by Pat McIntosh
‘I never heard it sung like that before,’ said one of the younger men from up the glen in doubtful tones. ‘Are you sure you mind it right, Davie Drummond?’
‘On the contrary,’ said old Mairead. ‘He has it exactly right. That is the old way of singing it, just as I mind it in his father’s mouth thirty year since.’
‘Just as I mind it too,’ said Patrick in his grave voice. He leaned forward and put his hand on Davie’s curly head. ‘My doubts are gone. Wherever you have been, if you can sing like that, you can only be my brother returned to us.’
Mòr’s face, lit by the nearest rushlight, twisted into a sour smile as she watched. Caterin leaned down to her spindle, whose thread had snapped, and Davie reached up to grip Patrick’s wrist and said, ‘I was well taught.’
Yes, thought Alys, and who by? And was the hand that gripped Patrick’s trembling, or not?
The discussion went into Ersche, and seemed to be a detailed dissection of parts of the song, a consideration of what some of the old words meant. Davie joined in occasionally, with a diffident comment preceded each time by, My father said.
There was a touch on her elbow. She looked round, and found Agnes smiling shyly at her in the glow of the nearest rushlight.
‘We are going outside, we young ones,’ she said softly. ‘Will the lady come with us?’
‘Gladly,’ she said, suddenly aware of being over-warm, and rose to follow the girl. Socrates scrambled up from behind the kist she sat on and followed, provoking warning growls from some of the other dogs lying among the feet, and there was a further disturbance as Steenie extricated himself from his corner.
Out in the moonlit yard the air was cool and fresh. The hills around the farm loomed black against the stars, and the occasional call of a nightbird prompted the Drummond girls to cross themselves and mutter a charm Alys could not catch. The dog paced about, checking the scents, cocking his leg against the fulling-tub and other corners; Steenie took up a watchful stance by the house wall, and Murdo said:
‘Are you liking the ceilidh, mistress?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ she said. ‘I was never at such an evening before.’
‘That great song was bonnie,’ said Elizabeth softly. ‘It never sounded like that when they sang it down in the Kirkton.’
‘Maybe he could be singing it next week at the Feis,’ said Agnes.
‘Maybe no,’ said Ailidh. ‘Murdo,’ she prompted. Her lover nodded, and braced himself to speak.
‘There has been another accident, just this day,’ said Jamie Beag before he got the words out. ‘Would the lady be wishing to know more about it?’
‘I would indeed,’ said Alys, as levelly as she might.
‘It was worse than before,’ said Agnes. ‘For Jamie and my uncle Padraig might have been hurt in earnest.’
‘Hush, Nannie,’said her sister. ‘Let Jamie tell it.’
Jamie explained. They had gathered in all the barley, and since the stooked straw was dry they had begun to bring it in as well. The far end of the outfield was a good half mile from the stackyard, so the bundles must be laid on a wooden sled, which the pony brought down with reluctance.
‘He has never liked the sled,’ said Jamie seriously, his voice very like his uncle’s. ‘Nor he has not taken well to let Davie work him, though he is fine with my uncle and me.’
‘He bites,’ said Elizabeth. The other girls nodded, the moonlight shining on their clouds of fair hair.
‘You should be selling him at the Feis,’ said Ailidh. ‘There is no use of a pony that only two folk on the place can work.’
‘You would get a good price maybe if you sold him to the monks,’ said Agnes.
‘Maybe,’ said Jamie Beag. ‘Am I to tell this or no? So we had the pony up the field, and the sled loaded, and hitched Lachdann up, and Davie had the rope at his head, and my uncle and me were pushing to start the sled.’ He paused, and Alys murmured understanding. ‘And then Lachie began snorting, and he shied away, and he was for biting Davie, only Davie got him on the nose with the rope. So I took Davie’s place, and he was to push instead, and when I tried to lead Lachie forward he tried to bite me and all, and then he reared up and struck out with his feet, and squealed, and reared again. I thought he would split my head open, even though he is not shod.’
‘I saw it from here,’ said Agnes. ‘I thought the Devil was at the beast.’
‘So did I,’ said Jamie frankly, ‘but my uncle came, and he checked all the harness, and when he looked inside the breastplate he found a needle.’
‘A needle?’ repeated Alys incredulously.
‘A broken one,’ said Murdo. ‘Wedged in the lining of the breastplate, so it would stick in the beast when he leaned into it. They have showed it to me.’
‘And those ones,’ broke in Elizabeth, ‘would not be touching a needle, because it is iron, you know, so it makes it certain it is –’
‘Husha!’ said Jamie. ‘You see how it is, mistress. This time it was no accident.’
Alys nodded.
‘Has any of you lost a needle, or broken one, lately?’ she asked. A needle was not cheap; even in Glasgow, with merchants and metalworkers to hand, she guarded her own carefully in a little wooden case, and here where the nearest replacement was probably in Perth or Dunblane, it would be wise to keep a close watch on such things. Jamie looked at his kinswomen, and after a moment Agnes said reluctantly:
‘I lost my good needle a while ago. Maybe two weeks since.’
‘Mammy broke one the other day,’ admitted Elizabeth. ‘She put it safe, out of Iain’s reach. He crawls about the floor, times,’ she explained to Alys.
‘I never found mine,’ said Agnes. Alys nodded. No help there.
‘What does Davie plan to do, do you know?’ she asked.
‘About the needle?’ asked Ailidh.
‘No, no. Does he mean to settle here, or go back to Dunblane, or go for a priest, or –?’
‘Oh.’ Ailidh turned to her kinsfolk. ‘Well, he – we’ve not –’
‘I’ll be staying here –’ said Davie at Alys’s elbow. She jumped convulsively, and he put out a hand to her. ‘My sorrow, I never meant –’
‘You with the soft feet,’ said Jamie, half smiling. ‘He goes like a cat, isn’t it, mistress.’
‘So you will stay here at Dalriach?’ she said, her heart still hammering.
‘I will, while the old woman dwells here. As sure as my name’s Davie Drummond,’ he said, on a faint note of challenge.
‘But is it?’ she said quietly. He looked steadily at her in the moonlight.
‘It is,’ he said. ‘I swear it, mistress.’ One of the girls giggled nervously.
‘By what will you swear?’ she asked.
‘Mary mild and Michael and Angus be my witnesses,’ he said formally, and crossed himself with each name, ‘that I swear I am Davie Drummond.’
Jamie clapped Davie briefly on the shoulder.
‘Another pair of hands about the place is a good thing,’ he said, ‘and the more so when it’s kin. I’m right glad to hear that you’ll stay.’
‘But what will the mammies be saying?’ said Agnes pertly, linking arms with Davie. Her cousin Elizabeth moved to his other side, looking up at him, her face shadowed. ‘They were arguing again today, about whether there is enough here to be dividing three ways.’
‘Husha!’ said Jamie again. ‘No concern of theirs it is, but only of the old woman’s.’
‘You can go away up the field and never be listening to them,’ Agnes pointed out, ‘it’s me that has to sit here and wind bobbins and –’
‘Mind your tongue, Nannie. What will our guest think of you,’ said Ailidh, and pinched her elbow to stop her.
‘Did you know,’ said Alys deliberately in a soft voice, ‘that Mistress Drummond wrote twice to her son who is in Dunblane, and the second time she said that if David went back to his place in the sang-schule she would gift land of twelve merks per annum –’
‘What?�
�� Davie exclaimed. The noise from inside the house paused briefly, but the silence in the courtyard lasted longer. All the Drummonds stared at Alys, open-mouthed, and Murdo looked from her to Jamie and then his sweetheart. After a moment Davie said more quietly, ‘No. She will not be persuading me.’
‘Is there twelve merks of land to spare?’ asked Murdo.
Jamie shrugged. ‘I’d say not, unless it was the whole of the land up by Garachra, and then what would we do for the summer grazing?’
‘Do the mammies know that?’ wondered Agnes. ‘Do you think your father knows?’
‘I’ve not heard them say it,’ said Elizabeth cautiously.
‘No matter,’ said Davie. ‘There is no reason I would be going there.’
‘Fat Uncle Andrew would never be wanting you back anyway,’observed Agnes.
‘He’s not so bad as that,’ said Jamie.
‘Och, he is. Last time he was home, afore Pentecost, and the cailleach was lamenting Davie again, he could hardly hear her for jealousy.’
‘Andrew was aye jealous,’ said Davie rather tentatively.
‘He was,’ said Ailidh. ‘Do you mind, Jamie, when he heard you would have our father’s portion entire? He has given up his portion, seeing he is well forward in the great kirk at Dunblane,’ she added to Murdo, ‘but he could not bear to know that Jamie would get a half-share of the tack.’
A voice rose from the house door, speaking in Ersche. Alys looked round, and saw Mòr standing there. Catching sight of her, the woman switched to Scots.
‘Will you be coming away in, the whole of you, and you too, mistress. You will be missing the best of the singing. And we were hoping our guest might have a song or a tale for us,’ she added as Alys passed her in the doorway, into the lighted room.
So the moment was on her. She caught her breath, smiled and nodded, seated herself again, while her mind whirled and Steenie clambered over legs and bodies, back to his corner. A song or a tale, a song or a tale? She tried to recall Annec’s amusements for a small girl, and could only see her nurse’s face and the white linen on her head. None of the tales she had heard in her years in Glasgow would come to mind either.
‘A song, maybe,’ suggested Mistress Drummond, her hand curving round Davie’s jaw as he leaned against her knee again. ‘We would like to be hearing what songs they sing in Glasgow or France.’
‘A song,’ said Alys. That was easier. She thought briefly, opened her mouth, and found she was singing Machaut, one of his endless hymns to his Peronelle. Sweet and demanding, the music took concentration, but she was aware of interest, of careful listening, of a rewarding audience. As had happened for the children, there was no direct praise when she finished, but instead a lengthy discussion of the song itself, which she had to translate into Scots, and then a point-blank request from Caterin.
‘Would you be singing more, mistress? I would like fine to hear another like that.’
‘Another one?’ she said. ‘Yes, of course.’ She paused, and the evening a few weeks since when she had last sung the Machaut came clearly to mind. They had had some new music from Edinburgh, and she and Gil and her father had explored it happily, but they had finished with some songs they all knew. Gil had played the monocords, and she had sung Ockeghem to the spidery notes. She found her pitch, and began.
Halfway through the first line, she was aware of recognition from somewhere in the room. Somewhere close to her. She looked round in the shadows. Not Murdo, who was engrossed in a wordless communion with his Ailidh again. Not Steenie, surely? No, closer than that – someone at the hearth knew Ockeghem, knew this song. She continued to enumerate the charms of the nameless beloved while looking from face to face, at Patrick listening politely, Caterin gazing at her son still asleep in the cradle, Mistress Drummond nodding gently in time with the tune. Mòr sat with that sour, faintly triumphant smile; her eyes were on the lad who swore his name was Davie Drummond, who was staring at the glow of the peat fire, small movements of mouth and fingers betraying to the watchers how well he knew words and music. He had both played and sung the same piece, Alys judged, many times.
Once her bedfellows finally fell into sleep, she was able to think.
When the gathering ended, the other folk at the ceilidh set out with lanterns to pick their way back to one settlement or the other, and the family began the process of readying houses and people for sleep. Alys had tried to lend a hand in the carrying of kists and benches out of Mistress Drummond’s house, but it had been firmly refused. Now Mòr’s house was quiet, the dogs in the yard and byre had settled down and Ailidh and Agnes, one on either side of her, were warm and somnolent. The ceilidh had been an extraordinary experience, one she was eager to discuss with Gil, and the ritual of the night, the smooring of the fire, the washing of feet and covering of dishes, had been fascinating to watch, but she needed to examine what she had learned and observed. She lay staring into the dark interior of the box bed, turning things over in her mind.
Whoever had taught David had taught him well. If he could swear to the name he used, he must be blood kin of the family here at Dalriach, either a legitimate son or an acknowledged bastard. Old Mistress Drummond said that her man was the only child her English mother-in-law had raised. Since the thistledown hair came from the Englishwoman, we need not consider descent from any further back, she thought, counting off the family, but could Mistress Drummond’s man have had a child elsewhere without her knowing? It would need to be a son, to pass on the name. Something to ask down the valley, she thought, rather than up here. And in the next generation – well, whatever their mother said, her sons might have issue elsewhere. Indeed we know that Andrew has children, she realized. The two sons left on the farm would have less opportunity, perhaps, and less chance to acknowledge the result without her knowing. Word spreads fast in the glens, she recalled. I wonder if either of them went as far as Stirling, like their father. Seonaid the tiring-maid had assured her that the daughter, Bethag Drummond, wife to Angus MacLaren, had been no further than the Kirkton these three years, nor had she had any strangers to stay at her house, so it was not her teaching which made Davie so confident.
And that left David. Not this young man calling himself Davie Drummond, but the boy who vanished thirty years ago. Where is he now? she wondered. Could he be alive, and this one his son, and all the impressive knowledge of the place and its music learned from him?
And what had he come back to? Why had he come back? Very different questions, she reflected. The welcome he had met varied greatly in tone. It seemed to her that the young Drummonds had accepted the stranger on other terms than their elders. Patrick now seemed as convinced as his mother that this was his brother returned; what Caterin and Mòr thought was still unclear, but their children had a different attitude. The girls were almost protective, she thought, recalling the way they had gathered round Davie when he appeared in the yard, and Jamie treats him as an equal. I wonder what they know? No hope that they will tell me.
Beside her in the darkness Ailidh and Agnes slept, their breath even and innocent. In the wider space of the house, beyond the bed-curtains, something stirred. She lay listening to tiny movements, sounds so faint they were drowned by the rustle of the bedclothes when Ailidh sighed. Mice? she wondered. Or rats? Then there was a click, and a thin creak. The door. Mòr or her son, she thought, going out to the yard. Nothing to fear.
The daughters-in-law were both hostile, in very different ways. Hardly surprising, she thought, if it means the land must be further divided. I must check that with Lady Stewart. She considered the two women, Mòr tall and sardonic and simply, politely, hostile, with her prodding remarks designed to trip Davie into giving himself away as an impostor, none of which had yet succeeded; Caterin, oddly ambivalent, jealous perhaps of Davie’s effect on her son, and yet valuing his ability to soothe the boy, as well as wary of his claim on the estate. She thought again of the searing bitterness in the woman’s face as she watched Davie singing.
The doo
r creaked thinly again, the latch clicked, those small movements reached her. Whoever it was, returning.
Turning all this over in her head, she must have drifted into sleep, because she dreamed about the shouting before she realized she was hearing it. Then there were dogs barking, and she was awake in a muddle of arms and legs. The girls were exclaiming in Ersche, and Socrates spoke urgently by the bed-curtains in the soft, embarrassed bark he used indoors.
‘What is it?’ she asked, and realized that some of the shouting was Steenie’s voice.
‘Fire! Fire! Rouse the ferm! Fire!’
‘Our Lady protect us!’ she said, and tumbled out of the bed after Ailidh, in time to see Mòr kindling a light which showed Jamie struggling into his huge sark. He pulled it down round his knees and seized his belt, fumbling with the buckle as he hurried out of the door. Alys identified her own kirtle by touch and dived into it, stepped into her shoes, and followed the other women out into the noise of the yard, the dog anxious against her knee.
It was the thatch of Mistress Drummond’s house which was burning, and it was well alight already. Bright flames leapt from the bundled bracken, smoke towered in their light, a red glow showed at the house door. Alys stood frozen in horror for a moment beside Mòr’s house, the ends of her kirtle laces in her hands, then collected herself, knotted the laces, tugged at the arm nearest her.
‘Buckets!’ she said. ‘Water – where is the water?’
‘The burn,’ said Ailidh, pointing. ‘Jamie is there now.’
The men were already running back and forth, but the water they threw made little impression. First Steenie, then Murdo, appeared with pitchforks and began tugging at the eaves with it, scattering burning bracken on to the cobbles, the wooden forks beginning to smoulder almost immediately. Ailidh ran to join them, and Alys went to help handle buckets, aware of Socrates still at her knee and of the tethered horses squealing on the grazing land, the cattle bawling in the fold by the byre. Hens squawked, the changeling boy screamed somewhere, once and not again, the farm dogs were barking madly in the leaping shadows. Caterin came stumbling up the yard into the firelight, and behind her two of the tenants arrived to help, joining the bucket chain. The water seemed to come from beyond the stackyard.