Wild Heritage

by Wild Heritage (retail) (epub)

  Kitty stood up. ‘I’ll have to go to see them first. Will you let me leave my baby here while I go to Camptounfoot? I’ve a hired carriage outside so I won’t be long.’

  ‘Of course the bairn can stay here. You must stay with us as well. I won’t have you going anywhere else. Emma Jane’s told me this is my home as well as hers and I can entertain anybody I like. We’ve plenty of empty bedrooms. I’ll find a nice sunny one for you and your baby. Off you go to see your mother. Take it easy how you go about surprising her. Seeing you is going to be a shock.’

  The carriage dropped Kitty at the end of the village and she walked along the main street, looking at everything she passed. First of all she pressed her eye to the splits in the door leading to the orchard and saw the silver wilderness inside. Little pink and violet flowers were growing among the moss that patterned the stones of the wall.

  In the lane that led up to the bondagers’ bothy, she could hear the chink, chink, chink of hammer on iron as she passed the smith where Tibbie’s brother and his son were shoeing horses, but there was no rattle of a loom from the Rutherfords’ window and that surprised her till she remembered that they had not done any weaving since Robbie made his fortune.

  She walked on slowly and saw Jo’s forbidding-looking house looming at the end of the lane. Jo was dead… Poor Jo. He was the only person in the village apart from Tibbie and Tim Maquire who had shown any sympathy for her when she was young.

  She turned into the narrow vennel at the top and saw the tumbledown cottage where she was born. Its thatch was even more ragged and grass-covered than she remembered; the windows still stuffed with rags and bits of paper. A trickle of smoke rose from a hole at the end of the roof. There was not a sound to be heard except the chirping of birds in the orchard trees.

  When Kitty pushed open the door she was blinded for a moment after going into semi-darkness from bright sunlight. The smell of smoke from the fire made her nose itch.

  Somebody was sitting hunched by the hearth. ‘Whae’s that? Come closer. I cannae see you,’ croaked her grandmother’s voice.

  In spite of her new confidence Kitty felt the cold hand of fear grip her gut but she stood up taller and said, ‘It’s Kitty.’

  There was silence for a moment and then Big Lily asked, ‘Kitty Scott? My lassie’s lassie?’

  Kitty walked slowly up the uneven floor. ‘Yes, your lassie’s lassie. The navvy’s bastard,’ she said when she was close to the seated woman.

  ‘Why’ve you come back? To laugh at me? Are you pleased we’re going to the Poors’ House? Is that why you’ve come back? To see me taen awa on the back of a carrier’s cart?’

  Kitty said nothing. She stood like a figure of doom against the light and stared at Big Lily with disbelief. The once tall, vigorous woman was bent almost double and the hands that were folded on the top of a stick that supported her were red and swollen-jointed.

  ‘I’ve not come back to laugh,’ she said at last.

  ‘Then you should,’ said Big Lily, turning her head and staring into the fire. Kitty could see a white membrane over the pupils of both her eyes. She was almost blind as well as crippled.

  ‘I hope you dinna expect anything from us because we’ve naething to gie you,’ was Big Lily’s next remark.

  ‘I don’t need anything from you,’ said Kitty coldly. ‘I’ve come to see what I can do to help my mother.’

  ‘You’ve left it a bit late. If you’d come sooner we wouldn’t have been sent off because you’d have been able to do the work,’ Big Lily sounded hopeless and bleak.

  ‘Tell me what’s happened,’ said Kitty.

  ‘You see what’s happened. I’m old and I cannae work so Craigie’s sister’s sending us away. She says she’s going to sell the farm. She’s a daftie and doesnae ken what she’s daein’.’

  ‘Does Craigie know she’s selling the farm? Does Craigie know she’s sent you off?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘I dinna ken. She doesnae tell me anything and I canna go to Edinbury any more.’

  ‘I’ll speak to her,’ said Kitty, but Big Lily only snorted, ‘That’ll no’ do any guid. She’s been waiting to send me off for sixty years. She’ll no’ change her mind noo.’

  ‘But surely you’ve got rights. Surely my mother’s got rights too. She’s Craigie’s child…’ Kitty was angry and her rage made her forget her fear and hatred of the woman by the fire.

  ‘Bastards. That’s what we are, bastards. You too. Bastards haven’t any rights,’ said Big Lily.

  ‘This bastard does, this bastard certainly does,’ shouted Kitty and ran out of the bothy.

  Her mother was in the dairy, washing out the milk-pans. She did not hear Kitty coming into the shed and the girl was able to stand for a moment watching her at work. Her head, in the cotton sunbonnet, was bent over the pail she was scouring and her sleeves were rolled up showing brown muscular arms. When she turned round, however, her face was older, weather-beaten and worn. Her eyes were blank.

  ‘There’s nae milk till evening time,’ she said.

  At first Kitty couldn’t speak for the strength of her emotion. All she could do was walk forward and hug her mother. ‘Oh dinna you ken me, dinna you ken your own bairn?’ she sobbed.

  ‘It’s Kitty. It’s my Kitty. Oh my word, it’s my wee Kitty!’ sobbed Lily, kissing the young woman’s face and running her hands up and down her arms. ‘Aren’t you braw! Aren’t you bonny! I’m that glad to see you. I was awfy feared you were dead.’

  They clung together and Kitty ran her hands gently over her mother’s face as she said, T’ve come back to take care of you, Mam.’

  Wee Lily looked into her daughter’s eyes and asked, ‘And my mither. You’ll take care of your granny and Wee Jake too, won’t you?’

  Outside the sky was darkening. It would soon be evening. There was a rustling in the shed that meant the animals were preparing for their rest. Birds twittered softly in the eaves and the whole steading seemed to sigh as if the ancient stones from which it was built were settling down. Those sounds were among the most evocative of Kitty’s life.

  She was holding her mother’s hand as they walked back to the bothy when a young boy emerged from the shadows and clung to Wee Lily’s skirt. When she saw him, Kitty mentally thanked Tibbie for the way she d managed the money she’d sent because he was properly dressed and had thick boots on his feet.

  ‘Jake, this is your sister Kitty,’ Wee Lily said and he grinned broadly at the stranger. His head was almost completely spherical, like a cannonball, and his eyes small and red-rimmed.

  Kitty bent down and put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Hello Jake,’ she said.

  He grinned even wider and touched the skirt of her dress, fingering the fine material. ‘Pretty,’ he said.

  In the bothy Big Lily was still brooding by the fire and did not look up while Wee Lily prepared the supper, laying out plates of soup and bread. While they ate, Kitty told them about her time with the boxing show, and of living in London and Paris.

  When she said that Marie was dead, Wee Lily expressed surprise but little grief. Big Lily was trying to make it seem she was not listening so she said nothing, but Kitty could tell that she was.

  Kitty said nothing of Marie’s baby though that bit of news burned on the end of her tongue.

  When the meal was finished she gathered up the plates and took them out to the water barrel at the back door for rinsing as she had always done. Then she announced, ‘I’m going over to the farmhouse to speak to Craigie’s sister. Which one is it that’s left?’

  ‘Helen. Joan died,’ said Big Lily who’d been silent till now.

  The lamp that Jo used to tend on the gable wall of his building was still guttering when Kitty came out to pick her way over the farmyard and across the street to the old farmhouse.

  Tiny pipistrelle bats swooped above her head, making funny little twittering noises, and she looked up towards the dark outline of the three guardian hills that loomed on the southern horizon. Nothing had chan
ged. Time stood still in Camptounfoot. Lives came and went like water flowing along the river… Marie, Jo, Tim Maquire and Lady Godolphin, Joan Scott, in time Kitty herself, and still the village would nestle in the evening beneath its sheltering hills as it had always done.

  There was no one, real or spectral, about when she reached the tall gable of Townhead farmhouse. The door was at the back, facing the ghostly orchard that Kitty loved so much. The lichen had overtaken even more trees and it seemed as if she were in a snow-covered world when she walked among them.

  No one answered her knock. Then she hammered more loudly on the chipped door. No one came. Undeterred she went to a window and cupped her hands round her eyes in an effort to see through the dirt and grime that clouded the glass. The faint flicker of a lamp shone in the darkness within. She knocked again and was rewarded by a voice calling out, ‘Go away!’

  Instead of obeying she dropped the latch of the door and stepped inside. The cold was deadly. Even though the day had been warm the chill cut through to her bones.

  She had never been in the house before and looked around curiously. The floor was laid with huge, flat stone slabs and the walls covered with tongue-and-groove panelling that had once been painted green but was now in the same flaking condition as the front door. A carved oak cupboard, more than seven feet tall, stood against one wall, and facing it was an elaborately carved chair with lions’ heads on the ends of the arms and a tattered cloth seat.

  A wall-eyed sheepdog lay under this chair with its lips lifted in a snarl, showing ferocious fangs. Seeing a shepherd’s crook lying by the door, Kitty grabbed it in case the dog should take it into its head to attack her. As soon as it saw she was armed it slunk away.

  ‘Where are you, Helen Scott?’ she called. The uncanny silence told her Craigie’s sister was nearby, holding her breath.

  ‘Where are you, Helen?’ she called again and walked towards a closed door on her right. It opened into a little parlour, also furnished with fine Georgian pieces including a huge pedestal table, but everything was dirty, dusty and uncared for.

  Craigie’s sister, looking like a scarecrow in ragged clothes, sat in a wooden chair by the unlit hearth. She had a broadsword in her hand and was using it as a walking stick. It was unsheathed.

  ‘I told you to go away,’ she said.

  ‘I’m Kitty Scott. We’re related,’ said Kitty boldly.

  Amazingly Helen knew who she was and shouted angrily, ‘We are not, we are not, you’re mother’s a bastard. Nobody kens who her father was. They tried to blame it on Craigie, but it wasnae his fault.’

  Kitty shouted back, ‘My mother’s your brother’s child, so she’s your niece and my grandmother’s your half-sister. You can’t put them off this farm. They’ve probably got legal rights anyway.’

  Helen stood up, trying to raise the big rusty sword above her head but it was too heavy for her.

  ‘Get oot. You’ve no right in here. I didn’t ask you in. It’s too good for the likes of you,’ she shouted.

  ‘Put that thing down before you hurt yourself,’ said Kitty scornfully. ‘I’ve come to tell you that it’s wrong to send my mother and grandmother to the Poors’ House after all the work they’ve done for you. You can well afford to hire another labourer and let them stay in the bothy till they die. That’s how other farmers repay people who’ve worked hard for them.’

  ‘Craigie’s the boss here. He’s the one who gives the orders, not you,’ shouted Helen.

  ‘And I’ll be bound he doesn’t know what you’re doing with my mother and her mother,’ snapped Kitty.

  ‘He does, he does, he wrote me a letter telling me to get rid of them,’ stuttered the old woman rummaging around among a pile of papers on the table as if in search of the order.

  She was lying. It was not there.

  Kitty looked scornfully at the pile of envelopes and said, ‘If that’s the case I’ll have to go to Edinburgh and speak to him myself.’

  She turned on her heel and left the house. When she closed the door, the sheepdog flung itself against it on the inside, snarling viciously.

  Next day she left Kate in Tibbie’s care again and took the train to Edinburgh. The prison, high on its hill at the end of Princes Street, loomed over the station and she kept it in her eye as she walked towards it.

  Would Craigie be sufficiently sensible to discuss the problem of his bondagers? she wondered. She’d never seen him and only had local gossip to give her a picture of him. What she’d heard was not very good. ‘Craigie was aye funny, even before he went off his head and shot the navvy,’ Jo used to say when she asked about her grandfather.

  The guard at the prison gate was bribed with a florin and she was admitted to the governor’s office. Her assurance and the expensive clothes she wore gained her an audience when she said that she wanted to speak with her grandfather, Mr Craigie Scott.

  The governor was cordial. ‘You’ve come to see Craigie? And you’re his granddaughter! Well, well, I didn’t know he had any children. He said he wasn’t married, the old rogue.’

  Calmly Kitty said, ‘He’s not married. My mother is his illegitimate child. My name is Kitty Scott.’

  The governor coughed and said, ‘Quite, quite, I understand…’

  ‘How is he?’ asked Kitty, who hoped Craigie was not senile.

  ‘He’s been here a long time,’ said the governor carefully.

  Kitty nodded. ‘I know, twenty-one and a half years…’ Craigie had shot Bullhead for raping her mother on the day she was conceived.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the governor. ‘He’s not been very well recently but it’s only because of his age. When you speak to him, don’t excite him or tire him too much please.’

  It struck Kitty as touching that the governor of such a big prison would have the time and the sympathy to worry about one of his longterm inmates, but she could see that the man had a kindly face and he seemed to have established some sort of friendship with Craigie.

  He nodded to the clerk and said, ‘Take Miss Scott to the hospital ward. Craigie’s there now, isn’t he?’

  Once more he shook her hand and told her, ‘I’m pleased to have made your acquaintance. Your grandfather is an interesting man. Very knowledgeable.’

  That last remark ran in her head as she followed the clerk down a long, dank corridor to a gloomy room in which there were two lines of metal beds, half of them occupied by men who looked as if they were breathing their last… I hope I’m not too late, I hope I’m not too late, thought Kitty as she walked past them.

  They stopped at the last bed. The man in it was sitting up against a coverless pillow. He stared at the clerk without speaking. Then his eyes moved to Kitty and she saw something spark in them, some kind of recognition woke there. It seemed to amuse him.

  ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ he asked. His accent was old Camptounfoot, like Jo’s had been.

  ‘This young woman says you’re her grandfather and she’s asked to come and see you,’ explained the clerk.

  ‘Has she indeed?’ said Craigie. His eyes were fixed on Kitty’s face and, yes, he was amused.

  The clerk indicated to an attendant that a chair be brought for Kitty and then said, ‘I’ll leave you now. One of the guards will show you out.’ There was silence for a few moments after he left. Her eyes met Craigie’s and they both looked as if they were sizing up the opposition. It reminded Kitty of going into the boxing ring and she mentally raised her fists. It was Craigie who broke the ice, however.

  ‘And how’s your grandmither?’ he asked.

  ‘Not well. She’s got bad rheumatics and can hardly walk.’

  ‘She’ll no’ be able to do much work then, will she? How’s your mither?’ was his next remark.

  My mother’s well enough but you know how it is with her, she can’t take decisions, she needs guiding.’

  He nodded and Kitty went on, ‘Your sister Helen has told them they’ve got to leave Townhead at the term, that’s in four days’ time.’


  ‘And has Helen got someone else to do their work?’ Craigie was completely unsurprised by anything she said and she wondered if he had been writing to his sister with his instructions.

  ‘No. She told Big Lily she’s going to sell the farm.’

  That made him sit up. His coolness disappeared and he snapped, ‘The daft bitch, she can’t sell Townhead. She doesn’t own it. I do and I’ll never sell. Never, never. There has to be a Scott in Townhead. We’ve been there for four hundred years…’

  ‘She may be able to sell because you’re a certified lunatic and she’s your nearest kin,’ Kitty told him.

  He bristled and his prominent grey and ginger eyebrows seemed to stick out even farther. ‘I’m no more a lunatic than you are,’ he snapped.

  ‘The law says you are,’ she told him.

  ‘The law! I’ve no time for the law. It’s made to be broken. It’s only cowards and women who bother about the law,’ he growled.

  ‘Well you didn’t get away with it the last time you broke it, did you? If you had, you wouldn’t be here,’ said Kitty, giving as good as she got.

  ‘You’re a lippy besom, aren’t you?’ he said but not without respect.

  ‘I must have taken it off somebody,’ was her reply and she was astonished when Craigie actually laughed.

  Then he asked her, ‘What do you want coming here? Was it just to tell me about Helen? Was it just to get me worried?’

  ‘No, I came to ask you to stop my mother and grandmother being put into the Poors’ House. They don’t want to leave Townhead. They were both born there and they’ve lived there all their days, though I must say I’d be happier if they were living in more comfortable conditions.’

  ‘It’s a good enough bothy,’ said Craigie.

  ‘It could be a damn sight better and you know it. The cows are better housed,’ was Kitty’s reply.

  He made a mollifying move by saying, ‘We shouldnae be fighting about the bothy. You want me to keep them on the farm? But why should I do that if they cannae work? And you don’t look as if you’ll be working with them, not with all that finery you’ve got on you.’