122
THE GUARDIAN
IT WAS NOVEMBER; THERE WERE NO FLOWERS. But the holly bushes gleamed dark green, and the berries had begun to ripen. I cut a small bunch, careful of the prickles, added a tender branch of spruce for fragrance, and climbed the steep trail to the tiny graveyard.
I went every week, to leave some small token on Malva’s grave, and say a prayer. She and her child had not been buried with a cairn—her father hadn’t wanted such a pagan custom—but people came and left pebbles there by way of remembrance. It gave me some small comfort to see them; there were others who remembered her.
I stopped abruptly at the head of the trail; someone was kneeling by her grave—a young man. I caught the murmur of his voice, low and conversational, and would have turned about to go, save that he raised his head, and the wind caught his hair, short and tufted, like an owl’s feathers. Allan Christie.
He saw me, too, and stiffened. There was nothing to do but go and speak to him, though, and so I went.
“Mr. Christie,” I said, the words feeling strange in my mouth. That was what I had called his father. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
He stared up at me blankly; then some sort of awareness seemed to stir in his eyes. Gray eyes, rimmed with black lashes, so much like those of his father and sister. Bloodshot with weeping and lack of sleep, judging from the shocking smudges under them.
“Aye,” he said. “My loss. Aye.”
I stepped around him to lay down my evergreen bouquet, and with a small spurt of alarm, saw that there was a pistol on the ground beside him, cocked and primed.
“Where have you been?” I said as casually as possible, under the circumstances. “We’ve missed you.”
He shrugged, as though it really didn’t matter where he’d been—perhaps it didn’t. He wasn’t looking at me anymore, but at the stone we’d placed at the head of her grave.
“Places,” he said vaguely. “But I had to come back.” He turned away a little, plainly indicating that he wanted me to leave. Instead, I pulled up my skirts and knelt gingerly beside him. I didn’t think he’d blow his brains out in front of me. I had no idea what to do, other than to try to make him talk to me and hope that someone else would come along.
“We’re glad to have you home,” I said, trying for an easy, conversational note.
“Aye,” he said vaguely. And again, his eyes going to the headstone, “I had to come back.” His hand wandered toward the pistol, and I seized it, startling him.
“I know you loved your sister very much,” I said. “It—it was a terrible shock to you, I know.” What, what did one say? There were things one might say to a person contemplating suicide, I knew, but what?
“Your life has value.” I’d said that to Tom Christie, who had only replied, “If it did not, this would not matter.” But how should I convince his son of that?
“Your father loved you both,” I said, wondering as I said it whether he knew what his father had done. His fingers were very cold, and I wrapped both my hands round his, trying to offer him a little warmth, hoping that the human contact would help.
“Not as I loved her,” he said softly, not looking at me. “I loved her all her life, from the time she was born and they gave her me to hold. There was nay other, for either of us. Faither was gone to prison, and then my mither—ah, Mither.” His lips pulled back, as though to laugh, but there was no sound.
“I know about your mother,” I said. “Your father told me.”
“Did he?” His head jerked up to look at me, eyes clear and hard. “Did he tell ye they took me and Malva to her execution?”
“I—no. I don’t think he knew, did he?” My stomach clenched.
“He did. I told him, later, when he sent for us, brought us here. He said that was good, we’d seen with our own eyes the ends of wickedness. He bade me remember the lesson—and so I did,” he added more quietly.
“How—how old were you?” I asked, horrified.
“Ten. Malva was nay more than two; she’d no idea what was happening. She cried out for her Mam when they brought Mither out to the hangsman, and kicked and screamed, reaching out for her.”
He swallowed, and turned his head away.
“I tried to take her, to push her head into my bosom, so she shouldna see—but they wouldna let me have her. They held her wee head and made her watch, and Auntie Darla saying in her ear that this was what happened to witches, and pinching her legs ’til she shrieked. We lived with Auntie Darla for six years after that,” he said, his face remote.
“She wasna best pleased about it, but she said she kent her Christian duty. The auld besom barely fed us, and ’twas me took care of Malva.”
He was silent for a bit, and so was I, thinking the best—the only—thing I could offer him now was the chance to speak. He pulled his hand from mine, leaned over, and touched the gravestone. It was no more than a lump of granite, but someone had gone to the trouble to carve her name on it—only the one word, MALVA , in crude block letters. It reminded me of the memorials that dotted Culloden, the clanstones, each with a single name.
“She was perfect,” he whispered. His finger traced its way over the stone, delicate, as though he touched her flesh. “So perfect. Her wee privates looked like a flower’s bud, and her skin sae fresh and soft. . . .”
A sense of coldness grew in the pit of my stomach. Did he mean . . . yes, of course he did. A sense of inevitable despair began to grow within me.
“She was mine,” he said, and looking up to see my eye upon him, repeated it more loudly. “She was mine!”
He looked down, then, at the grave, and his mouth turned in upon itself, in grief and anger.
“The auld man never knew—never guessed what we were to each other.”
Didn’t he? I thought. Tom Christie might have confessed to the crime to save one he loved—but he loved more than one. Having lost a daughter—or rather, a niece—would he not do all he could to save the son who was the last remnant of his blood?
“You killed her,” I said quietly. I was in no doubt, and he showed no surprise.
“He would ha’ sold her away, given her to some clod of a farmer.” Allan’s fist clenched on his thigh. “I thought of that, as she grew older, and sometimes when I would lie with her, I couldna bear the thought, and would slap her face, only from the rage of thinking of it.”
He drew a deep, ragged breath.
“It wasna her fault, none of it. But I thought it was. And then I caught her wi’ that soldier, and again, wi’ filthy wee Henderson. I beat her for it, but she cried out that she couldna help it—she was with child.”
“Yours?”
He nodded, slowly.
“I never thought of it. I should, of course. But I never did. She was always wee Malva, see, a bittie wee lass. I saw her breasts swell, aye, and the hair come out to mar her sweet flesh—but I just never thought . . .
He shook his head, unable to deal with the thought, even now.
“She said she must marry—and there must be reason for her husband to think the child his, whoever she wed. If she couldna make the soldier wed her, then it must be another. So she took as many lovers as she might, quickly.
“I put a stop to that, though,” he assured me, a faintly nauseating tone of self-righteousness in his voice. “I told her I wouldna have it—I would think of another way.”
“And so you put her up to saying the child was Jamie’s.” My horror at the story and my anger at what he had done to us was subsumed by a flood of sorrow. Oh, Malva, I thought in despair. Oh, my darling Malva. Why didn’t you tell me? But of course she wouldn’t have told me. Her only confidant was Allan.
He nodded, and reached out to touch the stone again. A gust of wind quivered through the holly, stirring the stiff leaves.
“It would explain the bairn, see, but she wouldna have to wed anyone. I thought—Himself would give her money to go away, and I would go with her. We could go to Canada, perhaps, or to the Indies.” His voice sounded dreamy, as though he envisioned some idyllic life, where no one knew.
“But why did you kill her?” I burst out. “What made you do that?” The sorrow and the senselessness were overwhelming; I clenched my hands in my apron, not to batter him.
“I had to,” he said heavily. “She said she couldna go through with it.” He blinked, looking down, and I saw that his eyes were heavy with tears.
“She said—she loved you,” he said, low-voiced and thick. “She couldna hurt ye so. She meant to tell the truth. No matter what I said to her, she just kept saying that—she loved ye, and she’d tell.”
He closed his eyes, shoulders slumping. Two tears ran down his cheeks.
“Why, hinny?” he cried, crossing his arms over his belly in a spasm of grief. “Why did ye make me do it? Ye shouldna have loved anyone but me.”
He sobbed then, like a child, and curled into himself, weeping. I was weeping, too, for the loss and the pointlessness, for the utter, terrible waste of it all. But I reached out and took the gun from the ground. Hands shaking, I dumped out the priming pan, and shook the ball from the barrel, then put the pistol in the pocket of my apron.
“Leave,” I said, my voice half-choked. “Go away again, Allan. There are too many people dead.”
He was too grief-stricken to hear me; I shook him by the shoulder and said it again, more strongly.
“You can’t kill yourself. I forbid it, do you hear?”
“And who are you to say?” he cried, turning on me. His face was contorted with anguish. “I cannot live, I cannot!”
But Tom Christie had given up his life for his son, as well as for me; I couldn’t let that sacrifice go for naught.
“You must,” I said, and stood up, feeling light-headed, unsure whether my knees would hold me. “Do you hear me? You must!”
He looked up, eyes burning through the tears, but didn’t speak. There was a keening whine like the hum of a mosquito, and a soft, sudden thump. He didn’t change expression, but his eyes slowly died. He stayed on his knees for a moment, but bowed then forward, like a flower nodding on its stem, so I saw the arrow protruding from the center of his back. He coughed, once, sputtering blood, and fell sideways, curled on his sister’s grave. His legs jerked spasmodically, grotesquely froglike. Then he lay still.
I stood stupidly staring at him for some immeasurable span of time, becoming only gradually aware that Ian had walked out of the wood and stood beside me, bow over his shoulder. Rollo nosed curiously at the body, whining.
“He’s right, Auntie,” Ian said quietly. “He can’t.”