Heather Song (31 page)

The sound of her former name and the Gaelic command seemed to jolt Olivia like a dousing of cold water.

For a tense moment all was silent.

All at once, she let out a dreadful shriek and kicked and flailed at me with terrific power. I screamed again in terror.

“The grass, Marie—grab the grass. It’ll haud ye!” yelled Ranald.

Even as he spoke he rushed forward, swinging his great shepherd’s staff mightily in a great arc. It caught Olivia at her knees. She cried in pain and toppled to the ground. Two or three solid hits to her body followed until she scrambled up and out from under the torrent of blows. Limping and shrieking the foulest of obscenities, she hurried along the path and away.

Had it not been for Ranald’s last words, I would surely have been dead by now. I was probably four feet over the side, legs scrabbling frantically for something to cling to, clutching with my hands and elbows at the roots of the tough wiry shore grass covering the rocky projection of the cliff.

“Hang on, Marie!” called Ranald. “I’ll git ye. Here’s the staff. Take haud o’ the crook, ane hand, then the ither. ’Tis good for pullin’ mair tae safety nor jist wee lambies! Haud till it wi’ a’ yer life!”

I don’t know how he kept his balance on the precarious path. Nor had I imagined a man of his years could be so strong. I grabbed desperately as he lowered his staff, and held it till my knuckles were white. Once I had a tight grip, Ranald pulled, kneeling and leaning back to balance himself. Slowly I struggled up to safety. I climbed to my feet and fell into his arms weeping in relief.

“I’m so sorry, Ranald. I was so stupid. I should have listened to you.”

“Dinna fret, lass,” he said tenderly. “She’s weaved her spells ower many afore ye came along. But I dinna think we’ll hae’t fae her again. The spell o’ her lies is finally broken.”

T
he following day a small lorry appeared at Castle Buchan. Two men asked to see me. They produced a list of possessions they had been instructed to remove on behalf of Mrs. Olivia Urquhart. They also had a key to the apartment Olivia had occupied. I was relieved to know that I would not have to tell Olivia in person that I’d had the lock changed. After the trauma of what had taken place, I had no interest in seeing her again.

I looked over the list, saw nothing I was not eager to be rid of, and happily showed the men upstairs. Within two hours they were done. It was with a tremendous sigh of relief that I watched the lorry pull away, and with it the last remnants of Olivia’s occupation of the castle.

Olivia was not seen in Port Scarnose again. Within days a sign from “Stewart & Watson, Estate Agents,” appeared in the front window, notifying all interested parties that the former Urquhart home was for sale.

It would seem that nearly every frayed end of my life’s tapestry had at last been woven into its proper place. All uncertainties and doubts had been resolved.

All but one.

The moment the words
Banff Hotel
had sounded from Alicia’s lips as she was leaving for her date with Nigel Crathie, my subconscious mind began stirring an unexpected corner of my being into renewed wakefulness.

Thought of dinner at the Banff Hotel reminded me of one of
my
memorable dates in Scotland, too.

It had not been with Alasdair.

They say ancient houses and castles such as Buchan often possess gardens that come and go and change with time. One owner or mistress or gardener plants and cultivates a certain area or plot of ground with prized species of flowers or trees or bulbs and shrubs. In time, however, these may become neglected and overgrown in favor of another plot fashioned elsewhere by another gardener, who then cultivates new and different varietals. Then a later descendant does the same yet again. And thus many changes over the centuries are made from ever-shifting needs of space, causing gardens and their locations and contents to adapt to the passage of time.

It is likewise said that nothing from the past is lost. Nothing dies out. Life endures. It may change its form, but because it originates in love, life continues on. As the snows and frosts of winter send the earth into a season of dormancy, so also do the shifting and changing circumstances of life cover once-thriving plants and send them into seasons of periodic hybernation. But the pods wherein is contained the life-germ of such plants are not dead. They only await new sunlight and fresh rains to bring them out of their sleep into renewed vitality of life and reemergent growth.

One of Scotland’s greatest men, Huntly’s native son of the nineteenth century whose books I had discovered since coming to Scotland, phrased this truth in this way:

And thus it was that a seed, not long-neglected but long-dormant, began to come to life again in the deep, hidden, invisible garden of my heart. When he had first shown me the rose garden at the castle, Alasdair had said that the secret of a good garden was the gradual revelation of its mysteries. Was the same true of the garden of the human heart?

At first I feared the quiet whisperings of the germ-cell urging the chrysalis awake.

I pretended it was other than it was. I refused to look at it, refused to acknowledge that some unseen force was stirring in my innermost depths, reluctant to ask if God, the master Husbandman, was wielding an upturning spade and shifting the ground so that light fell again on the dormant seed.

Yes, I admit, it was a little fearsome.

But with the fear came also a tingling thrill of excitement. And the question: Can love ever be a bad thing?

Is it not what we do with any God-gift that distinguishes the good from the bad, the self-centered from the selfless, the temporal from the eternal, the earthly from the holy?

Fear is not intrinsic to the equation of life, only right response.

At last, when I could no longer ignore the inevitable whispering reminders of what had once
been
, and now seemed to be a new
becoming
, the question arose again that had driven me back to Canada after my first sojourn in Scotland:

Can a woman love two men?

Discovering the answer to that question five years before, and making the choice between them, had set me on the path to a destiny I could never have foreseen. But the question had now changed. No
choice
now confronted me. Only the question of whether love might still exist…or, if dormant, was it reviving again into life, rebirthing itself from out of the past?

If so, what was I to do about it—flee again to Canada to escape its consequences, to escape where it might lead? Or meet it with honesty, even courage, and find out—yet again—what the future might hold?

I had run from it before. But my running had only presented me with the inevitable conviction that I had to
know
what my heart was saying.

Even as many questions posed themselves again, questions I thought I had put behind me forever, I knew that again there could be no resolution without knowing.

I had to know.

Many long walks followed. Much prayer. Time with
Journey
sitting on my favorite bench, reliving many special moments, playing the melodies that probed the depths of Scotland’s historic melancholy soul, thinking of Alasdair, wondering what he would want me to do.

Yet could Alasdair, could the Lord himself, help me
know
what lay in my heart?

T
he knowing I sought contained no speculation of outcome. As yet I was building no aerial fantasies of renewed romance. At first I did not even envision a meeting. It was simply the waking
within myself
that I had to understand.
I
had to come to terms with it so that my own personhood would be whole and complete in its self-​knowledge.

But is it possible for love to sprout in the human heart without the desire to meet its accuser face-to-face?

If so, surely it is rare. For love, by its very nature, is
compelled
to make itself known. I was not thinking consciously in such terms. Yet even then, surely my subconscious had already begun impelling itself toward the inevitable desire to
see
him again.

In inquiring about Iain Barclay’s whereabouts, and after Nigel Crathie had successfully tracked him to London, my initial response had been excitement at the possibility of locating Alasdair’s friend. But with the words
Banff Hotel
, and the flood of memories and emotions that began infiltrating my senses like an incoming tide, I became tentative, afraid of pursuit, afraid of what it might imply about me…perhaps afraid of what it would look like, of what people would think or of what
he
would think.

Women did not pursue
men
. It was supposed to be the other way round. Especially widows in their mid-forties did not do so.

Iain left Port Scarnose four years earlier for reasons of his own. He had not shared them with me. They were not for me to know. I couldn’t go chasing after him to fulfill some selfish need to know whether my feelings were those of a friend or something more. To attempt to find him again, if it was only to satisfy my own selfish ends, would be wrong.

What about
his
thoughts and feelings? He obviously did not want to be found. Otherwise, he would not have gone to such lengths to keep his whereabouts secret.

The largest and most obvious uncertainty hanging over my conjectures was the huge question of whether Iain was now married. How could he not be after so long? I couldn’t lose myself in a ridiculous whirlwind of thoughts about
love
if a married man was involved!

And no matter from which angle the sun shone on the long-buried soil that was being cultivated anew, my love for Alasdair complicated everything tenfold. The question was constantly with me: Was I somehow being unfaithful to that love by allowing myself to think of Iain? Did this hidden sprouting reveal a betrayal of Alasdair’s memory?

I tried desperately to examine the other side of the coin. I tried to convince myself that Iain was a good friend.
Only
a friend. He had been Alasdair’s
best
friend. What if he didn’t know about Alasdair? He
needed
to know,
deserved
to know. It had nothing to do with me. As Alasdair’s widow, it was my duty to contact Iain. His probable marriage had nothing to do with it. I still needed to contact him…for Alasdair’s sake.

This was not about romance or love. It was about friendship with a man with whom Alasdair and I had once been very close.

At last I convinced myself that such was the right and honorable perspective. I came to terms with it on the basis of the friendship that Alasdair had cherished and had missed during the final years of his life. I came to terms with it by keeping Alasdair in his proper place in my memory. Yes, I had once loved two men. I had married one of them. Those two men had been friends—good friends, close friends, best friends. The one deserved to know about the other. To tell him was my responsibility. It was a debt I needed to discharge on Alasdair’s behalf.

I must try to find Iain Barclay to tell him of Alasdair’s passing, and that Alasdair had loved him to the end.

I telephoned Nigel Crathie to ask if there were any additional details concerning what he had learned about Reverend Gillihan’s predecessor.

“None,” he said. He had contacted Church of Scotland headquarters in Edinburgh to make inquiries. He had been told that Rev. Iain Barclay was not listed among the church’s active clergy. Thinking it a dead end, he did not pursue it immediately. On a hunch, some time later he wrote to the church offices requesting a list of all living
retired
Church of Scotland clergy. He had received the list only two days before the trial was set to begin. On it was the name of Iain Barclay, residing in London.

“But no address?” I said.

“No, only the city.”

“Surely it could be found with an Internet search.”

“Probably…but London? It would not surprise me if there are two hundred Iain Barclays in the greater London area. Both are common names.”

“Unless he is still using the
Rev.
,” I suggested. Even as I said it I knew it was a stupid idea. “Forget it,” I said. “Iain always hated the ‘Rev.’ in front of his name, even when he was the curate of a church. He would certainly not be using it now.”

“Do you know his middle name?”

“Actually, come to think of it, I don’t even know if he has one.”

“We can find out. He was born in Deskmill Parish, I believe. It will be in the records. What about other family?”

“All I know is that he has a married sister. It seems she may have married an American, but I could be wrong. I really know very little about his family. Both their parents are dead, I believe.”

“Not much to go on. Would you like me to pursue it?”

“If you don’t mind. Maybe I will, too—though I’m not very Internet-savvy.”

“What about Alicia’s friend Tavia Maccallum? Isn’t she a computer whiz? As I recall, she does Internet research for some firm in Sydney—​​all by e-mail and online.”

“That’s right.”

“She probably knows how to track folks down. People who know what they’re doing can practically google a picture of someone walking along the pavement in front of their house.”

“Really!”

“Well, maybe not quite—but it’s amazing what people can do these days.”

“I will talk to her.”

I would have been reluctant to mention such a request to anyone else in town. Can you imagine what Mrs. Gauld would do with a tidbit like my trying to track down Iain Barclay!

But Tavia had faithfully kept our plans and movements secret when Alicia came for me in Canada, and then when she and I had snuck into the castle without Olivia getting wind of it. I knew she could be trusted to keep it confidential.

When I went to visit her and told her of my request, she did not seem to think it so difficult an assignment.

“Sure,” she said. “I can find him. Knowing he is in London is the main thing. If Nigel—Mr. Crathie—is certain of that, I can do the rest. In a worst-case scenario I should be able to narrow it down to two or three possibilities.”

She glanced toward the window a little nervously.

“Are you expecting someone?” I asked.

“Actually…well, yes, but it’s fine. I’m all ready.”

“Whoever it is, it must be special—you look very nice.”

Tavia dropped her eyes in embarrassment.

I stood. “Well, I’ll be going then. So you will see what you can find out…And have a good time,” I added with a smile.

Tavia nodded.

I left the house. As I walked toward the Volvo parked on the street, a familiar car drove up and pulled in behind me. It was the BMW with the
Buchan
license plate. Harvey Nicholls got out and greeted me with a sheepish look on his face.

Confused for a moment, I turned back toward the house. There stood Tavia at the window.

The light dawned.
How intriguing
, I thought, smiling to myself. I wasn’t the only one around here with secrets!