A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  The words tumbled out before I could stop them; he seemed the only link to William that was not mired in suspicion and doubt and greed. I had a terrible sense that very soon I might be given my chance, and might fail it.

  ‘What would you do? ‒ if you were I? No! ‒ I didn’t mean that! What would you do if Cluain were yours?’

  He stared at me, features tightening into something I was beginning to recognise as the shell erected by a man who appeared to want little of anyone, and wanted to be asked for little. ‘You ask foolish questions, Miss Howard. Indiscreet, childish questions. If Cluain were mine … I don’t bother my head with such ideas.’

  ‘Someone must. My grandfather is old. He says a woman cannot run a distillery. Now ‒ now I’ve seen it, listened to you, I almost believe he is right. You’ve told me so much. Now tell me what you would do if Cluain were yours.’

  I seemed to have touched a part of him which even his careful indifference could not hide. His eyes changed oddly, grew thoughtful and questioning. He stepped back and turned and looked over the whole length of the stone building, the two pagoda chimneys, even beyond it to the river, and then across towards the mountains, over all of Cluain’s land.

  ‘If it were mine … If Cluain were mine I’d mortgage my soul to gut this distillery ‒ use it as another warehouse. I’d build a new one. Build it as it should be. There would be logic and order in it. The distilling would be an even flow from the storage for the barley to the final cashing and weighing ‒ not this mad back-tracking and overlapping, fitting things in where there is space for them, not where they ought to be. How many times in there did we cross our own path to get to the next stage of the production? That’s how wrong it is. It should be a quiet, orderly process, ticking away like a good machine. Instead there is wastage and double effort, and men tripping over each other. They’re good workers, these men. They like what they’re doing. I would like to see them have a place where they could double the output for no extra work.’

  ‘And my grandfather doesn’t know these things? Surely he must …?’

  ‘Very likely he does. He doesn’t ask my opinion. But I know him. Every stone of Cluain is his work ‒ except the house, of course. He began in a very small way, with no money but what he could borrow, I’m told. He was geared for small production runs ‒ remember, whisky has only fairly recently become a drink of the upper classes. Until the production of cognac was brought almost to a standstill by the Phylloxera blight, no English gentleman could be persuaded to drink whisky. Now, of course, it’s respectable, and sought after. Cluain could sell four times as much as it produces. But your grandfather has his own ways. He has built Cluain and its reputation ‒ and that’s no small thing to have done. But he grows timid in his old age, I think ‒ or tired. He could take Cluain’s reputation to the bank now and build himself a new distillery with it. But he won’t. The old feeling that you must reproduce every dent in the stills, and not dare to sweep away a cobweb hangs on. Cluain has served Angus Macdonald well, and he it.’

  Then he shrugged. ‘And who can blame him? At the end of a man’s life does he start to build for the next generation when there is none? I know what I should do, but I’ll not speak for what Angus Macdonald should do.’

  He turned, and it was finished. ‘You’ll be all right now, going back to the house. I’ll see Big Billy doesn’t start after you.’

  ‘You? ‒ you’re not coming to the house?’

  He shook his head. ‘I have my own house, and anyway it’s too good a day to spend within four walls. I’ve given Cluain its due for the day ‒ more than that. I hadn’t intended to go near the distillery … but I knew Macfarlane and Murray would be working and I thought …’

  ‘Where will you go?’ I couldn’t help it; it was an impertinence to ask it of him, but I couldn’t help it.

  Once again his gaze swept away from the immediate vicinity of Cluain, once again down to the river, over the barley fields to the mountains, up to Ballochtorra’s heights. ‘Where my nose leads me. I have a pony and a dog … and a bird.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I was giving so much of myself away to him. There seemed no pride in me. But lately pride had begun to seem such a useless, stupid possession, keeping one person from another. There was too much of it at Cluain.

  ‘Then you know enough. A man with a dog, and a bird to fly … we will just go, that’s all.’

  I tried to keep him, even for a minute longer. ‘It’s some sort of a hawk, isn’t it?’

  It was as if I had struck a spark off him; his eagerness spilled out, transforming him. ‘A peregrine falcon. Giorsal is her name. I found her as an eyas up there on the far side of Ballochtorra’s crag, and she has been with me for three years. We hunt these lands together. She is the freest, wildest thing I know, and yet she returns to my glove each time, and seems content. She cares nothing for distilleries or whisky or whatever we do down here. Her element is the sky, faster than any living creature when she stoops in her dive. There’s no compliment greater to a man than when such a creature comes back willingly to his hand. Mind you, on the days I cannot fly her, I will happily raid Cluain’s meathouse to bring her food, and Angus Macdonald can think what he likes. The time I give to the distillery is time taken from Giorsal. She is demanding ‒ and wonderful. Her name means Grace in the Gaelic.’

  His face abruptly now took a wry, slightly bitter twist, as if a black humour had come to take the place of his exaltation. ‘Do you know the ancient rule, Miss Howard, which lays down precisely the social order among falconers of who shall have what, who may fly which among hawks?’

  ‘No ‒ is there one?’

  ‘There is. Precise and definite. It goes so …“An Eagle for an Emperor, a Gyrfalcon for a King; a Peregrine for a Prince, a Saker for a Knight, a Merlin for a Lady; a Goshawk for a Yeoman, a Sparrowhawk for a Priest, a Musket for a Holy-water Clerk, a Kestrel for a Knave.”’ Now he laughed aloud, as if he enjoyed what he had done to such orders and definitions. ‘So you see, by those rulings I would be flying a humble kestrel. So when I fly a peregrine falcon, I am no less than a prince. Good day, Miss Howard.’

  I watched him as he walked the length of the building ‒ walked away from me. The shabby kilt was swinging above his knees, and I wondered why I never had seen before how it could become a man, how light and free it made him seem. The sheepskin was slung over one shoulder. Before he rounded the corner of the distillery, I heard him whistle, some lilting, marching melody that belonged to these hills and heaths. The world was wide about him, and he and his falcon would lose themselves in its heart. I looked up at the blue sky of this wondrous, soft summer day, and I seemed already to see the distant speck vanishing into the sun that would be his Giorsal in free flight.

  I wanted to be with him ‒ with him and Giorsal, and the dog and the pony. The whisper rose inside me, unrepressed. ‘Take me ‒ take me with you!’

  But he had not asked.

  Chapter Four

  I

  That afternoon I followed Morag’s directions and climbed up to the kirk and the graveyard on the hill on the other side of the river. I had to pass Ballochtorra, and cross the bridge below it. As I gained height on the road opposite, the road which forked to go to Ballinaclash, or to the kirk and on to Grantown, I kept looking across at it. Seen from here, viewed straight on, not at the angle I saw it from the tower room, it was a strangely unharmonious building. The central fortress retained its old, rather grim beauty; the rest, the new additions, seemed a tasteless clutter. Too much building had been piled into too little space ‒ the crag had no room for broad sweeps, or matching proportions. Wings were tacked on at different levels, like a lopsided cake. It was strange how ill the mass of it suited the mood of the day. Yesterday, the wind-driven rain, and later the mist that had boiled up about it had lent it dignity. On this blue-golden day that character had been lost, and it lacked the quality of fantasy. Even this early in the day, one side of it was already in shadow, because of the steepness
of the glen. By contrast, all of Cluain would bask in the sun until the last of the Northern twilight. Seen close to, the building was massive, overbearing. Its flamboyant style did not seem to fit with the reserve of Gavin Campbell’s manner.

  Once I was beyond the glen that Ballochtorra dominated, my eyes swept the sky for a sight of Callum Sinclair’s hawk, Giorsal. I had little hope of seeing her ‒ how could I tell one bird among so many, when most of them were unfamiliar? And did not falcons climb so high that they were lost to sight? But I wanted to pretend I had glimpsed her; it brought Callum Sinclair closer to me, drew him back from his independent, self-sufficient journey, the journey on which he had not, and would not, I thought, ask for my company.

  I had been late to the midday meal at Cluain. My grandfather had been in, had eaten, and had left again. ‘The Master is very busy, always,’ Morag had said when she brought the cold sliced beef, pickles, and the first delicate strawberries from Mairi Sinclair’s garden.

  ‘Did he ask for me?’

  ‘He did that, and none of us could say where you were. He did not enquire any further. It is not his way. Were you at the distillery then?’

  Something in her tone disturbed me. ‘Would it have mattered to my grandfather if I had been there?’

  ‘If you had been? Och ‒ there’s no saying. It was Callum Sinclair then who showed you about?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She said nothing more, and finished quickly with the dishes on the sideboard. I had to ring the small brass bell to summon her at the end of the meal. Not again to-day was I going to enter Mairi Sinclair’s kitchen. I asked her then how I would find the kirk. She nodded, knowing my mission: ‘Should I send word to the Master? He would have the trap harnessed up. He might have a mind to go with you.’

  ‘I prefer to go alone.’

  I had a sense that she, or Mairi Sinclair, watched from one of the upstairs windows as I set off along the road to Ballochtorra and the bridge. And with as much determination as I could summon I shook off the thought of Mairi Sinclair. If I let her obsess me she would become a dark shadow on my life, and her insidious power would grow. If I was ever to resist the woman, that anguished haunted animal who had scratched upon the door of the tower room last night, I must hold myself detached from her. But how detached, and for how long? William’s words came back to me, ‘… there is a Dragon Lady here …’ I was glad then, when I was over the bridge, and the road twisted away from the sight of Ballochtorra and Cluain. The land opened out, and the sun seemed warmer. I began then to raise my eyes to look for the birds, with only the faint, but persistent, hope that I would see Giorsal. Giorsal meant Callum Sinclair. But how did one pick a hawk from the sky? I felt depressed suddenly. The land and the people seemed more foreign than China. I would know only as much as I was permitted to know. I would never see the hawk in flight, stooping for her prey. I would only see the tamed, acquiescent creature on the glove ‒ as if that was all there was to reveal.

  The outline of the kirk was obscured by the ridge of a hill, but I recognised the dark shapes of the yews that Morag had described. It was not so far from Ballochtorra, but out of sight. It stood alone, a tiny church with a square tower, without a village, or even a single cottage near it. It seemed so forsaken, as if no one ever came there, or had ever been there. And yet, it was in good repair, the stonework well mortared, the plain windows intact, the latch of the gate lifted silently and easily under my hand. A good stone wall kept at bay the cattle that grazed the hillside; only one or two bothered to lift a head. They were sleek with summer grass. Further down were fields of barley and oats: somewhere, a meadow lark sang. There was utter peace here. Suddenly I was reminded of my father’s grave within the British Legation wall in Peking. Some day, I thought, those alien feet would trample it in some new rising against the Foreign Devils. It was far better that William lay here.

  I found his grave easily enough ‒ there were not so many of recent years, few whose headstones were not weathered beyond reading, or toppled and half buried in earth and grass. There were several rows, though, whose headstones looked newly placed; they were polished marble slabs, but some of them bearing dates that went back several hundred years. The names were the same ‒ Campbell … Campbell … Sir Andrew Campbell, his wife, Catriona … Mary Campbell … Sir Robert; three rows of Campbells, all lying in long-tenanted graves, with newly placed markers. Then, directly across the gravel path, I found William. It pleased me that there was no polished marble slab; the headstone was a piece of granite, barely cut to fit its place, the words chiselled deeply in it: WILLIAM MACDONALD HOWARD, and the dates his life had spanned. I was glad that no bible text followed it; I was grateful to my grandfather that he had sought to give William the dignity of this simple memorial, the very roughness of the stone almost signifying that his life had not been finished, nor worn by time. There was no flowery text to extol his virtue ‒ young people have not had time to establish that. The granite, by contrast to the polished marble, told another tale ‒ my grandfather’s belief in work and toil and simplicity decrying the formal splendour of the establishment at Ballochtorra. There was more than a hint of scorn for the polished niceties of the gentry.

  The grass grew long on William’s grave already, though this was its first summer. I wondered if I should bring tools one day to cut it; the Chinese every spring made a ceremony, called Ching Ming, of the cleaning of the ancestral graves. The siting of the graves was important to them; a well-placed grave could bring good fortune on the surviving family. ‘William …’ I whispered. I wondered if I would be here next spring to perform the ceremony of Ching Ming. Why did one come to talk to the dead where they lay buried? William was more present in the tower room of Cluain than he ever would be in this grave. But he lay in a fair place, and the free winds blew over him, and the clean winter snows would blanket him. The Chinese would probably have considered this a good siting. I was more than ever glad that it was not the British Legation compound in Peking, bitterly cold, stiflingly hot, dirty, always. I sat down in the long grass still wet from yesterday’s rain, and leaned against the granite stone. ‘William … why did you tell me so little? What does it mean? ‒ what did you expect me to do?’ No answer came, of course. No answer. There was nothing but the words scrawled with fevered hand on the scroll. William could tell me nothing more.

  Then came the music. It was a great burst of sound, the sudden releasing of spirit in the mighty first notes of the Bach fugue. I stood up, electrified, frightened almost, by the great, unexpected thunder of it, and at the same time a sense of passion that a highly skilled musician was holding in tight discipline. It went on, the wonderful, remembered cadences of it. The chances of hearing such music in China were few, but I remembered this. In Hong Kong there was a church with an organ good enough to permit its great harmonies to come through. One did not forget such sounds. Now here again, in this tiny church in the Highlands, too small, I would have thought, for a pipe organ, with too small a congregation to warrant such an instrument or such an organist. The music simply did not belong here. This was no doleful tune of sin and repentance, not the austerity I had expected in the Church of Scotland. It was a great song of praise and exultation and joy. I stood in awe, my hand resting on William’s stone; I hardly dared to draw my breath.

  It ended, and I did not move, hoping, perhaps, for more of it. But nothing came. I waited, and finally there was the sound of the side door opening, and the lock being turned. The man stood on the step for a moment, accustoming his eyes, I guessed, to the stronger light, pausing to lift his face to the sky, and possibly to listen to the high, thin song of the lark. I knew him and without thinking, I raised my hand. He caught the movement, and looked towards me. Then he began to make his way among the long grass and the graves.

  ‘Miss Howard ‒ you’re here alone!’ His brow was wrinkled, but I thought he was glad enough to see me.

  ‘Yes, Mr Campbell ‒ I’m sorry, it’s Sir Gavin Campbell, isn’t it?’

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nbsp; ‘I seem to make a habit of finding you alone in places no one would expect a young lady to be.’

  ‘Why not?’ I glanced down at William’s grave.

  He shook his head, the brusqueness of yesterday’s meeting gone. ‘I’m sorry. Of course you would come. But somehow ‒ well, one always expects nicely brought-up young ladies to do the expected thing. But you ‒ you don’t wear black crepe and lament in public. You merely come all the way from China alone, without so much as a telegram. I suppose I was so amazed yesterday it didn’t really strike me until afterwards. Standing there at Ballinaclash halt with your bags, no mourning veil, no tears, no one to meet you … If I hadn’t been there, I almost think you would have walked to Cluain.’

  ‘I would have had to,’ I said. ‘Without the bags, of course.’ Then I added, ‘I’m really not all that different. I think I was just so frightened of coming, I simply came. If I had told my grandfather ‒ if I had waited to be invited, I probably wouldn’t have had the courage. As it turns out ‒ I don’t think he would ever have asked me. I think he had just not registered the fact that I existed. You see … I am not another grandson. It didn’t actually shock me. I’m used to it, I suppose. The Chinese think that way about girls. No one wants them. China teaches one a lot of things, Sir Gavin. To survive, for one thing. To hold on to life ‒ and all I have left is here. So I don’t wear mourning, or a veil. All that seems rather useless to me. My father believed in life, and to him death was nothing. William believed in life too ‒ though he didn’t say it the way a clergyman does. And you ‒ you believe, don’t you?’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The music. That was you at the organ, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked at him directly. ‘It was the best thing that had happened to me since the news came about William. It was life … and joy. No one plays like that ‒ that music ‒ unless the belief in life is in his very soul. You could even tell me now that you don’t believe in God, and I know you believe in life. My father often said it was the same thing.’