A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  Once James Ferguson strolled near my chair. ‘Good evening, Miss Howard. I hope you are enjoying yourself.’

  ‘Very much,’ I lied. We both knew it was a lie. ‘It’s a very splendid company.’

  He could not resist saying it. ‘Aye, very splendid. My little girl has done very well.’ Then, looking hard at me, at the Chinese gown, at the tartan sash and the two clan brooches, ‘And when will Angus Macdonald be ready to sell Cluain, do you think?’

  I lifted my head. ‘My grandfather will never sell Cluain.’

  ‘Well then, he will not live forever. I hear he has been poorly this past winter. It will be sold when he is gone.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure, Mr Ferguson.’

  ‘So then, lass? You think you have it for yourself? Well, it’s nothing for an inexperienced girl. Or a man who doesn’t know what he’s about. Well, you may give Angus Macdonald the message. James Ferguson will meet his price whenever he is ready.’

  ‘Give the message yourself, Mr Ferguson.’ I got to my feet, almost brushing him aside. ‘I am no messenger boy!’

  I went through the hall quickly. Neither Margaret nor Gavin was in sight. I thought I was at the point when I would damn etiquette, and ask for The Sunday Lad to be brought around; and then I thought again. My grandfather would expect me to bear through whatever the evening held; I would not let him down, nor would I admit my defeat before these people. I would not let the valley know that I had left before the proper time. Because the valley would know everything about this night.

  I avoided the rooms where the people strolled, and the cards were played. No one danced; those who had been invited after dinner had arrived, and become part of the company. The large rooms seemed almost crowded. After that huge dinner, supper was already being set up. It was an animated gathering, but curiously joyless. To the people who watched from beyond the windows, it must be a strange sight. Where were the traditional Scottish dances, the men in their dress kilts and ruffled jabots, the women with the tartan sashes? ‒ where was the piper? But perhaps His Royal Highness was tired of such ceremonial, and wanted only his cards, with high stakes. It was an English gathering, however many of the company bore lordly Scottish names.

  I found the room I sought, the small one almost at the end of the passage that ran the length of the main building. I had only been in it once before ‒ it was a sort of small annexe to the main library, which occupied the corner of that wing. I had thought I would find it empty, and it was. No one would miss me, and I would wait until the first carriage came to the door. And then go and get the monkey fur, and home to Cluain. Home.

  ‘Are you tired of it all, too, Kirsty?’

  I swung round. ‘Gavin!’ He was seated in a deep arm-chair, facing the long windows and the very last of the light that silhouetted the opposite heights of the glen. The moon was already there, waiting for the sky to darken.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be with your guests?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be out enjoying yourself? No one can have failed to notice that the Prince thought you charming. Other women have made whole careers of less than that.’

  ‘Gavin ‒ don’t laugh at me ‒ not you!’

  He got to his feet slowly. ‘It’s the last thing in the world I would do ‒ laugh at you. You’re a proud and courageous woman, Kirsty. If you wanted to, you could have charmed every man in the house, and made all the jewels and finery look silly.’

  ‘Oh! ‒ the little country maid? I can’t play that role, Gavin. It doesn’t suit me. It wouldn’t suit my grandfather to have me do it, either.’

  ‘No ‒ it wouldn’t suit. So you wait it out, as I do. Well, it won’t be long.’

  I was standing by one of the French windows that looked out on to the principal terrace. This was the new part of the house, and down below, nearer the river, the old tower stood, a kind of stern reminder of what this place had first been built for. From here, the music was faint, almost ghostly.

  ‘Take the White. First move to you, Kirsty.’

  I looked back at Gavin. Between the windows there was a marble chess table, and he was now standing beside it. I took the couple of paces to bring me opposite him, and looked down at the table. I spent some minutes examining the set; I had seen a similar one before ‒ a Cantonese ball-mounted set, carved in Indian ivory of exquisite quality and delicacy. Not really a set to play with, but to look at. I held up one of the pieces against the light from the window, marvelling at the intricacy of balls set within balls ‒ the eternal Chinese enigma. ‘How beautiful,’ I said. ‘How really beautiful.’

  ‘One of the few things I own at Ballochtorra. It belonged to my father.’ He prompted me again. ‘Take the White Queen, Kirsty.’

  ‘How did you know I played?’

  ‘William’s sister? How could you not?’

  I acknowledged the fact with a nod, replaced the piece I was holding, and made my first move. His followed rapidly. My next I made almost without thought. The rest was part of the pattern. We followed it through, perhaps both of us knowing, and yet I was unsure. Compelled, I made each move as before, Pawn, Bishop, Knight. Gavin’s moves now seemed like an oft-told tale. We reached the point I knew we must reach.

  ‘Check to the Queen, Kirsty.’

  I looked at him. ‘Did you play with him? ‒ with William?’

  ‘We played quite often.’

  ‘This game? ‒ these moves?’

  ‘This game? ‒ I don’t remember this particular game. No ‒ I don’t think we did, ever.’

  ‘But you played this game now …’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because …’ Suddenly I shivered. William’s presence was too tangible. I looked hard at Gavin, trying to reassure myself that this was a living, independent being, his own man, not an instrument of a dead man, not an old man like my grandfather, not a grieving sister, playing and replaying endlessly the last game.

  ‘Kirsty …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Kirsty … I’m going. This is a kind of farewell. I could hardly have gone to Cluain …’

  ‘You’re going? ‒ you mean to London? When the house is ready?’

  ‘No, not to London. Never to London. I’m going, Kirsty.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘God knows. I’m leaving. That’s what I mean. Leaving. I have to leave for my soul’s sake ‒ for what that’s worth.’

  ‘Gavin ‒ what are you saying? Exactly.’

  ‘Exactly? I’m saying that when this tiny farce is over, when His Royal Highness has set the accolade upon my wife’s shoulders as the most beautiful woman, the best hostess ‒ whatever the nonsense is, then I’m leaving. Leaving Ballochtorra, leaving everything. Leaving ‒ God forgive me ‒ leaving my son.’

  ‘You can’t!’

  ‘I must. Even leaving a son is better than appearing a fool in his eyes. In a very little time Jamie will know that my father-in-law pays for everything here. In a little time more he will know what a pretence it is between his mother and father. I can’t be here to witness it. I would rather be dead than see his knowing ‒ the contempt ‒ in his eyes.’

  I knew. At once I knew. There was no need to ask. ‘Where will you go? What will you do?’

  ‘Who knows? Anywhere ‒ it doesn’t matter. What I do doesn’t matter. I’ll never find an organ to play, but there’s always a ditch to dig ‒ a boulder to move ‒ somewhere in the world. Anywhere ‒ away from here. Lost.’

  ‘You can’t be lost, Gavin. No …’

  ‘To them … yes. Margaret will miss the convenience of me ‒ for a while. I will never formally take my seat in the House of Lords, and so my father-in-law will lose something. But one day my son will. Perhaps by then he will understand. The only hope I have is that he will somehow understand why I had to go. But you see, I matter too, Kirsty. I can’t live with myself as things are. Can I expect to live with my son?’

  ‘Can you live without him?’

  ‘I will have to try. Better that than be an objec
t of scorn to him ‒’

  ‘Other men don’t mind. Other men marry for money, and make no bones of it. They exchange a title for money, and it seems to men like James Ferguson, and most others, that it’s a fair exchange.’ Why did I argue with him? I knew the truth.

  ‘It was never that sort of exchange. It was a small enough rank, and there wasn’t so much money then. We loved each other … I’m sure of that. And somehow we lost it. How did we lose it, Kirsty? How could I have let it happen?’

  ‘Could you have helped it?’

  ‘I could, if I’d known. Is one always too young to know these things at the right time? The first acceptance of help from James Ferguson was the beginning of losing what we had ‒ and yet could I have expected a woman like Margaret to go on enjoying poverty? She was not made for it ‒ I should have known that.’

  ‘There’ll be a scandal …’

  ‘Of course there’ll be a scandal … but it will only dawn on people gradually that I am not coming back from whatever part of the world they’ll say I’ve gone to. By then Margaret will be firmly established as a London hostess. I won’t even be missed.’

  ‘You’ll be missed.’ I looked down at the board. ‘You’re being too extreme, Gavin. There isn’t any need … you could stay on here alone, if that’s what has to be.’

  ‘On James Ferguson’s money? No, there’ve been too many years of that. If I stay any longer I won’t have the courage to go. I will never be happy away from this place, this strath. Every day I stay the resolution will grow weaker ‒ I will find excuses to delay. Just as I’m delaying now. I tell myself it’s for Margaret ‒ just to see her through this. I say I’ll have just one more summer of Jamie before they send him off to school and make a stranger of him. And the excuses will go on, and on …’

  I fingered the elaborately carved figure of the White Queen. ‘There’s no way out of this check, Gavin. I have played the same game too often. William …’

  ‘Yes, William … I don’t forget William.’

  I looked straight at him. It had grown much darker. There was no light now but the moon.

  ‘Was William her lover, Gavin?’

  The sudden clatter of the pieces falling to the parquet as his hand swept them off the board was my answer, the terrible, deliberate crunching of the delicate ivory as they splintered under his feet. It was one of the most awful things he could have done ‒ the destruction, in his despair, of something loved and prized, a part of himself. His hand now partially covered his face, needing to screen it.

  ‘I don’t know. That’s the worst of it. I don’t know! That’s what will kill me if I stay ‒ never knowing. Or knowing too well. Guessing. Which one? ‒ this one, or another? When? How? Was William one of them? I don’t know …’

  I turned away from him, sick. The taste of deceit was in my mouth, and the terrible memory of the letters that had told too little. William … what would he have done? He might have loved, and not counted the cost, not reasoned the error. I suddenly understood much more because I loved Callum Sinclair. Did I stay at Cluain for him ‒ or for the sake of Cluain itself? Had William deceived both my grandfather and himself that he too stayed for the sake of Cluain? The words came back … ‘there is an enchantress.’ Had he been bewitched and enchanted, as I was, sick with longing, lost to reason? Was there a kind of madness here that both William and I had experienced in our separate ways? Was that why his hand had touched me so strongly, why his presence was all about me at every turn, so that he even played over and over this wretched last game of chess? It was almost as if he tried to speak to me. ‘Not you, too, Little Sister. Here is your check. There is no way out, unless it is to lose … unless it is to damnation …’ But William had never said that. I was being too fanciful, letting myself be carried along on the wave of Gavin’s anguish for his own loss. Why, should the sense of damnation cross my spirit at this moment? There was nothing wrong in my love for Callum … nothing wrong … nothing wrong. And yet why did I feel this breath of ice, as if William’s cold hand was touching mine across the chessboard, not a warning, but a terrible confirmation that I also must lose. ‘Check to the Queen, Kirsty.’

  It was not William’s hand that touched mine, but Gavin’s. ‘Listen …!’

  And eerily, upon the stillness of that hour that had crept past midnight, when the moon held its own, came the sound of the pipes. It was below us, and farther over, at the old part of the house. Both of us went to the window, again the crunching sound of ivory under our feet, and Gavin flung open the long window. The rush of chill air met us, and the sound of the pipes, stronger.

  The moon cast unreality upon the scene; the whole deep glen was in shadow and bold relief. The light blended the old and the new of the buildings into one. In that instant it was a fairy castle, frozen in time and pale golden light. All along that upper terrace, from all the French windows of the new wing, the guests came, the silks and the flash of jewels as brilliant as they had been by candlelight. They drifted, that splendid company, the Prince’s figure conspicuous among them, to the balustrade.

  It was a sight from the ages that met us. The platform of a tower of the old building was below us, and clearly in our view. The moon struck fire from the shining steel of the two crossed swords, laid at right angles on the ground; it caught the drone of the pipes, and the silver of the clan badges. The piper and the dancer both wore full dress ‒ lace at the throat and sleeves, velvet jacket, jewelled dirk at the garter of the stocking. The kilt and the plaid each wore was different. Even from this distance, though, I knew at once the Sinclair tartan. But no matter what he had been wearing, I would never have mistaken the figure.

  My lips formed his name soundlessly. ‘Callum!’

  It was performed with beautiful precision, the sword dance. The pipes skirled, and his slippered feet leapt between the blades; the kilt and the plaid flared about his body, the arms extended outward and bent at the elbows, and so clear was the moonlight that I could even see the grace of the upraised fingers. It was a heart-stopping sight, there upon that ancient battlemented tower, with no room for mistakes, and no forgiveness from his audience either, if one slippered foot should even brush one of the blades. The first murmurs among the watchers had died. Even on that gathering, to whom little was new, he was making his impact. And the word had spread quickly. From the back of the house, from the kitchens and stables, the sound of the pipes had drawn them, those who knew the dance, and those, like myself, who had never seen it before. For most of them, it must have been the first true satisfaction of the evening ‒ an entertainment for a prince, but in the traditional manner, and executed with flawless precision and grace.

  But this was not the Callum I knew, the man who would have scorned to dance for a prince. Who was this stranger in finery I would not have expected him ever to put on ‒ the kind of dressed-up travesty of the old sensible Highland garb that now was romanticised beyond recognition? And had I ever thought to see him dance? Perhaps … perhaps at a wedding when the whisky had been passed around, and there were other feet to tap the rhythm with the piper, perhaps before the huge fire of an ancient hall like Cluain’s. But here, like some hired entertainer, dressed in costume? The grace and skill I might have expected; his presence here, never.

  Is he drunk?’ I whispered at last to Gavin. It was the only explanation.

  ‘No ‒ not drunk.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Mad.’

  The word was said with conviction, and harsh bitterness. With its saying, the pipes died out on their wailing note, and the dance was done. There were shouts and whistles of appreciation from those who had drifted round from the back of the house; they had carefully separated themselves by a long space from the guests clustered around the Prince. A few urged Callum on to other things. I heard a polite handclapping among the privileged group. The Prince puffed on a half-smoked cigar, and he continued to stand, as if he also waited for more. Perhaps he had been entertained; after all. Certainly, the whole e
vent had had the novelty of the unexpected, and the most supremely appropriate setting. But it should not have been Callum Sinclair there.

  But Callum was finished. I was glad to see there was nothing of a bow to acknowledge the applause. I wished that I did not feel a shame for him ‒ one should not feel shame for someone who was loved ‒ but I did. One more thing to be endured on this interminable evening, the evening when I seemed to be losing everything, the night when I was learning the bitterness and price of becoming myself. With a kind of dreadful fascination, wondering how deep the hurt could go, I watched as Callum lightly vaulted the battlements of the tower, and leaped to the balustrade of the lower terrace. He must have leapt the slippery rocks of mountain streams much more dangerous, but that instant when his figure was outlined against the sky was dramatic and slightly theatrical. There were little gasps from the women. And then he was running lightly up the steps to the upper terrace, and heading directly for where the Prince stood. The run slowed to a walk. I couldn’t believe it. Was Callum Sinclair, the proud, lonely man, who asked for no favours, going to bow before the Prince and be grateful for a word or two ‒ something to boast of after? I didn’t want to look. It was like the shattering of a dream. I stared out across the glen, unwilling to witness the falling of an idol.

  But it was the shocked murmur that forced me to look again. The Prince had advanced slightly, graciously willing to accept the bow, perhaps to offer the hoped-for few words. But Callum had simply passed him by as if he did not exist. It was to Margaret, who had been standing by the Prince’s side, that he went. The people about her drew back slightly, as if they couldn’t believe the scene. She and Callum were isolated in the midst of that circle when he made his low bow to her. And then she, as if she had also entirely lost all sense, instead of gesturing towards the Prince, held out her hand to Callum. I had never thought to see him bow low to kiss a woman’s hand, but he did it then, and it was for all the world to see.