The Royal Mile

by Mary Daheim

  But after a while, it occurred to Dallas that the emptiness she felt was not entirely caused by her father’s passing. Tarrill had Will Ruthven to comfort her; Glennie had her sons and the memory of a loving husband; even Marthe was probably commiserating with old Dr. Wilson in the kitchen. But Dallas had nobody—nobody, she reminded herself sharply, except for a total stranger of uncertain parentage who had rescued her from rape and then barged into their dying father’s bedroom.

  I let him touch me, she thought with horrified wonder. No man except George Gordon had ever touched her before—and then only in the most casual sort of way. She had cursed his unresponsiveness at the time but had realized later that any advances could only have been dishonorable and would have brought her grief.

  Dallas stared down at her hands: Unlike the groping of the drunken louts in the wynd, Fraser’s touch had not been repugnant. It had been a comfort. But, of course, she reasoned, under other circumstances, she would have felt obliged to box his ears.

  Slowly, Dallas got to her feet, picked up the stub of candle from the nightstand and made her way to the tiny square of uneven glass which hung above her father’s bureau.

  The face that stared back at her was hollow-eyed, pale and drawn. As usual, she compared herself to her sisters: plump, pretty Glennie with her sky-blue eyes and sweet little mouth; tall, raven-haired Tarrill with her striking profile and angular grace. Dallas, however, was not as dark as Tarrill nor as fair as Glennie. She was neither tall nor short, and her features never seemed to match. The nose and chin were too small for the wide mouth and the enormous brown eyes. The heavy dark hair tumbled in every direction and the few plain gowns she owned concealed rather than accented the sensuous curves of her body. Indeed, it seldom occurred to Dallas that her body was anything more than the shell which supported her mind. Hadn’t her father always told her she was the cleverest of his pupils—and without ever qualifying the compliment by adding that, after all, she was only a girl.

  That memory buoyed her momentarily. A fine mind was more rare than beauty, more precious than gold. A pox on George Gordon and his ilk for scoffing at a learned female. So why did the emptiness return, like a savage blow in the pit of Dallas’s stomach? She frowned at her image and for one fleeting moment the dark, lean face of Iain Fraser seemed to gaze back at her with that hint of mockery in the hazel eyes.

  Dallas blinked rapidly and turned away. Damn the man, she thought, why did he have to intrude upon our lives at such a terrible time? Yet, if he had not encountered Dallas while she was trying to fend off the drunken youths, even now she might be lying in some dark cellar off the Cowgate, battered, mauled, ravished—even dead. She shuddered violently, the memory of those greedy hands making her dizzy. But rather than chide herself as an ingrate for her attitude towards Fraser, Dallas tried to dismiss him from her mind. There was work to be done, sad, terrible work, but only she could—or would—do it.

  Willing herself to move, Dallas went to the garderobe to fetch her father’s best clothes. Carefully shaking out the long charcoal robe with its lapin trim, Dallas smiled faintly as she pictured her father when he had last worn it at a former pupil’s wedding, jesting with the other guests, arguing with a fellow scholar from St. Andrews, paying a pretty compliment to the fresh-faced young bride. Then, with the robe cradled in one arm, she moved to the bed, bent down, and tenderly kissed the lank grey hair which fell over her father’s cold forehead.

  Chapter 2

  Daniel Cameron was buried with the full rites of the Roman Catholic Church the following Tuesday, two days after Mary Stuart’s triumphal entrance into Edinburgh. The burial service was held in the chapel of St. Catherine of Siena’s convent at Newington, just outside Edinburgh.

  Master Cameron’s body was laid to rest next to his wife in the little graveyard at the eastern edge of the Burghmuir. Dallas bowed her head but remained dry-eyed as the priest intoned the final blessing. Tarrill wept openly, clinging to the wheezing Marthe, while Glennie held her sons by the hand and struggled vainly with her own composure. An ardent Protestant, Will Ruthven was not present, but the Camerons’ long-time friends, Walter and Fiona Ramsay stood on the opposite side of the grave, their lips moving in silent prayer. Walter, twenty years earlier, had been one of Master Cameron’s most beloved pupils.

  The little funeral party had returned to the house in the Lawnmarket before noon. It was a clear summer day, with not a trace of the heavy mist that had enshrouded Edinburgh on Sunday.

  With Tarrill’s help, Marthe prepared a wholesome, if unelaborate meal. Dallas dispensed the port somewhat reluctantly, knowing that it was one of the few remaining bottles in the cellar. Glennie’s boys were already wolfing down food in the kitchen where they’d been whisked off by Marthe. Over platefuls of ham and bread and fresh carrots, the mourners talked of Daniel Cameron and his many virtues. Dallas joined in, but privately, she was wishing that those virtues had included a saving nature.

  “At least,” Walter Ramsay said as he took a pear from the wooden fruitbowl, “your father knew that the Queen was coming back. That must have pleased him greatly.”

  “Oh, yes,” Glennie answered. “He could talk of little else these past few weeks. Though,” she added thoughtfully, “he was not overoptimistic about reestablishing the old religion.”

  “Some of us have remained steadfast,” Fiona commented. “And some only follow the new ways to advance themselves.”

  Walter smiled fondly at his wife. “If you refer to James Stuart, I think his faith is as strong as his ambition. I hope he will use his wits to help, rather than hinder, the Queen. Religious discord is only one problem. An even greater one is that Scotland is a poor country, very poor.”

  “Poor!” echoed Dallas. “How we fit right in! When our meager savings are gone, we’ll be as poor as any Highland crofter.”

  Glennie regarded her sister with acute embarrassment. “Please,” she murmured, “let’s not discuss our problems with Walter and Fiona.”

  Walter waved a sturdy, freckled hand at Glennie. “Now, now, if you can’t talk about your difficulties with old friends, who can you speak to? If your purse is a bit thin, Fiona and I can offer you something to help.”

  It was Dallas’s turn to be embarrassed. She’d given the matter much thought, considering a variety of alternatives. Employment for one or all of them had at first seemed the likeliest solution. But Glennie couldn’t leave the children and what scant monies she’d earn from taking in mending or such wouldn’t help much. Tarrill might obtain a position as a governess, but she’d never command more than enough for her own keep. That left Dallas—she would take up where her father had left off, tutoring young scholars. At first, they might resent a woman—and a youthful one at that—but they’d get used to the idea after a while. Dallas was convinced she could hold the students her father had been teaching at the time of his death and perhaps add a few more.

  “Your offer is kind, Walter,” Dallas replied with a smile, “but I’m going to continue in Father’s place. Tomorrow young Grant and his cousin from Peffermill are coming as usual. I’ve already sent word that their lessons are not to be cancelled.”

  Glennie and Tarrill regarded their sister with astonishment, but Dallas had already raised a hand to silence them. “I may not know as much as Father did, but what he taught me, I’ve learned well. I’ll manage just fine,” Dallas declared with an air of bravado. “You’ll see, what with the Queen and her relations being so well educated and our Scots nobles seldom able to write their own names, I’ll have plenty of young scions begging to be taught.”

  Glennie made a noise in her throat that was half grumble, half-lament. But Walter leaned towards Dallas and smiled encouragement. “You may be right; these laddies who seek advancement will discover they need more than a ready sword and a braw arm.”

  Buoyed by his comments, Dallas confronted the others. “Of course. Scotland is facing a whole new future and our young men must prepare for it. If they must be taught, why not
by me?”

  But Tarrill remained unconvinced. “I’ll bide and see what happens,” she asserted with an ominous stare at her sister. But Dallas stared right back and silently vowed to make her plan work.

  That night, after Walter and Fiona had left and the rest of the household had gone to bed, Dallas remained up, ensconced behind her father’s desk. A single candle burned on the desk. Outside, the watch went past the house, calling out that all was well.

  All might be well with him, but not with her, Dallas thought grimly. The small ledger her father had haphazardly kept for the family accounts lay open on the desk. Glennie had worked on updating it earlier in the evening and there was still sand on the page where she had made the last entries. The funeral expenses had been covered, Dr. Wilson’s fee—which he had at first refused—was paid and the masses for Daniel Cameron’s soul had been offered by Walter and Fiona.

  In the margin, Glennie had made notes indicating that there were sufficient victuals in the house to last a month. The supply of candles, linen, firewood and other household necessities was plentiful. Marthe would make soap as she did every winter, and if somehow they could pick enough berries at the edge of town, they’d be able to put up jam.

  The total, not counting the small residue Glennie still had from Jamie’s weaving business, came to four marks, three shillings and sixpence. It would not last long, at best into late autumn. The boys would need new clothes, at least young Daniel would; his old ones could be handed down to his younger brother. Glennie needed new shoes, Dallas had noted just that afternoon.

  Dallas brushed off the remnants of sand and closed the ledger. At least Marthe didn’t have to be paid, having been one of the family for so long that she worked only for her keep and a small allowance. She had come from the Highlands as a sturdy, red-cheeked young wench with the girls’ mother, when Eva MacKintosh had been brought to Edinburgh by Daniel Cameron as his bride. And Eva herself, namesake of that famous thirteenth-century heiress to the Clan Chattan, had taken to city life immediately. She retained her old clan loyalty, however, and named each of her daughters after one of the MacKintosh families. When gentle Eva died, her serving woman, Marthe, slipped imperceptibly and unobtrusively into the role of surrogate mother.

  Rising from the chair, Dallas went over to the bookshelves. The fine leather spines of her father’s cherished collection stood straight and dust-free along the wall facing the fireplace. Plutarch, Ovid, Petrarch—they were all old friends to Dallas.

  Glancing over the vacant chair behind the desk, she could almost see her father sitting there, the shock of hair over his forehead, a map of Crete spread out before him, and the wind outside, blowing down between the tall houses. Quickly, she looked away, back to the bookshelves. Sentiment must be overcome, some of the books would have to be sold. It would be one way of securing a bit of extra money to see the family through until she was sure her tutoring project would work out. Despite the brave face she had put on for her sisters and the Ramsays, now that she was alone in the shadows of her father’s study, Dallas was uncertain and afraid. But, she lectured herself sternly, there was no reason to dwell on the possibility of failure.

  Instead, she thought about her family, about how happy they had all been together until her mother died. The comfortable pattern of their uneventful life was shattered by Eva Cameron’s death, and Dallas had reacted more violently than her sisters. She locked herself in her room for two days, weeping inconsolably. For almost ten years now, she had refused to discuss her mother’s passing with anyone—not even with her beloved father.

  It was very quiet inside the house as she went into the corridor and up the stairs. She undressed rapidly in the dark, careful to hang her mourning dress on a peg by the door. Her room was small, with the bed under one of the eaves and a single gabled window already shuttered for the night.

  Sleep, however, proved elusive. For the first time since her father’s death, Dallas thought about his last words to Iain Fraser. Dallas knew about the famous Highland battle between the Camerons and the Frasers, for her father had recounted the story on several occasions.

  Yet a few months after the battle, Daniel Cameron had made a short trip north, alone, to visit his kinsmen. He was gone for several weeks and when he returned, Glennie and Dallas had begged him for tales of the Highlands and the Cameron kinfolk. Tarrill had been only three at the time, more interested in the pine cone doll her father had brought back for her than in stories of towering mountains and sparkling lochs.

  No, there had been nothing extraordinary then in Daniel Cameron’s attitude towards his Highland visit. Dallas couldn’t dredge up a single recollection which might have accounted for her father’s deathbed ramblings and his whispered words to Iain Fraser. She rolled over in bed, tugging at the pillow to make herself more comfortable.

  She closed her eyes and immediately conjured up an image of Fraser. But it was not the lean, dark face she had glimpsed in the mirror or even the mocking grin he had displayed upon their first encounter near Holyrood. Rather, she saw him outlined in the wynd on Castle Hill, tall and arrogant, with sufficient authority to frighten off four young men. And to her great surprise, Dallas felt the old emptiness return, accompanied by some other emotion she could not quite identify. Fie on Fraser and his family perplexities, she thought. She laid down, pulling the pillow back into place. But the image of Iain Fraser and the Battle of Blar-na-Leine followed her into sleep and her dreams focused on a swirl of Cameron and Fraser plaids, so alike in their red and green patterns, merging and meeting on a sun-baked hill that turned from green and gold to red, a dark blood red.

  The cellar was well lighted, for the Cameron house was built entirely above ground. The windows on the west side looked directly into Master Drummond the baker’s second story. Mistress Drummond was at one of the bedroom windows, throwing out a pail of slops and shouting, “Get ou’ the gait!” No one was in the wynd which separated the Cameron and Drummond houses, but the warning cry was always uttered.

  The old trunk was not locked and opened easily. A flutter of dust rose to meet Dallas’s nose and she sneezed twice before settling down to sort out the books. Only a handful, she decided, would be worth carting out to the High Street.

  She was just shoving the trunk back into its place by the wine and ale casks when she felt rather than heard an odd noise. She paused, her knees on the stone floor, her hands on the battered trunk. The sound was beneath her, not upstairs in the house or out in the wynd. Yet, she told herself that was impossible. It must be rats, rumbling about somewhere, making echoes.

  Dallas wiped the dirt from her hands on an old cloth, gathered up the pile of books and started out of the cellar. Halfway up, she heard the noise again, barely perceptible this time, but still coming from the same source.

  “Fie,” Dallas said under her breath. “I’m turning fanciful.” Resolutely she continued up the stairs. Back in the hallway, she packed the books into the now bulging shopping bag, grabbed her old brown shawl from its peg, and hurried out the front door. She had scarcely more than an hour before David Grant and his cousin would arrive for their lessons.

  The late summer drizzle had stopped just a few minutes earlier and the sun was struggling to assert itself among the drifting grey clouds. Dallas trudged between the tall houses to the Lawnmarket where Edinburgh’s goodwives crowded around the stalls, haggling over heavy bolts of wool, lawn and silk. At the entrance of Beith’s Wynd, she saw Lame Angus, the beggar who had lost a leg at Pinkie Cleugh fighting King Henry’s men.

  Every day for the past fourteen years, Lame Angus had sat on that same spot, his battered tin cup clutched in his hands. Daniel Cameron had always paused for a chat as Angus was a veritable well of information about famous Scottish battles. Though Cameron had heard each story a dozen times or more over the years, he enjoyed Lame Angus’s vivid descriptive powers. At the conclusion of the tale, Dallas’s father would discreetly drop some coins into the cup before bidding Lame Angus a fair day. As Dalla
s had grown older, she, too, would pause to put something in the cup though she was less inclined to linger for the repetitious history lessons.

  On this day, Lame Angus greeted her with a mournful shake of his shaggy head. “Poor lass, I’ve heard of your father’s passing. Rest his soul, he was a fine, fine man.”

  “He was indeed.” Dallas smiled wanly at Lame Angus and juggled the shopping bag so that she could reach for her little suede purse. “We are so lonely without him.” Lame Angus nodded dolefully. “Many a lively talk we had on this very spot. Flodden Field, that was his favorite. How he liked to hear of King Jamie the Fourth and the dire death which awaited ....”

  But Dallas broke in on what was obviously going to be a recapitulation of the tragedy at Flodden over a half century earlier. “Blar-na-Leine, Angus. What know you of that battle?”

  “Ah.” The beggar leaned back his head, savoring the name as a connoisseur would appreciate a fine wine. “There was a bloody fray! The Field of Shirts, it was called, taking place on a scorching hot day so that the warriors had to strip to the waist.”

  Dallas nodded her head as the beggar’s narrative ran along. So far, she hadn’t learned much more than she already knew. Angus, however, was just warming to his tale, and Dallas soon found her mind wandering as the beggar went into great and grisly detail over sword and claymore, pike and broadaxe. At last he came to the conclusion of the battle, with the Frasers’ defeat at the hands of the Camerons.

  Lame Angus had paused as a goodwife dropped some coins into his cup. “It’s a fascinating tale,” Dallas said with forced enthusiasm. She dropped two coins into the cup; they had grown sticky in her hand as she waited for Lame Angus to finish his story. And for the first time in her life, she regretted parting with the money. Indeed, she somehow felt cheated, for Angus had not enlightened her in the slightest regarding her father’s dying words to Iain Fraser.