‘The plaid serves well enough.’
‘It’s a Highlander you’re becoming? Well, you will wear it thin on your days of riding before you’ve done.’
‘Done ‒ done what?’
‘Do you not go seeking Callum Sinclair?’ She turned to me with a gesture of appeal. ‘Och, mistress ‒ ’tis no business of mine, and I ask your pardon. I have no right.But Callum Sinclair follows his own way ‒ always has done, and does to this day. And the woman he seeks now is as high above him as that bird of his that he flies. High and mighty. Swooping and teasing, she is, and poor fool that he is, he does not see that. Och, a man he is, for all his education ‒ and they all have their times of foolishness. He will come to his senses, perhaps, when the summer is gone, and she is gone.’
‘Morag ‒?’
‘Och, mistress, I should have a lock on my tongue. Who am I to be gossiping about my betters? ‒ though it seems to me sometimes that those they say are my betters can do what I would be in trouble for. But Callum Sinclair may seek her in the glens and on the moors, and she may be his for a time, but she will not be his forever. He will have to come down to earth, will Callum Sinclair. And he will crash like a stone, not soft-lighting, like his bird. He will fall heavy and hard. And he will lie there, ready for the hand that picks him up.’
‘Whose hand?’
She shrugged, her back turned to me. ‘Who knows? But, mistress, do not wear out your pony and your skirt riding after him. There is a season for everything. All comes right in its time. Those who have waited can wait a little longer.’ She folded the monkey fur carefully back into the trunk. ‘Then I will send to Inverness for the skirt and some shirtwaists, shall I, mistress? They will be quite inexpensive. And I see that you have a fine gown that will do excellently when His Royal Highness comes to Ballochtorra. They say it is to be a very grand evening, with all the gentry of the country coming to bow and scrape. Yes, you will look very well in this gown, mistress …’
‘How do you know I’m invited?’
She laughed. ‘Does not everyone know? There is little enough to talk of in the strath. What is said in the drawing-room at Ballochtorra is soon repeated in the servants’ hall. From there, it belongs to the winds. We all know you and the Master are invited. We all know that he will not attend, and we are all waiting to hear what he will have to say about you going.’
‘He has no say in it! I do as I please.’
She turned from the hanging press, and her face, usually pert and confident, was now softened and faintly wistful. ‘It is well for those who can say it, mistress. May it always be so. But for freedom we must always pay. All of us … all that you see ride through this strath on their separate ways … some of the ways coming together, and some going apart. Freedom and power is always paid for, mistress … Now I’ll just take the skirt with me, and make a note of the measurements to send to my aunt. You shall have it back in the morning.’
She was gone, and I was left standing by the window, wondering about what she had said, wondering if this was one of the evenings that Callum would pass Cluain without ever raising his eyes to the tower window, without turning his head sideways. Were his thoughts always so much with the woman at Ballochtorra, for that was the only meaning Morag’s words could have had? Did he ride out to meet Margaret Campbell? ‒ and did the glens and moors hide their meetings? No ‒ it could not be so. It was not Margaret Campbell’s style. And yet fixed in my mind was the imprint of Callum, motionless astride the pony, falcon on the gloved hand, that dark and striking figure. If the imprint was there for me, then why not for her? In her restless, seeking ways, had she also fallen on the image of Callum that I forever carried? ‒ and would it go, as Morag said, when she went to London with the first snows of the autumn? Did she play with him, to ease her boredom, and did he believe that the game was no game at all, but real?
Then the thought came to me for the first time. I went quickly to where I kept the small box in the bottom of the wardrobe which held William’s scroll. Once again, my finger traced that shaky brushwork, splashed, I had always thought, by the fingers of a sick man. But in what way had he been sick then? ‘She has killed …’ Did I read not, as I had believed, the death of the body, but of the heart? And had Margaret Campbell been the cause?
Chapter Seven
The Prince was coming. All up and down the strath the knowledge of it was there, heard and felt. It seemed that every hour or so another trap or cart or carriage rumbled over the bridge at Ballochtorra ‒ servants came from Edinburgh, and some special ones, chefs and ladies’ maids, and extra footmen came from London, hunching their shoulders against the chill of the Highland summer, and scornful of the lack of amenities, the lack of a village or a town where they could spend their spare hours. They viewed the whole terrain with distaste and hostility, and stayed within the confines of Ballochtorra. They thought it shocking, the report came, that the best view from the seat of a baronet ‒ soon to be a marquis ‒ was spoiled by the ugly heap of the distillery. No place for the Prince, they said. No place for them. They would be gone, thankfully, as soon as he was, and well paid by James Ferguson’s money.
I did not see Margaret Campbell in those last days before the arrival. I did not want to present myself at Ballochtorra ‒ there would be too much confusion, and no time for talk. And now, I had grown reluctant to talk alone with Margaret, almost for fear of what I would discover. I did not want to believe what I thought I knew. And yet, in those last frantic days before the Prince’s coming, I saw her, late one afternoon, pass on the road that cut through Cluain, riding alone, looking straight ahead down the strath; it was as if she hoped I would not be there, would not see her pass, nor expect her to stop. She rode in a way I had not seen her ride before ‒ as if she wished to make herself small and inconspicuous ‒ as if she ever could, mounted on that wonderful horse, dressed as she was, with her back as ramrod straight as ever, and her head high. It was her expression, not her presence, that she seemed to try to hide. How could a creature like Margaret Campbell hide? ‒ she could never be unobtrusive, unnoticed. Women like her had been born to be noticed. But she did not stop at Cluain’s door, and from the tower room I watched her progress along the road, until she turned off upon a sidetrack, so rough not even a cart could have gone that way. Even without Morag’s voice saying it for me, I was asking myself what a woman, with a household turned upside down to receive the heir to the Sovereign, was doing riding alone in the last hours before his arrival.
The engraved invitation had lain in the drawer of the writing-table in my room for several weeks. I had answered formally, although it was known that I would come; it was also known that my grandfather would not accompany me. It had been a courtesy gesture on Margaret’s part to invite him. I had taken out the dress that Morag had said would do very well for the evening a dozen times ‒ shaken it, tried to push some life into its rather tired ruffles. It would do well enough, I supposed, but it did not excite me. It belonged to the Peking of three years ago, when I had been younger, and had had more taste for ribbons and bows. It was low cut ‒ I had thought at the time my father might have been displeased, but he was not ‒ and it showed off my shoulders and bust, and even I knew they could stand showing. The silver slippers that went with it were a little dulled, but they were all I had. And over it, the monkey fur, of all ridiculous things. But again, there was no choice. And who would see, except the long-nosed servant who took it from me? And Cluain’s trap, with The Sunday Lad to carry me, was what I would ride to Ballochtorra in. My grandfather had been faintly disgusted when one of the distillery workers, Ross MacKinnon, had come forward and asked if he might drive me, and wait to take me back. His wife would come also, he said. They just wanted to stand about the stableyard and listen to the music, take their share of what was handed out from the servants’ hall, perhaps even catch a glimpse of the Prince.
‘Have they no pride?’ Angus Macdonald demanded of me at the supper table. ‘Have they turned themselves int
o servants? ‒ into gaping street fools watching a circus ‒ and if it were a Stuart prince, not that fat Hanoverian! Who would suppose that they are independent working people, free to come and go at their will, bowing their head to no man?’
‘Perhaps they are just kind ‒ and ordinary,’ I said. ‘Should I drive The Sunday Lad myself, and enter by the stable door? Perhaps they don’t want that for Cluain. They are more proud than you think ‒ and life can be a little dull doing the same thing year in year out.’
‘It has never been dull for me. I have never found life in this strath dull.’
‘You are the Master of Cluain. As long as you can count your barrels of whisky growing year by year, life is never dull. For them it could be just season after season … and just growing older.’
‘Och!’ He turned from me in disgust. ‘You’re too soft, Gurrl. They have a good life, and should know it. And no need for frivolity. Waste of time. Waste of money. But then, James Ferguson seemed to have plenty of money to waste.’
‘Waste ‒ or spend ? If he gives happiness …’
He looked back at me sharply. ‘Happiness! What do you know of happiness?’
‘Very little, Grandfather. Very little. I am trying to learn.’
He grunted, and was silent for a long time, as if he did not care to question in what ways I was trying to learn. Finally he motioned with his hand. ‘If you can get your mind off the fripperies up there at Ballochtorra, perhaps you’d be good enough to favour me with your attention for a game of chess. Bring the board, please. And try to concentrate your mind. I do not care for too easy a victory.’
But I could not concentrate my mind, and that night his victory was a very easy one indeed.
It had not rained all day ‒ not even a passing shower to dampen the road, or wet the heather on the moor where the shooting party had been all day. From Cluain we had heard them set off, and I had sped to the tower room, trying to see which of the distant tweed-clad figures might be the Prince. But there was more than one stout man in the company. They did not pass Cluain, but turned towards the other side of Ballochtorra’s lands. It was said that to-morrow they would shoot over the moors above Cluain, and I think the only satisfaction my grandfather had in the Prince’s presence in the strath was the fact that he would have to pass by the distillery, would have to see it, and ask about it, and be told that Cluain’s was the greatest malt whisky in the Highlands. Whether this would actually be said or not I didn’t know ‒ or whether the grander members of the party would merely commiserate with Gavin on the fact that he had such an eyesore on his doorstep. But I guessed that my grandfather firmly believed that the whole story of Cluain would be related to the Prince, and he took a sour pride in it. And I knew he would take care to be well out of the way before the procession of gigs and traps went by, following the earlier ones that carried the food for lunch. It was not in Angus Macdonald’s blood to stand, cap in hand, to watch the progress of a prince.
Nor, I thought, would Callum come down to the roadside to see them go by; Giorsal’s fierce bright eyes would not look on that famous bearded face ‒ and for the days that the guns roared up on the moors, and the cries of the beaters sounded, she would only be flown in the early hours, and later, when they had departed. Callum would never risk one of the fancier shots in the party trying his skill on matching the flight of a falcon should Giorsal be tempted by the game driven up by the beaters. No, she would stand, safe and calm, hooded, with the jesses and swivel firmly attached to the perch, in her little hut. Perhaps for these days she would eat rabbit that Callum had snared, but she would be no prize for a sportsman to boast of over dinner.
The day passed, and the shadows started slowly down the strath; the pale transparency of a moon rose while the northern sky was still bright as day; my grandfather noted with satisfaction that a few clouds drifted across its surface. ‘Och, there’ll be rain before the night’s out.’
‘Nonsense,’ Morag said, when I repeated my grandfather’s opinion; she was taking away the white dress with the ruffles to see what a hot iron would do for it. ‘It will be as fine a night as you ever saw, and half the people in the strath will be creeping in by Ballochtorra to see the festivities.’
‘And will you, Morag?’
In an instant I knew I offended. ‘I, mistress? No, not I.’ Her chin had come up sharply. ‘I have an imagination. I know what will go on there to-night. And I’ve no mind to be of those peeking in at windows. It is not my way.’
‘But there must be plenty of young men who would want you to go with them …’
She handled the latch on the door heavily. ‘None of my choosing, mistress. I will go and do the dress now.’
I ate very lightly with my grandfather; we had supper unfashionably early at Cluain, at the end of a working-man’s day, rather than the hour when the gentry began to feel hungry again, So, for the sake of form, I sat with him at the table, and ate as little as I could. He noticed.
‘Better eat while you can, Gurrl. There’ll be so many courses and so many flunkeys to pick up just the second His Royal Highness sets his own fork down, and so much talk ‒ first to the right, then to the left ‒ that you’ll scarcely get a bite in. And finish up your dram before you go. It will put heart into you. And don’t touch the wines. Spirits and wines have never mixed. Have your dram here at Cluain, and touch nothing else but lemonade all evening. To-night ‒ although I wish you did not go at all ‒ you are Cluain. It behooves you to do us credit.’
I thought of his words as I went back upstairs. ‘You are Cluain.’ He was investing his pride in me. I knew, for his sake, for William’s sake, for my father’s sake, that I could allow no fault, no gaucherie to mar my behaviour. I would have to be all that they might want of me. And yet, on the way up the stairs my limbs seemed to drag. I had never learned to dance ‒ it was not the kind of thing we spent much time on in Peking.
It was still early, but the slanting sunlight was casting shadows in the tower room. I wandered first to the fire, a small fire, lighted, I thought, by Morag, to give me cheer; and then I went to the washstand, and looked at myself in the mirror. A lot to do on my hair, yet. A lot to do, everywhere. Then I sensed something amiss, something out of place. I turned and looked around the room, and there was nothing immediately out of order, nothing obvious to see. I looked up, and there, instead of his usual place, when he visited the tower room, on the bench before the fire, or curled on the bed, Mairi Sinclair’s white cat was hunched, in an attitude of hostility and defiance on top of the tall wardrobe. The colourless eyes looked down at me balefully, as if he were blaming me for something. Never before had he looked at me that way.
At once, then, my own eyes went to the bed. It lay in shadow, and at first I had seen nothing except the dress, freshly ironed, that Morag had laid out. I had paid no attention to it when I entered. That dress had begun to bore me long ago. But now I saw what had been done to it.
The disturbance was first evident in the bed-cover, the rumpling of it, in that house where everything was forever in order. I moved closer, very slowly, not wanting to see what my senses already told me. The dress lay there, yes, where Morag must have placed it while I sat at table with my grandfather. What had been then a simple thing, a girl’s white ball dress of ruffles and ribbons, was now a shredded mess. Fierce claws had raked across its innocent silk and lace, and the fabric had given before the onslaught. The bodice was mutilated beyond repair; the scratch marks even extended half-way down the skirt. A spirit of malevolent vicious fury had attacked it. I would never, nor would anyone else, wear that dress again.
I walked slowly across the room, stunned, disbelieving, and yet already knowing that the evening had ended for me. I would not be going to Ballochtorra.
I stood beneath the wardrobe, looking up at the cat. ‘Why did you do it, Cat? Do you hate me so much? Did it disturb you? But you have never touched anything else ‒ ever. You have been so peaceful … Why, Cat?’
I sucked in my breath wi
th fear as he leapt. But instead of the digging cruel claws I had expected, only the roughened surfaces of his pads met my shoulder. He clung there, and hesitantly, reluctantly, I made my hand come up to support him. I turned my face to look into his, and what I saw was not the baleful stare I had imagined in the half light, but a fear, and a frenzy to be comforted. Before I had realised my action, my hand was stroking his head, and then, for the first time, he gave me recognition. He rolled his head against my neck, and I heard his purr. It was like hearing the dumb speak. He had never spoken to me before.
I stroked him for a while longer. There was no hurry now. I would not be sitting at that grand long dinner table at Ballochtorra ‒ one of the favoured ones invited to dine with the Prince instead of merely invited to come and dance and take supper later. I thought absently that I would have to send a message of indisposition; Margaret Campbell would have to alter her table arrangements.
I suddenly thought of it ‒ the last gift of my father’s oldest servant, a woman who had taken care of his needs for more than twenty years in China, moving where he did, away from her family, which was a great sacrifice, caring for his children when he had been away on his duties; a woman who had known my mother. She had given me a parting gift ‒ heaven knows what it had cost her of her savings. It was not fashioned on Western lines ‒ her mind could not conceive of why we wore such desperately uncomfortable clothes, or why they should be cut so immodestly. So of a precious, costly roll of white silk, embossed with prunus blossom whose pink was only to be discerned with the second, close look, she had had made for me a ceremonial robe in the Mandarin style ‒ the high collar, the wide sleeves, the slight indentation to the waist, and the flare to the skirt. She reported that the Old Empress, Tz’uhsi, wore such a robe, fashioned so, and I had to believe her. How she knew it, I did not question. Very few people had ever seen the Empress.
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