The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (39 page)

"I've always been a peaceful man!" he would cry out. "I've only wanted to do what's right, and look after my family, and work in my fields, and worship my Savior in the true Presbyterian way! Why? Why has all this persecution happened to us? Why have such wicked men been unleashed against us?"

And he would go over, again and again, the cruelties and slaughter he had witnessed.

They're not all wicked,
I thought.
Not Musketeer Sharpus, anyway. You can't condemn them all. Tam didn't. He was sorry about the ones who died on the other side too.

Uncle Blair spoke of Tam only once, after the sound of a bagpipe had wafted to us on a distant breeze.

"I couldn't get the measure of the man at all," he said. "A rascally kind of a fellow, I suppose."

"He was good," I said lamely. "You didn't know the half of it. He helped people. Even thieves and poor people that no one else noticed."

Like Jesus,
I nearly added.

Uncle Blair was following his own train of thought.

"He wasn't a man of the Covenant, now, was he?"

"No, Uncle. I never heard him talk about that."

"And on the subject of man's free will, were his views sound?"

"He didn't know what it meant."

Uncle Blair walked on in silence.

"I sometimes think," he said at last, with a kind of wondering in his voice, "that we judge wrongdoers too harshly and forget the message of love in the Gospel."

I admired my uncle for the strength of his convictions, but it was when he softened into a kind of doubt that I really loved him.

While he'd been talking about Tam, the inner struggle that had been going on inside me ever since we had walked out through the gates of Edinburgh had been resolved. I knew what I was going to do. I put my hand into my pocket and fingered the little leather purse in which lay the precious coins that Mr. Shillinglaw had given me. They rattled against my father's silver buckle. Their jingle seemed to say,
You're free. Free to go.

If it hadn't been such a fine day, with the August sun warming the stones and the rowan berries turning scarlet on the trees, I think my resolve would have weakened. But as we approached the turning that would lead to Kilmacolm and Ladymuir, I steeled myself to walk past it and go on to the west, until I reached the sea and the boat that would take me home.

Uncle Blair was about to turn down the familiar path and was speeding up with joyful anticipation of his homecoming, before I plucked up the courage to tell him my decision. He stared at me, appalled.

"Go back to Bute? After all that's happened? And travel alone? A young woman? You can't! I won't allow it!"

"I'm sorry, Uncle," was all I could say. "I can't go home with you."

"Maggie, dear girl." He put his hands on my arms and looked earnestly into my face. "I know that your aunt hasn't always—that she doesn't find it easy to—but in her heart she values you, I know she does, and she wants you to be with us."

I reached up and kissed his cheek, from which the beard, scraped off by Cousin Thomas, was already bristling out again.

"It's not my aunt," I said. "She's always done her best with me. But I want to go home! I told you what the lawyer man said. There's no danger for me now. I have to face my accusers. I can't go on running forever. And I must thank Mr. Robertson for trying to help me, and I've got to see if my old cow is all right, and—and—oh, so many things."

"You mean," he said, his brow wrinkling, "that you feel duty bound to return? That it's the Lord who's showing you this path and not some girlish willfulness?"

There was such simple goodness and honesty in my uncle that it was impossible to lie to him. A glib answer rose to my lips and died there.

"I'm not sure if that's it, exactly," I said at last. "It's what my heart is telling me to do. Is that my conscience speaking? And if so, is it the voice of the Lord?"

He nodded slowly.

"With you, Maggie, I believe it is. Your heart is pure. Your courage is proven. But I don't like it. I'm afraid for you. And they will all be disappointed at home."

They won't think of me at all,
I thought.
Not once they've seen you. Except for Ritchie, perhaps, and Martha.

Aloud I said, "You don't need to worry about me, Uncle. It's only a few miles from here to Largs. I'll be there by tonight. And boats go across every day to Rothesay."

"Well," he said reluctantly. "You've a strong mind, my dear, and you've achieved harder things than this. I suppose I must let you go. But you'll come again soon to Ladymuir? We'll not be happy till we've seen you there again."

"I will. I promise."

He had given in.

"I shall remember you daily in my prayers," he said, and kissed me fondly on my cheek.

I almost wavered when I saw the love and concern in his eyes, but I steeled myself for a last goodbye, and once he had set out down the track, he didn't look back. I knew that every bit of him was yearning for his home and family.

For a moment, I was horribly lonely but straight afterward came a wave of joy. I jumped and twirled about and began to almost run on toward the sea.

Fortune smiled on me that day, because as I marched along the road, swinging my arms, a farmer and his wife offered to take me up in their cart. I sat on the back of it, dangling my legs all the way to Largs, where the masts of ships bound for the islands were bobbing about on the quayside, casting long shadows across the water in the evening light.

The farmer let me sleep in his barn that night, and his wife called me into her kitchen for a bowl of steaming porridge in the morning.

"There's a boat going over to Bute in an hour or two," she told me. "My man's asked the skipper for you. He'll give you a passage for a couple of pennies."

I thanked her, surprised by her kindness and interest in me.

"What did you say your name was?" she asked, watching me as I ate my breakfast.

"Maggie. Maggie Blair."

"I knew it." She clapped her hands down onto her apron in triumph. "I said to Nicholas last night, she'll be that girl, I said, the one who was taken up for a—you know what I mean—over in Rothesay, and who got out of the tolbooth." She paused, her eyes on me, bright with curiosity, and when I didn't say anything, she nodded, satisfied. "There were all kinds of stories at first, about the Devil flying away with you over the chimneys. Of course,
I
didn't believe them. Superstitious nonsense! But then it got out about the jailer drinking himself stupid and how your granny shooed you out on your own. How did you do it? How did you get off the island without being seen? Everyone wonders. You must have been so scared!"

She had been so kind and seemed so excited to meet me that I felt obliged to tell her my story, though I didn't want to. The memory of that awful time still made me shake inside. Luckily, before I'd had to say too much, the farmer put his head around the door.

"If you want to get to Rothesay today, you'd better run down to the shore now, miss. The sails are up. They're about to cast off."

***

Although it was still August, there was a fresh wind blowing, filling the boat's sails and making me shiver and pull my shawl close around my head. Slowly, very slowly, the Isle of Bute, lying long and low on the horizon, grew up out of the sea. As the hours passed, I could make out first the shapes of the bays, and then the outline of trees, and then the long strips of field at harvest, lying in brown and yellow lines across the hillsides, and then farmhouses with their ragged thatched roofs. At last I could make out people, walking about on the foreshore.

It looks so small,
I thought.
Even the castle. It's nothing compared to Edinburgh. I'd always thought Rothesay was a grand big place.

Though my heart thudded with fear, I felt an unexpected longing as the boat's prow creamed through the final stretch of water to tie up at the jetty. I'd never known until this moment how much I'd missed my island.

I'd had no clear idea of what I'd do once I arrived, though I'd planned first to walk down to Kingarth to seek out Mr. Robertson and thank him for the help he'd given to Granny and me. But I hadn't bargained for the stir my arrival would cause.

I'd hardly taken my first steps ashore when a woman carrying a basket of oysters on her head cried out, "Look who it is! The Blair girl! Maggie Blair!"

Heads swiveled around. The miller, loading sacks out of the boat onto his horse, almost let one drop as he turned to stare. A couple of fishermen, who were working on the upturned hull of their boat, dropped their tools and came over for a better look. A moment later a crowd had gathered.

I felt a surge of terror. Had Mr. Shillinglaw told me the truth? Or was I walking straight back into the old nightmare?

Then someone called out, "So you've come back, then, Maggie. Good for you!"

He spoke with self-conscious bravery, as if he was afraid he might be going against the general opinion.

"Aye, welcome home, girl," said another, more confidently.

"Look at her! She's grown! Hasn't she grown?" marveled a woman.

"Aye, you always were a bonny lass," another said, her voice almost sickly with affection.

Inside me, something that had been pulled as taut as a fiddle string relaxed so suddenly that I was afraid I would slump down and be overwhelmed with tears. Only Granny's voice, loud inside my head, stopped me.

"Hold your head up, child. Where's your pride? Don't let the loons see you down."

"Well," I said, swallowing hard. "I see they've not mended the castle walls yet. And the tolbooth looks about the same, too."

There were a few uneasy laughs, and someone said, "Look, here comes Mr. Robertson," and there was a murmur of relief as they stepped back to let him past.

Mr. Robertson raised his hat to the crowd and was about to hurry by when he saw me. He stopped and his face broke open into a smile so frankly joyful that I had to smile back at him.

"Here's someone I'd never hoped to see again! Maggie, it
is
you! Oh, this is wonderful. You've come back, I hope, in a spirit of forgiveness. We know, all of us, what a great wrong was done to you." His gaze swept around the ring of faces. Eyes dropped and feet shuffled. "I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we want to make amends."

At that moment a couple of boys who had been chasing each other down the hill burst into the crowd. They saw me, and the first began to chant, "
Witch girl, witch hag, hang and burn her, till she's...
"

Before he could finish, a giant of a farmer turned and swiped at him, catching such a clout on the side of his head that the boy went sprawling in the mud.

"Hold your tongue, you wee scunner," he snarled.

It's still there. Under the surface. It always will be,
I thought, a chill in my heart.

But Mr. Robertson was talking to me again.

"You'll come home with me to Kingarth, I hope? You'll take your dinner with us, perhaps. Where are you sleeping tonight?"

"I—I'm not sure. I hadn't thought."

"Mrs. Robertson will be delighted to meet you. My wife, you know. I was married last December."

He looked self-conscious and actually blushed. I noticed then that he was no longer the thin, gangling young man of last year. He had filled out, and the buttons of his long black waistcoat were actually straining across his stomach.

"Thank you, Mr. Robertson," I said gratefully, wishing to get away from the ring of onlookers as much as anything else. "I'd be grateful."

***

It was a relief to leave Rothesay behind, and Mr. Robertson kept blessedly silent until we had left behind us the grim tolbooth and climbed the hill toward St. Mary's Church. But as we passed the door, I was hit by such a strong memory of the day when Granny and I had stood there in sackcloth, as the good people of Bute, filled with hate, spat at us, that I began to tremble and feel sick.

"It's over, Maggie. It's all over now," Mr. Robertson said kindly, seeing how white I had turned.

I couldn't help it. I started crying then. He stopped and made me sit down under a tree in the churchyard, passed me his kerchief to wipe my nose, and waited, quiet and patient, until I had managed to pull myself together with a last hiccup.

It was five miles or so to Kingarth, nearly two hours of walking, but even that wasn't time enough for all the questions he asked me and his expressions of astonishment at my answers.

"So you've been aiding the martyrs of Dunnottar," he kept saying admiringly. "That was a terrible thing, so I've heard."

There were questions I wanted to ask him, but we reached his manse at Kingarth before I had the chance.

I hung back at his solid front door, afraid that Mrs. Robertson might not be as pleased to see me as her husband had promised. But I needn't have worried. Mrs. Robertson was as clean and pink as her husband, but small and round, with bobbing curls and a tendency to laugh at the smallest thing. She seemed a strange kind of wife for the earnest young minister, but I could see that she had done him good, softening his austerity and giving him a greater ease.

Although I felt shy in her neat kitchen, I smiled inwardly at how much more nervous I would have been over a year ago. I saw myself as I had been then: a wild, dirty child, with ragged clothes and unkempt hair, ignorant, illiterate, and fearful. I caught a puzzled look on her face as she appraised the good woolen cloth of the gown that Cousin Thomas had given me and watched me fold my shawl neatly and lay it aside, as Aunt Blair had always done, before I sat at the table and folded my hands, waiting for Mr. Robertson to say grace.

Is this really the girl you told me about?
she seemed to be asking her husband.

I couldn't help showing off a little as the meal progressed. I told Mrs. Robertson how Mr. Haddo dressed cocks' combs in the Marischal of Dunnottar's kitchens. I explained to her Aunt Blair's method of salting beef and began to describe the fashionable dresses of the high-up ladies of Edinburgh, though I stopped before I had told her of the craze for ribbon knots when I noticed that Mr. Robertson was frowning with displeasure at this show of frivolity.