The Blood And The Barley

by Angela MacRae Shanks

  ‘But it’s me should be doing that,’ Jamie protested.

  ‘And five days hence it’s you that's to fight the finest swordsman in Stratha’an!’ Malcolm drew breath with a quiver. ‘Be reasonable, lad. Ye canna do everything.’

  Her father then turned to Rowena, and with some trepidation gentled his voice. ‘If ye’ve a moment, Rowena, I would speak wi’ ye on a private matter.’ Lifting his gaze, he found the courage to look her in the eye.

  Rowena’s strained expression soften to a shy smile. ‘I see no need, Malcolm. Your heart is true, I know that. I’m only sorry I didna see it afore, but grief did cloud my thinking. Forgive me, but it made me distrust ye.’ She frowned. ‘I did suspect my own shadow.’

  ‘’Tis I seek your forgiveness,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was a drunken, half-witted –’

  ‘Ye made a mistake,’ she said firmly. ‘’Tis human to do so. There’s no profit in re-examining it, that route does lead to naught but pain. But I thank ye fer what ye’re doing now fer me and my kin.’ She nodded to signify she considered the matter closed and turned to go.

  Malcolm caught her by the sleeve, his face pitifully grateful.

  ‘Bless ye, Rowena.’

  She nodded with an awkward smile.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Morven straightened, grimacing at the numbing crick in the base of her spine as it realigned itself to the vertical. She massaged the spot through the wool of her gown and watched as Sarah made her way through the cleared rigs and oat stacks, a creel slung over her shoulders.

  ‘Belly-timber!’ whooped Rory from the neighbouring tattie dreels. He dropped his fork and vaulted the stone dyke, William and Donald trailing behind him.

  Alec straightened and dried his brow, then laid aside his scythe to relieve Sarah of the creel.

  ‘They’ll nae be as good as my mam’s.’ Sarah stood awkwardly by as Alec set the heaped basket on the newly scythed stubble. ‘But I was thinking they’d maybe go doon easier wi’ a sup o’ this.’ She pulled a flask of heather ale from the creel and handed it a little shyly to him.

  ‘They smell bonny enough.’ Rory reached for the biggest bannock. ‘And my belly’s been thinking my throat was cut.’

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ Rowena assured her. ‘Easily as good as any I could make.’

  ‘Nae worse, anyroads,’ Rory grunted, and Donald took a fit of the giggles, snorting into his hand. William shot him a look, and he swiftly sobered and sat down beside the older boy, his wee face upturned and contrite.

  Sarah smiled feebly at him, her gaze moving on to Alec. He was watching her just as closely, and she swallowed and glanced away.

  ‘Look what’s in here!’

  Beneath the layer of bannocks, Rory discovered a mound of hot tatties baked in their skins and rubbed in salt. He whistled appreciatively. They looked a mite singed about the edges but that would make no difference to the boys, and after the backbreaking demands of a forenoon in the dreels, Morven knew they’d not last long.

  Alec passed the ale to her, but once her thirst was slaked, Morven found she had little appetite. She picked at her food, conscious of the trouble Sarah had gone to, and of an odd change in the girl that saw her strangely eager to please yet more comfortable labouring with the boys among the tatties than with Alec, Rowena, and herself. She shrugged. Somehow it seemed a deal easier that way, easier to get through the despair of it all without Sarah’s company, though that was likely unfair.

  That first day the three of them had worked in silence, Alec cutting, Rowena laying the oats in bundles and twisting the oat-stalks into bands, while she bound the sheaves and stacked them. No-one had shown any desire to speak, and they’d each slipped silently into the rhythm of the harvest, drawing a numbing comfort from the toil yet enclosed in the gloom that overhung them all.

  Sensitive to that gloom, today Alec had chosen to sing, old Gaelic reaping songs full of the rhythm of the harvest. And alongside her brother's deeper voice, and Rowena's softer tone, Morven had allowed her own voice to rise. She set down her bannock now, her stomach too leaden to accept it, and looked over the growing ranks of oat stacks, the rigs of close-cropped stubble. In the stoop and rise of body and melody, she’d been able to find a brief escape, a means of forgetting, for a time, everything but the deep ache of wrist and spine. She looked down at her hands, chafed and sore, and squeezed them together.

  ‘How’s the tattie lifting going?’ Alec aimed his question at Sarah, attempting to draw her from her uneasy position at the edge of the group.

  ‘Aye, grand. Anither day should do it.’ Rory nodded back cheerfully, juggling a hot potato in his hands. ‘And the reaping?’

  Alec waggled his head. ‘Might get through it by the morn’s night if the rain stays away. Then there’ll be the threshing and the winnowing.’

  Rory grinned back, mouth full, but Sarah kept her eyes on the hills, her expression meticulously distant, and only in the flick of a tiny muscle at the base of her jawline did she give away her agitation.

  She knew, of course, by now it seemed the whole glen knew of Jamie’s stand against the Black Gauger, and Morven marvelled at the speed and ease at which some folk could change their opinions. She swallowed uncomfortably, but then, had she not done the same herself?

  When she returned each evening, it was to the clash of metal, to the sight of Jamie and her father locked in deadly combat, turning in an endless circle of weave and counter-weave, strike and parry. And to a great gathering of onlookers, drawn to the croft to watch the extraordinary spectacle.

  Word of Jamie’s deed at the Balintoul Inn had spread quickly through the glen, and many now came to see if the rumours rife among its patrons were true. Finding that they were, and that Jamie had duped McBeath good and proper, these folks seemed unwilling to leave, wishing to slap him on the back or wring his hands or simply to stand and stare and wonder at his courage. Her da chased away the more ghoulish among their number, but he judged the support most now extended, ‘to be good fer the lad’s frame o’ mind,’ and allowed the rest to stay a while.

  Donald Gordon of Craigduthel was among the first to come. Standing half hidden by the sheepcote, the wind whipping the dull remnants of his hair, his bonnet clutched in his hands, the old crofter watched Jamie’s intrinsic skill with the sword. The lad had a sure hand and nerves of steel and he couthily observed, ‘’Tis a gey auld dog ye’ve got there teaching ye, lad.’ He ducked as Malcolm aimed a good-natured swipe at him. ‘But ye ken, it’s said that every dog must hae his day, and I'm thinking … well, I’m thinking … ach!’ He twisted his bonnet a little harder. ‘Well, that your day, Jamie, must be well owerdue.’ He shook his head, his whiskery brows shielding the expression in his eyes, and without another word took himself back to Craigduthel.

  ‘Will ye join us fer the threshing, Sarah?’ The lines of strain ingrained in Rowena's face softened a little as she turned to look at her daughter. ‘We’d be glad of the help.’

  ‘That we would,’ Alec agreed, his eyes resting hopefully on Sarah’s face.

  Sarah glanced at Morven and her throat contracted. ‘I dinna ken.’

  Aware that in some way her approval seemed required, Morven cleared her throat. ‘Aye, Sarah, we’d be grateful fer yer help.’

  The girl nodded, her gaze sliding off to find her mother, and Morven watched Rowena give her a little nod and a half-smile of encouragement and felt a twinge of guilt. Lowering her head, she watched the girl from beneath her lashes.

  Sarah sat slightly removed from the others, diligently picking dirt from beneath her fingernails. She glanced up at Morven's scrutiny, and then quickly dropped her gaze to her lap again, where her bannock still lay untouched. In a sudden burst of activity, she tossed her uneaten bannock into the creel and set about gathering up what remained of the food. Morven watched her. Her face had grown thin, and she wore a certain crushing sense of loneliness.

  ‘Can I help ye with that?’ She rose and offered Sarah her hand.

 
; Sarah’s eyes widened, but she grasped Morven by the hand and got to her feet. Once they’d left the others behind, Morven said, ‘None of this is your doing Sarah, ye ken that, don’t ye? Jamie’s decision, it’s nae ower anything you said, his choice to –’

  ‘To get himsel’ killed?’

  Morven swallowed. ‘To challenge the Black Gauger. You’re nae to blame, I hope ye ken that. He has his honour ye see, and sees wrongs to be righted, wrongs from years back – from the time of his father. He’s set on seeing justice done, nae matter what. There’s nae blame fer it. I dinna blame ye, nor Alec. I hope ye didna think that.’

  Sarah’s face seemed to crumple, but she mastered herself and nodded curtly. Wrestling the creel from Morven’s hands, she turned and fled toward the crofthouse.

  ***

  It was the following evening before the rain came, no more than a spitter at first, raising tiny puffs in the dust of the yard. Jamie breathed in deeply, tasting the fresh loamy tang on the air and glanced at the dark sky, then at the McHardy clan perched on the infield dyke doing likewise. Over the course of the afternoon, every one of the McHardys had added their tuppence-worth to the melting pot of well-meaning advice now on offer, even young Dugald, and added to the counsel offered to him earlier that day by Lachlan Doull the poacher, the Frasers of Ballantrim, the Chisholms of Clachfuar, and a parcel of cottars from Glenlivet, his head was fair buzzing with it all. Morven would soon be home, and within him, he felt the quickening the thought of her always brought. Likely she'd be spent after the backbreaking toil that was, by rights, his duty, nae hers, but she’d make no complaint, as indeed Alec and the boys made none. He lowered his sword-arm, massaging the swollen wrist she’d bound for him that morning, and shivered at the touch. ‘Ye must forget me,’ he’d told her, and so she must. But Lord, did it have to hurt so much?

  ‘Aye,’ Malcolm grunted, sensing the dwindling of the lad’s concentration. ‘The heavens are fair full o’ something. We’ll cry it a day, will we, and let these folk home afore they take a drenching.’

  With the day’s sport apparently over, the McHardy clan clambered off the dyke, the low murmur of their voices falling away, replaced by a sheepish shuffling of feet. Hal McHardy pulled his bonnet from his head, the others bowing theirs, and mumbled, ‘Guid even, Father.’

  Father Ranald had rounded the cottage in a brusque abstracted manner, certain imminent matters weighing heavy with him, and now stopped short, eyebrows raised at the ragtag assemblage lined before him.

  ‘Hal.’ He nodded stiffly to the man. ‘And Eilidh.’ He nodded again to McHardy’s wife. ‘I hadn’t thought to finding you here.’ He smiled round at the younger members of the family, a warm crinkling of the lines weathered into his face, but the glint in his eye when he looked back at Hal was altogether cooler. ‘I’d have thought, man, if ye’d that much time on yer hands, ye’d be over at Tomachcraggen lending a hand with the harvest.’

  ‘Oh that … aye, Father.’ Hal nodded, and then a mite red about the face turned and led his folk away through the gathering rain. ‘Guid luck to ye, Jamie,’ he called over his shoulder.

  ‘Ye’ll eh … take a drop o’ barley-bree, Father?’ Malcolm enquired of the priest, pointing toward the cottage with his head. ‘Just to be civil-like, aye?’

  ‘To be civil, then.’ The priest waited patiently, rain pattering on his head and shoulders, while the two men sheathed and unbuckled their swords.

  At the fireside, the Father removed the thick woollen mantle he wore over his vestments, shaking the rain from it, and then used the garment to dry his head. He hung the cloak over the back of a chair and sat down, waiting for the men to follow suit. Jamie glanced at Malcolm, reading in the pallor of his face and the darkness of his eyes the apprehension within him.

  ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ Malcolm mumbled, sitting himself down beside the priest.

  ‘Hardly that, I think.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Malcolm admitted with a wry smile. ‘I’ve been half expecting ye these last days Father, what wi’ the eh … wi’ all that’s afoot.’

  The priest nodded, then sat back as Grace brought whisky and drinking cups and lit a fir-candle in the iron receptacle above his head. With a quick glance into the Father’s face, she withdrew to feigned business with her spindle in the far corner of the room. Malcolm poured out the drams, then, raising his drink first to Jamie and then to the priest, cried,

  ‘Here’s to the heath, the hill, and the heather,

  the bonnet, the plaidie, the kilt, and the feather!’

  He downed his whisky in one long gulp, wheezing as the fire of the spirit seared the back of his throat, and Jamie observed an immediate restoration of the colour to his cheeks.

  ‘Slàinte,’ Jamie replied, knocking back his own drink.

  ‘Aye,’ the Father murmured, sipping at his whisky. ‘A good health to ye both.’ He stared at his whisky for a moment, then leaned forward in his seat, his eyes moving back and forth between the two men.

  Jamie swallowed. The room had darkened around them, and he gave a little start as a blast of hail hammered with sudden violence against the window and the door. It drummed more mutely on the thatch, sending a torrent of hailstones down the chimney to sizzle and hiss in the fire. The priest studiously ignored the din, and as sizeable bullets of ice ricocheted about their feet, Jamie became aware the priest was carefully considering what he’d come to say.

  ‘I see no purpose in being but plain-spoken,’ he said at last. ‘Am I to take it, then, that the tidings whispered of in every crofthouse and bothy the length of this glen are true?’ His gaze moved to the swords now propped against the wall by Malcolm's chair.

  ‘They are,’ Jamie confirmed.

  ‘And the deed?’

  ‘To go ahead the day after next. At dawn.’

  Jamie felt his jaw lift a fraction and he knew a veil had slipped into place across his features, a fixed, wholly undaunted expression that revealed only the hatred he nurtured within him but would give no hint of his pain. What he would lose, regardless of the outcome of the duel, he felt as a barb buried deep in his flesh, but the wound was a private pain, and he wished to keep it that way.

  The Father’s nostrils flared momentarily, and he reached for the silver crucifix he wore around his neck. ‘I’ve no wish to acquaint myself with the details of the offence caused; I’ve bid in this glen long enough to know the true way of McBeath’s heart.’ He rose and moved across to the window, peering through the rivulets of water and melting ice sliding down the pane. ‘But what ye intend,’ he turned and fixed Jamie with a look that made him wince. ‘Is a mortal sin – one that’ll damn ye forever. To take another man's life …’ He exhaled, his nostrils flaring again. ‘And you’ve thought, have ye, that ye might well lose your own?’

  ‘Forsooth he has!’ Malcolm could keep silent no longer. ‘Ye dinna ken the full truth o’ it Father, if the lad hadna such just cause, then … then damned if I’d nae run the scum through myself!’

  Grace let out a shocked little gasp, then quickly lowered her head to the distaff again.

  The Father flinched and moved away from the window where the pelting downpour had strengthened in its ferocity. ‘Then you’d damn yerself too!’

  ‘Aye, mebbe I would. Or mebbe I’m damned already. But my conscience would be better served, I’m thinking, than it’s been in many a long month.’

  Father Ranald made an odd strangled sound and stepped back from Malcolm as though smote by his words. Jamie rose to intervene.

  ‘I ken well the risks, Father.’

  ‘To your soul as well as your body?’

  ‘To both. But I’m driven to bring the man to justice, and this is the only route left me.’

  The Father stared hard at him, and in the shadows of the priest’s eyes, Jamie was unsure if he read respect or revulsion.

  ‘Lad, the Lord is the true judge of men.’ Turning, the Father began to pace the room, his expression reflecting some deep inner conflict. />
  Jamie watched the priest, mesmerised by the undulating motion of his robes which hid his feet and made his gliding movements appear mysterious and unearthly. He felt wearier now than at any point in his life. Tired of the long hours of combat and instruction, of the physical punishment and the nagging worry of causing an injury to Morven’s father, but most of all weary of the damnable waiting.

  At length, heedless of the puddles of sooty water pooled at his feet, the priest sat down again, and the lines of his face relaxed a fraction. ‘I knew yer father,’ he said absently. His eyes seemed to focus on something more distant than the drawn face before him. Jamie sat forward, weariness forgotten. ‘An honourable man, great was the loss to the glen when he left us. But to lose another such as him …’ He fell silent, jaws clamped together, and stared hard at the sodden floor.

  Jamie was still searching for something to say in return when the Father lifted his head and regarded him with troubled eyes. ‘God forgive me,’ he sighed. ‘Give me yer hands, lad.’

  Puzzled, Jamie extended his hands, wincing as the Father gripped them fiercely. Then, lowering his head, the father closed his eyes and began to pray:

  ‘Almighty Father, whose power no creature is able to resist. It belongeth to thee to justly punish sinners and to be merciful to those who truly repent.’ He moved his right hand to the top of Jamie’s head and gently bent down the dark head. ‘Lord, I humbly beseech thee to protect and deliver thy servant James Innes from the hands of his enemies and thine. Confound their devices, Lord, that armed with thy blessing thy servant James may prevail. Bless him, Lord, to do this and to glorify thee, who art the true giver of all victory, through thy own son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

  Letting Jamie’s head up, the Father cleared his throat. ‘And fer what it’s worth lad, I give ye my own benediction too.’ He drew the silver crucifix up over his head and slipped it quickly over Jamie’s. Sitting back, he drew trembling fingers across the now empty space at his throat. ‘May the Lord have mercy on both our souls.’