by Kate Forsyth
‘Weeeell, ye ken this is my part o’ the world,’ Jack said, laughing, his brogue exaggeratedly broad. ‘No, really. I was born on Bute, only a hop, skip and a jump away. I’m on my summer break. What are you doing here?’
‘Travelling with friends,’ she answered.
Just then, Phil and Eliot came rushing down the stairs behind her. They paused when they saw Margot. She said, hot and flustered, ‘Phil, do you remember Mr Mackail?’
‘Of course I do,’ Phil said eagerly, and came down the steps to shake his hand. ‘How are you, Mackail? This is my friend, Eliot Norton.’
The three young men fell at once into eager conversation about fishing and cricket and mountain climbing. Jack confessed that was why he had come to Arran. He was hoping to tackle Goat Fell. ‘You’re meant to be able to see three kingdoms from its summit,’ he said.
‘What three kingdoms?’ Phil said scornfully.
Jack grinned. ‘England, Ireland and the Isle of Man.’
‘That’s not a kingdom!’
‘Don’t ever say that to a Manx man.’
Phil laughed uproariously. Jack grinned, a little surprised to find his witticism so appreciated.
‘I say, we’re awfully late for supper,’ Eliot said, pulling out his watch. ‘We must go.’
‘Won’t you join us?’ Phil said to Jack. ‘Eliot’s father won’t mind. He’s Professor of Art History at Harvard, and so will be most interested to meet an Oxford fellow.’
‘Well …’ Jack hesitated, looking at Margot. She looked away, all too aware of the hot colour again surging to her face.
‘You’d be most welcome,’ Eliot said. ‘That is, if you don’t have any plans.’
‘Oh, no, I’m all on my lonesome,’ Jack said. ‘Well, if you’re sure …’
Phil and Eliot began to clatter down the steps, talking at the top of their voices.
Jack waited for Margot. ‘Are you sure Mr Norton will not mind me joining you?’ he asked, offering her his hand to help her down the last few steps.
‘I do not know … I do not think so … he’s very good-natured …’ Margot was very aware of the warmth of Jack’s hand through her glove, and felt its absence once he let her go.
It was a merry supper party. Sally and Lily were delighted to have such a handsome young man join the party, and it balanced out their numbers perfectly. After supper there was dancing, and then a walk in the twilight gardens. It was late, but the sky was still flushed with light. Margot saw how the other girls laughed and flirted with Jack, and once again wondered miserably what was wrong with her, that she found even the most casual of conversations so hard.
A plan was hatched to spend the next day exploring the island. Jack had told them all about the King’s Cave, where Robert the Bruce was meant to have hidden once, and then a mysterious circle of stones not far away that had been raised thousands of years earlier. Sally and Lily at once cried they must see them both, and Mr Norton indulgently said they might go, as long as Mr Mackail did not mind escorting the party and showing them the way.
The King’s Cave was on the other side of the island, a journey of several hours. The caves were inaccessible at high tide, and so they were up early in the morning to be sure to have enough time to explore before the tide turned. The sky was full of thin running clouds and sudden slants of sunlight and unexpected darts of rain; the girls all wore their coats and carried long-handled umbrellas.
‘My old nurse would have called this weather blirty,’ Jack said. ‘I hope it clears, else we’ll have a damp walk.’
Mr Norton had hired a pony and cart for them. The pony – a short, stout, shaggy beast with a rolling white eye – needed a great deal of encouragement before it would consent to pull the cart up the very steep mountain road. Margot could not bear it. She seized the whip out of the driver’s hands and flung it down. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, whipping the poor beast so!’
She then begged to be allowed out of the cart so that she could walk, and so relieve the poor overloaded horse of her weight. The driver scowled ferociously, but stopped the cart and bent to pick up his whip. Jack jumped down to the road and held up his hand to help her down. The others all scrambled out too, laughing and complaining in equal measure.
‘Why did we bother hiring the cart?’ Phil said crossly. ‘We might as well just have walked the whole way, and saved ourselves the cost.’
Reluctantly he clambered out and walked with the others, as the pony plodded on up the hill, the empty cart rattling behind.
‘You are an animal lover?’ Jack asked.
Margot turned astonished eyes on him. ‘Of course? Aren’t you?’
When he declared his undying love for all animals, anywhere under the sun, she told him that her father always said that children must be taught to draw animals. That way, he thought, they would never wish to harm them.
It was a long hard climb, and Margot’s legs were soon aching. She would not climb back into the cart, though, until the road at last levelled out and wound its way through brown moorland, patched here and there with bright outbursts of yellow gorse. Then Jack handed her back into the cart to join the other girls, whose resolve had weakened much earlier than Margot’s.
‘Ye’re a douchty lass,’ he said admiringly. ‘Anyone would think ye were Scots.’
She realised that this was a compliment of the highest order, and flushed.
The road rose and fell, and twisted and turned, and Margot got out to walk every time the poor pony began to labour. Jack always joined her, though the others laughed and teased them both for worrying about a mere horse.
‘These Highland ponies are tough, Margot,’ her brother said in exasperation. ‘They’re used to hills.’
She did not reply, but acted as her conscience dictated, as her mother had taught her.
The cart driver dropped them off on the road outside the little village of Tormore, and they walked together through the beech forest. The Norton girls squealed at the sight of a red squirrel scampering up a tree.
The beach was rough with shingle and stones, and many people had built small cairns, which gave the place a strange and magical feeling. The sea pounded on the shore, rushing and retreating, rushing and retreating, rattling all the stones together with a wild kind of music. Jack gave Margot his hand, helping her over the rough shore. Margot saw that Lily was cross to have to ask her own brother for help. The entrance was guarded by an iron gate, but it was not locked and they were able to creep inside, their boots squelching deep in mud.
The roof was high and arched, and on the rocky walls faint drawings of horses and dogs and hunters could be seen.
‘They are meant to represent Fingal MacCool,’ Jack said, ‘a famous hero of legend.’
‘Here is a carving of a cross,’ Lily said. ‘Was this hero of yours a devout man?’
She spoke lightly, teasingly, but Jack answered her seriously. ‘I believe the cave was used as a chapel by the Covenanters, when you English tried to force us Scots to worship the way you wanted.’
Lily laughed. ‘I’m not English,’ she declared. ‘I’m American.’
‘Well, then, you need not feel guilty here,’ Jack answered.
‘I’m glad.’ Lily held out her hand so Jack could help her across the uneven rocky floor. ‘Tell me more about these Covenanters of yours. Did they really worship in a cave?’
On the walk through the rough bracken and birch of the forest towards the road, Margot fell back. She was tired. Her legs ached. She felt an overwhelming sadness begin to engulf her, and did not know why.
Lily was clinging to Jack’s arm, laughing and bantering with him. Phil and Sally walked, arm in arm, talking about his plans to be an artist like his father. That left Eliot to escort Margot, but she did not much like the young American. He talked all the time, stridently, about crank shanks and dynamos and solar cells and other such mysteries. He was punctilious in helping her over stiles and warning her against boggy patches, but otherwise delivered
a running monologue that Margot soon gave up trying to understand.
The pony and cart were waiting for them, and took them back up along the road to the path that led across the moors to the circle of standing stones. Mist floated in pale wisps over the brown moors. Jack looked across to the mountain, the tip of which was hidden in black clouds. Seagulls called, floating high above their heads in a freshening wind.
‘My old nurse always said to beware when the mountain puts its nightcap on,’ Jack said. ‘Perhaps we should head back.’
‘Oh, no!’ Lily cried. ‘Let us go on. I do so want to see these old stones.’
‘We’re likely to get wet.’
Lily waved her umbrella. ‘I’m no dainty English rose,’ she cried, with a quick sidelong glance at Margot. ‘I’m American! We don’t melt in a rain shower.’
Margot knew she should have a quick riposte, but she could think of nothing to say. Her feeling of dread and misery settled on her as heavily as the clouds wreathing the mountain.
It was a long walk through the moors, a mile at least. Once again Margot trudged along at the back. Jack looked back once or twice and smiled at her encouragingly, but both Sally and Lily were vying for his attention. Phil was worried about the mud and the cow pats and the prickly gorse that snatched at his trousers, while Eliot was now talking at length about attempts to make a gasoline-powered carriage that would chug up and down all these hills without anyone needing to get out and walk.
The mist was thickening, and Margot felt a few sharp needles of rain. She raised her umbrella, but the wind was so strong it threatened to turn it inside out. They passed a ruin of an old stone building, overgrown with blackthorn, climbed over a stile and then came, after a few minutes more walking, to a rough circle of low granite rocks. Not much further along was a double ring of boulders. The six of them wandered about, the Norton girls asking eager questions and Jack doing his best to answer.
‘This one is called Fingal’s Cauldron Seat,’ he said. ‘Fingal MacCool is meant to have come here and cooked himself a meal, tying his dog to that stone with a hole in it.’
‘What’s the mound in the middle?’ Lily asked, wandering over to see.
‘It’s a cist burial, I think. You can find bones in them sometimes, and old weapons and jewellery.’
‘So this was like a tomb?’ Margot asked, hugging herself against the sharp wind.
‘I think so. But not like a graveyard. More like a church that has the graves of important people in it. A king might have been buried here, or a mighty warrior, or a druid.’
Margot wondered what life must have been like for the people who lived here, so many thousands of years ago. It must have been hard, she thought. She imagined a burial procession coming through the moors, flaming torches high, carrying their dead king on their shoulders.
‘My father brought me here when I was but a lad,’ Jack said in a low voice. ‘He thought the druids may have raised these stones, and that they were filled with some kind of magical power. He was a minister, my father, but the wisest and most learned man I ever knew.’
Margot fixed her eyes on his face. ‘He … he’s dead now?’
Jack looked up in surprise. ‘Yes. He died only a month or so ago. I came to Arran … oh, as a kind of pilgrimage, I suppose. My mother is dead too, and my sister gone and married. I really am all on my lonesome now.’
Impulsively Margot stepped closer, putting one hand on his arm. ‘You can share my mother and father if you like. My mother lost a baby boy who would be only a few years younger than you, she’d love another son to feed and fuss over. And you know my father. He too would find this a place of ancient magic.’
Jack put his hand over hers. ‘Thank you. I’d be proud to share your parents with you.’
Margot went red and pulled her hand free, unable to meet his eyes. She went to the edge of the ring of stones, looking across the mist-wreathed moors. She could not think what had made her speak so boldly. Jack would think her very forward.
‘There’s another circle along here,’ Lily called. ‘It only has four stones.’
‘There were probably more originally. People came and took them to build their houses and walls,’ Jack said.
‘I wonder they dared.’ Margot spoke more to herself than anyone else, but Jack heard her and glanced her way, nodding in agreement.
He led the way along the path. Mist was rising from the ground, veiling the thorn bushes and the standing stones. The mountain had completely disappeared behind cloud.
A little further along the path, three much taller menhirs stood in a triangle. Nearby lay two heavy round stones, a hole bored through the middle.
‘It looks like someone tried to carve the old boulders into millstones,’ Jack said. ‘It’s strange that they went to so much effort to carve them into shape, but then left them here.’
‘Perhaps something happened to frighten them,’ Margot said. ‘It is an eerie place. I wonder how old it is.’
‘Thousands of years old, I think,’ Jack said. He and Margot were alone, the others still exploring the other circles further back along the path.
‘Why are they here? What do they mean?’
‘I don’t know. I have heard, though, that if you come here at dawn, on midsummer’s morning, the sun rises right in that cleft between the two mountains. So perhaps it was some kind of sun worship.’
‘Mr Mackail!’ Lily called.
‘Excuse me,’ he said and went back to the others.
Margot stood alone among the three standing stones. She laid her hand on one, and then her forehead, shutting her eyes. She felt very insignificant. These stones had seen the passing of thousands of summers and winters. They had seen babies born and ancients die. Perhaps witches had once come here at night, to dance under the full moon. Perhaps blood had been split here.
Tears had most certainly been wept.
It was impossible not to think of her father, who could be the most melancholy of men at times, and yet at other times the most delightfully impish. Margot’s mother had once asked her father if he believed in witches. He had answered, ‘I should very much like to.’ Margot had always wished to believe in them too. She liked to think there was magic in the world, hidden like the wick in the candle wax, but waiting always to flare into light.
Margot realised that she had allowed her own light to be doused. All those long months, curled under the weight of her counterpane, face hidden, heart shuttered.
Her eyes nettled. She put up her hand to scrub them.
For a moment, she thought her vision still obscured by tears. Then she realised that the mist had closed in upon the moor. She could see nothing but swirling white vapour, blowing sideways like a gauze curtain in the wind. She caught glimpses of the tall stones, of a thorn bush, of the fallen millstone. But beyond there was nothingness.
Margot took a few quick steps, looking for the path. She could see nothing. Panic sharp in her chest. ‘Phil?’ she called. ‘Are you there?’ Then, more desperately, ‘Jack! Jack!’
Her voice was deadened by the mist. She called again, and searched. Another stone looming above her. Margot could not remember which way was east and which was west. No clues to help her. She cast about, eyes on the ground, searching for footprints, a flattened stretch of grass. She cried for help at the top of her voice. Mist all about her, and a fine mizzle of rain that dampened her eyelashes and made it hard to see.
She heard a voice call from what seemed a long distance away. She began to hurry towards the voice, only to find her skirt catching on brambles. She jerked her skirt free and stumbled into a patch of bog. Her boots sunk deep into the brackish water, mud sucking at the hem of her skirt. Margot struggled to free herself. She unbalanced, lurched forward. Fell into a pool of water. Cold as death.
Heavy skirts dragging her under. Margot thrashed towards the shore, trying to grab a branch. It broke. Back she fell. She struggled up, snatched a breath, but sank again, weighed down by all her clothes. Bubbles burst
past her eyes.
This is it, she thought. This is when I die.
Then came the thought, sharp as a pin. I don’t want to die. I want to live!
She kicked frantically, and felt her foot touch something hard. She pushed off with all her strength. Her head broke through the surface of the water, and she gasped a breath. She managed to catch some rushes in her hand. They sliced open her palm, but she dragged herself high. Her skirts like a millstone tied to her legs. Above her, mist clearing. Light amidst the shadows. She hauled herself towards it.
‘Margot! Margot!’
‘Jack!’
She heard him panting and scrambling, then his tall figure emerged from the mist. He bent and lifted her. Her skirts dripped icy water.
‘Oh my God, oh my God, I thought I’d lost you,’ he cried. ‘I should never have left you. I’m sorry!’
He carried her all the way back to the cart, his coat about her. Margot shut her eyes, aware only of the warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, the sound of his heart banging hard beneath her ear.
7
Briar Wood
Autumn 1884–Summer 1885
Margot feared she had fallen in love.
What else could it be? The flush of blood in her face, the thunder of her heart, the thrill deep in the pit of her stomach, whenever Jack Mackail was near. She dreamt about him at night and thought of him all day long.
It was agony.
She did not think he could feel the same way about her. How could he? Papa might tell her a dozen times a week how beautiful she was, but Margot knew he doted on her. For Papa, she was his little one, his dearest girl, his beloved.
Margot knew she was just an ordinary girl.
Her father hated the thought of her growing up, leaving home, getting married. Margot did not want to distress him, and so she tried to never allow a hint of her feelings to show on her face when Jack came to visit them. He came often, staying for supper, talking for hours about art and poetry and history with her father.
