Jamie MacLeod

by Michael Phillips

  “Aye—a surprise—and I nearly forgot; there are two surprises!” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a stick of the reddest candy Jamie had ever seen.

  She reached up slowly, almost reverently, for it. “Oh, thank ye, Papa,” she said as her tiny fingers closed around the treasure. She took it from him, but did not eat it, or even take a bite right then. It was too special and pretty. She would lay it by her pillow as she slept, and perhaps tomorrow take a small bite, making its goodness linger as long as possible.

  “And for my other surprise,” Gilbert said, “I’ll begin by telling ye why I know things are sure to be changin’. I met a fellow today who was on his way to the big city—going all the way to Aberdeen, he was.”

  “Where’s that, Papa?”

  “It would take three, maybe four whole days to walk there. ’Tis by the sea, lass.”

  Jamie’s mouth fell open. To her young mind such a distance was more than she could fathom. The very words the sea evoked a sense of awe, wonder at the great unknown.

  “This man,” her father went on, “works in a big factory there. He said that no man who is willing to work need sit idle in the city. There is work a-plenty. He said with my knowledge of figures, I could get clerical work. The pay would be good, too. Would ye like to go to the city, Jamie?”

  “I dinna know, Papa,” she answered with some uncertainty. “What aboot oor cottage here?”

  “Ah, the house . . .” he replied thoughtfully. “It always seemed so important because it was ours. But what good be a piece of land when there’s no food in the cupboards? We worked hard to keep it, yer mother and I, Jamie. But I must face the facts, lass. I just can’t hang on to this place and this barren scrap of land, not if it means starvin’.”

  “I can work harder, Papa!” pleaded Jamie. “We dinna have t’ go!”

  “Oh, my bairn!”

  His lips trembled and his eyes filled, but he blinked back the tears so Jamie would not see.

  “No need for ye to work in Aberdeen,” he said, making an attempt at a laugh. “I’ll work hard and bring in plenty. Why, before ye know, we’ll have another house, finer than this one. And ye’ll ride in a carriage with two sleek white horses. Ye’ll have a bonnie pink bonnet and a dress to match with lace all over. Ye’ll be somebody, Jamie! Ah, Aberdeen—”

  Abruptly he stopped. For a moment his shoulders shook with a repressed fit of coughing.

  “Papa, ye’ll be sick again!”

  “No, child,” he replied, tenderly brushing a hand over her silky dark locks. “It’s just come to be a habit these days. But now ’tis time for you to be in bed. Ye can dream of Aberdeen tonight, lass. Where the air is filled with the tangy smell of salt water and the great ships come and go every day. Aberdeen is where we should have gone long ago. I’ll find what I’m looking for there—I know it!”

  Jamie said no more, the effects of the long day finally stealing over her weary body. Her father picked her up and carried her to the straw mattress tucked away in a warm corner of the cottage. With a sleepy smile she kissed her father’s cheek as he laid her between the blankets. And indeed, in the dark hours which followed she did dream of that faraway city of her father’s visions, where the streets in her imagination were no less than paved with pure gold.

  Gilbert MacLeod shuffled back to his chair where he continued to sit for some time, puffing quietly on his pipe, gazing at the far wall but clearly not focusing on it; his thoughts were far beyond, over the hills, toward the sea. Every now and then a cough rose to his lips, but he took pains to muffle it with a handkerchief so as not to disturb the child. Slowly the blaze in the hearth began to die into orange embers, which threw dark and forlorn shadows about the cottage. Gilbert made no attempt to rekindle it; the night was not overly cold and the child would be warm enough under the heavy wool blankets. As for himself, he took little thought for his own comfort; the cold or the heat mattered but little to him of late. Acutely aware of the meager quality of their life, this frustration had pressed upon him so that he had had room to think of little else. Only Gilbert’s intense love for his daughter forced him to at least care for her needs, though casual observers might think he had even failed at this.

  “It will be better,” he murmured. “It will be better!” The words were the litany to the only religion he had heart to embrace these days.

  He often recalled the faith he had learned from his father; perhaps he even longed for the peace and comfort it offered. But Gilbert MacLeod was a proud man—too proud to turn to a religion he had walked away from in his youth, at least not until he could turn to it with head held high. How could he now, in his hour of desolation, ask consolation from a God whose help he had long ago spurned?

  In the deepening gloom of the cottage his mind wandered, as it had many times before, to that day on which he had walked away from his father’s house. The single-room, sod-walled dwelling with thatched roof, surrounded by the rugged bluffs inundated with bracken and yellow broom and heather would always remain vivid in his memory. The very name of the grand mountain where he grew up, with its verdant yet rugged beauty and treacherous paths, spoke worlds to him—Donachie. There his father had been a herder of sheep, and there he too would have followed in his footsteps, except that he had not been able to stay. Donachie’s awesome allure was not enough to hold him. He had had to find his own way, he had to prove . . .

  What was it—now, so many years later—that he had to prove? At the time it had burned like a passion within him. Yet lately things had grown muddled. The passion, the drive, the energy of his youth had faded. Had he been a fool to leave? But there was Jamie. She had been given him as a result. How then could he look upon his decision as anything but providential?

  His father had been a good man. It took the maturing of Gilbert’s own manhood to allow him to see that his father had, indeed, been unique. In his boyhood, Gilbert wanted to be like him; in his youth, to make him proud. In the turbulence of his eighteen-year-old mind he thought the only way to do this was to better his station in life. Though he loved Donachie and revered his father, he yet disdained the poverty of their shepherd’s existence, barely able to eke out a living from their sheep and other animals, and the few vegetables they were able to grow in the stubborn soil. Even the ground whose every feature he and his father knew better than the back of their own hands was not their own. Nothing was their own, nor would it be so long as he remained on Donachie. He had to get away, to move up in life, to have something—to be somebody!

  The old man was torn with grief at his son’s decision to leave. Begging him to stay, he told Gilbert he belonged on the mountain, that he would be happy nowhere else, that it was folly to search for some elusive dream when he had been born to a herdsman’s and crofting life.

  But the father’s fervent and loving entreaty was taken by the son as a challenge.

  “I’ll show ye!” he had said. “When I come back, I’ll be a great man!”

  Three days later he marched with determination down the grassy fellside, and had never since laid eyes of flesh on Donachie again.

  His father groaned within himself, knowing what a mistake he had made, though Gilbert would never realize his father’s grief. The tears he wept for the following week, with none to share his anguish but the dumb sheep under his care, were rooted in the fear that he would never see his son again.

  If Gilbert had shared any such fears, he hid them well. Every night in the quietude of his own soul he dreamed of his grand return to Donachie. The vision of meeting his father’s challenge, of bettering himself, of making his mark in the world carried him through many a prodigal son’s hardship, until gradually the circumstances of his life did begin to improve. He was hired by the owner of a shop in a small village in the valley to take deliveries around with his wagon, and occasionally to clerk in the store. The pay was nominal, but it provided him a roof over his head and regular meals.

  The shopkeeper’s daughter Alice, though the eldest of se
veral children, was pale and sickly, with few prospects for marriage. The other sons and daughters had married and gone, and only Alice remained at home. Drawn to her soft-spoken gentleness, Gilbert came to love her, and she him. The storekeeper had cherished the hope of a better match for his daughter. But as this seemed the only match likely to come along, he gave his consent. They would be poor, no doubt, but he and his wife had been happy with the shop, and so would Gilbert and Alice after he was gone, for his wife had died two years prior to Gilbert’s coming. He had, however, all but forgotten his wife’s cousin—unmarried, childless, with no near relations, and ailing.

  Within two years of their marriage, Alice had to face the death of her father, followed shortly by the unexpected communication that a cousin of whom she knew nothing had passed on, leaving no heir, and had left the whole of his inheritance to Alice. It encompassed a small parcel of land, some fifty acres, a few miles from the village—nothing by the standards of men of means, but an unbelievable windfall for a hapless shepherd-turned-shopkeeper like Gilbert. It was a fertile strip of acreage despite the fact that it ran along the arid heath; a few years’ honest labor would make it green and profitable, and for Gilbert it represented the fulfillment of all his dreams.

  To be a landowner!

  It was more—much more!—than he could have hoped for so soon in his life. The gleam of pride and enthusiasm in her husband’s eye swelled Alice’s heart with satisfaction, and she agreed to sell the shop in the village in order to finance Gilbert’s dream. Nurtured by his newfound confidence, the land seemed to prosper. But more land was needed, he could see that clearly. More land would double his yield, as well as his profit, and would strengthen his position among the other local landowners. His would be an estate to be reckoned with, and he a man of means and influence in the county!

  With the proceeds from the sale of the shop, Gilbert set his eye on a piece of land adjacent to his own. Over-zealous, with little business instinct, he did not stop to consider why Mackenzie Graystone, laird of the nearby powerful estate of Aviemere and owner of most of the valley, would let this particular parcel go so easily. He concluded the deal, unable to pay more than a scant third of the total with his available cash, but optimistic that his payments to Graystone would come easily once his operation was in full production. It was his now! All his! And as is often the case when enthusiasm outstrips means, his dream did not bow to the practical.

  Jamie’s birth brought a joyous time. Yet the thunderclouds of grief soon appeared on the distant horizon. The hardship of bearing a child visibly drained the strength from Alice’s frail body. In and out of bed for the next four years, one chill autumn morning she finally breathed her last.

  The sought-after piece of land did not prove to be the boon Gilbert had anticipated. So eager had he been to increase his holdings, he had not seen that no amount of wealth or land could make one such as he accepted by the local gentry. He was, after all, of peasant stock, and they would never forget that no gentle blood flowed through his veins. As a shopkeeper he had been in his place, but now they treated him worse than before, looking upon him with scorn and contempt for trying to be something he never could become.

  Nor were these developments lost on Graystone himself, a shrewd, some said a cunning man. He had known from the beginning how it would turn out. He knew that after Gilbert extended himself beyond his means, it would only be a matter of time, one burden added on top of another till the load became unbearable, before the struggling farmer toppled. And was that not precisely what he wanted, why he had sold the land in the first place? He loathed the idea of this peasant, this lowly shopkeeper, making airs, posing as one of them, setting himself up as a sort of would-be laird on the fringes of his own estate.

  He would not have it! By giving a little now, by selling off a small parcel temporarily, he would soon be able to step in and not only take back what was his own but lay claim to the whole lot and completely dispossess the usurper. His solicitor had so drawn up the papers that it was only a matter of time. MacLeod was a fool, and he, Mackenzie Graystone, would reap the rewards of his folly!

  One calamity after another played into Graystone’s hands. Alice’s death was followed by two unseasonably dry springs and summers, with a long harsh winter with unpredictable frost between them which destroyed much of the severely needed spring planting.

  Fool that he had been—even Gilbert himself now recognized that fact—he was not a stupid man. He saw that he could not hope to hold on to his dear land much longer. He was now so buried in debt that even should he sell the land at a market price, he would barely be capable of paying the severest of his obligations. He also knew that a struggling farmer gathers the vultures as readily as a rotting carcass of highland deer, and he could already sense the circling of the nearby landowners. They were anxious to get rid of him—to squeeze his tiny hope for a better life into the dirt under their feet. Getting market price for his land was an illusion! He would be lucky to get half what he paid Graystone for the whole of both parcels! He would lose everything! And who would be there to pick up the pieces, with a cruel smile on his evil lips, but Mackenzie Graystone himself!

  The news of Aberdeen could not have come at a more fortuitous time. This was the hope he needed, the hope he had to have in order to dull the heartbreaking reality of the inevitable decision facing him.

  Gilbert MacLeod had to hope. He had to hope or admit failure—and that he could not bear to do.

  Gilbert slowly rose to his feet. He knocked his pipe against the stone hearth, emptying its contents into the cold fire, then quietly walked to where Jamie lay sound asleep, full of her own dreams. He bent over and kissed her cheek.

  “Ah, lass,” he sighed softly, “yer dreams are all ahead of ye, while mine are past—and never to be.”

  He turned from the bed, took his woolen coat from the peg where it hung, pulled it around him, and left the cottage. A cool breeze blew into his face as he directed his steps westward toward the arid moor on the edges of his land. He often walked here at night when the solace of sleep eluded him. The barren desolation suited his mood, and the harsh elements turned his feelings, if not his thoughts, toward forces larger than the achings within his own heart.

  3

  The Ebony Stallion

  The sky was only beginning to shake its black shroud when Jamie awoke.

  The cottage consisted of four rooms, a couple of them good-sized, and it had at one time been no mean dwelling. But only the large front room and another small sleeping quarters adjacent to it were in use these days. The other rooms were cold and damp and it was difficult and costly to keep them heated, so the father and daughter had contented themselves with the present arrangement. Jamie had her small straw-filled bed in a corner of the large room where it was warmest, and Gilbert occupied the other. From this room Jamie could now hear her father’s steady breathing. She had no idea he had been asleep only two or three hours, but she tiptoed quietly about her tasks nonetheless.

  By the time she had rekindled the peat fire and set the kettle to boil, streaks of amber and pink were coloring the sky. Notwithstanding the old nautical limerick about sailors taking warning from morning red skies, Jamie hoped there would be at least a couple more fine days before winter settled upon them in earnest.

  While the kettle heated, she slipped into her coat and, gathering up the milking pail, crept softly outside. One look around told her that winter was approaching rapidly; a thick hoarfrost covered the ground about the cottage and out onto the fields beyond. She shivered in the early morning cold, slipping once on the ice as she made her way toward the byre.

  It was no warmer inside. The byre had been constructed to accommodate up to fifteen cows, but only two now remained—a somewhat scrawny roan and a black and white, both still good milkers. Jamie caught up a little wooden stool and walked up to the roan.

  “Mornin’, Gracie,” she said as she set the stool into position and slipped the pail beneath Gracie’s swelling udd
er. She sat down and began coaxing milk from the animal. Her fingers were cold and awkward at first, but soon warmed to the task, and the creamy yellow milk flowed out readily.

  “Well, Gracie,” said the girl, “Papa says we’ll be goin’ t’ Aberdeen soon. Winter’s comin’ an’ maybe it’ll be warm there. ’Tis near the sea. I hope ye an’ Callie’ll be comin’ wi’ us. But I dinna ken much aboot it noo. ’Tis a big city, he says. I wonder where they keep the bo’s there? Ye are sich braw friends, I jist know Papa will fin’ ye a home there wi’ us.”

  She rubbed the cow’s great flank, then moved over to Callie’s stall where she began a like procedure until the pail was filled.

  “Dinna ye worry noo,” she said as she left the byre. “We winna be leavin’ ye behin’. They got t’ need milk in Aberdeen, too.”

  She loved the two cows. She felt no deprivation for having no brothers or sisters or children-friends; besides her father she had these two silent but loving companions. She had taken special pleasure in them in the last several months when they had fallen completely under her care. She milked them each morning, took them out to pasture, and cleaned their stalls. To her, such activities were hardly chores but more like recreation, she so thoroughly enjoyed the company of these living creatures. There had at one time been more animals about the place—chickens, a horse or two, and a fine collie dog—and, of course, sheep. Most of the other animals had long since been sold out of necessity, and the chickens and sheep were more than young Jamie could tend alone. As there were no neighbors nearby, Gracie and Callie were usually the only company the girl had. Her childlike concern for the two animals on this day went deeper than her young mind could even fathom. Her own fears were wrapped up in her anxiety for her two bovine friends—her fear of the unknown, of the mystical place they called Aberdeen that was supposed to fulfill all their dreams.

  Back inside the cottage again, she began preparing the morning’s porridge. She poured water from the kettle into a great iron pot, then slowly added handful after handful of oatmeal, stirring with her left hand, until it was creamy and thick. This would be their breakfast as well as her own lunch. She went about each job meticulously, with confidence, as if she had been at it forever—and in reality, that was very nearly the truth. When her mother died, Jamie had been but four. Gilbert hired a crofter’s daughter to help with the child for a while, but it soon became apparent that he could not afford the cost. By the time she was five, Jamie was almost completely self-sufficient. And it was not long before the entire little household, including her father, was completely in her competent care. Gilbert took it all rather in stride, never quite realizing just how well managed the affairs of his home were, considering the tender years of its mistress. He accepted food and drink gratefully, obliviously living day after day as if the whole proceeding was the most usual thing in the world. Yet deep inside, perhaps below the level of his conscious thought, he knew what a prize he possessed in his daughter. He rarely expressed even a hint that he knew she was invested with extraordinary gifts of ministration. But unmindful though he might have been of her unusual nature, she nevertheless meant the world to him. And so Jamie basked contentedly in love, if not in praise.