A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  Then he was walking quickly along the terrace, his back to the Prince; the same light run down the steps, the same effortless leap from the balustrade. The swords were gathered up quickly, and he and the piper vanished down through the trapdoor that gave access to the tower. They had gone, like two ghosts of the night, leaving behind consternation and scandal, and hurt in me such as I had thought I could never feel. Is there a precise moment when one remembers the wish to die? ‒ the first time it comes? I knew it then. But death is not so easy. One has to live the next seconds, and the. minutes and the days.

  Perhaps it was worse for Gavin, beside me, but I doubted it. He had begun to live with it long ago.

  ‘So she has Sinclair too. Are there none she will leave alone? ‒ no one she will not claim for her own. Is she never satisfied? How many more? ‒ how many!’

  Then he took my hand and led me back to the darkened room where the ivory pieces were the final, devastating reminder of William. ‘I’ll help you get your wrap, and send for the MacKinnons. Don’t wait for who should leave first. All the etiquette has been smashed. The evening is over.’

  Chapter Eight

  I

  The late days of August and early September stayed warm, and the barley stood high and golden; then it began to be touched lightly with brown, and was dry when I put my fingers to the heavy sheaves. ‘It is time to begin,’ my grandfather said. So they were saying at each farm all over Speyside, and labour was needed everywhere. Everyone on Cluain worked, of course, and the call went out to other straths and as far as Inverness, and the itinerant workers came, bringing women and children with them ‒ the children old and strong enough worked beside their parents, and the young ones tumbled barefooted among the stubble, following the line of workers who moved with sickles through the fields. It was hard work, that endless stooping under the sun, but most seemed to enjoy it ‒ enjoy the warmth of the days, the company, the songs, enjoy the food sent out on the wagons to wherever the workers were in the fields at noon, and the communal eating in the barns where the barley would eventually be stored, and where the itinerants now slept. Mairi Sinclair’s kitchen had never been so busy, and she had several extra women to help ‒ my first and only offer of help was shrugged aside, and those days were strangely quiet and dull for me in the midst of all the activity. My grandfather did not come for his evening meal till the last of the workers had left the fields. I watched the Cluain workers on the road home and the itinerants gather in the barns ‒ whisky had passed around in the last minutes in the fields, and tired women sang songs to sleeping infants as they carried them back. ‘The whisky eases an aching back and gives a good night’s rest,’ Angus Macdonald said. ‘Not too much, or they would not be at their work to-morrow, but enough to warm their hearts.’ My grandfather made no economies in the food or the whisky. It was always Cluain’s best.

  It should have been a happy time for me, a time to perceive and enjoy, as these people did, the endless cycle of life in this strath, the celebration of another year’s crop. But I felt myself dry and brittle as the stooks of barley standing in the suddenly arid-looking fields.

  My unhappiness was Callum Sinclair, of course. I had not spoken with him since the night when he had taken Margaret Campbell’s hand on the terrace of Ballochtorra, and the story had sped up and down the strath, and beyond, of that supreme act of folly, the insult to the Prince ‒ and most talked of, Margaret Campbell’s calm acceptance of both. They said afterwards that the Prince had not shown more than momentary surprise, had rather seemed more amused than insulted. But Margaret Campbell had dared much by not rebuffing that gesture from Callum, and it seemed that no one could talk of anything else.

  I could not even come face to face with Callum, much less speak to him. He seemed to have no place in the work of gathering the harvest ‒ the only man at Cluain so exempted, and since that was not remarked on, I thought it was probably part of his agreement with my grandfather. He showed no sign of repentance for his act, and would remain independent to the last. He would appear again at Cluain when the harvest was in, and the malting ready to begin, and not before. He rode back and forth on that road that passed through Cluain with no sign that anything had changed, or there was more reason than before to mark his passage ‒ I saw him a number of times ‒ him, the pony, the setter and sometimes Giorsal. I knew by now that there were many other ways to pass along the strath ‒ the track by the river, paths that by-passed the house. But Callum Sinclair would have scorned to hide from anyone, to avoid the comments ‒ if any dared offer them to his face ‒ and the looks, which could say even more. So he travelled the road as before, and I was more intensely aware of him than ever; I seemed to know his coming long before the familiar shapes appeared, and I was sick with hurt and envy as I watched him pass from sight. It would be Margaret Campbell who knew where he went, and when, and she seemed to care as little for the scandal of it as Callum did. But at least she did not ride that road, or if she did, I never saw her.

  Giorsal I did see, though. In those too often wakeful nights that blended to the dawn, and I sat at one of the windows of the tower room watching for the first of the sun, hearing the first stirrings about Cluain as the cattle were brought to be milked, as the ranges were stoked in the kitchen in preparation for the day’s cooking ‒ several times I saw Giorsal. Callum was flying her before there was danger from any shooting parties on the moors; it could only have been Giorsal, the great dark lightning streak in the sky, that plummeting stoop to her prey. The strath was her territory; she roamed its sky, wheeled and circled and lazed upon its air currents. But somehow instinct and Callum’s training had taught her caution. Her only enemy was the gun, and before there could be danger, she would disappear, off in the direction of Ben Cullen. My whole spirit called after her. Only once did my grandfather speak of what pre-empted everything else in my thoughts. It was two days after the party at Ballochtorra; I sat toying with the food on my plate and saying nothing.

  ‘Well, then … can you not hold your head up? Will you let the world see the pining of a love-sick girl for a man that’s worth nothing? He has shamed and disgraced himself and his mother, and that woman up there who flaunts ‒’

  ‘Enough, Grandfather! I will thank you to say nothing more about Callum Sinclair. He has done what he has done ‒ and that takes courage. A mad courage, if you like. He has told the world that he loves a woman. But he never said that he loved me! I told you that he would have none of me. What a fool I was to think he would look at me when there was Margaret Campbell.’

  ‘Margaret Campbell is a married woman, and should have more decency and pride. Where does she stand now before the world ‒ before her son? There is shame for them both, but more for her.’

  ‘Oh, leave them be,’ I cried at him. ‘It is their own affair. Margaret Campbell has not ruined herself. But she has ruined Callum. She will go and leave him here, and then he will be wretched.’

  ‘And will you be waiting when he comes down from his dream world? Will you look to take her leavings?’

  ‘There will be no leavings. When Margaret Campbell goes Callum Sinclair will not be free of her. I think he will never be free again. He may go also, but not with her ‒ because of her. He may never see her again, but he will not be free of her. His sort, once they have given themselves, can never be free. I think he will leave Cluain.’

  ‘And as well if he did. If it were not for his mother I would ‒’

  ‘I don’t want to hear!’ I said. I stabbed the food with my fork. ‘I don’t want to talk about Callum Sinclair. And my head is high ‒ never higher. You will not see me weep. It is a worse kind of feeling than when William and my father died, but no one will see me weep. And I hope he does go. If I could, I would make it a little easier for myself. But if he stays, then I will have to bear that, too.’

  ‘Have a care, Kirsty. Have a care. No point to ruin your life.’ It was said quite gently, and he was indeed more gentle with me in those next days. I worked in the
office, and no words passed between us that did not concern business matters. But even sitting there at the desk with my back to the window I knew the sound of Callum’s pony, and I could never stop myself looking around. If my grandfather was not there I would rise and watch him out of sight, as I had always done. I did not weep, ever. There was nothing but a kind of aching silence in my heart. Those were the nights when I played chess with fierce concentration, striving to wipe out the memory of that scene on the terrace. And those were the nights that my grandfather at last began to go down before me. Game after game I won, and he began to struggle, to put out his best efforts. But the terrible hurt had to be assuaged somehow. I could not lose everything.

  So it had been a relief when the time of the harvest came. I welcomed the distraction of it, the bustle of the carts leaving with the food. I did not often go into the fields among the workers ‒ just enough so that my presence was seen and felt there, but never dallying in case I might overhear talk ‒ talk about Callum and Margaret. I rode beside my grandfather, and his very appearance was enough to silence even the rowdiest of the children. I began to see him fully in those days as the man he appeared to be in the strath; he was just, not unfeeling, even generous when his help was needed. And yet the jokes fell silent on the lips as he passed, and the children gazed after him in shy awe. I often thought that the minister up in the kirk might have envied the respect that Angus Macdonald seemed able to command without words.

  No one saw Gavin Campbell in those days. The Prince had left after the allotted four days, the servants departed from Ballochtorra, and a strange quiet descended on the castle. I heard from Morag that Gavin left Ballochtorra early with Jamie and a gillie, and spent each day on the moors shooting. Occasionally, from down at Cluain, we heard the sound of guns, but it was not always from the Ballochtorra moors. There were other shooting parties in the district, working over rented moors. They would pass along the road, looking curiously at Cluain and the distillery, talking about it. For some reason I resented that. They were strangers to me, as the hired servants had been, when all the faces in the strath were growing familiar. I almost looked forward to the time of the snow, when they would be gone. But when they were gone, I thought, so would Margaret Campbell, and Jamie. Perhaps Callum would be gone, also. And Gavin would be gone, probably forever. It was a time of waiting, these last days of the summer. And I waited to see what my life would become when the summer was finally over.

  II

  There was something else astir in the strath, something that called my grandfather from the harvest fields, and brought Samuel Lachlan several times down from Inverness ‒ hurried visits without the usual overnight stay. The little man looked grey and fretted, I thought, as I sat and ate a midday meal with him in the dining-room of Cluain, and lingered with him over his tea when my grandfather had to hurry back to the fields. Neither of them said anything before me of the reason for the unusual activity ‒ the talk was of the harvest, the weather, an occasional uninterested reference to the shooting season, and Samuel Lachlan’s persistent inquiries for details of the Prince’s visit; to these I made guarded, agonised replies, and knew that my grandfather’s attention was always on me at these moments. But whatever lay behind the visits, and the long sessions of talk in my grandfather’s office, the telegrams sent back and forth to summon Samuel Lachlan once again, or announce his coming, I knew who had instigated them. It was James Ferguson.

  That burly authoritative figure changed subtly in those days also. He stayed for only one night of the Prince’s visit, perhaps not wishing to stress too much of his daughter’s association with ‘trade’, and lower her standing. Beside that, he did not shoot, and was lost in that company which talked of little else.

  So he left Ballochtorra on the day after the party, and I wondered what he had made of the scene on the terrace. Margaret had been greatly daring ‒ the risk of offence to the Prince had been great. But Edward did not leave, and the shooting party went on, and perhaps there was faint amusement at Margaret Campbell’s strange, rustic lover. The story, embroidered, I was sure would go about the London drawing-rooms that winter, but as long as the Prince continued to grant his company, Margaret was safe. In those few hushed moments it must have seemed to James Ferguson that his daughter was about to throw away all that he had so carefully built and planned and paid for. Yet the Prince had chosen to smile instead of frown ‒ he must have liked his hostess very much. So James Ferguson departed, perhaps not pleased, but at least reassured.

  But he was back again a very few days after the Prince’s party had left, and it was not for pleasure ‒ and the reason somehow concerned my grandfather. Ferguson waited overnight at Ballochtorra until Samuel Lachlan could be summoned from Inverness, and the three spent the most of the next day closeted in my grandfather’s office, though James Ferguson returned to Ballochtorra for his midday meal, and did not sit with us at table at Cluain. He returned for some hours more in the afternoon, and then a carriage from Ballochtorra came to take him to the station. The Sunday Lad was harnessed to take Samuel Lachlan to get the same train, but from the looks on the faces of the two men as James Ferguson departed Cluain, I did not think they would share the same compartment. And, of course, it was Samuel Lachlan’s unshakable rule to travel second class.

  And the next week James Ferguson was back again, and so was Samuel Lachlan, this time by appointment; the same sessions of talk took place in the office, the same arrangements over the meals. This time James Ferguson did not even stay overnight at Ballochtorra. He nodded to me absently, rather curtly, when I encountered him in the yard on that occasion, as if he had almost forgotten my identity. He wore then an air I had never expected to see on him ‒ the bluff, expansive look of the successful man of business who now sets out to enjoy his success seemed diminished ‒ though I noticed that when he realised that my eyes lingered on him for a time his rounded figure automatically straightened, and a smile flashed on as if he had touched a switch. He raised his hat elaborately to me as the Ballochtorra carriage drove off; I thought that he had not liked the fact that I had surprised his expression of abstraction.

  Samuel Lachlan stayed that night at Cluain. After supper, which was late, since the harvest had now begun, and my grandfather had had to go to the fields after Ferguson had left, I waited for the old man to climb the stairs to his bed before I voiced my question. Angus Macdonald had played one weary, absent-minded game of chess with me, and I had won easily. I rose and took the board away without his saying so.

  ‘Grandfather ‒ is James Ferguson trying to buy Cluain? He said to me ‒’

  He cut me short. ‘James Ferguson will never buy Cluain. Now mind your own business, Kirsty.’

  I was not offended. I took my time about lighting my own candle. ‘He once gave me a message for you, and I said I would not deliver it. I gave him an answer ‒ I said Cluain was not for sale.’

  He gave me a long, concentrated look. ‘You would be right in that. You had no business to say it, but, by God, Gurrl, you would be right.’

  The weather held, the last of the barley was cut, and the stooks stood upright, drying in the fields. It would be a matter for the Cluain men to gather them into the barns when the seasonal workers had gone. The evening the last field was cut, a long table was set in the neatly swept yard of Cluain, and the food was brought from the kitchen ‒ such mountains of it as I had never seen before ‒ great sides of beef and pork and ham, turkey and goose, blackberry and apple tarts, cream and sugar, iced cake laced with brandy. That night every soul who had worked Cluain during the harvest, and the children who had played around their feet, sat down to eat. And this night Angus Macdonald placed no limit on the whisky and beer.

  ‘They will sleep it off,’ he said. ‘They will remember it, and next year those I ask will come again. The idlers I notice and mark, and those are never welcome again at Cluain.’

  I wondered why he always cloaked his generosities with some other motive. I noticed that even that nigh
t he did not sit as a familiar with his men, nor beam with paternal pride on them. No one would ever see his face, flushed and triumphant, as I had seen James Ferguson’s face on the night of the party at Ballochtorra. The next day, Angus Macdonald would look about his world with a coldly sober eye, and have no indiscretions to regret.

  Nor did Morag join that group. After she had helped with the serving and clearing away, I found her standing a little behind me, her face impassive, the glow of the lantern light and the bonfire in the yard burnishing her hair. She looked beautiful, and rather stern.

  ‘You don’t join them, Morag?’ The whisky had passed around freely, and there was singing, and a piper, and some couples rose to their feet, and went, a little wildly, through the sets of some Highland dances.

  ‘Not I, mistress. Young men make free when there’s whisky taken.’

  ‘One day you’ll have to choose your young man, Morag. You’ll not spend your life unwed ‒ not you.’

  ‘Aye, that is so. But he shall be my choice. The man I want. None other.’ Then she stepped nearer me in the half-darkness; her voice was barely a whisper above the exultant cries of the dancers. ‘Do you wait for him still, mistress? Do not. He is not for you and surely you must by now know it.’

  I should have turned and left her, but I didn’t. ‘I don’t wait for anyone, Morag.’

  ‘You do, mistress. You do. You still think that when she has gone he will turn to you. It is useless. Have you looked on his face these last weeks?’

  ‘I have not.’

  ‘Then if you had, you would know. He is a man gone mad. He is lifted out of himself. He always has been different from every other man, but now the difference is greater, and it comes out of him like a light. He walks and he moves ‒ but he sees and feels nothing. Nothing but her … There was a poem your grandmother read to me once. I did not understand it, and it made me frightened. Those last words, I cannot remember them clearly, but I was a wee girl, and they frightened me. Something … Och, how did it go? ‒ I repeated them in bed that night, and they made me shiver. Something … Do you know it, mistress? ‒ “Circle him thrice …” ’