The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (15 page)

Why would God make Hell, when he can make all this?
I repeated to myself, but I was afraid that the thought was wrong, and I put it away from me as I hurried to catch up with Mr. Lithgow.

***

It was the faint whiff of peat smoke that told us we were near our evening's rest. We came around the shoulder of a hill and could look down on the roof of a small house lying by a loch. Peter Boag had already led the cattle through a gap in a dry stone wall, and he was lifting our bundles from Samson's back.

The sun was still quite high in the sky, and we hadn't been walking for more than five or six hours. I'd expected to cover a greater distance in a day, so I was surprised when Mr. Lithgow said, "Here we are. The day's over."

A woman had come out of the cottage. She didn't seem alarmed to see the great herd of cows already grazing in her field.

"The drove always stops here," said Mr. Lithgow, seeing my surprise. "She'll cook our food for us. We sleep out in the open, along with the beasts." He coughed, embarrassed. "You could ask for her to let you sleep inside, Maggie, but..."

"No, I'll stay outside with you," I said, seeing the woman look curiously toward me. "I want to keep out of her way."

"Good. That's best." He sounded relieved. "News seems to travel through the air, even in a lonely place like this. Everyone'll know soon enough that a witch girl has escaped from Rothesay. The hunt will be on for you, all over the country. I'll tell her you're my sister's son, coming on the drove to learn the way of it, but that you're shy and don't like to deal with strangers. Now stay here while I go and beat some sense into Peter's head, or he'll blab out what shouldn't be said."

***

I'd never slept out in the open before, and I was scared at the thought of it. At Scalpsie Bay we knew the places where fairies and elves lived and where ghosts might walk, and it was easy to avoid them. But to sleep outside in an unknown place, unwitting and unprotected, seemed foolish and risky to me. Granny would have known how to keep uncanny beings at bay, but I had never learned that kind of thing from her.

I put up my hand to brush away the persistent midges, and my fingers touched the silver buckle on my belt. I clasped it tightly. Silver protected people, I knew, against the spirit powers. Perhaps my buckle would be powerful enough to protect me.

I was worrying about this, sitting on a convenient boulder in the corner of the field, when Peter brought my supper out to me. He and Mr. Lithgow had eaten their porridge, cheese, and oatcakes inside with the woman. He stood beside me, leaning on his staff and looking down at me as I ate. At last he cleared his throat and said, "You could help me if you had a mind to."

I swallowed a crumb of cheese.

"How?"

"It's my ear. It's been aching this whole week past. The pain is like a hammer banging away in my head. You can make it better, I know you can. She must have taught you something. You must know what to do. Look—" He fumbled in the pouch at his belt. "Here's a penny for you if you get the pain off me."

I shook my head.

"I don't know anything about healing, Mr. Boag. I'm sorry. I'd help you if I could."

He glanced swiftly back toward the cottage, but no one was visible.

"I wouldn't tell anyone. It's just between you and me. Please! The pain's killing me."

I heard Granny's voice in my head. There was a thing she would chant sometimes, when she was tying a thread around a sick baby's body or burning oak leaves on a fire.

God teach me to pray
To put this ill away
Out of flesh, blood, and bone...

I couldn't remember the whole thing, and, anyway, the words would have done no good without the thread, or some such magical thing. I shook my head.

"I'm sorry. I really don't know anything."

But he had seen me hesitate. He was about to speak again when Mr. Lithgow called to him from the cottage door.

***

The evening was a long one as I sat alone in the corner of the field, idly watching the cows as the voices of the others rose and fell inside the cottage. When the sun finally set, the two men came out, their faces flushed with whiskey. Mr. Lithgow was already yawning mightily and unbuckling his belt, ready to wrap his plaid more comfortably around himself for the night. He inspected the ground near where I was sitting, kicked away some crusts of dried dung, and lay down on his back, his hands crossed on his chest. Peter Boag, grimacing with the pain in his ear, gave me a sour look before he too lay down and closed his eyes. Within minutes their heavy breathing told me that they were asleep.

Tired though I was, it was a long time before I could shut my eyes. I lay looking up at the darkening sky, watching it turn from deep blue to black as the sunset glow faded. The stars appeared as if they were pinpricks in a cloth at first, then they blazed more and more brightly.

How will I find my way to Kilmacolm?
I thought.
And if I get there, will my uncle want me? What if I'm caught and taken back to Bute?

An eerie scream from some way off made me jump, and I pulled my plaid over my head, shivering with fright. The noise came again. I relaxed. It was only a hare after all, caught in the teeth of a fox. I poked my head out, smiling at my own silliness. It was reassuring to hear the snores of the men and the quiet slurping as the cows chewed their cud nearby. I turned over onto my side, wriggling to find a comfortable position.

Suddenly, the words of Granny's healing chant came back to me, and I whispered them as I fell asleep.

God teach me to pray
To put this ill away,
Out of flesh, blood, and bone,
Into the earth and cold stone,
And never to come again,
In God's name.

I slept so deeply that night that it took a prod from Peter Boag's stick to wake me. The sun had been up for hours, and I saw that I had slept long after the other two had risen. Peter was holding a bowl of porridge out to me and smiling from ear to ear.

"Little miracle worker, you are," he said. "I knew it. You needn't have pretended. I wouldn't have let on. Here's your penny. You've more than earned it."

I must have looked like a halfwit, staring up at him, bemused and still half asleep.

"My earache," he said. "It's gone. Look!"

He bent his head, and I saw a trickle of thick yellow pus dribbling from his ear.

"The evil humor's coming out, you see? You've purged it."

"No!" I lurched to my feet and grabbed at my plaid, which had fallen away so that too much of me was open to view. "I never did anything! I don't know—"

"Oh, lassie, don't bother. Your secret's safe. I told you, I'll not tell anyone, and I mean it."

He thrust the penny into my reluctant hand and had turned away before I could stop him.

Well,
I thought, as I tied it into my father's shirttail and took up the spoon to eat my breakfast,
a penny is a penny when all's said and done, and after all I did say the charm right through before I went to sleep.

I should have felt glad, I suppose, that Peter Boag's ear no longer hurt him, but in fact I was dismayed. I wanted no strange powers, good or evil. I wanted only to be ordinary, a plain girl, living safe and respectable in a proper family. And a wife one day. And a mother.

***

We were lucky, on those long, slow days of the drove, because the weather was kind to us. A few sharp showers came tumbling out of sullen clouds that swept as fast as racing horses across the hilltops. But most of the time the sun shone, turning the lochs as blue as cut-out pieces from the sky and making the heather on the hillsides glow in purple splendor.

I was soon used to splashing through the streams and even wading across fast-flowing rivers, but I was glad that I never had to swim in deep water again. The farther we moved from the Isle of Bute, the less I feared discovery. I was not afraid to be recognized as we were rowed by ferrymen across the lochs and greater rivers, looking back at the cows who bobbed along after the boat, their noses stretched up out of the water. I was grateful, from the bottom of my heart, that I wasn't struggling along with them.

We seemed to have been on the drove for months, and I had become used to the pace and rhythm of it, but in fact only a week had gone by when Mr. Lithgow said, "Well, Maggie, we'll be in Dumbarton tomorrow, and you'll have to make your own way from there."

I'd known it was coming, of course, but still my heart sank at the thought. Mr. Lithgow must have been watching my face, because he said, "No need to look like that. It's just a wee sail across the Clyde from Dumbarton, and no more than ten miles south to Ladymuir. You can walk it in a morning easily."

I knew Granny would have thought me feeble, but I couldn't help saying, "How will I find my way, Mr. Lithgow? And what if I'm stopped for being a vagabond?"

"I've thought of that." He lifted his spare knitting needle to poke through his matted beard and scratch at his chin. "You'll show them your buckle, and you'll tell the ferryman and anyone else who asks that you're the drover Archie Lithgow's young cousin, and you're taking a message down to Mr. Blair about the cattle he wants to sell. You've taken color in your cheeks and legs this past week. You look more like a boy now than any girl I've ever seen. There'll be no need to hide and fear questions along the way. The ferryman will point you on the path to Kilmacolm, and once you're there at the crossroads, you'll ask the way to Lochwinnoch. Ladymuir's along that way. You'll find it easily enough."

"Have you been there yourself, Mr. Lithgow?"

"I have. Many years ago. With your father."

It was the first time he'd told me of it. Questions bubbled up inside me. I had to pause and choose them carefully. I knew Mr. Lithgow wouldn't like to be asked too many.

"Did you ever meet my uncle Blair?" I said at last. "What kind of a man is he?"

He chewed at his mustache as he tried to think of an answer.

"He's a tall-enough fellow."

I waited hopefully.

"A good farmer, I'm told. A respectable man. An elder of the church."

"Oh."

This was daunting news. What would an elder of the church think of me, a condemned witch, running around the country dressed as a boy?

"He's a man of the Covenant, so I've heard. A very staunch one."

"A what?"

"A Covenanter."

I'd never heard the word before. I didn't like to show my ignorance but luckily he went on.

"You'll not have heard much about the Covenanters, Maggie?"

"No."

"You will soon. The whole countryside in these parts and down around Kilmacolm is buzzing with the struggle."

"What struggle?"

He scratched at his ear this time, as if he didn't know where to begin.

"You'll have heard of the king, Charles Stuart?"

I nodded warily, though I hardly ever had.

"He sits in England with the crown on his head and thinks he can tell us up here what's right and what's wrong. What business is it of his to tell us here in Scotland how to say our prayers?"

He sounded bitter.

"Are you a Covenanter, then, Mr. Lithgow?"

"Me? I can't read or write. A drover like me goes around the country here and there. Who's going to ask me what I think about how the church should be governed and whether the king's bishops should be the men to do it? No one's asked me to sign the Covenant and call myself a Covenanter. There's right on their side, I suppose. The king wants his own way, but if it isn't God's way, then he shouldn't have it."

"What's the king's way?" I asked, even more confused. "What's God's way?"

But Mr. Lithgow had come to the end of his patience with my questions, and as he always did when he wanted a conversation to end, he whistled to the dogs to round up imaginary stragglers.

***

We came into Dumbarton late that afternoon. I could hear the noise of the place a good mile before we reached the town, which lay on the shores of the Clyde. There was a din of shouting men and lowing cattle, the clatter of hooves on wooden ramps, and all the hammering and banging of tradespeople at work. There must have been thirty or forty houses in Dumbarton, and more than a thousand people congregated in the open there. I had never seen such a big town or thought that so many people could be gathered together in one place. I felt nervous and stayed as close to Mr. Lithgow as I could.

We had spent the night at a drovers' stance only a mile or so from the town, so it was still early in the day. I could tell by the frown drawing Mr. Lithgow's bushy brows together that he was preoccupied with the business ahead. As he led his cattle into the sales area, his eyes darted about, looking critically at the state of other herds and comparing them to his own.

Down on the shore, wide, flat-bottomed boats were drawn up out of the current of the swift-flowing estuary. Cows were being driven up the ramps onto the boats, bellowing with nerves. The corners of Mr. Lithgow's eyes crinkled in a quick smile of recognition as he stared at the boatmen.

"Here, Peter, watch the herd," he said suddenly, and hurried down to talk to one of the men who was standing by the mast of his boat, untying the reefs of the sail. The boat was already laden with cattle, and the other boatmen were ready at the oars.

Mr. Lithgow turned and beckoned to me.

"That's you away, then," said Peter Boag.

I was already hurrying toward the boat and didn't take in what he meant.

"Mr. Gillies is ready to take you across, Ma—Danny," Mr. Lithgow said. "Hurry and fetch your bundle."

I raced back to Peter Boag. He had already taken my things off Samson's back, and he put the bundle in my arms.

"Good luck. You're a one, you are. I'll come and find you if the other ear goes."

I was so shaken by the suddenness of this parting that I didn't know what to say. I looked around to see that the boat was already pulling away from the shore. I sprinted back to it and had to run through the shallows, splashing wildly, before I could scramble on board. The wind had caught at the sail, and the oarsmen were already at work.