Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2)

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Knowledge of Sins Past (Murray of Letho Book 2) Page 17

by Lexie Conyngham


  ‘Why don’t you ask Lady Scoggie for help with the pain? I hear she knows a fair bit about illness and such.’

  ‘Oh, aye, she’s the great one,’ she said, ‘but I doubt she’d visit the likes of me.’

  ‘I don’t know why not,’ he argued. ‘She was visiting the families at the saltworks the other day. Why wouldn’t she visit a respectable weaver’s wife?’

  ‘I don’t want her to.’

  ‘Why not? I could get a message to her, I’m sure –‘

  ‘You will not, son. There’s no need to bother Lady Scoggie or involve her in our troubles. The end will be the same whether she comes or not. There!’ she said, as if suddenly relieved, ‘that’s these powders. Who needs Lady Scoggie when you have the witch woman of Elie at your disposal?’

  The powder really seemed to have helped, for she became more alert and at the same time calmer, and he could convince himself that she was not so bad, that she would last a good while yet. He answered her questions about his life and doings with readiness, and made her laugh a little with some of his stories, till she seemed to tire again, and the questions tailed off, though she kept her eyes on him. They sat in companionable silence for a little while, listening to the wind outside.

  ‘It’ll be a storm tonight,’ he said at last.

  ‘Aye, them down the hill will have to stop the fishing for a bit. That’ll not please them.’

  At the mention of the fisher folk, he looked thoughtful, but she did not question. She wondered if he had a girl yet: she would have been surprised if he had not, for he was a charmer, there was no doubt about it.

  ‘Well, mother, I’d better be going now.’

  ‘Aye, before the storm sets in,’ she agreed, with regret.

  ‘Do you need anything else before I go?’

  ‘Will you light the lamp there? It’s getting gey dark.’ She watched while he touched the wick with a taper from the fire, and replaced the glass. His movements were neat, almost – she laughed to herself – gentlemanly. He bent to kiss her.

  ‘Come back again when you can, dear,’ she whispered.

  ‘I will – when I can. Tell him to send to me if – if I’m needed.’

  She nodded. The powders made her sleepy, and already she was slipping away from him, seeing him as a blur against the lamp.

  ‘Goodbye, dear,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Goodbye, mother. I’ll see you again soon.’ She was already asleep, jaw slack, sliding down the bed again. He opened the cottage door as little as possible, thinking of the draughts, and stepped outside, closing it firmly behind him. He looked up. In the little time he had been there, the sky had turned a greyish yellow, an unhealthy, bruised colour. He pushed his hat hard down on his head, and turned his collar up. The wind caught the tails of his scarf as he wound it round his neck, then he hurried off. Above him, the seagulls swept and cried, woven like pearls into the sick sky, and into his mother’s drugged dreams.

  Cocky’s coffin disappeared beneath the rocky earth of the headland just as the first heavy drops of rain began to fall. The diggers, fuelled by whisky, muttered curses at the sky and dug more quickly. Eager to see the formalities finished with, the mourners passed the traditional bottle of brandy amongst themselves as they stood with their backs to the wind, feeling the hot spirit send their blood flowing. They shook hands quickly, gave a nod in the direction of the muddy grave, and scurried back towards the street, slithering down the rocky slope to the ford over the burn, clutching hats and scarves, racing to beat the weather home. Back at Cocky’s cottage, the women had already dispersed, seeing the weather worsen, leaving the minister on his own to stare out at the sky and wonder at the state of the manse roof. The servants of Scoggie Castle, sent ahead, found that Andrew had been busy heating water and lighting fires, preparing the place for receiving cold, wet travellers. The ladies had a less certain passage home, for already the lightning had begun to stitch the land to the black sky, and the horses dithered and skittered over the rough road. The gentlemen followed not long after in Major Keyes’ carriage, rolled by the thunder along the lanes and up the drive at a gallop. Lord Scoggie paused at the door, staring up at the sky, then down east, towards the sea.

  ‘The good Lord be with the fishermen tonight,’ he said, half to himself, but Murray found himself responding with a heartfelt Amen.

  In Aberardour Lodge, the servants huddled by the kitchen fire, while Philip Bootham and his wife stood arm in arm in an upper window.

  ‘Look at the grandeur of it, my love,’ he murmured. ‘What is man or his puny God, beside nature in all its glorious strength?’

  Geordie Kinkell came home with Peter, to find his wife sound asleep with a cup in her hand, and the lamp mysteriously lit.

  In the lower reaches of the village, lamps were lit in the windows facing the sea, and in more than one cottage a shawled figure stood by the lamp, or in the doorway, distant gaze on the sea as it rolled and broke.

  ‘It’s not at its worst yet,’ Richie Shaw’s wife called along the street to Hugh Farquhar’s mother. Mrs. Farquhar shook her head.

  ‘If they get in now, they’ll be grand.’ The wind snatched her words, laughing at her. Richie Shaw’s wife waved to her in a gesture that meant everything, reassurance, companionship, acknowledgement that this was not the first or the last time they had talked like this, and went inside her own cottage again. Mrs. Farquhar waited, though, propped against the doorway with her arms folded over her plaid, immune to the cold and the rain. In the dim distance she thought – she was sure – she could see the shapes of the herring boats slipping and bouncing over the waves. If they came back now, if they could slip into the harbour before the worst of the storm caught up with them ...

  ‘We must turn back now!’ cried Joe Baillie, one arm hugging the gunwale as if it was a lifelong friend. The wind whipped and cracked about them, as if the darkness around them were some huge black sail, shrouding them in stiff canvas folds. His crew were turning before he had even given the order, for these half-dozen men knew these seas almost as well as he did. Dotted about them, sliding in and out of sight as if in some huge magic lantern, were the other herring boats, nineteen of them, captained by the senior fishermen of the village, manned by their boys back from whaling in greater seas than these. Joe glanced over them, counting them again in his head, knowing every boat like a mother seal with her pup. In the open hold, the silver darlings slithered and spilled as if the boat were already under water and the herring were swimming free. The heaped nets bundled and tumbled about, kicked aside by frantic feet as the crew toiled and fought and ploughed hard for the harbour.

  Joe counted again, and again. John Walker’s boat vanished for a long second, then reappeared from beneath a wave, untouched. There was Richie Shaw ahead, never one to take a risk these days, holding a steady course for his home berth and a warm dish of stew by his fire. Joe smiled to himself, feeling the salt crack on his face. He counted again. Nineteen. Who was missing this time? He counted more carefully – had he remembered to include Richie up ahead? He had. Twenty. Twenty small boats, daring to confront the might of the sea.

  ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.’ The words passed through his head, as familiar as the surging deck beneath his feet, his mind holding them as firmly as his arm clutched the gunwale. ‘These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.’ The boat plunged down a long, steep wave, and he leaned back, keeping his balance, losing sight of all the other boats. Up they swept again as if they would fly, and one by one all the others fell and rose again in the same wave. Another boat was perilously close as they came clear: Hugh Farquhar, standing in his father’s old place, waved to Joe. He put his hands to his mouth.

  ‘Riding .... Out,’ he cried, the words coming muffled to Joe’s cupped ear. Joe shook his head, waving his free hand flatly.

  ‘Mad!’ he shouted back. ‘Come Home! Stay Together!’

  ‘Waste of time,’ came back the words in a
sudden flat calm moment. Joe could see Hugh’s crew were not racing like his own, like the others. In a second, it seemed, he was away, back far behind them. Joe stared, aghast. It was mad, it was. A stupid risk to take. Hugh was young, and daft.

  He counted again. Nineteen boats, and the twentieth sitting back on the wide sea.

  ‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways,’ he cried into the wind, willing his crew on. ‘They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.’ On nights like this, he could feel the hand of the Lord, scooping up his little fleet, gathering them up in His mighty hand, casting the lightning and thunder to either side of them. It was a rough ride, but that was what happened when little men dealt with God. He counted again. Nineteen boats, and the twentieth – where was the twentieth?

  He turned, changing his grip, searching the seas behind him. Where was the twentieth? He watched for deep waves, for anything that might hide a herring boat. He watched, and watched, and saw nothing.

  Breathless, he turned back again. Nineteen boats. Richie, up ahead, was almost at the harbour mole, almost to the last quick manoeuvre into the harbour. In he went, slick as a fish, and the next boat followed him. Nineteen boats. Now he could see the lights in the windows along the main street, and even the figures in doorways. They would be counting, too, the wives and mothers who knew the boats as well as he did. Nineteen, they would count. Another five boats slid into the harbour, and Richie was tying up, and scrambling on to the harbour.

  Joe’s boat would be last in, but that was his duty. Nineteen. He turned again, staring back into the darkness, lit by sudden lightning into an oily, mountainous landscape, bare of life, bare of boats. Hugh had turned back, and had left God’s mighty hand, and had left them.

  When he left off looking, his own boat was taking her turn to slide into the harbour, the first out and last back, the twentieth out and the nineteenth back.

  As he scrambled up on to the steady harbour, he could see Hugh Farquhar’s mother, standing motionless in her doorway, Richie Shaw’s wife hurrying towards her. He watched for a moment, but Hugh’s mother did not move, even as Richie Shaw’s wife embraced her.

  Joe turned away, and surveyed the sea, as the men around him scuttled in out of the storm.

  It was the fault of that damned pig, he was sure of it. And the uptown folk were going to pay.

  Chapter Eleven

  Outside, the rain fell unremittingly. Inside, the castle had another occupant: lurking, feeling its way around the doorways, fingering the tapestries and carpets, lingering on the stairs, the smell of the solander goose they had had to eat for dinner was an evil presence that it seemed only exorcism would ever remove.

  Mrs. Costane said that Lord Scoggie had appeared in triumph with the bird just before they had all left for Cocky’s funeral, and when she had recovered from the shock, and had suggested, with heavy sarcasm, that it would be nicely complimented by a bit of herring, Lord Scoggie had agreed with enthusiasm.

  ‘You’d never find either on an Edinburgh dinner table,’ she told Murray bitterly, when he came downstairs in the morning to find out what had died. ‘The man must have no sense of smell in his head.’ Hannah had a cloth tied over her face as she roasted the bird, and even Andrew, used to the exotic dishes of Kirkcaldy, was looking distinctly green.

  ‘Henry might like the skull for his collection,’ Murray suggested hesitantly. ‘If it’s well boiled, anyway.’

  ‘He’ll be lucky,’ said Hannah indistinctly. ‘As far as I’m concerned, there’s not a fragment of this bird that’s staying in the castle for longer than it takes to whisk it off the dinner table.’ Indeed, he noticed, she was flinging handfuls of white feathers into the roaring kitchen fire, where they added a sugary taste to the overwhelming fishy reek. He did not feel inclined to argue, and left.

  The texture of the goose, which was the size of a reasonable turkey, left nothing much to be desired. Lord Scoggie had set to with every appearance of enjoyment, but on most of the plates the goose meat was abandoned at the first attempt, and Deborah actually excused herself from the table until it had all been taken away. The herring went down with greater ease, though it was true that Murray had not seen it on a polite table in Edinburgh for years. To object to its offensive smell seemed petty after the goose.

  After dinner, Beatrix and Deborah hurried about the castle opening windows, but somehow the rain outside seemed to form an effective curtain, preventing the smell escaping. As they went they flapped at their shawls and their skirts, as if afraid that the smell would be clinging to them just as effectively – to Murray, discreetly flicking at his coat tails and catching Major Keyes doing the same, it seemed far from unreasonable. It was too wet to take a walk or a ride outside, though Lady Scoggie could not resist wrapping herself in several layers and setting off in a trap for some sickly victim, and at last in desperation the girls, Murray and his charges, and Major Keyes retreated to the gallery, as far up the castle as they could go, and dug out the carpet bowls. The rain darkened the room despite the high windows, and they lit some of the candles in the brackets along the gallery. Even in half-daylight, the place seemed to have a memory of dark deeds. The smell of the goose did not help.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind so much,’ Deborah said, as she bent to roll one of the striped china balls down the rush-matted floor, ‘but the Boothams are coming to tea, and staying to supper – or that’s the intention. If I arrived in a house that smelled like this, I don’t think I would stay any longer than I had to.’

  ‘Let alone to eat,’ added Beatrix, with an anxious look. ‘Did you close the drawing room door, Deborah?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  Beatrix hurried away to try to keep the smell out of one room, at least.

  ‘Where does Father find such things?’ Deborah went on in despair. ‘He’s worse than a cat, dragging in dead birds and expecting us to call him a clever puss!’

  ‘I heard him say one of the fishermen had brought it to him, knowing he liked a bit of solander goose,’ said Major Keyes, grinning at Murray.

  ‘It should be a hanging offence,’ Deborah muttered. ‘Your turn, Major.’

  Beatrix reappeared, breathless from her run.

  ‘I’m sure the smell is spreading,’ she said. ‘You did tell Mrs. Costane to burn all the leftovers, Deborah?’

  ‘I don’t think she needed to be told,’ Murray put in. ‘I think if she had had the chance she would have burned the whole bird before it set foot in the house.’

  ‘I wonder how long it had been dead?’ Deborah said.

  ‘Several months, would you say?’ Beatrix said drily.

  ‘It’s your turn, Bea – you’re on Mr. Murray’s side.’ Deborah seemed disposed to be friendly towards Major Keyes today, Murray thought: it was hard to know from one day to the next where her heart lay, or even if she had allowed it to stray at all. Deborah and the Major formed one team, the boys another, and himself and Beatrix the third – probably doomed to lose, for neither of them felt as driven to win as the others, but likely to enjoy themselves more than anyone.

  She was looking particularly pretty today, he thought: she was wearing a pale green spencer over a white gown sprigged with the same green, and it brought out the reddish gold in her hair, which she seemed to have done differently today. The candlelight reflected off little plaits and curls that had a not-quite artless look. How, he wondered, could anyone compare Deborah to her?

  He had to be careful, he knew. He was attracted to Bea, and found her very congenial company, but he was fairly sure that part of that attraction was the lack of much other suitable female companions. He knew she was not the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and taken on a practical level, as he had been taught by his father was a good thing to do, if he was reunited with his father, his father would not approve of her or her rather limited portion, and if he was not, he could not afford to support a wife for years yet. He had heard all the stories
that young gentlemen of his age did – the friend of a friend who had been trapped into marriage by false witnesses, or after a moment of careless talk in front of untrustworthy acquaintances. He knew Bea would never behave like that, but at the same time he wanted to treat her fairly: a poor relation would have few enough opportunities of marriage offers, and he wanted neither to make her think he was going to make one, nor to pay her so much attention that he would prevent some other man from stepping in and claiming her. It was easier in Edinburgh, or even in St. Andrews, where one could chat with one young lady, dance with another, sit with a third at supper, and rarely arouse comment, but here, where people were thrown together, he had to be careful, indeed.

  Robert hurled a bowl down the gallery, and the cries of protest from Deborah and Henry brought him back from his reverie.

  ‘This is supposed to be a quiet indoor game, Robert,’ Deborah groaned.

  ‘But that’s no fun,’ Robert objected. ‘They bounce a bit, if you throw them hard enough.’

  ‘I imagine the same could be said of you,’ said Deborah, with some menace.

  ‘Do you think the rain will ever stop? Look at it,’ Beatrix, trying as ever to be the peacemaker, drew Murray over to one of the windows. The grey light gave her blue eyes a clear luminosity.

  ‘Miserable,’ Murray agreed.

  ‘You know what’s worse than having to suffer this appalling stench,’ said Deborah, abandoning any hope of reforming Robert today. ‘It’s the suspicion that we’ll get used to it, and long before it has actually faded we’ll think everything is all right and we’ll be going about reeking and not realising it.’

  ‘I’m sure you could never be anything but fragrant, my dear cousin,’ said Major Keyes, winking at her with heavy gallantry.

  ‘That’s no use coming from you, Major, for you will be just as used to it as the rest of us.’

 

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