‘There’s fighting in prospect. I’d lay a sovereign on it,’ Rob said sagely.
Fin seized his moment.
‘So now could I take the lassie to visit Mother?’ he asked eagerly.
Rob thought about it. The girl had never set foot outside the castle walls since she arrived. She was mewed up like a prisoner. It would do her good.
‘Och, go on then. But don’t take risks with her. She’s the Master’s favourite.’
‘Why d’ye say that? He hardly notices her.’
‘That’s all you know. If she’s no’ by when he wants to see her, have ye no’ heard him bellow like a gored bull? She’s his wee pet, if he knows it or not. He’d be lost without her.’
‘He’s a funny way of showing it.’
‘Listen, ma lad. Let me tell ye something. When a man has lost his wee’uns he’s lost his sun and his moon. Then he needs every candle he can find to light up his dark.’
‘Ye mean, Wee Eyes is his candle?’
‘Aye. Without her he’d be more blundering and blind than he is, and so much the worse for us all.’
Fin was too excited at the prospect of taking Peony home to pay much attention. As if he’d take chances with her safety, anyway! He was far too fond of her, and at nearly fourteen he was already man enough to feel protective. He made her put on her new dress (made for her by one of the castle sewing-women in her spare time), wrapped her shoulders in a little shawl he’d brought for her from home as a gift, and together they walked boldly out through the castle gate and across the drawbridge, still lowered after the Master’s departure.
First they walked through the village. It was a beautiful spring day. The townsfolk had opened their shops. Fin spared a few coins from the wages he was taking to his family, and bought Peony a honey cake. The people had heard about the little girl from afar (there were dark, superstitious tales about her, as well as kinder ones) and tried not to stare at her too openly. If Fin caught them glancing or whispering, he would scowl until they remembered their manners.
Soon they reached the edge of the village and went through the gate between the high earth ramparts, and into the countryside. All nature seemed to open up before the two children so long shut into the dark castle walls. As they ran up and down the hills, the tussocks of rough grass and the little ling bushes seemed to bounce back under their feet, propelling them forward like springs.
‘The way it looks when the sun shines on it, and the heather all in bloom, ye’d never think how glum it seems in winter!’ exulted Fin. ‘Dunna ye think so? Is the land ye come from half as bonny as Scotland when it’s like this?’
Peony didn’t agree or disagree. She just smiled happily. Her hand was fast in his. Her free hand held up her dress so she could run better. Her feet felt almost normal now; she could forget, for long stretches, that they didn’t look right. So when, after running and walking for two or three miles they came to a little stream and Fin suggested they take their shoes off and paddle, she plumped herself down on the grass and pulled off her shoes without a thought.
When Fin saw her bare feet he stopped in mid-chatter and gaped at them, open-mouthed. ‘Och, lass! What happened to your toes?’
Swiftly she pulled them up under the hem of her dress. Her face whitened and she sucked her lips into her mouth, looking at him in a scared way as if expecting him to turn from her in disgust.
‘Naw, naw, don’t hide them! Show me them. Come on, it’s aw’richt, show me.’
Slowly, slowly, she poked the tip of one foot out. The toe-knuckles appeared first, because the ends of the toes were still turned somewhat under the foot. They would never recover from the damage done to her for the sake of men’s perverse desires and the fashion of the rich and idle in her country.
Fin stared at them for a long time, then reached out both hands and took the little foot between them, stroking it softly. ‘Och, puir wee foot! Puir wee foot!’ he murmured. And suddenly he knelt up on the edge of the stream, bent his head down and kissed first one, and then, fishing it out of its hiding-place, the other. Peony watched him open-mouthed. His tenderness was like a forgiveness for her broken feet. It made them seem right again.
‘Let’s sit wi’ our feet in the stream,’ said Fin.
So they did. The clear, cold water chuckled past their calves and Fin said, ‘If it was magic watter, it would heal you. Were ye born wi’ them like that?’
‘No,’ Peony answered. ‘Mother do, so that I am beautiful.’
Fin was bewildered. Her mother had done this?
‘I dunna understand,’ he said.
Peony frowned. It was all a long time ago. ‘Mother tie my feet,’ she explained. ‘Tie tight to make them small-small like—’ She cupped her hands together to make the shape of a lotus-bud. ‘Like rich woman foot, so one day I will be rich woman.’
‘How would having wee feet make ye rich?’
‘Rich man marry me, give me many thing, I give many fine thing to Mother and sisters,’ she answered seriously.
Fin sat in benumbed silence. Her feet had been deformed on purpose, for gain. He couldn’t believe it, but he’d held the evidence in his hands. A sudden flash of insight came, into what she must have suffered. This brought another flash, of absolute fury. He put his arm around her suddenly.
‘Then ye have no mother. My mother will be your mother,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘We’ll be brother and sister.’
‘Och, ayiii!’ cried Peony in her funny mix of accents, gazing at him with shining eyes as the water united their feet in its clean embrace.
They reached Fin’s house by lunchtime.
He hadn’t, of course, been able to warn his mother he was bringing a visitor, but she was expecting him – he came home on the same day every month, the day of the full moon, so that he could find his way back easily if the visit stretched, as it tended to, especially in winter, beyond sunset.
She was waiting for him with his favourite meal of haggis with bashed neaps, and apple pudding. The whole cottage was full of good smells, not least fresh bannock which his mother was just pulling out of the brick oven beside the woodstove.
When she turned and saw the two figures in the doorway, she almost dropped the round, flat loaf. ‘Fin! Ye brought her!’
‘Aye, Mother,’ said Fin proudly. ‘Here she is. Meet Wee Eyes.’
Fin’s mother, Janet, had been married at fourteen and was still only thirty-six. She had six sons of whom Fin was next to the youngest, and no daughters. Now she looked at the child standing next to Fin (‘A wee girl at last! Who’d have thought it would be my Fin would bring her!’ – for Donald, her oldest boy, had not yet brought home a sweetheart) and thought she would like to run to her and give her a hug. But there was something in the tense little figure, poised like a wild creature uncertain if it was going to be welcomed or chased away, that told her she shouldn’t make any sudden moves, even motherly ones.
‘Did ye have a fine walk, children? Ye’11 be ready for your dinner. Wash your hands, then, and come to table.’
Peony followed Fin to the water trough out at the back and Fin pumped water for her and they washed. He was grinning like a zany. She could feel his happiness. But she was not easy. What if her master should find out? What if he should come riding over the moor and clatter into this yard?
Back indoors, Fin introduced her to his brothers, the eldest first.
‘This is Donald. This is Malcolm. This is Rab. This is Angus. And this wee scallywag is my young brother Jamie.’
Jamie, aged nine, was staring at her without shame.
‘Why does she look so gie queer?’
‘Jamie, mind your manners!’ hissed his mother, muffling his mouth with her apron. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said to Peony, as the little boy struggled free. ‘We don’t see many visitors, but he knows better than to make personal remarks, all the same!’
Just then the father of the family entered. He was a stocky, ruddy-faced farmer with bristly grizzled hair. He’d clearly
changed from his working clothes when he heard that a guest had come, and when he saw Peony he greeted her courteously, offering her the seat of honour at his right hand at the long, scrubbed table.
Peony was quite used to Scottish food by now, and this food was good. It was little tight-filled bags of some peppery meat-mixture, which, when broken open, could easily be eaten with chopsticks, and some mashed root vegetable the colour of apricots, puddled with butter. This was devoured to the accompaniment of loud masculine conversation from all sides, and when it was cleared away, Janet brought to the table a great pudding as big as an upturned wash-bowl, redolent of apple and honey but with a contradictory whiff of meat too, from the rich lambs’-kidney suet that had gone into its thick pastry crust. When it was cut into with a big knife, the cloud of fragrant steam that rose out of it drew roars of appreciation from around the table. ‘Mother’s best pudding, special for Fin!’ said Father.
They all covertly watched Peony’s way with the ‘wee sticks’. There was some smirking and nudging, but a look from their father scotched it. He leant to Peony.
‘Where d’ye come from, lassie?’
‘Chi-na,’ she said with a trace of pride. From McLennan she had learned to call her homeland by its English name.
‘Where might that be?’
‘Long way. Long way.’ They all waited, eight of them round the table, staring at her expectantly. She mustered her words. ‘Place where all people has hair like me. Eyes like me, too. I not just one, there. Every people has wee eyes there. There in Chi-na,’ she went on seriously, as they all continued to gaze at her, ‘you, all you, are “Big Eyes”.’ She made two circles with her fingers and thumbs.
This was the longest speech she had ever made and she was justly proud of it. So it put her out when twenty-one-year-old Donald, the eldest, threw his head back and laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked Fin, bristling.
‘Och, no disrespect! She’s richt!’ Donald boomed. ‘In her country, wherever it is, we’d be the ones wi’ the different eyes! Ye shouldna call her Wee Eyes, Fin. That’s what she’s trying t’tell ye. It’s rude. It’s a personal remark. Isn’t that richt, Mother?’
‘Aye,’ said Janet. ‘Come to think of it, that’s just what it is! Good for you, Donald!’
‘But she dunna mind it!’ said Fin, flushing bright red. Could he have been hurting her feelings all this time?
‘How do ye know?’ said Malcolm. ‘I’d mind it, for certain, if someone called me a name that made fun of ma looks!’
‘I wasna making fun!’ exclaimed Fin, shocked.
‘She mun have a name of her ain,’ piped up Jamie.
Fin’s father leant forward again and put his face close to Peony’s.
‘What’s your name, lassie? The one ye was born to.’
‘Wo shi mudan,’ she said softly.
‘That’s what she always says,’ said Fin.
‘Washee Moodee,’ said Jamie cheekily, and was hushed by his mother.
‘What does it mean?’ asked Donald.
‘What does it mean, what does it mean!’ mimicked Fin. ‘What does “Donald” mean? It’s just a name in her own language!’
A lively argument was about to break out. But then they saw that their little guest was doing something. She’d dipped her finger into a tankard of ale and proceeded to draw with it on the scrubbed-white wooden tabletop. The boys, who were seated far down the table, got up and crowded round to look.
‘Will ye look at that! It’s a flower!’
‘Aye, but what kind?’
‘It’s like the pompom on top of a tam-o’-shanter.’
‘I’ve never seen a flower the like o’ that.’
‘It must be a kind they only have in her country.’
‘You should think of a pretty name for her, Fin. A flower name,’ said Janet.
‘Dandelion!’ joked Jamie, and was hushed again by his mother.
But none of the flowers they could think of was like the flower Peony had drawn with the ale.
‘You should call her “Little Flower”,’ said Janet.
Fin and Peony stared at her. It was a beautiful name. Fin felt ashamed he hadn’t thought of it. But when he looked at Peony, he still thought ‘But she’ll aye be Wee Eyes to me.’
The matter of names was dropped, and after dinner the men prepared to go back to their work about the farm. It was then Fin remembered to tell them that the Master was visiting some of his tenants.
‘We must have the place looking its best,’ said his father. Every tenant of the estate was aware that the laird owned it and let them live on the land and farm it only so long as they wrung the last ounce of produce from it and paid their tithes.
‘Rob says he’s maybe doing a head count because there’s fighting coming,’ said Fin importantly.
The men and boys, already trooping out, stopped, and glanced apprehensively at each other. Janet stiffened and went pale.
‘Well,’ said her husband slowly, rubbing his chin, ‘I always said, after what happened, it was bound to come. Bound to come. We’re lucky to have had so many peaceful years.’
After a happy day playing games and doing a few chores, Fin and Peony left before the sun went down, chivvied by Janet who was worried about them getting back.
As they were leaving, Fin clutching a packet of goodies, Janet managed the hug she had been hungering to give Peony. She crouched before her with her warm arms around her and said, ‘Ye’re welcome to visit us every month, Little Flower. Please come again soon!’
After the children had walked some way, Peony broke the silence.
‘Your mother is good woman,’ she said.
‘Aye, she’s all of that,’ said Fin warmly.
‘She be my mother now truly?’
‘Ye can borrow her, like ye can borrow me for a brother.’
They walked on through the twilight.
‘What “fi-ting”, Fin?’
Ironically, it was a word she didn’t know. Fighting was something McLennan did. It was not something he gave a name to.
‘Fighting? I’ll show ye!’
Fin broke away and launched into an energetic pantomime. First he pulled back an imaginary bowstring and fired an arrow, accompanied by a sharp whistling sound, followed its flight with eyes and pointing finger, and then played the victim, clutching his chest and falling over backwards. Then he jumped up and hurled a spear. Next he drew a sword and showed her a bout with much thrust and parry, dancing about on the turf.
Peony watched.
‘Fin go fi-ting?’
‘Naw, no’ me, I’m no’ old enough. But Donald might have to, and maybe Malcolm, and Father.’
‘Don-al want fi-ting?’
Fin laughed. ‘It’s naught to do wi’ us wanting or no’ wanting. The Master’s will is the law, and it’s his quarrel that we have to fight in.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s the way it is. Because we’ve all got liege-lairds. Our master too, he’s got a laird above him. Only the King hasna. We all owe allegiance to them that’s above us, and have to fight for our lairds. If we dunna, we’ll lose our land and our livings and if another laird, or maybe the English some day, come to attack us, our laird wullna protect us. Ye canna live wi’out a laird.’
They walked on. Then Peony, who was frowning, asked, ‘Ma-kri-nan go fi-ting?’ Fin nodded strongly. ‘Why fi-ting? Fi-ting make dead. Fi-ting no good.’
‘Och, well, but it’s what they do when there’s a quarrel.’
‘Kwa-rel?’
‘Aye. Ye know. When people are angry wi’ each other, they quarrel.’
‘Why Ma-kri-nan angry?’
‘Let’s walk on, and I’ll tell ye. But it’s no’ a nice story, so be prepared.’
They walked on through the twilight, the heather rough on their bare ankles.
‘Ye see,’ Fin began, ‘a long time ago there was a quarrel between the Master and another laird, Mclnnes. One of his – Mclnnes’s, I mean –
got killed in a fight. I think it was his kin. After that Mclnnes sent men to make a raid on the Master’s home. He didna live in a castle then, he just had a gie big house. They tied the Master up and stole his wife and killed his wee’uns.’
He had to say it all twice, but suddenly, like a blow to the heart, Peony understood. She understood so much that she couldn’t bear the knowing of it – she felt as if she might break apart from understanding it.
She stopped in her tracks. Fin tramped on a few steps, then turned and looked back at her, startled. Her eyes were black with shock and her free hand had dropped her skirt and flown to her mouth as if to hold back vomit, or a cry. She stood like that for a full minute, tense and shaking, then crouched down to the ground, and began to weep.
‘Wee Eyes – I mean Little – Flower – don’t – what’s wrong?’ He crouched, too, putting his arm around her, trying to look into her averted face. ‘It’s just a thing that happened. It was bad aw’richt, but it’s over now.’
She shook her head.
‘Not over. Never. Not over.’
Chapter Nine
McLennan determined the best time for the raid he planned on his enemy. It would be a moonless night in the month of May when there was good hope of fair weather. Well in advance, he sent out riders to summon a hundred of his strongest men. Some came willingly, eager for a change and a challenge. Others, like Fin’s brother Donald, came reluctantly. Donald’s bent was farming, not fighting. He had no wish to leave his home and risk his life, but there was no choice.
McLennan kept them quartered in the village for a couple of days while he put his carpenters to work on an exact copy of the catapult-on-wheels he had seen in Chi-na. It was to be made in pieces that could be assembled later. He got his masons to fashion big balls of stone and made arrangements to have them dragged on hurdles by strong horses. When that was done, he gathered his fighting men into the inner ward of the castle and rallied them.
The Dungeon Page 8