The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (29 page)

"Maggie," began Ritchie.

"It's no good," I told him. "My mind's made up. Let's go and tell my aunt."

***

I have to admit that Aunt Blair was a good woman. A spark of relief lit her eyes when I told her my decision, but she doused it quickly and tried to persuade me to stay. The danger was too great, she said. She was responsible for me. She'd never forgive herself if I came to harm.

In the end, though, when she saw how determined I was, she came around to agreeing.

"When will you go?" she asked.

"Now! Today! Look, the weather's fine for a walk. There's not a cloud in the sky."

"You'll not go till you've eaten," she said. "There's a little cheese left, and those eggs you found, and the last of the oatmeal that Dandy Fleming brought."

Tam was so pleased at the thought of breakfast that he seemed quite reconciled to the long journey ahead.

"This is fine! This is kind, mistress!" He cracked his dirty knuckles as he looked at the meager meal laid out on the table.

"It's not what it was." Aunt Blair sighed.

"Or will be again," said Ritchie.

Tam stretched out his hand toward the oatcakes, and I nudged him just in time as Aunt Blair said, "You'll ask a blessing on our food, Ritchie." And Ritchie, sitting in his father's place, said a mercifully short grace.

I was so tense with excitement and dread that I could hardly eat. Now that the moment had come, I hated the thought of leaving this neat, homely house and the family who'd treated me so kindly and taught me all I ever knew.

No one said much at the table, and when the last crumb had been eaten, Ritchie scraped back his stool and went into the parlor. He came back a moment later carrying his father's old coat and put it into Tam's hands.

"What's this? It's not for me?" said Tam doubtfully.

"Yes, of course, what a good idea, Ritchie," said Aunt Blair, bustling forward. "And there's a shirt, too, and some breeks that I was going to cut down for dresses for the girls. We can spare them easily. Take him into the other room and get him dressed."

I hardly recognized Tam when he came back into the kitchen a few minutes later. His old rags—patched, faded, and torn—had been part of him for so long that they had seemed like a second skin. My uncle's clothes were far too big for him. They hung loosely on his skinny frame, the coat tails dangling below his knees, the sleeves falling down over his hands. I wasn't sure that I liked the new Tam. He looked even more frail and pathetic than before.

He was so entranced, though, with his new clothes that I couldn't help smiling. He gazed down at himself, awestruck, fingering the strong woolen weave of the shabby brown coat between his clawlike fingers.

"There's an old bonnet of your father's too," said Aunt Blair, who seemed to be enjoying the chance to dress even such an unpromising figure as Tam.

But when Ritchie fetched it, Tam looked at the clean blue bonnet with dismay.

"You're very kind, mistress." He was clasping his disgusting old headgear tightly to his chest. "But my old one, you know—like a friend—I wouldn't feel quite right in another. Keep it for your man when he comes home."

Aunt Blair's smile faded.

"When he comes home," she repeated bleakly. "Aye, God willing."

I had been gathering together my few possessions and had tied them in my old bundle. Martha had been following me about, trying to hold my hand whenever it was free.

"You're not really going away, are you, Maggie?" she said, her chin wobbling.

I bent down and hugged her.

"Yes, sweetheart, but I'll come back, and maybe when I do, I'll have your daddy with me."

Big tears rolled down her cheeks, and then, in her usual way when she was distressed, she ran off to hide.

We were ready at last. We stood at the door, and I took a deep breath as I looked down the track that led away from Ladymuir, on into the valley below, then away up and over the hills.

"Here," said Ritchie, who had reappeared from the parlor. "Take this."

He put two silver pieces into my hand.

"What, Ritchie? You can't!"

"It's the rest of the laird's money. For my father, and for you, if you really need it." He hesitated, then his face flushed red. "I
hate
you going off like this. It's a man's work you're doing. It ought to be me!"

"You can't, Ritchie. You have to run the farm and look after your mother."

"I know. But it's a bitter thing to have to stay. I—I haven't said this to you, Maggie, but you know how much I admirey ou and—and—"

I didn't want to hear any more. I hitched my bundle up onto my shoulder and said quickly, "Thank you for everything. You're a good cousin and friend, and I'll do my best for your father."

Aunt Blair put her arms around me and hugged me with what felt like real affection.

"God go with you, Maggie dear, and may his angels watch over you. We'll pray for you and your mission without ceasing."

And then we were away, and I was hurrying after Tam, who had retrieved his pipes from the barn and was scampering down the track at his usual amazing speed. After a while I turned to look back and saw them still standing there—Aunt Blair with Andrew in her arms, waving his little hand, and Nanny jumping up and down at her side. Ritchie had come a little way down the track after us and was standing by the rowan tree, with his hand resting against the trunk as if he needed the support. But Martha hadn't reappeared, and I knew she was hiding in the bed we had shared for so long, curled up in a tight little ball, crying.

It's no more than sixty or seventy miles from Kilmacolm to Edinburgh, so Ritchie told me, and if we'd been able to travel along the highway, with plenty of food to keep us strong and energetic, the journey would have taken three days at the most. But the whole country was in the grip of terror. There was a kind of madness in the air. The soldiers' bright uniforms stood out against the soft greens and browns of the May countryside in splashes of scarlet. They trotted on their jingling horses in bands of six or seven down the muddy lanes. They sang and swore and brawled in the village inns and appeared suddenly out of the remotest farmhouses, where they'd been planted to live with covenanting families, to harass them and eat up their supplies as punishment for refusing to swear the oath to the king.

I'd told Ritchie no more than the truth when I'd bragged about Tam's cleverness. Even in peaceful times he had avoided the main routes, wary of officials and ministers and lawyers and busybodies, who always seemed to want to arrest him for begging or drunkenness or being a vagabond. A lifetime's wandering about the south of Scotland had made him familiar with every burn and sheepfold and stand of trees. He knew which cottage housed an old companion who might be good for a meal in exchange for a tune or two on the pipes. He knew the back doors of every laird's house, which ones had a mean cook or a ferocious dog, and which had a kind housekeeper with a full storeroom. He could sniff his way as if by instinct to the lairs in remote glens and bothies where outcasts met to divide the gains of their thieving or to roast the meat and fish they had poached and comfort themselves with whiskey.

Tam showed his true colors when we had got no farther than the end of the track to Ladymuir, where it met the lane running up to Kilmacolm. I turned to the left, heading for the village.

"No, no, Maidie." Tam grasped my arm. "We'll not need to trouble the folk of Kilmacolm with our presence."

"But the troops aren't there. They're at Sorn. And the lane's easy walking," I objected.

"Aye, well." He grinned apologetically. "There's an awful irritable lady I'm not anxious to run into, and a couple of fellows..."

"Tam," I said accusingly. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! But we'll give the place a wide berth, if you don't mind."

My walk with Archie Lithgow on the drove to Dumbarton had seemed like a great adventure last year, but it had been nothing at all compared to my furtive progress over the hills and through the glens with Tam. I thought almost with longing of the cattle's gentle, ambling pace, the steady, reassuring click of Mr. Lithgow's knitting needles, and the hearty bowls of porridge morning and night. With Tam, there was haste, dodging and darting, and very little food. We would scurry over a high empty moor in the morning, ducking down to hide in the ditches of peat cutters if a farmer or a shepherd came by. Then we would creep stealthily past a highland farm, snatching a chicken from the yard as we went, and end the day in a high nook by a lonely crag, sharing our little bit of meat with a band of destitute old soldiers and highwaymen, while Tam entertained them with stories and music in return for some drink and a little of their food.

"Keep your silver pieces and your buckle out of sight," he warned me. "The temptation might be too much for these poor fellows."

I marveled at how he kept us both alive and fed from day to day, with the help of a little begging, a poached trout or two, and payment for his piping.

"And to think," he said sometimes, looking down at his new clothes, "that I could pass for a respectable man now and walk down the main street of any town raising my bonnet to the ladies like a gentleman."

I hadn't the heart to point out to him that after only a couple of days of sleeping out in the open, being drenched in constant showers, and hiding in stands of gorse, my uncle's old clothes were unrecognizably dirty, crumpled, and torn.

Seven days after we'd left Ladymuir, we came around the edge of a hillside and stopped to take in the awe-inspiring view. The city of Edinburgh lay along a raised spine that sloped down from the west to the east, where it crouched close to the ground. Along its back rose ranks of tall buildings, so closely crammed together that they seemed to squeeze each other thin. Church spires sprouted above the chimneys, and long gardens fell to the valley below, fenced in by the high wall that enclosed the whole city. At the far, lower end of the spine, I could see a palace of such size and magnificence that my mouth fell open.

"Aye," said Tam, enjoying my wonder. "You may well gasp, Maidie. That's Holyrood, the king's palace. There's enough jewels and furs and silver and gold in there to feed an army of poor bodies till their bellies burst, but never a bit of it comes to us."

Now I was looking at the great rock at the top end of the spine. It reared up, as forbidding as a monster's head, and was crowned by a castle whose massive stone walls made me shudder.

"Is that where my uncle is? In the castle?"

"No. They'll not have put the Covenanters in there. The place is buzzing with soldiers like bees in a jar. Your uncle will be in the tolbooth. See that tower halfway down the city? That's it. That's the prison. He'll be in there, for sure."

My knees felt weak, and I sat down on the ground. From the castle at the top to the palace at the bottom, with the bristle of houses in between, the city of Edinburgh seemed to glare at me.

You'll never get in here,
its frowning walls seemed to say.
And you'll never get your uncle out. Go away. Go back. Go home.

But I had no home to go to. I'd come this far. I had to go on.

"How do we get in?" I asked Tam. "And where will we go once we're inside?"

Tam had sat down beside me and was pulling from his pocket half the singed carcass of a hare, which he had trapped the night before. He tore it into two pieces and handed my share to me. He studied the city as he gnawed on the hare's bones, his eyes half shut in calculation.

"It's not going to be easy, Maidie."

"I can see that."

"We can't go through the gates like ordinary folk. Terrible strict they are these days, with all the panic on. It's permits and badges and letters you need before they'll let you in. But I have a trick or two. And I've some old friends who will help us out once we're inside the walls. You'll have to trust me, Maidie."

I felt a rush of love and gratitude for the wily old man.

"I do, Tam! I always will! You don't know how grateful I am. You always look after me. You always know what to do. I just wish I was rich. I'd give you lots to eat and plenty of whiskey, and you'd have a new coat every year, and a bed with a linen sheet like they have at Ladymuir."

His mouth opened in a hideous grin.

"That's very good of you, darling. I take that very kindly." He looked as pleased as if I really did have a comfortable home to offer him. "When you're settled, if you can find room in your house for poor old Tam, I'll end my days as happy as a king. It won't be long. A pretty girl like you can find a husband. That cousin of yours, Ritchie Blair, he seems a nice-enough young man. A bit serious, perhaps. But he likes you, I could tell."

He stopped. His sharp ears had caught the sound of footsteps above us, and he was already on his feet, creeping quietly into a crevice in the hillside. I followed him. We stood motionless until the lone traveler went past, then settled ourselves comfortably again for the long wait ahead.

Talking of the future had set a question nagging in my brain. Annie had talked of a letter. Of money owed to me from the Laird of Keames and Mr. Macbean.

The seed she had planted in my mind that day had grown like a weed at first. I'd thought and dreamed about having money of my own. I'd asked Annie again several times, but from the way she'd laughed at me, I'd decided that the whole thing had been just a malicious invention that she'd made up to torment me.

But if there's any truth in it,
I thought,
Tam might know. He's from Bute. He knew my father.

"Who's the Laird of Keames, Tam?" I asked.

"Mr. Bannantyne. Whatever made you think of him?"

"It was something Annie said. Months ago. She said he'd owed my father money. And Mr. Macbean did too."

"Did she, now?" Tam had cracked the bone he was chewing, and he was sucking out the marrow. "I wouldn't set any store by that, Maidie. Your father died a long time ago, God rest his soul."

"She said she'd seen a letter about it. At Macbean's."

"A letter, eh?" Tam looked impressed.