The Highwayman's Curse

by Nicola Morgan

  Chapter Twelve

  I marvelled at the behaviour of the men that evening. They had been so ready to kill us, but now seemed to have forgotten our presence, as they huddled on stools at the far end of the room, away from the fire. It was as if they did not take our lives seriously – it had mattered so little to them whether we lived or died that our escape from drowning did not stir their emotions.

  I suppose now they talked of the old man’s death and what they might do about it – but I could hear only parts of what they said. The argument between Thomas and Red seemed forgotten. Red had returned from outside, with a rolling gait, seeming forgetful of what had happened, though at no point did he come to thank me as the others had. The other men took me by the hand or slapped me on the back, until my face was tired from smiling back at them.

  Though they might seem suddenly to be our friends, I did not trust them as yet.

  The boy of my age, Calum, was not there. He had been sent outside for some reason I did not know. Mad Jamie, too, had gone, back to wherever he came from, I presumed.

  Iona sat by the fire. She was deftly weaving willow to make a basket, when Jeannie handed her a slate and instructed her to copy out some lines from a huge black Bible. At first, she grumbled, but Jeannie had said something about Sunday being a good day to write words from the Bible and she had gracelessly taken the slate and begun to write. I wondered at this – that in such poverty, a girl would learn to read and write.

  The old shepherd’s corpse still lay on the trestle table at the far end of the dwelling, near where the men sat now. I had heard mention of waiting for the minister – their word for churchman, I guessed – to come, but I knew not when that would be.

  There was much I did not know or understand.

  Whereas before we had been held as captives, now suddenly we were treated as guests. This seemed strange to me, though I was too tired to wonder at it. Perhaps they wanted me to tend to Tam when he should wake. And what had Jock said about Bess being small enough to go down to the cave? What did they plan for us?

  What if we wished to leave? Would they be so agreeable then?

  I had barely strength to remain awake. On the floor I sat, resting my head against the ragged wall, soothed by its cool stones. Bess sat near by on a stool. I could see her looking towards the old woman every now and then.

  The old woman for her part sat on the floor by the fire now, her legs crossed like a young child at play, staring into its flames and muttering every now and then to herself. “I curse their heid an’ all the hairs…” she would say. If she meant not us, it was not clear whom she meant. I only know I did not like her words, or her voice, or anything about her.

  Jeannie lay on the bed beside her grandson, leaning on one elbow, and stroked his hair as he muttered in his drunken sleep.

  She looked over at me once, and at Bess. “I thank ye again. The both o’ ye. I ken no’ how ye came to be here, but I thank God that ye were, for Tam’s sake. ’Tis a sad day, but Old John was ready for the next world. And there’s nothing that weeping can heal.” She threw a look towards the old woman. “See Old Maggie, she doesna even grieve for her man. She understands nothing. She lives only in the past, and nothing from today makes a difference to her. Blessed she is.”

  “What of her cursing, her anger at us?” I asked.

  “She speaks not o’ ye. She curses the men who killt her father and mother for their faith, and who deformed her face as ye see it. Seven years old Maggie was when the King’s men tied her mother to a stake and drowned her in the rising tide, along wi’ another woman. They shot her father as he prayed. And then they took a burning sword and burnt her face. A wee child – would ye believe it! No’ even English they were, nor even Catholic – just soldiers who would do all their masters tellt them.”

  “Why? What had they done?”

  “They would no’ sign an oath o’ duty to the King. Their duty was to God above all others but the King would no’ have that. Our forefathers had a Covenant wi’ God and they called themselves Covenanters. Brave they were, though much good it did them. Now, we have other ways o’ fighting agin a King’s government.” She nodded towards where the men sat. “Ye’ll see soon enough. And if ye take my advice, ye’ll do what they tell ye. Ye are either wi’ us or ye are agin us. And they will put ye in the cave if they think they canna trust ye.”

  Bess had been silent during this time and I knew not if she listened. But now she spoke. I saw her hand go to her throat, where she touched the locket beneath her shirt.

  “Seven years old? And she has carried her anger so long?”

  “Aye, and more than eighty years old she is. But ’tis a kind o’ madness has taken her mind. She can no’ say what she had to eat this morning, but she can tell ye what her mother wore as the tide drowned her.”

  “All in white, an’ never weeping,” said Old Maggie now, staring somewhere into the rafters, her thin lips quivering. “An’ the soldiers shouting, ‘Repent!’ but she wouldna. No’ my mother. Brave she was, braver than any. Curst we are now. Curst that we were no’ pure enough.”

  “No, Maggie, we’re no’ curst.” Jeannie spoke with a weary patience, as though she had heard this many times.

  “No’ ye!” the old woman snapped. “No’ ye. Ye are no’ o’ my blood!” And she began to rock again, muttering, “Curst we are.”

  Bess moved to sit nearer to the old woman. She stretched her fingers to touch her hand. The woman started, looking suddenly at Bess, seeming a little frightened.

  But Jeannie was speaking now. “Dinna fret yourself, Maggie. Ye’re no’ curst. And ye ken I dinna like ye to speak like that in front o’ Iona and wee Tam.”

  Now Old Maggie blazed, her eyes bright and her body leaning forward, her bony finger pointing at Iona. “Curst she is too, like all the women o’ my line.” Suddenly, she stopped and her face became like a child’s, the back of her hands rubbing her eyes. “I am going tae sleep.”

  Iona stood up and left the dwelling quickly.

  Jeannie called to the men, “Billy, help me get your grandmother ready for bed. She will sleep here wi’ us tonight, no’ alone in her own cottage. She needs her sleep, do ye no’, my love?” And Old Maggie nodded. As Jeannie carefully climbed off the bed, avoiding the sleeping Tam, Billy came from the group huddled at the other end of the room and walked towards us, his huge frame rolling, and yet with perfect balance and ease. Gently, he took his grandmother beneath one arm, while Jeannie took the other, and they led her slowly from the dwelling.

  Jeannie was a woman who would do what needed to be done, I could tell. Such women, I see now, hold the world together, while men rip it to pieces with their wars and their false justice, always claiming God as their guide.

  Why could my mother not have been as strong as these women? But the women of my mother’s sort, high-born and soft, were worse than any man, for they did nothing, only took their easy lives and thought of no more than scent and silk and servants. This I had come to understand.

  Tam, meanwhile, began to stir, groaning. I went to him, not knowing if this was the whisky or a worsening of his condition. He opened his eyes and groaned again and gagged. I turned him gently so that he lay on his side, his good arm, and I reached for a tankard and held it by his mouth. He gagged again, but at first nothing came from him save thin, bubbling spittle. And then, indeed, he did vomit a little, as I held the tankard by his mouth.

  It was the whisky. He would suffer a sore head in the morning but he would not die. Now I dared hope further that we would be safe. As I stayed by him, reassuring him and adjusting the cloths where they bound his arm too tightly, Bess turned to Iona, who had returned from outside with a large jug of water. Calum was still away and the men sat and talked quietly at the other end.

  “Iona, what did Maggie mean about the women being cursed?”

  Iona did not look at Bess but her answer was clear enough. “She is mad, aye she is. She says I’m cursed. Well, I am no’! She does no’ even car
e that her husband died today!” She did not cry, but her eyes were bright and I thought tears were not far away.

  “Iona!” Jeannie was back, leading Old Maggie, with Billy helping. They had, I suppose, been out to the latrine and were now going to put the old woman to bed. “Where’s your heart, Iona? She doesna understand, ye ken that well.” Iona’s face clouded.

  “Aye, I understand,” said Old Maggie. “He drowned at the stake, for he would no’ repent.”

  Iona looked away with a slight shake of her head. For a moment I thought less badly of her. What did she have to look forward to in this place? She was surrounded by madness and filth and men who drank whisky in quantities and the best she could hope for was to marry into another family who might be no better.

  “Iona, take our guests to the well and the latrine. And then find them some blankets. We should sleep soon.” Wordlessly, Iona took a long metal stick, pierced it through a clod of peat from a pile, lit it in the fire, and walked out with no more than a glance at us. We followed. I carried the tankard of Tam’s whisky-reeking vomit. I, too, would do what must be done.

  It was by now nearly dark but it seemed early to be going to bed. However, I would not argue, tired as I was. Still my head thumped slightly behind my eyes.

  I breathed deeply in the fresh twilight air as we walked across the yard, our way lit by the blazing peat torch. Curlews called above us and the smell of the sea came salty and dry.

  “Tell us about Old Maggie. Why does she say you are all cursed? You don’t believe in such things, do you?” I asked.

  Iona spoke freely now, outside, away from the undercurrents of anger inside. Still she did not look at us and there was an edge of bitterness to her voice. “When I was wee, I used to. I used to dream o’ terrible things happening to me, every night, as soon as it was dark and the shadows came. But now, I dinna know whether to believe or no’. By day, I dinna, but by night…” This I understood all too well.

  “And why does she say you are cursed?” asked Bess. I sensed a dislike in her voice, as though she had little sympathy for Iona.

  “She said one o’ the soldiers cursed her, when he was taunting her mother and telling her to sign the oath. Then, many years later, the gipsies took her only daughter for a wife. And her youngest grandson, Hamish, my uncle – the one who would no’ have ye killed on a Sabbath – had a daughter who died only four days old and another is blind. My two other uncles, Red and Billy, have no children, nor wives neither, and nor does Mouldy. So she thinks the women o’ our line are none o’ us pure enough in God’s eyes, because the soldier made her impure by touching her as he did, and so we deserve our curse. And my father has one daughter.” At this, she pointed to herself. “So Old Maggie is waiting for something bad to happen to me. And if it does, she’ll no’ be weeping – she’ll be pleased to see her words come true.”

  Silently, I rinsed out the tankard in well water. It was a story with power and yet it had begun merely with the cruel and ignorant words of a soldier. And belief in those words had grown it into a story with the strength to hold for generations.

  “The soldier merely used the words of a curse to frighten her mother so that she would give way,” I argued. “It has no power.” Bess said nothing and I could not tell her thoughts from her face in those shadows.

  “Aye, but the women in her line have all come to a bad end,” said Iona simply. “It must have power. I try to tell myself that it means nothing, but I canna help but fear it.”

  The peat torch sent its smoke swirling around her head, lending her a ghostly appearance, sending black shadows across her face, and I shivered. It seemed to me that Old Maggie had lost her heart and held only onto her hatred. And her hatred was keeping the curse strong.

  A curse may be a powerful thing. I knew that much. It holds even the wisest man in its grip and in the darkness and the wavering shadows anything is possible.

  That is its power.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I did not sleep easily that night. My head throbbed dully. Never had I slept with so many bodies in one room, and I do not think Bess had either. Tam, Jeannie and Old Maggie slept in the box-bed near the fire. Thomas and Jock slept at the other end of the dwelling, Jock on a pallet which they pulled from under a smaller box-bed, and Thomas on this box-bed, with Iona. I know not where they normally slept. I think perhaps Jeannie and Jock would have had the main box-bed. With Tam? Or Iona? I did not know about the others. I only knew that in my own home we had each had a separate bed and that in the homes of the poor there was much need to share.

  The corpse still lay at the other end of the dwelling, the trestle table pushed to one side.

  Billy sat hunched by the window, with the shutter a little way open – he watched, for what I knew not. Calum still had not returned from wherever he was. Mouldy and Red also were not with us – perhaps they had one of the other two cottages around the yard. And Hamish was at his own abode over the hill, I had learnt. Bess and I lay near the fire, the floor hard and lumpy beneath us, but we were warm enough under the thick, hairy blankets that Jeannie found for us.

  Iona had become silent again as we went inside. She would not look at Old Maggie. She had kissed her father, Thomas, good night, and Jeannie had ruffled her hair and wrapped her round in her big arms, but Iona seemed not to like this. She shrank away and looked cross, as though too old for such things.

  Jeannie bade us sleep while we could because we would be woken early. No one told us why, until Iona had said we would be “running a cargo”, which I did not fully understand but took to be a seaman’s term. I would not show my ignorance in front of the girl, although she was softening towards us slightly and I to her. There was a silent anger about her, which I was coming to understand. She was trapped in a hopeless world. She must have felt weighed down by the curse that she believed hung over her.

  Lying awake on a cold night, alone with her thoughts, she must have feared what might happen to her. As I had, when the man had cursed me. “The devil take the sheriff’s son!” he had said, with all the poison and hatred he could muster. And still I feared those words sometimes, though I was far away now and I considered myself no longer the sheriff’s son. I had paid for my father’s sins, had I not? Had I not done enough to shake off the power of any curse, especially one that was wrongly made?

  But could I be entirely sure?

  One thing I didn’t worry about as I tried to sleep that night – the horses. We had seen to them before we slept and they were dry and comfortable, with some dusty oats and fresh water. These people might be harsh in their treatment of fellow men but of their beasts they would take good care. We had been given back our saddlebags too, and though they contained little of value it meant something to me that we were now trusted by these men. Not that I wished to stay long, of course, but I felt that we were safe at least for a while.

  Our pistols and swords were not returned to us, not yet.

  The fire hissed and crackled, sometimes spitting a violent spark onto the hearth. Snoring there was aplenty, and the muttering of men sleeping uneasily. Every now and then, Tam moaned in his sleep and I peered at him through the darkness, hoping that he was not slipping into fever. And from outside came the faraway crashing of waves and the nearby whishing of a night wind ruffling the heather-lined thatch above us. Every now and then, a draught from the window moved the spinning-wheel a little, and then it settled with a click.

  The scrawny dogs licked themselves regularly with a wet slapping sound. Eventually, someone sent them outside, where I suppose they found shelter where they could.

  But more than these noises, it was my thoughts that kept me awake.

  I had changed in the last few weeks since running from home. My reasons for leaving seemed like a story from another life. Did it matter now that my father and my brother had despised me so? They had been wrong, and I had punished them in full.

  At first Bess had shown me how to survive, but now I needed no one to show me. That thought was
strong and good. Yet the future seemed full of confusion. I did not know where I was going, what choices I might have, what chances. I could see the silhouette of the spinning-wheel in the darkness and the image came to my mind of the three Fates, spinning our lives for us, the thread twisting and strengthening, then weakening, then snapping on a whim.

  At last, I must have slept, because it seemed a very small time before I was woken by the confusion of voices and other commotion. Someone was shaking my shoulder. It took many moments before I remembered where I was. My mouth felt horribly dry, hunger making my tongue taste foul.

  In guttering candlelight and the glow from a quiet fire, Thomas and Jock were pulling on their jackets and boots. Mouldy, Red and Billy were there too, taking up items such as rope, and sacks, and fastening them about their bodies.

  Few words were spoken. Jeannie bustled around, giving the men hunks of bread and some cheese, which they ate, ripping at the food with their teeth. She gave the same to Bess and to me. “Do as ye are tellt, and no harm will come,” she said quietly. She touched Bess’s shoulder, as a woman to a girl, and stroked a finger on her cheek. Bess smiled back at her.

  Two men removed the chest from its place alongside the wall and brushed aside the dirt, revealing once more the trapdoor. I shivered as the dank smell of the sea rose through the opening.

  Tam still slept, as did Old Maggie. Iona stared up from where she lay, saying nothing.

  Calum returned, rushing through the door. Wild-eyed he looked, with exhaustion and excitement together. He carried an unusually large lantern. “Well done, laddie,” said Jock.

  “Ye’re sure, now?” asked Thomas. “’Tis the right one?”

  “Aye, I’m sure,” said Calum with some irritation, pushing his hair from his eyes. “The signal was good and strong and they saw mine too.” He glanced at the lantern as he said this. He looked towards his father but Thomas had turned away.

  Now Jock spoke to Bess and to me. “Now we’ll see if ye can be o’ help or no’. And if no’, then ye’ll ken too much and ye may guess what’ll befall ye.” We nodded. Although his voice seemed full of vigour now, I could see traces of exhaustion, and perhaps pain, in his eyes. Was he merely ageing or was it more? “Then follow close. If ye lose a step, the waves are waiting. This is no’ for the faint-hearted. This is our business, our way o’ life. And if ye’re no’ wi’ us, then the devil or the exciseman can take ye.”