9
THE GATHERING
My life seemed to be assuming some shape, if not yet a formal routine. Rising at dawn with the rest of the castle inhabitants, I breakfasted in the great hall, then, if Mrs. Fitz had no patients for me to see, I went to work in the huge castle gardens. Several other women worked there regularly, with an attending phalanx of lads in varying sizes, who came and went, hauling rubbish, tools, and loads of manure. I generally worked through the day there, sometimes going to the kitchens to help prepare a newly picked crop for eating or preserving, unless some medical emergency called me back to the Skulkery, as I called the late Beaton’s closet of horrors.
Once in a while, I would take up Alec’s invitation and visit the stables or paddock, enjoying the sight of the horses shedding their shaggy winter coats in clumps, growing strong and glossy with spring grass.
Some evenings I would go to bed immediately after supper, exhausted by the day’s work. Other times, when I could keep my eyes open, I would join the gathering in the Great Hall to listen to the evening’s entertainment of stories, song, or the music of harp or pipes. I could listen to Gwyllyn the Welsh bard for hours, enthralled in spite of my total ignorance of what he was saying, most times.
As the castle inhabitants grew accustomed to my presence, and I to them, some of the women began to make shy overtures of friendship, and to include me in their conversations. They were plainly very curious about me, but I replied to all their tentative questions with variations of the story I had told Colum, and after a bit, they accepted that as all they were likely to know. Having found out that I knew something of medicine and healing, though, they grew still more interested in me, and began to ask questions about the ailments of their children, husbands, and beasts, in most cases making little distinction between the latter two in level of importance.
Besides the normal questions and gossip, there was considerable talk of the coming Gathering that I had heard Old Alec mention at the paddock. I concluded that this was an occasion of some importance, and grew more convinced by the extent of the preparations for it. A constant stream of foodstuffs poured into the great kitchens, and more than twenty skinned carcasses hung in the slaughter shed, behind a screen of fragrant smoke that kept the flies away. Hogsheads of ale were delivered by wagon and carted down to the castle cellars, bags of fine flour were brought up from the village mill for baking, and baskets of cherries and apricots were fetched daily from the orchards outside the castle wall.
I was invited to go on one of these fruit-picking expeditions with several of the young women of the castle, and accepted with alacrity, eager to get out from under the forbidding shadow of the stone walls.
It was beautiful in the orchard, and I greatly enjoyed wandering through the cool mist of the Scottish morning, fingering through the damp leaves of the fruit trees for the bright cherries and smooth, plump apricots, squeezing gently to judge the ripeness. We plucked only the best, dropping them into our baskets in juicy heaps, eating as much as we could hold, and carrying back the remainder to be made into tarts and pies. The enormous pantry shelves were nearly filled now with pastries, cordials, hams, and assorted delicacies.
“How many people customarily come to a Gathering?” I asked Magdalen, one of the girls with whom I had become friendly.
She wrinkled a snub freckled nose in thought. “I dinna ken for sure. The last great Gathering at Leoch was over twenty year past, and then there were oh, maybe ten score of men come then—when old Jacob died, ye ken, and Colum was made laird. Might be more this year; been a good year for the crops and folk will ha’ a bit more money put by, so a good many will bring their wives and bairns along.”
Visitors were already beginning to arrive at the castle, though I had heard that the official parts of the Gathering, the oath-taking, the tynchal, and the games, would not take place for several days. The more illustrious of Colum’s tacksmen and tenants were housed in the castle proper, while the poorer men-at-arms and cottars set up camp on a fallow field below the stream that fed the castle’s loch. Roving tinkers, gypsies, and sellers of small goods had set up a sort of impromptu fair near the bridge. The inhabitants of both castle and nearby village had begun to visit the spot in the evenings, when the day’s work was done, to buy tools and bits of finery, watch the jugglers and catch up on the latest gossip.
I kept a close eye on the comings and goings, and made a point of paying frequent visits to stable and paddock. There were horses in plenty now, those of the visitors being accommodated in the castle stables. Among the confusion and disturbance of the Gathering, I thought, I should have no difficulty in finding my chance to escape.
It was on one of the fruit-picking expeditions to the orchard that I first met Geillis Duncan. Finding a small patch of Ascaria beneath the roots of an alder, I was hunting for more. The scarlet caps grew in tiny clumps, only four or five mushrooms in a group, but there were several clumps scattered through the long grass in this part of the orchard. The voices of the women picking fruit grew fainter as I worked my way toward the edge of the orchard, stooping or dropping on hands and knees to gather the fragile stalks.
“Those kind are poison,” said a voice from behind me. I straightened up from the patch of Ascaria I had been bending over, thumping my head smartly on a branch of the pine they were growing under.
As my vision cleared, I could see that the peals of laughter were coming from a tall young woman, perhaps a few years older than myself, fair of hair and skin, with the loveliest green eyes I had ever seen.
“I am sorry to be laughing at you,” she said, dimpling as she stepped down into the hollow where I stood. “I could not help it.”
“I imagine I looked funny,” I said rather ungraciously, rubbing the sore spot on top of my head. “And thank you for the warning, but I know those mushrooms are poisonous.”
“Och, you know? And who is it you’re planning to do away with, then? Your husband, perhaps? Tell me if it works, and I’ll try it on mine.” Her smile was infectious, and I found myself smiling back.
I explained that though the raw mushroom caps were indeed poisonous, you could prepare a powdered preparation from the dried fungi that was very efficacious in stopping bleeding when applied topically. Or so Mrs. Fitz said; I was more inclined to trust her than Davie Beaton’s Physician’s Guide.
“Fancy that!” she said, still smiling. “And did you know that these”—she stooped and came up with a handful of tiny blue flowers with heart-shaped leaves—”will start bleeding?”
“No,” I said, startled. “Why would anyone want to start bleeding?”
She looked at me with an expression of exasperated patience. “To get rid of a child ye don’t want, I mean. It brings on your flux, but only if ye use it early. Too late, and it can kill you as well as the child.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” I remarked, still stung by having appeared stupid.
“A bit. The girls in the village come to me now and again for such things, and sometimes the married women too. They say I’m a witch,” she said, widening her brilliant eyes in feigned astonishment. She grinned. “But my husband’s the procurator fiscal for the district, so they don’t say it too loud.”
“Now the young lad ye brought with ye,” she went on, nodding in approval, “there’s one that’s had a few love-philtres bought on his behalf. Is he yours?”
“Mine? Who? You mean, er, Jamie?” I was startled.
The young woman looked amused. She sat down on a log, twirling a lock of fair hair idly around her index finger.
“Och, aye. There’s quite a few would settle for a fellow wi’ eyes and hair like that, no matter the price on his head or whether he’s any money. Their fathers may think differently, o’ course.
“Now, me,” she went on, looking off into the distance, “I’m a practical sort. I married a man with a fair house, a bit o’ money put away, and a good position. As for hair, he hasn’t any, and as for eyes, I never noticed, but he doesna trouble me much.” She held out the basket she carried for my inspection. Four bulbous roots lay in the bottom.
“Mallow root,” she explained. “My husband suffers from a chill on the stomach now and again. Farts like an ox.”
I thought it best to stop this line of conversation before things got out of hand. “I haven’t introduced myself,” I said, extending a hand to help her up from the log. “My name is Claire. Claire Beauchamp.”
The hand that took mine was slender, with long, tapering white fingers, though I noticed the tips were stained, probably with the juices of the plants and berries resting alongside the mallow roots in her basket.
“I know who ye are,” she said. “The village has been humming with talk of ye, since ye came to the castle. My name is Geillis, Geillis Duncan.” She peered into my basket. “If it’s balgan-buachrach you’re looking for, I can show you where they grow best.”
I accepted her offer, and we wandered for some time through the small glens near the orchard, poking under rotted logs and crawling around the rim of the sparkling tarns, where the tiny toadstools grew in profusion. Geillis was very knowledgeable about the local plants and their medicinal uses, though she suggested a few usages I thought questionable, to say the least. I thought it very unlikely, for instance, that bloodwort would be effective in making warts grow on a rival’s nose, and I strongly doubted whether wood betony was useful in transforming toads into pigeons. She made these explanations with a mischievous glance that suggested she was testing my own knowledge, or perhaps the local suspicion of witchcraft.
Despite the occasional teasing, I found her a pleasant companion, with a ready wit and a cheerful, if cynical, outlook on life. She appeared to know everything there was to know about everyone in village, countryside, and castle, and our explorations were punctuated by rests during which she entertained me with complaints about her husband’s stomach trouble, and amusing if somewhat malicious gossip.
“They say young Hamish is not his father’s son,” she said at one point, referring to Colum’s only child, the red-haired lad of eight or so whom I had seen at dinner in the Hall.
I was not particularly startled by this bit of gossip, having formed my own conclusions on the matter. I was only surprised that there was but one child of questionable parentage, surmising that Letitia had been either lucky, or smart enough to seek out someone like Geilie in time. Unwisely, I said as much to Geilie.
She flung back her long fair hair and laughed. “No, not me. The fair Letitia does not need any help in such matters, believe me. If people are seeking a witch in this neighborhood, they’d do better to look in the castle than the village.”
Anxious to change the subject to something safer, I seized on the first thing that came to mind.
“If young Hamish isn’t Colum’s son, whose is he supposed to be?” I asked, scrambling over a heap of boulders.
“Why, the lad’s, of course.” She turned to face me, small mouth mocking and green eyes bright with mischief. “Young Jamie.”
Returning to the orchard alone, I met Magdalen, hair coming loose under her kerchief and wide-eyed with worry.
“Oh, there ye are,” she said, heaving a sigh of relief. “We were going back to the castle, when I missed ye.”
“It was kind of you to come back for me,” I said, picking up the basket of cherries I’d left in the grass. “I know the way, though.”
She shook her head. “You should take care, my dearie, walking alone in the woods, wi’ all the tinkers and folk coming for the Gathering. Colum’s given orders—” She stopped abruptly, hand over her mouth.
“That I’m to be watched?” I suggested gently. She nodded reluctantly, clearly afraid I would be offended. I shrugged and tried to smile reassuringly at her.
“Well, that’s natural, I suppose,” I said. “After all, he’s no one’s word but my own for who I am or how I came here.” Curiosity overcame my better judgment. “Who does he think I am?” I asked. But the girl could only shake her head.
“You’re English,” was all she said.
I didn’t return to the orchard next day. Not because I was ordered to remain in the castle, but because there was a sudden outbreak of food poisoning among the castle inhabitants that demanded my attention as physician. Having done what I could for the sufferers, I set out to track the trouble to its source.
This proved to be a tainted beef carcass from the slaughter shed. I was in the shed next day, giving the chief smoker a piece of my mind regarding proper methods of meat preserving, when the door swung open behind me, sending a thick wave of choking smoke over me.
I turned, eyes watering, to see Dougal MacKenzie looming through the clouds of oakwood smoke.
“Supervising the butchering as well as the physicking, are ye now, mistress?” he asked mockingly. “Soon ye’ll have the whole castle under your thumb, and Mrs. Fitz will be seeking employment elsewhere.”
“I have no desire to have anything to do with your filthy castle,” I snapped, wiping my streaming eyes and coming away with charcoal streaks on my handkerchief. “All I want is to get out of here, as fast as possible.”
He inclined his head courteously, still grinning. “Well, I might be in a position to gratify that wish, mistress,” he said. “At least temporarily.”
I dropped the handkerchief and stared at him. “What do you mean?”
He coughed and waved a hand at the smoke, now drifting in his direction. He drew me outside the shed and turned in the direction of the stables.
“You were saying yesterday to Colum that ye needed betony and some odd bits of herbs?”
“Yes, to make up some medicines for the people with food poisoning. What of it?” I demanded, still suspicious.
He shrugged good-naturedly. “Only that I’m going down to the smith’s in the village, taking three horses to be shod. The fiscal’s wife is something of an herb-woman, and has stocks to hand. Doubtless she has the simples that you’re needing. And if it please ye, lady, you’re welcome to ride one of the horses down wi’ me to the village.”
“The fiscal’s wife? Mrs. Duncan?” I immediately felt happier. The prospect of escaping the castle altogether, even if only for a short time, was irresistible.
I mopped my face hurriedly and tucked the soiled kerchief in my belt.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I enjoyed the short ride downhill to the village of Cranesmuir, even though the day was dark and overcast. Dougal himself was in high spirits, and chatted and joked pleasantly as we went along.
We stopped first at the smith’s, where he left the three extra horses, taking me up behind him on his saddle for the trip up the High Street to the Duncans’ house. This was an imposing half-timbered manor of four stories, the lower two equipped with elegant leaded-glass windows; diamond-shaped panes in watery tones of purple and green.
Geilie greeted us with delight, pleased to have company on such a dreary day.
“How splendid!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting an excuse to go through the stillroom and sort out some things. Anne!”
A short, middle-aged serving woman with a face like a winter apple popped out of a door I hadn’t noticed, concealed as it was in the bend of the chimney.
“Take Mistress Claire up to the stillroom,” Geilie ordered, “and then go and fetch us a bucket of spring water. From the spring, mind, not the well in the square!” She turned to Dougal. “I’ve the tonic put by that I promised your brother. If you’ll come out to the kitchen with me for a moment?”
I followed the serving woman’s pumpkin-shaped rear up a set of narrow wooden stairs, emerging unexpectedly into a long, airy loft. Unlike the rest of the house, this room was furnished with casement windows, shut now against the damp, but still providing a great deal more light than had been available in the fashionably gloomy parlor downstairs.
It was clear that Geilie knew her business as an herbalist. The room was equipped with long drying frames netted with gauze, hooks above the small fireplace for heat-drying, and open shelves along the walls, drilled with holes to allow for air circulation. The air was thick with the delicious, spicy scent of drying basil, rosemary, and lavender. A surprisingly modern long counter ran along one side of the room, displaying a remarkable assortment of mortars, pestles, mixing bowls, and spoons, all immaculately clean.
It was some time before Geilie appeared, flushed from climbing the stairs, but smiling in anticipation of a long afternoon of herb-pounding and gossip.
It began to rain lightly, drops spattering the long casements, but a small fire was burning on the stillroom hearth, and it was very cozy. I enjoyed Geilie’s company immensely; she had a wry-tongued, cynical viewpoint that was a refreshing contrast to the sweet, shy clanswomen at the castle, and clearly she had been well educated, for a woman in a small village.
She also knew every scandal that had occurred either in village or castle in the last ten years, and she told me endless amusing stories. Oddly enough, she asked me few questions about myself. I thought perhaps that was not her way; she would find out what she wanted to know about me from other people.
For some time, I had been conscious of noises coming from the street outside, but had attributed them to the traffic of villagers coming from Sunday Mass; the kirk was located at the end of the street by the well, and the High Street ran from kirk to square, spreading from there into a fan of tiny lanes and walks.
In fact, I had amused myself on the ride to the smithy by imagining an aerial view of the village as a representation of a skeletal forearm and hand; the High Street was the radius, along which lay the shops and businesses and the residences of the more well-to-do. St. Margaret’s Lane was the ulna, a narrower street running parallel with the High, tenanted by smithy, tannery, and the less genteel artisans and businesses. The village square (which, like all village squares I had ever seen, was not square at all, but roughly oblong) formed the carpals and metacarpals of the hand, while the several lanes of cottages made up the phalangeal joints of the fingers.
The Duncans’ house stood on the square, as behooved the residence of the procurator fiscal. This was a matter of convenience as well as status; the square could be used for those judicial matters which, by reason of public interest or legal necessity, overflowed the narrow confines of Arthur Duncan’s study. And it was, as Dougal explained, convenient to the pillory, a homely wooden contraption that stood on a small stone plinth in the center of the square, adjacent to the wooden stake used—with thrifty economy of purpose—as whipping post, maypole, flagstaff and horse tether, depending upon requirements.
The noise outside was now much louder, and altogether more disorderly than seemed appropriate to people coming soberly home from church to their dinners. Geilie put aside the jars with an exclamation of impatience and threw open the window to see what caused the uproar.
Joining her at the window, I could see a crowd of folk dressed in church-going garb of gown, kirtle, coat, and bonnet, led by the stocky figure of Father Bain, the priest who served both village and castle. He had in his custody a youth, perhaps twelve years old, whose ragged trews and smelly shirt proclaimed him a tanner’s lad. The priest had the boy gripped by the nape of the neck, a hold made somewhat difficult to maintain by the fact that the lad was slightly taller than his minatory captor. The crowd followed the pair at a small distance, rumbling with disapproving comment like a passing thunder cloud in the wake of a lightning bolt.
As we watched from the upper window, Father Bain and the boy disappeared beneath us, into the house. The crowd remained outside, muttering and jostling. A few of the bolder souls chinned themselves on the window ledges, attempting to peer within.
Geilie shut the window with a slam, making a break in the anticipatory rumble below.
“Stealing, most like,” she said laconically, returning to the herb table. “Usually is, wi’ the tanners’ lads.”
“What will happen to him?” I asked curiously. She shrugged, crumbling dried rosemary between her fingers into the mortar.
“Depends on whether Arthur’s dyspeptic this morning, I should reckon. If he’s made a good breakfast, the lad might get off with a whipping. But happen he’s costive or flatulent”—she made a moue of distaste—”the boy’ll lose an ear or a hand, most like.”
I was horrified, but hesitant to interfere directly in the matter. I was an outlander, and an Englishwoman to boot, and while I thought I would be treated with some respect as an inhabitant of the castle, I had seen many of the villagers surreptitiously make the sign against evil as I passed. My intercession might easily make things worse for the boy.
“Can’t you do anything?” I asked Geilie. “Speak to your husband, I mean; ask him to be, er, lenient?”
Geilie looked up from her work, surprised. Clearly the thought of interfering in her husband’s affairs had never crossed her mind.
“Why should you care what happens to him?” she asked, but curiously, not with any hostile meaning.
“Of course I care!” I said. “He’s only a lad; whatever he did, he doesn’t deserve to be mutilated for life!”
She raised pale brows; plainly this argument was unconvincing. Still, she shrugged and handed me the mortar and pestle.
“Anything to oblige a friend,” she said, rolling her eyes. She scanned her shelves and selected a bottle of greenish stuff, labeled, in fine cursive script, EXTRACT OF PEPPERMINT.
“I’ll go and dose Arthur, and whilst I’m about it, I’ll see if aught can be done for the lad. It may be too late, mind,” she warned. “And if that poxy priest’s got a hand in, he’ll want the stiffest sentence he can get. Still, I’ll try. You keep after the pounding; rosemary takes forever.”
I took up the pestle as she left, and pounded and ground automatically, paying little heed to the results. The shut window blocked the sound both of the rain and the crowd below; the two blended in a soft, pattering susurrus of menace. Like any schoolchild, I had read Dickens. And earlier authors, as well, with their descriptions of the pitiless justice of these times, meted out to all illdoers, regardless of age or circumstance. But to read, from a cozy distance of one or two hundred years, accounts of child hangings and judicial mutilation, was a far different thing than to sit quietly pounding herbs a few feet above such an occurrence.
Could I bring myself to interfere directly, if the sentence went against the boy? I moved to the window, carrying the mortar with me, and peered out. The crowd had increased, as merchants and housewives, attracted by the gathering, wandered down the High Street to investigate. Newcomers leaned close as the standees excitedly relayed the details, then merged into the body of the crowd, more faces turned expectantly to the door of the house.
Looking down on the assembly, standing patiently in the drizzle awaiting a verdict, I suddenly had a vivid understanding of something. Like so many, I had heard, appalled, the reports that trickled out of postwar Germany; the stories of deportations and mass murder, of concentration camps and burnings. And like so many others had done, and would do, for years to come, I had asked myself, “How could the people have let it happen? They must have known, must have seen the trucks, the coming and going, the fences and smoke. How could they stand by and do nothing?” Well, now I knew.
The stakes were not even life or death in this case. And Colum’s patronage would likely prevent any physical attack on me. But my hands grew clammy around the porcelain bowl as I thought of myself stepping out, alone and powerless, to confront that mob of solid and virtuous citizens, avid for the excitement of punishment and blood to alleviate the tedium of existence.
People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans—hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning—have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it, was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.
It seemed forever before the door opened and Geilie stepped in, looking cool and unperturbed as usual, a small stick of charcoal in her hand.
“We’ll need to filter it after it’s boiled,” she remarked, as though going on with our previous conversation. “I think we’ll run it through charcoal in muslin; that’s best.”
“Geilie,” I said impatiently. “Don’t try me. What about the tanner’s boy?”
“Oh, that.” She lifted a shoulder dismissively, but a mischievous smile lurked about the corners of her lips. She dropped the facade then, and laughed.
“You should have seen me,” she said, giggling. “I was awfully good, an’ I say it myself. All wifely solicitude and womanly kindness, with a small dab o’ maternal pity mixed in. ‘Oh, Arthur,’ ” she dramatized, ” ‘had our own union been blessed’—not much chance, if I’ve aught to say about it,” she said, dropping the soulful mask for a moment with a tilt of her head toward the herb shelves—” ‘why, how would ye feel, my darling, should your own son be taken so? Nae doubt it was but hunger made the lad take to thievery. Oh, Arthur, can ye no find it in your heart to be merciful—and you the soul of justice?’ ” She dropped onto a stool, laughing and pounding her fist lightly against her leg. “What a pity there’s no place for acting here!”
The sound of the crowd outside had changed, and I moved to the window to see what was happening, ignoring Geilie’s self-congratulations.
The throng parted, and the tanner’s lad came out, walking slowly between priest and judge. Arthur Duncan was swollen with benevolence, bowing and nodding to the more eminent members of the assembly. Father Bain, on the other hand, resembled a sullen potato more than anything else, brown face lumpy with resentment.
The little procession proceeded to the center of the square, where the village locksman, one John MacRae, stepped out of the crowd to meet them. This personage was dressed as befitted his office in the sober elegance of dark breeches and coat and grey velvet hat (removed for the nonce and tenderly sheltered from the rain beneath the tail of his coat). He was not, as I had at first assumed, the village jailer, though in a pinch he did perform such office. His duties were primarily those of constable, customs inspector, and when needed, executioner; his title came from the wooden “lock” or scoop that hung from his belt, with which he was entitled to take a percentage of each bag of grain sold in the Thursday market: the remuneration of his office.
I had found all this out from the locksman himself. He had been to the Castle only a few days before to see whether I could treat a persistent felon on his thumb. I had lanced it with a sterile needle and dressed it with poplar-bud salve, finding MacRae a shy and soft-spoken man with a pleasant smile.
There was no trace of a smile now, though; MacRae’s face was suitably stern. Reasonable, I thought; no one wants to see a grinning executioner.
The miscreant was brought to stand on the plinth in the center of the square. The lad looked pale and frightened, but did not move as Arthur Duncan, procurator fiscal for the parish of Cranesmuir, drew his plumpness up into an approximation of dignity and prepared to pronounce sentence.
“The ninny had already confessed by the time I came in,” said a voice by my ear. Geilie peered interestedly over my shoulder. “I couldna get him freed entirely. I got him off as light as could be, though; only an hour in the pillory and one ear nailed.”
“One ear nailed! Nailed to what?”
“Why, the pillory, o’ course.” She shot me a curious look, but turned back to the window to watch the execution of this light sentence obtained by her merciful intercession.
The crush of bodies around the pillory was so great that little of the miscreant could be seen, but the crowd drew back a bit to allow the locksman free movement for the ear-nailing. The lad, white-faced and small in the jaws of the pillory, had both eyes tight shut and kept them that way, shuddering with fear. He uttered a high, thin scream when the nail was driven in, audible through the closed windows, and I shuddered a bit myself.
We returned to our work, as did most of the spectators in the square, but I could not help rising to glance out from time to time. A few idlers passing by paused to jeer at the victim and throw balls of mud, and now and then a more sober citizen was to be seen, seizing a moment from the round of daily duties to attend to the moral improvement of the delinquent by means of a few well-chosen words of reproval and advice.
It was still an hour to the late spring sunset, and we were drinking tea below in the parlor, when a pounding at the door announced the arrival of a visitor. The day was so dark from the rain that one could hardly tell the level of the sun. The Duncans’ house, however, boasted a clock, a magnificent contrivance of walnut panels, brass pendulums, and a face decorated with quiring cherubim, and this instrument pointed to half-past six.
The scullery maid opened the door to the parlor and unceremoniously announced, “In here.” Jamie MacTavish ducked automatically as he came through the door, bright hair darkened by the rain to the color of ancient bronze. He wore an elderly and disreputable coat against the wet, and carried a riding cloak of heavy green velvet folded under one arm.
He nodded in acknowledgment as I rose and introduced him to Geilie.
“Mistress Duncan, Mrs. Beauchamp.” He waved a hand toward the window. “I see ye’ve had a wee bit doing this afternoon.”
“Is he still there?” I asked, peering out. The boy was only a dark shape, seen through the distortion of the wavering drawing-room panes. “He must be soaked through.”
“He is.” Jamie spread the cloak and held it for me. “So you’d be as well, Colum thought. I’d business in the village, so he sent along the cloak with me for ye. You’re to ride back wi’ me.”
“That was kind of him.” I spoke absently, for my mind was still on the tanner’s lad.
“How long must he stay there?” I asked Geilie. “The lad in the pillory,” I added impatiently, seeing her blank look.
“Oh, him,” she said, frowning slightly at the introduction of such an unimportant topic. “An hour, I told you. The locksman should ha’ freed him from the pillory by now.”
“He has,” Jamie assured her. “I saw him as I was crossing the green. It’s only the lad’s not got up courage to tear the griss from his lug yet.”
My mouth dropped open. “You mean the nail won’t be taken out of his ear? He’s to tear himself loose?”
“Oh, aye.” Jamie was cheerfully offhand. “He’s still a bit nervous, but I imagine he’ll set his mind to it soon. It’s wet out, and growing dark as well. We must leave ourselves, or we’ll get naught but scraps to our dinner.” He bowed to Geilie and turned to go.
“Wait a bit,” she said to me. “Since you’ve a big, strong lad like yon to see ye home, I’ve a chest of dried marsh cabbage and other simples as I’ve promised to Mrs. FitzGibbons up at the Castle. Perhaps Mr. MacTavish would be so kind?”
Jamie assenting, she had a manservant fetch down the chest from her workroom, handing over the enormous wrought-iron key for the purpose. While the servant was gone, she busied herself for a moment at a small writing desk in the corner. By the time the chest, a sizable wooden box with brass bands, was brought in, she had finished her note. She hastily sanded it, folded and sealed it with a blob of wax from the candle, and pressed it into my hand.
“There,” she said. “That’s the bill for it. Will ye give it to Dougal for me? It’s him that handles the payments and such. Dinna give it to anyone else, or I’ll not be paid for weeks.”
“Yes, of course.”
She embraced me warmly, and with admonitions about avoiding the chill, saw us to the door.
I stood sheltering beneath the eave of the house, as Jamie tied the box to his horse’s saddle. The rain was coming down harder now, and the eaves ran with a ragged sheet of water.
I eyed the broad back and muscular forearms as he lifted the heavy box with little apparent effort. Then I glanced at the plinth, where the tanner’s boy, in spite of encouragement from the regathered crowd, was still firmly pinioned. Granted this was not a lovely young girl with moonbeam hair, but Jamie’s earlier actions in Colum’s hall of justice made me think that he might not be unsympathetic to the youngster’s plight.
“Er, Mr. MacTavish?” I began, hesitantly. There was no response. The comely face did not change expression; the wide mouth stayed relaxed, the blue eyes focused on the strap he was fastening.
“Ah, Jamie?” I tried again, a little louder, and he looked up at once. So it really wasn’t MacTavish. I wondered what it was.
“Aye?” he said.
“You’re, er, quite sizable, aren’t you?” I said. A half-smile curved his lips and he nodded, clearly wondering what I was up to.
“Big enough for most things,” he answered.
I was encouraged, and moved casually closer, so as not to be overheard by any stragglers from the square.
“And tolerably strong in the fingers?” I asked.
He flexed one hand and the smile widened. “Aye, that’s so. Happen you’ve a few chestnuts you want cracked?” He looked down at me with a shrewd and merry glint.
I glanced briefly past him to the knot of onlookers in the square.
“More like one to be pulled from the fire, I think.” I looked up to meet that questioning blue gaze. “Could you do it?”
He stood looking down at me for a moment, still smiling, then shrugged. “Aye, if the shank’s long enough to grip. Can ye draw the crowd away, though? Interference wouldna be looked on kindly, and me a stranger.”
I had not anticipated the possibility that my request might put him in any danger, and I hesitated, but he seemed game to try, danger notwithstanding.
“Well, if we both went over for a closer look, and then I were to faint at the sight, do you think—?”
“You being so unused to blood and all?” One brow lifted sardonically and he grinned. “Aye, that’ll do. If ye can make shift to fall off the plinth, still better.”
I had in fact felt a bit squeamish about looking, but it was not so daunting a sight as I had feared. The ear was pinned firmly through the upper flange, close to the edge, and a full two inches of the nail’s square, headless shank was free above the pinioned appendage. There was almost no blood, and it was clear from the boy’s face that while he was both frightened and uncomfortable, he was in no great pain. I began to think that Geilie perhaps had been right in considering this a fairly lenient sentence, given the overall state of current Scottish jurisprudence, though this didn’t alter by one whit my opinion as to the barbarity of it.
Jamie edged casually through the fringe of lookers-on. He shook his head reprovingly at the boy.
“Na then, lad,” he said, clicking his tongue. “Got yourself in a rare swivet, have ye no?” He rested one large, firm hand on the wooden edge of the pillory, under pretext of looking more closely at the ear. “Och, laddie,” he said, disparaging, “yon’s no job to be making heavy weather of. A wee snatch o’ the head and it’s over. Here, shall I help ye?” He reached out as though to grasp the lad by the hair and wrench his head free. The boy yelped in fear.
Recognizing my cue, I stepped back, taking care to tread heavily on the toes of the woman behind me, who yipped in anguish as my boot heel crushed her metatarsals.
“I beg your pardon,” I gasped. “I’m…so dizzy! Please…” I turned away from the pillory and took two or three steps, staggering artfully and clutching at the sleeves of those nearby. The edge of the plinth was only six inches away; I took a firm hold on a slightly built girl I had marked out for the purpose and pitched headfirst over the edge, taking her with me.
We rolled on the wet grass in a tangle of skirts and squeals. Letting go of her blouse at last, I relaxed into a dramatically spread-eagled heap, rain pattering down on my upturned face.
I was in truth a trifle winded by the impact—the girl had fallen on top of me—and I fought for breath, listening to the babble of concerned voices gathered around me. Speculations, suggestions, and shocked interjections rained on me, thicker than the drops of water from the sky, but it was a pair of familiar arms that raised me to a sitting position, and a pair of gravely concerned blue eyes that I saw when I opened my own. A faint flicker of the eyelids told me that the mission had been accomplished, and in fact, I could see the tanner’s lad, napkin clutched to his ear, making off at speed in the direction of his loft, unnoticed by the crowd that had turned to attend to this new sensation.
The villagers, so lately calling for the lad’s blood, were kindness itself to me. I was tenderly gathered up and carried back to the Duncans’ house, where I was plied with brandy, tea, warm blankets, and sympathy. I was only allowed to depart at last by Jamie’s stating bluntly that we must go, then lifting me bodily off the couch and heading for the door, disregarding the expostulations of my hosts.
Mounted once more in front of him, my own horse led by the rein, I tried to thank him for his help.
“No trouble, lass,” he said, dismissing my thanks.
“But it was a risk to you,” I said, persisting. “I didn’t realize you’d be in danger when I asked you.”
“Ah,” he said, noncommittally. And a moment later, with a hint of amusement, “Ye wouldna expect me to be less bold than a wee Sassenach lassie, now would ye?”
He urged the horses into a trot as the shadows of dusk gathered by the roadside. We did not speak much on the rest of the journey home. And when we reached the castle, he left me at the gate with no more than a softly mocking, “Good’ e’en, Mistress Sassenach.” But I felt as though a friendship had been begun that ran a bit deeper than shared gossip under the apple trees.