The cleft was so narrow that only a child could enter with comfort. They two, grown past that agility, must slide sideways past the jutting grey rock. But within, it was not dark. High above, the cleft opened to the dim sky, and light trickled in, with the rain. Marsali stepped deeper into the cave, where the light was dimmest.
‘It will be yon,’ she whispered.
‘I will go,’ Antoine said, and stepped forward. There was at once, a scuffling, and a small cry, as some wild thing leapt towards them. His sword was in an instant in his hand, and the thing screamed and shied away, but he caught it around the waist and had the sword at its throat.
‘Oh mercy, sir, mercy, I didn’t know, please don’t kill me, please.’
There was a curse and a clatter as Rory, and then Murdoch, forced their way, weapons ready into the cave. Antoine yet struggled with the creature, and so strong was it in its desperation that he had to brace all of his wiry body against the rocks to hold it still. He cried out, ‘Be still, damn you, I’ll slit your throat.’
It screamed the more, and then Rory suddenly cried out, ‘Jamesina.’
‘Mister, please don’t let him kill me,’ and to be sure she twisted her wild fair head and bit Antoine’s hand with sharp, small teeth.
‘Damn the thing,’ he cried.
‘Let her go,’ said Rory. ‘She’s but a friend of mine.’
‘Friend?’ Antoine said, staring from Rory to the struggling fair head of the little girl. ‘Save me your enemies. Here.’ He flung her loose, so she stumbled across the cave floor, whirling, like a spun top. ‘Have her with my compliments.’
Rory reached for her, and she wrapped her arms about his neck and he lifted her up, sobbing, in the dimness of the cave. Antoine rubbed his bitten hand and suddenly grinned, and said, ‘Aye, you can tell she’s a Glentarvie lass. I know the breed.’
Rory smiled and nodded, and stroked her soft hair with big gentle hands. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘and a MacKinnon she is as well. Jamesina,’ he coaxed softly, ‘Jamesina, do you remember my song?’
The head came out from its shelter beneath his half-bearded chin. ‘Aye,’ she said softly, dragging the word out the length of two, in the highland way, ‘ Aay-ee, I do.’
‘Good then, lass; later I will hear you sing it. But now there is a wee something we must find.’
‘I didn’t know it was your cave as well, sir.’
‘It is not my cave. This is the lass who knew Glentarvie House, when she was but the same as you.’
Jamesina looked Marsali over carefully and said grudgingly, ‘She is bonnie. Do you love her?’
Rory laughed. ‘Who was talking of love?’
But Murdoch said then, sheathing his sword, ‘Will you tell me where this fine friendship began? Carolina?’
‘No, no,’ Rory said, walking carefully deeper into the cave, his left hand feeling its way along the damp stone, and his right yet holding Jamesina’s fingers. ‘No, this lassie awaited me when I found again Glentarvie, on my return. And she gave me a brave welcome, in the boneyard, below.’ He stepped farther and said, ‘Marsali, perhaps you’d better come. My memory fails me.’
She was at his side at once, with the child between, and Murdoch yet looking on, while Antoine, sword yet in hand, stood calmly watching down the steep pine valley, beyond the cave door.
Marsali hurried along the stone face of the cavern, her hands feeling their way. ‘’Twas just past this outcropping, then there was the rough patch, and beyond, och yes, ’tis here, Rory,’ she said calmly. But as she said it the child between them put her hand to her mouth and gave a moaning little cry. They ignored her, and Rory was at once at Marsali’s side, finding the rotting leather handle of the wooden box. He grinned and called, ‘Aye there, Murdoch, I will need you, ’tis not a feather’s weight to be sure.’ But he slid it forward from the rough hole in the stone, and it slid with ease.
‘Wheesht,’ Marsali said, ‘’Tis strange.’
Rory tugged at it again, and then before Murdoch could reach him in the dim musty light, he lifted the thing from the rock.
‘’Tis light,’ Marsali cried.
‘Indeed,’ Rory whispered. And as he did, Jamesina bolted, like a rabbit, for the door.
She had forgotten Antoine. He was there, just beyond the cleft mouth, and he caught her on one slender arm and flung her up over his shoulder. He slipped then through the cleft again, and into the cave, with Jamesina yet struggling and screaming and pulling at his plaited hair. ‘I’ll whip you,’ he said sharply to herself, and then to Rory, ‘What is it, lad, have you lost something?’
Rory was looking solemnly down into the great wooden chest, filled with dust and a webbing of wet spiders, and one solitary louis d’or, wedged in a crack in a board. Jamesina wrenched herself back from Antoine’s shoulder, and he set her, absently, on the ground and grinned at Rory, and Rory, after a long reluctant time, slowly grinned back.
‘I didn’t know, sir,’ Jamesina said, ‘I didn’t know it was yours.’
‘As it happens,’ Rory said, closing the lid and settling wearily down upon it for a seat, and toying with the one gold coin, ‘as it happens, lassie, it was not mine at all. Now, will you be telling me who it was came and got it. Was it the minister? Or was it the new English laird?’
‘Yes,’ said Jamesina.
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes. Both of them, sir. And soldiers. A hundred English soldiers. They made me tell, sir, they said they would shoot me with a big gun and cut off my mammy’s head with a sword.’
‘Did they?’ said Antoine, still grinning. ‘How unkind.’
‘How can you laugh?’ Marsali cried. ‘’Tis awful.’
‘It would be,’ Antoine said mildly, ‘if it were true. She is lying.’
‘No, sir, never.’ Jamesina turned her blue eyes on Rory, with desperate appeal. She sidled away from Antoine, of whom she was now doubly scared. He caught her, gently enough, and drew her back. He crouched down then beside her and looked straight into the child’s face, with his own as innocently calm.
‘Jamesina. I am not a wee lad to be twisted round your little finger. Even that big lassie there cannot do that, and she’s been practising for years. Now you will tell me, where is the gold?’ She pulled away but was enchained by his strange eyes, and could not free herself. Her fingers came, without her thinking, to the talisman of fur.
‘What’s that?’ she said suddenly, forgetting all else.
‘My question first, then I may tell.’
She nodded solemnly and took his hand. He stood and followed her, ducking under the rock lintel. She pointed far out where the silver gleam of Loch Arkaig shone through the dim trees.
‘There’s the gold,’ she said.
‘I do not understand,’ said Rory, who had followed them out.
‘There, sir, in the water, ’Tis in the loch, the gold.’
‘In the loch?’ cried Murdoch, standing with Marsali at his side. ‘Will you be telling me, you idiot, what it will be doing there?’
He was that gruff that Jamesina began again to wail, and Antoine laughed aloud. She sobbed and gasped out between great chokes of breath, ‘’Twas Ailie’s fault, Ailie from Clune-mhor, who came with her mam. ’Twas Ailie first said it.’
‘Said what?’ Antoine whispered.
‘That is was enchanted. You see, we found the gold, and we couldn’t move the box, but we took the wee bits out and I was playing with them, on the floor of the cave. It was my secret place, then. But then I showed Ailie and Ailie said, it was fairy’s gold and the fairies will carry me off to Tir Nan Og for touchin’ it.’ She wailed again and Antoine took his silken handkerchief and wiped her nose, still laughing softly.
‘How terrible. So what then?’
‘I was saying we should run away and ne’er touch it, but Ailie said the fairies would come back and find me if the gold were here. So we must take it away.’
‘How Jamesina? Surely it was heavy?’
‘Aay-ee. I
t was that heavy, all summer we were taking it. With the fairies watching, too. In my skirt, sir, I made a little bundle.’ She crumpled up her plaided skirt to show him. ‘I couldn’t carry but ten at once. And Ailie another ten. Och, but it was weary, the carrying.’
Then she brightened, grown calm now, and twisted playfully at the silvery talisman Antoine wore. ‘But it was great fun when we cast it away. All the bright gold, gone splashin’ and scatterin’ into the water. Gold and silver, ’twas bonnie. But then one day, they were all gone. An’ then Ailie caught the measles and died, an’ her mam doesn’t come any longer.’ She twisted on her feet looking past Antoine at the silver loch. ‘Will you take that piece away, sir, I didn’t see it, and I am fearing now the fairies will come back.’
‘I will take it,’ said Antoine. He stood up slowly and looked at Rory and Murdoch and they looked at him and out to the silvery loch. Then Rory began slowly to laugh, and Antoine as well, and they went on till they stood, face to face, with their hands on each others shoulders, gleeful as children in the dim, piney light.
Jamesina tugged at Antoine’s coat. ‘Sir, will you be telling me?’
He looked uncertainly at her, and she said again, ‘The furry thing, will you be telling me what it is?’
‘Och that,’ he said slowly and knelt down beside her. ‘I had forgotten. I will tell you, lass, but you must make a promise.’ She nodded, curiosity satisfied being worth a promise. ‘’Tis a fairy’s cloak, lass.’
‘That wee scrappy thing, never.’
‘But it is Jamesina. I am a silkie-man, a changeling from the sea, and that is my sign, and my tie to the other world. If you break your promise I will away and tell those fairies what all you’ve done with their gold.’
‘No, please, no,’ she cried.
‘But I will. You must promise me, lass, that never ever will you tell a soul where it has gone. Not your mam, nor your dad, nor the minister, nor the laird. Obey me, and you’ll be safe. If you do not, he that owns the gold will aye come back again, and have revenge. You have my solemn word.’
She nodded solemnly and he stood and said, ‘Fine lass, now you’ve done what King George could not, and we will pay the price.’
In the ruins of Glentarvie, where they sheltered from the winter wind, Marsali asked, ‘Why now, Antoine, did you frighten the child so, with all that nonsense of changelings and fairies? She’ll shudder in her dreams for years.’
‘Well she may,’ he said, ‘but if her mam and her dad and all their kin learn what’s in that deep water, it will earn them all more misery than ever a wee girl can dream. ’Twas a kindness I did, for the lassie.’
Marsali looked at him strangely, where he sat, eating their scant meal of salt fish and oatcakes from the house at Arisaig, with the same dignity with which he dined at the great table of the Château Sainte Marie. ‘’Tis not like you to do an unwarranted kindness,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘’Tis not against the rules.’
Rory picked the bones of his fish and said, ‘Aye, now, Tearlach must whistle for his gold, but we’ll yet bring him men enough to dance to his tune.’
‘It was not for want of men he lost in forty-five,’ said Murdoch, wiping his hands on his shirt. ‘But for the want of gold. I am thinking it’s time we were away.’
‘Away?’ Marsali asked. ‘Away to France?’
Murdoch leaned back against a charred stone of his father’s wall. He smiled faintly and said, ‘France for those who are French,’ he eyed Antoine carefully, ‘and fear those who are but poor highlanders after all, I am thinking, Trotternish will do. Lassie, the cause is lost. But I have yet my few acres by the sea. It fed three in the past, and will no doubt feed three again. What say, Rory, is it not time we were home?’
‘This is your home, brother, and no other. Courage will win it, gold or no.’
Murdoch sighed and said, ‘Courage did not win Culloden.’ Then he stood and stretched and scratched his head, and said, ‘Aye, this is home. I remember the bite of the beasties. Look, lad, I will sleep one night more under my father’s roof, if it will yet keep the snow off.’ He gestured above his head, to where winter stars shown through the black beams. ‘And in the morning, we will face truth.’
He curled up then in his blanket and Rory, with no choice, did the same. Antoine and Marsali sat awake looking at the fire burning to nothingness, and then she too lay down, weary with a new weariness. Just before she slept she was dimly conscious of his hands upon her head, touching her hair, and wrapping her with the blanket, close against the night. Then he went out and sat, watching quietly into the darkness, from the fallen heap of stones at James MacKinnon’s door. Twice in the evening he had heard a night bird cry, with an eerie disturbed wail, and was certain they were not alone.
When he heard the scuffling crunch of a living thing in the bracken, he quietly drew his sword. But he yet sat utterly silent in the darkness with his coat drawn tight, and Marsali’s plaid wrapped about him against the cold, and the sword still across his knees. She came creeping, like a winter mouse, across the light scattering of snow.
In the dim light, where stars and snow shifted in a restless highland sky, she did not see him sitting there. But he saw her, and when she was but feet from him, creeping to the door of Glentarvie, he said with infinite softness, ‘Jamesina.’
‘Oh, Mother of Mercy.’
‘Do not fear, it is just myself.’
She looked up then and saw him. He had not moved, and sat yet with his knees drawn up and his bright sword across them. ‘You’re watching,’ she cried accusingly.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Why have you come, Jamesina? You’re late from your bed.’
‘It wasn’t you I was wanting.’
‘I am sure it was not. But it’s me you have. The others are sleeping, Jamesina. You’ll speak with me.’
‘’Twas the soldiers, sir.’
He did not move, but she felt an awakening, like a tension as if he was suddenly aware of the night about them in a new way.
‘What soldiers, Jamesina? And what of them?’
‘That came to my mam’s house, askin’ for you.’
‘For me?’
She shrugged. ‘For the ones called MacKinnon. Are you one as well?’ He shook his head, and she cried, ‘But the lady must be MacKinnon if she came from this house.’
‘You are clever, Jamesina.’
‘You’re makin’ fun.’
‘Never. I do not make fun of lassies. It’s not good manners. Jamesina, it’s late, and snowing. You’re to go away home now, and back to your bed, and do not come this way again, not for days. Ten days. Then it will be all right. Do you understand?’
‘Aay-ee. I understand.’ She hunched in her tattered bit of plaid and pulled it tight over her head. ‘Do I go now?’
‘Aay-ee, you do,’ he said laughing. ‘Are you not afraid of the fairies and ghosties, by the boneyard so late?’
‘I wasn’t, sir, till ye said it.’
He laughed again and suddenly leaned down and kissed her forehead. ‘Then you’d best run fast, to your bed, lass. But I thank you, now, you’ve done us a service to be sure. And when you’re home, not a word to your mam, but straight to your bed without her seeing.’
‘Aye, sir.
‘And mind you pull the covers over your head.’
She scampered away and Antoine watched in the dim starlight until she was gone. Then, as silent as herself, he crept into the house. He went straight to Marsali and knelt beside her, without touching or waking her. He found the Italian pistol and the powder and shot she always kept by her, and took them with casual ease. Then he was outside again, beneath the dim shadow of Glentarvie House, with the snow falling. He loaded the pistol, careful, slung the powder horn about his neck, and walked silently away. When he reached the dark path that led to the rocks and the cave, he began, silently, to run.
Marsali woke in the dim, grey morning, with snow upon her blanket and a dark shadow between her and the light,
Rory yet slept beside her, and Murdoch. She cried out, uneasy, ‘Antoine?’
‘He appears to be elsewhere, Mistress MacKinnon,’ the voice was English and flatly amused. ‘Indeed he appears to have left. We have looked rather carefully, I assure you.’
She sat up at once, and by instinct her hand swept the sodden, broken floor for the pistol. It was not there.
‘Have you lost something, missie?’ said the voice. He stepped closer and she saw the red of his uniform, dark in the dawn, and the heavy pistol held steadily in his right hand. ‘If you seek the little present I gave you, I would not advise it. You will recall I was never a permitted target. Besides, I am in a superior position, and two of my friends wait just at the door. Now you, give me the weapons your friends have abandoned.’ He indicated Rory’s sword and Murdoch’s pistol, laid last night in the shelter of the hearth. ‘And do not wake the gentlemen.’
Marsali got to her feet, caught her hand to her mouth at the familiar uneasiness in her throat. The soldier gestured her away from the others and whispered, ‘What now, missie?’
She shook her head and whispered back, ‘A moment, damn you. I am ill.’ She could see him now, the remembered pale face of Lieutenant Percy of Skelton’s Horse, the brown moustache yet drooping elegantly. He had a new scar above his left eyebrow, won in some recent skirmish, and it twisted as the eyebrow lifted.
He smiled softly and said, ‘So you’ve learned a lesson or two in Rome?’ He suppressed laughter with difficulty as she carefully crept across the floor. He held the pistol now, aimed not at herself, but at Rory’s sleeping head, and said, ‘Carefully, missie, I am inclined to be nervous.’
She handed him each sword and scabbard and the pistol, lastly, with the butt towards himself. He thanked her for each, as if they were some thoughtful gift. ‘Now wake the gentlemen, missie, and warn them, as you do. My nervousness is not improved by sudden starts.’ Marsali bent carefully beside Rory and touched his face. He did not wake at once, tired from his journey, but as she stroked his brow and whispered his name, he turned to her, half in his sleep, as to a lover, and his arms came about her waist.
The Sea-Harrower: A Scottish Highlander Historical Romance Page 31