A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘Easy, lass ‒ easy,’ he murmured. And to me, ‘What has happened, mistress?’

  I shook my head. ‘Just bed her down, please, John, and give her nothing. Not water ‒ not anything, yet.’

  And then I ran, using all the pent-up need of the slowness of the journey back. I burst in at the kitchen door, and Mairi Sinclair looked up from her task of setting the dishes for the supper she and Morag ate at the big scrubbed table.

  ‘Mistress Sinclair, will you come at once … please! It’s Ailis. There’s something terribly wrong with her!’

  The dark eyes met mine, lingering only a moment. There was a kind of wonderful assurance in her calm. She nodded. ‘I will bring what may be needed.’

  There had been neither foreknowledge or surprise in that gaze. It was the instinctive, experienced, unpanicked reaction of the healer to a cry for help. It was from Morag the exclamation came ‒ not of questioning, but a little yelp of pain as she placed her hand carelessly against a hot pan on the range. But by then I was already on my way out, and Mairi Sinclair was reaching for the keys to the herb room, and flinging her plaid about her shoulders.

  For the first time since I had come to Cluain we moved together, in common purpose.

  We sat there by the loose box through the night, Mairi Sinclair and I. At first she squatted by the pony, feeling her, looking into her mouth, opening the eyelids that wanted to close; she put her hand, and then her ear, to Ailis’s heart. She stayed there for a long time, saying nothing, just watching; she did not reach for anything from the basket of medicaments she had brought from the herb room. She raised her head only when the shadow of Angus Macdonald fell across her.

  ‘I don’t know what it is, Master. Never have I seen anything like it ‒ such strange symptoms in an animal ‒ one thing going against the other. The heart is too fast, and yet she is sluggish. It is beyond my knowledge to prescribe anything for her. I am afraid of what I do not know. You must send for the veterinarian, Master.’

  ‘What ‒ have you lost your courage, Mistress Sinclair? You’ve saved animals that veterinarians have given up.’

  She was stubborn. ‘I give my medicines when I believe I know what I am giving them for. When I am ignorant, I say so. And I say I do not know what ails the animal. What I know is that you set great store by this one.’

  ‘My granddaughter sets great store by Ailis, Mistress Sinclair. I trust your skills. We will wait until morning before we send for the veterinarian. He will not come this evening, in any case, and if he’s been at the bottle, it were better he did not come at all.’

  ‘You place a burden on me; Master.’

  He looked down at her, hardness in his face. ‘And when has Cluain not placed its burdens on you, mistress? This is nothing new.’

  And then he left us.

  I remember Morag brought us things to eat in a basket, and hot jugs of tea. My grandfather sent a flask of whisky, which Mairi Sinclair refused, but I did not. We sat on stools and as it grew dark a lantern was brought, and placed between us. On her last visit that night, Morag brought Mairi Sinclair her Bible, and she read it, the pages held low to the light. But I noticed, as time went on, that she almost ceased to read; her lips moved soundlessly over the words, reciting the endlessly familiar chapter and verse. She needed no lamplight.

  There was nothing to do for Ailis except to give her the knowledge of our presence. There was little to see, except that from time to time she still trembled, and her eyes were closed, and she sweated under the blankets. Occasionally Mairi Sinclair would rise and kneel beside her, bending low to listen to the heart beat, rolling back the eyelids. Several times she returned to her stool and nodded to me. ‘She holds ‒ she holds, yet.’ And when I went to pat the sweating, heavy little body, Ailis would faintly flicker an eyelid, and once she struggled to rise. Instantly, Mairi Sinclair was there beside me, and together we forced the pony back. When she was quiet again, I went and paced the dark stableyard to exercise some warmth back into my cold and cramped limbs. But Mairi Sinclair seemed to need no such thing. Once more, at the coldest time of the night, I sipped a quarter cup of whisky, expecting to find the woman’s eyes upon me disapprovingly, but there was no reaction. With her plaid about her head she seemed the immemorial figure of the woman who watches by a bedside, waiting for the hours to decide on life or death. She must have sat in that fashion so many times in her life.

  Once, across the glow of the lamp, I whispered to her. ‘Did you sit this way with William?’

  She shook her head. ‘Your brother did not like me, mistress. It did not calm him to have me by his bed.’ She said it as if she had known for most of her life that there were some who did not like her, for whom her presence did no good. There was a stoic acceptance of that, as of other things. ‘It was Morag who sat with him, and fetched and carried. I thought it might help him a little to see a young face beside him. She was very attentive.’

  We said no more. I sat hunched upon my stool, a plaid and a blanket about me. And before dawn I must have nodded in sleep. I woke with Mairi Sinclair’s hand upon my shoulder, her face bent close to mine. I felt a sudden start of fear. ‘Ailis …?’

  ‘It is past. She sleeps naturally. The heart beat is normal now. The sweat is over. Now I may go and prepare a little bran mash for her, and put a gentle sedative in it. She should rest easy through the day. And when that is done, I will send Morag to warm your bed, mistress. It is time you went to your own rest.’

  So I stayed alone with Ailis, sitting in the straw beside her, in those last minutes while Mairi Sinclair went back to the kitchen and her tasks. The sky was lightening rapidly. I heard footsteps in the yard, and hastily brushed away the tears that had come as a relief in the privacy of those moments. Neil Smith’s red, unshaven face looked down at me.

  ‘The little lass is all right, then?’ he said. ‘You will have her for a long time yet, mistress. These wee ponies live to a terrible great age. Mistress Sinclair has made her right again.’

  ‘Mistress Sinclair refused to dose her …’

  ‘Then you may be sure that was precisely what she should have done. Mistress Sinclair has strange powers … if she will not dose, then it is best left alone. Good morning to you, mistress.’

  I looked after his squat little figure, wondering why I should ever have disliked him. He and Big Billy were as much part of Cluain as its very walls. And his words came home: ‘You will have her for a long time yet …’ Through the open door of the loose box I watched the light grow steadily, outlining the far distant rim of the Cairngorms. The hurt of Callum came flooding back with the sweetness of the relief that Ailis would live. And Neil Smith thought I would be with Ailis at Cluain for a long time, the pain and pleasure of its life mixed as it had been this night.

  My grandfather came from his room as I climbed to the tower stairs. I had never seen him in the long flannel nightshirt, and the plaid used as a robe about his shoulders. Perhaps he had spent his own vigil by his bedroom window, watching the light in the stableyard. Perhaps he saw the traces of tears yet on my face, and the relief and the weariness there.

  ‘It is not the last long night you will spend sleepless at Cluain, Kirsty. You learn, Gurrl. You learn.’

  III

  I came down to eat the midday meal after my grandfather had left. My eyelids still drooped with half-finished sleep; I felt curiously numb. I wanted to drift on the tide of my fatigue and not to think. The thoughts, the remembrances would only bring the probe and the pain again. But before I sat down to eat, I visited Ailis in her box. She was standing steadily enough, and looking slightly aggrieved; I guessed that Mairi Sinclair had kept her on tight rations that morning, and she was hungry. I didn’t dare feed her; just stroked her nose, and fended off John Farquharson’s questions about what might have brought on Ailis’s attack. I remembered all through the night that Mairi Sinclair had asked nothing except if I knew had Ailis been feeding on any wayside herbage, and to that I could truthfully answer that she had not
. I knew the more lengthy questioning would come, and with it I might have to say where I had been. So long as Ailis had recovered, I felt disinclined to tell anyone, not my grandfather or Mairi Sinclair, about the journey up to the ruined bothy above the waterfall.

  I did not linger in the stable. I had woken to the sound of steadily beating rain, the straight rain that comes with no wind, and will not move on with the clouds. The stableyard was full of puddles; no one was to be seen out about the distillery. Big Billy kept his flock within their pen. I shook off the Inverness cape I had worn to the stable in the kitchen hall, and regretted the splashes it left on Mairi Sinclair’s scrubbed flagstone floor. It was the kind of day that mud gathered on one from nowhere.

  Morag served me hot soup, and a beef stew kept warm on the range. It was already growing late; the afternoon seemed dark after the golden days of the harvest. I began to sense what the winter would be like.

  As if she knew my thoughts, Morag nodded towards the window and the steady downpour. ‘Aye, mistress, I’m thinking we may have seen the end of the summer. It is well the barley is in the barns. The days will start to close in quickly now.’ She took the empty soup bowl, and began to ladle out the stew. ‘There’s not many will be stirring on a day like this.’

  As she set the plate before me I answered, just to show a kind of spirit I did not truly feel, ‘Oh, not many, I agree.’ I dug into the steaming meat. ‘But everyone is not deterred. I saw Lady Campbell out on her mare ‒ down by the river. Wet through, I’d say. So you see, Morag, perhaps she is less inclined to party-going than you think. She and Sir Gavin must have come directly back from the gathering at Cawdor.’

  ‘Lady Campbell.’ The lid of the stew dish clattered a little as she replaced it. ‘Lady Campbell? ‒ is that so, mistress? Well, she’ll hardly have much company on a day like this. I’ll leave the stew, shall I, mistress, if you should like some more? I’ve the vegetables to see to for supper …’

  But when I carried the dishes through the kitchen into the scullery it was deserted. The carrots and cabbages were laid there ready for preparing. And Morag’s plaid was gone from the line of hanging pegs in the kitchen passage.

  Perhaps I dozed that afternoon by the fire. I remember I built it up, and took some needlework, which bored me, and settled before it. I wore my cashmere shawl and the red slippers. I would be waiting so when my grandfather came in.

  It was odd that this once I should have missed his coming, when so many times I had seemed to know it before the figure on the pony even appeared along the road. But it was the thundering bang of the knocker at the front door which roused me. The piece of sewing had slipped from my lap. I did not wait for Morag or Mairi Sinclair to attend it.

  Callum was still mounted on his pony. He was bareheaded, and rain streamed down his face; the bedraggled, mud-caked setter tried to find what shelter he could within the doorway, his tail hanging and a whimper in his throat. I let my eyes slowly travel upwards to Callum’s face. I had never seen anything so awful ‒ like stone set in a deathmask of suffering.

  ‘The mare has broken a leg. She is up there screaming, and may drown. Have someone go up with a gun and put her at rest. John will know where it is ‒ the place just below the waterfall on the way up to the old Sinclair croft. Up beyond my cottage. Tell them to shoot the mare, and leave her where she is. I will see to the rest.’

  I could say nothing. One hand held the reins, and with his other arm he supported the sodden burden. The tweed cape I had seen her wear to protect her from the rain as she had splashed along by the river early that afternoon was wrapped about her, covering her head and face. The hand-made boots, fitted to the delicate ankles, hung limply from the familiar cinnamon-tan riding habit; the cream-coloured lace on her petticoat was mud splattered and soaked. I remember the horror of standing there, watching the rain stream off the heels of those boots, the unheeding rain.

  ‘Margaret …’

  ‘Dead. I’m taking her to Ballochtorra.’

  He flicked the reins, and the pony moved off; the dog was close by, as always, but keeping far enough back to avoid the mud kicked up by the pony’s hooves. The rain became an obliterating curtain. I seemed paralysed there in the doorway, with the rain dripping down on my head from the eaves. I opened my mouth. The sound that came was a weird low moan, much like the whimper in the throat of the dog.

  Chapter Nine

  The tales drifted to us in the next two days, while the rain hung on the strath, not the streaming, heavy rain of the day Margaret had died, but gentler, sometimes no more than a light sheet of mist. They were not spoken of within the household of Cluain ‒ it was Mairi Sinclair’s son the stories concerned, and even Morag knew enough to keep silent about that. It was a very silent household. My grandfather spoke less even than usual; our chess games were concentrated and swift, and ended soon, and I found myself going earlier to the tower room, where Morag had already completed her tasks, and made no excuse to linger. There were no songs rising from the scullery window. Even, for those days, the flow of those who came to seek Mairi Sinclair’s aid ceased, as if no one could quite face her with this new, terrible thing which must be borne, but not spoken of. And yet, calmly, the night that Callum had brought Margaret’s body to the door, Mairi Sinclair set out in that drenching rain to deliver the first child of a young distillery worker’s wife. No one knew at the cottage what had happened, and the talk was normal, at least as normal as it ever was in the presence of Cluain’s housekeeper, whom the whole strath held in some awe. But she was gentle, and soothing, and efficient, bringing her own clean linens from Cluain, hanging a sheet soaked in a solution of carbolic at the doorway of the tiny room where the child was born. The grandmother complained that there was unnecessary washing of hands, and too much water to keep boiling. She was outraged that she was not allowed to handle the child or the mother without washing her own hands and wrapping her person in linen which Mairi Sinclair supplied. When the young wife screamed in the pains of labour, Mairi Sinclair gave her a mild infusion of henbane, and the woman was lulled, though still awake.

  It was about dawn, they said, and the child had been born and bathed, and slept peacefully, before Callum Sinclair came to the door of the cottage. He refused to come inside, and Mairi Sinclair stood in the road in the rain to speak briefly with him. When she came back inside, they said, she seemed no different ‒ but there never was any telling with Mairi Sinclair. She washed again, took more clean linen, and went to tend the mother. Then finally she gave the young woman a potion that would give her complete sleep, and rest her tired and wracked body; and very gently she moved the cradle where the eyes of the woman would fall on the baby when she woke. In the last moments before sleep, the moments of emotional weariness when the tension and pain are at last gone, the mother lifted her eyes once more to Mairi Sinclair. ‘I shall call him Callum …’

  ‘No, do not call him Callum. You would be better with any other name.’ And she did not explain.

  And in her usual fashion, before she left, she ordered the young father to see that the fire was kept up, but the window open, that his mother was not to smoke her pipe over the cradle of the baby, and everyone who touched the mother or the child must first wash their hands. She left a solution of carbolic.

  He dared to grip her hand in thanks, and offer a black shawl which his wife had knitted as a gift against this time, knowing, as they all did, that Mairi Sinclair never accepted money. But she shook her head. ‘Your mother will find it warming this winter.’

  ‘Then let me walk with you back to Cluain.’

  Mairi Sinclair had looked at him with eyes that he swore afterwards he could never forget. She lifted her face, and he saw an expression of pain that not even his wife’s trials during the night had produced. ‘Thank you, I will go alone. It grows light. And what harm can come to me in this strath ‒ now?’

  I heard this story, and others, from John and from Neil Smith, and the others who moved about Cluain ‒ the outside peopl
e who perhaps were hoping in turn to have my version of what Mairi Sinclair herself said, or thought ‒ as if anyone could ever know that. The stories drifted down first from the servants at Ballochtorra, and were added to by those who lived along the road to Callum’s cottage.

  First there had been the shock of Callum bringing Margaret back to Ballochtorra. He had taken her to the stableyard, because he had to have help in getting down from the pony. But they said that he would not then relinquish her body until he had finally laid it upon her own bed, and he himself had taken a towel and dried that cold, wet face, and tried to smooth the hair. Then he had gone downstairs, to wait on Gavin. What had been said between the two men when finally Gavin had been found, had visited Margaret’s room, and come to the library where Callum waited, no one ever heard, even those who had listened too closely. The tone of the men’s voices had never risen above a murmur ‒ that, I thought, itself was a deadly thing. That conversation had been ended by the sudden scream of Jamie, who had discovered what had happened to his mother before Gavin had had time to tell him. That scream must have rung in Callum’s ears as he left Ballochtorra, riding back past Cluain in the darkness, gathering a lad from the stable, and another from a cottage along the way. With them he had gone to the place below the waterfall where Margaret’s mare lay. John Farquharson had hours ago put the mare down with one of my grandfather’s guns. He was waiting for Callum at his cottage, and had joined the three on the uphill trek. They had taken a field gate, and dragged the mare’s body, lashed to it, down that impossible track, and there, not too far from Callum’s cottage, they had dug a pit. It was hard work, and the rain poured down; the hole had inches of water in the bottom. Callum went to the cottage and brought whisky for them, the young lads taking their share. But they said he himself did not drink. And when the hole was ready Callum dismissed them, saying he would do the rest himself. He had, he said, Gavin Campbell’s permission to bury the mare. They did not dispute him.