As they covered the last few miles to Inveraray the next day, Alasdhair grew increasingly silent and withdrawn. He drew his horse to a halt as the village came into view. He was nervous. It did not mean as much as he had thought, but it still mattered. Ailsa had been right. She had a way of always being right when it came to him.
Nigh on twenty years since he had seen his mother. Twenty years in which he had grown from boy to man, abandoned by one parent, deprived by circumstances of the other. Unwanted and unloved. He thought he had grown accustomed to that, and indifferent too, settled in his new life across the sea. Coming back to his homeland, he had been forced to face up to the fact that he was very far from accustomed to it. He didn’t like it, any more than Ailsa liked to acknowledge Lady Munro’s continued ability to hurt her. They had both practised self-delusion, he and Ailsa.
Laying his ghosts was proving an emotional experience. He had not expected to be so altered by it. The barriers he had erected around himself, that he had thought as impenetrable as the fortifications of the Duke of Argyll’s original castle, a sturdy stone edifice just visible up ahead, hidden behind the excavations for the new castle being built to replace it, were eroded. He cared about this meeting. He cared about what his mother would say and cared about what she felt for him. The knots of his past were all but unravelled. He had not thought their unravelling would be so rewarding, had not dreamed he would be returning to Virginia with Ailsa by his side. His love for her made him confident he could deal with whatever version of his past his mother was about to disclose to him, but it was that same love that meant that he was exposed, raw to whatever emotions the truth would rouse in him.
He had a momentary impulse to turn around and head away from this place. He was happy now. Blissfully happy for the first time ever. Nothing could puncture or taint that, but maybe he should not tempt fate by testing it?
Beside him, Ailsa was pushing a long strand of her golden hair back from her cheek. As usual it had escaped its pins. The long days in the open air had given her face a rosy glow and a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The vitality that had been her essence, which he had thought lost forever, had returned in these last two days, though at this precise moment she was frowning.
‘Are you sure you’re ready for this?’ she asked.
‘As I’ll ever be.’
‘If you’re having second thoughts, Alasdhair, it is only natural. Even after all this time, she is still your mother. What she says matters, no matter how much you tell yourself it does not.’
‘Spoken from the heart,’ Alasdhair said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. ‘You are right, it matters. Matters more than she deserves, perhaps.’
The little fishing village of Inveraray was perched on the shores of Loch Fyne. The large sea loch sparkled as the noon sun played on its waters. The village was a mixture of longhouses, where the animals shared their living quarters with the occupants, and smaller cottages, some with separate barns, all with thatched roofs. Every house had its own kale yard. A few fishing boats lay above the water line on the narrow strip of sand that formed the shore. The small kirk stood on a high point at the far end of the settlement, with the howf, whose purpose was obvious from its lack of windows, at the opposite end.
Behind the village, on a small rise, the foundations of the Duke of Argyll’s new castle were being laid out. Already it had a chequered history, for the design had first been made nearly thirty years earlier for the previous duke by Mr Vanbrugh, who had been responsible for the magnificent palaces of Castle Howard and Blenheim. It was Mr Adam who now had charge, though all that could be seen were the deep gouges in the landscape marking the site of the four towers, the new tracks formed from the banks of the loch to the building site for the transporting of the materials, and the bustling activity of the stonemasons and carpenters, most of them incomers brought in by the architect.
Two women were standing together on the shoreline. They were both knitting, the wool hidden in the panniers formed by the folds of their arisaidhs, but though their fingers flew, their eyes remained fixed firmly on the loch, where they were obviously awaiting the safe return of a fishing boat. A cow lowed from a byre built on to the side of a cotter’s cottage. In a kale yard, some scrawny chookies could be seen scratching the bare earth. On the front step of a newly thatched longhouse a middle-aged woman was sitting with a piece of sewing, the dog at her feet enjoying the afternoon sunshine. She looked up at the sound of the horses and her sewing dropped unheeded to the ground. Ailsa looked at Alasdhair. The expression on his face told her all she needed to know.
‘My mother,’ he said, his voice stripped of emotion.
Morna Ross had black hair. The blue-black of raven’s wings, with barely a trace of grey, though she was older than Lady Munro by five years. Brown eyes the colour of bitter chocolate. Strong features. The resemblance was remarkable, Ailsa thought, as she hitched her horse’s reins to a post, her hands shaking. She was nervous, not for herself, but for Alasdhair. She could sense by the way he held himself how tense he was. She wanted to take his hand. She wanted to run up to Morna Ross and beg her to have a care for him. If there was a way of enduring this ordeal for him, Ailsa would have gladly taken it. But there was not a way and she knew how proud he was. He would hate her drawing attention to his nerves. Her own nervousness increased. She felt almost sick with anticipation.
Morna Ross was standing still as a statue. She was a striking woman and had obviously been quite beautiful in her youth. For a long moment, mother and son stood facing one another. ‘Alasdhair?’ Her voice was so faint it would have been lost on the breeze if there had been one. ‘Alasdhair, can it really be you?’ She took a step towards him. A faltering step. She held out her hands, as if in supplication. ‘Alasdhair?’ Her voice cracked.
‘Mother.’
‘It is you.’ Morna Ross shook her head, as if she could not believe what she was seeing. ‘Twenty years, but I would know you anywhere.’
‘And I you.’ His voice was harsh. Now that he was finally face to face with her, he could think of nothing to say. He felt nothing either, only cold indifference.
‘They told me you were gone.’ Morna was looking at him as if he were an apparition. ‘They told me you’d run off. To America, is what I heard.’
‘Virginia.’
‘Virginia.’ The word sounded so strange on her tongue. Morna shook her head. ‘And has it treated you well?’
‘Well enough.’
‘Aye. You look well. I …’ Morna shook her head again, and dashed her hand across her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t expect—the shock. It’s the shock. I didn’t think to see you again. Ever. I can’t believe—after all this time, I can’t believe …’ Her voice wavered, and she tottered back towards the step.
Alasdhair took her arm. ‘Don’t go fainting on me.’
‘No. Just give me a second.’ Morna took a couple of deep breaths. ‘I’ll be all right. Here, let me get a proper look at you.’ Trying desperately to compose herself, she wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron and took a step back to gaze up at Alasdhair’s handsome countenance. ‘How tall you are, and so dark—you get your colouring from me.’ She made as if to touch his hair, but Alasdhair flinched and Morna shrank back. ‘Why have you come here after all this time, Alasdhair? Why now?’
‘I need to know the truth.’
‘The truth,’ Morna exclaimed. ‘I doubt there is such a thing any more. What is the point in raking over old ashes? I have done it often enough myself, and it does no good, believe me. Look at you, you’ve grown into a fine man; and you’ve made a life for yourself far away. It has done my heart more good than I deserve to see you. It’s all I ever wanted, Alasdhair, to know that you are well. There is nothing to be gained by harping back to the past. Please, don’t let us talk of it.’
‘It is to talk of it that I came here,’ Alasdhair said impatiently.
‘What you don’t understand, Alasdhair, is that there are many
versions of the truth, and none of them anything other than shameful. Please.’
‘I want to know.’
Morna sighed heavily. ‘Very well. If you must have it, then I must tell you. You’d better come in.’
She stood aside to usher him to the door of the cottage. Alasdhair beckoned to Ailsa, who had been standing to one side, partially hidden by the horses. ‘Mother, this is …’
Morna, who was already pale, now turned a greyish shade, and put her hands to her breast. ‘Merciful God.’
‘What on earth is the matter?’ Alasdhair asked.
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘This is Ailsa Munro, Mother.’
Ailsa took a step forwards and dropped a light curtsy. Morna peered at her, her face rigid with horror.
‘Merciful God,’ Morna said again. ‘It must have been you she was expecting.’
‘Who?’
‘Your mother. At least, I assume it was your mother. Lady Munro. You’re the living spit of her,’ Morna said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Ailsa looked helplessly at Alasdhair. ‘I think maybe it would be best if I let the two of you talk. I’ll take the horses to the stables at the howf.’
Alasdhair shook his head. ‘No, you’ll stay here with me. I want you to hear what she has to say.’ He turned back to his mother. ‘Ailsa has an interest in this. I’ll explain later.’ Until he heard her side of the story and could judge for himself its impact, he had no intention of sharing his love for Ailsa with his mother. It was too precious.
‘On your head be it,’ Morna said in a resigned voice. ‘Any road, I suppose I might as well put to bed any lies that mother of yours has put about.’
Ailsa looked confused. ‘What do you mean? What has my mother to do with this?’
He remembered then, the look on Lady Munro’s face when she had called Morna the root cause of it all. A premonition of something malevolent made Alasdhair take Ailsa to one side. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you—’
‘No. If your mother’s story has some bearing on me, I want to hear it. Come, Alasdhair, you can see how upset she is by all this; let us get it over with.’
Reluctantly, he allowed her to precede him into the cottage. This was not working out at all as he had anticipated. He had expected to find this meeting upsetting, but he was struggling to feel anything other than a wish to have done with it, added to that there was now an impending sense of doom. His mother seemed strangely reluctant to talk. He had thought she would be anxious to explain herself and couldn’t understand why she was not.
Inside, the longhouse was partitioned in two, with the living quarters for the animals at the back where a second floor formed an attic. A peat fire burned in the middle of the floor, the smoke curling lazily towards the hole in the thatch that served as a chimney. A bed with a straw mattress took up one corner. There was a table upon which was the makings of a stew and, on the fire, a pot of broth set on a trivet simmered appetisingly. Four wooden chairs were set around the table. An aumrie, a low wooden linen chest, sat under the single unglazed window, whose shutters were open. A rag rug, a patchwork cover on the bed, a knitted blanket folded neatly on top of the aumrie and Morna’s woollen shawl, spread across the back of one of the chairs, were the only signs of comfort in the clean but spartan cottage.
Thinking of the simple but elegant furnishings of his own plantation house, remembering the domestic comforts of his childhood home, Alasdhair was shocked.
‘It is not much, I know,’ Morna said, looking embarrassed as she pulled out chairs and ushered her guests towards them. They sat side by side. Morna took the seat opposite to her son, her hands clasped tightly together under the cover of her apron. ‘I don’t know where to start,’ she said, pulling one hand out to rub her eyes, then put it back again. ‘Maybe if you could tell me what you know it would help me to understand what it is you want from me.’
‘They told me you ran off with another man. I’ve never understood how you could leave my father in such a cruel way, knowing what it would do to him. You never made any attempt to get in touch, not even when he died. And you abandoned me, too. I thought it didn’t matter any more why; I’ve had twenty years to grow used to it, but now I need to know.’
‘You came back all the way from America to see me?’
‘No. Not at first. But since I got here, so much of what I thought was the truth has turned out to be such a different kettle of fish that I realised I owed it to you and to myself to hear your side of things. For better or for worse.’
Morna pursed her lips and nodded silently. She seemed to have regained her composure, though the effort it cost her was writ large in the rigid way she held herself. She did not seem able to look directly at Alasdhair, but rather snatched frequent glances at him, as if afraid that anything more prolonged would result in his disappearance.
Ailsa watched her from under her lashes. She herself felt on edge, as if she were sitting on the sinner’s stool outside the kirk, bracing herself for a dousing. Her nails were forming painful crescents on her palms, so tightly was she clenching her fists in an effort to stop herself from shaking. She was afraid of what was to come. Not for herself—she could not believe any of the ancient history Morna was about to divulge could have much to do with her—but for Alasdhair. She prayed that whatever Morna’s secrets were, they were not any more shameful than those he had already imagined.
Morna gazed off to a spot over Alasdhair’s shoulder. ‘I came to Errin Mhor as a chambermaid, part payment for a debt my father owed. It was not long before the Munro married Christina MacLeod, and I married your father, his factor—a match the laird organised, as was the way, but we were happy enough.’
She paused to untangle her knitting wool, that had fallen from her pocket and twisted itself around the leg of the chair. When she sat up again, her colour was heightened. ‘It was the laird’s birthday. Lady Munro was big with child, and they were short-handed for the ceilidh, so Alec sent me to help at the castle. I was fetching a bottle of the special whisky for Lord Munro; he wanted it brought to his library. I knocked on the door and he bade me enter. He was alone. I never thought—I didn’t mean to—I wouldn’t have gone to the room alone if I had known.’
Morna’s eyes were large with unshed tears. Watching her, Ailsa was suddenly afraid of what she was about to say. Looking over at Alasdhair, she saw the same fear on his face. Her impulse was to flee the room, the cottage, the village, with her hands over her ears, but if she did, then Alasdhair would blame himself for upsetting her. She must endure it, for his sake.
Morna’s hands were shaking; she was obviously struggling for control. She spoke more quickly now, eager to have it done with. ‘He forced himself on me. I didn’t have chance to stop him, he was on me before I could escape.’
‘The despicable bastard! He raped you.’ Morna turned scarlet. ‘He was the laird. You don’t understand how it was in those days, Alasdhair, most people would say he had the right to me. I should have kept out of his way. I should have had more of a care.’
‘For God’s sake, you talk as if it were your fault.’
‘It was, in a way. I should have known better.’
‘He took you against your will. You, a married woman.’
‘Aye, but that was not the way he saw it, or the world. I could scream or I could just close my eyes and let him get it over with. I chose the latter. I thought if I made a fuss it would be worse for Alec, so I let him get on with it and, dear God, I wish I had not, for she walked in on us.’
Ailsa could hardly bear to speak, but she knew she must. ‘My mother?’
‘Lady Munro. She turned white as a sheet. I thought she would faint away. I actually felt sorry for her, though God knows it was misplaced. She has no entitlement to anyone feeling anything for her. She turned on me. She must have known how things had been, but I suppose she couldn’t very well vent her temper on the laird, so she blamed me and he, God rot him, was happy enough to allow her. Until she started
demanding retribution, that is. That he was having none of; he just laughed at her when she demanded I be sent away, but the more he denied her what she wanted the more upset she got, falling into hysterics and claiming it was damaging the child. Well, that swung everything in her favour, as you can imagine. She wanted me banished. He agreed, eventually, though only to my going. Alec was too good a factor for him to lose over a bit of skirt, and of course there was no way on earth he’d let me take you with me, Alasdhair. Thrawn old bastard that he was, the more I begged to be allowed to take you with me, the more he dug his heels in.’
‘So you left.’
‘I was banished.’
‘The laird had a fondness for that particular punishment,’ Alasdhair said sardonically.
‘It is his right, and no matter what you might think, Alasdhair, it was partly my fault. If I had not tried to blame him as I did, if I had not tried to excuse myself, if I had just kept quiet, maybe Lady Munro would have allowed it to be forgotten and none of this would have happened. Your father might still have been alive. I would not have lost you. For years, when I first came here, it was all I could think about, finding ways to undo what had been done, ways to change what I couldn’t change. It eats away at you, Alasdhair. The only way to deal with it is not to think about it.’
‘And what of my father? What had he to say to all of this?’ Alasdhair’s voice was devoid of emotion, but his fists were clenched on the arms of the chair in which he sat.
The Highlander's Return Page 17
