Heather Song (13 page)

I
knew Alicia would not be completely over what had happened when she and I went out the day before the storm, and with what had transpired on the cliffs of Findlater, until she was able to meet Ranald Bain face-to-face and could be comfortable in his cottage. To truly be broken, Olivia’s phantom curse had to be broken within
her
.

After several weeks, after two more summer storms had blown through and another dry spell had set in and the ground had mostly dried out, I suggested another walk up the Bin.

She nodded. “Do you think I am ready?” she said.

“I do. But it’s your call.”

She drew in a deep breath of resolve. “I would like to,” she said. “I need to find out if I am at last master of my own fate. If I am still afraid, then Olivia has still got her hooks in me. I have to find out, so let’s go.”

It was mostly quiet as we retraced our steps from the earlier walk. It was truly a pilgrimage of sorts for Alicia, maybe a little like coming to Scotland the first time had been for me. When we came out of the woods, rather than taking the same route to the summit that we had before, Alicia headed straight into the meadow where I had first encountered Ranald. A few sheep were grazing, and the barking of dogs as we climbed over the dyke told us that Ranald himself was not far away. In another minute we saw him walking toward us, sheep and dogs surrounding him, the dogs bounding about playfully.

“Guid day tae ye, lassies!” he shouted while still some distance away.

I waved and we continued toward him. He approached and we slowed.

“Hello, Marie,” said Ranald, “an’ greetings tae ye, Alicia, lass. I’m aye glad tae see ye again. ’Tis been mony a lang year.”

“Hello, Mr. Bain,” replied Alicia, then held out her hand. “Thank you for saving my life.”

I could tell it was a hard thing for her to do, far more than a mere gesture. She did not want to shy away from what she knew she must do. Ranald took her hand, clasped it a moment, then shook it twice softly and gently.

Alicia looked up into Ranald’s face and sheepishly smiled.

“I am sorry about before, Mr. Bain,” she said. “I was confused and afraid. I said terrible things. I am truly sorry.”

“Think nae mair aboot it, lass,” Ranald replied. “’Tis o’er an’ past, jist like the sin o’ the worl’ will vanish in the licht o’ God’s eternal Sun. We’re a’ pilgrims on the road, an’ we a’ stumble fae time tae time. But gien God doesna luik back, nae mair should we. I’m haupin’ ye ladies hae time tae bide a wee an’ come ben the hoosie for a drap o’ tea wi’ an auld shepherd.”

“We would be delighted,” I said.

Ranald turned and led us toward his cottage, chatting with me as we went so that Alicia could watch and listen and grow comfortable in his presence.

“An’ hoo’s the duke, Marie, lass?” asked Ranald.

“Just fine, thank you,” I replied. “Busier than ever and to all appearances loving every minute of it. He visits with most of the farmers in the community regularly and even lends them a hand whenever they let him. He has never enjoyed hard honest work so much.”

“An’ yer harpie ladies?”

“They are doing well. I am anxious for you to hear them.”

“A’ in guid time, lass.”

As we walked into the cottage, I saw Alicia hesitate momentarily, glancing above her at the roof and ceiling, almost as if she were entering a den of danger. I knew Olivia’s words were going through her head. She kept on bravely, resisting them, and, in the very act of walking through the door, sending away their power to hurt her again. The moment we were inside, she brightened. A fire burned on Ranald’s cookstove almost as if he had been expecting us, a thin wisp of steam rising from the spout of the kettle sitting on top of it.

“A drap o’ tea an’ then hoo de ye fancy a wee bit o’ music? ’Tis been awhile since the auld wife an’ the harpie made melody thegither.”

“What’s an auld wife?” asked Alicia.

“That’s what Ranald calls his violin.” I laughed.

“I didn’t think you could be talking about your wife, Mr. Bain.”

“Nae, nae…she’ll always be my Maggie.”

Alicia glanced down and a serious expression came over her face. “I am sorry about your wife, Mr. Bain,” she said after a moment. “And Winny, of course. I don’t think I ever told you what a good friend she was. I still miss her, but I’m sure not nearly as much as you. It must be very hard.”

“There be times, I winna deny’t, fan the tears come upo’ me unbidden. But I ken they’re thegither an’ happy, an’ I’ll join them soon by-an’-by. Sae I dinna greet lang. God is guid, an’ that’s aye the end o’ a’ things. His guidness swallows my sorrows, an’ I rest content. After a’, this wee cottage, nor this whole worl’, isna my hame…I’m jist bidin’ here a wee while.”

We visited with Ranald for two hours, had tea and oatcakes and made music, and Alicia thoroughly enjoyed herself. By the end of that time she was clapping along to our music and laughing and even singing now and then to a familiar tune. She had the most lovely deep, throaty alto voice I had ever heard.

Suddenly Ranald set down his violin and ran into the adjacent room. He returned a moment later with two swords. He laid them on the floor perpendicularly across each other. The next instant the violin was back on his neck and a rousing jig exploded from it. He looked at Alicia with a grin.

“Oh, Mr. Bain, it’s been years!”

“As I recall, ye won mair nor one ribbon at mair nor one Hieland games wi’ yer twa wee feet atween the swords.”

“That was thirty years ago, even more!”

“Nae Scots lassie forgits the fling. Yer feet’ll de the rememberin’. Show oor Canadian frien’ the duchess hoo Scots lassies learn tae skip lightly through the heather.”

He began the music again. Reluctant but beaming, Alicia took her place at one of the four sword-corners and then, on cue from Ranald, began to leap on her toes in the familiar dance of the Highland fling. Whatever she might have lost from the years certainly escaped me. I was speechless to see how high she jumped, how effortless the movements…the pointed toes perfectly skimming her calves in rhythm…like a ballerina at a barn dance! I began to clap in time and Ranald whooped and hollered, and by the time Alicia made her way around all four squares of the swords, she was panting and laughing like I had never seen her.

She crumpled into a heap on the couch, laughing with delight and exhaustion, while Ranald and I applauded and praised her blue-​ribbon effort.

“Wud ye ladies like a ride doon the hill?” asked Ranald as we prepared to leave some time later.

“I think I would like to walk,” I said. “What about you, Alicia?”

“I’m fine with that.”

“Then I’ll gie ye what’s better,” said Ranald, “a Scots conveyance.”

Alicia burst out laughing. “I haven’t heard that expression in years!”

“What’s that,” I asked, “a special kind of ride?”

“’Tis a walk hame in the company o’ yer host,” replied Ranald, walking across the room and taking his cap from a peg on the wall. “Or at least—halfway hame.”

When we said our good-byes to him awhile later on the lower slopes of his own meadows and then continued our way back toward the castle, it was obvious that a friendship had begun and that one more root of Olivia’s influence was broken.

Alicia told the other ladies about our afternoon at the “house of Bain.” I suggested that one or another of them might like to accompany us sometime. The idea met with mixed reviews. I did not push the matter. I did, however, continue to drop periodic hints that I intended to invite Ranald to join us one day with his harp. I wanted them slowly to become accustomed to the idea without pressing it before they were ready.

Meanwhile, summer at last gave way to autumn. Leaves fell, the wind grew chillier. A faint hint of coming snow in the air could occasionally be detected. The songs of the birds subtly changed. The translucent Mediterranean blue of the coastline gave way more frequently to menacing grays and deep cold, sinister greens. The sudden dousings of rain for which Scotland is infamous were occasionally laced with a few peltings of hail.

The advent of the cold weather turned my thoughts toward an advent of another kind—the Christmas season. The ladies were doing well enough on the harps by now that I pulled out my holiday music and began teaching them four or five Christmas pieces. Alicia and I had driven to visit a harpmaker near Glencoe, another in Aberdeen, and a third in Edinburgh. As a result of our investigations and my trying out a number of different instruments, I ordered two more floor-size lever harps, which I hoped would arrive sometime in the middle of November. My plan was to organize a community Christmas concert, with all four of the ladies and myself on large harps, but also to invite other local musicians and groups, such as the renowned Duncan Wood Quartet from Milton, to join us. I had privately already given Ranald the same Christmas music we were working on so that he could participate with us.

At last, in early November, I made plans to drive up the hill—in my own new car this time—to pick up Ranald and his harp and bring him to the castle to join us for the Thursday ensemble as we prepared for the Christmas program. His appearance was met a little skeptically at first. But the warmth with which Alicia embraced him in front of the others went a long way toward breaking the ice.

As well as did the Christmas music itself. Who can listen to Christmas music and not be happy?!

As we worked our way through “The First Noel,” with Ranald fingering the high notes of the counter melody I had taught him, most lingering reservations about him vanished. Music is healing by its very nature. What could be more healing than music about the Lord’s coming to earth to heal humanity from its sin?

I asked Ranald if he would like to host the rest of us at his cottage the following Thursday. He consented eagerly. And so it was that our two cars made their way up the winding road, loaded down with our harps—alas, the
Queen
had to stay behind!—and music stands and benches. It took a little longer in Fia’s case to break free of her reservations. She wasn’t at all certain she liked the idea of going to Ranald’s house. But as Alicia had discovered, Ranald was a delightful and entertaining host whose engaging warmth no one, not even Olivia’s former friends, could resist.

Most of them, that is.

With Ranald’s participation at the castle still fresh, the day after I announced that the ensemble would meet at his cottage, Adela telephoned to say that she would be discontinuing her lessons and that either I or Nicholls could come round to collect the harp at our convenience.

It was a sad turn of events, though now Fia was able to graduate from the
Ring
to the
Shamrock
while I awaited the delivery of the two new harps. The next day Alicia asked, since the
Ring
was now available, if she could begin learning on it. Naturally I was delighted.

The others were concerned about Adela. But none wanted to turn back from their own newly energized pilgrimages of growth and wholeness. In some cases, sad to say, spiritual growth requires leaving friends behind. But all growth in life must be forward. To remain still is in fact stagnation and regression. I had been in that danger myself several years before. Adela was making a conscious
choice
not to move forward with what life had to offer. Her friends and I could only hope and pray that a time would come when she would make the choice to leave her past behind.

One of the wonderfully unexpected consequences of Ranald’s increasing involvement in the lives of the ladies, and his weekly visits to the castle with his two instruments, was a deepening friendship between Ranald and Alasdair. They had obviously known each other all Alasdair’s life, and had enjoyed a relationship of camaraderie and increasing mutual respect during the years of our marriage. But now something deeper began to blossom. It is possible, I suppose, that on both sides the departure of Iain Barclay created a void that the other was able to fill. Yet there was more to it than that. It would have been different, perhaps, had Iain still been in the area, but I think it would have happened regardless. For reasons I was never quite able to identify, Alasdair recognized in Ranald a wisdom he could learn from, even at such a mature stage in his life. But he did not merely recognize wisdom, he wanted to
partake
of it—a unique quality in the world of self-sufficiency in which men often dwell. The hunger to grow and change and learn and
become
more than they are is not usually part of the masculine makeup. It is not always part of the feminine constitution either, as evidenced in the case of Adela. The relationship I observed between the two men I can describe only as between a mentor and a protégé, between an aging man of wisdom and a younger man in his prime, hungry and eager to glean all he could from him.

This realization on Alasdair’s part had a subtle spiritual component, as
any
relationship with Ranald must develop eventually. Ranald’s entire existence was bound up in a thoroughgoing awareness of
spirit
life. But their new friendship was at first not
primarily
spiritual. Alasdair was not what I would call a spiritual seeker. At the same time, obviously connected with my own spiritual rebirth and growth of recent years, Alasdair was interested in my spiritual development and
open
to spiritual influences. Looking past the externals of his humble garb and unimposing station in the world, I think he came to recognize in Ranald a man of years and stature whom he could respect on many levels. It was not that he was reluctant to glean spiritual food, so to speak, from me because I was a woman and his wife. Not at all. He was wonderfully accepting of my faith and my own maturity as a person. He often asked questions about things that came up, even decisions concerning the estate. He gave weight and respect to my responses. If ever a man treated a wife as an equal, even ahead of himself, as
more
than an equal when it came to spiritual things, that man was Alasdair Reidhaven. He was truly a
humble
man.