‘Come, Cat,’ I said, as I went towards the door. Surprisingly, he obeyed. He was out of the door before me, a swift white streak, and then, quicker than I, he was off down the broad spiral. When I reached the floor below, he had disappeared.
I went on then, unaccompanied, to my meeting with the Master of Cluain.
Chapter Two
I
He stood there ‒ a powerfully built man in whom the strength seemed too suddenly to have wasted. He was not so tall, but the breadth of the shoulders was great, only now they appeared bent forward unnaturally, hunched. His distinguishing feature was massive eyebrows hooked over deep-set eyes. There was a strong thrust of jawline, but most of the face was lost in the gathering furrows of age, and the dim light of the room. He stood, legs apart, facing out from the fireplace, and he half-turned at my entrance.
‘So ‒ you have come. William’s sister.’
‘My mother’s child.’
Why did I always have to make the tart rejoinder? Could I not have greeted him without provocation in these first words? ‘Learn to curb your tongue, Little Sister,’ William had once said to me, using the name the Chinese had bestowed on me, ‘and you’ll have the men at your feet ‒ that is, if you want those kinds of men!’ I looked at this big ageing man, and I knew that he would never be at my feet. I hoped I would never be at his.
He gestured irritably. ‘Well, come in, come in! And close the door. There’s draught enough with this wind.’
I did as he bade me, and then went and stood near the fireplace. His voice was deep and strongly accented. ‘You’ve come a long way. Are you staying?’
‘A while. If you’ll have me.’
He shrugged. ‘If it pleases you. You’ve a right to the roof of Cluain.’ It wasn’t much of a welcome, but then he hadn’t asked me to come in the first place. A silence fell between us, which I left him to break.
‘Why did you come? You could not find anyone to marry you out there?’
I flushed. ‘There were some. That’s unimportant. My father was killed and ‒’
‘Aye ‒ I read of it. I was going to write ‒’ The tone softened a little. ‘But I never got to it. In any case, the letter would have missed you, as it happens.’ It was said with some relief, as if this absolved him of any fault. ‘I never did like him ‒ your father. I’ll not pretend any different. He came here just for one summer, and took away my only child ‒ and she still so young. He was English, and a minister of a different church. And he took her not just to England where I might have seen her from time to time, and might have come to know my grandson. Och, no ‒ he must carry her all the way to China, that miserable cesspool of pagans, where she died of one of their stinking fevers. No, there was no love lost, and I cannot deny it.’
‘I loved him.’ I had to say it.
Surprisingly, he nodded. ‘That’s as well. I like to see respect in a child ‒’
‘Love,’ I insisted.‘I loved him ‒ and William too.’
Perhaps the outright declaration of love was too much for this taciturn Scot; his tongue would not come easily to such a word, nor hear it too readily from others. He half turned away from me, as if in embarrassment. ‘That’s why I came.’ Then I stopped. I could not tell him about the scroll. Some time, but not now. ‘I had to see where William … Well, I knew he was growing attached to Cluain.’
As if I had wounded him and he could bear no more of it, he left the fire abruptly, and went to the sideboard. For a moment he bent over it, both hands placed there as if to steady himself. The voice was muffled and choked when he spoke again.
‘Aye ‒ and well I knew it. He would have been grand for Cluain, and Cluain for him. But he’s dead now ‒ and there’s an end to it.’ He cleared his throat thunderously, and his body straightened; the big head with its brush of white hair came up. ‘Sit down, then, and welcome.’ But still he did not look at me. ‘You’ll take a dram with me?’
‘A dram?’
Now he turned back. ‘Are you stupid, Gurrl? Have they taught you nothing of your heritage? A dram ‒ whisky! Cluain’s whisky!’
‘I ‒ I’ve never drunk whisky.’
‘Then you are sadly ill-educated. Or perhaps you drank only brandy or champagne out there in the bishop’s palace.’
‘It was no palace. We were quite poor.’
This seemed to irritate him also. ‘He didn’t only take my child, but he could not even leave his own children decently provided for. Well, we’ll not fret it. Doubtless you’ll find someone to marry you. But if it’s to be a Scot, then you’d better learn fine soon what his national drink is. Some women drink it ‒ some don’t. But here at Cluain at least you’ll know what it is.’
He was unlocking a cupboard in the sideboard with a key he selected from a ring he carried. Glasses stood waiting ready on a silver tray. He poured from an engraved decanter into two glasses and came back and placed one in my hand. I had not sat down, as he had bidden me, so we faced each other, standing, across the breadth of the fireplace. The firelight caught the glow of the amber liquid in the good crystal glass. He raised his slightly towards me.
‘Well, there it is, miss. Uisge beatha we call it in the old Gaelic tongue. Aqua vitae, the Latin scholars say. Water of life. Cluain’s distilling ‒ and your heritage. Well, miss, here’s to us!’
He tossed his own glass back, and incautiously, I was too hasty in following his example. It was in my throat before I felt the fire of it, an aged smoke that seemed to pour into my lungs; I gasped for breath, and struggled not to choke. I was certain he could see the tears that came to my eyes, but I would not allow the cough and the splutter to come. He had been expecting that, I thought, and with a certain malicious pleasure.
I had to wait until my breath was even enough to speak. The whisky had an extraordinary aftertaste on my tongue, and although I knew the alcohol couldn’t have affected my legs so quickly, I sat down without ceremony on one of the broad oak settles placed at each end of the fireplace. I knew he was waiting for a verdict, and I had my own satisfaction in withholding it.
‘I’m not miss, you know ‒ nor Gurrl. My name is Kirsty.’ But I had the feeling the name ‘Gurrl’ had come to stay.
The words disturbed him. His big features twisted with a look of bitterness. He sat down opposite me, and the movement was that of an old man.
‘Kirsty ‒ Christina. Well, my daughter gave you that name but she could not give you the spirit and great heart of the woman she called you for. You’d have to be bred here in the Highlands to be her kind. But then my grandson came, and it was as if he had been to the place born. Now he’s dead, and there’s no one for Cluain but an ignorant girl, God help us! No one for Cluain …’
And then he drained the last of his glass. In desperation, with no words of comfort to offer him, I took another sip of my own. This time it wasn’t so bad. At least it was warm; I could feel its glow move subtly through my veins. Uisge beatha ‒ whisky ‒ water of life. Cluain …
II
The hot dishes were brought in wordlessly by Mairi Sinclair, and left on the sideboard. My grandfather cut the meat, and we helped ourselves from the other dishes. As Morag had said, the food was good ‒ it was excellent. I had been hungry, but the whisky had made me ravenous. I noted the plates we ate off, the silver utensils one would not have expected in what I had thought of as a farmhouse. But it was also the dower house of Ballochtorra, and judging from the furniture, must have shared some of Ballochtorra’s riches. But here, also, while we ate off fine china, there was no single thing that was superfluous. The windows of the dining-room looked on to the enclosed garden, and there the plants waved and nodded in their own cheerful disorder. But no rose such as climbed those old walls perfumed this room; instead there was the smell of beeswax, and the peat and wood burning in the fire. Everything shone, and was set with mathematical precision. The great sideboard and the long table with stretchers joining its magnificently carved legs, were precisely parallel. The two settles were
at exact right angles to the fireplace, with no cushion or footstool to ease the sitter. Under the window opposite them was a smaller table ‒ still of the same carved dark oak ‒ it must all be about the Jacobean period, I thought, though I was hazy about such things. On the table was set a huge book bound in faded, though polished, brown leather, with brass trimmings on the corners, and an ornately fashioned brass hinged clasp which fastened and held the pages together. There were such ones on display in the richer homes of the residents of the British Legation in Peking, though it was characteristic that my father, a bishop, had never thought of declaring his faith in any such obvious manner; the small, thin-paged book he carried in his pocket had been sufficient. Beside the Bible, and more interesting to me, was the one note of individuality that the room-contained. A chess set was there, the board and pieces polished, as everything was, but with the look of use about them. But no unfinished game was set up. The pieces waited, their four solid ranks opposing. Whoever dusted and polished them had learned in what order to replace them. But by now I was beginning to believe that the two women of this house, the older and the young, between them were capable of learning all they put their minds to. It could not be true that all Scots were as intelligent as the engineers and scientists they exported to the rest of the world; but quite certainly the stupid would not have lasted long at Cluain.
My grandfather ate in silence. I thought there might have been a prayer, but there was none. All apparently, were not like Mairi Sinclair. Then, after a while, my grandfather laid down his knife and fork, and stared at me, as if he had suddenly, once again, become aware of my presence. I realised that he was totally unused to eating at this table with anyone else ‒ he had forgotten that one could talk at meals. William, I thought, would have changed that. No one had ever been able to stop William talking.
The words came in fits and starts. ‘You know what Cluain means in the old tongue, lass? Did your mother talk to you of things like that? ‒ about Cluain, and such?’
‘She died when I was four,’ I reminded him.
‘Aye, she did. So she did. Killed by the foulness of that savage place he took her to. Well, it’s done now. But Cluain ‒ Cluain means a broad, green meadow ‒ a pasture. Och, we use a fancy name to call the whisky by, because the old words aren’t understood. Royal Spey, we call it ‒ because of the river. But Cluain’s it is, and made from Cluain’s own barley, and dried over peat cut from Cluain’s bog, up there on the mountain, and most of all, brewed with the water from Cluain’s own well ‒ not river water, mind you, but from our own well. The water’s a great part of it ‒ Christina’s Well, it is called, and it is the most precious thing on Cluain.’
He forgot who I was. He had a new listener ‒ a new pupil. So he must have talked to William on that first night, seeing the one who could carry on Cluain for him, seeing the longed-for grandson.
‘It must age, you know. And it must age here. Whisky that’s new-distilled can boil your eyeballs out ‒ send you daft. But here the climate is right. Don’t ask me why. As soon ask how a good whisky is made, and you’ll get a hundred answers, and a hundred different distillings. Some think the climate here is damnable, though it suits me, you see. It suits the whisky, too. Aye, it lies there in its oak cask ‒ best if you can get casks that have been used for storing sherry ‒ gives it colour, in time. Three years is the youngest whisky you can sell by law. But those who buy for blending know Cluain. They come up here from Glasgow and Edinburgh and they bargain and they buy just as the new spirit is distilled. They are content to leave it to age here, untasted, because they know they are buying the finest malt whisky the Highlands make. They ask no questions of Cluain any more. Some leave it only the legal three years, and then take it away to blend with their grain spirits ‒ that’s blended whisky, Gurrl, and if it weren’t for the malt in it, it would not be even as good as your rot-gut gin. And then some ‒ those who can afford to wait ‒ they wait, and they leave it here, and it grows better with the years. Och, mind you, most of it ends up in a blend, but we all know that without the pure malt distilling, there would be no such thing as the Scotch whisky they sell all over the world these days. There’s few that will pay the price, and wait the years to drink a pure malt brew. Perhaps there’s few that have the head for it, except those that are brought up to it, here in the Highlands. But never mistake it. Malt is the heart and essence of it. It gives it the flavour and warmth. No whisky without malt, Gurrl ‒ no whisky at all …’
Almost without noticing it, we were back at the fire again, seated on those opposite settles. Mairi Sinclair had come to clear the dishes silently, and I noticed that my grandfather was silent also while she was in the room. But we were alone again, and he held another glass in his hand, and again he seemed to have forgotten my real identity. He had taken out a pipe without troubling to ask me if I minded him smoking it. But I could not stand in William’s shadow forever, and finally his eyes snapped alive. He seemed to come out of a dream.
‘Och, why do I bother? What’s it to you? ’Tis God’s will, but ’tis hard when a man’s worked all his life and there’s no one to pass on his knowledge to ‒ no one to care how a good malt whisky is made.’
‘Cluain is a farm as well as a distillery.’ Why did I seem to bargain for a place here, when I didn’t even know that I wanted to stay? It was not the reason I had come.
‘The farm is all right. It is a very good farm. But the glory is the whisky. Cluain is famous for it. What can a wee gurrl be taught about it? There’s no woman I know who could run a distillery.’
‘I’m useless to you, then?’
His words were brutal. ‘Useless ‒ yes. Just about useless. Unless you can find and wed a man that’s fit to take over from Angus Macdonald. And that man will not be easy to find.’
‘You place a high value on yourself, Grandfather.’
‘I do that! Any man that’s fought and worked as I have must place a high value on himself. He has proved that value.’
In the dim light that came from the fire, and the gathering twilight, I knew he would not see my faint, rueful smile. And I didn’t much care if he did. I had come rashly, on impulse, fleeing from a China that no longer held anything I loved, coming here because of that scroll, and the scarlet characters splashed on it. What could I prove? ‒ what could I do? I could stand beside William’s grave, but that would not bring him back, nor answer my questioning. And then what? Cling on here at Cluain, knowing my grandfather would hardly turn me away; but stay on unwanted ‒ useless, as he put it. William had been fond of the Chinese philosophy that observed the bamboo bending before the wind and surviving, while the great oak was uprooted. ‘It is easier, Little Sister, to go where the wind blows at one’s back, than lean against it.’ But he had never really practised that himself, nor could I. So in time I would leave Cluain, I thought. I would then take that road that so many of my kind did. A bishop’s daughter, I would have references enough from his friends in the Church; but what waited would be no better than the position occupied by so many other women of small education, and less money. I would make a wretched governess, I knew. I did not know my place well enough; my quick impulses and sharp tongue would be no asset. And yet, that was all there was ‒ that, and Cluain. If only, I thought, this old man sitting here had once held out a hand to me. But I would not beg, nor would he. We both were lonely, and alone. But what gigantic pride stood between that fact, and either of us admitting it.
I rose. ‘I’ll go up now.’
He nodded above his pipe, as if he didn’t care. ‘Aye. As you wish. You’ll find a candle in the hall.’
There was no good night, as there had been no words of welcome. I took the candle, as he had said, placed ready in its pewter holder. But I didn’t need it. In this far latitude the light still lingered. The narrow slits of windows gave little aid on the staircase, but when I reached the tower room it was still washed with the grey light of the evening. But the heart of the room was alive with the fire; Morag, I s
upposed, had laid turf on the glowing wood, and a bed of coals was forming a powdery ash. I crouched for a moment before it. William must often have assumed this posture here, and now I followed him. But suddenly the image of William receded, and unbidden, the thought came to me that this was not a room for a young woman alone. It invited another presence ‒ a young man, not one’s brother. It was a room to be alone with a lover. How large that bed looked, and how large the world beyond the three windows. How wonderful to be here with a man one loved, lost, as Morag had said, as if in the snows of the mountains. How, then, the fire would glow; how warm the bed. I felt the heat rush to my cheeks. I was alone, I reminded myself. There was no man ‒ no man I loved. There was only the fire and the rain slashing against the windows. I got up quickly. Useless to dream.
On the washstand something new had appeared. It was a small swivel mirror with a drawer beneath, such as a man used. It would only let me see my face, not the back of my hair, or the hang of my dress ‒ but it would do. And beside it a half-page torn from a notebook, well-formed but somewhat laboured handwriting, and with correct spelling. I thought you would need the mirror. I have set a hot water jar in the bed. Be careful lest you burn your toes. Morag Macpherson.
I smiled, grateful, wondering what I would have done in these first hours at Cluain without Morag. And smiling, I caught sight of my own face in the mirror. Did I look so much like William that the man Mairi Sinclair had called Sir Gavin had recognised me? ‒ or had he simply made the association afterwards? We both were dark-haired and white-skinned; we both had eyes that were more grey than blue. Were mine as deep-set as William’s? ‒ as heavily lashed in black? I suddenly thought of my grandfather’s eyes; had both William and I inherited from him that smudged darkness? It was strange, but I had never really thought until now about how I looked; I had somehow taken it for granted that I would do quite well. In Peking, every young European girl was paid compliments, called pretty, even if she were just passably so. I had been called pretty, but I knew it wasn’t quite true. Not pretty. But William had been almost formidably handsome ‒ and now I was said to look like William. I sighed, and turned away from my image in the glass. What did it matter? If I left Cluain to go South in search of a position the fact that I might be called pretty, or handsome, or whatever else, was a positive disadvantage. Who wanted a good-looking governess who wore red ribbons and slippers?
A Falcon for a Queen Page 4