And still my stiff lips went on framing the fatal, stupid words. I felt I was driving him from me forever, and yet I went on. ‘I want you, Callum. Not to tease ‒ not to play with. I want you for myself, always. I want to see you the master of Cluain. I want to marry you.’
‘Woman …’ His voice was a raging shout. ‘For God’s sake keep away from me! Keep away. There is nothing for you and me. Nothing! There never will be.’
‘You love someone else? Who? ‒ who is it?’
‘Who? If I love someone, it is not your right to know.’
‘Perhaps not. But I will know. I will know, and I will wait. I know how to wait. I’m good at it. And I shall have you ‒’
He cut me off as he turned towards the pony. ‘Do not wait. Don’t waste your days, your years. It will be to no purpose. There will never be anything for you and me. Not now ‒ not ever.’
‘But you kissed me ‒ I know you kissed me.’
‘Yes, I kissed you, and I liked it. I admit that. But I will never kiss you again.’
‘Don’t you want me, Callum?’
‘There’s no answer to that. No answer …’ He was walking away from me, across the heather to where the ponies were tethered. And I was running after him, my skirt dragging and catching, and once I stumbled and fell, and the breath was almost knocked from me. And then I was on my feet again. I was shouting into the wind.
‘No answer but pride, is that it? You could not be seen to take anything from Angus Macdonald ‒ even if it is his granddaughter, who loves you. You would not take me and Cluain as a gift … Callum, stop! Listen … please …’
But he had flung himself into the saddle and slipped the glove on his hand. At the sight of that, Giorsal came at once, as if to a command ‒ a swift black shadow across my blurred vision, and then she was back on his fist, and the dog already trotting at the pony’s heels.
He turned his head at last. ‘Forget it, Kirsty. Forget it. For your own soul’s sake, forget what you have said. Forget this day …’ The rest of the words were lost as he kicked the pony into a canter, and they went down that slope at a dangerous speed. The falcon swayed and jerked upon his hand, but clung there, not needing the jesses to restrain her, or the hood to calm her. She clung to Callum as if he were her life.
As he was mine. I would never forget this day. I would push away the kind of blackness that had descended between us; that I would forget. But I would wait, as I had said I would. To love is something; it is something more than most would ever have. I would love, and I would wait, no matter what. I would outwait him, and time, and whatever other love it was that possessed him. After the darkness that had fallen on me with my father’s and William’s death, I was now experiencing a rekindling of spirit and life. I told myself then that I would wait forever, if that were necessary.
And then, quite calmly, I went to untether Ailis. I was patient and gentle, and made my way carefully, noting the landmarks, taking care not to be lost ‒ and knowing that Ailis would never let me be lost. What possessed me on the ride back to Cluain was the sense of time to come. I had made a declaration to Callum, and I would wait to see the truth of it proved. In the end he would know that I loved him. In the end he would know that I could wait. Cluain would wait; everything would wait. Despite the awfulness of the way he had rejected me, confidence was there, and it was growing. I came of an enduring race; Christina Campbell, lying in her grave beside my brother, was the proof of that. We knew how to wait, and how to love ‒ to love someone, or something, with a passion. What I could not begin to imagine then was how long the waiting was to be.
Perhaps my grandfather had seen me ride, late, weary, and wet from one of the Highlands’ fierce showers, across the stableyard that afternoon; perhaps my absence at the midday meal had angered him. Whatever it was, he barely spoke to me through the meal that evening. After it was cleared off, he did not bring out the chessboard. He waited for a time after the last dishes had been taken away by Morag, then he turned on me with a kind of smouldering fury.
‘They say you ride with Callum Sinclair.’
‘They say … who are “they”?’
‘Don’t be impertinent, miss. I know what I hear.’
‘Yes ‒ I ride with Callum Sinclair when I can find him. He’s no more readily available to me than to you.’
‘Then you will do it no more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it is not fitting, that is why not. Do you think I want to hear tales of my granddaughter running after a distillery worker.’
‘My grandfather was ‒ still is ‒ a distillery worker. Are you looking to match me the way James Ferguson did his daughter? Are you looking for a title ‒ or money ‒ for Cluain? You won’t get them through me.’
‘I’m looking for nothing for Cluain but what it deserves. And Callum Sinclair is not for you.’
‘But you keep him here ‒ you have need of his services. You grant him privileges no other worker has because of his worth to Cluain.’
‘What arrangements I have with Callum Sinclair are my own business, and no concern of yours. And Callum Sinclair shall be no concern, either. I forbid you to see him again. I shall speak to him, and if I ‒’
‘No!’ I thrust back my chair and stood up, leaning across the table to look into his old face; I could read little there ‒ the eyes had veiled themselves behind squinting folds of flesh. Was it trouble, or fear, or just the obstinate snobbery of a man whose pride would not admit into his future the son of an unknown man, the son of the woman who ruled the kitchen of his home? And yet, that first night he had told me to find a man fit to follow him at Cluain. And there was none more so than Callum. And Callum was the man I wanted. Was it too much for him to face that?
‘You will not speak to Callum Sinclair about me. You will not humiliate him so ‒’
‘I will do whatever is necessary. I will even send him away from here.’
‘Send him …’ The thought made me freeze. My voice was deliberately quiet and controlled when I was finally able to utter the words. ‘That will not be necessary. I assure you that will not be necessary. Callum Sinclair does not want me. Don’t ask me how I know that ‒ just believe it! To him, I hardly exist. I swear to you ‒ he does not want me!’
The old head nodded. The eyes opened a little wider, and there might have been relief there, or was it just the satisfaction of feeling himself unthreatened once more, unchallenged.
‘It is as it should be. He is wise. He knows his place …’
‘Then you are a fool!’ I could hear my tone rising again, and knew it was perilous. ‘Callum Sinclair’s place is nowhere ‒ and everywhere. He is fit for the company of kings, if he chose it. But he does make his choices ‒ they are not forced on him. He is like his falcon. He only stays ‒ he only returns ‒ because he chooses to. And he does not choose me!’ I left him then, quickly, so that he could not witness the hurt, and the tears. It was strange; as I had ridden back that day I had known confidence, and I had believed I could wait for as long as was needed. Now I had heard myself speak what Callum Sinclair had tried to tell me, and somewhere now the doubt had begun, the anxiety, creeping in like shadows thrown down on the strath from the crag of Ballochtorra. I had not wept then, but I did now. I wept in a kind of despair before the fire in the tower room. For all its blaze and its glow, there seemed so little warmth in it. I shivered, and held my hands towards it, and there was no comfort in it. All I could see now was Callum’s retreat; all I could hear were his shouted words: ‘Forget this day, Kirsty.’
Callum tried to elude me, and I pursued him. It was a physical pursuit; it had to be. He never placed himself where I could find him easily, and so it became a matter of my placing myself where I thought he would have to come, of searching and finding the places where he was likely to go. I ceased even to make excuses for lingering around the yard between the distillery and the stables; I rubbed Ailis down so often, groomed and curried her, that she began to be sceptical of the
whole game ‒ she would look at me inquiringly, as if to establish that once a day was enough for a little nondescript pony. But she was also good-tempered, and put up with my sudden rush for the saddle when I thought Callum might be leaving the distillery ‒ if I were even certain that he was there. There were so many times we rode out fruitlessly on that road, waiting for the sight of that dark figure with the pony and dog. I even tried, and successfully, to pretend that I was riding sidesaddle, but using an ordinary saddle, and when I was out of sight of the farm buildings and the distillery, I slipped my leg over Ailis’s back. It made the going easier, and for that few minutes on leaving I was able to balance sideways to her broad back, and spread my skirt so that the lack of the pommel did not show. She needed only one hand on the reins, and scarcely even that; with the free hand I held up the second dangling stirrup, and covered it partly with my skirt. So long as no one looked closely ‒ and no one did any more ‒ the pretence worked. But once we left the road, and I flung the other foot into the stirrup, I was free to follow the trails that Callum might have taken, to go into the steep and uneven places, and to let Ailis have her head. She led me into parts of the strath I had never seen before, never imagined. She would turn aside from the trail on to a narrow track that followed the run of a plunging burn, and she was like a goat picking her way up and down among the tumbled boulders, deep in the shadows of the overhanging ledges. She had no fear, no uncertainty, and she knew this land, with all its changing faces, as if it were her own pasture. She led me on to the open moorland, and on the pasture slopes, and she knew always where the bog began, and which path would lead us higher and farther in the shortest time. Had she learned all this in the years of searching for the illicit stills with Mr Ross? If she had not been a dumb animal, supposedly without understanding, I would have sworn that she knew my purpose. I talked to her constantly as we rode. ‘Shall we find him to-day, Ailis? Shall we see Giorsal and find him when we watch where she returns after she has stooped?’ And there was never the nervous, sensitive snort to answer my words. Ailis was a very matter-of-fact, a very intelligent, animal.
And a few times we did find him. He seemed to greet us with no pleasure, but neither did he send us away. But now I always stayed mounted; we would watch the falcon fly, marvel at the grace and speed, then the lazy hovering, the glide on the wind as she surveyed her terrain. Sometimes there was the excitement of the incredibly swift stoop, the burst of feathers in the air, the instant kill. Callum would let me watch, would give Giorsal some time to preen and eat her kill, and then suddenly, without a word of farewell, he would kick the pony into motion, and Dougal would fall in at his heels. Once or twice I tried to follow, but he was faster than Ailis; it was too easy to lose me once he wished it. A slight rise of the moor would take him beyond my sight, the twist of the glen would hide him. When I reached that point, he would be gone, and a half-dozen tracks would lead on from there. Unless the ground was very muddy, and the hoofmarks clear, I could never follow, and the few times I did, he still outpaced us. After a time I learned not to hope for too much; then I would let Ailis turn her head towards Cluain and the stable. She seemed to know as well as I did when the quarry was lost. We were never again late for the midday meal. There was never any reason.
‘Don’t do it, Kirsty,’ Callum once said to me. ‘You are wrong to follow me ‒ to come after me this way.’
‘Has anyone said I have followed you?’ It was pitiful, the little effort I made to cloak my longing. ‘Can I not ride where I please? And if I sight Giorsal …?’
‘Those who sight Giorsal are looking for her. They have very keen and watching eyes. Forget about me, Kirsty. Forget Giorsal.’
‘And what shall I do with my days?’ I tried to make it sound mocking, as if I really didn’t care. But I was not good at covering myself.
He lost patience with me. ‘Oh, for God’s sake! ‒ do whatever it is that women do with their days. It is no concern of mine. But you must not come where I go. I will not be followed and watched, I will not be … hunted.’
I knew my mistake. He was right. If he were hunted he would disappear. I would never have him by naked pursuit. He might come only to the lure. And would I ever be lure enough? I watched him ride away that day, and the doubt was growing, large and hard within me, like a stone. What was it Callum Sinclair wanted? What would he take as the lure?
And once, on the return to Cluain, on a trail so little used that the bracken grew high about the pony’s flanks, I suddenly came on Mairi Sinclair. It would have been easy to miss her; I was gazing ahead, trusting Ailis as always to watch her own footing, when the pony’s head turned abruptly, and she checked. There, watching me, the Sinclair plaid twisted about her head, was the lean, once-beautiful face that I now looked at so seldom. I realised in that moment how many weeks had passed since our gaze had met in this way, how many meals she had served and never once looked fully at me, how many times we had passed in the kitchen passage, and only a nod acknowledged my presence. But now the stare was frank and open. It was one of the times I had managed to find and snatch a few minutes conversation with Callum. He could have passed this way; he could have passed his mother and not seen her, though that would be unlikely; Callum had eyes like his hawk. But the bracken was tall, and without Ailis, I would have missed her.
She lifted her face and looked up at me; the plaid slipped back, revealing the streaked black hair. How like Callum she was ‒ and how different. And then there was another recognition. Her eyes looked at mine in the same way they had done on that first night at Cluain ‒ the eyes of a woman, desperate and haunted ‒ but always, except that time, controlled. I knew then for certain that Callum had passed her, and that she knew we had been together, however briefly, however unsatisfactorily for me. For a second her lips moved, as if she would speak, but no words came. She did not need to say them. They were the same as that first night. ‘Cluain is not yours ‒ it is not yours.’
I urged Ailis forward into movement. We were a mile nearer Cluain when I realised what Mairi Sinclair had been doing ‒ what had been her reason for being where she was, if indeed she had not followed me deliberately, and not actually watched my meeting with Callum. In her hand she had held a long, roughly woven basket, and the flowers and herbs and berries of the field and wayside were there. I was suddenly aware, as the Chinese always had been, that what lay in that basket could have been for poison as well as for cure. The foxglove ‒ digitalis ‒ dead men’s thimbles it was sometimes called, could mean healing as well as death. And among the bracken grew the tall, death-giving hemlock, and the belladonna ‒ deadly nightshade. And who but Mairi Sinclair would know which was the edible mushroom, and which the poisonous toadstool? She could carry both life and death in that innocent basket.
And William’s uncertain characters splashed on the scroll came back, every line traced on my memory. ‘She has killed …’
And so many nights of that summer Morag would come, some kindling and turfs in a basket, the hot-water jar in her hand. Often this task was done before I left my grandfather, but just as often I sat before the fire, or by the window, reading in the long twilight of the Highlands.
‘Books, is it?’ she would say. ‘Yes ‒ your father must have been a scholar … I remember Master William was forever at his books ‒ that is, when nothing else offered. But then, it is to be expected of a man. He was near to having his degree as an engineer. They make it easier for men, do they not, Mistress Kirsty?’ As she talked, she would move about the room, turning down the bed, placing the hot-water jar, taking any pieces of clothing I had left about and folding or hanging them. She always was busy with her hands; her tongue also was busy, but soft. It was hardly necessary to listen to her, except that the words came through. ‘He spent a deal of time at Ballochtorra, though, did Master William. And yet, I would not have said that he and Sir Gavin were very close friends. The Master did not like it, of course. He likes nothing that brings Cluain and Ballochtorra together.’ Then a clicking
sound from her tongue. ‘Och, mistress, this skirt of yours is getting to be a disgrace. I mean … Well, look you! It is so shiny and worn. You ride so much, and I’m having trouble now sponging the mud off it. Could I not send away to my aunt ‒ the one my mother stays with in Inverness ‒ to have another made? I could take the measurements, and it would come back fitting perfectly ‒ in the finest serge. And a few shirtwaists, while she was about it. These are washed very thin. I’m sure the Master would not mind the expense … After all, they are not silks and satins.’
‘I would be very grateful if you would do it, Morag, but there is no need to speak to my grandfather. I have some money of my own‒’
‘Och, well, yes. A bishop’s daughter. Mr Lachlan says great fortunes were made in China.’
I felt my anger rise. There was too much supposition; all the talk of the opium trade, the barter in railway shares, the great indemnities exacted from the Manchus. Everyone supposed that all in China had had their cut. I thought of the relative poverty in which we had lived, and I choked on the thought of riches. ‘Morag, that is not so! I can’t explain, but it is not so ‒ not for all. And, please, put that back in the trunk ‒’
She was holding up the long loose coat of monkey fur which I had used during the bitter Peking winters, when the cold dust from the desert had blown hard against one’s body. ‘It should not be hanging, then?’
‘The cedar-lined trunk is made to keep the moths out. Please put it back.’
‘Certainly, mistress.’ She was respectfully humble again. ‘It is just that I have never handled a fur piece before. Och, and yes, it will be useful here in the winter, make no mistake. You will need more than the old plaid you wear now.’
A Falcon for a Queen Page 22
