Now May You Weep

by Deborah Crombie

  DEBORAH CROMBIE

  NOW MAY YOU WEEP

  To my uncle, A. C. Greene, 1923–2002,

  man of letters and storyteller extraordinaire

  Let torrents pour then, let the great winds rally.

  Snow-silence fall or lightning blast the pine;

  That light of Home shines warmly in the valley,

  And, exiled son of Scotland, it is thine.

  Far have you, wandered over seas of longing,

  And now you drowse, and now you well may weep,

  When all the recollections come a-throwing,

  Of this rude country where your fathers sleep.

  —NEIL MUNRO, “TO EXILES”

  CONTENTS

  Epigraph

  Map

  1

  Wrapped in her warmest cloak and shawl, Livvy Urquhart paced…

  2

  Bracing her shoulder against the thrust of the wind hammering…

  3

  Livvy roused her son with a touch on his shoulder.

  4

  By morning, the wind had died, and the world outside…

  5

  “Catarrh,” pronounced nurse Baird as she sat back from examining…

  6

  It was the longest meal in Gemma’s memory. John and…

  7

  Breathe. Gemma knelt, eyes closed, fighting the slickness of nausea…

  8

  Gemma forced herself to walk back through the woods by…

  9

  The knock came just as Gemma was ending her call…

  10

  Callum had breakfasted early before going to pick up the…

  11

  It was only after Charles had been buried in the…

  12

  Will stood in the door of the warehouse, gazing at…

  13

  Every year, since Livvy had left her father’s house to…

  14

  I suppose you could say the place has a sort…

  15

  John innes came out to greet them, and when he…

  16

  Kit walked aimlessly for hours, only vaguely aware of his…

  17

  Gemma slipped into the double bed in the upstairs bedroom,…

  18

  Gemma pulled herself from Kincaid’s arms reluctantly, loath to leave…

  19

  Livvy stood in the distillery office, her father’s letter dangling…

  20

  As Hazel drove, the last entries in Helen Brodie’s journal…

  21

  Gemma had managed to bind Louise’s hands with a frayed…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Deborah Crombie

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Map

  1

  If there’s a sword-like sang

  That can cut Scotland clear

  O a’ the warld beside

  Rax me the hilt o’t here.

  —HUGH MACDIARMID,

  “To Circumjack Cencrastus”

  Carnmore, November 1898

  WRAPPED IN HER warmest cloak and shawl, Livvy Urquhart paced the worn kitchen flags. The red-walled room looked a cozy sanctuary with its warm stove and open shelves filled with crockery, but outside the wind whipped and moaned round the house and distillery with an eerily human voice, and the chill penetrated even the thick stone walls of the old house.

  It was worry for her husband, Charles, that had kept Livvy up into the wee hours of the night. He would have been traveling back from Edinburgh when the blizzard struck, unexpectedly early in the season, unexpectedly fierce for late autumn.

  And the road from Cock Bridge to Tomintoul, the route Charles must take to reach Carnmore, was always the first in Scotland to be completely blocked by snow. Had his carriage run off the track, both horse and driver blinded by the stinging wall of white fury that met them as they came up the pass? Was her husband even now lying in a ditch, or a snowbank, slowly succumbing to the numbing cold?

  Her fear kept her pacing, long after she’d sent her son, sixteen-year-old Will, to bed, and as the hours wore on, the knowledge of her situation brought her near desperation. Trapped in the snug, white-harled house, she was as helpless as poor Charles, and useless to him. Soon she would not even be able to reach the distillery outbuildings, much less the track that led to the tiny village of Chapeltown.

  Livvy sank into the rocker by the stove, fighting back tears she refused to acknowledge. She was a Grant by birth, after all, and Grants were no strangers to danger and harsh circumstances. They had not only survived in this land for generations but had also flourished, and if she had grown up in the relative comfort of the town, she had now lived long enough in the Braes to take hardship and isolation for granted.

  And Charles…Charles was a sensible man—too sensible, she had thought often enough in the seventeen years of their marriage. He would have taken shelter at the first signs of the storm in some roadside inn or croft. He was safe, of course he was safe, and so she would hold him in her mind, as if her very concentration could protect him.

  She stood again and went to the window. Wiping at the thick pane of glass with the hem of her cloak, she saw nothing but a swirl of white. What would she tell Will in the morning, if there was no sign of his father? A new fear clutched at her. Although a quiet boy, Will had a stubborn and impulsive streak. It would be like him to decide to strike off into the snow in search of Charles.

  Hurriedly, she lit a candle and left the kitchen for the dark chill of the house, her heart racing. But when she reached her son’s first-floor bedroom, she found him sleeping soundly, one arm free of his quilts, his much-read copy of Kidnapped open on his chest. Easing the book from his grasp, she rearranged the covers, then stood looking down at him. From his father he had inherited the neat features and the fine, straight, light brown hair, and from his father had come the love of books and the streak of romanticism. To Will, Davie Balfour and the Jacobite Alan Breck were as real as his friends at the distillery; but lately, his fascination with the Rebellion of ’45 seemed to have faded, and he’d begun to talk more of safety bicycles and blowlamps, and the new steam-powered wagons George Smith was using to transport whisky over at Drumin. All natural for a boy his age, Livvy knew, especially with the new century now little more than a year away, but still it pained her to see him slipping out of the warm, safe confines of farm, village, and distillery.

  More slowly, Livvy went downstairs, shivering a little even in her cloak, and settled again in her chair. She fixed her mind on Charles, but when an uneasy slumber at last overtook her, it was not Charles of whom she dreamed.

  She saw a woman’s heart-shaped face. Familiar dark eyes, so similar to her own, gazed back at her, but Livvy knew with the irrefutable certainty of dreams that it was not her own reflection she beheld. The woman’s hair was dark and curling, like her own, but it had been cropped short, as if the woman had suffered an illness. The dream-figure wore odd clothing as well, a sleeveless shift reminiscent of a nightdress or an undergarment. Her exposed skin was brown as a laborer’s, but when she raised a hand to brush at her cheek, Livvy saw that her hands were smooth and unmarked.

  The woman seemed to be sitting in a railway carriage—Livvy recognized the swaying motion of the train—but the blurred landscape sped by outside the windows at a speed impossible except in dreams.

  Livvy, trying to speak, struggled against the cotton wool that seemed to envelop her. “What—Who—” she began, but the image was fading. It flared suddenly and dimmed, as if someone had blown out a lamp, but Livvy could have sworn that in the last instant she had seen a glimpse of startled recognition in the
woman’s eyes.

  She gasped awake, her heart pounding, but she knew at once it was not the dream that had awakened her. There had been a sound, a movement, at the kitchen door. Livvy stood, her hand to her throat, paralyzed by sudden hope. “Charles?”

  The world slipped by backwards, a misty patchwork of sheep-dotted fields and pale yellow swaths of rape that seemed to glow from within. Occasionally, the rolling hills dipped into deep, leafy-banked ravines that harbored slow rivers, mossy and mysterious. The bloom of late spring lay across the land with a richness that made Gemma James’s blood rise in response. As the train swayed hypnotically, she fancied that time might encapsulate the speeding train and its occupants in a perpetual loop of rhythmic motion and flashing hillsides.

  Giving herself a small shake, she looked across the aisle at her friend Hazel Cavendish. “It’s lovely”—Gemma gestured out the window—“wherever it is.”

  Hazel laughed. “Northumberland, I think. We’ve a long way to go.”

  Farther down the car, a mother tried to calm an increasingly fractious child, and Gemma felt a guilty surge of relief that it was not she having to cope. As much as she loved her four-year-old son, Toby, it was not often she had a break from child care that didn’t include work. Nor, she realized, had she and Hazel spent much time together away from their children. Until the previous Christmas, Gemma had lived for almost two years in the garage flat belonging to Hazel and her husband, Tim Cavendish. As Hazel and Tim’s daughter, Holly, was the same age as Gemma’s son, Hazel had cared for both children while Gemma was at work.

  “I’m glad you asked me,” Gemma said impulsively, smiling at Hazel across the narrow tabletop that separated them.

  “If anyone deserves a break, it’s you,” Hazel replied with her customary warmth.

  The previous autumn, Gemma had been promoted to detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police, assigned to Notting Hill Police Station. The promotion, although a goal long set, had not come without cost. Not only had it brought long hours and increased responsibility, but it had also meant leaving Scotland Yard, ending her working partnership with Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, her lover—and, since Christmas, her housemate.

  “Tell me again about the place we’re going,” Gemma prompted. A week ago, Hazel had rung and, quite unexpectedly, asked Gemma to accompany her on a cookery weekend in the Scottish Highlands.

  “I know it’s short notice,” Hazel had said, “but it’s only for four days. We’ll go up on the Friday and come back on Monday. Could you get away from work, do you think? You haven’t had a holiday in ages.”

  Gemma understood the unspoken subtext. A therapist as well as a friend, Hazel was concerned that Gemma had not fully recovered from her miscarriage in January.

  It had been a hard winter. The fact that the pregnancy was unplanned and had been difficult for Gemma to accept had made the loss of the child even more devastating; nor had she recovered physically as quickly as she might have hoped. But with spring had come a lifting of her spirits and a renewal of energy, and if she still woke in the night with an aching sadness, she didn’t speak of it.

  “It’s a small place called Innesfree,” Hazel told her. “A pun on the owners’ name, which is Innes.”

  “Nice sentiment, wrong country.”

  Hazel smiled. “It’s near the River Spey, at the foot of the Cairngorm Mountains. According to the brochure, John Innes is making quite a name for himself as a chef. We were lucky to get a place in one of his cooking courses.”

  “You know I’m not up to your standards,” Gemma protested, thinking of some of her recent kitchen disasters in the house she and Duncan had taken in Notting Hill. She had yet to master the oil-fired cooker, in spite of Hazel’s helpful advice.

  “The course is supposed to be very personalized,” Hazel assured her. “And I’m sure there will be other things to do. Walks by the river, drinks by the fire…”

  “How very romantic.”

  Much to Gemma’s surprise, Hazel colored and looked away. “I suppose it is,” she murmured, leaning back into her seat and closing her eyes.

  Gazing at her companion, Gemma noticed the smudges beneath the fan of dark lashes, the new hollows beneath the well-defined cheekbones. For a moment Gemma wondered if Hazel could be ill, but she dismissed the thought as quickly as it had come. Hazel—therapist, perfect wife, mother, and gourmet vegetarian cook—was the most healthy, balanced person Gemma had ever known. Surely it was merely a slight fatigue, and the weekend’s rest would be just the restorative she needed.

  Donald Brodie lifted one section of the wort vat’s heavy wooden cover and breathed in the heady aroma of hot water and barley. He had been fascinated by this part of the distilling process even as a child, when his father had had to lift him up so that he could peer down into the frothy depths of the vat. It still amazed him that the liquid produced by combining ground, dried barley with hot water could produce a final product as elegant as a malt whisky—but perhaps that was why he had never lost his fierce love of the business.

  Even today, when he had so much else at stake, he had gone round the premises after work finished, as was his habit. He closed the vat and crossed the steel mesh flooring to the stairs, his footsteps echoing in the building’s cavernous space. Once outside, he locked the door and stepped out into the yard, stopping a moment to survey his domain.

  It had been mild for mid-May in the Highlands, and the late afternoon air still held the sun’s warmth. Before him, the lawn sloped down to the house his great-great-grandfather had built, a monument to Victorian Romanticism in dressed stone. He turned, looking back at the building he had left. To the left stood the warehouse, once the home of the vast floor maltings, with the distinctive twin-pagoda roofs that had ventilated the kiln; to the right, the still-house and the now-defunct mill. Although the mill had not been used to grind barley to grist since the early 1960s, his father had restored the wheel to operation, and water tumbled merrily from its blades. The building now served as the distillery’s Visitors Centre.

  The mill was powered by the burn that ran down from the foothills of the Cairngorms to meet the nearby River Spey, but the water that went into the whisky came from the spring that bubbled up from the gently rolling grounds. In the making of whisky, the quality of the water was all-important, a Highland distillery’s greatest asset.

  The Brodie who had named the place Benvulin had shown a wayward imagination—ben being a corruption of the Gaelic word beinn, or hill, but vulin, the phonetic spelling of the Gaelic mhoulin, or mill, was a bit more accurate.

  Tomorrow he would entice Hazel into coming here—a not-so-subtle reminder of her heritage and of what he had to offer—but then, he had grown tired of subtlety. The phone calls, the notes, the casual lunches in discreet London restaurants, spent skating around what they were feeling; all those things had served their purpose, but now it was time for Hazel to face the truth. His friends, John and Louise Innes, had done their part in getting Hazel here by arranging the cookery weekend; now he must do his—and soon, he thought, his pulse quickening as he looked at his watch.

  The mobile phone on his belt vibrated. Slipping it from its holder, he glanced at the caller ID. Alison. Damn and blast! He hesitated, then let the call ring through to voice mail. If there was one complication he didn’t need this weekend, it was dealing with Alison. He’d told her he had a business meeting—true enough, with Heather, the distillery’s manager, who’d insisted on bringing Pascal Benoit, the Frenchman whose conglomerate was salivating over Benvulin. Not that he could put off Alison indefinitely, mind, but a few more days couldn’t hurt, and then he would find some way of dealing with her for good.

  With that thought, he went to wash and change for the evening, whistling all the while.

  Sitting down at his wife’s desk, Tim Cavendish began to work his way through the drawers. He was a methodical man, and his time was limited, because Holly, who at age four protested naps with great indignation, would not sleep l
ong. He told himself this was a job, a project, to be approached like any other; he could, in fact, pretend he was looking for something, a lost note, or a receipt. Perhaps that would quiet the ingrained revulsion he felt at invading another therapist’s privacy. But Hazel, he told himself, had forfeited all rights to such consideration.

  Pencils, elastic bands, paper clips—all the innocent paraphernalia of work. Hazel’s appointment book lay open on her desktop; her case files were stored in a separate cabinet. Disappointed, he sat back and idly lifted the corner of the blotter.

  The dog-eared photo was near the edge, as if it had been examined often. From its fading surface Hazel gazed back at him, smiling. She wore shorts, her tanned legs seeming to go on forever, and her face, younger and softer, was more like Holly’s than he remembered. Beside her sat a large man in jeans, his arm thrown casually, possessively, around her shoulders. His face was strong, blunt, his thick hair a bit longer than was now fashionable. Behind them, the purple haze of a heather-covered moor. Scotland, in summer.

  His first impulse was to destroy the photo; but no, let her keep it. She would have little enough when he had finished with her.

  A corner of white protruded from beneath one side of the snap. He nudged the photo out of the way with the tip of his finger, as if touching it would contaminate him.

  A business card. Good God. The man had given her a business card, like a commercial traveler come calling. Unlike the photo, it was new, still pristinely white, and it told him what he wanted to know. Donald Brodie, Benvulin Distillery, Nethy Bridge, Inverness-shire.