The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance

by Abigail Clements

  ‘Oh indeed,’ Marsali cried. ‘We have sought him everywhere, and now he comes to us. But of course, we will come at once. Will you lead us there?’

  The gentleman doffed his hat, and bowed to her, and when he straightened she saw a small round face, with ruddy cheeks and a short straight Irish nose. He had blue eyes, and a small, tawny moustache, much stained with the usage of snuff. ‘Sean O’Niall, at your service,’ he said.

  Marsali hurried forward from the shadow of the convent door, but Rory’s arm across the entrance restrained her. He stood there yet, blocking the narrow doorway, leaning with the flat of his hand against the stone. He said coolly, ‘And if the Chevalier Douglas is so dearly wishing our company, will you be telling me now why he ran in the market like a scalded cat?’

  Marsali made to argue, thinking Rory in his rudeness would send the gentleman off in a temper and lose their last chance. But the Chevalier O’Niall only nodded sagely and said, ‘And is that not a wise question?’ He smiled engagingly. ‘I would expect no less from a highland lord, for surely that is what stands before me.’

  ‘What stands before you is a highland beggar, bred to suspicion by a life of misfortune. Do not be flattering me now, but showing me how I am to know I can trust you?’

  ‘But sir, how was the Chevalier Douglas to trust you? Is it not richly clear at once that it was necessary to maintain the cloak of secrecy until your good selves had been well observed?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘These are sore troubled times, and the head of my master is threatened on every side. Few know even of his presence here, and his identity is a secret from all but the most loyal friends. He is forced to skulk like a commoner, and make a bold show of shopping like some pitiful burgher in the markets of the town. Thus is secrecy preserved and safety maintained. Little would ye countenance the dangers that lurk. Why, even that innocent pretty face,’ he gestured with bold extravagance to Marsali, ‘might mask a treasonous intent, and that poor pistol in her hand, no doubt a maiden’s last desperate defence of her honesty, might in crueller hands hold a darker purpose.’

  ‘Och never,’ said Murdoch. ‘You’ll never convince me of so fearful incongruous a thought.’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ said Sean O’Niall, ‘such things have happened.’ Marsali studied his face with alarm, but could read nothing but a boundless naivety.

  ‘Will ye come now?’ he implored. ‘The Chevalier Douglas awaits even now in his poor, secret abode.’

  Rory nodded. ‘We will come. I will be at your right shoulder the way, and if I see any one thing I do not fancy, I will run my sword from there, to there.’ He tapped mildly both a point beneath the man’s shoulder blade, and a corresponding mark on his chest. ‘And you will not like it. So go canny.’

  The man looked nervously at Rory’s sword hand and at his dark scarred face. He mopped his brow lightly with a small linen square, replaced it in his waistcoat pocket, and agreed. Marsali went back into the quiet corridors of the convent and took her shawl from her bedchamber and wrapped it, highland fashion, about her head and shoulders. She knelt briefly before the crucifix and crossed herself and rose and stepped to the door.

  Sister Marietta was hovering there. As Marsali passed she whispered, with a glance over her shoulder, as if Reverend Mother might be passing, ‘Is it true?’

  ‘What pray?’ Marsali asked.

  ‘That ye go to see the Chevalier Douglas?’

  ‘I am thinking that is the intention.’

  The Irish nun clapped her hands with girlish delight. ‘Oh promise when ye come back, ye’ll tell me, is he as handsome as they say?’

  Marsali paused, rather surprised and said, ‘Is that truly a question you should be asking me? The good looks of gentlemen have but small place here, I would be thinking.’

  Sister Marietta sighed. ‘Oh sartainly. But only … himself, he is not just a gentleman, now, is he? Surely, ’tis but a loyal thought to be praisin’ the face o’ a good Catholic prince.’

  As they walked down the darkened streets by the glistening waters of a shadowy canal, Marsali said to the man who walked stiffly with Rory’s arm through his own, ‘Are you knowing now that the Chevalier Douglas’s most secret identity is common knowledge in the convent at our back?’

  ‘Sure an’ it cannot be,’ O’Niall said firmly.

  ‘Sure and it is. The Irish sister knew at once. She called him “a good Catholic prince”.’

  ‘And indeed he is,’ O’Niall said at once, adding nervously, ‘for all he says from time to time. Never fear, the lips of the holy sisters are sealed by vows. The word will never pass without the convent walls.’

  ‘I am wondering, though,’ Murdoch said, ‘how that same word passed within?’

  The Chevalier O’Niall shrugged, cautiously, so as not to startle Rory. ‘There are spies all about us, I fear.’ He glowered darkly and Rory grinned broadly, the scar twisting his mouth.

  ‘I am thinking, ’twas King George himself under the abbess’s bed. Do you not see, Marsali, that this here is an idiot, and our prince appears another. They play like children at hiding. So they’ve tucked their wee heads in under the pillow, and all is safe. Only they’ve left their brave Catholic arses poking out.’

  ‘Sir,’ cried the Chevalier O’Niall, ‘you’ll not insult my prince.’ He stopped short on the cobbles and jerked about in stubby outrage.

  ‘Will I not?’ Rory asked mildly, setting his hands to sword hilt once more. Then he smiled a little and said, ‘I have earned the right to insult him sir, and earned it with my blood. But do not fear; I will lay myself dead at his feet before I see him harmed. A good prince may take a jest now and again, with no loss to his honour. Lead on, sir.’

  Sean O’Niall looked warily about, but seeing Rory yet grinning to himself, he nodded, with a small nervous smile and went on. At the next corner he looked all about them, as if he feared, or hoped, to find themselves followed. They were not and they went on to a small, tatty house among many, and O’Niall rapped three firm times on the faded grey paint of the door.

  A Flemish serving maid in a grey skirt and white linen cap opened the door but a crack and stared out with wide frightened eyes. O’Niall spoke sharply to her, and the door opened to a wider crack, enough for him to get his precautionary boot toe within, and then she fled in a small rabbity panic, with a clatter of wooden shoes. O’Niall strode in with elaborate confident calm. The door opened onto a hallway with a fire smouldering on the hearth and faded flowers wilting in a jug on a sideboard.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said with a magnanimous wave, rather as if the house were his own. ‘I will seek out my master, and determine his royal pleasure.’

  ‘Oh for the love of Christ,’ said Murdoch. But at the moment he said it, a door banged open and over the sound of a woman’s soft-voiced protest came the sound of a big striding figure stamping down a stairway.

  ‘O’Niall,’ a voice called, a powerful voice, ‘have you found them, O’Niall?’

  A second door, opening onto the hallway, banged open, so hard that the dusty blue delft pottery upon the tile mantel clattered with the force.

  He stood in the doorway, a tall, strong-built man, bending his red head under the low, dark wood lintel, and peering at the group in the hall. Then at once the long, faintly dour face brightened and broadened to a wide engaging grin. He rubbed his slightly pockmarked nose with the back of his hand, a nervous boyish gesture, and called out boldly, ‘Mistress MacKinnon, my bonnie seamstress. Welcome to the house of your prince.’ He grinned again, and his broad, lace-cuffed hand gestured with delicate finesse about the dusty hall. ‘I have waited anxious for days for word of you.’

  ‘But, sir, surely,’ Marsali asked, bewildered.

  ‘Ah hah, the market, no?’ He grinned again, suddenly more Italian in his manner. ‘But of course I saw you, and knew you at once.’ He stepped forward and with a boldness impossible in the shy boy she’d remembered, he touched beneath her chin with his long blunt fingers and raised her face, and her
eyes to his own. ‘You must understand how it pained me to so abandon you there, but,’ he leaned conspiratorially closer, ‘caution is the mark of our every day.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Rory. ‘Does caution forbid you saying a kind word to us as well, or is it just the lady you’ve longed to see?’

  ‘Wheesht,’ Marsali said, turning quickly. ‘You’ll show respect.’ But Rory had taken unkindly to those fingers beneath her chin, and would not renege.

  ‘I am not used to such frank address,’ said the prince.

  ‘Then you sir, are not the man you were,’ Rory said at once. ‘On the road to Derby we were brothers, every one. And brothers again at Culloden. I speak to you as I speak to my foster brother, here,’ he laid a companionable hand on Murdoch’s shoulder which Murdoch regarded with a light amazement. ‘With honesty as a brother is due, and expect no less in return.’

  There was a long silence, and Tearlach stood yet rubbing his nose, and considering anger. Then he grinned broadly, instead. ‘Yes. It is true.’ He waved a dismissive hand. ‘These days among dull burghers have corrupted my sense of justice. Forgive me. Brothers we were indeed. Brothers we shall be again. Come, we will drink.’ He turned and strode ahead of them from the room.

  They followed, Murdoch prodding Rory, and saying in a mocking whisper, ‘Aye, brothers we were and brothers we always shall be. Is he not as golden-tongued a bletherer as yourself?’ But he followed and Marsali did also, and the tall figure led them up a narrow wooden staircase with unpacked, half-opened wooden boxes heaped in the corner of the landing. Marsali peeked in and saw the dark gleam of tarnished silver and the dusty smoothness of china.

  ‘Is it moving in or moving out, they are after?’ Murdoch whispered.

  ‘He is not a one for settling down,’ Sean O’Niall whispered confidentially. ‘Those boxes have sat like that for four long months. He cannot be bothered with the unpacking.’

  But at the top of the narrow stairs, Tearlach halted and dismissed O’Niall with a curt wave of his broad hand. Then he took Marsali’s arm, with a flourish, and led her into the drawing room on the right.

  It was a pretty room, in the Flemish manner, with ornate ceilings, and solid Dutch furniture. And there was a carpet on the floor, and a painting on one of the walls, and a more lived-in look than the rest of the house. In the corner, patiently sewing, sat the blue-eyed woman Marsali had seen in the square.

  ‘May I introduce Mistress Clementina Douglas,’ Tearlach said as she rose. She came nearer, with dignity, but a certain shy fright, her fingers twisting a pleat of her skirt, while she extended the other hand to Rory and Murdoch and Marsali. Names were exchanged, and the prince acknowledged Rory’s and Murdoch’s with a nod each time.

  ‘MacLeod of Portree, I recall, surely,’ he said in response to Rory. ‘He will be your father?’

  ‘He will, if I ever find him again. He has fled to Nova Scotia. A little trouble over a letter to Avignon. Nothing I am sure to do with the Chevalier Douglas.’

  ‘Do not mock me,’ Tearlach said sharply, both hands coming down flat to his sides.

  ‘Do not mind him,’ Marsali cried. ‘He is bitter.’

  ‘Bitter? Bitter? For a father who has served well his king?’ Tearlach flung his hands up in annoyance. ‘This one would be my brother? How dare he?’

  Rory bridled and would have spoken, but Marsali stepped between, even as the shy, but straight-backed Mistress Douglas reached for the prince’s arm.

  ‘He means no harm, sir,’ Clementina whispered. ‘He is simply without grace.’

  Then Marsali said suddenly, and proudly, ‘His father was honoured to serve you, as was my own. And he himself has served you well. He bears that scar from your service and has spent seven years in exile, and now crossed the ocean and all of Europe to pledge himself to your cause. He is but distressed at the confusion in the market, and feared that, for all his efforts, his prince would refuse his service.’ She felt rather than saw Rory’s rising protest, and caught his arm with her hand, digging her fingers hard into his wrist. ‘All he wishes, is one word from yourself that you will honour his journey by accepting the loyalty he offers.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Murdoch in a smothered grunt.

  Tearlach smiled, a slow, growing smile. Then he bowed briefly to her and turned to the company, and announced, proudly, ‘With ladies like this to my side, how can any say my cause is lost?’ He did not wait for an answer, but expanded his possessive gesture to embrace the room and said then, ‘And with gentlemen like these.’ He reached his hand to Rory. ‘We will shake hands, like clansmen, and drink, like once at Glentarvie. Mistress MacKinnon will sing again the songs I loved. And I will hear what your fine loyalty has brought.’

  He sent at once for brandy, and Mistress Douglas hurried to have them seated, and comfortable, visibly relieved at the change of events. Marsali thought of her as a mother with a restless, difficult bairn; never relaxing, never with her eyes far from that mobile, petulant mouth.

  They drank together, and he toasted the king in awkward Gaelic that touched her with its sincerity. She tried once to tell him of her meeting with James in Rome, but he seemed more willing to speak of the king as a stranger than as the gentleman who was his father. They were obliged then to tell all of their tale from the start, and each must give a history, so that everything, even the fate of her brother Norman, and of her father, was revealed.

  At that, Tearlach took her hands with much offered comfort, but she saw his dark eyes alight with an odd pleasure, and when he was done lamenting he turned to Mistress Douglas, and said, ‘Do you not see, Clementina, in your own good country how they honour me? Here they cluster about me like jackals, for the payment of their bills, and such trivia. But there, there,’ he leaned back and closed his eyes, ‘there they believe enough to die for me. My father is a fool to wait, even a day. They would rise for me tomorrow.’

  ‘Indeed we would,’ Rory cried at once. ‘If you will but come, and only ride through the glens, the people will be on your side.’ He grinned suddenly, his twisted grin. ‘MacKinnons and MacLeods, MacKenzies and MacNialls, Camerons, MacDonalds, all. Sir, if you will but come, just stand at our sides, even if you never lifted a sword, I swear Scotland will be yours again, and all will be won.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ Tearlach said querulously. ‘Did I not say the same? But England, sir, is the prize that holds my crown.’

  ‘To hell with England,’ Rory cried. ‘What is that to us? They may keep their fat Dutch king if they wish. James will be ours, and after, yourself. Why ask for more?’

  ‘England is mine,’ Tearlach said. He poured more brandy and then folded stubborn hands.

  ‘Scotland is yours as well,’ said Rory.

  Tearlach shrugged. ‘It is not enough. I must have it all …’

  ‘Or nothing?’ Murdoch said quietly. ‘Those are child’s words from a prince.’

  ‘I will not be called names by a peasant in bare feet,’ Tearlach returned coldly. Clementina immediately stood and offered brandy to Murdoch as if to drown the prince’s words. Murdoch set his glass down and ignored her.

  ‘My feet are bare for walking in your footsteps. I have followed you across half of Europe. All because there were some thought you worth a crown. I am beginning to think you’re not worth the cabbage you haggled for in the market.’

  Marsali froze, expecting fury, but it did not come. Instead Tearlach suddenly laughed, broadly, with delight. He clapped his big hands together, and flung his strong red head back against the padding of his chair. Marsali watched, wondering then if he had teased them, all the while, deliberately inviting their anger. Then he leaned, a little drunkenly, and nudged Clementina and said, ‘Look now, these, these are men. They’ll never come crawling to my feet. The loyalty of the like of these, that is a thing worthy of pride.’ His dark eyes, incongruous under their fair brows narrowed sleepily, a little dreamily. He rested his head back and closed them and said, ‘Mistress MacKinnon, will you sing now, like yo
u sang once before, please, for your prince?’

  Marsali hesitated; but Clementina nodded hurriedly, her pale blue eyes intent on Tearlach’s still, drooping face. She moved across the room until she stood behind the prince’s chair, and gently rubbed his big shoulders. Marsali began to sing, the one song first to her mind,

  ‘My bonnie moorhen, my bonnie moorhen,

  Up in the grey hills, down in the glen.’

  Before she had finished, Rory had risen, poured brandy boldly for himself, and joined her, in his sweet, strong voice, on the final words.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said Tearlach, ‘beautiful. When I hear the singing, I can believe again.’ He opened his eyes then and beckoned to Marsali. She came cautiously and knelt before him, and he took both her hands. ‘I can believe,’ he said again softly. ‘Do you know, mistress, there are times when I cannot. My father grows old and querulous, and his letters are full of religion and despair. And my brother, damn his soul, has become a priest.’

  He flung up his hands, free of Marsali’s, and the waiting Clementina stroked his shoulders again and seemed afraid to speak. ‘Who, tell me,’ he demanded then, ‘who with a crown but two heartbeats away, becomes a priest? He will have no issue. Aye, ’tis up to myself.’ He glanced around to Clementina and shrugged. Marsali moved back and Clementina brought a footstool and sat mildly and devotedly at her prince’s feet. Her eyes fixed on his still handsome and much troubled face were full of love.

  ‘They do not believe,’ he said. ‘No one believes.’ He looked slyly up and then glanced with sudden warmth from Marsali’s face to Rory to Murdoch’s. ‘No one believes, but my highlanders.’ Marsali thought then he was as wily as Antoine, and then he said, ‘Of the like of these a man can make an army. And what of you?’ he demanded, reaching again for his brandy. ‘What do you believe?’ He glared at Clementina, suddenly angry.

  But before she would answer, he said, softly, while he toyed with her neatly pinned dark hair, half-undoing it, ‘I cannot tell with her. My friends all say she is a spy, and I must disown her. Shall I do that?’ He looked alarmingly about from one to the other.