The Blood And The Barley

by Angela MacRae Shanks

  There was silence in the room now, even the thunderous deluge outside had ceased abruptly, and Jamie looked up to find Morven standing stock-still in the doorway. She peeled back the layer of sodden plaid that covered her head and shoulders and, staggering slightly, fell back against the wall. Her face was pale as bone, and she made a small sound in her throat, then hid her face in her hands.

  ‘Thank ye, Father,’ Jamie croaked.

  ***

  There was little respite in the rain, it fell most of that night and the next day with remorseless monotony, interrupted only by the occasional burst of more savage hail. A period of quieter rain would follow each such volley, but by evening there’d been no let-up in the deluge. Morven pulled down the kerchief that covered her mouth and nose. The air in the threshing barn was foul, dense with dust and chaff and moisture; thick as soup.

  ‘Are ye a’right, Morven?’ Alec lowered his flail, peering anxiously at her through the haze. The skin of his face, what she could see of it beyond his own protective covering, was streaked with dust and sweat, and flecks of chaff were lodged in his brows and clothing. She imagined her own appearance would look something similar.

  ‘I thought I heard something, was all.’

  The whicker of a pony came again, and Alec gestured to Rowena and the others to cease threshing and peered from the barn. Two men were approaching.

  ‘In here,’ he called, and a moment later Ghillie and Dougal Riach shook themselves in the shelter of the barn.

  Rowena’s apprehension was immediately palpable, and the two men glanced warily at her, then scanned the other dusty faces with scorn.

  ‘He’s nae among ye, then.’ Dougal grinned. ‘Thon fool, Innes? It’s hard to tell, ye all look the same.’

  ‘Aye, like rats in a millhoose.’ Ghillie sniggered at his own wit. ‘Where is he then, cowering in some hole?’

  Alec lowered the covering from his mouth. ‘What business is it of yours? Some bidding o’ yer master?’ He eyed the two men with contempt. Neither had made any attempt to comply with the customs of Highland civility, and each man’s bonnet remained plastered to his head, feathers hanging limply.

  ‘A message,’ Ghillie replied.

  ‘I’ll see he gets it.’

  ‘To be given to him alone.’

  Ghillie glanced at Dougal, dripping by his side, and shot a look back out of the barn. The rain had turned to hail again and hissed sharply in the yard; he shivered. ‘Ach, suppose ’twould do nae harm.’

  Dougal shrugged doubtfully.

  Plainly dredging the words of the message from some stagnant region of his brain he rarely employed, Ghillie frowned in concentration. ‘Mister Hugh McBeath will await the pleasure o’ his satisfaction at the appointed place, dawn the morn wi’ his seconds.’ At that, he beamed and glanced at Dougal, who was also beaming. ‘Who will be in attendance to mak’ sure the rules o’ combat are ad … adhered to. Mister Innes may select twa attendants who are to be unarmed and are nae to interfere wi’ the course o’ the contest unless their man be mortally wounded, in which case they may carry him awa’ and minister to his wounds. Naeone else to be present, nae pistols, dirks, nor sgian dubhs to be carried, the opponent to be searched aforehand.’

  ‘Both opponents, ye mean,’ said Alec.

  Ghillie blinked. ‘Are ye questioning the integrity o’ an officer o’ His Majesty’s Excise?’

  ‘I am. And his twa seconds.’

  Ghillie’s eyes narrowed, and he advanced on Alec, his hand closing tight around his throat. ‘A young whelp that canna yet bite,’ he hissed, ‘would do well to mind and nae show his teeth.’

  ‘And an ill-natured dog that’s aye snarling would do well to put awa’ his teeth,’ said a voice from the doorway.

  It was Alastair MacPherson who’d spoken, his wife Elspeth and four grown sons standing beside him.

  ‘What business is it o’ yours?’ scowled Dougal. He nudged Ghillie, who reluctantly released his hold on Alec.

  ‘None but that of a guid neighbour. My business is with Mistress Forbes, so I’ll thank ye, if ye’re done, to let me on wi’ it.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ Ghillie thrust out his chin but backed off all the same. ‘See thon brazen-heid gets the message.’

  They were gone a moment later, Ghillie turning at the door to level a malignant stare in Alec’s direction. Morven let her breath out. Beneath the dust, Alec’s face had paled, but he gave her a faltering smile, and she attempted one in return.

  ‘An unwholesome pair,’ observed the miller. ‘But rhymeless wi’out their master, ’twould seem.’

  It soon transpired the miller had brought an empty cart to take away Rowena’s grain for grinding.

  ‘’Tis the least we could do,’ Elspeth told Rowena. ‘After thon wee outbreak o’ the smallpox ye treated me fer back in the spring.’

  Rowena let out a choked little laugh, and Sarah moved to support her mother, laying a steadying arm around her waist. ‘But I canna pay ye,’ Rowena replied.

  ‘Ye already have.’ Alastair signalled for his sons to begin shovelling the grain into sacks.

  Rowena seemed quite overcome, and it was Sarah who came to grasp the miller’s hand. ‘We’re indebted to ye.’ Her eyes strayed over the man’s shoulder to where Alec stood watching her.

  ‘Och, away,’ Elspeth tutted.

  ***

  Hugh McBeath dined alone that night, as he’d done every night since the death of his wife. The venison was tough and the claret, acquired from McGillivray’s cellar by the factor’s own manservant, Joseph Gunn, was corked and sour. It was only last March, in a blizzard, that Dougal had caught Gunn's youngest getling attempting to cross the ladder trail with a half-dozen kegs of illicit whisky. Since then, of course, the supply of claret and brandy-wine to McBeath’s own home had been assured. He pushed away the glass with a grimace of distaste. It might’ve been as well to hand the boy over after all.

  Reaching instead for whisky, his hand shook, and he gulped at the liquor, greedy for the numbing sensation he knew it would bring. He checked his pocket watch – still early. It was cold in the dining-room, but he loosened his waistcoat, aware of a disturbing quickening of his pulse and a shortness of breath.

  ‘WHAT?’ he barked, as the little maid rapped on the door and then immediately entered. ‘Have I no told you to wait till you’re called?’

  ‘Oh, aye … beggin’ yer pardon, Mister McBeath.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was wondering, sir,’ she said, nervously lifted his barely touched plate, ‘if ye’ve done wi’ me fer the night, should I mebbe be getting away hame now?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, waving his hand irritably at her. ‘Go. Go!’

  Once the girl had fled, he sat back, snorting to himself. It seemed the Balintoul gossips had done their work and there was scarce a household in the township hadn’t heard of the morn’s work. The girl was afraid of him, he’d long seen it in her eyes and been entertained by it. Let her run then and be damned with her.

  Lifting the whisky, he climbed the stairs to his bedchamber, glad of the warmer air in the upstairs rooms and set about preparing certain items for the business ahead of him. From his wardrobe, he chose a pair of loose-fitting breeches and a linen shirt, and to wear beneath the shirt a semmit of a closely woven material packed with wadding. It wouldnae stop a stabbing sword but would at least deflect a slashing one.

  These he set out on the chair at the foot of his bed. Boots and a top-coat followed, and he topped the tidy pile with a black lum hat. Bending, he unlocked the top drawer of the cabinet beside the bed and removed a silver inlaid pistol, powder and shot, and a pair of short stabbing daggers. The daggers he would conceal in special folds made into his breeches together with the primed pistol, which he would strap within his top-coat. Lastly, he looked out his sword, well-oiled and reputably unbreakable.

  ‘Send me to hell, will ye?’ He smiled slowly. ‘I dinnae think it.’

  He returned to the wardrobe and w
ith trembling fingers, unlocked the door at the far side, leaning forward to run his hands over the luxurious silks and brocades hanging there. Some he’d bought from a merchant in Aberdeen, but most of the garments he’d ordered from a seamstress in Edinburgh's Canongate. Bought twenty years ago for his young bride-to-be, Rowena Innes.

  Stroking the sumptuous fabrics, faded and dusty now, he groaned softly and bent to rummage among the items at the bottom of the cupboard, finding, at last, the lacy whalebone corset he’d bought one breezy Lammas Day in Perth. Flimsy, indeed almost transparent, it had long been a yearning of his to dress her in it and have her wait upon him until he could stand it no longer and would have to jerk and wrench it from her.

  He lay down on the bed, a growing restlessness in his flesh, and fingered the delicate undergarment. His religion, indeed his superstition, told him to have no part of her, to take no indulgence with her, but ’twas far too late for that. Bedevilled and bewitched he was, cursed with her fixation, and after so long the wait was near over. Lang – he cursed, still calling the man that – would stand no chance armed with the second-rate blade he’d seen him carry, and with the last obstacle removed from his way…

  He sat up, reaching for the whisky. She’d see sense, wouldnae let herself be dispossessed, there were the getlings to consider, though he’d no use for them here. But he’d find places for them … somewhere. And keeping his bed warm would allow her no room for witchery and the like, he’d see to that. He shuddered and bent to pour more whisky, conscious that beneath his excitement lay an unwanted sense of dread, a panic almost. Whisky would quell it, and he waited for the spirit’s restorative powers to take effect, for the familiar stirrings that were a feature of his life to return to him.

  When his hands had steadied, he lay back down again feeling his heart bound against the stuffing of the bed. There would be no sleep tonight, the restlessness was too great, the craving too deep in his flesh. He rechecked his pocket watch, then, groaning, reached to rub at himself.

  ***

  That night Sarah was obliged to share her bed with Rory and wee Donald. Crammed head to toe in the narrow box-bed with them, hemmed in by a tangle of blankets and limbs, she waited out the night until in the pressing darkness she could wait no longer.

  The room’s tiny window admitted a pale, unearthly kind of light, and, watching it through the long hours, she’d felt the tension build in her muscles, the clamminess grow in her palms, though her mind had reasoned the dawn must still be some way off and she shouldna be hasty.

  It took a further twenty minutes of painstaking inching to at last extricate herself and, heart pounding, she waited for signs that she’d disturbed the sleeping boys. Neither moved. Rory remained face down on the bed, limbs asprawl, while Donald’s face was upturned, flushed and untroubled and cooried into his brother.

  She took a quick measure of the room, of the shapes just visible in the darkness. At the far side where William slept there were now three forms: Alec sleeping nose to tail with William while Jamie lay on the floor, too restless to seek the company of others. His breathing was even now, and she sensed that he slept at last, although it had taken an immeasurable length of time and she’d begun to fret he’d not sleep at all but would sit up the entire night praying and staring into the darkness.

  She pulled her gown and arisaid from beneath her bed where she’d stowed them and, feeling in the darkness, found the fir-candles and flint she’d wrapped in the woven wool. Her fingers trembled, but she quickly slipped into her clothes, reassuring herself that the hoard of pignuts she’d gathered while the others discussed the final details of the duel was still safely stored in the pocket of her gown. There was little hope the dun would come to her without a bittie enticement.

  Tiptoeing to the door, she stooped to peer at Jamie’s prone figure curled on the earthen floor. He wouldna understand, would try to stop her, maybe even curse her, but then she supposed he did that anyhow and a bittie more would make nae difference. Her scheming seemed that petty now, that contemptible.

  The door latch creaked, the hinges too, but she’d thought on that and earlier greased them into silence. What was less certain was how deeply those in the other room slept – if at all. She pressed her ear to the grained oak but could detect nothing above the wee settling noises the old cot-house made in the night. It had been her mother’s suggestion that the MacRaes sleep the night at Tomachcraggen, all of them, nae just Malcolm and Alec, Jamie’s seconds, and they’d agreed readily enough. It complicated matters though, made it a deal more trouble to slip away unseen and unheard.

  The door opened soundlessly, and she stood in the shadow of it, breath aquiver, surveying the scene in the feeble glow from the fire. Malcolm and Grace slept in her mother’s bed and wee grunts and snores came from there, though she could see little of Malcolm beyond a dark heap and nothing at all of Grace. Morven lay on Jamie’s makeshift bed. He’d offered it to her, had wished to make her comfortable, Sarah supposed, or to in some way make up for what he’d do come morning, or just, perhaps, to feel her close to him somehow, and she felt a twinge of old jealousy at that thought, though no more than a twinge. Morven suffered as she did – maybe even more.

  Morven lay still though, doubtless aching with weariness after a day in the threshing barn, and she sifted the darkness for her mother, realising with a pang of alarm there was no sign of her, no dark shape bedded down on the floor. She closed the door and crept into the room, clutching the back of a chair to steady herself. Something brushed her hand, something curling and alive. She snatched her hand away, choking off the cry in her throat. Her mam sat upright in the chair, her hair let down in a dark mass of curls. She made no movement though, and Sarah bent her ear to the back of the chair, breath held, and listened to the rhythm of her breathing. Even it was, deep and regular. She swayed a little in relief. Her mam was apt to do that at times, to sit the night through worrying ower some sick bairn or some auld bodach breathing his last, and she’d find her in the morning slumped and stiff with cold. The wonder was she’d found sleep the night at all, but Sarah’s relief was too great to ponder over it for long. Time was a-wasting.

  She moved to the door and felt for her boots in the darkness. Tucking them under her arm, she lifted the latch and cast a last lingering look at her mother sat in the shadows. The night’s mission would bring no remedy to her mother’s plight, that was beyond her engineering, but it might at least save her cousin’s life, and that alone made it worth the doing. Might right some of her wrongs. Duelling was illegal after all, and McGillivray would have none o’ it … she hoped.

  She closed the door behind her, soft as butter to the knife, and sniffed at the night air. The rain was past, and the air smelled earthy now with a whiff of something queer upon it, something that made her shiver. Away to the east where the dawn would come, the sky was inky black, but in the west, from some source near Sìthean Wood, a puzzling light came, a queer pale lustre. Pulling her boots on, she shivered and hastened away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  On a spit of shingle at the edge of Inchfindy ford, Sarah brought the garron she’d taken to an uneasy halt. She cocked her head, straining her ears in the darkness, and at what she heard the breath rattled fearfully in her throat. The pony snorted and whickered nervously, its hooves slipping and clopping on the wet pebbles.

  ‘Steady, ye great brute.’ She leant to stroke the rough hair of its neck. Yet the pony’s fear was strangely reassuring; it meant the distant clanging was no figment of her imagination, though this was surely a night fer trickeries of the mind. The sound was an earthly one carried on the still night air, a calling from the chapel, a warning perhaps.

  Shivering, she held aloft the last of the fir-candles, its feeble flicker throwing a tiny pool of light on the stretch of river before her. From the shadow of trees beyond the river the dark outline of Inchfindy Hall arose; with a fearful little cry, she pressed the garron on into the surging water.

  ***

 
; Dulled by distance yet pressing in its tone, the ringing bell drew many a godly crofter from his bed that night to fret over what the calling, at that hour and on a day other than a Sunday, might possibly mean. But for Morven, crushed by despair and crippled by an aching weariness, the darkness had brought only welcome oblivion. And it was only later, once a faint greyness had pushed the shadows back to the corners of the room and roused the warblers in the birk-woods outside, that she stirred into consciousness; woken by the flare of peat on the firestone and the murmur of strained voices.

  Dread had threaded through her sleep like some parasitic worm, and she sat bolt upright now, her stomach churning. She had slept. While the hours slipped away, she’d meant to pray for him, to try and bind Jamie to her with her will, yet her bone-weary body had rebelled, had failed her. And with a sick dawning, she recognised the appointed hour was near upon them.

  The twinkle of fir-candles proliferated around the room and Rowena’s face, dark-eyed and ghostly, appeared through the gloom. ‘’Tis time,’ she said softly. ‘Jamie’ll be needing a bite to eat, and I’ve a tonic a-brewing fer him, a drop vervain fer a clear head.’ She nodded to the doorway where Jamie stood, already dressed in sark and russet plaid, a striking figure in the flicker of the firelight.

  His eyes were upon her, searching, a poignancy in them, a rawness he’d kept from her these last days that spoke of his sorrow and regret, and she’d to turn from the sight of it lest the tenuous grip she had on herself should desert her. Every nerve skirled at her of his closeness and mourned the transience of it, every fibre pressed her to go on bended knee and plead for a change of heart, yet, stiffening herself, she knew better than to shame him so.