The Blood And The Barley

by Angela MacRae Shanks

  He pulled himself straight, his eyes riveted on Rowena, his voice sharply commanding. ‘You’d do well to mind, devil’s temptress, I’ve the factor in my pocket. One word from me and he’ll have your removal writ signed and served. You’ll scarce have time to stir yer next potion, but there’ll be fresh tenants a-turning Tomachcraggen soil.’

  The rabble raised its voice in a threatening manner, a disturbing sound close to a snarl, a sound the exciseman cared very little for when from the pinewood at the far side of the clearing a loud crack rang out. The boom reverberated, followed by a bellowing roar. McBeath squawked with fright, tripping over the incline behind him, and landed sprawled on his back.

  ‘In your pocket, am I? By God sir, but it’s you would do well to mind your place!’

  William McGillivray’s pistol was still smoking, the reek from its muzzle as dark as his countenance. But it was only when he stepped fully from the trees that Morven appreciated just what she’d been looking at all this time. That what she’d taken as the pattern of light and shadow cast in slanted shafts by the newly risen sun, was in fact, a body of men stood among the trees, armed and still as standing-stones. How long they’d been there, how much they’d seen and heard, she could only guess at.

  ‘God’s truth!’ the factor roared. ‘It’s a rum tale I’ve heard this day! And a foul mood it’s put me in. Roused in the wee hours with tales of murder and forced marriage and imminent dealings to the death. Highly illegal dealings, forbye. And now I’m to be cried puppet, clay in the hands of this loose-livered scoundrel. A cat’s paw, by God!’ He turned and crooked a finger. ‘Come hither, girl!’

  Morven’s eyes widened, and she was conscious of Rowena drawing breath sharply through her teeth. Stumbling from the pinewood, Sarah’s face was stony, and she cracked furiously at her knuckles. Plainly aware of her cousin’s incredulous stare, along with those she drew from the crowd, a furrowing of her brow was all that marked it. She neither looked at him nor acknowledged his presence, although it was plain Sarah was acutely aware of her cousin and the dismayed expression he wore and had no wish to witness it.

  No tinker-girl could have looked more bedraggled and begrimed. Her pale hair was uncovered, wildly tousled, her face as pale, yet in the carriage of her head, the set of her shoulders, it was evident Sarah retained the essence of her arrogance. She glared at the exciseman, still half-sprawled at her feet, and curled her lip.

  ‘Well? Is it nae as I told ye, sire? Is he nae the most loathsome creature?’

  Morven turned to Rowena, seeing her companion’s eyes fill at the latest twist of her emotions. So, Sarah’s flight in the dead of night had been little to do with collecting her thoughts and a great deal to do with summoning the factor in his role as Justice of the Peace. Jamie wouldn’t thank her for her interference, but Morven could’ve kissed Sarah’s haughty cheek.

  Six strides took McGillivray to the prone exciseman, who stared up open-mouthed. Bending, the factor seized McBeath by the collar and dragged him to his feet. ‘Loathsome, sir, doesn’t even come close!’

  It was in mounting disbelief that the factor had watched the antics of the exciseman he’d considered, not friend exactly, but certainly close acquaintance, and had been appalled. Of a mind to allow the young Highland lad to take his satisfaction, for he was plainly the finer swordsman and had put on a grand show, he’d thought to cry a halt to the proceedings upon the drawing of first blood or upon the eventual disarming of one or the other. The arrival of hordes of onlookers, however, had somewhat confused the issue, although he felt no confusion now. None at all. Public humiliation at the hands of the exciseman had focused him sharply. Indeed, had outraged him. William McGillivray played puppet to no man. He drew a ragged breath, his jowls quivering, and addressed the exciseman with barely-concealed rage.

  ‘I was brought here, only half-believing mind, to put a stop to this utterly lawless settling of scores.’ Drawing another ruthless breath, he levelled the transfixed exciseman with a black stare. ‘Now I’ve a notion to let it continue – on a more level footing, mind.’

  Blinking, and momentarily robbed of his faculties, McBeath let his sword drop to the ground. He stared down in horror as the factor, with grim-faced deliberation, withdrew a small clasp-knife from his doublet pocket. Opening the blade with a flick of thumb, he proceeded to slit the fastenings of the exciseman’s top-coat with a ruthless little flourish. The garment, amply padded from within, burst open with a series of little pops, revealing the incriminating leather strapping and glint of pistol beneath.

  ‘Confound it, man!’

  McGillivray made a disgusted sound in his throat. To blazes with the exciseman, but the young rustic had a higher regard for the principles of fairness and honour than the so-called servant of the Crown. He shook his head at Jamie. ‘I’d have the scoundrel searched to the skin, lad, as is your right in the circumstance.’

  Jamie stared at the factor in astonishment.

  Malcolm and Alec needed no second telling, complying with zeal and taking but seconds to discover the daggers concealed among the exciseman’s breeches, his pistol, and that he wore some manner of protection, some cowardly contraption about his person packed with wadding.

  ‘Damned if he’s nae stuffed like a cock-turkey!’ Malcolm declared.

  ‘Weel, let’s hae him plucked!’ shouted Achnareave. ‘Oor lad’s in naething but his kilt and bare hide. Let’s hae them fight as equals!’

  ‘Aye,’ hollered Rory. ‘Aff wi’ his claes!’

  A great roar went up, and in the bedlam that followed, Morven was borne forward, pressed from behind by an onrush of people, elbowed and shoved, her feet knocked from under her. Twisting, she caught sight of Rowena, also carried along, and cried out to her. The cry was swallowed by the din, twenty years of hardship and repression wrought by one man erupting in a spasm of anger the likes of which she’d never seen. She found her feet in time to see the hated black coat, symbol of McBeath’s tyranny, flung from hand to clutching hand above the heads of the crowd; a prized trophy of his downfall. Then she was grasped by the shoulder and swiftly hauled from the furore.

  ‘Stay by me, and ye’ll be safe.’ She looked up into Jamie’s face. Taking her hand, he quirked her a grim smile.

  As suddenly as it erupted, the uproar died away, and she could see that it was now Father Ranald who stood atop the drumlin, his staff raised, pleading for calm with his congregation. McGillivray’s men had emerged from the pinewood but stood by uncertainly, flanked by the factor who watched with decided indifference. Evidently, he’d washed his hands of the exciseman and intended to let glen justice take its course, whatever that might be.

  Clutching at Father Ranald’s vestments, McBeath now quailed behind the priest, the shreds of his clothing hanging from him in tatters. All pretence of authority had been stripped from him, and he shrank from the crowd like a cornered animal.

  ‘You’ll no’ let them at me, Father?’ His face was stiff with fear. ‘I mean, you’re still a man o’ the church, even be it the Roman one.’ Locating Jamie in the crowd, he released the Father’s robes and raised a quivering finger. ‘He’s the witch’s kinsman … her instrument … as are all these!’ He threw his arms wide, taking in the entire gathering, now congregated about their priest. ‘This is her doing.’ Swiftly he shifted the finger of accusation to Rowena, who was sat on the ground a little apart from the others, rubbing at her bruised limbs. ‘Can you no’ see? That woman’s mistress o’ the dark arts, and these … why these are naught but her disciples!’

  ‘You’ll watch yer tongue!’ snapped the Father. ‘These are my parishioners, every one decent, honest, and God-fearing.’

  ‘Then she’s taken you in too!’

  The Father’s exasperation showed plainly on his face. He drew an enraged breath. ‘I first met Rowena when she was but five years of age, on the day she lost her mother. Every day since I’ve been blessed to call her friend. Even as a child she had a gentle nature but in womanhood, the Lor
d has seen fit to bless her with wisdom and insight along wi’ a gift fer healing. Make no mistake, the woman hasna an ill-hearted bone in her body, still less any ill-will.’

  Deliberately he raised his own finger of accusation. ‘If there’s any here possessed wi’ dark thoughts and urges, I believe ’tis you, sir, fer Rowena Forbes is no more a witch than auld Jessie MacBride there.’

  At mention of her name, Jessie beamed with pleasure, revealing the blackened stumps of her teeth nestling in a pink mouth.

  McBeath recoiled. ‘Then you’re one of her disciples too!’

  ‘I'm no such thing!’

  But the crowd had heard enough.

  ‘Son o’ Belial!’ Achnareave’s eyes widened in shock. ‘To show such disrespect, such profanity to a man o’ the cloth! Ye’re nae even fit to stand upon the same ground as the Father there.’ His voice took on the weight of judgement. ‘I ken what it is ye are – ye’re an obscenity, an affront to decent God-fearing folk!’

  ‘Blasphemer!’ Hal McHardy swiped the air with his sickle. ‘Foul-tongued skite!’

  McBeath let out a skelloch of fright as a clump of sodden peat struck him on the chest, splattering him with mud. Morven turned in time to see Sarah, screaming her hatred, wrench another dripping sod bare-handed from the ground and take aim again, her face contorted with rage.

  Her fury took hold among the crowd, spread like a contagion to hate-fired cries of, ‘Blasphemer! Devil’s get! The fiend’s fit only fer the rope!’

  Malcolm pounded him with his bare fists. ‘Devil take ye, ye murdering scum!’

  ‘I’ve his tree picked oot!’ whooped Rory.

  Others spat on him. Women and old men. Even bairns took turn to fling fistfuls of sod at him and flail him with whatever came to hand.

  Skirling with fright, arms wrapped around his head, shoulders hunched against the blows, the gauger lurched through the trees. The McHardys gave chase, howling like wolves. Others joined them until a great horde pursued the exciseman and his hirelings through a dense tangle of brambles and away through the forest, the sound of their anger shrill on the morning air.

  ‘I’ll have no lynch-mob!’ bellowed McGillivray. ‘Not while I’m Justice here.’ He gestured with his head to his waiting band of men. ‘I’ll have the three of them before me and tried justly for their crimes.’ Grimly, his men fanned out like huntsmen through the trees.

  The commotion receded at last, and Morven looked up at Jamie. ‘What’ll happen? What’ll they do to them? I mean … will he be back?’

  Jamie had no answer for her. He sat down abruptly and thrust his sword into the weedy ground. Dazed, he shook his head then pulled her down beside him. As if to verify his understanding of the facts, he took her hand and pressed it to his lips. He lived! Was untouched, and the gauger gone. There’d be no desperate flight up into Ross-shire or beyond. Shoulders shaking, he let out a choked little laugh and pressed her hand to his cheek, the coldness of her fingers sweet against his own hot flesh. She leaned into him, let him shelter her from the violence that rode the air.

  It was a dry clearing of the throat that broke the spell between them.

  ‘A fitting outcome in the circumstance.’

  Bemused, they looked up to find the factor regarding them both with cocked head.

  ‘I adjudge who is unfit to be tenant to his Grace and therefore in need of removal, not the Board of Excise nor any of their officers.’ He inclined his head to Jamie, who struggled to his feet. ‘Your aunt will have her rental renewed at Martinmas, sir, upon the payment of the customary tack duty. You have my word on it.’

  Jamie’s delight took a moment to register. ‘I … I dinna ken how to thank ye, sire.’

  ‘No need. Nothing need be done or changed, and I congratulate you on a fine piece of swordsmanship.’ Lips pursed, McGillivray nodded once to emphasise his decision. ‘A very good day to you both.’

  Lifting his bonnet to Rowena, who stared back open-mouthed, the factor turned on his heel and affected a stiff bow to a be-muddied Sarah. ‘Your servant, ma’am.’ Then cried curtly for his horse.

  ***

  The month of October was a sight drier than its predecessor, though a bitter wind skirled through the Cromdales, shaking the birks of their bright foliage and driving dark storms across the glen. The wind, however, had died away during the night and the day had dawned mellow and soft, a mantle of mist lying in the hollows of the land. Morven had picked a posy of wild rosehips and haws, all that could be found now, and added a handful of bracken fronds, gilded bronze and curled by the hand of frost. They’d mark the wee soul’s grave until the next squall scattered them.

  She’d come to the chapelyard with Rowena and waited while her companion prepared her own posy. A shelter of pines screened them from the site of the new chapel, although looking through the lower branches, Morven could see the new stone structure with its exposed timber roof, an open ribcage, awaiting its covering of slate. The slate, local Cnoc Fergan schist, had been gifted to the parish by the Duke himself and lay in stacked pallets by the side wall. It would be no humble heather thatch for the glen’s newest place of worship.

  Yet Morven knew it was not a glimpse of the chapel that had brought her here, nor even a desire to honour the little soul’s grave, though she’d aye do that, but a more straightforward reason. A reason that quickened her pulse and hung now from the framework of the chapel roof, a leather apron wound about his waist. Hal McHardy was Jamie’s companion, and their voices came to her through the mist, though not their words, only the occasional snatch of song while they worked and Hal’s tuneless whistle.

  Hal had crowed of chasing the Black Gauger near ten miles down the glen.

  ‘He’ll nae bother ye again,’ he’d told Rowena. ‘Nae in my lifetime. Nae if he kens what’s good fer him.’

  And it was said Grant of Achnareave had washed the foulness from the gauger’s mouth with a hipflask of raw whisky. Near drowned the wretch ’twas told. Remembering the foulness of the man’s breath upon her, Morven shuddered.

  But in the end, fearing he’d be lynched, the gauger had blubbered and prostrated himself at the feet of the factor’s men, near naked, bloodied and spent, and had pleaded for a fair trial. He and his hirelings now languished in Elgin’s tollbooth awaiting that trial.

  Yet if he was truly gone it did not feel so to Morven. Though a new Officer of Excise bid in a humbler home in Balintoul and extended a more flexible grip upon the smugglers of the land, it seemed something of the Black Gauger’s sway remained. And with it a remoteness between Jamie and herself. An unexplained restraint he maintained, a will o’ the wisp feeling she could neither catch nor fully identify that distanced them in some perplexing way.

  Maybe she’d expected too much of him, imagined he carried her in his heart as tenderly as she held him. But then she’d find his eyes upon her, wistful and intense, and she’d not think it imagined at all but would puzzle over the regretful flicker of his eyes as he shifted his gaze away and the frustrated pulse that beat at his throat.

  ‘He’s the best worker the Father has.’ Rowena followed her gaze. ‘Jamie. Has fair put his back into the work. His way of thanking the Father fer what he did fer us that day.’

  Morven gave no answer, although she felt Rowena’s gaze, concerned and assessing, turned toward her. The new chapel would soon be completed, weather-tight at least, and once consecrated would make a fitting place for Alec and Sarah to exchange their vows. Stooping, she laid her posy on her infant sister’s grave.

  ‘Jamie’s agreed to give Sarah away.’ Rowena laid her own posy. ‘Wi’ my heartfelt blessing.’

  Morven nodded. She knew that, but since the day of the duel Rowena had found it well-nigh impossible to contain her sheer thankfulness, and at times it did burst from her.

  ‘I couldna ask fer a better man fer my Sarah than young Alec. Nor a finer man to take her father’s role than young Jamie. Supposing I scoured the whole kingdom, I swear I’d never find such able kinsmen.�
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  ‘Aye. I know that.’

  Rowena fell silent. Over the last few weeks, she’d watched these two drift tortuously apart and had puzzled over it, although she sensed pride lay at its root. ‘His heart is yours,’ she said softly. ‘Ye ken that, aye?’

  Morven made a slight shrugging movement. She’d thought she knew it … once.

  ‘Only, he’s a proud man, mebbe a mite ower-proud.’ Rowena’s voice lowered, took on the note of astuteness Morven knew so well. ‘He’ll nae wish to come to ye empty-handed is what I think. He’ll wish to give ye what he doesna have to give. Land. He’ll wish to give ye land.’

  Morven looked blankly at her, and Rowena nodded and smiled a little shyly.

  ‘I’ve seen it afore. ’Twas in his father and I ken it’s in me. That hunger fer a scrape o’ land. Stratha’an land, oor native land. ’Tis what he’ll wish to give ye, and I’ll wager he’ll ask nothing of ye till he’s got it to give.’

  Morven opened her mouth to counter the notion, then let it close. Land? A rental from his Grace? She’d not thought on that, but Rowena could well be right. She felt her gloom lift a fraction. And to think her da cried her stubborn! Jamie must surely own the condition. Yet he was all she wanted; could it be he was too proud to see that?

  Jamie looked up from the length of timber he was cutting. The distant drum of hooves carried clearly in the still air of the day; he’d not have heard it yesterday he judged, nae above thon wild and buffeting wind. But he picked the rider out at once, a dark shape moving swiftly across the bronze patchwork of rig and heath.

  A journeyman from Elgin was expected, a roofer to demonstrate the craft of slate-laying, a skill little called for among the humble cot-house and bothy dwellers of the glen. Jamie thought it likely he’d take the bulk of the labour upon himself, with maybe Hal McHardy, for of all those who’d given their time to the chapel’s construction, Hal had shown the greatest willing and the most dogged endurance. He’d grown fond of the wiry crofter with his thick brows lifted in a permanently questioning expression and his droll sense of humour. He cried out to him now.