The Highwayman's Curse

by Nicola Morgan

  I had left my home because of hatred and anger. Later, when I had discovered my father’s corruption, I had taken revenge and at the time it had felt good. But had it changed anything? Still I hated my father and what he had done. Were revenge and punishment ever the end? Would evil not then go on and on, a twisting line of pain, until the memory of what had begun it had faded into dust?

  I had thought that what I had done was just and proper. But now – now, I was carrying smuggled goods for some whisky-soaked men mired in a brutal poverty on the wrong side of the law. Was that just and proper?

  I wished to do right, even to change some evil in the world. But I was powerless, driven by the actions of others.

  For the moment, there was no other course but to be led. To wait.

  But I would not be satisfied with only this for ever. There must be a better way to live. There must be something of worth I could do.

  With these confusing thoughts, I stumbled with Bess and the other smugglers, along the passageway and back to the places where we must leap across the jaws of the sea once more.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The leaps back over the spouting waves were a little downhill, and easier. Besides, the tide had fallen further and the sea no longer threatened us. The men had a routine for passing the bags across the abyss on ropes and before long we had safely crossed the openings and were soon making our way up the steeply sloping passage until we came to the rungs set into the wall. We left the goods at the bottom and began to climb.

  The trapdoor was open and Jeannie and Iona waited for us. We were greeted with food and mugs of a thin ale. The mood was warm and festive and I allowed myself to drift into its comfort.

  Jeannie seemed concerned for Jock, who went straight to bed, pain etched in his face.

  I tried to put my earlier confused thoughts away from me. For the moment, I could do nothing. For the moment, for a few days at least, I must stay here.

  There was one thing useful that I could do, and that was to ensure that Tam was comfortable. His face had a warmer colour now, not the pallor of approaching death. He was awake, though lying still in the bed. When he saw me, he even smiled and I confess I was glad to see this.

  “Thank ye!” he whispered suddenly. Were these the first words he had spoken since his injury? Jeannie was beside me now. She touched my shoulder and smiled.

  “Aye, he has found his speech again and he has tellt me all. He said the men who killt his grandfather were nothing like ye and your friend. And if ye had no’ brought him here, he would be dead for sure. I kent ye were no murderers, but the others, they were no’ sure. And now ye must stay. Ye can have the cottage that Old Maggie and John had together. ’Tis too big for her alone and she needs the company, the way she is, and there is plenty o’ space. ’Tis just o’er the yard and…”

  I knew not what to say and I let her chatter on while I tended to Tam, adjusting his bindings. I had no wish to stay. Nor did I think that Bess would relish the thought of a grim life with these people.

  Soon, we all slept, for there was still some while till morning light. To my surprise, I slept deeply and peacefully, without dreaming, through sheer exhaustion, I suppose.

  When I woke, Jeannie was sweeping the floor of the dwelling. Early sunshine streamed through the open shutters.

  Bess was sleeping beside me and I stared at her resting face for some moments. As if aware, she opened her eyes then and smiled at me, raising herself up. We both found water to wash our faces in and quite soon we were dressed. None of the men was there, as far as I could see.

  Old Maggie sat, smiling happily to herself at something. It was as if she suffered no memories of the fact that she had learnt of her husband’s murder only a day before. Perhaps Old Maggie was happier than anyone, understanding nothing. And yet, what life was that?

  As we returned to the fire, Old Maggie turned to look at Bess, seeming to see her for the first time.

  “Who are ye?”

  “My name is Bess.”

  “Bess. Bess.” The old woman seemed to roll the name round in her toothless mouth and in her mind. “’Tis a strange name for a lad.”

  “I am no lad,” Bess replied. “I dress sometimes as a boy because … it is easier.”

  “Aye, well.” And she touched her scarred face, though her eyes told of no emotion.

  “Will you tell me your story?” asked Bess now. Jeannie heard her and looked little pleased.

  “No, she will no’,” she said firmly.

  Maggie’s mouth twisted into the raw anger of a small child. I had seen my youngest sister do this, before her governess had taught her that she must not show her feelings so. And now my sister, all my sisters, sat straight-backed and kept their lips closed hard like oysters, merely tilting their little chins and controlling the colour in their faces so that nothing more than a tight rosebud of anger prickled under their cheeks.

  “I will so!” said Old Maggie now. I wished not to listen. The old woman disturbed me, with her ancient anger and how she kept the fire of it stoked till the flames blazed as high as ever. I feared the chasm of her mind, empty of all the things she should know – her husband’s death, her children’s births, her grandchildren’s lives. The here and now. The present and the future meant nothing to her as much as the ancient cause of her anger.

  And it seemed to me wrong, and ugly. I found her ugly, too, her wrinkled face like the skin on a bird’s leg, the terrible stretched scar gouged from her other cheek, her twisted eye, even her hair like a ghostly halo. I did not like that she was so old and yet so like a child. She made me uncomfortable.

  So I wished not to listen. But her voice drew me in, weaving a web around me until the sound of it was held close around my head, weaving its way inside my ears.

  Its power was hard to resist.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Old Maggie told of the day they came for her parents, and she only seven years old and trying to hide in her young mother’s long skirts. She told of the feel of the thick woollen material against her face and the smell of her mother, the smell of all mothers. She told of the marsh gentian they had been picking for medicine when the men came and how her mother had dropped the purple flowers, scattering them as she ran back to the house with her daughter, as the soldiers clattered in the yard and as they shot her husband while he knelt and prayed.

  Maggie had heard the shot and seen her father twist and fall, surprise on his face. They had taken her mother and thrown her on a cart with Maggie clinging to her. Other women had been on that cart but, when they reached the beach and saw the thick salt marsh with the tide coming in, all but two had sworn the oath to the King. Her mother and one much older woman had not.

  Maggie told of how she had been torn from her mother, and how she had stood in water as the tide swept higher, dumb with fear and confusion and disbelief – still thinking of the scattered flowers and the waste of it – her bare feet sinking into the silt on a soft summer day, a tiny breeze ruffling the water, the wavelets lapping as they stroked her skin.

  Her mother’s eyes had been wide with fear but she would not swear their oath. Silently, her mother had stood waist-deep in the sea, chained to a wooden stake. Her skirts and bodice had been ripped from her and she stood only in her undergarments, white and drifty. The other woman was similarly tied a few feet away. This woman, the older one, shouted abuse at the soldiers. Her shift was torn and her bony shoulders and thin arms were exposed. As Maggie spoke, I could picture them, like the twigs on a winter tree.

  For an hour Maggie’s mother stayed silent. Then the soldiers had brought Maggie to her, wriggling and screaming above the thickening water, and had threatened to burn the child’s face if her mother would not swear the oath to the King. But her mother had not done so, because God was watching her and God would keep her safe or take her to a place of peace.

  And perhaps she did not believe that the men could be so cruel.

  Many people then had shouted to Maggie’s mother, telli
ng her that she should save her daughter and that God would forgive her, but her mother had not listened. Because she knew that it is by God’s grace that we go to Heaven and not because of the things we do or wish for. She had stayed strong.

  Maggie understood none of this but felt her mother’s love and knew that God did indeed watch over her because if her mother said so then that must be right. Then Maggie had seen a light settle above her mother’s head, a soft glow, warm, fluttering, flickering like a candle in an evening breeze.

  The soldiers put Maggie back on the beach and she was carried away from the water by some other women. They had planned to take her where she could not see what was happening, though Maggie twisted round in their arms and saw the waves lapping at her mother’s throat now. The strengthening breeze began to whisk the surface of the water and she could see her choke and splutter as a wave washed over her mouth.

  Now some of the soldiers, who had been throwing insults at the two women, came for Maggie. They tore her from the arms of the women who carried her. When a woman tried to fight back, a soldier slashed her across the face with the back of his hand and the woman was thrown off her feet, landing hard on the ground. Blood dribbled down her chin.

  Maggie did not like the way they touched her, these men, with their hard fingers on her bare skin. It was as they touched her that one of the soldiers shouted the curse and Maggie did not know if it was meant for her or her mother.

  I watched old Maggie’s face as she told this story, her words making sense, her thoughts in order, as they usually seemed not to be. Her eyes were alive now, her voice strong. It was as though she was no longer a very old woman. It was as though she was still there, all those years ago, living through every moment, every detail. Keeping it alive.

  Her story had not finished. As she told the rest, I became unaware of everything around me, of the people and the smells and the spitting fire. All of it receded into nothing as I listened to the end of her story. And as she spoke, I pictured everything as though I had been there.

  The soldiers had quickly built a fire. Maggie understood nothing of what they did. She thought perhaps they were wishing to warm her, for she was indeed cold. She shivered through her thin dress, her bare feet painful in the cold. Still she could see her mother, distant now in the water, the waves at her chin, sometimes lapping over her mouth as she desperately stretched her face skywards. Maggie did not cry. She could not.

  A soldier’s sword lay in the flames of their fire. She wondered dimly at this. Why did he put his sword in the flames? She struggled to make sense of everything around her. Why was she with the soldiers? Why were they smiling at her? Why were the other women standing some distance away, huddled in a group, with other soldiers watching them?

  And then two of the soldiers had gripped her at the elbows and their hands felt huge. She thought that if they were not careful they might snap her arms. Another soldier had held her head and another had picked up the sword from the fire. She gasped. It had turned bright orange! She had never seen such a thing!

  The soldier came to the side of her head, where she could not see him properly. Still the other soldier held her head tightly. One of her ears was trapped painfully, pinched between his fingers. She wanted to tell him, to tell him not to hold her so tightly. That he was hurting her.

  Then a fizzing sizzle, followed by her shriek of pain. Her scream took everything else away, all the pain and all her breath. She fell into a swoon.

  But soon, she knew not when, she awoke and when she looked out to sea her mother was not there. Only the rough waves, licking and spitting. And the sun not shining any more.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Old Maggie’s fingers played in agitation on the twisted skin round her scar. I turned away.

  Jeannie remained tight-lipped, a dark look on her face. She had been sweeping the floor around us while Old Maggie had told her story. Now, with a deft and sharp flick, she sent the pile of dirt into the fire, then put her broom aside and said, firmly, “Now ye tellt your story and let that be an end o’ it. I’ll get your spinning-wheel and ye can do something wi’ that and take your mind off the memories. We could all do wi’ some new stockings and there’s still some o’ last year’s wool to be spun.” She nodded at Iona, who went to the other end of the cottage and, with a long stick, began to unhook a sack that was hanging from a rafter.

  Jeannie shifted the spinning-wheel a little and guided the old woman to the stool beside it, unfastening something from the side of the wheel so that it could move freely. Iona now came back, carrying the sack, from which Jeannie took a mass of grey sheep’s wool, which she set at Old Maggie’s feet. The old woman smiled, as she took some of the wool in her fingers and expertly began to twist it, turning the wheel in her other hand. A rhythmic clicking filled the cottage as thin, strong strands began to appear.

  “All in white,” she muttered as she spun, her ancient fingers flying fast, her liquid eyes fixed into the distance. She had no need to watch her fingers, so expert was she at this craft.

  I stood up. Jeannie looked towards me and spoke. “Aye, ’tis time ye looked at the other cottage, the one I tellt ye about. Iona, come wi’ us. Bess?”

  Bess was sitting next to Old Maggie, passing wool to her. She looked up. “May I stay with Old Maggie?”

  “No, ye’ll come wi’ us.”

  Bess opened her mouth as though to argue, but she rose and came with us, though her thoughts seemed elsewhere.

  What did Bess think of? I knew she felt some fascination for the old woman. If I am to be honest, I found her fascination distasteful. Yes, I pitied the old woman, of course – how could anyone not pity such suffering? But it was long ago. She should forget it now. She should let it pass and God would judge. What good would it do to keep it burning fiercely for ever? And what did it have to do with Bess?

  Even more now, I wished that we could move on and leave these people. As soon as possible.

  I wanted adventure, to ride my horse, to have the companionship of Bess, to survive on our wits and feel the open sky above me. I wanted to feel that there were choices I could make. These were things I had come to know since running from my home. No, they were not enough, but they were a start, and they were better than staying with this group of people and becoming part of their ways. I had now seen many lives of trapped poverty, and could measure them against my early life of cushioned softness and silks, and I could not believe that there was no other way than those two.

  As I followed Jeannie outside into the spring sunshine, I felt weighed down by small but growing doubts. How would we leave? How would I tell Jeannie that we wished to go? And what if Bess did not choose to come with me?

  The cottage, single-roomed like the other, though smaller, was cold and dank. The fire was dead. It had the smell of something rotten. Many things rotten, I decided as I looked around.

  Jeannie, Bess and Iona set to clearing the mess. They flung clothes and items into a pile, then folded them and put them in a chest. Iona began to lay the fire, sweeping up the ashes and placing straw and sticks in an expert heap. I must admit that she worked well, though she spoke little and I did not know what to make of her. Bess took a broom from a corner and began to sweep the floor.

  I stood there. I could not see what to do or why. I did not want to be here.

  “Will, take these pots,” ordered Iona. She held towards me a pile of items: a pan with a handle, a wooden platter crusted with something, a bowl smeared with something else, spoons, two thick pottery cups.

  “What will I do with them?”

  “Wash them?” she said, with a slight smile. Her hair was now bound in a thick plait hanging all the way down her back. She was pretty when she smiled. Her being pretty made no difference to my mood. Still I did not wish to sleep in this cottage which Old Maggie and her dead husband had shared.

  And so, in the yard, with sunshine around me, in the icy water that came from the well, I washed the pots. I heard the whinny of the horses, and a
t the same time their warm, grassy smell came to me and my spirits lifted a little.

  I paused in my work and allowed myself to look up, and to gaze past the cottages and out of the yard. In the farthest distance lay the shiny strip of sea and suddenly all the openness, the emptiness, the vast sky, seemed indeed part of my world, a world where I could breathe freely. Perhaps what I did not like was only the grim interior of the dwelling where we had spent the night enclosed with strangers whom we little trusted, their whisky-reeking belches, their fizzing aggression, the undercurrents of what made them so dark and fierce and not of my ilk.

  Indeed, the yard seemed well kept enough, though I could see little evidence of farming. I knew there was a cow, maybe more, in a byre which served as milking parlour and stable. Some chickens pecked over by some bushes. But there seemed little else. There were three small cottages, and the stable or byre, a shed which I think was for the chickens, and two other outhouses – one of which seemed to have been damaged by fire and had now a newly made roof. And there was also a latrine behind the main cottage.

  Outside the yard, I saw no crops, only rough land, strewn with boulders and thick clumps of tall, reedy grass. A small field, enclosed by a wall, held the ponies. Yesterday, I remembered, I had glimpsed some fields a little way off, newly ploughed, with dykes separating them from grazing land, but I knew not whether these were fields belonging to Jock and his family.

  I thought not. I think they had not the wealth for such land. Or the means to farm it.

  Then I remembered the sheep. They had lost their sheep when the old shepherd was murdered. What would they do about this? Surely they would report the loss, and the murder, to the authorities? Surely the authorities would act for them?