Jamie MacLeod

by Michael Phillips

  “It was a mistake to come here,” she murmured, sobbing quietly now. “Oh, God, why did you let me come here? I don’t belong with these people! I will never even be able to be a servant, much less a lady! Let me just go away somewhere!”

  The sounds of Andrew stirring from his nap interrupted her thoughts.

  All at once she remembered why she had come. It wasn’t for herself. It wasn’t because of the laird. It had nothing to do with being a lady. She and Emily had prayed for that dear, lonely child who needed someone to love him. Whatever else might come of it, she could still give herself to him. Even if he seemed to be a contented boy, oblivious to the turmoil surrounding him, she had still been sent to love him. And she could not turn her back on that.

  She rose from the bed and went through the adjoining door to the nursery. Standing in his bed Andrew held out his arms to her. She smiled, as fresh tears filled her eyes.

  “How about a walk outside this afternoon, Andrew!” she said. “Could you use some fresh air, too?”

  She dressed him and within twenty minutes the two found themselves standing in the fragrant afternoon breeze.

  Unconsciously they made their way along the tree-lined drive, and were halfway to the factor’s friendly cottage before Jamie realized her unplanned intention. Andrew walked beside her, his small hand reaching above his shoulders to keep it enclosed in hers. The air was clean after two days of rain, and the smell of every plant, every tree, every blade of grass greeted their nostrils, mingling delightfully with the soil and the aroma of distant fields of grain, covered over with the mystery carried from the high regions of Donachie down into the valley on the gentle mountain breeze. The sky was blue, with abundant patches of billowing whiteness and not quite yet willing to relinquish the stormy control they had enjoyed in the earlier part of the week. Soon Jamie’s head was clear and her good spirits restored, and she and Andrew chatted merrily as they walked along.

  They had just made the turn off the main drive toward the factor’s when in the distance, standing on the highway beyond the gate to the estate, she saw Iona Lundie peering into the grounds toward the house. She was hardly close enough to see her expression, but she could feel, rather than see, that same cold, foreboding gaze. The woman gave no indication that she saw Jamie at all.

  Jamie shuddered and quickened her pace.

  Her mind was still on the unnerving woman when she came to herself and found that they were approaching the Ellices’ yard. She let herself in through the gate, then knocked on the door. The factor was gone, but Mrs. Ellice greeted them warmly.

  “I hope a visit is allowed without an invitation,” Jamie said.

  “Hoots! You’re welcome anytime!” the woman laughed. “Especially if you bring the dear child with you!”

  She went about setting a kettle on to boil, and soon had laid out a rather nice tea, including a freshly baked loaf of bread and a slab of butter.

  “Come along,” said their hostess. “You and Andrew share tea with me this afternoon. George’s out in the fields. With the sun back out, they’re tryin’ to get at the grain.”

  Andrew already had a chunk of bread and was about to dig his fingers into the butter. Mrs. Ellice laughed at his antics and reached over to help him.

  “Do you know Iona Lundie?” Jamie asked after a moment.

  “Oh, that one!” the factor’s wife replied grimly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t want to speak unfairly of her, for the Lord knows she has had a hard life. But she does bring much of it on herself.”

  “She told me her husband was killed.”

  “Aye! It happened immediately before Mr. Ellice and I came. Frederick Lundie was the factor before my George, you know. As I heard it, he fell from his horse out on the moor and broke his neck.”

  “Does—does the woman blame the Graystones?”

  “Could be. You see, just before the accident—if accident it was—he had been let go of his position on the estate.”

  “You said he was the factor?”

  “Aye. And the cause must’ve been something serious: the laird—that would be Mackenzie Graystone—wanted him cleared off the estate as soon as he could get his family packed up. Must have been a hard blow for the man.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “They went nowhere. The man fell from his horse before the time was out. Then the woman went to stay with her sister in the village. But her troubles were only beginning; the following summer she lost her eldest son in a drunken brawl.”

  “That’s terrible. The poor woman!”

  “Yes, I expect she blames it all on the Graystones. But it seems these were things that just couldn’t be helped.”

  “She said she knew my father,” Jamie ventured, “and that he died about the same time as her husband.”

  “Oh?” replied Mrs. Ellice with a raised eyebrow. “I thought you were from Aberdeen.”

  “Not to begin with,” said Jamie, who then proceeded to relate what little she knew of her father and her own background, as well as what Iona Lundie had told her. “So now I’m wondering if it’s possible my father actually had land near here at one time,” she concluded.

  “No doubt it’s possible,” said the factor’s wife. “But don’t take everything that woman says seriously, for she is so full of bitterness, she might say anything against the Graystones—truth or not.”

  “I understand. But if my father’s land was somewhere close by, I suppose—I just think—well, it would be nice to see it. Somehow it might help me to feel closer to him and know him better.”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Ellice about this if you like. Maybe he can help you find out.”

  “Yes, thank you . . . but—”

  Jamie hesitated.

  “What is it, child?”

  “He wouldn’t say anything to the laird, would he? I wouldn’t want him to think I was of the same mind as Mrs. Lundie.”

  “Be assured, Mr. Ellice will use discretion in the matter.”

  ———

  Late that night Jamie lay wide awake in her bed. Her mind raced with thought of her father and fragmentary glimpses of a childhood she knew so little of. Sleep was impossible.

  Was it true that poverty had forced him from his land?

  And how did he come to hold land in the first place?

  Since her instruction under Mr. Avery and Emily Gilchrist, Jamie knew more of such things than she had before. She now realized how rare, indeed, it was for one of peasant stock to rise to that position. It was happening more in the south, in England, these days Mr. Avery had told her. But in the north the stations of society remained as they had been for centuries.

  If her father had come to own land, how crushing it must have been for him to lose it! But again came the question—how could he have come by it? Finlay MacLeod and his father before him had always been peasant shepherds. Could it have come from her mother’s side? But she knew even less about Alice MacLeod’s family than she did her father’s.

  Jamie sighed.

  What did it all matter anyway? Would knowing the answers to all these questions actually change anything?

  Perhaps not.

  Except . . . except she wanted to know her parents! That was what she longed for most of all. What orphan does not want to know his family roots? How she longed to know the man who died in her arms wanting better things for her, to know the woman who wanted only love for her daughter!

  Involuntary tears had begun streaming down her face.

  Oh, Mama . . . oh, Papa! how I miss you—how I need you! she cried out the desolation of her heart. Oh, God, I am so alone. Help me, Lord! Help me know them!

  Suddenly the words which had so long ago been planted into her heart flooded her conscious mind:

  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help . . . The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee. .
. .

  Oh, Lord, she thought, thank you for that promise! Help me not only to know them . . . Help me to know you, Lord!

  Comforted in the peace that she was not alone, Jamie fell asleep with the precious words—strangely mingled between her grandfather’s thick brogue and Mr. Avery’s precise English tongue—running through her mind.

  27

  A Midnight Intruder

  When Jamie started awake, she thought the cause had been her dream.

  She had been standing on a great stretch of barren moorland searching for her father and mother. At last she had found them, but they stood in the distance, separated from her by a wide gulf which was too deep to cross. She called to them, and unlike most dream-voices, the sound from her mouth was loud and echoed across the chasm. They called back to her, reaching out their hands, imploring her to come to them. But there was no traversing the void that separated them.

  Then from in the distance, on their side of the heathland, approached Iona Lundie. She had a fearsome expression on her face and walked deathlike toward them, screaming at Jamie’s father, accusing him of killing her husband. She was picking up stones from the ground and hurling them toward him. They were pelting his face, and he seemed powerless to defend himself. Jamie was shouting at her to stop, but now her voice was empty and hollow and swallowed up by the wind. It began to rain, then the rain came in torrents, and now she could no longer see her mother at her father’s side. Still the woman was hurling rocks at the poor man who was her father. She could see that his face was bleeding and a look of contorted agony and confusion was in his eyes. Still the rain poured down. Gradually the width of the chasm shrank and she came closer and closer, but still she could not shout or reach him. But now the woman was not Iona Lundie at all. It was not a woman but a man, standing over her father. The rocks had ceased, but still came the rain, and still his face bled, and still he looked confused and tormented. And she was no longer herself but a little girl, helplessly, frantically trying to reach her father. But it was no use. Now the man was coming closer to him. Now—yes, she could see his face! And—could she?—yes—but how was it possible? She had never seen the man before. Yet she recognized his face! She had seen it somewhere—but where? Now the face was fading. There were no rocks in the man’s hand. But he clutched something—something that flashed in the black night. She looked at the man’s face again. It was a blur. Still she tried to see into it, to see where she had—

  Suddenly Jamie awoke trembling and cold with sweat.

  A noise had awakened her!

  A noise from Andrew’s room. It had not been part of her dream!

  In the deathly quiet of night she lay still and listened. It must have been only the child stirring in his sleep. But no! There it was again! The floorboards creaked. Someone must be walking about!

  She shot upright in her bed, her heart thumping in her ears. Yes—someone was in Andrew’s room!

  Suddenly a picture of Iona Lundie flashed into her mind, and with it the memory of the awful glare she had given Andrew.

  I’ll ne’er be happy until I see every one o’ them cauld in their graves!

  The woman’s words re-echoed in Jamie’s mind and filled her with dread. That the woman could be capable of treachery there could be no doubt. But how could she have gotten into the house in the dead of night?

  Jamie jumped silently from her bed, threw a wrap about her shoulders, and crept on tiptoe toward the door between the two rooms. But what could she possibly hope to do against such a large and undoubtedly powerful woman? She looked hastily about, then grabbed up the heavy iron poker from the hearth. Trembling with terror she approached the door again, gripped the handle with her shaking hand, took a deep breath, then flung open the door.

  The figure she saw bathed in the moonlight streaming through the window was not Iona Lundie’s at all. It was tall, broad, and masculine, and was bent over Andrew’s bed, gazing upon the sleeping face.

  As the door snapped open, both startled and angered by the sudden intrusion, Edward Graystone swung sharply around. The moonlight also reflected moisture in his eyes.

  A tense moment of silence followed, both too surprised to speak.

  The laird broke the spell, his eyes flashing darkly as if to hide their vulnerability.

  “Not only an eavesdropper, but a common sneak as well!” he seethed.

  “No!” she cried. “I was just—”

  She stopped abruptly. It seemed she was always having to defend herself to this man. But why should she? She had done nothing he would not have wanted her to do had there indeed been an intruder. The unfairness of his accusation welled up within her.

  “I believe I was hired to care for the child,” she replied boldly, all the timidity gone from her voice. “And what am I to think, with someone creeping about this room in the middle of the night? What else would you expect me to—?”

  “Why you insolent little hussy!” he shouted back. “I’ll not be spoken to in that tone!”

  When she had first seen him, the tears standing in his eyes, she had felt momentary pity for him. She had even been willing to think that his sharp tone meant nothing and was only the result of his being caught thus exposed. But that sympathy was suddenly obliterated in the frustration over his treatment of his son, a frustration that had threatened to explode the past several days.

  “Ye deserve nae better!” she retorted, forgetting for the moment all the fine speech she had learned in Aberdeen. “E’en if I were a sneak, it’d be nae worse than the coward ye are yersel’! Not man enouch t’ show yer affections t’ yer ain son when the bairn’s awake an’ can git the comfort frae them!”

  “Shut up!” he yelled. “And get out of here! Out of this house, do you understand! I don’t want to see your face around here again!”

  By now the awakened Andrew was crying in his bed.

  Standing stock-still, Jamie waited to see what the father might do. Surely if he could only be brought to hold the boy once in his arms, surely then the walls of his heart would soften.

  But he remained where he was, his face contorted in mingled anger and self-recrimination, the tears struggling to rise once more. Still he made no move toward the child.

  At last, able to stand it no longer, Jamie dropped the poker from her hand and rushed to the sobbing baby. She scooped him into her arms, kissed him, and softly crooned in his ear.

  “There, there, my wee bairn! ’Tis all right. Jamie has ye noo.”

  She laid her cheek against his wet face, and as she spoke his cries gradually calmed. After a few moments she turned again to face the father.

  But he was gone.

  With Andrew still in her arms, she turned and walked to the rocking chair and sat down.

  She hardly knew what to think. The pain she had observed in the laird’s face was so unexpected. Would he have perhaps gone to Andrew if she had given him the chance? What if he wasn’t in truth like those names she had hurled at him? She had been wrong to judge him in her heart, and especially to call him a coward to his face!

  “Oh, wee Andrew,” she sighed softly, “I don’t know what to think of your father.”

  She rocked and sang softly until both she and Andrew fell asleep in the rocking chair.

  She awoke to the full light of day, Andrew still asleep, snuggled in the crook of her arm. She immediately recalled the events of the night and was filled with despair. What had she done! She had spoiled everything! When she had left Aberdeen, it had been with a strong sense of purpose in her heart. God had been leading her here, she thought. But suddenly all that purpose and sense of mission was over. She had been dismissed! And she had no one to blame but herself and the foolishness of her untamed emotions and unbridled tongue!

  Oh, why had she allowed her anger to get the best of her? What did she have to be angry about, anyway? What possible business was it of hers if a man she hardly knew held or did not hold his son? Who was she to think it concerned her?

  She had spoken rudely and
disrespectfully, lashing out at the man, without ever stopping to pray for him or consider his own personal struggles.

  Oh, Lord, she prayed silently, forgive me! Curb my tongue, Lord, and help me to get the beam out of my own eye before I try to take the sliver out of someone else’s. Oh, God—please let me have another chance! If not for my sake, then for Andrew’s . . . and for his father’s. I know you sent me here. Please don’t allow my own vanity and stupidity to get in the way of your purpose. And comfort the laird in his pain, God, and somehow draw him closer to his son.

  Andrew began to stir, turned in her lap, and looked up in her face, his bright eyes and smile saying that for him the night had never been. Jamie wept inside, thinking that she might never see him again, just when the bond between them was beginning to extend deep into her heart.

  But as she had completed her prayer, despair had been replaced by resolve. If she must leave Aviemere, there was one thing she must do first. If the laird had told her to leave, she no longer had anything to fear from him—nothing but his menacing eyes and intimidating voice. But even those she was willing to brave if she might possibly manage to reach that tender spot she had seen exposed for the briefest of moments last night. But this time she would not face him with anger, but with humility—and with God’s love for the man going before her.

  She dressed Andrew, then found Bea and asked if she could mind the boy for a while. She then went to her own room, washed up, and changed out of her night clothes. She took a fleeting glance about the room that had been hers for such a short time. By later this same day she might well be packing her things and leaving this place.