The Camerons

by Robert Crichton

  “No, I don’t understand that you can’t trust me.” She turned away and started back down the moor.

  “Don’t go,” Andrew called to her. It was more like a call for help. “You can come with me.” She stopped and he trotted down to her.

  “You can come.”

  “Can I see what you do?”

  “Yes.”

  “And will I understand?” It was astonishing to him how close she seemed to come to what it was they did. He had a feeling she knew and was testing him.

  “No.”

  “But once I’ve seen it, will you tell me?” He wanted to say yes and found that he was shaking his head. She walked on down until she reached the edge of the orchard.

  “Please, don’t leave that way,” he said, following her.

  “You can come with me if you want,” the Bone girl said.

  “No, I can’t.” It was a cry of pain. “I have to go up. They’re counting on me.” He held her arm, surprised at himself. “Look, the Bones are a proud family. If you had a family secret you were sworn to keep, you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Oh, aye, I would though.” He hadn’t expected that and he was thrown altogether off balance. “Because I would trust you.”

  And still the words wouldn’t come, especially this day, his father waiting to go down to face Lord Fyffe, the family a rock behind him, he couldn’t break the secret they had all kept so many years. She started down through the apple trees. He felt bound in some way, held by some tie much stronger than himself that kept him from doing what he wanted to do.

  “Alyson? Come back. I’ll tell you,” but he didn’t go down to her and he knew that if she came back up he wouldn’t tell her. He started to run up the moor then, to punish himself, and because the pain of the running was good. The family came first, the family was always first, without the family there was nothing. Bones might tell their secrets but Camerons never would.

  It sounded good, it always had, and it made him sick to think about. Why did he have to be born a Cameron, he said to himself, aloud now with each painful step up the moor, why me? why me? knowing he had possibly given up the only love of his life in order to hold on to another. It was too much to ask of a young man, Andrew thought.

  10

  It seemed to Gillon he had been in the tub for hours. Washings and rinsings, a hair soaping and then a vinegar wash to shine the hair and get rid of the alkali. If they wanted to make him look crippled, he thought, they were going about it in an odd way. In theory they should carry him down on a shutter and deposit him at the door and here they were, sending him down like a Highland warrior on parade.

  “How much time?” he suddenly cried out. Hours must have slid away.

  “Three hours until you walk,” Maggie called in.

  Until you walk. The hangman’s words. They sent a chill through him.

  When he dried himself he noticed his hands were trembling again.

  “There ought to be a pill a man could take to settle his nerves,” Gillon said.

  “There is, only it’s not a pill,” Mr. Selkirk said. “You pour it out of a bottle.”

  She came out of the ben into the but then, although Gillon was standing there naked in the center of the room.

  “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she shouted at Henry Selkirk. “You’d have your friend pour a little courage from the bottle, is it, and go down there stinking of whisky? And you, get dressed. Standing there all white and shaking like a bush on the moor.”

  Maggie took the whisky off the dresser and into the ben. Rob Roy was at the door and the rush of air that followed him in was no help to Gillon. He could not stop trembling.

  “Got them,” Rob said, holding up the knee-length socks. They were good gray wool with a faint red pattern, just a suggestion of Argyle running through them and topped with little tassels.

  “And look,” he cried. “Can you see them?” He passed the stockings around. “Little snecks to hold your stalking knife.” He was elated; he also had been drinking.

  “I am taking no knife to no castle,” Gillon said, and the silence fell on the house again.

  “What’s the matter here?” Rob said. “It’s like a house of the dead in here.”

  Gillon began to get dressed, thoughtfully the way a man might dress knowing it would be his last time doing it.

  “Well, you ought to get outside. The whole town is waiting. It’s a festival out there. Andy Begg wants to send down to Cowdenbeath for a piper to pipe your way down.”

  The cold feeling came over Gillon again but he forced himself to keep moving. He put on his clean knitted underwear. If the mansion was overheated he would sweat but it was a risk he would have to run. There was no going down in a kilt without drawers, that much in all of Scotland was certain. Every movement seemed heavy to Gillon.

  “Christ, what do they think this is?” Gillon said. “This is a serious day.”

  “The Miners’ Second Freedom Day,” Rob said. “The common man forcing his way into a world that was closed to him before. A simple workaday coal jock forcing himself before the mighty Earl of Fyffe. Think of that, now; before the powerful—”

  “I won’t do it!” Gillon cried out. “I will not! I won’t go down there like this.”

  He had stepped into his kilt and hooked it closed and the transformation was total. That one movement of the arm, the snip of metal meeting and clicking shut and Gillon was transported out of their drab world into a world of his own, alien to theirs.

  It was almost embarrassing. Here he was, in the center of the small dark room, brilliant against the grayness of smoke-smothered walls, a tropical bird come to rest for a moment with the sparrows in some working-class back alley.

  The pleats of the kilt rippled when he moved, a subtle movement of the wool like a breath of wind across the moor, and the colors of the tartan, strong with blues and hunting greens, streaks of red and yellow flashing out at every movement, were startling in this world that knew only grays and blacks. The ruffled shirt above the kilt, softly white and as creamy as good linen can be, brought out the gaiety of the Erracht tartan.

  “But Daddie,” Emily said, “you’re beautiful.”

  “Aye, it’s true. You look like Scotland,” Sam said. Everyone knew what he meant. In his kilt Gillon was the heart of the dream people have about themselves. Gillon had a sense of it. He knew that none of the others had the lean grace or the fine-boned face that would let them feel that the clothes belonged on them. There was an ancient rightness about it on Gillon that none of them possessed.

  “Jemmie wants to see you, Daddie,” Sarah said.

  “No. He doesn’t want to see me, because I’m not going down to Brumbie Hall.”

  “Please, Daddie. He wants it very much.” Poor Jem, all right, little slope-shouldered Jem. He would just let him see the kilt and then he’d take it off for good.

  “Let me get my hose on then, the filibeg’s not right without it,” Gillon said and they had the feeling that his resistance was failing. He went into the ben, where Jem was lying in his parents’ bed.

  Jem nodded and then he smiled. He tried to sit up and when he couldn’t he made a small fist and motioned for Sam to come to him.

  “What does he say?” Gillon asked.

  “He says if you don’t go down and act like the man you look like, he’s going to get up and breathe in your face.”

  They laughed, their first real laugh, and it changed the house. Everyone wanted to talk then, to Scotch-up the Scotsman until perfection was approached.

  “I want a drink of good whisky.…”

  “No, no you don’t,” Maggie said.

  “And I intend to have it.”

  Gillon brushed by his wife, no John Thomson’s man now, and got the bottle.

  “Any that want to share it with me can share it,” Gillon said, and poured two thick fingers’ worth into his tassie.

  “To Jem, that he be well soon.”

  “To Jem.”

  “To
our dad, that the words come right.”

  “To our dad.”

  “To our mother, who has taken us this far,” Gillon said.

  “To our mom.”

  “To the Earl of Fyffe,” Gillon said.

  “To the Earl of Fyffe!” they shouted. Gillon suddenly turned and clumsily threw his cup into the fireplace, where it shattered.

  “Why did you do that?” Maggie said.

  “I don’t know, but it’s what I intended to do.”

  * * *

  It was all new after that. The glassers came to straighten the lead frames and replace the broken glass. They took down the wooden planking and light swarmed into the house as if the light itself were a sign sent for Gillon. He could see people in the lane outside waiting for him.

  “I would like you to meet our uncle, Sir Lauriston Cameron,” Sam said.

  “A pleasure, I’m certain, sir,” the glasser said, and took his cap off before recognizing Cameron. “Ah, Cameron, for Christ’s sake. You’re too loovely to look at.”

  The socks had performed the same little miracle that the kilt had for Gillon’s too long, too work-wiry legs. The legs looked hard and compact underneath the taut new wool, deerstalker’s legs, and the knees, somewhat long and suggesting too much bone, looked … correct. He put on his tweed tie, knowing how to tie it now, and then slid into his tweed jacket, which made his miner’s shoulders look broader and less bunchy. The shoes were tight but he could bear that, and to his surprise they added more than an inch to his height. Whoever had owned them had had the insides built up to exaggerate his size. Everything was right; everything worked.

  “Now I know why you went up there and got him,” Sam said to his mother. “I never saw it before.”

  “Aye, that’s what I went for and that’s what I got. Too bad some of you didn’t get more of him.”

  “Always bring it down to earth, Mither. Perhaps it was we got too much of you,” Rob Roy said.

  “Aye. Perhaps it was.”

  * * *

  An hour to wait. It was too long. Gillon was ready to go right then. He forced himself to sit down and read in his Henry George to prepare his mind, to get it oiled for the arguments to come.

  But the lawless license of early English rule has been long restrained. To all that vast population the strong hand of England has given a more than Roman peace; the just principles of English law have been extended by an elaborate system of codes and law officers designed to secure the humblest of these abject peoples the rights of Anglo-Saxon freemen.…

  Wherever you turned, Gillon thought, there it was, something Pitmungo had never seemed to have learned. No man above the law, no man greater than another because of his station—not where the law and a man’s rights were concerned. He saw the door in his mind again, the great door at Brumbie Hall, and this time he didn’t feel the cold inside.

  “What are you going to say to the bastard?” the glasser said to Gillon through the window.

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of the right thing when the time comes,” Gillon said, and was sure that he would.

  “I know you will,” the glasser said. “That’s what we’re counting on.” It didn’t bother Gillon any longer.

  * * *

  “I’m on fire again,” Jemmie whispered. “Tell Sarah to come.”

  Sam put the book down and went to get his sister. They did it all quietly because this was no time to disturb their father. She tried all of her tricks, the cold compresses and the soothing witch hazel, but the fever stayed up and Jemmie fought against delirium.

  “As soon as Dad goes, I’m going to get the doctor,” Sarah said.

  Sam was angry. “I don’t want that bastard to touch my brother.”

  “But I’ve done what I can do,” Sarah said. “Aye, he’s a dumph but there’s a chance he can do something.”

  “A chance! You think they’d let that butcher inside Brumbie Hall if one of them got sick?”

  Mr. Selkirk had been listening. “What about ice? You could pack him in ice to bring the fever down,” the librarian said. “It’s what they’re doing these days.”

  They looked at one another. It was worth some sort of try.

  “If we had ice,” Sam finally said.

  “I can make ice,” Maggie said. While Gillon read she slipped into the ben and looked at her son. He barely recognized her.

  “All right,” she whispered to Sam. “Get Ian. Bring him in the back way. It means the loss of one of our stone bottles but we’ll have to take the loss.”

  When Ian came up she sent him down to the Pluck Me to steal a few ounces of saltpeter.

  “I know that I’m setting a bad precedent with this stealing,” Maggie said. “You understand the word?” Ian nodded. “And when this thing is over I’m going to knock the stealing out of you, you understand that, too?” Ian nodded. “Knock it out of you so you’ll never want to steal again. But I’m sending you down the now to steal.”

  It was the trait Sam admired most about his mother. When a thing had to be done she knew it had to be done, and when she knew it, she did it. When Ian got back the water was boiling and she poured it into the stone bottle, leaving room for the expansion of the water into ice, and added two or three ounces of the niter.

  “Now, you,” she said to Andrew. “You take this down to the well on the moor and dip it down as deep as it will go and let it stay there for three hours. Bring it up once in a while for the change in temperature and put it back down again.”

  They all saw his hurt. He would miss his father’s walk, for which he had already lost his love. He had never felt so sorry for himself in his life.

  “Have you seen your brother recently?” his mother said. Andrew shook his head. “Then I think you should.”

  He came out of the ben and went out the back way so no one would see him crying while he made his way to the moor with the stone water bottle.

  “That was hard on Andrew,” Sam said.

  “Aye, hard, but who was there to rely on? Those you can rely on get relied on. That’s a fact of life. If you catch them young enough they get so they won’t have it any other way, even when they don’t like it.”

  Rob Roy came bursting through the door, and it made Maggie and Sam laugh, because without his knowing it Rob Roy had made a statement. Rob Roy would never be sent to the moor to make ice.

  “Time to go, Daddie. Mr. Bone says it’s time to go down now.”

  Gillon shut his book and rose from his chair with elaborate calmness. The time had come for the setting of the cap. The hair to be brushed and then the glengarry seated just so, the hair brushed around the sides of the cap so it seemed natural and then the two black ribbons streaming down the nape of his neck and the crease of the hat just right, the angle jaunty but stopping short of being cocky. When he was ready he went into the ben to see Jem once more. Sam was sitting by the bed, a book open on his lap, and Jemmie slept, breathing heavily.

  “What are you reading him?” Gillon said.

  “Highland Clearances.”

  “I thought you were reading him Walden?”

  “Aye, I was. He got tired of it. He says it’s not his idea of America.” Sam got up and shut the book and went over by the window. “I was reading him the time, Daddie, when the Duke of Sutherland went up to the Highlands to raise a regiment to fight in the Crimean War. The people were all hungry, Dad, and he made his touching little speech about how the Crown needed them and then he spread out his packages of crisp bank notes and his platefuls of gold and waited for the line to form.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Not a man stood up, Daddie. Not one man, where fifteen hundred men had been raised on two days’ notice a few years before. They had finally learned to say no, you see.”

  “Go on,” Gillon said. He knew when Sam was making a point. He didn’t make them often or easily any more.

  “So then the Duke finally stood up and said, ‘What’s the meaning of this insult to your Laird, your clan chi
eftain, your Crown?’ And no one would stand up, Daddie; that’s a little more than anyone had the guts to do. But finally, one man, an old one, found the guts and got on his feet and told him.

  “‘You took our land and abused it and now you ask us to give you loyalty and go out and die for you. I’ll tell you what to do, sir. You send your deer and your roes, and send your rams and dogs and shepherds to go fight your war for you. We’d rather stay home, sir, and starve.’”

  Sam looked across the room at his father.

  “One brave man.”

  His father understood.

  “Do you want to walk with me? Or stay with Jem?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I think you should walk alone.”

  “And you?” He looked at Maggie. “Will you walk with me?”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t belong there. This is your day, Gillon.”

  Walter Bone tapped and opened the door.

  “Time, now.”

  Gillon spun around and the swirl of his kilt was almost an affront to the drabness of the others in the room. He shook hands with Rob Roy and Sam and Ian and then with the other men in the room, Walter Bone and Andy Begg, with Archie Japp and finally with Henry Selkirk. When he kissed Sarah he tasted salt on her cheeks and then he lifted Emily and she whispered something in his ear, one of Emily’s incantations, an Emily oath, and then he crossed the room to kiss Maggie. He couldn’t recall kissing her in front of the children before and not in front of people except the day of his wedding.

  “When you talk to him look him square in the eye, Gillon,” Maggie said. “Because you’re a better man than he ever was. And when he offers a decent settlement, have the courage to take it.”

  Gillon went back into the ben. Jem was still asleep. He picked up Thoreau’s book that Sam had been reading him and glanced at it, taking his sweet time about things, a defiant act of independence, and the line he read made him laugh. Sam had been so good, making his point, shoring up Gillon’s courage, and now this.

  “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Gillon himself had underlined it years before and Sam had done the same. He shut the book and leaned over toward Jem.