A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Gavin burst out. ‘Will you leave it alone! You may own Ballochtorra, but at least you’ll treat its guests with civility.’

  ‘Miss Howard will not swoon, Gavin. She knows well enough what I’m talking about. I’ve never had time in my life to waste on pretty speeches ‒ never learned to make them. She knows ‒ and so do you. I’ve a call to make on Angus Macdonald before I leave. Perhaps Miss Howard will give me a cup of tea at Cluain. I haven’t a doubt we’ll talk well enough then. Ballochtorra is a mite overrefined, wouldn’t you say, Miss Howard?’

  ‘You’re leaving then?’ Gavin said.

  ‘Day after to-morrow. I’ll be back before the Prince’s visit to check that all is in order. Can’t be away from Glasgow too long. Things move in a man’s absence. Mustn’t give them the impression I’ve too much time to play up here in the Highlands. People might think I’m slipping …’

  ‘Grandpapa, there’s nothing slipping.’ Jamie came running from the box that Ailis had occupied, ‘McClintoch made me check all the buckles myself, just to make sure. He said we couldn’t have Miss Howard falling off …’

  The face of the man altered quite visibly. There was no subtlety in the expression. The rough vulgarity seemed to fall away in the glow of tender pride that spread upon his face. He didn’t care who knew that he doted upon his grandson.

  ‘Och, she’ll not fall off that broad back, laddie. She’s the heftiest wee pony I ever saw. You’d not compare her, now, would you, to your own Milky?’

  ‘No ‒ but I’d rather have Ailis. Ailis is famous. She carried Mr Dougal Ross back home one night when the worst blizzard anyone could remember was raging, and he had a fever that nearly killed him. She found her way all alone for near ten miles when you couldn’t see your hand in front of you … Everyone wanted to have Ailis. But Mr Ross offered her first to Mr Macdonald.’

  Ferguson looked at the pony with real dislike. ‘There’s no breeding in her, Jamie, lad. If you look at her closely now, she’s about the ugliest wee pony you’d see in a long day.’

  ‘I don’t think you should say that in front of her, Grandpapa. She understands, you know.’

  ‘To hell with what she understands! Am I surrounded by a lot of fools here! A damned ungainly piece of horseflesh, she is, and I’ll see no grandson of mine mounted on such.’

  ‘I’d still like her ‒’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘Ailis belongs to Cluain.’ And while the three stood there, glowering at one another, I swung myself up into the saddle without assistance. Ailis moved willingly, as if she were glad to be free of the place. She moved in her plodding, unconcerned, tranquil gait, not caring in the least for the turmoil she left behind her, not caring, I thought, for what she must have sensed in me. Without direction she turned on the road to Cluain as we passed through the iron gates embossed with the hissing swan. She was heading for her stable, and I also knew where I belonged.

  I went many times to Ballochtorra after that. Margaret was not always there, nor Gavin, nor Jamie. They were out riding, Gavin and Margaret always separately, it seemed, and I did not wait on their return. But Wilson, the butler, had his instructions, and I was always offered tea, and a place to wait in Margaret’s sitting-room. I never stayed unless she was there; Ballochtorra depressed me. For all the newness of the furniture, the curtains, the upholsteries, the graceful trailing of ferns and plants at the windows, for all its well-kept splendour, it was a place that had lost itself. It had lost the stark beauty of Cluain, which would once have been its own; it had gained nothing by the fussiness of its new additions and decorations. I wondered how the spare elegance of Margaret Campbell’s own person had been submerged under this sea of lace and trimmings and heavy velvets. It was, I thought, as if she had long ago given up caring ‒ as if she allowed whatever furnisher her father instructed to come in and have his way with Ballochtorra. She had her presence marked only upon one room that I knew, her own sitting-room. Here we sat and talked, and ate those tiny cakes, and she played the piano. There was a kind of desperate gaiety about her at times, as if she were holding off the size and bulk of the house, the retinue of servants who stood ready to answer the bells, the whole ritual of her life. ‘It is so different here from London,’ she once said to me. ‘Here everyone in the whole valley knows who comes and goes, and talks about it if it pleases them. In a city one can be more private. Here I feel I’m … watched. I wasn’t made for places like Ballochtorra. I don’t even sleep very well here ‒ it’s the quiet, and then every quarter hour that stable clock that Father put in tolling away. Sometimes I get up just after dawn and saddle up for myself, and ride out, just to feel I can really be by myself. I ride until I’m tired, and then I come back and I can sleep. I wish there were more noise. I like city streets and bustle, and shops. I like to see carriages stopping next door, or on the other side of the square ‒ better still if they come to one’s own door. I like people coming and going … friends, acquaintances … even strangers.’

  And Jamie would sometimes come bursting in. ‘Mother, today Father and I rode up beyond Ben Carden. You can’t think how tiny Ballochtorra looks from there.’ And again, ‘To-day we had to shelter from the rain under that crag over by Drumnoch …Father gave me his coat.’ And another day, his face petulant with disappointment, he would report that his father had gone by himself. ‘He rode off … I don’t know where he’s gone …’

  But never again did Gavin come and join us in Margaret’s sitting-room; he never again came to drink tea with us, demand sandwiches, never played the light, easy melodies for me to sing the words to.

  And Ballochtorra continued to depress me, and especially I disliked the stableyard, where I had to go to get Ailis. This was wholly the creation of James Ferguson, heavy, overdone, the horses too pampered, the grooms too much their servants. And often as I left I found myself giving a swift, upward glance to the room where Gavin Campbell might have been, his own tower room. But his figure was never at the window where I could see him; I never heard the sound of the piano; I never was really sure which one of the towers and turrets of Ballochtorra, spanning the five centuries of its building, was the one he inhabited.

  Riding, in those weeks, I came on Gavin only once away from the kirk, though Margaret said he was often on the moors. It had been a dry day, though overcast, the mountains lost in the clouds. Not a day to venture too far. I turned Ailis across the bridge at Ballochtorra, and instead of going towards the kirk, she had headed, almost at her own wish, in the other direction, up the steep hill on the road to the station at Ballinaclash. She had as strong a streak of curiosity as I, and I think it was she who first heard the sound from an unaccustomed direction. They were above us still, as we climbed up the glen, sounds that reached us from some place in the plantation of Scots pine and larch that hugged both sides of the slope. We found the track ‒ very rough it was, and soft with leaf mould; we made very little noise, and it was covered by the cries and the sounds that came to us.

  It was a clearing where a burn pitched headlong down from some spring above, rushing to join the river below. Over the centuries it had worn its own narrow path, and now the trees pressed about its edges, defining its course, as did the boulders that lined it. A small croft stood here, the usual one of the Highlands, two rooms, thatched, a smoking chimney, a single door, and hens pecking the ground all about it. There was a lean-to stable, and a sty to fatten a pig.

  There were two men, a woman, and a boy of about sixteen in the clearing ‒ and Gavin and Jamie. I checked Ailis and held her close, watching the scene. Gavin and Jamie were both wearing the kilt, the green Cawdor kilt, and Gavin was in the stream up to his knees. He had just finished attaching a chain about a boulder that stood squarely in the middle of the burn, forcing the water to flow each side of it, and raising the level almost beyond the banks. The chain was attached to a kind of pole harness I had seen used for dragging felled trees about the Cluain lands, and I thought I recognised one of Cluain’s
huge Clydesdales in the harness. One of the men stood beside Gavin in the burn, fixing the chain, testing it against slipping; the other man and the boy were at the horse’s head, holding him. As I saw the second man in profile, I knew him as one of the farm workers from Cluain, Bruce Bain. Jamie was moving excitedly from one group to the other, until at a word from Gavin he abruptly changed his place so that he was on the uphill side of the horse and harness. Then Gavin signalled Bruce Bain, and he began to urge the Clydesdale forward. At first the big animal could get little grip in the soft ground; I could see the big body straining. The boulder rocked a little on its base, seemed about to move, then slipped back. Bruce Bain rested the Clydesdale a few moments; I could see the coat already beginning to darken with sweat. Gavin shifted one of the chains a little, to get a more secure purchase on the boulder. Then he signalled again. Again Bain began to pull on the halter. ‘Ho! ‒ come now lad! ‒ come now!’ The Clydesdale managed a step forward, the slack of the chain was taken up. Even from where I was I could see the ripple of the great muscles across the horse’s chest. Another step; the boulder rocked, poised. The horse was forward two feet more, and the boulder was now shifted from the hole where it had bedded itself in the burn. Gavin was there, beside it, watching to see that the chains did not slip. I had to suppose he knew the danger he was in of the chains slipping, or of the horse being dragged backwards by the weight. He seemed foolhardy, but someone had to check the downhill side of the boulder, and it was Gavin. As I watched I saw him take a heavy iron bar, and use it as a lever to help the boulder out of its position. On the uphill side, the man did the same. The real danger came when Gavin called to Bain to hold the Clydesdale there, and he himself moved forward and plunged his arms down into that icy water, fixing a smaller rock under the boulder to hold its new level. It was an anxious moment, wondering if Gavin would be quick enough, if the horse could hold his position against the weight, if the lever of the other man would give Gavin’s hands enough room for his task. Then Gavin stepped back, and called again to Bain. The Clydesdale moved on ‒ a mighty heave this time, as if he were thankful not to be asked to hold any longer. Then the boulder moved up the incline of the burn, teetered there a moment ‒ another use of the bars from Gavin and the other man, another rock to hold the boulder secure, another heave, and the boulder was on firm, almost level ground. From there it was nothing for the Clydesdale to move it a few feet farther into the clearing ‒ the hens dashing screaming away from the monster suddenly in their midst. Gavin scrambled up the bank, his boots and stockings wet, the edge of the kilt, and his shirt sticking to his back with sweat.

  His voice reached me. ‘Right now, Bain. We’ll rest the horse, and then we’ll move the thing off where it will be out of harm’s way.’

  I slipped off Ailis, and came forward. ‘Gavin ‒ Jamie!’

  ‘Kirsty! How did you come here?’ And from Jamie, ‘Miss Howard, did you see it? The Clydesdale was wonderful, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was, Jamie. I’m glad I came in time to see it. I was riding on the road below …’

  The woman made a sketchy, but warm gesture to me. ‘Och, welcome now, mistress. I’ll be giving everyone some tea, now the great part’s done. Everyone needs a wee rest.’ She seemed to know very well who I was. ‘And that great horse ‒ a marvel, he is. And Sir Gavin so kind …We’ve been plagued with that terrible great thing …’

  ‘Thank you. I’d like some tea …’ I was following Gavin and Jamie to the edge of the burn. ‘Look, Miss Howard. You see, the boulder crashed down here during a winter storm ‒ it was just held by a tree above.’ Jamie was skipping about in excitement. ‘And it bedded itself in the burn, and every time there was a thunderstorm, or the snow thawed, the water would come spilling over, and washing into the McInnes’s cottage. And so Father …’

  ‘Jamie, Mrs McInnes has cake for you, I think,’ Gavin said. He watched his son run towards the cottage. ‘An adventure for him, Kirsty,’ he said. ‘He would not be left behind when he learned this morning where I was going.’

  ‘That’s Bruce Bain, from Cluain ‒ and that’s a Cluain Clydesdale,’ I said. We sat on rocks by the burn, and Mrs McInnes brought us tea in battered pewter mugs, and oatcakes. Gavin began to strip off his boots and stockings. Will you not come to the fire, Sir Gavin? It’s wet through you are.’

  ‘I’m all right here, Mrs McInnes. And make sure, please, that Jamie doesn’t eat too much of your good things. I’ll be in trouble if he doesn’t eat his dinner when he gets home.’

  ‘Och, now, Sir Gavin, don’t we all know that a wee lad has the appetite of three …’ And she went off happily to feed Jamie all he would eat.

  ‘Was it as Jamie said ‒ the boulder …?’

  ‘Just about. The tree that was holding it crashed down last winter, and every heavy rain since then has sent the water from the burn lapping past the McInnes’s threshold. I walked up here one day and saw it myself. God knows, these crofts are damp enough. So I thought that when the burn was low in summer, I would have a try at moving it. Robert McInnes, you know, helps look after the kirk ‒ as does Mrs McInnes. They kept my secrets well. The minister has yet to hear about the strange, ungodly music the laird sometimes plays in the house of the Lord.’

  ‘They’re your tenants?’

  ‘No ‒ this is on MacKenzie Grant’s land. McInnes just earns a few extra shillings looking after the kirk, and trying to coax some heat out of that stove in winter. Mrs McInnes cleans the windows and dusts ‒ that kind of thing.’

  ‘Grant land? ‒ then why doesn’t Mr Grant take care of the matter himself? You do know, Gavin ‒ well, you must have known that the chains might have slipped. The Clydesdale might not have been able to hold the weight.’

  ‘The horse I couldn’t help. Perhaps I should have had two, but I didn’t really think the boulder was that big ‒ it was deeper in the burn than I thought. And if the chains had slipped, it would have been my own fault for placing them badly. If I’d been killed, it would have been my own carelessness. But I’d no intention of getting myself killed in front of my own son’s eyes. I haven’t such a taste for bad melodrama as that. It wasn’t as dangerous as it might have looked.’

  ‘But why do it? ‒ since it’s Mr Grant’s estate?’

  ‘Oh ‒ I don’t know. The McInneses are such decent people, and old MacKenzie Grant hasn’t been on the estate for more than a year ‒ he’s sick in England, they say. His bailiff’s useless ‒ drunk half the time. The McInneses have asked, but they had no hope of getting anything done until Grant got up here himself, if he ever does again. It could have been years. Robert McInnes doesn’t have much to live on ‒ just this place here, on the estate, the right to cut a tree or two for fuel. He helps on the Grant farm, and digs the bog when work is slack. It isn’t much of a living, but he’s a good man.’

  ‘But Bruce Bain, and my grandfather’s horse?’

  Gavin laughed. ‘Do you think Ballochtorra’s stables could produce anything like that Clydesdale? Oh, I made my arrangements formally with your grandfather. He offered the horse free ‒ he also has a regard for Robert McInnes ‒ but he said I would have to pay for Bain’s time. That’s your grandfather, Kirsty. He always manages to temper any generosity with a practical bite. I will probably never be given a bill for the services of Bain. But he warned me, did your grandfather, that the horse, if he were hurt or damaged in any way, would cost me a fortune. I believe it.’ He suddenly lowered the mug from his lips. ‘Lord, I wish this tea had a drop of Cluain’s whisky in it. We make cold water up here in the Highlands, Kirsty. Be sure you never tumble into a burn. You might freeze in the same second.’

  It was then I saw the blood ooze between his fingers as he held the mug. ‘Gavin ‒ your hands!’

  He didn’t even look down at them. ‘Oh, it’s good clean water, Kirsty. I won’t be poisoned. That rock had a bit of a bite to it ‒ but no fingers crushed, and nothing that won’t mend.’

  ‘But your hands ‒ how can you risk them
? The organ …’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t really understand, Kirsty. Because you see me at the kirk, you hear me play, you think that’s really what I live for. Yes ‒ I’m a musician of sorts. I used to be a much better one. And if I’d never seen this strath, and Ballochtorra and Cluain, I’d be perfectly happy as organist in some quite humble place, as long as it was a living. But these mountains and moors get into one’s blood, even if one wasn’t born to them, as I wasn’t. Playing the organ isn’t everything I want to do, Kirsty. It only helps fill the time ‒ the emptiness.’

  His low, musing tone helped me to ask the next question, one I thought I might not have a right to ask. ‘What else do you want to do, Gavin?’

  ‘You’ll not tell him, I know ‒ perhaps he already suspects. But I envy your grandfather. I wish I had my fields of barley, and my fat cattle. I wouldn’t even mind hill sheep, difficult though they are. Forget the distillery ‒ I would like to farm the land.’

  ‘You can’t? ‒ isn’t there any part of Ballochtorra’s land you could use?’

  ‘There’s some ‒ around the bend of the river past the crag. But it’s boggy, and needs draining. It’s subject to flooding but that can be an advantage, as it leaves you with some good soil, and you’ll lose nothing if you’re careful to move your cattle in time. I’ve seen stretches of peat-moorland reclaimed to clover pasture. There are places on Ballochtorra where it could be done. A man could make a living from it, Kirsty. Not a fortune ‒ just a living.’

  ‘Why don’t you ...’ I hesitated. ‘Why don’t you try?’

  ‘I’d need money in the beginning ‒ not a lot of money, but some. That would mean James Ferguson again.’