‘Please, sir,’ the girl was answering him, ‘Dougal, the ferryman, brought Murdo Macrae over the firth last night.’ Her gaze was resting in wonder on the wall hangings in the room as she spoke. She was looking at them as if she hadn’t seen tapestries before. ‘He’d come from the west…’
‘Well?’ Now that the Sheriff came to think of it, little Elspeth from the kitchen probably hadn’t ever been in his private sanctum before, let alone seen a minor work from Angers. She might not have even been in this part of the house at all until now.
‘Dougal, the ferryman, knew who he was and he told Fergus Macpherson and Fergus was at the house this morning with fish and Fergus told us…’ She paused to take breath.
‘It doesn’t follow that Murdo Macrae is the man in the bothy,’ objected the Sheriff sternly, quite forgetting that he was talking to a mere girl – and a kitchenmaid at that – and not addressing learned men in a court of law.
Quite unfazed by his words, Elspeth from the kitchen held out her own thin right hand. ‘Dougal told Fergus that his passenger had a bloody bandage on his right hand and Fergus, he told us in the kitchen.’
‘So?’
‘The man in the bothy has a wound on his right hand too, sir. I saw it when he was holding his plaid tight against his face.’
The Sheriff gave the girl a quizzical look. At this rate he would soon have to look to his own laurels – she hadn’t missed a single thing that should be marked by a sheriff too.
Elspeth was still speaking. ‘And the mannie outside said I wasna’ to tell anyone but the Sheriff himself that he was there in the bothy. That was very important, he said.’
Rhuaraidh Macmillan gestured towards the hearth. ‘So that’s why you brought in the peats that the fire didn’t need.’
She bobbed up and down. ‘I don’t ordinarily get to come in here, sir, and I thought if anyone saw me coming this way…’
‘Quite right, Elspeth,’ he said gravely. He would have to consider how he himself could best cross the steading to the bothy behind without causing comment. Scotland wasn’t what it was. Or rather, perhaps, what it had been. And there might be men watching him too, as they watched others in these troubled times. He knew well enough that Drummondreach was no safer than anywhere else in Fearnshire these days. He waved a hand. ‘Now, away with you, lassie, while I think. Keep your tongue to yourself, mind.’
She didn’t make any effort to take her leave. Instead, she stood uncertainly between the fire and the door while the Sheriff looked up at the sky and tried to calculate how long it would be before the darkness was deep enough to allow him to slip out to Murdo Macrae unseen.
‘Sir,’ she began tentatively.
He turned. ‘Yes?’
‘Calum Beg will be after bringing the horses back soon from the fields.’
‘What about it?’ The girl should know that such mundane matters were outwith the concern of the Sheriff of Fearnshire.
‘They have to go across the steading for their feed.’
‘You’re not wanting me to ride to the bothy, surely?’
‘No, sir.’ She bobbed again. ‘But if we were to stop Calum on the road in front and you were to take the horses in instead of him…’
‘Then I could lead the horses round towards the steading and into the bothy in his coat without being recognized,’ finished Rhuaraidh Macmillan, appreciative of her use of the royal ‘we’. If only the daughter of James V had had half as much sense – no, there was a better word for what he was thinking of, a Greek word ‘nous’, that was it – as this youngster had, then Scotland – and probably England too, for that matter – wouldn’t be in half the turmoil that it was now.
* * *
Calum Beg’s coat was old and dirty but it covered Rhuaraidh Macmillan well enough. The Sheriff didn’t have Calum Beg’s accomplished way with his equine team but somehow he got the pair round the front of the demesne and into the steading behind. He hitched the horses to their post and slipped first into the steading. He came out with an old bucket and then, thus laden with this unsavoury touch of verisimilitude, went into the bothy.
‘Thank God you’ve come, Sheriff,’ said a voice out of the darkness at the back of the unlit building. The bedraggled figure of Murdo Macrae emerged from the shadows. ‘Macmillan, we need your help ower badly.’
‘We?’
‘There’s a great trouble brewing over Loch a’Chroisg way.’ Macrae didn’t answer him directly. ‘I got away yestre’en, but it was a near thing…’
‘And sore wounded…’ observed the Sheriff, pointing to Macrae’s blood-caked hand.
The man winced as he moved forward. ‘This wound, Sheriff, is why we need your help. I’m a marked man now.’
‘And you can’t go back without a working sword arm anyway,’ observed the Sheriff, ever the realist. ‘You’d no’ be able to defend yoursel’. You’d be cut down in an instant.’
Macrae acknowledged the truth of this with a jerk of his head. ‘You need to know that the blackguards are laying siege to the house by the loch.’
‘The Rogart rebels?’ Sheriff Macmillan didn’t really, need to ask. That band was only one of those roaming the Highlands bent on causing trouble for the forces of law and order, but its men were the most prominent of the marauders presently terrorizing Fearnshire. And the best armed.
‘Aye, and that’s not the worst of it.’ Murdo Macrae’s face twisted into a grimace of pain quite separate from that caused by his injured hand. ‘There’s women and children in the house without men there able enough to guard them. The doors’ll no’ last much longer. They’ve taken a deal of battering already.’
The Sheriff nodded. It was a tale he had heard many times before over the county.
Murdo Macrae’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And,’ he said hollowly, ‘a rowan tree by the track here has been set about.’
Rhuaraidh Macmillan acknowledged the seriousness of this. A rowan tree by the track roughly hacked down was an old Highland indication of trouble to come nearby and soon. ‘They’ve taken the cattle, no doubt…’
‘And torched the hay…’ His shoulders sagged. ‘Sheriff, I’m sure they’re bent on laying waste to the whole strath and there’ll be no stopping them unless we get help.’
Rhuaraidh Macmillan said in his measured way, ‘There’s no enemy like an auld enemy…’ Highland memories went back a long way but he had no need to remind Murdo Macrae of Balblair of that. ‘And the men of Rogart are auld enemies with the people from Loch a’Chroisg, right enough.’
‘That’s half the trouble,’ said Macrae.
‘And the other half?’ asked the Sheriff, although he was sure he already knew the cause of the present troubles at Loch a’Chroisg.
Murdo Macrae lifted his shoulder in something like a shrug of despair. ‘That there’s still some for the Queen and some that are not.’
‘That leddie’d not be wanting bairns starved out,’ said the Sheriff firmly, ‘whoever they’re fighting for. She had one of her own, remember…’
‘Not that she ever got to see him over much from all accounts.’ Murdo Macrae grimaced. ‘And that’s not natural for a mother or her wean.’
‘Aye.’
There was no denying that the Crown that had come in with a lass and was well on its way to going out with a lass – or even two, if rumours about the health of the Queen of England were true – was not what it had once been. Rhuaraidh Macmillan was profoundly grateful for one thing, though, and that was that the county of Fearnshire was a long way from Edinburgh and even further from Fotheringhay Castle, where he’d heard Mary Queen of Scots was presently imprisoned.
‘So it is said,’ he murmured noncommittally.
There was an even older Highland tradition than a savaged rowan tree: one that went, ‘A silent tongue got no one hung.’ He knew well enough that words could be as dangerous as swords; would that the Queen had known it too. But earlier.
Murdo Macrae said eagerly, ‘If, Sheriff, we could get wo
rd to the Lord of Alcaig’s Isle, I know he’d take up his men to Loch a’Chroisg and see the men from Rogart off…’
‘Aye, Murdo, that’s true. Old Duncan Alcaig would deal with them right enough,’ agreed Rhuaraidh Macmillan, adding thoughtfully, ‘And he has sons, too. Big men now.’
‘But he’s an aye careful body,’ Macrae pointed out. He sounded rueful. ‘He’d no’ trust any messenger, any more than I would myself … not these days.’
The Sheriff acknowledged the truth of this. Old Alcaig was nobody’s fool. ‘Messengers are not always what they seem,’ he conceded.
Nothing, you could be sure, he thought to himself, was what it seemed these days. There had been those letters famously found in a casket first and now, he’d heard, letters concealed in a firkin of beer. None of those letters had been what they had seemed either. And all of them had caused a deal of trouble for a certain Queen – enough trouble to dissuade any man from trusting that any missive sent off into the blue would reach its destination without being tampered with and reported on to the man’s – or the woman’s – enemies. Moreover, no man could rest assured that, even if letters did reach the right reader, they would be seen only by the eyes of the man to whom they had been addressed. Not any longer.
Murdo Macrae struggled to get his good hand inside his torn jerkin. ‘I have letters for the Lord of Alcaig’s Isle here, but I’d need to know that they will get to him and him alone, mind you, otherwise…’ His voice trailed away and there was a moment’s silence in the bothy, broken only by the stamping of the hooves of one of the horses in the steading. ‘Otherwise, Sheriff,’ he went on hoarsely, ‘I’m worse than a dead man.’
Rhuaraidh Macmillan did not attempt to contradict him. The slashed rowan tree was evidence enough that Macrae spoke the truth there.
‘Wait you, man,’ he said, ‘while I think…’
The wounded fighter stood in front of him, anxiously scanning the Sheriff’s face. ‘There’s men hiding up in the wood,’ he said, ‘who’ll take letters to Alcaig, right enough, but he’ll not know they’re safe to act on and not a trap.’
Rhuaraidh Macmillan didn’t need reminding of the dangers of a trap. Fearnshire might be a long way from London, but even they had heard about the uncovering of the Babington plot.
‘I have a small chest indoors,’ the Sheriff began slowly, ‘with a good lock on it…’
Murdo Macrae’s shoulders promptly sagged in despair. ‘Locks need keys, Sheriff, and keys are no more safe than messengers these days.’
‘Aye, man, I know that fine…’ All Scotland knew that. The boy William Douglas had obtained the key to Loch Leven Castle when he had released Mary Queen of Scots. He had thrown the key into the loch as he rowed her and her maid across the water. ‘But I wasn’t thinking of your parting with the key of the casket…’
Murdo Macrae stared at him, nursing his blood-stained hand. ‘Is Alcaig meant to break the casket open, then?’ He looked even more weary now. ‘And if so, how’s Alcaig to know that that isn’a a trap too?’
Sheriff Macmillan stroked his chin. ‘The messenger that takes the casket is to tell him to put his own lock on it too – a barrel padlock – and keep the key of that himsel’.’
The wounded man looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Why is that, Sheriff?’
‘And when Alcaig has done that, he’s to send the casket back to you.’
‘Without his key?’ asked Macrae dully, moving over to the bothy wall for support, clearly now beyond thought.
‘That’s right,’ said the Sheriff briskly. ‘Then all you have to do is to unlock your lock with your key and send the casket back to him with his own lock still on it…’
‘So that he can open it with his own key,’ said Murdo Macrae, his mud-bespattered face clearing and some of his weariness dropping from him.
‘And only him,’ said the Sheriff.
‘I think I understand,’ said the wounded man, passing his good hand over his brow. He was sweating now. ‘But why…’
‘Knowing that no one else can have got into it because only he has the key,’ finished the Sheriff of Fearnshire. He stopped and picked up the noisome old bucket. ‘Now, wait you while I send Elspeth from the kitchen and her egg basket out here. The casket and the key’ll be in there under some food and drink.’ He paused at the door and added drily, ‘If you haven’t got that business with the keys straight in your mind, Macrae, ask her to explain it to you. She’ll tell you, right enough.’
Gold, Frankincense and Murder
‘Christmas!’ said Henry Tyler. ‘Bah!’
‘And we’re expecting you on Christmas Eve as usual,’ went on his sister Wendy placidly.
‘But…’ He was speaking on the telephone from London, ‘but, Wen—’
‘Now it’s no use your pretending to be Ebenezer Scrooge in disguise, Henry.’
‘Humbug,’ exclaimed Henry more firmly.
‘Nonsense,’ declared his sister, quite unmoved. ‘You enjoy Christmas just as much as the children. You know you do.’
‘Ah, but this year I may just have to stay on in London over the holiday…’ Henry Tyler spent his working days – and, in these troubled times, quite a lot of his working nights as well – at the Foreign Office in Whitehall.
What he was doing now to his sister would have been immediately recognized in ambassadorial circles as ‘testing the reaction’. In the lower echelons of his department, it was known more simply as ‘flying a kite’. Whatever you called it, Henry Tyler was an expert.
‘And it’s no use your saying there’s trouble in the Baltic either,’ countered Wendy Witherington warmly.
‘Actually,’ said Henry, ‘it’s the Balkans which are giving us a bit of a headache just now.’
‘The children would never forgive you if you weren’t there,’ said Wendy, playing a trump card, although it wasn’t really necessary. She knew that nothing short of an international crisis would keep Henry away from her home in the little market town of Berebury, in the heart of rural Calleshire, at Christmas time. The trouble was that these days international crises were not nearly so rare as they used to be.
‘Ah, the children,’ said their doting uncle. ‘And what is it that they want Father Christmas to bring this year?’
‘Edward wants a model railway engine for his set.’
‘Does he indeed?’
‘A Hornby LMS red engine called “Princess Elizabeth”,’ said Wendy Witherington readily. ‘It’s a 4–6–2.’
Henry made a note, marvelling that his sister, who seemed totally unable to differentiate between the Baltic and the Balkans – and quite probably the Balearics as well – had the details of a child’s model train absolutely at her fingertips.
‘And Jennifer?’ he asked.
Wendy sighed. ‘The Good Ship Lollipop jigsaw. Oh, and when you come, Henry, you’d better be able to explain to her how it is that while she could see Shirley Temple at the pictures – we took her last week – Shirley Temple couldn’t see her.’
Henry, who had devoted a great deal of time in the last ten days trying to explain to a minister in His Majesty’s Government exactly what Monsieur Pierre Laval might have in mind for the future of France, said he would do his best.
‘Who else will be staying, Wen?’
‘Our old friends Peter and Dora Watkins – you remember them, don’t you?’
‘He’s something in the bank, isn’t he?’ said Henry.
‘Nearly a manager,’ replied Wendy. ‘Then there’ll be Tom’s old Uncle George.’
‘I hope,’ groaned Henry, ‘that your barometer’s up to it. It had a hard time last year.’ Tom’s Uncle George had been a renowned maker of scientific instruments in his day. ‘He nearly tapped it to death.’
Wendy’s mind was still on her house guests. ‘Oh, and there’ll be two refugees.’
‘Two refugees?’ Henry frowned even though he was alone in his room at the Foreign Office. They were beginning to be very careful there about some
refugees.
‘Yes, the Rector has asked us each to invite two refugees from the camp on the Calleford road to stay for Christmas this year. You remember our Mr Wallis, don’t you, Henry?’
‘Long sermons?’ hazarded Henry.
‘Then you do remember him,’ said Wendy without irony. ‘Well, he’s arranged it all through some church organization. We’ve got to be very kind to them because they’ve lost everything.’
‘Give them useful presents, you mean,’ said Henry, decoding this last without difficulty.
‘Warm socks and scarves and things,’ agreed Wendy Witherington vaguely. ‘And then we’ve got some people coming to dinner here on Christmas Eve.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Our doctor and his wife. Friar’s their name. She’s a bit heavy in the hand but he’s quite good company. And,’ said Wendy, drawing breath, ‘our new next-door neighbours – they’re called Steele – are coming too. He bought the pharmacy in the square last summer. We don’t know them very well – I think he married one of his assistants – but it seemed the right thing to invite them at Christmas.’
‘Quite so,’ said Henry. ‘That all?’
‘Oh, and little Miss Hooper.’
‘Sent her measurements, did she?’
‘You know what I mean,’ said his sister, unperturbed. ‘She always comes then. Besides, I expect she’ll know the refugees. She does a lot of church work.’
‘What sort of refugees are they?’ asked Henry cautiously.
But that Wendy did not know.
* * *
Henry himself wasn’t sure, even after he’d first met them, and his brother-in-law was no help.
‘Sorry, old man,’ said that worthy as they foregathered in the drawing room, awaiting the arrival of the rest of the dinner guests on Christmas Eve. ‘All I know is that this pair arrived from somewhere in Mitteleuropa last month with only what they stood up in.’
‘Better out than in,’ contributed Gordon Friar, the doctor, adding an old medical aphorism, ‘like laudable pus.’
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