But it was her voice I heard. And it was raised to a pitch of intensity I knew too well ‒ not a tone she would have used to Morag in giving her instructions, or chiding her about the day’s tasks. This was something deeply felt, and important.
‘Och, it sickens me to see you hang about like this! Here it is gone late in the day, and the Master’s been at work since early. Don’t you care ‒ now more than ever?’
The answer was slow, heavy with scorn. A man’s voice, deep, hardly concerned with the answer he gave her. ‘Och, hush you. Everything’s in good order, and will be when we start distilling again. What’s there to do at this time? God Almighty, we’ve only just finished after a long winter’s work. You know right well we’ll not be distilling again until the barley’s harvested and the weather settles colder. From now on, my time’s my own.’
Her furious voice cut him short. ‘And what kind of farmer are you that there’s nothing to be attended to? The cattle are up in the shielings to look to, the tackroom’s full of harness to be mended, the fences to be inspected. Does a farmer ever have time to call his own? You and your roaming ways ‒ will you never have done with them? Never showing yourself near the farmyard. What does the Master think of you …?’
His exasperation was plain. ‘Och, enough! You go and gather your eggs or make your butter or whatever else it is that you must next do for Cluain. I’ve earned my days to myself, and earned them right well, and he knows it. If I’ve a mind, on a day like this, to take some bread and ale and time to myself to walk where I want, then I’ll do it, and no man will tell me else. He knows what I do for Cluain ‒ well he knows it, and he doesn’t dare question what I choose to do when there’s no need for me about the place. He has other men who can mend the fences, and herd the cattle on the shielings ‒ and plenty of that I’ve done in my time. Let him whistle to the wind for me, and I’ll come when I’m right and ready.’
‘It is not wise. Only a fool neglects his opportunities …’
‘Wisdom, is it? Oh, God, your head’s stuffed full of knowledge, and not an ounce of wisdom in it. When you walk along the roads and watch for your herbs and flowers, do you ever think to raise your eyes to see what’s above you? Do you ever stop to listen to the birds, to watch their flight? Or do you only look to see where they’ve left their eggs? Well, if that’s so, I’m sorry for you. I’ve no intention in the world of spending my life serving one man. I’ll serve myself first, and then see what comes‒’
‘’Tis Cluain will suffer …’
‘Let it.’ The words were final, and measured.
‘Have you lost your senses?’
‘Perhaps, but no great loss.’
The silence fell between them, as if she had heard more than she could answer. I listened to the banging of iron pans, a mark of speechless fury. I used the noise as a chance to rattle the china a little on the tray, and fumble at the latch. Mairi Sinclair was there in an instant; the door was flung open as she confronted me. She made a swift movement to take the tray from my hand, but I swept past her as if I had not seen the gesture.
‘You have some magic with the bees, Mistress Sinclair. It is the best honey I have ever tasted.’
‘I was coming to take the dishes ‒’
‘No need, surely. Are you so grand at Cluain that I may not come into the kitchen? After all, you have the right to my room.’
She met my thrust in silence. I went on past her, to the big scrubbed table in the middle of the flagstoned room, putting down the tray with exaggerated gentleness. It was only then that I allowed myself to look around.
He stood leaning against the mantel, but his shoulders came higher than the shelf; it was not the face I recognised, because it had been nearly lost to me in the dimness under the beeches, and last evening he had bent his head before the rain. But the figure was unmistakable; even in the heat of the dispute with Mairi Sinclair his body had yet retained its quality of stillness, of being contained within itself ‒ the same as when he had stood with the dog, and the bird on his gloved hand, the self-containment of the man alone in the rain. He wore the faded red kilt ‒ or perhaps another one, for this seemed dry ‒ a shabby, almost ragged garment, and long socks knitted in the same pattern; I was startled to see a dagger ‒ I would later learn to call it a dirk ‒ thrust into the band of the sock by his right hand. The sheepskin jerkin was slung across a chair, the shoulders still dark with moisture. He was holding a tankard with both hands, which he lowered slowly from his lips. It was the same kind of prideful indifference I had seen displayed in so many small ways since I had come. Clearly this man was not in the habit of springing to attention.
I returned his stare without letting my eyelids flicker. If he thought he could stare me down, let him try. He was more than ordinarily handsome; he must have known it ‒ but from his attitude and his dress he didn’t seem to care if anyone else should be impressed with the fact. He seemed too rigorously bent on telling all the world that he was free of its opinion. Was there some lingering thought in his mind that anyone would doubt it? His skin was oddly white for a man who was used to the outdoors ‒ a natural whiteness, not a pallor. Everything else was black ‒ the tumble of rough hair, the straight hard black line of his brows ‒ from this distance it seemed that even his eyes were black. The line of his mouth matched his brows, a face cut deeply by the horizontals of brows and eyes and mouth. There was no softness to be discovered in body or face.
And then, with great deliberation, with me looking at him, he set the tankard on the mantelshelf, and picked up the sheepskin. He nodded, not to me, but to Mairi Sinclair.
‘I’ll be away, then.’
I watched in a kind of stunned disbelief at the studied rudeness of the gesture as he went to the kitchen door, opened it, and closed it, not with a bang, but not gently, either. He must have known who I was; obviously he was an intimate of Cluain. This was not just an absence of welcome, but a complete rejection.
I had to ask her, though my lips were stiff with fury and outraged pride.
‘Who ‒ who was that?’
I thought she took some pleasure in the insult he had offered, and her own pride came thrusting up. I knew from that moment I would likely never speak of what had happened last night. In the broad light of day, this woman was not weak, and would not be intimidated.
‘Who? That was Callum Sinclair. My son.’
And then, with no more concern than her son had displayed, she went to the door and took down a black shawl from its hook. She went out, as he had done, without a further sign to me, but she was not hurrying after him. A moment later, from the windows of the kitchen, I saw her in a leisurely but purposeful stroll along the flagged path of the garden. She walked a few paces, paused, bent to touch or smell; for a moment I thought I saw her lips move as if she spoke to those plants, and their nodding in the breeze was their answer. In those minutes she seemed to me to become a different creature. Her body lost its rigidness; her waist and neck and head seemed to bend and sway with the grace of a beautiful woman; she moved as the plants did. And, it seemed natural, the cat was there also, running before her, the white body disappearing into the grey of the lavender, the colourless eyes peering from the tall thyme.
She paid no attention to the cat, nor he to her, but they were a pair, a company. They were supreme in a kind of splendid isolation.
‘Well, then ‒ that’s Callum Sinclair for you.’
Morag stood in a doorway that led, I guessed, to a scullery beyond. She was wiping her hands in her apron.
‘And his mother,’ I added. How easily I had slipped into the role of friend with this girl, her manner so easy, frank, without servility, but without presumption. Did this natural dignity belong here to this people, to this country?
‘Och, aye ‒ his mother. ’Tis his father they’ll never be knowing.’
‘Dead?’
She shrugged. ‘Who knows? They do tell me that when Callum Sinclair was born here at Cluain ‒ here, in this kitchen, I th
ink ‒ his mother seemed near to death, and Mistress Macdonald, who had taken her in at Cluain out of charity when no one else would, urged her to say who was the father, so that her child could have a name, and a claim on some kin. But she never spoke, and she lived, and no one has ever known, or dared guess ‒ before her face, that is ‒ who is the father of Callum Sinclair. And it is my own opinion that whoever they might have guessed and riddled then, none of them ever did know the answer. It was near thirty years ago, and since then Mairi Sinclair has become a much respected woman in these parts. No one ever talks about it any more. For sure, there has been no other man, for all have observed her like hawks. Let once a woman fall, and she is never free of the eyes and the tongues again.’
‘Did she have no family, then? ‒ at that time?’
‘Mistress Howard, I was not born then, and by the time I had grown into curiosity, people were already forgetting ‒ save the odd old woman who will be forever talking about things past. I have not much time for those kind of people myself, but my mother was a great one for collecting stories, and since she did not care for Mistress Sinclair, she made it her business to know all that could be known of this one.’
‘So …?’
Morag lifted her shoulders. ‘Well they do say that she lived alone with her father, the only child still left to him. A terrible hard man, they said, very close with his money, and never giving company or a dram to anyone. They were poor ‒ or so he made out to be. Mairi Sinclair worked very hard, but he sent her to the little school down here in the strath. A long trudge it was ‒ and work to do on the croft in the evenings, and a cow to milk before setting out in the mornings. Very prideful, her father was, and he could not abide the disgrace of his daughter being with child and unwed. They say he beat her until she was like to have died. The wonder is that she did not miscarry of the child ‒ perhaps that’s what he intended. That’s the way some men are, mistress ‒ too many of them. He put her from his door, and for a time she stayed with neighbours until she got her strength again. But they were a big poor family, sending children off to Canada and Australia, and it was no place for her to stay. She was bound for Inverness herself when Mistress Macdonald invited her to stay at Cluain. She was a very kind woman, your grandmother. There was something said at the time that the Master did not want her here, but your grandmother overruled him. I suppose Mistress Sinclair was a strange woman, even then, and her father was not liked. But she came, having no place else to go, and she stayed, and Callum Sinclair was born at Cluain. Och, she kept herself to herself after that, and tended her child, and gave herself to Cluain as if she could never do enough for it. There were never any complaints about Mairi Sinclair. She read her Bible and soon there was Mistress Macdonald sending off to Edinburgh for books about herbs for her, because she seemed to have a natural skill with them. The Mistress encouraged Mairi Sinclair to write down her own records ‒ how much of this and that she used in brews. They say she had a grandmother who was gifted in that way, but she was an unlettered woman, so the recipes were never set down. The boy ‒ Callum ‒ was clever too, and Mistress Macdonald could not be stopped from sending off for special books for him also, as he grew. Remember, it would not have been long after Mairi Sinclair came to Cluain that your own mother was up and off to China, and perhaps your grandmother was lonely. And as the Mistress was poorly in health, in time she began to pass more and more of the running of Cluain into Mairi Sinclair’s hands. At the time the Mistress died, there was no change at Cluain ‒ it went on as it had done before. There never was a better run household in the whole of Speyside, and the people were coming for years past to Mairi Sinclair for her skill with the herbs. They would even send for her when there was difficulty with a cow in calf, and the like. Stronger than a man, they said, and more gentle. She can soothe beasts with her very words ‒ a soft tongue she has with anything that is dumb. No one ever questioned her staying on here after your grandmother died. Angus Macdonald would have been mad to let her go. People had long ago been saying that Andrew Sinclair had done himself a great disservice by sending her from his house. He had lost a rare woman.’
‘Were they never reconciled?’
‘Never, mistress, never. He could never bring himself to speak to her again, and, indeed, in time, I thought she would not have wanted it. So bitter he was ‒ probably more bitter because she had turned out so well ‒ that he did not even leave his wee bit of land to her or his grandson. It was left to some far cousin off in London, or some such place, who never bothered even to come and see it. ’Twas only a poor bit of land, after all, with the gorse growing in on it, and fit only for a few sheep. But poor as it was, Mairi Sinclair was not to have it. The wee house on it fell into ruin, and the land was left go wild. They do say the cousin wanted to sell it, but none about here would buy ‒ out of respect for Mistress Sinclair. They do say, also ‒ though I can’t tell if it is true ‒ that to this day Mairi Sinclair has never set foot on her father’s land again. And could you wonder at it?’
Absently, Morag moved to the range, and took a teapot off the hob. ‘Will you be having more tea, mistress? Och, no ‒’ as I held my cup from the tray towards her, ‘I’ll bring you a fresh one. Mistress Sinclair is a great one for doing things right. No sloppy ways in her kitchen.’ Her eyes widened as I refused milk and sugar. ‘That’s a very strange way to drink tea.’
‘Most people in China drink it that way,’ I replied, as absently as she had begun her own action. She stood by the range with her thick kitchen cup stirring the sugar vigorously, and I had my fresh cup of fine china, but there hardly seemed to be any difference between us. I was finding a kind of democracy of independent spirits at Cluain.
‘They say,’ Morag continued, nodding towards the dark figure pacing the garden, ‘that the Master offered to pay for Callum Sinclair’s schooling, when he had outgrown what the local dominie could offer, for he was a very bright lad. But Mistress Sinclair would take nothing she had not earned herself, and it was she who paid when he went to school in Inverness, and even to Edinburgh for a year. I can tell you none ever expected to see him back here again. Who would suppose he would come back to a place where all knew his story, and none knew his father’s name? At nineteen he went into the distillery full-time, and when he had reached twenty-four, or thereabouts, he was running the place, almost. Och, not the business side, though he knows enough about that. He is not present when the buyers come to make their price. But he knows it right enough. He knows all there is to know about the business. He has some uncanny knack with the whisky ‒ he has the nose and the eye for it, and he seems to know just exactly the moment when the foreshots become true whisky, and when the spirit itself runs into the feints. It is a gift as well as an art, mistress, and he has it.’
‘Then my grandfather values him highly?’
Morag shrugged. ‘He does ‒ and he doesn’t. Callum is fierce independent. He demands his rights ‒ and mostly gets them. There’s no great closeness between the two, though the Master has taught Callum all he knows. Callum comes and goes as he pleases ‒ never neglecting the distillery, mind, but never letting it have all his life or his interest. Anything less than that, of course, does not please the Master. I suspect that was what the trouble was about. Four years ago there was a great quarrel between them ‒ Callum went back to Edinburgh and took some work there. But it was not long before the Master was sending for him to come back. And when Callum did, they struck their bargain. Callum lives now in a wee house up off the road, that he repaired and put in order himself. Not very often will he come and eat at his mother’s kitchen table, and he has never spent a night under Cluain’s roof since he came back. Before that ‒ I remember when I was a wee thing, he moved himself out of the house and had a room over the stables. Always independent, he was ‒ and nearly always getting his own way. In the silent season when they can’t distill, then he’s off and away, and no man owns his time. He has his mother’s gifts in a way … he knows every fowl and creature that mo
ves. He walks the moors in all weathers, and no harm ever comes to him. He has never had an ill day in his life, Mistress Sinclair says. ’Tis my own opinion … well, who am I to say what is what with Callum Sinclair? There’s not many he would be giving any information to about himself.’
‘What is your opinion, Morag?’ I pressed.
She shrugged again. ‘I think that was why he came back from Edinburgh. He was born here, and he cannot abide the crampiness of the towns. He puts in his time at the distillery, and works like three men, and then is free. He would owe the Master nothing ‒ nor any man, I think.’
Morag was nodding, as if she were striving to grasp the meaning of Callum Sinclair’s life, her eyes on the figure of Mairi Sinclair as she bent to pinch back a bud, or pull a weed.
‘They do fight something terrible at times. But mother and son, they’re two of a kind. They walk their own way.’
II
I found my own way out by the passage that curved around the tower to the back door of Cluain. On this side of the house it was pasture down to the river bank ‒ again, a parklike planting of oak and beech that told the many years that Cluain had stood upon this land. I noticed the churned-up mud of the path that the cows took to the dairy, but the stone path that skirted the house itself seemed, as everything else at Cluain, freshly swept. I paused for a time looking down at the tumble of the river, but irresistibly the buildings of the distillery drew me. I wondered if I would find my grandfather there, or was he elsewhere about the farm? And what was the ‘silent season’ they talked of, when the distillery did not operate? I was crossing the cobbled yard that was bounded by Cluain’s walled garden, the stables and the distillery building when I heard the same terrible shrieking, hissing noise that had greeted my arrival yesterday.
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