Grace in Thine Eyes

by Liz Curtis Higgs

  A few folk inquired of Davina, “Is there no May King?” She only smiled, thinking of her evening plans. The day would end as it had begun—with a solo venture out of doors. Not to bathe in the dew nor to banish her freckles but to test an old Beltane tradition “from auld lang syne,” as her father would say.

  At the four hours, cups of fresh tea were brought out on trays before their guests were sent home, weary yet well sated. Most departed on foot, some on horseback; the narrow, rutted road into the glen did not accommodate wheeled conveyances. Will and Sandy did their duty by Jock, saddling the best horse in Glentrool’s stables.

  When the last rays of sunlight painted the horizon the color of orange marmalade, and the first quarter moon neared its zenith, the twins finally returned from Brigton farm. Davina flew to the front window at the sound of her brothers pounding up the drive, relieved to see them. Aubert Billaud, Glentrool’s temperamental cook, served supper precisely at eight. Jamie insisted they all be seated on time without exception.

  After handing over the horses to a stable lad, her brothers disappeared up the stair, then arrived at table with damp hair and loosely folded cravats. If any ill feelings remained between father and sons, they did not surface during the meal. Aubert’s main courses—boiled salmon with fennel, kidney collops, and roasted plover—kept everyone’s forks busy and their attention occupied. Ian and Mother carried much of the conversation and avoided any mention of Edinburgh.

  As always the evening ended with family worship. In many Scottish homes, the practice had faded away with the last century, but not at Glentrool. Davina folded her hands in her lap, waiting as her father opened the wooden box by the hearth, lifted out the Buik, and placed it on the table with due reverence. A tattered ribbon marked the psalms. He opened the thick volume, smoothing his hands across its worn pages.

  “For the LORD God is a sun and shield.”

  Her father could spend an entire evening’s worship on a single verse. Davina did not mind the long hour, but the twins shifted in their seats, elbowing each other to stay awake. As for Leana, her gaze remained fixed on her husband, her face shining like the moon.

  “The LORD will give grace and glory.” Spoken like a promise, which her mother affirmed by lifting her hand to her heart. Her father had much to say about glory and more still about grace. “Mercy is a gift. Yet we are encouraged to ask for it, as David did. ‘Have mercy upon me, O God.’ ”

  Davina’s brow wrinkled, considering his words. Was it seemly to request a gift? King David, for whom she was named, repeatedly cried out for mercy. Did the Almighty not grow weary of extending grace to his people over and over?

  Her father didn’t seem to think so. As the hour drew to a close, he finished the evening’s verse. “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Davina missed most of his comments that followed, her mind circling round the last two words: walk uprightly.

  The phrase nagged at her as she followed her family up the stair, knowing she would steal back down when their bedroom doors were closed and the entrance hall stood empty. Though her plans were innocent enough, custom required that she go alone, then return in utter silence. She dared not risk her boisterous brothers trailing after her, or this night would be lost to her for another twelvemonth.

  Sarah undressed her with practiced ease, then slipped a fresh muslin nightgown over her head and brushed her hair until it fell round her shoulders like a soft cloud. “Sleep well,” Sarah murmured before quitting her bedroom, bound for the servants’ quarters behind the house.

  The mantel clock in the drawing room chimed half past eleven when Davina pulled on a pair of cotton stockings and wrapped herself in a thin plaid. She tiptoed down the long staircase, holding the plaid with one hand and clutching a knife in the other. Pilfered from Aubert’s knife drawer while he was distracted with supper preparations, the small utensil provided all that custom dictated: an ebony handle and a sharp blade.

  Opening and closing the broad oak door without making a noise required a steady hand and infinite patience. Once the door was securely shut, Davina grabbed the iron lantern from its perch by the door and started down the front path, holding out the lantern with its windows of thinly scraped horn, twin candles lighting the way. The waxing moon was of little help, low in the sky as it was. As for the night air, it was chillier than she had expected. She tightened her grip on the plaid and peered along the edges of the path. No need to strike out for the hills if she could find what she needed closer to home. Yarrow—milfoil, her mother called it—grew everywhere.

  By Lammas, the plant would reach her knees. Now it was not so tall, nor had it flowered. Surely she would recognize the angular stems covered with feathery leaves. Didn’t her mother collect yarrow each harvest to make tea? She remembered the bitter leaves being broader than her thumb …

  There.

  Davina leaned down, placed her lantern on the walk, then pinched the hairy plant with her fingers. A familiar scent wafted up to greet her. Refreshing, like feverfew. And strong.

  She gripped the knife in her right hand and pulled the yarrow taut with her left. The single cut sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness of approaching midnight. In her heart she whispered the lines of an old verse:

  Good-morrow, good-morrow, fair yarrow,

  And thrice good-morrow to thee;

  Come, tell me before tomorrow,

  Who my true love shall be.

  Davina pressed the yarrow to her breast and imagined waking in the morning with a vision of her future husband. Since she had yet to meet such a man in Galloway, perhaps she would encounter him in her dreams, the one place her brothers could not possibly intrude.

  According to the custom, she tucked the aromatic herb inside her right stocking. The leaves felt scratchy against her skin. She reclaimed the lantern, then held it aloft as she hurried toward the door. Walk uprightly. The words of her father—the words of the Almighty—resounded inside her.

  Had she broken some rule? committed some sin?

  Davina shook her head, refusing to believe it. A harmless weed, a simple rhyme, a girlish hope. Nothing more.

  She entered the house as silently as she’d departed. After replacing Aubert’s knife in the kitchen drawer, she climbed the stair, listening intently. Ian was sound asleep; she heard his shallow, even breathing. The twins, who shared a room, snored in a tuneless duet.

  When she ducked inside her turret bedchamber, Davina took her first deep breath in several minutes. A successful outing with no one the wiser. She removed her cotton stocking and its precious contents, then tucked the yarrow beneath her pillow. After such an eventful day, sleep would not be long in coming.

  She pulled her bedcovers to her chin and was soon lost in slumber.

  Not until she’d dreamed many dreams did she rise with the sun and reach for her sketchbook, eager to commit to paper what the yarrow had shown her in the night.

  Six

  Guilt’s a terrible thing.

  BEN JONSON

  Will McKie stuffed the last of his cambric shirts into a leather valise. A half-dozen sarks would suffice for the summer. Wouldn’t Edinburgh harbor a bonny laundress or two?

  “Will?” Sandy’s voice, sharp and insistent, came from the stair. He strode into their bedroom a moment later, his expression troubled. “Have you seen Davina?”

  He abandoned his packing, senses on alert. When he’d noticed their sister’s place cleared at breakfast, Will had assumed she’d awakened early and taken to the hills for an hour of sketching. “Who saw her last and when?”

  “Mother. Yestreen at bedtime.” Sandy glanced sideways at the door and lowered his voice. “You know very well that Davina has been out of sorts since May Day.”

  Will grimaced, reliving the scene with Jock Robertson from two days past. He’d noted the displeasure in their sister’s eyes, the gentle reproof in her demeanor.

  “Better to risk Davina being unhappy with us,” h
e told his twin, “than allow a laborer to sport with her and ruin her good name.” And ours. Their innocent sister knew nothing of men—how their minds worked, what they were capable of. Davina needed Sandy, needed him. Yet here they were, leaving for Edinburgh within the hour.

  Sandy gestured toward the window and the heath beyond. “The weather is foul. Rab has the dogs out on the hill, searching for her. Father and Ian are tramping round the orchard on foot.”

  “We’re away to the loch, then. On horseback.”

  Striding across the lawn, the twins came face to face with May at its murky worst. A heavy gray mist, thick as goose down, had settled into the nooks and crevices of the landscape. The loch, the pines, and most of the buildings that comprised the farm steading—henhouse, doocot, granary, barn, stables, cart shed, and byre—were lost in a moist shroud.

  Sandy mounted his gelding, the stable lad having already saddled the horses for the day’s journey. “How do you intend to find her in the fog?”

  “Loosen the reins and let the horses lead us,” Will advised, fitting his feet into the stirrups. “She’ll not have gone far.”

  He guided them in the direction of Trool, a long, sinuous loch that threaded through the steep glen. In better weather Davina often perched on the stone pier at the end of the front walk, absorbed in her drawings. Though a small boat was stored beneath the pier, she seldom took out the flat-bottomed skiff by herself. Will dismounted long enough to look round the moorings, glad to spot the oft-used craft bobbing on the water. A stout rope anchored it.

  Sandy exhaled, visibly relieved. “She’s not on the loch, then.”

  The brothers continued east, traveling single file on a narrow bridle path along the bank. They took turns shouting her name, then listened for a response—movement in the brush, the clatter of a rock, anything. Davina could not answer them verbally, of course, but surely she’d come to them. If she could.

  Will’s heart began to pound as the horses veered slightly north, leading them into the dense stand of evergreens that guarded an immense mausoleum. Other families in Monnigaff interred their loved ones in the parish kirkyard, but not the McKies. As the sharp scent of pine filled his nostrils, a sharper sense of dread flooded his soul. The deceased were not all that inhabited this burial ground.

  Sandy called ahead to him. “Do you mean to do this, Brother?”

  His twin knew him well; this was the last place he wanted to be. Their horses came to an abrupt stop as the square memorial rose out of the mist. Two generations had already been laid to rest behind its ornately carved facade, their names chiseled in stone: Archibald and Clara McKie. Alec and Rowena McKie.

  “Faithful unto death,” Sandy read aloud. They both knew which two names would likely be added next. James and Leana McKie. “Lord willing, countless years will pass before the stonemason returns to Glentrool.”

  “Aye.” A shudder ran through Will’s body. They’d tarried long enough. He tugged the reins, urging his horse to move on. But it was too late.

  “Please, Will! Don’t …” Davina’s voice. High and sweet.

  “Stop it, Sandy! You’ll hurt someone …” The voice of their sister. The voice of a child.

  Will leaned forward, pressing a gloved fist to his mouth, fearing he might be sick.

  Sandy was already by his side. “She’s not here, Will. Take some air into your lungs. Aye, that’s it.”

  His head began to clear, and the roiling in his stomach eased. The memory, however, was sharper than ever. He and Sandy, all of six years old, had been standing there—right there, beside the mausoleum—wrestling with Grandfather’s broadsword, stolen from beneath his half-tester bed.

  While their parents were preoccupied with a visitor, the lads had dragged the heavy scabbard a good distance from the house, intending to take turns dueling with an imaginary enemy. Instead they’d fought each other. Argued over who would wield the sword first. Threatened bodily harm.

  Davina had come looking for them. Had cried out in alarm when she saw the weapon. “Sandy, let go of it! Please, Will!”

  Each twin had wrapped one hand round the hilt, their outstretched arms holding it above their heads as they struggled, the deadly blade pointed toward the April sky. Davina had drawn nearer, pleading with them to end their fighting.

  That was when Will had yanked the broadsword free from Sandy’s grasp. Or his brother had let go. To this day, the truth remained a mystery. Will had stumbled backward, the weapon in his right hand sweeping through the air in a wide arc.

  The momentum had been too great. And the sword too heavy.

  The flat of the blade had struck Davina squarely in the throat, knocking her to the ground with lethal force. She could not breathe. She could not speak.

  Sandy had fled for the house, screaming for their father …

  “Is that you, lads?” Jamie’s voice sliced through the mist as neatly as steel.

  Will straightened in the saddle, dragged into the present by an unseen hand. “Sir?” There stood his father and Ian next to him, fully grown, as if a decade had passed in an instant. Will shook his head, hoping to dislodge the painful memory and erase the dreadful diagnosis. Trauma to the larynx. Nerve damage. Impaired vocal cords.

  The last word his sister had spoken was his own name.

  Ian looked round the clearing with a wrinkled brow. “Did you think you’d find Davina … here?”

  Will heard the tinge of judgment in his older brother’s words. Or did he imagine it, richly deserved as it was? “The horses brought us,” Will explained, then realized how ridiculous that sounded. He shrugged. “We thought perhaps they’d heard something.”

  Sandy spared him further embarrassment. “What news from Rab?”

  “ ’Tis what we came to tell you.” Jamie put his hand to Will’s bridle, turning his mount toward home. “Rab found your sister at Jeanie Wilson’s cottage. Unbeknownst to us, Davina went for an early morning walk to the linns on the Minnoch. When the weather turned foul, she sought shelter with the midwife.”

  Will was relieved to hear it, though the tightness in his chest did not ease. “I’m grateful Davina is safe,” he muttered, wishing he’d been the one to find her.

  Two on horseback, two on foot, the McKie men slowly made their way back to the house. The mist was thick as ever, swirling round them as they walked. Nothing more was said of Davina, which Will found irksome. Had Father not marked her absence at breakfast? Why had he not looked for her sooner? Instead the man spoke of Edinburgh, outlining their plans to depart at noon with enough clothing and provisions for a few days. The twins were to visit a tailor once they arrived; their books and other effects had been sent ahead by mail coach.

  “Your trunks are traveling the main carriage roads,” his father continued. “We, however, will ride due east. Across the moors to Moniaive and Thornhill, through the Lowther Hills on the old Roman road to Elvanfoot, and on through Biggar.” He’d often journeyed to Edinburgh on estate business and knew the shortest route. “ ’Twill test your mettle,” he warned them. “We’ll not cross many gravel roads between here and College Wynd, where your future awaits.”

  “And what of Davina?” Will said bluntly, having heard all this before. “What sort of future awaits her?”

  His father stopped to look up at him, incredulity stamped on his features. “Are you suggesting I will not provide for my own daughter?”

  “She’ll be provided for, aye.” Will was glad he was mounted, glad he held the superior position. “But our sister must also be protected. Looking after Davina is—”

  “My concern,” Jamie countered. “Not yours.”

  Father and son locked gazes, along with wills, in a brief skirmish.

  At last Ian spoke, the peacemaker among them. “Davina is loved by all Glentrool, my brothers. I promise she’ll be well cared for when you leave.”

  “Which will be soon.” Their father consulted his pocket watch, then snapped it shut, the discus
sion ended. “Once you bid farewell to the household, we’ll meet at the stables.”

  Jamie strode away, shoulders squared, head held high, brooking no doubt who was laird. When he turned on his heel and marched back to face them, his formidable strength on full display, Will felt a strong urge to dismount and did so. Seconds later, Sandy followed his lead.

  Their father stood before them, bristling with intensity. “I want this understood: No one loves Davina more than I do. I have seen my daughter well educated and will see her well wed.” A brief pause, a slight softening. “Your desire to protect her is understandable, Will. Even commendable. But I will not keep her fine mind and bright spirit under lock and key. Davina cannot speak, but she can think, and very well.”

  Will swallowed hard. “Father, I …”

  “Listen to me.” Jamie clapped a hand on his shoulder, his grip like a carpenter’s bench screw. “Your sister will come to no harm. Not this season, nor any season. Will you not trust me?” Releasing his shoulder with a firm squeeze, he added, “You ken what the Buik says: ‘My son, be wise, and make my heart glad.’ ”

  Will recognized the proverb, even as another came to mind: A foolish son is a grief to his father. He’d provoked the man enough this day and so held his tongue.

  Aye, Father. I will trust you, if I must.

  Seven

  But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.

  EDWARD YOUNG

  Davina pressed her sketchbook against her lap. In the past she’d never cared who saw her drawings and scribbled notes. Now she cared very much. Even her mother would not be shown the entry from yestermorn, when Davina had lifted her head from her yarrow-scented pillow and captured her dreams in charcoal.

  Candles burned in every corner of the drawing room, and a peat fire glowed in the grate, chasing away the gloomy forenoon weather. All the household staff and most of the shepherds and farmworkers—herds and hinds, Rab Murray called them—had assembled to see the twins on their way. The house servants wearing neatly pressed uniforms, the herds in faded blue bonnets and collarless linen shirts, the hinds ignoring the stains on their breeches—all seemed quite happy to while away an hour usually spent working.