Most times it was little that Isa saw of the laird. Nigh all day he’d bide in his study high in the great tower and when he went out to dander through the woods or whiles fish the Drochet it would be down the long tower staircase that dropped past his own private rooms and out by a little postern door remote from the rest of the house, a door of which the key was ever in his pocket. Isa would see no more of him than a keek at meals, and that was maybe enough. Only once a week she was allowed up to his bedroom for the thoroughing of it and then she would hear him pacing the study above, murmuring verses, another’s or his own. For you must know that Guthrie was poet as well as scholar. Years ago he put out a book of poems, a slender thing in black and yellow covers that fair scunnered those who thought a Scottish laird’s poems would naturally take after Rabbie Burns. I was a younger man myself then, unwilling to admit that a sutor will do well if he but knows a few classics, and once a week I used to read what they were writing of the new books, over in the Dunwinnie Institute – ten miles there and ten back, and long before the Saturday bus. And there bides in my memory a review in one of the London papers that ended: Mr Guthrie cultivates the abyss. I thought cultivates an unjust word: the reviewer creature had confounded Guthrie with the many poets of that day who were but playing at damnation. Guthrie – I must have believed these many years back – was damned in good earnest. I was romantic, maybe.
But to return to Isa Murdoch. A glimpse at meals was all she saw of her master, and the murmur of his chanted verses was all she heard, until a bit after the Gamleys left. Then one day when she was sweeping the corridor outside Christine’s room – the schoolroom, they still called it – she turned round and saw Guthrie standing over her and glowering. It almost sent her clean skite at once, she said, she’d never met in with him about the house before and never before had his awful gowking eye fallen on her – Guthrie, as I’ve told, going ever about with his gaze fixed on the middle air. She saw the glint of gold in his eye, she said, there in the dusky, dusty corridor, and when his lips parted – Guthrie who had uttered fient the syllable to her in all her Erchany days – she expected to hear a spell that would undo her surely.
Guthrie said quietly: ‘Open the house.’
5
A strange day they had of it, Christine Mathers and Isa and the Hardcastle wife, opening up Castle Erchany. They forced back the lofty shutters on their rusted hinges and set the slant autumn sunlight feeling through the dirt and destruction of forty years, blight, mildew and rot, and cobwebs as big as in the transformation scene at a pantomime. Isa turned the key in a pair of doors she had never glimpsed before and found herself in a billiard room, the great swathed table looming like some monster in his shroud, or like a stretcher in a giants’ morgue. She went up and touched it, wondering and a bit feared, never the like had she seen before. And at her touch on the corner of the thing a mouldering pocket gave way and down fell a couple of balls with a crash to the floor and rolled into the darkness. Isa said she felt a real clutch of fear at her thrapple then; it was as if the great muffled mysterious thing had stirred to life as she put her hand to it. She ran out, crying for Miss Christine, and the next thing she knew she had nearly spitted herself on a sword; it was the laird had taken down a rusty claymore from the wall and was doitering about with it like mad Hamlet looking for King Claudius of Denmark. But this time Guthrie looked straight over Isa’s head as usual and muttered something about having such airs that folk might know you kept a sword upstairs – and, at that, upstairs he went, sword and all, and wasn’t seen again that forenoon.
But at lunch time came another shock, for the laird must needs be served in the great chamber, a dark grand place that spoke of the pride of the Guthries in times gone by. Chill and echoing, the echo half muted by the chill damp air, it was choke full of lumber at one end and had a regular minstrel chorus of rats in the gallery at the other. Before a carven fireplace, that big you could have stalled two–three shetland ponies in it, was a long Flemish table, sore eaten by the worm, and down this Guthrie and his ward Christine Mathers faced each other – with wee Isa Murdoch, right feared now by the whole unco stour, bringing them their bit stewed rabbit not on some old cracked ashet but on a half-polished silver dish. Syne Guthrie ordered up wine from the cellar and when the dusty bottles were before him he gowked at them as if they held some strange elixir new-sent him from another planet, as well he might seeing that nothing but water and milk was ever drunk at Erchany. Mistress Hardcastle had sent in a corkscrew, Guthrie’s hand hovered on it as if he would open a bottle and see, then he started up and called to them to get on with their work and that they hadn’t yet opened the gallery.
Going upstairs Isa asked Christine did she know what the laird was about, and after all these years was he going to hold in with the gentry? But Christine seemed to know nothing, her thoughts were far away as ever, it was but a dreaming life she had led at Erchany, though with passion maybe behind every dream. So Isa was none the wiser, and presently they were at the stair head and facing the gallery door.
The Erchany gallery was the work of some late seventeenth century laird, building before the lust for distant commerce nigh beggared Scotland and the Guthries. He had been among the English and liked fine the way they builded their great houses in Tudor times; at Erchany he knocked all the topmost rooms together and made a long low gallery. Three turns it had to it and would have been a right roundabout but for the tower – for he couldn’t drive his fancy through the nine foot walls of that. ’Tis said that after building it the Guthrie was fair out of patience on all but smoring wet days: then he would dander round his gallery getting exercise, as blithe as a laverock. For a Guthrie ’twas an innocent pleasure enough.
None had ever been in the gallery in Ranald’s time and when Christine and Isa took a keek at the door they must have felt none would ever enter it again. There was but the one door, massive and iron-bound, and it was here that Guthrie, closing nigh all Erchany forty years since, had cheated the locksmith of his labour. Christine turned pale, Isa said, as she glimpsed the fury that had gone to the closing of that door. Great nails had been driven slantwise through the boards deep into the jamb, the blows with the strength and skill to them of a man who had handled axe and hammer in the Australian bush. It was to save his silver that Guthrie, near-going that he was, had put shutter and key to Erchany, but here surely was some other passion, forty years past or forty years hidden, that had yet left record of itself like a sculptor’s passion, deep bitten into the dark oak.
Up to this the laird, save for an order here and an order there, had taken small part in the confloption he was causing; almost, Isa said, he seemed misdoubting of what he was about. But now he came upstairs and saw the two women standing helpless before the gallery door, and sudden he fell into a fair stamash. It was seldom Guthrie raged, cold and proud he was and with a strange cruel courtesy, and it sore frighted poor Isa anew to see him fair rampage before that door, as it might have been Satan raging before the portals warded by Sin and Death. Syne he strode to the landing window and called out, hoarse and high, to Tammas ploutering in the court below to bring him his axe and see that it was fell keen. For turned seventy though he was Guthrie ever felled his own timber, and could have given points at it to the coarse creature Gladstone, him that fooled the Midlothian folk in ’eighty. Up came Tammas then with the axe, him with his great gomeril mouth open and slavering, it with a subtle curve to its long handle that was unlike the common woodmen’s axes here about. Guthrie threw off his jacket and standing spare and straight in his sark cried ‘Stand back!’ in such a voice that Tammas tripped over his own mucky feet and fell head over heels downstairs. Isa scraiched and Christine ran down to see if he had mischieved himself, but fient the glance did the laird give to anything but the great oak door of the gallery. In a moment he was hacking at it as a man might try to hack his way out of a burning biggin – only he was fair skilly, the blows came light and fast and where any slummock of a chiel would have bedded t
he axe like Excalibur in that tough wood Guthrie took chip and chip just where he wanted, the axe leaping back free every time. At the first blow there was a great scampering behind the door, the gallery rats fair frantic at the shattering of generations of repose. And at the second blow the Erchany dogs in the court gave tongue and Tammas down the stair recovered sufficient breath to set up a yowling like a soul in the eternal bonfire. Down in the kitchens the Hardcastle wife heard the rumption and, half blind and half dottled that she was, she ran out to the court and tolled the great cracked rusty bell that had meant fire or foray centuries past. Almost, there had been no such uproar in a Scottish keep since they found King Duncan with his bloody sheets about him.
But Guthrie worked on unheeding, driving deep furrows here and there about the door. After an hour, the sweat pouring from him, he called for water, washed out his mouth and spat; then he drove at the living wood again; pale he was, Isa said, and with a burning spot to his cheeks, but his wrists were like steel still and his legs without a tremor. Four o’clock came, and five; a last sunbeam, thick with dancing dust, was climbing up the worn stone stair and in the court the lengthening shadows of the battlements were closing like black and jagged teeth upon the eastern wall; at six half the gallery door fell inward with a crash. And at that Guthrie came down, changed his clothes and called for his supper, the same as if he had been about some common task enough that day. Only he broached a bottle of wine, the same that had been brought up for luncheon, and offered some to Christine – that grave and formal, Isa said, he might have been entertaining a stranger, douce and decent, to the fit honours of Erchany.
These were the events of the day before Isa Murdoch left the meikle house. But the events of the night – which was when things went clean over the quean – are yet to come. And then I’ll be telling you something of Christine Mathers, and something of how I came myself to have part in what befell at Erchany.
6
Either the sore clout he gave his head on the stairs or the unco conduct of the laird fair upset the daftie Tammas. At the best of times he was an unchancy chiel, whiles almost sensible-like and whiles clean skite; whiles right sweet and gentle so that you were real sorry for him, not all there that he was, and whiles girning and glowering as malicious as the foul fiend. Always though he had kept from troubling the queans, he seemed to know nothing of the purpose of them any more than some neuter thing. Isa had never been feared of him, ever she gave him out his meals at the back-kitchen door with no more thought than if she had been meating the hens. But maybe the fall he had gave the daftie’s system a jolt the Harley Street slummock could put a learned name to, for that night the way of nature came to him and he decided to make try for Isa. Late in the night a rustling that was more than the capers of the Erchany rats awoke the quean, she opened her eyes in a full moonlight and saw Tammas just louping in at the window. One keek at the face of him was enough for her, she was out of bed and through the door while her legs had still strength to carry her. Tammas gave a sort of slavering yammer horrid to hear and was across the room in pursuit.
Isa’s first thought was to run to Christine, but even the two of them might be helpless against the frenzy of the creature and anyway it seemed not right to lead him that way. She wavered a minute at the corridor’s end, where she might get either through to the wing the Hardcastles had or, turning the other way, reach the tower and seek the laird. And right feared as she was of Guthrie she knew that he was more to trust in this than the factor Hardcastle, who had ever a lurking lechery in his look and was a craven, it might be, forbye. So she kilted her bit shift about her and made for the tower, she was half-way before it came to her like a clutch at the heart that the laird double-locked himself in his fastness of a night and there would be no getting into the tower and up to him. She stopped at that, the daftie still not far behind her, and looked round despairing-like for a place to hide. Then her glance went out through one of the great windows that look on the court and across the court, high up, she spied a moving light. Guthrie was not shut away in his tower but up in his new-opened gallery. And at that Isa made up the main staircase, never listening now to hear if the demented Tammas was following still, but taking the uneven stone treads as if she was running for a prize at the Sabbath School picnic.
Not until she was more than half-way up did she think to cry out and then she had no breath for it, fient the thing but a bit sob and hoast would come from her thrapple. So she stumbled to the top and through the broken door and then a real cry broke from her, for there was Guthrie in a kilt, awful pale, and with a great battle axe in his hand. Then she saw it was nothing but a likeness, an old painted thing gleaming from its tarnished frame in the moonlight, and but one of a row of paintings down the gallery. Guthrie himself was to seek, he would be somewhere round a corner – the gallery, you remember, having three turns to it in all.
She ran down the long dim-lit room and sudden she heard a breathing sound close behind her. It must be the daftie, she thought, and still no sign of the laird, and at that she juiked into a bit alcove, nigh ready to cast herself from a window. And certain a window was there, one that looked not to the court but out behind the castle. The glass was half gone and sudden she heard a bit song drifting up in the stillness, it was The craw kill’t the pussy-oh, Tammas’ song:
The craw kill’t the pussy-oh,
The craw kill’t the pussy-oh,
The muckle cat
Sat doon and grat
At the back o’ Meggie’s hoosie-oh…
Fair thrilling and gracious the daft old words floated up to Isa, she herself near grat for joy. Looking out, she saw Tammas in the moonlight holding for his own biggin and singing full blithe to the moon, the moon might have waned of a sudden and taken his madness clean from him, he looked up at the moon and Isa saw his face calm and gentle as he made for his bed.
And then Isa heard the breathing sound behind her again.
She knew at once it was the laird; as she turned in at the gallery she must have turned away from him and now he was coming up behind her. When she realized that she was alone with Guthrie in this uncanny long-deserted place she was nearer ready to die of fright than ever. For the danger of being couched and maybe bairned by Tammas was a horror she knew the measure of, many a tale of the sort she’d heard that she shouldn’t, but the dark power of Guthrie was a thing unguessed, its outlines overran the boundaries of the quean’s knowledge. A danger is ever the worst that has no shape to it, and there’s a straight difference between instinctive and imaginative terror.
So Isa held her whisht and cowered down in her bit hidyhole; when Guthrie went by she would slip to the door and away back to her room, where she could bar door and window against another fit of the daftie’s. And now Guthrie was coming close up, the queer breathing of him was nearer and she was fell certain his awful eye must light on her. But she was well hid behind two great magical contraptions she could make nothing of: big terrestrial and celestial globes they turned out to be. The gallery had been a library place at one time with all the gear of a gentleman’s library about it, only Guthrie had caused the most of the books to be carted to the tower before he shut down on it, great scholar that he was. Little remained on the shelves but tall and mouldering folios, and squat quartos in their heavy Continental gilding, Protestant theology for the most part brought from Geneva, the metropolis of orthodoxy in the olden time. Perished entirely they were, the musty smell of perished leather heavy in the place, for of such godly matter Guthrie – God help him – had little thought.
All this was nothing to Isa. She minded only that the laird was up and past her and that now maybe she might slip unseen to the door. But half a keek showed her she was fast prisoner still; Guthrie was standing not five feet away, wrapped in an old torn dressing-gown and in his hand his bedroom candle that made a warmer wavering circle of light amid the chill moonbeams. It was cold in the gallery; Isa shivered – maybe at the bite of it, crouching in her shift as she was, and maybe
at the look of the laird. Guthrie, she said, might have been the Guthrie carven in stone on the great tomb in the kirk. Right pale he was, transfixed it might have been in some deep and murky thought; and on his high lined brow, there in the nip of a November night, there glistened beads of sweat. Like a statue he stood, only his breath coming fast and deep and a glint to his eye more lowering than the common told of some inner stour that had grip of him.
It might have been half an hour, Isa said, he stood there unmoving, and if one remembers the strain on the nerves of the quean one may think perhaps that he stood three minutes so, or four. And then he strode straight towards her.
Isa said she gave a little cry at that and Guthrie’s hand came out to drag her, as she thought, from hiding. At that she shut her eyes and tried to think of a bit prayer. But no prayer came – nor yet the touch she had expected on the shoulder. Instead, the great globe she was crouching by stirred at her side, its cold smooth surface brushed eerily over her naked arm, she took another keek and saw that the laird was like in a trance still, refusing to see the quean that cowered right under his neb. Idly, and now murmuring some unintelligible words, he was turning on its rusted axis the dust-encrusted miniature world that lay beneath his hand. It creaked and grated, the wee world with its faded sprawl of oceans and continents, much as the moon might do if made to quicken on its poles again. Then above the little strident noise of the turning world, hoarse and piercing came Guthrie’s voice, his words now clear to Isa, all in a blur of fear though she was.
‘He will! It’s in the blood, and by the great God he will!’
The worst fright Isa got that night was from the way Guthrie’s words were spoken, for it was right fearsome to think there was something the laird himself was feared of. When she told her tale in Kinkeig there were smart folk said the quean had read her own feelings into Guthrie, and the stationy – him they called the Thoughtful Citizen – said sure it was a case of transferred emotion. But Isa stuck to her story the laird was sore feared of something; and before many weeks passed folk were to say Well, he had good reason and Isa was a gleg quean to have probed to it; the stationy said he had ever thought her a perspicacious young person.
Lament for a Maker Page 3