Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  “Kate,” Patrick began, and I knew, or strongly guessed, what was to follow. “It appears that there are things I’ll be needing in this old wreckage and few occasions to do so. If I direct you, will you be able to make your way to Maidenmoor? You’re such a clever puss, you can do anything you set that busy little mind of yours to.”

  “No need for your honeyed Irish tongue,” I said briskly. “When I do purchase this house, I’ll seal it off and put about no-trespass notices, and heaven help the man or woman who ventures upon my property then.”

  I started out the door and, not at all to my surprise, was rather hastily followed by Patrick Kelleher, who ventured in that wheedling way which must have served him well in his lifetime, “Katie me darlin’, don’t be cross now. If I can but get past the old dragon this night, I’ll be driving you to Heatherton Fair. Won’t that be worth the wait?” He patted me upon the back of the hand, and I am happy to say Timothy hissed at him.

  Before stalking off, I stopped long enough to say, “During your rather—if I may say so—long life, has someone told you, my dear sir, that your company is preferred to your absence?” He brightened under this until I added, “If so, I suggest you devote your evening to that person; for I feel quite the reverse!”

  “No, now...” he started to say, but I walked free of his pursuing fingers and started across the garden in the rising wind to the gate, which had finally broken away from the low stone wall when we were bringing out Macrae’s body.

  “Will you not be asking the way, then, pretty Kate?”

  I felt a powerful inclination to reply, “Not in the least, pretty Pat,” but restrained myself from what I can only say was an almost overwhelming temptation.

  He must have felt a certain moral responsibility for my safety, however, for he hurried out after me, trampling over the blackened heather and pointing out with some urgency, “Remember, Kathleen, you take the straight of it, not the crosstrail, or you’ll end up at the Hag’s Head again.”

  “And we mustn’t have that, must we?” I asked sweetly, and hurried away from the grim but oddly fascinating old building and the less grim, less fascinating, and slightly less ancient Patrick Kelleher.

  The wind swept across the moors, twisting and curling up from among the moist, velvety hollows and pushing everything before its fury. I was glad I had dressed for chill weather, for it was quite cold despite the frosty northern sun, which appeared and disappeared among the tumbled clouds. In the distance to the north I made out a bundled sheepman and his flock, separated from me by innumerable waves of hill and dale, little black borders of woodland, a tangled spinney or two, and always the grandeur of solitude.

  How many sheep trails there were crossing my path! Even Timothy, going before me in short, odd cat-leaps, was confused. As for me, I had not realized before how deceiving the sheep trails could be, even when the sky was piercing and blue and windswept, as now. I had been so disgusted with the Irishman, so anxious to be away from his annoying wiles, that I had not quite concentrated upon his directions. However, I did remember that I was to take “the straight of it,” rather than one of these cross-trails. Not a very difficult thing to remember at first, while I was still in sight of the Hag’s Head and had but to turn and study the path behind me to get my bearings.

  But by the time the inn was hidden behind more and greater slopes of mauve and dun color, the wind had raised to a furious roar, sweeping furze bushes, blackened heather, and loose dirt across the heath before it. Timothy disappeared ahead of me, and I followed him down into a little thicket of entangled trees and bushes through which meandered a stream, or “beck,” as the local inhabitants called it. The banks of the stream were emerald-green with moss, but as I started across this carpet my feet sank down into the soggy morass, curiously red in color. I had never seen mud quite that color. I decided to follow the stream until there was less boggy red mud to get across.

  It was dark in here among the bushy trees, which had many times before trapped all the flying debris from the moorland storms. I was so carefully avoiding the boggy patches that I paid the price of my single-minded concentration by snapping a twig in two and lodging the pointed end inside my shoe. I put out one hand for balance against the trunk of a sapling and raised my foot, emptying out my shoe and tapping it against the little tree.

  Timothy thought I was playing some sort of game with him and leaped up to paw at my shoe, dropping back afterward with light, boneless ease, only to stop as he raised his paw again. Suddenly he dropped to all fours and crouched there with his ears pointed stiffly upward as if he were listening. His sensitivity suddenly made me aware of the thick, dusky look of the little copse around us. The moorland wind high above our heads, snapping at the top foliage and roaring on to produce havoc elsewhere, made it impossible for me to hear betraying sounds of other life than Timmy and me in the little copse, I could trust the acute senses of the little cat.

  I still had my shoe off, and with the sudden realization that some person or animal was near us, unknown and unseen, I limped around in a panic, trying to get my shoe on. At the same time I looked before me along the tangled way I had come since reaching the beck and tried vainly to see a bit more behind me and on either side. At my left side was the soggy moss, and beyond was the water making way through the reeds and rushes and tumbled rocks. Dimly, I could see through the bushes on the opposite bank, and I made out nothing more dangerous than a furry little brown rodent of the moors, drinking at the beck, but with a watchful eye and ear out for Timothy, who at the moment had no interest in him.

  I was fairly sure there could be no danger in whatever had disturbed the little cat. The most savage creatures in this area were the watchdogs owned by the farmers and small-property owners of the countryside, and any hound on our trail would have leaped long ago, either at Timothy or me. I watched Tim carefully to see which direction disturbed him and saw on the slope above us a vague, indistinguishable creature half-hidden by the fiercely blowing bushes. It was probably a great mastiff that had been following upon our trail and hovered over us where the ground dipped sharply down toward the beck. The beast had chosen a perfect place for an ambush. It had but to leap down upon us.

  I snatched up Timmy, along with my shoe, and stepped hastily across the wet, mossy bank, feeling the mud ooze about my stockinged foot as I leaped the last hurdle into the stream. I heard my own cry of pain as my unprotected foot twisted upon the sharp stones of the stream bed, but I had a healthy fear of the dogs hereabouts, whose vicious protection of their masters’ property was a matter of legend, and I could not stop to pamper myself.

  Once I reached the opposite bank, I scrambled up, squeezing the cat until I was surprised he did no more than meow plaintively. It was obvious that, like me, he was too frightened to feel pain. Just as I paused a minute to discover the quickest way through the wind-blown thicket at the top of the bank, Timmy gave a loud, open-mouthed snarl, and I glanced back across the stream, expecting to hear the furious answering growl of our pursuer. Instead, I saw once more a peculiar, indistinct presence hovering in the darkest wooded part of the thicket, near where I had first stopped on the other side of the stream to remove my shoe. A most peculiar dog, if dog it was, not to have leaped after Timothy or barked at the very least. For one dreadful moment, doubting my own sanity, I fancied that the pallid mask of an old crone gazed up at me from the heart of that thicket. It was too fantastic. In the next instant I knew that my encounter at the inn today had obsessed my thoughts.

  It was enough for me. I slipped my shoe on and scrambled through the bushes, which scratched and clung to Timothy’s fur and my coat. Then I began to run, finding that my ankle pained me hideously and hindered, but by no means stopped, my flying feet.

  I had not forgotten Patrick’s warning to me to take the trail straight on rather than any of the sheep paths that crossed it. I saw no sign of crossing trails and felt that by great good luck I had come out of that thicket exactly into the path I sought. I ran on, h
oping to gain ground and perhaps cross another low-lying beck before the beast tracking us made his decision to cross the first stream. Our scent might be destroyed by that stream. I hoped so.

  I began to limp more and more painfully, and suddenly I stumbled over a rock in the path, like any ignorant London outlander. I went down on one knee, barely catching Timmy before he slipped out of my arms, and fell upon him. I got up, gritting my teeth against the intermittent, stabbing pain through my left foot, which I had wrenched in crossing the stream. I felt it quite beyond my power to run any further, but I managed to limp along, concentrating upon one step at a time.

  It seemed to me that something was emphatically wrong about this path. I should have reached the Heatherton High Road long before this. Overhead, the clouds had gathered so that they gradually absorbed the sun and the whole heather was gray with the look of an approaching storm. I groaned at my abominable luck and paused to make quite sure I was heading in the right direction. I had reached the highest plateau of the moors, and on the northern horizon loomed a series of buildings that appeared much too imposing for a moorland sheep farm. I wondered what they were but was too worried to speculate.

  At the same time I heard a shrill sound like a whistle, and Timothy leaped from my arms in panic. I swung around, feeling excruciating pain upon my sore foot as I put my full weight upon it. The pain, however, abruptly ceased as I saw a pair of huge hunting dogs, lean and swift and doubtless, hungry, bounding over the dying heather, with me as their prey.

  I started to run, turned on my injured foot, and, as the dogs leaped upon me, fell into a deep, all-encompassing blackness.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I cried out, “Don’t let them eat me! Oh, please do not!” This preposterous plea was the first thing I heard upon recovering my senses, and it very naturally provoked an answer from a voice I recalled as being odiously right at all times.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No one is going to eat you.”

  “Nor Timmy either!” I added, taking advantage of the absolute and godlike quality in this man’s voice.

  “If you mean that detestable little bundle of fur who abandoned you in your extremity—”

  “It is scarcely his fault that he is a cat,” I said indignantly, opening my eyes and finding, with an uneasy start, that my rescuer’s face, with its deep-set dark eyes and its stubborn, harshly beautiful mouth, was very close above my own.

  “Well then,” he said as he saw me open my eyes, “the creature shall not be drowned in a rushy mere after all. Mind that, Jacob.”

  “No! Indeed, no! Do not drown him. Please...” I began to stir around, discovering that Sir Nicholas, in hunting jacket and with a frightfully efficient-looking rifle tucked under one arm, had somehow made me comfortable against his body, and we were both settled on the windy heath, speckled by the first raindrops that heralded the coming storm. This was improper and embarrassing enough, but it was plain that it had all occurred under the interested eyes of Sir Nicholas’s loader, a grizzled fellow with a big grin and many teeth missing.

  “Aye, mum, we be watchful of the bitty creature.”

  “Well, I should hope so!” I said indignantly, trying to rise. But I was slapped back by something slippery and wet and warm across the lower half of my face. It proved to be a gigantic pink tongue.

  “Down, Mealy!” thundered Sir Nicholas in that authoritative voice which instinctively touched off the battle light in my own nature.

  “Let him be,” I said irritably. “He is merely being friendly.” And then I muttered, somewhat to my own surprise, “What a disagreeable man, to be sure!”

  I did not understand why he laughed aloud at this. It seemed an odd thing at which to find amusement.

  The great mastiff, however, did not share my feelings of conflict against his master. After Sir Nicholas’s command he came to heel, whining, a sound that I could only take for a compliment. I reached out and patted the good fellow, wondering how I could ever have been terrified of such a docile creature. His comrade, a smaller and leaner dog some distance away from us, was busy pawing, chewing, and growling over a huge mutton bone.

  Sir Nicholas, who saw my sympathy toward the animals, explained, “Jacob gave him that bone to comfort him...”

  “How nice of Jacob!”

  I gave the big toothy loader my best smile, until Sir Nicholas added, “To comfort him when we could not let him chew upon Miss Bodmun.”

  I felt that I had received a distinct setdown, and I sneaked one more look at the lean, growling dog, reflecting that but for Sir Nicholas and Jacob I would, at this moment, be in the same case as that wretched mutton bone which was audibly cracking under its teeth.

  “I confess, I prefer the big monster beside me,” I said boldly.

  But I was immediately caught up by Sir Nicholas’s sly remark, “My dear Miss Bodmun, not very flattering, to be sure.”

  I flushed red as a lobster and pretended not to have understood him. Then I fumbled to find another subject, reaching out and petting Mealy upon his huge, receptive head while Sir Nicholas prepared to move on. A protesting meow disturbed me, and I saw that Jacob, the loader, had Timothy in his big pocket, probably crouched uncomfortably upon a bed of bullets, and Jacob’s huge fingers were knuckling Timmy’s head in a friendly way.

  “Would you truly have drowned him?” I asked, worried over what might have happened if I had not come to consciousness until later.

  “Timmy is one of those creatures who will always land on their feet, like many a female I have known,” remarked Sir Nicholas drily as he handed his rifle to Jacob and reached under my waist in a manner I found much too familiar—though I should have known what he intended by his businesslike approach.

  In any case, I started as if I had been stabbed, which was not only ungrateful of me, but naive, as I realized immediately by the faint, contemptuous curl of Sir Nicholas’s lips.

  “Be at ease, my dear girl. I am not the Kelleher lout. I assumed from the way you were rubbing your left foot that you had twisted your ankle and could not walk.”

  I had the grace to mutter, “I beg your pardon,” but it was an effort. His cool, competent, ungracious handling of any emergency made my apologies to him sound quite unnecessary and, I supposed, unwelcome. I added by way of explanation, “It is not my ankle that gives me trouble, sir, but the arch of my foot. I believe I pulled a muscle in my foot when I was running across the stream to escape your dogs.”

  “These infants,” he sighed, “with their blind exuberance ... What stream was that?”

  I did not have a chance to answer, for he was removing my shoe, and I became very conscious of my dirty, mud-encrusted white stocking. He pinched my foot at the instep, and I jumped, but more from the pressure of his fingers than from pain. He ran his thumb along the arch of my foot with a surgeon’s indifference to the pain of his patient, and this time there was no mistaking the root of the problem. I gave an enormous start and only kept from screaming by pressing my teeth hard into my lower lip.

  “Young Miss seems tolerably pale, Yer Worship,” Jacob noted with some of his employer’s clinical curiosity.

  “Yes. I think we have the seat of the problem,” said Sir Nicholas. “Put your arm around my neck, Miss Bodmun, and do your best not to choke me.”

  Fiercely resenting the position in which my own clumsiness placed me, that of once again owing my comfort and even my safety to this odious aristocrat, I did as he commanded, reflecting that it was much easier to obey such intimate orders from a man I disliked than from a man for whom I might have had what Mrs. Sedley called a tendresse. He lifted me with the greatest ease, which would have surprised my father, who, upon my birthday three months earlier, had offered me the dubious compliment, “My little Kate’s become a strapping fine lass!” and then pretended to stagger as he raised me off the floor by his hands around my waist.

  Mealy, the great mastiff with the tongue as wide as my face, conceived that when his master swung me off the ground he was
somehow borrowing Mealy’s prerogative, and he barked fiercely, jumping about in his excitement. But apparently he was too much in awe of Sir Nicholas to leap upon him, for which I was very grateful, though the baronet seemed to have no fears on that score. Mealy was joined in his barking by the vicious hound with the mutton bone, who, however, might be said merely to have barked between bites, for I could plainly hear the intermittent crunch of snapping, slivering bone, and I shuddered.

  Each step Sir Nicholas took seemed to jar my entire body. But to give him his due, I do not think he meant to jar me, and I felt sure that when he spoke to me he intended, in his unromantic, matter-of-fact way, to take my mind off the pain.

  “You said my dogs chased you into a beck. Where was this?”

  I tried to explain, but it was a disjointed description, and the only clear point of the matter was that the little vale and the stream were heavily shadowed and not too far from the Hag’s Head.

  “I know the place. A spinney where some of the local moorland lads take their lasses for sundry purposes. Megan and I used to meet there ... in our younger days.”

  Jacob, the loader, coughed to cover any disrespect and murmured, “Yer Worship, maybe the lass is a bit young for such facts, so to speak.”

  I said indignantly, “I know exactly what you are talking about.” It made me angry, for some inexplicable reason, to learn of Sir Nicholas’s philandering with Megan Sedley before her marriage, despite what Mrs. Sedley had told me of their understanding, which had broken up because Nicholas had no expectations. How wrong Mrs. Sedley had been on that score!

  Sir Nicholas cut short my speculation on the matter. “That is neither here nor there. The point is, my dogs have been nowhere near Seven Spinney today ... Miss Bodmun, my neck, please. Not my cravat!”