by Jane Yolen
The laird turned to face the door with a cold smile on his face. “You spoke only in the heat of the moment, Josephine, so I do not hold you to it.”
“You should,” Josie told him as she peered into the bedroom.
“I am only looking after your best interests,” the laird said. “Consorting with riffraff hardly befits you.”
“And speaking of riffraff, Uncle, who is this?” She came in and pointed to Rood. “You both must have slithered in under the jamb like a pair of snakes.”
“Now, Josephine, don’t be speaking to your own kin in such a disrespectful fashion,” the laird said. It was clear even to me that he was trying to make his voice mild, to show the widow he was a reasonable man, but it sounded as hard as a standing stone. “I’m your father’s own brother, after all. And your laird.”
“His half brother,” Josie reminded him as she stepped into the room. “And only half the man as well.”
McRoy turned to Josie’s mother and put up his hands as if to say, “Can ye not see how outrageous she is?” It was a gesture I’d seen Ishbel make too often to my father to miss.
But Bonnie Josie ignored his protest. “You lived off my father’s good heart and good name for far too long, Uncle, and now you run roughshod over his widow and daughter and expect gratitude? For shame, sir. For shame.”
“Miss Josephine,” Rood interrupted, “it’s a good thing I came along when I did. I found this whelp trying to rob you.”
“Liar!” I couldn’t get the word out fast enough.
Josie seemed to notice me for the first time. Putting her hands on her hips, she looked at me askance. “I am absent no more than an hour, and all manner of capers break out behind my back. What have you to say for yourself, Roddy Macallan?”
“It was him!” I said, pointing at Rood. “He was trying to force open that cabinet in the wall.”
“The position was quite the reverse.” Rood’s voice was a low growl, and a fresh flush rushed to his cheeks. “He was looking for money, I’ll wager. Had an iron bar with him. The boy’s a common thief. I’ve warned you before about these people, Miss Josephine.”
“I doubt any common thief would go to such trouble,” said Josie. “To come into the dowager’s house in broad daylight? And the boy certainly had no iron bar with him when I brought him here a few hours ago. Faith, he could scarcely stand up from the beating you gave him, Willie Rood. And even I would be hard put to find an iron pry bar around the house.” She glared at Rood. “But someone certainly came here with the pry in hand, and I think I can guess who that might be. Especially since this room and that safe is just where an uncommon thief might hope to find the deeds to this property.”
I stood there stunned. Clearly I had happened upon terrible acts without meaning to. What were these deeds Bonnie Josie spoke of? And why would Rood—or the laird—need to steal them? None of it made sense to me. I opened my mouth, then closed it again. As Cousin Ishbel liked to say, “An open mouth gathers flies. A closed mouth gathers secrets.”
Rood’s nostrils flared. “Miss Josephine—you would take the word of this unwashed field mouse over mine?”
The widow’s hand fluttered about like a moth seeking a flame, but Josie answered calmly, “This field mouse is a guest in this house.” She smiled slightly before adding, “Unlike you, whom I do not recall inviting.”
“I’ll see him up before a judge,” said Rood. “I swear I will. We can let the law decide. And then we’ll have the right of it.” But I noticed his right hand was trembling as he spoke.
“You’ll have a hard time pressing charges against the boy when neither my mother nor I will have any part of it,” Josie warned.
Her mother nodded slightly.
Waving a hand in the air, as if to quiet everyone, the laird said, “This is a very vexing puzzle indeed, but so far as I can see, no great harm has been done to either party.”
Rood glowered his disagreement, but a hard look from the laird kept him silent. “Mister Rood, I am sure you have pressing business elsewhere on the estate.” His tone made it clear that this was an order.
Still furious, Rood stepped out of the room and stomped away toward the back door.
“There,” said the laird. “Now, let us retire to the parlor and discuss our business like gentlefolk.”
He turned and led them back to the front parlor, where he had been talking just minutes before with the widow. And though I doubted he meant to include me in “gentlefolk,” I was not about to leave Bonnie Josie and her mother alone with the man. He was dangerous. And—I feared—he meant them no good. But I went no farther than the parlor door, where I stood slightly in shadow.
Josie saw her mother seated once again on one of the cushioned chairs, then stood beside her, a hand on the widow’s shoulder for comfort. Next to the chair was a shining wooden table with the thinnest legs I’d ever seen. A tray with a dainty cup and saucer and a teapot, of some white china, sat atop it.
“Get rid of this boy,” the laird said, waving at me as if once again shooing away a fly. He had remained standing and now folded his arms over his chest. Often Da stood the very same way when he was about to hand down punishments for Lachlan and me.
“He’ll stay until I am satisfied he took no permanent harm at the hands of your henchman.” Josie’s face looked set in stone.
“Rood’s methods are simple, but his heart is in the right place,” said the laird. “It is you who are behaving unwisely, young lady, and guiding your poor mother to do the same.”
I bit my lip to keep from shouting out at him.
The laird ignored me and continued, “Surely you must see that all those people who have been legally evicted from the estate cannot be allowed to remain encamped around the Lodge. It gives them false hope. It keeps them from finding work and starting their lives anew.” Once again, his voice was gentle, but the intent beneath it was pure steel.
There was a flash of anger in Josie’s eyes, and she answered him back steel for steel. “They needn’t have had to start anew without your bully boys burning them out. At least with them camped here, it will be known throughout the Highlands that there’s one corner of McRoy land where the old clan loyalties are not forgotten.”
The widow leaned back in her chair, as if shrinking from a pair of snarling dogs.
Raising his hands, the laird said, “You are upset, Josephine. I can see that. And your thinking is confused, as if you were one of them, a peasant, and not the daughter of a laird. It’s what comes of having all these idle rascals on your doorstep, living off your goodwill. I’m done with all that.”
“Have done with kindness?” said Josie, with a shake of her head. “Have done with family and honor and loyalty? I cannot live that way, Uncle. I will not live that way.”
I would have lifted my cap to her then, had I been wearing one.
“It is like hearing your father again.” The laird gave her the sort of smile given a bairn when it says something amusing. “He could have been a rich man if not for his sentimentality about the clan.”
The widow raised her hand and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She spoke low, as if she understood the argument but would not shout it out. “Thomas was rich enough, Daniel, just not in the way you mean. His treasure was the love of his people.”
The laird snorted and turned away from her to stare out of the window. It was an amazing window with a view over a great lawn of grass. All that grass and nothing pastured on it but squatters. I was amazed.
“For hundreds of years,” McRoy said, “that ignorant rabble has followed the laird just like sheep, so we might as well have sheep in their place and do without the inconvenience of the rabble’s dirt and noise. This is a mercantile world we live in, my dear. It’s time these Highland folk learned that.”
I could stand it no longer. Stepping forward from the doorway, I said, “Ye talk about people like they are animals and animals like they are people!” And then I shut my mouth again, my teeth hard against my
bottom lip. I could not believe the sound of my own voice. And speaking out that way to the laird. The laird! It was as if the spirit of the clan had seized me and spoken through me.
“Bravo!” declared Josie. “I could not have said it better.”
The laird turned back and stared at me, rubbing his fingers on his sleeve as if wiping away a stain. “If you keep mixing with this sort, Josephine, you will become one of them in the end. I had higher hopes for you than that.”
“You had hopes for me?” Her face began to turn a sunrise color, and she put her hand again on her mother’s shoulder, as if steadying herself.
“You are my niece. Of course I wish the best for you. Your dear mother cannot care for you much longer. It is long past time you made yourself a good match.”
“What? To one of your sheep farmers?”
The laird tapped his chin with a long forefinger. “You know that Mr. Rood plans to farm a part of the estate himself?”
Josie looked appalled. “You cannot seriously think I would consider marrying that man!”
“Seriously indeed,” said the laird. “Rood is an up-and-coming man, and while not of your station, my dear, he stands close to me. Marriage to my niece would raise him up. I count on him enormously. I suggest you take this proposal as seriously as I do. Life here could get very uncomfortable if I put my mind to it, and your dear mother is in such precarious health.”
I clenched my fists and stood aside. What would Lachlan do? I wondered. And then I knew. I opened my mouth to tell the laird what I thought of him, but Josie darted me a warning glance. It was a clear signal to keep quiet. Or as Cousin Ishbel would say, “Keep yer breath to cool yer porridge.”
“I think you’d best go now, Uncle,” Bonnie Josie said, “before your tongue carries you any further along that path. This house is still ours by law. We do not have to listen to such … such threats while we still have possession of it.”
The laird made a small bow in the widow’s direction and headed for the door. Pausing for a moment, he turned. “Think hard on what I have said, Josephine. Times are changing, and if you are not part of the change, you will be crushed by it as it rolls over you.”
When he was gone, Josie swung a fist in the air and let out an exasperated noise between her teeth. “I’d like to challenge that man to a duel and shoot him through the heart!”
“It would be too small a target,” I said. Surely Cousin Ishbel wouldn’t mind my saying that.
Josie laughed uproariously, like a man, not a young woman, and her face got as flame red as her hair. “I suppose it would.”
“I’ll fight him if ye ask me,” I said, swelled up with my courage and her laughter.
Josie stopped laughing and looked at me. “I think you’ve fought enough battles for one day, young Roddy. Are you steady on your feet now?”
“I am indeed,” I told her, lifting my feet one after another to show her, though I wasn’t entirely sure. “Da always says that a good fight works wonders for any Highlander. ‘Stirs the blood and stirs the stumps,’ he says.”
She smiled at that.
“But,” I continued, “if it be none of my business, I will nae ask again. What was Rood up to anyway? Why did he come to rob ye? And in daylight. And with the laird’s permission?”
“It’s no secret,” Bonnie Josie said. “With your bruises you have won the right to ask.” She looked over at her mother, who nodded in agreement. “Under the normal law of inheritance,” Josie explained, “if a laird dies without a son, the estate passes to his brother.”
I interrupted her. “I know that much!”
“What you may not know,” she said, putting up a hand, “is that my father did not trust his half brother—and rightly so, it seems—so he had a separate deed drawn up for the Lodge. He signed it over to Mother before he died.”
“So what could yer uncle do about that?” I asked, though I thought I could guess.
“Well, if the deed to the house were to go missing …” Her eyes had become slits and her mouth pursed as if she’d eaten something sour. “Why, then he could argue in court that the normal rules of inheritance should apply. That way, the Lodge would belong to him along with the rest of the estate. And trust me, Roddy, he’s got many a tame lawyer who’ll do his bidding and many a friendly judge to see his will carried out.”
So, I had guessed right. “He meant to throw you off your land.” I drew in a deep breath. “Just as he has thrown out the rest of his clansfolk.”
“Oh, what if he had found the deed!” exclaimed the widow, a hand fluttering over her mouth.
“Do not worry, Mother, the Lord provides. Did we not have our own wee terrier on guard?” Josie laughed again, but there was little mirth in it this time.
Wee terrier! I liked that. Though I’d rather she thought me a larger dog. Especially if it would help guard them. I grinned.
“But now that Uncle has made clear his intentions, I will make sure he cannot get his hands on that deed. I will put it beyond the reach of Rood or any other intruder.” Josie turned away from both of us and looked out the window, where the late afternoon sun was trying to break through the mist.
Regaining her composure, the widow stood up. “Let us brew a pot of tea for this young warrior,” she said. “Then we had best pack him off home before it gets dark.”
Tea. I had heard of the drink. But it was much too dear for any crofter’s pot. And then I thought: what a day I’d had! I’d been a warrior and I’d been wounded; I’d been a terrier inside a great house. And now I was to taste a cup of tea. I could hardly wait to tell Lachlan.
“Good thought, Mother,” Josie said. “A pot of tea will be just the thing. You find young Mairi to put the kettle on, and I will find a new hiding place for our much sought-after deed.”
6 HOME
I reached home in the gloaming, the twilight time when the sun dies like an ember behind the hills. Ahead of me on the rocky path I could see our stone cottage. As I got closer still, I could smell the bitter peat fire smoke drifting through the hole in the turf roof. Suddenly the place seemed rough and poor and hardly room enough for one, though four of us lived there. How quickly a person’s life can change. How quickly his dreams get bigger.
I wondered if we could ever hope to have a house with high brick walls, glass windows, and a lofty chimney like the Lodge. A house with painted pictures of birds and fruit and shepherd maids hanging on white walls. A house with a separate kitchen and pantry, not just a hearth in the main room where mutton cooking spattered its grease on the wall.
Stopping on the path, I shook my head to clear it of such stupid dreams. Even if the cottage and the land about were ours to sell and not the laird’s property, it could never raise enough money for a fine home like the Lodge. Not if we sold all our furniture and pots and pans and Ishbel’s horse in the bargain.
Yet as I tried to count up our meager possessions, I thought suddenly of the Blessing, the secret gift my mother had passed down to us from my grandfather Duncan MacDonald. Mother always said that her family had been given the treasure by Bonnie Prince Charlie himself and it was worth a fortune. We were to keep it safe until the Bonnie Prince returned and a Stuart king sat once more on the throne of Scotland. But the Bonnie Prince had died a long time ago in a foreign land, no matter that the old songs said Charlie would come back again. That much I knew. Da had told Mother, and it was hard not to overhear him when they argued. So if the prince was dead, there was no reason to keep the Blessing now when by selling it, we could get ourselves a better life. And maybe help Bonnie Josie as well.
Above me an owl went on silent wings to a nearby tree, becoming a shadow on a branch. I shivered as if the owl were an omen. And maybe it was. After all, the secret of where the Blessing lay hidden had died with Mother. How could we sell what we couldn’t find? Maybe the owl meant her death and the death of my dream.
All right, it was just a dream. But after what Josie and I had talked of in the Lodge, perhaps it was a dream w
orth having.
I tried to recall everything I’d heard about the Blessing. Da had sighed when Lachlan and I had asked him some months past where it might be.
“Yer mother was havering,” he said. “Dying women speak of heaven as though it’s but a step away. Dinna fash yerselves about it.” Da still found any mention of Ma painful. He kept her memory like a burr under his shirt.
As for Ishbel, she wouldn’t stand for any talk of the thing either. “That was a harmless fancy of yer mother’s,” she told us sharply, “a happy dream of princes she used to cheer herself with when things were hard. If it had been real, she would have shown it ye, whatever it is. Or we would have found it after …”
I didn’t agree. I believed Ma had hidden the Blessing to keep it safe. In the house or outside the house—that was the question that had no answer. When the fever took her, she died so quickly, she couldn’t pass on the secret of where the Blessing lay.
We’d gone through the house after she was buried and after the townsfolk came for the wake. A wild wake it was too. There was much drinking and storytelling and the women in tears. Cousin Ishbel made us clean up after, going through every cupboard and drawer and writing down what was there. Nothing that looked like a Blessing was in our accounting.
But I was sure it was here somewhere, like the Bible story of the pearl hidden in a field. It was as real to me as my heart beating in my breast; indeed, it was suddenly the very heart of all my hopes for the future.
As I entered the darkness of the cottage, Ishbel was bent over the hearth, stirring a bubbling pot of stew over the smoky peat fire. The croft had not the clean, flowery scent of the Lodge. I could smell musky peat, earthy neeps and potatoes, but little else. No one had snared a hare, then. And clearly Lachlan had not caught any of the Glendoun chickens.
“He’s back,” Lachlan announced, looking up from his perch on the stool. “See, I told ye he’d be fine.”
Ishbel looked up sharply from the stew and fixed her eyes on me. The flames sent shots of gold through her bushy red hair. “Fine? It looks as if his head’s been cracked like an egg.” She pointed the spoon at me accusingly. “If trouble comes to us because of your daft capers, we’ll know where the blame lies.” Ishbel had a way of turning our brave adventures into a child’s foolish games.