‘I do not understand,’ said Marsali. ‘Where is Antoine? Was there no message?’
The girl shrugged, but there was the shadow of a figure behind her, and a voice, familiar from the dark of last night. ‘The message is with myself, Marsali.’
She whirled about at the sound of her name. He was a man of early middle age, dressed plainly in a black coat and blue silk waistcoat, and a gentleman’s powdered wig. He wore a sword at his side, and a pistol in his belt, and a shrewd honest look in his blue-green eyes.
‘I am Archibald Cameron,’ he said. ‘It was I who spoke with yourselves last night. He is a one for speaking in riddles, that friend of yours, so dutifully,’ he said with a patient smile, ‘I have committed it to memory.’ He recited clearly,
‘The lion and the unicorn may aye be honest men, But a little cat from Trotternish betrays my good moorhen.
What, will you be telling me, is the meaning of that?’
Marsali looked straight into his honest eyes and read nothing there. She said coolly, ‘I would not be knowing; he is full of foolish nonsense, that friend of mine.’
‘Indeed. You will no doubt be glad to be rid of him.’
‘Rid of him?’ Marsali whispered.
‘He is away, lassie, surely you knew, away to his ship and the sea.’
‘He has gone?’ she said weakly.
‘Has he not told you, lass?’ Doctor Cameron said, uncertainly. ‘But surely, it has all been arranged for days. I am to go to Scotland, in two days’ time. And yon young lord has placed you in my care.’
Marsali sat alone in the courtyard garden of the Palazzo Muti. The sun just cleared the tall height of the laurel hedge behind her, touching lightly on her folded hands.
But the air was yet warm, though it was September, and in Scotland the cold rains would be riding across grey hills and grey sea. In her fingers, tanned dark now by her southern summer, she toyed with a Roman coin, a baiocchi, with St. Peter engraved upon it. So small a thing, the low measure of Antoine’s trust. Her tanned face was streaked from the tears she’d wept, in the garden, alone.
He had indeed gone. At first she had not believed and allowed the servant girl and Doctor Cameron to escort her to a small, dark, panelled apartment in the palace with tolerant patience. It was a narrow, shaded contrast to the magnificent mural-laden public halls and was typical, she discovered. The palace, like much about the Roman life, was all surface display and show, with little depth. She had accepted her bundle of belongings in the same air of half-amused acknowledgment of a clear mistake. But it was no mistake.
She knew at once when she unfastened the case and unwrapped the few things neatly folded within. Oh, surely, she thought, Maria had packed it, for Antoine could never have done anything so carefully. But even her Italian pistol was there, and, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, with his own monogram upon it, was a heavy burden of French coin, gold, more of it than she had ever owned. True to the promise he’d made James MacKinnon, he had seen her fairly to Rome, and left the means to see her fairly home. There was nothing her father could ever find to complain in her treatment.
And herself? How could she explain, when he had indeed guessed the truth and treated her accordingly? Even failed, irreligious Jacobites need not cosset a traitor. But the irony to Marsali was his sudden and wildly uncharacteristic loyalty to that kind, disillusioned gentleman in the palace beyond. How could a young man who so neglected his family as to leave his own father in doubt of very life have so kind a care and concern for another father of another son? And how, if he cared even a little for King James, could he care so little for her? Marsali tossed the little coin to the ground in despair, and kicked it with her toe against the weed-grown, tawny brick.
She stood up and walked disconsolately to the marble fountain that filled the sheltered little garden always with its music. If Antoine, so heartless for all else, felt compassion for that sad James, could she do other? She remembered the opera, suddenly, and the maimed, angelic singer. Beauty and evil, hand in hand; a glove for many a hand she knew. Patrick Molloy, with his gleeful joy in destruction; her own father the same, and the grand grey dog that had no use at all but the bloody ending of the innocent deer. All like Antoine, as bonnie as Pan and with the same uncaring pagan’s soul. And yet he cared for James.
Remember when you meet your bonnie king; beauty and good are not the same thing. That was his meaning then; Tearlach it was with all the beauty, the brave red-headed boy who caught all their hearts. It was not James the men would follow, even Geordie knew that, and the English soldier, who sent her for the murdering of not the king, but the bonnie, heart-winning heir. But the good was in James, plain dark and passionless, not in Tearlach at all.
Marsali looked into the fountain water, and up to the griffin and the unicorn, with water running free on his stony head. She knew fair enough that a time in which good bore the laurels and beauty went bare-headed had no more place in the world of men than had the unicorn.
There was the click of a door latch and a creak of hinges, and Doctor Cameron came into the garden, strolling with his hands behind his back. He had regaled her last night with a long tale of a plot for the Restoration that was even now unfolding. He spoke most freely, his trust in her founded in the trust of his king in whose house she lodged. And he spoke truthfully, she knew, for the bones of the plot were familiar, and the names she had heard before: Lord Elibank and Alexander Murray, and the landing of the Swedes. It was Patrick Malloy’s plot, still spinning on, with poor Patrick now drifting in the spinning tides of the deep.
‘A good morning to you, Marsali,’ he said, stopping to admire a marble statue set up on a balustrade. ‘I have had word with the coachman, and a post chaise has been obtained. We may leave in the morning, if all is well.’
‘All may be well, for you, sir, and so I hope. But I’ll not be going with you.’
He paused, uncertain, and remembering her disbelief of the yesterday said, ‘I am afraid, Marsali, that the young man has treated you most unkindly. Surely he should have told you of the plans he made. But it was with me he made ’em, and well I knew his intention. And that was that you are to travel with myself, and he to go his own way.’
‘He may go his own way to hell, for all I care,’ Marsali said angrily, ‘but he’ll not arrange for me. I am going to Ghent; I have business with the prince.’
‘This I was not told.’
‘Indeed not. It did not fit his purpose.’
‘But you cannot travel alone. What would he say?’
‘I can, and I shall, and I care nothing of what he would say. He has tricked me, but again, and will not trick me longer.’
‘Marsali, we live in dangerous times, and you deal in a dangerous trade. All who come and go here are watched. Indeed, did I not warn you both that there were a pair of fair brigands asking for yourselves in every tavern in the district?’
‘Antoine’s friends, or Antoine’s enemies, no problem of my own. Nor his, seeing as how he has most bravely retreated to his bonnie ship and her forty great guns.’
‘No lass,’ Doctor Cameron said quietly, ‘he is not a coward, young Sainte Marie, and none of that clan are cowards. You do him injustice, and yourself a danger. It was not just himself, Marsali, they asked for. Your name was spoken as well.’
‘How can that be,’ she cried, startled. ‘I am knowing no one in Rome.’
‘Marsali,’ Doctor Cameron said then, ‘this is not Rome, where we are standing, but a phantom kingdom of the North, the last of the lands of the Stuart Kings. Until we come again into our rights, you will find an odd crew about this place, with nothing at all to be doing with Rome. If ever you’ve a friend or an enemy, made in northern land, you might well expect to find him here.’
Marsali shrugged. ‘I am with neither friend nor enemy in either land, I am thinking. A wise man once said to me it is a lonely life, without friends, but safer. I will now be playing it safe. Good-bye sir, I am thanking you for your concern, and wish
you all luck and fortune. But now you go your way, and I, my own.’
He shrugged and brushed his hands idly over the trimmed, rich box hedge that was sculpted into ingenious shape all about the green lawns and white fountains. ‘So gentle a garden, so easily won,’ he said. ‘We could work all our days in the north, and get but a pale image. Nature is an unkind divider, do you not think?’
‘I am thinking there is little point in arguing over what can never be changed.’
‘Aye, maybe. Good-bye, Marsali. Perhaps I will see you again, someday, in the north. But one thing more, I must tell you. Those two, yon brigands of the tavern.’
‘Aye, what of them?’
‘They were at this door, in the evening.’
‘Surely no.’
‘They were sent away, of course, at the late hour. But I have no doubt, Marsali, they will return.’ He paused again, letting her think. ‘You’ve not changed your mind?’ he said at last.
She smiled sweetly, stroking her thick hair. ‘Yon clan Sainte Marie who have so won your praises will not be besting the MacKinnons every day. I am not a coward either, and I will go to Ghent, for all your brigands, and without a ship and forty of her guns.’
When he had left, with a sad smile and a small formal bow, she sat alone by the fountain, with her fingers trailing in the water and her muslin shawl wrapped snug about her, as if against a chill. The unicorn looked down from the fountain, frozen in an ancient youth. Marsali put her face into her hands.
It was then that she heard the creak of hinges and looked up and out across the neat rectangle of box hedges to the tall laurel and the two orange trees by the palace wall, and then that she saw him.
He was standing alone by the door that led from the street beyond into the courtyard. It was a planked wooden door and no doubt, giving access to the palace as it did, it was customarily kept locked. But somehow he had found his way in, there, and was standing by the open doorway, his back to her, talking quietly to someone beyond. He seemed somehow taller and stronger, standing there, as if he had taken a new manner upon himself with his changed clothes. For he was dressed once more in rough garments as he had worn on the ship, the better to play boys’ games in the rigging, and had plaited his black hair down his back.
She longed dearly to scorn him, to stalk away without him seeing her, for payment for his trickery. But she could not. ‘Antoine,’ she cried softly, like a small girl. He did not turn to his name. She ran then, across the garden through the twisting lanes of box, wildly, as once she’d run down a hill to see a prince. ‘Och Antoine, Antoine, I thought you gone forever.’
He turned then, slowly, uncertain, so that he faced her, eyes widening with shock. But it was not Antoine.
Marsali cried out at the scarred face of the stranger there. He said nothing at all, but his companion stepped pithily through the gateway into the courtyard and shut the wooden door behind him. He looked up then, and Marsali cried out again, but he only said quietly, ‘Och, lassie, lassie. Do the lad the kindness of recalling his name. He has travelled far enough for your sake.’
‘Murdoch,’ she whispered, her hand to her throat.
‘Aye, well,’ Murdoch said sourly, ‘at least you know myself.’
‘But who,’ Marsali asked bewildered, looking on the lean, dark, scar-marked face of the man before her. An older man, hard with the hardness of lessons learned, who looked upon her sadly, with Spanish black-brown eyes.
He said softly, in her own Gaelic, ‘Can you pledge on yon orange tree, like on the rowan? Or do such things not bind lovers here?’
‘Och it cannot be,’ she whispered, and for the first time in her hearty, land-born life, felt the light haziness of a faint. Oh God, she prayed, let me hide in the darkness. But she did not faint, and stood facing the long-prayed-for and now forgotten past.
‘You’re a fine family for not believing the evidence of your eyes. Yon doubting Thomas must have been your ancestor,’ he said.
Murdoch laughed coldly, bitterly embarrassed, and Rory said then, ‘Lassie, I will not touch you, if you wish not, nor speak another word. I have come from Tir Nan Og, from whence none return, and well I am knowing such surprises come not lightly. Many an honoured warrior, much wept over, would be an embarrassment come home to a crowded hearth.’
‘Och poet,’ Murdoch cried in a fury. ‘You kiss the lass or you bugger off. You do not just stand there blethering!’
Rory grinned lightly, and swung round in one smooth gesture and clouted Murdoch across the neck and face with the hard flat of wrist and hand. Murdoch spun into a laurel bush and almost to the ground, and came up rubbing a swelling mouth and ready to fight. But he did not fight, meeting a look in Rory’s eyes with one of his own. Rory said, quietly ‘Now you bugger off, lad, and let me be getting on.’
Murdoch looked once more, unkindly on them both, and went off, picking his hat from the bushes, and finding himself a sanctuary behind a wall of statuary.
‘’Tis a bonnie place,’ said Rory.
‘Where was it, your Tir Nan Og, where aye you’ve been?’ Marsali whispered, wonderingly.
‘Carolina, in the middle of the finest malaria swamp you’ve ever seen.’
Marsali shook her head slowly and said, ‘You look well on it, Rory.’
‘Oh aye, bonnie. ’Tis not your fault not knowing me, nor Murdoch’s, and I swear he knew me no better. Yon cursed day on Drumossie Moor, I got this remembrance.’ He touched his maimed face. ‘I am not the lad who left you, that I am well aware.’
‘No,’ Marsali said softly, ‘you’re not the lad who left. But it is not the scar, love, has changed you, but age. A lad I saw away to Culloden, a laddie, I remembered. And me the while growing to womanhood, and thinking aye, ever, on that lad. But always a lad. The day has come but recent, when I scorned your memory, thinking you’d be just a child, to one so wise-grown as myself.’ She laughed at her own foolishness. ‘Is it not odd, lad, how we think that time comes only to ourselves?’
‘Och, the scoundrel, time,’ Rory said with a weary shrug, ‘he has stolen away my country and all the folk I loved, and brought my lass to a foreign land and the love of foreign folk. But, aye, she is bonnie yet for all that.’ He smiled gently and lightly lifted her chin with his big hand. ‘Where is he now, the one you called for, like once you called for me?’
‘Rory, do not shame me.’
‘’Tis no shame, girl, to love another.’
‘It is shame that you heard me call in all my foolishness for a one who has left me,’ she said in a voice harsh with misery. ‘I cannot lie to you, Rory MacLeod, never could I lie to you. Yes I have loved him, and more than I should. You are not the lad, and I am not the lass I was once. I am a woman, and not a good one, and I’ve been made a fool by one whose name you heard me bleating like a comfortless ewe.’
Rory shook his head uncertain, and Murdoch hearing it all could not resist joining where he should not have, and cried out, ‘Antoine, he has left you?’
‘You’re not seeing him, are you?’
‘But he was with you days ago, we heard from all we asked.’
Marsali laughed suddenly. ‘In the taverns, you were asking?’ And when he nodded she laughed again and told how she was warned of the two fearsome brigands, the lions in the lions’ den they were bound to meet. Then she thought quickly, and asked of Murdoch, ‘Were you by chance at yon grand Opera, with all the crowds and the singing of the libbet man?’
Rory grinned and said, ‘Och aye, we were there, though that is not what first comes to mind. Why do you ask?’
Marsali stood with her hands folded together, looking down at the dry leaves scattering about the brick wall. Finally she said, ‘Then ’twas yourself, Murdoch, the lion’s cub.’
Murdoch glowered and said, ‘You’re a fine pair, yourself and Rory, for talking in riddles.’
‘Not just ourselves, brother. There is another late among us who talks the same. Antoine saw you, at the Opera, I am certain, now. For James MacK
innon is aye the lion to him, and you then the lion’s cub. And for fear of meeting you, we fled away down the stairs and out the door, afore the thing would end. But for my faithful friend, you’d have found me sooner.’
‘But why would he do a thing like that?’ Murdoch said. ‘Myself he would be glad to see, and Rory he does not know.’
‘We were not knowing him well, those days in Trotternish. He is a mysterious creature and has led me a fine dance through all the countryside, has that one. ’Tis a wonder you ever found us.’
Murdoch said, ‘It was in Avignon, we learned where you’d gone.’
‘From Ishbel.’
‘Never, lass, Ishbel will tell no more tales.’
‘She is dead then?’ Marsali asked quietly.
‘No. Not dead. But her mind has gone. She is become like a child. She said only that you’d fled away to the sea caves with the silkie-folk of Barra, and never would return to the land of men. ’Twas quite content she was, sitting in the sun of yon French garden, blethering on about those creatures as if they were real as you and I. Ishbel was aye a one for the fancying, and now her fancies have captured her mind.’
‘From such nonsense, you did not find your way to Rome.’
‘Surely not,’ said Murdoch. ‘But from the Chevalier Robert Cameron and his wifie. But it is long we have been in Rome, and word of you but recent. We had near enough given up all hope and returned home.’
Marsali shrugged, her eyes wandering with lonely, sad hunger over the strange-familiar form of Rory MacLeod. ‘No doubt it would have been better. We are but recently in Rome. We have been long weeks in Provence at the Château Sainte Marie, long weeks, Rory, alone.’
‘If you wish to make me hurt, or jealous, lass, you may well succeed, but I cannot fathom your purpose.’
‘Och, Rory, go away, go away home. I am not your lass longer, nor Antoine’s. Yourself I have abandoned for him, and now he has abandoned me. You’re too fine a man to be gathering up what he has tossed away.’ She turned from him, her face wet with shame.
The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance Page 26