Yes, words to make one shiver.
‘I know it.
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.’
‘Ay, that’s it. The milk of Paradise … exactly so. Once a man has tasted that, it seems to me, he will drink no other. He rides out to meet her. They come and go separately, but they meet. To be sure, he must go without his drink these next few days ‒ a taste of the long thirst that is to come. She has gone with Sir Gavin to a grand party given at Cawdor Castle ‒ the Campbell of Cawdor who is chief of his clan. She is not one to be missing such a thing for some lover here in the strath ‒ and no doubt His Royal Highness will be among the company. Those kind, the gentry, they merely smile at the little things they do among themselves to pass the time. The story of her lover here in the Highlands will not go against her when she is among the London crowd ‒ since he is so handsome, and well-spoken, and could pass, the way they saw him that night, as a Scottish gentleman. He is a distillery worker who flies a falcon ‒ a sport for princes and gentlemen. It will make an amusing tale, I’ve no doubt, this winter in London. Very original, Lady Campbell will be thought. And he ‒ he will break his heart, and he will not look on another woman. He will be waiting on her now ‒ you see, he is not among this company. He will spend his days upon the moors, flying his hawk, until she returns. And she will take her time. There is another shooting party to go to, at some place beyond the Moray Firth. Lady Campbell does not neglect such activities. Is she not bored here? ‒ and that is the only reason that Callum Sinclair is chosen to ease her boredom. And he will be waiting, poor fool.’
I should not have listened, but I let the voice, quiet, calm continue. ‘They meet in the old bothy of his grandfather ‒ Mairi Sinclair’s father. He has a part of it new-roofed, and the track to it is so wild and rough that none do ever go that way. It is the track that goes up beyond his own cottage, away up there towards the slopes of Ben Cullen, towards the top of the glen past the waterfall.’
‘How do you know this?’ I choked on the words, but I had to say them. Everything else receded ‒ the firelight, the pipes, the songs, the cries of the dancers; I heard nothing but the voice near my ear.
‘I use my head and my eyes, mistress. I was born at Cluain. I know this strath ‒ its every stream and glen almost as well as Callum Sinclair. I am no fool, mistress.’
I turned and looked at her. ‘And you think I am!’
A weird little smile came to her lips. ‘I would not see you commit folly.’
It was clear that Morag had found no one among the young men to linger late with over the whisky and beer that night, because she was up before the herdsman had gone to bring in the cows to milking the next morning. I saw her from where I sat by the tower window; she was wrapped against the chill of the early morning in a plaid, but I knew that quick, light, high-stepping walk, and the one glimpse of the red hair that the plaid revealed. I did not think about it very much ‒ Morag was like Mairi Sinclair in her ways. They both did the work that was to hand, and no one would have dreamed of questioning their comings and goings. So I marked her crossing the yard, and thought no more of it; after that I did not even notice which way she went. My gaze was searching the valley for a sight of Giorsal; but it was overcast, and the clouds were low. In the mist that tumbled down from Ballochtorra there was the feeling of rain ‒ a change in the weather. My grandfather would be in a great hurry to-day to get in the stooks of barley. Once more Cluain and Angus Macdonald had been lucky; the barley was cut and would soon be in the barns, and the itinerant workers would straggle off in twos and threes that morning, their wages in their pockets, and perhaps some Cluain whisky for those especially favoured. I thought, as I watched that mist blow out the mountains, that if the weather turned cooler now, the malting would begin, and Callum would return to the distillery. And then I cursed myself for the vain wish that lay behind the thought.
But the thought of Callum would not be wiped out ‒ never had been in all the weeks of the summer when I had grown into the world of Cluain. Had it actually begun, I wondered, on that first evening, the first time I had seen him there beneath the beeches below Ballochtorra? No, people of intelligence did not fall in love with the image of a man merely glimpsed. But was love ever intelligent? ‒ if I applied logic to my own madness, then all it was revealed as was just that ‒ madness. But why had that moment of first sight remained so intensely with me ‒ and now, when I thought of it, it could have been one of the times when he had ridden with Margaret Campbell, and had, that evening, watched her husband return home from a journey, and known that their freedom to meet must now be more restricted. I grew slightly sick at the thought. I heard again Morag’s whispered words of the night before. ‘They do meet in the old bothy of his grandfather …’ I did not believe it; they could not have established anything so permanent as a trysting place ‒ nothing except the heather and the moors and deep rock shelters of the Ballochtorra crag. But as an animal will lick and probe its wound endlessly, feeling the hurt and yet not knowing how to stop, so did I. I had to know.
I lingered over the midday meal that day, drinking tea after my grandfather had gone back to the office. The itinerant workers had begun to shake off their night’s revelry, and with a last hand-out of food from Cluain’s kitchen, were starting back along the road to the bridge at Ballochtorra, and from there on to the next strath.
‘The weather’s turning against them, though,’ Morag remarked as she stacked dishes on the sideboard. ‘The next farmers may not be so fortunate as the Master.’ I noticed that Neil Smith had let Big Billy and his flock out from the pen by the warehouses; the gander was thoroughly enjoying harassing the strangers that he had been kept away from for so long. ‘Many were on their way very early, to try to get another day’s work, at least.’
‘You were abroad early also, Morag.’
She did not pause in her task of loading the tray ‒ the tureen, the dishes, the knives and forks neatly and competently, without noise, as she did everything. ‘A sick child one of the women had, mistress. And Mistress Sinclair bade me take the little one some extra medicine before the family left. They were to go early, and Mistress Sinclair left it ready for me last night … I often do these errands for her. For all her cleverness with the herbs, she is still stiff with strangers. Once she knows which mixture to make, she has little to say to those she treats.’
I nodded. It would be so. ‘It seems odd,’ I said, really for the sake of talk, ‘to see so many on the road. The strath will be quiet now they’re leaving.’
‘Och,’ Morag tossed her head lightly as she lifted the tray, ‘there’ll be enough coming and going for a while ‒ as long as the shooting lasts. But when the snows come it is quiet enough. The gentry all run south then. Ballochtorra will be empty until the late spring. And Sir Gavin may come back alone, for Lady Campbell, they say, has made plans for the fashionable races ‒ Ascot, is it? ‒ and such things …’ And with that she deftly balanced the tray on one hand, and pulled the door closed behind her, leaving me alone.
Leaving me to the disquiet of my thoughts, which could hardly now be borne. I took my plaid and went into the herb garden, and paced its walks ‒ back and forth, back and forth. The tall thyme and the lavender nodded to me, but leaves were beginning to dry, and blow off the roses that climbed the wall. How quiet and deep the snow would lie on this garden. The white cat ran before me. Out here the cat seemed a kitten again; he scurried among the beds, and lay in wait to pounce on me, to grab with his paws for the swinging end of the plaid.
I watched his pranks, and wondered how Mairi Sinclair could have used such an innocent creature to make him seem the instrument of the destruction of that silly white dress, the dress that seemed so far back in time now. What had she used? ‒ the sharpened claws of a rabbit, or a bird? It might have deceived anyone who had not liked cats, had not known th
eir ways. And there I paused. In my turns along the path I had seen that black figure seated in a chair by the kitchen range, Bible in hand, seemingly oblivious of my presence. It struck me that I had never seen her seated before; but she was human like us all, and must need rest. The harvest time had been gruelling for her, and she had tended more than one sick person among the workers. Morag sang by the scullery window as she washed the dishes. The cat made another playful dash for the plaid, and it occurred to me that no one could ever prove that it had been Mairi Sinclair who had wreaked her dislike of me upon that white dress. But Mairi Sinclair knew cats and their ways, and suddenly it seemed too clumsy an effort for her. So I looked from that still, black figure by the range, to the shining red hair of the singer by the scullery window. Morag did not like cats ‒ so she said. But Morag said a great deal, and knew a great deal. She said she knew where Callum and Margaret met.
Suddenly I knew what I would do. I already wore my plaid, the new serge skirt sent from Morag’s aunt, and the usual boots. I needed nothing else. I went out by the seldom-used door from the herb garden into the road, and then on to the stableyard. Both those watchers, the one by the kitchen range and the one by the scullery window must have heard the slam of the door. The song that had floated over the gentle rattle of the dishes stopped.
Ailis’s big eyes greeted me as if she already had foreknowledge of our destination; if she had really known she would have thought me foolish. I slipped an ordinary saddle across her back, and hurried with the harness before John Farquharson could come to help me. If the track was as rough as Morag said, and there was the burn to cross near a waterfall, then I would need both feet in the stirrups.
Big Billy was quiet as I went by the warehouses. Perhaps he was worn out by the morning’s exertions; perhaps he just knew that there was no longer any sport to be had from me.
II
It was as Morag had said. The track past Callum’s cottage narrowed and went higher, skirting the edge of the burn, and weaving among boulders. The dry weather had dropped the level of the flow, but I could see how it would cascade when the floods of the spring thaws came, or a thunderstorm broke over the mountains. We went higher than I thought, and closer to Ben Cullen ‒ the terrain grew rougher and tighter, the glen narrowed almost to a gorge. The water spilled green on mossy rocks. It would be a poor land up here when I did find the bothy, poor, starved land that the cousin that Mairi Sinclair’s father had willed it to would never have bothered with. The waterfall, when I came to it, was a gentle trickle, but it foamed into a deep pool. Stunted trees tried to meet each other across the burn; I saw the dark leaves of holly and the more tender leaves of laurel. The snow would lie here in the winter, but they would have shelter from the biting winds. I saw the way across, the fording place just below the pool, and if Ailis had not been what she was, and the water so low, I would not have liked to take that path; below it again was a sheer rock fall, and more boulders. But I turned her, and she led me across, calmly, quietly, and, as if she knew the way, she found the track on the other side. In the dry weather the ground had hardened, but this way was not unused. We emerged from the gorge at last, and out on to more open land ‒ that is, free of trees, windswept, wild, and choked with gorse. It rose above my head, and if it had not been for the faintly defined track, I would never have found the place.
It was a tiny Highland ‘butt and ben’ ‒ the traditional two-roomed cottage, rough stoned, and the stones mortared with mud. The searing winds and rains up here had long ago taken most of the whitewashed plaster, and the gorse grew almost to the door. It was no longer land even fit for sheep to graze. I thought of Mairi Sinclair, as I sat quietly on Ailis and looked at it; she had been born here, and been a girl here, had walked this hard track all her young life. I remembered Morag’s story of how she had been beaten by her father until the life almost left her. I thought of the last terrible downhill climb, over the ford by that deep pool, bearing the burden of her unborn child. Having made this journey, I now began to understand many things about Mairi Sinclair, gazing about at the grim, barren land, just looking at the place where she had grown from child to young woman, where she had been formed to the hardness of the granite. Hard and passionate, holding forever, to whatever belief, whatever love, whatever hate.
I saw all the rest of it too, in those few minutes. I slipped from Ailis’s back, and led her to the second half of the ruined house ‒ that with the gable end almost gone, and a quick roof of boughs and straw thrown over it to form a rough stable. It had been recently used ‒ there were fresh droppings on the ground that the fastidious Callum would never allow to collect in depth, the fresh straw spread; there were two hitching rings fastened to the solid wall that would be the back of the fireplace in the other room; there was even a bag with feed in it. The space where the entry had been to this room from the other had been freshly blocked with stones, and plastered with mud. I left Ailis tied loosely there, and with a useless determination to see it all, I went to the door of the little house. That too, had been freshly mended, the rotten wood replaced, the lintel propped up, the catch was new, though there was no lock. Inside was emptiness ‒ that is, if I could ever see emptiness in the place so imbued with the presence of those who had recently used it. The thatch was loose and rough enough, but sufficient to keep out the rain of the summer ‒ and if it leaked in one place, they could move to another. The stone walls had been swept clean of dust and cobwebs, and newly whitewashed; the floor was the bare earth, but laid deep with clean straw. The old, tiny windows had been sealed so that no birds or rodents could enter and defile this place. I looked at it all with mute acceptance, wanting to close my eyes, and not being able to. I did not even have to touch the ash in the old fireplace. It was fresh and powdery, the smell of peat recently burned lay on everything. As if they were before my eyes I saw them there, Margaret and Callum, their hands upon each other, their white bodies on that clean straw. I saw the passion of Callum’s face. ‘For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drank the milk of Paradise.’ The milk of Paradise. I turned and closed the door carefully behind me.
Afterwards I didn’t remember how long I stood outside, registering the knowledge of what I had seen. There were no more dreams now, no more doubts. Whatever Margaret Campbell felt, I knew that for Callum to have gone this far, then he was gone very far indeed. The instinct I had had about him, that if I only waited he would be mine, had been totally wrong. Not for me would the earth floor be lovingly laid with a blanket of clean hay; not for me would the peat fire burn. I took it in in a dazed, superficial kind of way; I realised vaguely that with time the hurt would only be deeper. I stumbled towards the stable and with a kind of idiot’s half-seeing gait. With a rough pull I jerked Ailis’s head out of the feed bag, resenting her, somehow, for eating what I could not taste.
‘Greedy beast! Isn’t there enough at Cluain for you!’
She looked at me with indignant eyes, and the slowness of her walk seemed to mock my impatience. But her broad back received me as willingly as always, and soon I found my arm about her neck, and I leaned forward and lightly kissed her between the ears. ‘No ‒ I understand. There’s not enough at Cluain for me, either.’
At an ordinary time I would have noticed it sooner. But we were down at the ford below the waterfall before I was fully aware of the tremble through all her limbs; the leisurely pace had become something more, a dragging, leaden pull ‒ one leg deliberately placed after the other, and she seemed to wait upon each step, as if not trusting herself to make another. When we reached the ford she would not descend to the waterline; she tossed her head in a violent denial, almost the last energy she seemed to have left. Then I slipped down from her back, and stroked her head, wondering how I had not noticed before the sweat beginning to stand out darkly on her coat. ‘Ailis? ‒ what is it?’ The usually knowing, intelligent eyes looked at me with dull incomprehension.
I led her with infinite care across the stones of the ford, my ankles and skirt deep in the
water. She did not want to come. Something in that great spirit had become afraid, confused; the pool looked so deep, and below the ford the rocks of the gorge seemed more jagged.
But we were across, and the downward track faced us. I trembled almost as much as Ailis did, but with a nervous energy and desperation that were not in her. I dared not mount her again, nor force the pace. The way was so rough that if once she slipped, I doubted I would be able to raise her heavy little body. I took my plaid, folded it, and laid it along her back, the best kind of blanket I could devise.
I prayed on the way down that I would see smoke rising from Callum’s chimney, hear Dougal barking in the yard. But the cottage was closed and silent as before, and beyond giving a couple of shouts as I drew near, I didn’t waste any time there. Ailis followed me obediently; I had the feeling that if once we stopped she would lose the will to go on. Her eyes looked with a kind of dumb wonder when finally we reached the place where the track to Callum’s cottage joined the road. She was not so far gone that she did not know this place, and the firm, level surface of the road that led back to Cluain. Momentarily she raised her head and looked at me. I encouraged her with a light whisper. ‘Soon home, Ailis. Home!’ But the even surface of the road made the trembling wobble of her tough little legs all the more painfully obvious.
Several people came to the doors of their cottages as I passed. There were offers of help, offers to shelter Ailis in their own lean-to stables. But I knew that above all she needed the reassurance of her own place, and I kept her going. It would be time to lay her down in straw when she reached the familiarity of Cluain. A woman sent one of her sons with me, to walk the rest of the way. He put his strong young shoulder against Ailis’s, so that now she was supported on both sides. At last we were past the warehouses and into the stableyard. I had sent the lad on ahead to warn John Farquharson, and the loose box was open, and ready, spread with fresh straw. He rushed forward to take off the saddle and harness.
A Falcon for a Queen Page 27
