surely you cannot come with us. I know your illness, for I have seen it on others.’

  ‘My illness is my years.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I see now how you favour that shoulder and arm, and how you hirple along when you step.’

  ‘It is rheumatism.’

  ‘It is more than that.’

  ‘You’re no fool, Antoine.’

  ‘May we go then, and leave you? Mistress Cameron will be glad of your company, and has told me so. And for all their talk of poverty, she is a generous woman. Besides, I will leave yo
u gold enough to keep you for as long as you wish to stay. Or to take you home again to Scotland.’

  ‘I do not see myself home again,’ she said slowly. ‘Mistress Cameron is kind indeed, and I am thinking that courtyard beyond with the small chair under yon strange green tree is a kinder place to be, than Trotternish. But come now, will you be telling James MacKinnon for me, that I have not forgotten him, if you find yourself that way north, again?’

  ‘Surely. And I will find myself north again, wifie, for that is my home.’

  She smiled faintly and said, ‘That is strange. I think of this as your home, and you think of Barra. Whoever would choose it with its cold wet winds, when they could have this?’ She thought a moment longer and said, ‘Antoine, will you be telling me, why is it, if in truth your mother came from Barra, I never have heard of her?’

  He did not answer at first, but twisted around and looked out the window at the branches waving there. Suddenly he leapt up and strode to the balcony and leaned far over with one leg beyond the railing, teetering there, and reaching till he caught from one bright branch a spray of blossom. Ishbel shouted, ‘Take care, you’ll fall.’

  ‘Och, never,’ he said calmly, and climbed back onto the balcony, and then came into the room, and laid the flowers, white and pink and casting pollen on the coverlet, beside her old hand. Ishbel lifted them, and sniffed at them, and adjusted her white linen cap.

  ‘It is the way of children to do something pretty, when asked too significant a question,’ she said clearly. ‘I am old enough to understand children. Antoine, tell me the truth.’

  ‘It was a very long time ago, when my mother was there.’

  ‘I am a very old woman.’

  Antoine took her hand. He said, ‘It is hard to be old, and to have lived beyond all who were young when you were young. It is very lonely.’

  ‘True,’ Ishbel said. She leaned back against her pillow and looked at him fondly, and disturbed. She held his hand between her two and said, ‘You have travelled a long way with us, Antoine, and I am thinking this fine Cause of James MacKinnon means little enough to you. And now you would away to Rome. Surely there are other things you’d be doing with your money and your time.’

  ‘Money I have plenty of, as well you know, Ishbel. More than I need. And time, och, I’ve more of that than I want. Let me take Marsali with me, for I would not wish her to travel alone.’

  Ishbel paused a long time, thinking, still holding his hand, and studying his face, and the cool child’s calm of his eyes. ‘Nor would I wish her to travel alone, and I may indeed allow her with you. I may do more. Antoine, I will give her to you; I will give you the charge of her care that I have from her father. But I want one small thing in return.’

  ‘Surely anything.’

  ‘I do not think so, Antoine,’ she said uneasily. ‘But we will try.’ She paused warily, and said, all in a breath, ‘I will have that wee bit nonsense you wear about your neck.’

  He was silent for a long time, and seemed to draw back from her, and instinctively she let go of his hand. Then slowly he shook his head.

  ‘Give it to me, Antoine.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That for Marsali. A small price, surely.’ Her eyes narrowed, a little cruel, and more frightened.

  He laughed lightly, a cold laugh, and said, ‘It is nonsense, as you say. Why do you want it?’

  ‘Prove to me it is nonsense. Give it to me.’

  ‘I cannot. It is a gift from my mother.’

  ‘A fair trade, then, a mother’s gift, for a wife. She would understand, I am sure, when next you see her. Take her Marsali, at your fine house in Antibes, and I promise you she will approve the exchange.’

  ‘Och, my mother is not there,’ he said harshly. ‘Nor will she be again. It is years, long years since I have even seen her … nor can I go to see her, without her gift.’

  ‘I would not have thought you quite so sentimental,’ Ishbel said coolly. ‘But that is my bargain, and I will make no other.’

  He sat yet at the edge of her bed, his fingers instinctively wound in that silver plaiting of fur. For a moment she was sure he wavered, both hands together at his neck, beneath his long black hair. But then he flung them down and stood up, and the child-creature she had teased had gone, replaced by an angry man. He said abruptly, ‘Good-bye, Ishbel. I will send Marsali to you, and I will be on my way. I have had enough of the kindness of Christian womankind.’

  When Marsali came in, minutes later, and worried, for Antoine had been angry and she had never seen him thus, Ishbel called her to the edge of the bed. She looked older, and wearier, and Marsali saw now that she scant lifted her left arm at all, and her left eye seemed half-closed. She spoke however in a strong cold voice. ‘You will not be going to Rome, lass. We will be going home, on the first ship we can find. And no ship of Antoine’s will it be.’

  Marsali felt the flicker of a frail hope, as if somehow, miraculously, all was altered, and she might yet not be faced with burden of murder. ‘But why?’ she said tentatively. ‘And how, for I must go on, for my father’s sake, and Antoine has offered now to go with me.’

  ‘Has he?’ Ishbel said coldly. ‘Has he indeed? You may tell him then that I forbid it, and he need not ask the reason.’

  ‘But why? And why are you now so hard on him when but an hour ago you were telling me to take him to bed?’

  Ishbel shook her head, weary and stubborn. ‘No matter. I forbid it now, in the name of your father. I forbid you even to speak to him. He is leaving us now, and he will go alone.’ She waved Marsali away with an angry hand, and refused to speak further. She was weak and distraught and Marsali, afraid to upset her further, crept from the room. At the door she stopped and bent, finding something on the floor. It was a branch from a tree beyond the window, a bough of blossoms, broken and crushed. Surely a strong wind, from nowhere, she thought, to have blown it thus, into the room.

  A strong wind was blowing that night, the mistral wind down from the mountains, and Marsali shivered in the raw challenge of it beyond the walls of Avignon. She turned on her pony and looked back at the dim lights of the city. Antoine came up on his own mount till the two stood side by side. He let go the reins and the beast cropped grass with a hasty mouth.

  ‘Still now, it seems wrong, to leave her thus with no farewell,’ Marsali said.

  ‘’Twas the only way, lass. The illness has gone to her mind and she cannot be rational. In the morning she will have forgotten her worries, and Mistress Cameron will explain. She will be well cared for there, and will sit in the sun under the olive trees and have her last days in happiness. For she could never travel on with us, nor is she strong enough to travel home.’

  ‘But whatever made her take on so, Antoine, about yourself. For surely she had grown fond of you, I know.’

  ‘Och, who knows, when the mind grows old? Some wee bit nonsense, no doubt. Some wee bit nonsense. And nothing more.’

  Chapter Ten

  A small fair child, leading a milk cow by a rope spun round its shaggy horns, came through a gap in the drystone wall that ambled brokenly about the old graveyard. She had a brown wraith face, half-wild, and underfed, and she flung her hand up to it and nearly cried out, seeing the man there. He was a tall man, in ragged shirt and coat, and knee-breeches, with a plait of black hair. He had his back to her, halfway, and scarce noticed her, looking down solemnly, as he was, at the grave before him.

  ‘Please forgive me, sir, I was not knowing there were ever folk about.’

  He spun around, shocked at the sound and then, seeing his sabre-scarred face, she did cry out, ‘Oh Jesus save me,’ and began backing away, stumbling against the cow, and protesting the while, in uneasy English. ‘I was but taking the cow to grass, fer my mam. We were not knowin, sir, and thinkin’ there’d be none to mind. The grass is good here, and the walls were keeping her in. She is the terrible cow for the roaming …’

  Rory laughed, aloud, shaking his head and saying, in Gaelic, ‘Whee
sht, lassie. ’Tis no matter about the cow. ’Tis not my grass, nor my grave. But come, you can be of help to me.’

  He stepped closer to her, and she held her ground, though looking ready to flee. Comforted perhaps by his use of her native tongue, she permitted him to come right beside her. He knelt down. She was only a wee thing, slim-boned and barefoot. She reminded him eerily of Charlotte.

  ‘Look now,’ he said, ‘I am not so fearsome, surely. I cannot help my face. ’Twas an English soldier did it, long ago.’

  She nodded solemnly, as if that at least were understandable. She came forward then and touched the scar, curiously. Rory smiled and she smiled as well.

  ‘Yer not so ugly when ye smile,’ she said.

  ‘I hope not.’ Rory grinned and stood up. ‘Will you be telling me your name?’ he said.

  ‘’Tis Jamesina. Jamesina MacKinnon.’

  Rory smiled again, to himself, and said quietly, ‘Aye, lass. Your name speaks louder than you do yourself. Clan MacKinnon you are, then. I am knowing now all there is to know, of your kin, and their politics.’

  ‘D’ye know my mam then?’ she said, curious.

  ‘I do not think so, lassie; that was not my meaning. But tell me now, do you remember the lady that lies yon?’ He waved his hand over his shoulder to the grave. It was the newest of the names in that small family ground of Glentarvie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the child said, losing interest. But then she stepped closer and nudged at the turf with her foot and said, ‘Aye, but I do. Is it not the lady they brought from the West? All the way across yon hill there, they carried her, dead, to be buried here.’ The child’s eyes opened wide at the thought. ‘My mam told me,’ she said, ‘with great flames at night, to light the way.’

  Rory nodded. It was not unusual for the dead to be returned thus home.

  ‘I am thinking,’ the child said slowly and dreamily, ‘she was surely once the lady of yon house.’ She gestured absently to the hulk of broken stone beyond the graveyard wall. Its stepped eaves, long roofless, were black against a blue spring sky.