The Wicker Tree

by Robin Hardy

  'Of course I believe it. It says so in the Bible.'

  'Has anyone thought that through? Jesus is back. What happens next?' Lachlan was playing for time. Where was Delia? 'Yes, what happens if Jesus is back? There he is at Tel Aviv airport. Planes leaving for all over the world. Does he go east to meet the Dalai Lama? Does he schedule a meeting of Christendom at Rome, hosted by the Pope? Has America invited him to visit Ground Zero while offering him the Congressional Medal of Honour and his very own programme on the Fox Network?'

  While Beth listened to this horrific description of Jesus – as if he had returned to earth as a kind of travelling salesman for God – she saw with enormous clarity what had been obscured by sheer shock and all the fantasy going on around her. She was face to face with Steve's murderer. However it had happened, he had planned it. Jesus may have been for forgiving. God, the Father, in the Old Testament, was all about 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' Now she saw Lachlan very clearly; this clever sophisticate – Big Bill's typical European. The totally amoral, condescending murderer of her Steve was feet away from her, blaspheming.

  What Beth did next came from no plan, but simply a reflex driven by bitter, furious anger and hunger for revenge at any price.

  Shouting: 'Blasphemy, you murderer!' she ran straight at Lachlan as hard as she could. When she collided with him, her head lowered so it impacted with his gut, he crumpled, winded and in pain, staggering backwards to fall onto the great pile of kerosene-soaked kindling behind. Standing over him for no more than a second, with Steve vividly in her mind, she dropped Steve's hat and grabbed the burning flambeau from the stunned Eric and thrust it first into Lachlan's face and then into the kindling. The Laird's scream was almost lost in the crackling roar of the fire as it took off up the tree. Lachlan tried to rise but the flames had engulfed him. Almost every part of him was on fire. His hands seemed to claw upwards. But they were now two burning brands.

  Anyone who had been anywhere near the tree had now fled and as Beth, the flambeau still in her hand, turned quickly away from the horror of what she had just done, she saw that the villagers had retreated somewhat and were now talking animatedly amongst themselves. They had heard nothing of what had passed between Sir Lachlan and the Queen because of the piper playing the 'Laddie' song. Perhaps they expected something from her. Perhaps she should make a speech. Perhaps they all intended to kill her and deliver her to Beame. But somehow she didn't think so. Deprived of their leader they seemed a little lost. For some reason, the Queen of the May had killed Sir Lachlan. For some reason she had not been ritually killed and stuffed. For some reason she was alive and in a vengeful mood. Beth guessed that these were mysteries to them – and as to why she had not been stuffed, like the other Queens, that was a mystery to her too.

  What Beth did not know was that for the people of Tressock she was still in a sense the Goddess that the Queen of the May represented, almost an avatar – her very presence, alive amongst them, was divine.

  She decided that if, as seemed the case, they still found her kind of awesome (why otherwise had they not come forward when she killed Lachlan?) the best thing she could do was to play out her role with as much authority as possible.

  She waved the flambeau in the air, until the crowd, sensing this was a signal from her to attract their attention, fell completely silent.

  'I want all of you to go home. When you get there, pray for Steve. Pray for Lachlan. Pray to my Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness. I am the living Queen of the May. Now go home. Go! Go!'

  There was little hesitation. A muttered conversation between Peter McNeil, Murdoch and Danny, in which they kept staring curiously at her, continued after the vast majority had started back down the hill to Tressock. But they soon followed. She was left alone with the blazing tree, from which branches had started to crack and fall and upon which occasionally an offering, a toy or a clock, would explode in the heat.

  Now she prayed to God, her God, thanking Him for her deliverance. So far. And she asked further protection and help, which she just knew she was going to need if she was ever going to see Dallas and Texas again.

  'Lord,' she prayed, 'I know I'm not safe yet. I have just killed a man and broken one of your most important commandments. But I believe he was a deeply evil man and he had killed Steve who was as good a man as you could find. I ask for your forgiveness, not only for what I have just done. But, Lord, if I ever make it to a safe place in this country I just want to go straight home. I don't know what these people will do now. But if I am going to die, please take me straight to Steve so we can be together with You for ever and ever. Amen.'

  Now she saw that there was a figure approaching with a bird fluttering on his arm. This could only be the weird guy who talked in riddles. The guy with the rotary telephone.

  'Bless your beautiful hide,' he said as if he was pleased to see her alive and intact.

  Jack had walked past her far enough to see Sir Lachlan's remains. The Laird lay there like a grotesque charred marionette amid the ashes of the still fiercely burning tree. Nevermore fluttered around the tree cawing hoarsely, then flew back to Jack's shoulder. He strolled towards her, although she held her flambeau defensively pointed at him, and as he came he spoke to her, in his unique way, reassuring words, up to a point:

  'Our Gods have little quirks

  Their world and all its works

  Are subject to

  One weird taboo.

  They hate the pride of CEOs

  Conceited Moguls are their foes.

  For pretty girls they'll come disguised

  As Bulls or Swans for virgins prized.

  And you sweet Beth,

  They'll save from Death.

  But never think you know their rules.

  They love to make us humans fools.'

  'So who would worship gods like that?' asked Beth. 'Anyway, who the heck are you?'

  'The oracle round here. Or so it would appear,' answered Jack.

  'So you knew the future and you let it happen?'

  Jack nodded his head sadly.

  'That's right,' shouted Beth. 'You knew and you did nothing. Damn you to hell!'

  Her bellow of anger frightened Nevermore into flight. The bird cawed anxiously and took off across the hillside for the distant church tower. Jack laughed and went on laughing even after Beth had hurled the firebrand at him. All he did was turn and walk off in the direction of Tressock.

  The End Game

  BETH STOOD ALL alone alongside the grisly horror at the foot of the blazing tree. She found that she could gaze anywhere except at what remained of her mortal enemy. The series of fantastical events that had occurred since awakening to find Beame by her bed kaleidoscoped in her memory. She could still not grasp that they were real – but the merest glance at the crumbling, charred figure of Lachlan was so real that she could not bear to look longer.

  The eminence upon which the tree stood allowed her a view of Tressock below, its street lights just coming on in the gathering dusk. Beth could no longer hear the chattering of the retreating crowd, but the hillside still wore the guttering bonfires around which so recently humans had behaved like beasts, if beasts could ever imitate humans. These people had obeyed her, but for how long? She had not seen Delia in the crowd. She must be down there in the castle. However much the Laird's wife had already been involved in Steve's murder and the plot to kill the Queen of the May, the news that Beth had killed Lachlan would surely make her an implacable enemy. It was only slowly dawning on Beth that there was no one – absolutely no one – she had met or seen in Tressock who was not implicated in the murder of Steve, in her murder too. A lynch mob in Texas, that was something you could understand. People thought a wrong had been done. They took Justice into their own hands. Beth thought that was against God's law. It was plain evil. But this? Was Mary Hillier evil? Was Bella? Were the guys who'd played at the preach-in gig? She'd seen them all there in the crowd.

  Looking to the west, where the sun had onl
y just sunk below the hills, the silvery Sulis meandered through meadows in a valley skirted by pine woods. No road was visible. Beth knew that was the direction she must take. She could dimly see a village with tiny pin-pricks of light on top of a hill. There just had to be a telephone there so she could call the police. But Beth had a nagging memory that, back at the nuclear power station, the police she'd seen seemed to answer to Lachlan. She tried to think what she would do if she was in Texas. Suppose she had just killed the Mayor of Osceola in front of hundreds of witnesses, because she had reason to believe he had killed Steve – would the police be the first call she'd make? Hardly. She'd call her lawyer. Terry had mentioned the American consulate in Edinburgh as the place to go if she was in trouble. They'd help her for sure, and they'd have access to a lawyer. But the consulate number Terry had given her was in her room at the castle.

  Frightened to hesitate any longer, Beth started to run down the hillside towards the river. The terrain was covered with heather, patches of fern and nettles and, every now and then, a drainage ditch, which she either saw and jumped or else, several times, fell into, grazing her shins. Gorse bushes caught at the gossamer material of her dress, tearing it, and one of the gilded buckle shoes she was wearing lost its heel. Still, she was covering ground fast and was within about a quarter of a mile of the river when a figure loomed up before her. It seemed to be standing on a stile. The head was silhouetted against the shiny surface of the river beyond. It took a few seconds, while her headlong rush brought her closer, for her to see that it was a boy, about ten years old. His face was smiling and he had put out his hands to stop her colliding with the stile.

  'I know you,' he said. 'You're the May Queen.'

  Struggling to control her shock, Beth blurted out:

  'And who are you?'

  'I'm Angus. I brought you that note from the Laddie last night,' he said. 'I was supposed to give it you myself, but Mr Beame he said he'd do it.'

  Beth was overcome by an immediate feeling of warmth for this boy. He had seen Steve only last night. He had brought her that wonderful note in which Steve said that he still loved her – he still wanted to go back to Texas but, much more importantly, he still loved her.

  'I got the note. Thank you so much,' she managed to say.

  'The Laddie shoulda brought his shooters,' said Angus. 'What's a cowboy without his shooters?'

  'Did you see how he… what happened… to Steve… the Laddie?' What an impossible question to ask the kid, she thought. But she desperately wanted an answer.

  'My parents don't allow me outta the house over May Day. "When you're a man," is what they keep saying. It's so unfair. But they been gone to the May Day's Eve picnic and I'm here aren't I? They canna stop me.'

  Beth looked back up the hill at the still blazing tree. It was a long way from where they stood, at least a mile she reckoned.

  'So what have you seen while they were at the picnic?' she asked, wondering if he could possibly have seen her killing Lachlan.

  'I saw crazy Jack comin' back just now. He said…'

  'What? What did he say?'

  'It's what my dad calls gibberish… Jack said: Horror… upon horror's head! Something like that. Then I saw the tree burning up there. I thought if I go up there, my mum and dad'll see me. So I watched from down here and saw you running this way. Where are you goin'?'

  Beth hated telling lies. Even white lies to spare folk's feelings were a problem for her. But now she saw no alternative. To lie successfully to Angus she must discover what he already knew of the truth. But how? Her hesitation seemed to be making Angus nervous. The innocent question asked direct was worth trying.

  'I'll tell you where I'm going, but first – why did you think that the Laddie should have had his shooters?'

  'To frighten away the hunters. No Laddie has ever had shooters, my dad said. 'Cause I asked him. But no Laddie was ever a real cowboy like Steve. My dad had to admit that if the Laddie had shooters it would make the hunt more exciting.'

  'So what happens at the end of the hunt? Do you know?'

  'No, that's what the grown-ups call the Tressock Mystery. Mum says: When you're fourteen. When you're no longer a boy. Then you'll know. It's a grown-up game. A bit like charades. So where are you going?'

  Beth's plan had been forming as they spoke.

  'You see those lights on that hill over there?' She pointed across the valley.

  'You mean Kirkallan? It's just a wee village. No very nice people either, in my mum's opinion,' said Angus.

  'Well nice or not, I've decided to hide out there. As part of the game, the Queen of the May has to hide till the morning, then they find her and bring her back to Tressock to be crowned. Angus, will you help me find the best way to get there, so that no one from Tressock sees me?'

  Beth was relieved that no further lies were needed. Angus seemed delighted to participate in a game from which he had hitherto been excluded. He led the way, whispering warnings about obstacles such as rocks and ditches, until they picked up a sheep's trail which took them straight to the tow-path along the banks of the Sulis. Around a bend in the river they could see a stone bridge. It consisted of five arches, three of which were planted in the fast flowing water.

  'There's a road over the bridge where people might see us if we use it to cross to the other side,' said Angus. 'The tow-path goes under the near arch, like. See?'

  Beth saw that the tow-path was indeed leading straight under the near side of the bridge. But if they didn't use the bridge to cross, and she could see the risk, they still had to cross the river somewhere in order to climb the hills to Kirkallan.

  'Why don't we just swim across right here?' she asked.

  'Swim? Here?' Angus seemed to be considering the possibility, but shook his head.

  Perhaps he can't swim, thought Beth.

  'Leeches,' he said.

  'What?'

  'Suck your blood,' added Angus. 'If we go quiet under the bridge, my dad's boat is moored a coupla hundred yards further on.'

  She had been wrong to doubt him, Beth thought, as they left the comparative light of the midsummer dusk for the dank darkness under the arch. But Angus had stopped just in front of her, so that she bumped into him. He pushed her away from him as he shouted:

  'I did it! I did it like you said! The Queen's here. Come and get her.'

  The instantaneous terror that gripped Beth made her legs start to give way under her. She thought for no more than an instant of diving into the water and swimming for it, but there were already men in the water wading towards her and other men crowding in along the tow path from both sides of the bridge, amongst them Beame, with Delia at his side. As Beame grabbed her and held her on high, like a trophy, she heard Angus, his child's voice whining with anxiety that he might not get his prize: 'But you promised that next year… That's just not fair…' he was saying to someone, perhaps Delia, perhaps his mum.

  But that was in the world Beth knew she had already left. She tried to concentrate now on the world to come, as certain as any human being can be that that she had earned her place in heaven. As she waited for Beame's needle, and the oblivion it would bring, Beth's heaven was already peopled with Steve and her mother and her music, that music she could hear in her inner ear where no other sound would ever penetrate.

  Nine Months Later

  SIR LACHLAN WOULD have disapproved. His sudden and totally unexpected death in the accident at the Nuada employees' annual picnic had left Lady Morrison with substantial (and unplanned for) inheritance taxes and it was generally accepted that opening the castle to tourists, starting with the Easter holiday, was unavoidable if she was to keep the estate from being sold. It would be open for four weeks and then closed until July when the schools' summer holidays began.

  One of the first groups to arrive was a busload of American Ivy League college kids, exchange students from Edinburgh University, majoring in European History, doing the castles and the cathedrals of Britain. Delia had decided to train a pair
of docents by leading the tour around the castle herself, starting with the great entrance hall, with its battle flags and its rich collection of dead animals' heads.

  She was herself later to recognise that her introduction to each room was too long, her anecdotes perhaps too British to amuse students for whom the portrait of an old red coat general who sent a message to his superior saying 'pecavi,' meaning 'I have (conquered the province of) Sindh,' required too much explanation. In short it was not altogether surprising that two of the students detached themselves from the tour and set about exploring the spiral staircases, looking into rooms conspicuously marked 'private', and finding their way down into the labyrinthine passages that led to the kitchen and the Queens' Room.

  It was there that Beame found a giggling co-ed actually trying the handle of the Queens' Room door. Her male companion, although slightly over-awed by Beame's bulk and his ferocious expression, was quick thinking enough to say, 'She's looking for the toilet.'

  'Upstairs, Miss,' said Beame pointing back to the spiral stair. 'Down here's private,' he added.

  'What about torture chambers?' asked the young man. 'Don't all these real old castles have those?'

  'Yeah and, like, dungeons. Got any dungeons?' asked the girl, quite forgetting her need for the toilet.

  Whereupon Beame bellowed a great laugh. Not a humorous sound.

  'Why, Lassie?' he asked. 'Would you like to be walled up in one for all eternity?'

  Perhaps it was more his terrible laugh than what he actually said that frightened them into hurrying up the stair to rejoin the tour.

  Inside the Queens' Room the rosy light bathed all the motionless young women in its pinkish glow. Beame had ended up by doing Beth's eyes great justice. They were just the correct colour. Right beside her an empty throne already awaited the new Queen of the May.

  If no miracle had saved Beth, it seemed to most of the population of Tressock that over in the Kelso Hospital's Maternity Wing a miracle was indeed under way. Lolly was having a baby. At seven pounds four ounces her little son represented the hopes of a whole town. Lolly did not know that Delia had jokingly suggested he be 'offered' to the sun. Although Sir Lachlan's mantle had descended upon her shoulders, even he would have found that a difficult proposition to sell to the people of Tressock. Delia had anyway promised that there would, as ever, be a new Laddie and a new Queen. Little Steve would live a much cherished life in Tressock. Beame, who had retrieved his father's hat, wanted to give it to him as soon as he learned to ride.