“I found oot a valuable piece o’ somethin’, Gilbert, aboot them blaggarts,” Lundie continued; “somethin’ they’ll be wantin’ t’ keep quiet. An’ that old jackal’ll pay a heap t’ keep it from bein’ known, too. He couldna afford not t’ pay once he knows what I know.”
“Frederick, ye’ve drunk too much of this ale.”
“I’m not drunk, man.” Lundie’s voice was steady, unflinching. Almost lethal.
“Then ye’re crazy!”
“I’ll get my due from ’em, an’ there’s nothin’ more sane than that!”
“Ye’re talkin’ about bleedin’ a rich an’ powerful man, Frederick. Men have killed for less. Ye can’t be serious!”
“That’s why we must work t’gither,” Lundie reasoned. “They wouldna dare kill me if they knew there was someone oot there t’ blab the minute somethin’ was t’ happen t’ me. Wi’ two o’ us, there’d be no danger. ’Tis a perfect setup, an’ no risk fer ye because they won’t e’en ken who ye are.”
“Then why use me at all?” asked Gilbert. “It only matters that they think someone else knows.”
“Them cursed Graystones are too wily fer that. They’d know. I’d hae t’ hae proof t’ protect mysel’. An’ besides, what do ye hae against makin’ yersel’ some fast loot, an’ bringin’ the rat doon in the process?”
“I’ll not make my money that way,” Gilbert replied. “I have no taste for such revenge. I just want to take my daughter and get far away from here.”
“I ne’er took ye fer a ‘holier than thou’!”
“Ye’ll not intimidate me, Lundie.”
“I meant t’ do none o’ that,” Lundie said. “Maybe I hae had a wee bit too much o’ the ale. But I’m dead serious aboot everythin’ else. I need yer help, because if somethin’ was t’ happen t’ me, I’d need someone I could trust to speak oot fer me—fer my family’s sake. Someone I would know wouldn’t take Graystone’s side.”
“For your family’s sake, then, give up this foolishness.”
“I canna. Graystone swore I’d ne’er hae another job in these parts again. I hae no choice.”
Gilbert leaned back heavily against the stone wall. “I’m sorry, my friend, but I cannot have any part in such a thing.”
“I’ve always respected ye, MacLeod,” Lundie said, seeming at last to give up on his plan. “Ye’ve had a rough time o’ it, but ye kept t’ yer principles. Where e’er ye go an’ what e’er ye do, ye can always be prood o’ that.”
Pride!
How Gilbert had longed for it! Somehow he did not feel very proud of anything at the moment. The word from Lundie’s lips seemed to jolt him back to the reality of his desperate situation. For a moment he forgot everything else.
When he glanced across the table, he realized his companion had continued talking but that he had heard nothing more. As he tuned his ears again to the sound of his voice, it was only in time to hear his final words.
“I’ll go it alone, then,” concluded the factor solemnly.
————
That night Gilbert walked slowly home across the moor. It was dark and cold, the air full of the approaching winter. A breeze whispered dismal sayings over the boggy ground, and in its peculiar way seemed to clear Gilbert’s mind.
He had managed to depart The Ebony Stallion with his integrity intact, but out there on the cold, unrelenting heath, he began to wonder if he would regret his decision. How different his honorable notions might seem if he heard of Lundie’s sudden wealth and good fortune! Would he then consider himself a fool for his decision of this night?
He had made many honorable decisions in his life, and they had done little for him. In fact, it seemed he had not moved forward at all, but rather backward, far back. Graystone would no doubt be willing enough to pay to protect his secret if it was as serious as Lundie indicated. More willing to pay than shed another’s blood, certainly. He could afford the money. Yet how was a man’s pride to be anticipated? Graystone would be sure to seek revenge on anyone trying to extort money from him.
But on the other hand, wouldn’t it be a harmless enough ruse? Did he not deserve something more from his efforts than a mere twenty pounds?
Gilbert was not a man of faith, but from somewhere higher than the peat moor, like the very breath of Donachie—the mountain he could almost have seen in the distance had it been daylight—he heard a new whisper. He heard the quiet words of his father, the finest man he had ever known—words of honor. And he could not shake them from his mind; he would not shake them.
Honor was all he had left.
5
Parting
The cold increased over the next several days. A chill wind raced down from Donachie and the highlands beyond, stripping the leaves from the trees and leaving the valley as stark and gray as the blossomless, scraggly heather shrubs.
Gilbert went to the mill no more, but spent most of his time shambling about his property. With a mournful sense of loss, he looked upon each dear thing that surrounded him. “Will it be the last time I walk out to the wall on the upper pasture?” he would murmur. Or, “How many times have I mucked out this byre? Well, this will be the last.”
He had scarcely thought of it before, but now he realized how deeply a part of him all these places were, all the sheds and walls and stalls and fences he had either built or repaired. Memories of Alice flooded his mind wherever he went; for this had, after all, been her land, not his. And he had now lost it all! Silent tears filled his eyes with each remembrance of her pale, sad eyes.
Graystone had given him only two weeks to sever the ties and clear out. It was scarcely enough time. But there was no choice. And would any amount of time be enough to sever the dreams of a lifetime?
The day Graystone’s stockman came to lead Gracie and Callie away, Jamie burst into tears.
“Papa,” she cried, “I promised them they’d come wi’ us!”
“I’m sorry, child,” he replied, his heart breaking for sorrow at what he had been forced to do.
He rubbed the back of his sleeve across his eyes, took Jamie’s hand, and led her to the cottage. “We’ll not be needin’ a bo in the city,” he said cheerfully, through eyes that had grown red of late. “Why, a man’ll bring us our milk right to our door fresh every mornin’. No more milkin’ for you, Jamie. Ye’ll be goin’ to school and to fancy parties instead!”
“I want t’ stay here, Papa!”
“Come now. We’ll be makin’ a lady of ye. Remember?”
Jamie sniffed back her tears and tried to match her father’s bravado. How could she know how false his cheerful face was? What child is ever capable of comprehending his parent’s silent pain?
With a portion of his money Gilbert bought a tired old mare to hitch to his cart. They would pack what would fit onto the cart and thus carry their possessions to the city, there to make what he hoped would be a successful new beginning. The animal served to cheer Jamie considerably, not taking the place of her two friends, but at least helping to console her at their loss. And it helped, too, that her papa promised she could ride upon the cart whenever she grew tired of walking—just like a princess, he said.
With two days of their tenure left, as night drew down around them, Gilbert tucked Jamie into place on her bed, and the moment she was asleep he kissed her gently and slipped into his coat. He would take one last late-night walk upon the moor and bid goodbye to the place that had occasionally served to comfort him.
Though the moon was up, giving him ample light to walk by, the wind was blowing at full force and would not be kind to the cough deep in his lungs. It had grown worse in the last weeks. He looked toward the sky and saw, in the moonlight, heavy, dark clouds rolling in. It would surely rain before morning had dawned. He tried not to think that they might have to travel in such weather.
He made his way west over the lowland pasture. It was still green and would remain so at least until the snows fell. But it had never been green enough to sustain more than a few she
ep. Sheep needed space, more of it than he had. That was why he had tried to invest in crops. Oats and barley had flourished elsewhere around him, but Gilbert’s timing had been poor. Those last few seasons had been difficult for everyone, but especially for someone like himself, starting new. He glanced to the south, toward the field where he had planted his oats. It looked only a little more barren now than it had at harvest time.
“I’m just not a farmer by nature,” he said to himself as he walked along. “Just wait till I get to the city—that’s where I belong!” He had said the words so many times he had almost begun to believe them.
He climbed the rocky incline to the upper pasture. Here the wind was even more persistent, and he had to hold his hat on with his left hand. It was only a short distance further to the “dry stane dyke” that divided the heath from the pasture. The wall of dry stones had been a futile attempt to keep out the arid bog; like everything else he set his hand to, it was a failure. The bracken and brush had pushed some distance into the pasture, and in many places the wall itself had crumbled as if in silent defeat.
He paused a moment before attempting to climb over the wall. The wind whistled in his ears, and his shoulders jerked as his lungs contracted in a painful spasm of coughing. A certain heavy disquietude crept under his skin.
He shivered.
Was it only the wind he heard?
He shrugged and made a vain attempt to laugh. “’Tis only the spell of the moor,” he said aloud. Then he climbed over the wall. In years past he had leaped over it in a single bound, but that strength was far gone now.
As his feet touched the ground, another involuntary shiver trembled through his body.
Ah, this is an evil place! he thought. Why do I come here?
He labored on until ahead in the eerie darkness loomed the dark shapes of the craggy granite boulders that dotted the moor with irregular symmetry. The constant howling of the wind now knifed painfully into his ears, and his breathing came in short wheezing gasps. He turned toward one of the huge rocks where he could crouch down at its back and find a few moments respite from the savage elements.
He was only two or three paces from the rocks when something shot out from the darkness toward him. Before he had time to react, he was caught in a vise-like grip. In the darkness he could see no face and the voice was muffled by the whining of the increasing wind. He struggled desperately until he saw the gleam of a razor-sharp skean-dhu flash in the moonlight.
“What—what d’ye want?” he gasped. “I have no money!”
“Money!” spat the voice of his attacker. “You’ll be lucky, you broken old man if that’s all I take from you!”
He loosened his grip on Gilbert, but before he could escape the man flung his hand with a sickening blow into Gilbert’s face. Gilbert stumbled backward and, tripping over some loose rock, crumbled to the ground. He could already feel the warm blood oozing from a cut under his right eye.
“That’ll teach you to try to blacken my name, you miserable scum!” The man stood glowering over Gilbert, still brandishing the gleaming dirk.
“I dinna ken yer meanin’!” shouted Gilbert, in his terror forgetting his speech he had worked so hard to polish as a landowner.
“Blackmail, you lout!” shouted his assailant over the wail of the wind.
“’Tisn’t true.”
Even in the darkness Gilbert could see this man was not Mackenzie Graystone, although there was a certain similarity in the timbre of the voice. He had never seen either of Graystone’s two sons, but he had little time to ponder who else it might be, for the evil laugh of his attacker forced his mind to the single question of survival.
The man had grabbed him by the collar and yanked him up to his feet, only to beat him down again. Gilbert was in little condition to offer much resistance.
“You’ll learn to keep your mouth shut or the same will happen to you as happened to your dirty accomplice. You’re lucky I have no more taste for blood tonight.”
“What d’ ye mean? I have no accomplice. I swear t’ ye—”
“And you think I believe what you’d say, you bounder! The factor’s dead, and so will you be if ever you breathe a word of what you know.”
“I—I dinna ken a thing—he ne’er told me what it was!”
“Ha! I’ve heard from the tenants how the two of you blighters were thick as thieves. They said you were up to no good, but only I know what it was about.”
“’Tis not true!”
For his only answer the man kicked Gilbert in the soft of his belly, sending a sharp throb of pain from his ribs. As the poor man staggered backward, the younger man sheathed his knife and began thrashing him about the head with his fists. Struggling with what little strength remained within his worn frame, Gilbert tried to resist, knowing now that if he didn’t, he could well be a dead man before morning—dead like his friend Frederick Lundie.
The ominous hand was raised one more time against him when Gilbert reached up and grabbed weakly at it. He caught only the sleeve before it was jerked away from him. He fell back again, his fingers clutched around something cold and hard. The fight had torn from him his last remnant of strength and he reeled back and slumped unconscious, to the dry stony ground.
The assailant kicked him once more, and when the limp body made no response he spat upon it.
“I’ll let the moor finish my work for me, you cur!” he said, then turned and strode away across the heath in the direction from which he had come.
The wind did not once let up, even to succor the hapless victim that lay exposed to its vicious blight. Gilbert lay unmoving for hours until the cold sting of falling rain later in the night finally brought him to the edge of his senses. But he could barely move, for his limbs were numb with cold and pain, and the pain in his chest was enough to send him into a fresh faint. In the delirium of his fevered brain, he knew it was his destiny to die out there on the lonely moor, with the rain beating down upon his wasted corpse.
He thought of the jaunty lad who had confidently left his father’s home, promising to return as a great man. What would he have done then if he had been able to see himself as he lay now? Oh, he had been such a fool! This was no prodigal-son tale in which his father would kill the fatted calf for the feast upon his return. If only he could see his father again! But it was not to be. He had left the home of his father as a young fool, bent on a dream that never was, to become a man he never could have been! He had wallowed about, feeding upon the husks thrown to the pigs by the laird of Aviemere, sinking deeper and deeper into the mire himself, until now. And here he would die!
If only he had not left, this nightmare would never have been!
Suddenly he thought of Jamie. If he had not left Donachie, she would never have been either.
“Oh, Jamie, my bairn!” he moaned.
The thought of his child, alone in the cottage waiting for him, stirred some dormant strength within his pain-racked body. He forced his legs to move, then grasping clumsily at the wet rock next to him with one hand, he pulled himself to his knees, and at last to his feet. He realized now that his other hand still clutched rigidly to something. He opened his hand, covered with blood where the sharp edges of the object had punctured his flesh. It sparkled golden in the moonlight and he saw flashes of gems. What was it? A button or a cufflink? He closed his hand upon it again, not thinking to drop it into his pocket, then he stumbled forward on his last trek across his moor.
Half walking, half stumbling, sometimes crawling, he made his way at last to the fine cottage that had once been his. He had scarcely the strength to turn the latch, but he managed to do so somehow, then fell into the room, feebly calling his daughter’s name.
———
Jamie had been dreaming.
The rain pounding down outside had intruded into her sleep, though it made only a dull sound as it fell onto the soft thatch of the roof, and she dreamed that hundreds of tiny pebbles were being hurled toward her. Alone and weeping, there was no o
ne in her dream to help her. She had tried to run, but always the torrent of pebbles pursued her. She screamed, but her voice would utter no sound, and her papa was far away and couldn’t hear. Her legs were heavy and couldn’t run. At length she fell, and then the pebbles caught up to her at last. Just when she was certain she was about to die from the deluge, she heard him. He called her name, distant and soft at first, then it grew louder and louder . . .
The blast of freezing air from the open door finally awoke her from her nightmare. But she continued to hear her name. Was she still dreaming?
Suddenly her eyes opened and she saw her father lying senseless on the floor, the wind howling through the open door behind him, threatening to make an end of what little fire was left on the hearth.
“Papa!” she cried, flying from her bed toward him.
“My little bairn,” he managed to whisper through his unconsciousness.
It was he who had needed rescuing all along, for the pebbles had been aimed at him, not her! He was so bruised and battered, with dried blood about his face and coming from between his fingers that well she might have imagined he had been caught in a shower of stones.
She ran to the door and slammed it shut so nothing else could hurt her dear papa. Managing to rouse him, she led him to her own bed in its warm corner by the hearth. She peeled from him as much of the wet clothing as would yield to her efforts, then covered him with all the blankets she could find in the place. But even after she had stirred the fire into a roaring blaze, he continued to shake violently with combined cold and shock from the beating and exposure. She made tea and tried to make him drink, but he choked and gagged on the hot liquid.
At length Jamie contented herself with sitting by her sleeping father’s side with his hand between her two soft palms. Then the golden cufflink fell onto the floor. She had never seen it before and knew it could be nothing her papa had ever worn. She didn’t even know what a cufflink was. Could it have been meant as a gift for her? She wiped away the dried blood from its edges to examine it more closely. But it wasn’t any use, for tears filled her eyes.
Jamie MacLeod Page 4
