Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (30 page)

The grave in the glade held him as one caught in a spell. Before, he had been prey to fear and anxiety and kindred emotions as it became more and more apparent that his daughter’s life was hanging in the balance, but this sight filled him with a welling and inexpressible grief.

At last he went over to the mound and knelt at its side, half fearing in his heart that he would read, “HERE LIES MARY RUADH MACDHUI, AGED 7, BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANDREW MACDHUI—”

He tilted his big, burning, aggressive head to read the legend inscribed on the board, bending low to make out the faded, washed-out lettering and, in this manner, came into possession of the knowledge as to who and what lay buried there, for he could make out, “H re lies T omasina born Jan. 18, 1952, FOUL Y MURDERED Jul 26 1957 Sleep Sweetly Sain ed Freind.”

The true horror of the place to which he had come grew upon him only gradually. Kneeling there, a massive, self-sufficient man, red beard as always outjutted in defiance of the world, he was not at first even aware that his head, twisted to read the accusing letters, was shaking from side to side in negation.

Foully murdered! Foully murdered! Foully murdered!

It was untrue! It was a lie! There had been no time. The cat was already half dead. It would have died anyway. Who had written those words that forced themselves like hard, cold stones into the pit of his stomach and turned his bowels to ice? Who had dared to pass this verdict upon his judgment and write it for anyone to read?

Now the picture of Hughie Stirling of the handsome head, the clear blue eyes, and the level gaze came into the mind of Andrew MacDhui, and with it the forms and faces of his two companions. And it was as though he heard three young voices speak and they cried out, “Mr. Veterinary Surgeon Andrew MacDhui to the Bar. You are to be judged by childhood. The verdict will be rendered out of our way of seeing things and the sentence will be the contempt you have earned in our eyes.”

He saw them again, his judges, lined up in his study; long-necked, long-faced Jamie Braid, Hughie Stirling of the open countenance, crop-headed tear-smudged Geordie McNabb, making their accusations against the gypsies for cruelty and inhumanity toward something helpless that had set off the spark of love in their breasts and touched their hearts.

“They beat the poor bear! They were awfu’ cruel! They struck a horse wi’ a loaded crop!”

And behind them the silent shadowy figure of Mary Ruadh. “He killed my cat!” How long had it been since he had heard the sound of her voice, or seen her eyes light in a smile at his presence? “Murder!” had been the verdict of the three stern unbiased judges. Here they had interred the victim, to the drone of the pipes of Jamie Braid; here had stood Mary Ruadh in her sham widow’s weeds and laid her living child’s heart alongside her dead.

“Foully murdered,” the judges had added, and Mary Ruadh had passed upon him the sentence of silent contempt.

The cold, congealing portent of the full circle he had come crept to his heart. Would they write “Foully murdered!” too, upon the gravestone of his child? A groan, “No! No!” burst from him, and he struck his forehead with the heels of his hands savagely to drive away the fearful thoughts storming in upon him. But it was too late . . . The breach in the dam of his arrogance and self-sufficiency had been made and through it overwhelmingly poured the floodwaters of his guilt and failure as a human being.

His arsenal had been the stony heart and stubborn will and monumental selfishness. Even in his wooing of Lori he had forgotten his child and had bawled like a madman for her to come to him. This fearful grave with its contents and inscription had in one blinding flash succeeded in showing him to himself and the enormity of shouldering through life without pity, compassion, and human sympathy. He had loved neither man nor beast, but only himself. He had failed on every count as father, husband, lover, doctor, and man. The mocking grave laid his daughter’s death at his door.

This then was the way that Andrew MacDhui, veterinary of Inveranoch, was brought to his knees, the shivering wreck of a once proud and self-sufficient man whose tears of revulsion burst the restraint of his manhood and coursed unheeded down his face as at last he brought himself to cry aloud words he never thought would pass his lips.

“God forgive me my sins! God help me!! Help me, God!”

Then he staggered to his feet and fled the glade, the grave, and its marker, leaving behind him, undiscovered, the sole spectator to these events, the small, ginger cat with pointed ears who lay above his head upon the branch of a giant beech growing at the edge of the glade that stretched almost to the little mound. She had been there from beginning to end, her paws tucked up under her and a smug, pleased, and interested expression on her long, narrow face as she gazed down through the leaves at the strange and disturbing spectacle below.

2 7

I
AM
the Pasht, the holy, the dedicated, the sacred!

Glory to Amen-Ra, creator of all!

I am truly Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, mistress of the skies, before whom man and beast tremble. The sun is my father, the stars are my playthings. When I stretch I span the universe; my growl is the thunder; the lightnings flash from my eyes; the earth shakes when my whiskers quiver; my tail is the ladder from earth to heaven.

I am God!

I have been worshiped once more. I have been acknowledged. I have been prayed to.

I said that if but one walked this earth who knew me for who and what I was in this incarnation of my sacred ka, my divine power would return to me and I would be as once I was before, all wise, all seeing, all knowing, all terrible, all merciful.

Such a one there has been and I am God again. Bow low ye foolish ones in the presence of all cats, persecute or slay them not, for Bast sits once more upon her throne and fearful is her vengeance.

It came about the day after the night of the fire in the valley and the change in Lori, when I had despaired of who I was, or what I was.

I had gone to a quiet glade in the forest where I liked to be when I wished to be peaceful and think upon things. There was a grave there of one of us who in her life had been known as Thomasina. The branch of a great beech tree stretched over it and I was accustomed to climbing out and lying upon it.

The quiet and my thoughts were disturbed when raving and cursing, mine enemy, the Man with the Red Beard came crashing from the forest and into the circle of the glade, where he paused, staring about him like a mad bull.

Then he went to the grave of the one who had been known as Thomasina and a great change came over him. For he wept for one of us. He groaned, and rolled his eyes, and tore at his flaming beard and hair. He knelt there crying great tears in an agony of remorse.

And then he looked aloft and worshiped me. He confessed his sin and begged my forgiveness. He prayed to me to help him in his need. I have granted him his prayer.

It matters not that he was mine enemy upon whom I had placed a doom and whom I had hated to this day.

I hate him no longer.

I am a merciful and forgiving god to those who acknowledge me.

“God help me! Help me God!” he cried to me.

By Isis and Osiris, Horus, Hathor and my father god, the sun, now you shall become acquainted with the power and mercy of Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, queen of the night and cat goddess of Bubastis on the Nile!

2 8

W
hen at last Andrew MacDhui returned to the house in Argyll Lane he found a knot of the curious gathered outside the door, including Constable MacQuarrie and the three boys, Hughie, Jamie, and Geordie, and was prepared for the worst. It was midday.

But the constable touched his checker-band cap and said, “About whatever happened last night, sir—”

“Aye—”

“I only came to tell you, sor, there’ll be no trouble. The gypsies have move clean away.” he hesitated and then added, “And thank you, sir. We should have kept a better eye on them—”

MacDhui said, “Yes, I know—”

The constable then said, “Aboot the wee one—”

MacDhui was surprised to find how numb he was with resignation. “Aye—”

The constable looked embarrassed. “I’ll be prayin’ that she pulls through, sor.”

“Thank you, constable. Do.”

The boys were at his side, wishing to speak. MacDhui faced his judges. Hughie Stirling asked, “May we go inside, sir?”

“I think not right now—”

Geordie McNabb asked, “Is Mary Ruadh dying?”

Hughie Stirling lost his head and shook the boy roughly. “Shut up, you little beast!”

MacDhui held Hughie’s arm. “Let him be,” he said and then added, “Yes. I am afraid Mary Ruadh is dying.” He faced them squarely.

Jamie Braid said, “Och, ’tis grieved we are. ’Tis I will play the Lament for her.”

MacDhui marveled. Could they then so young, like the wisest of the bench, judge, sentence, and hold no rancor?

The irrepressible Geordie asked, “What happened to the bear?”

MacDhui understood that the death of the bear would mean more to this boy than the death of his daughter, but it did not make him angry. He felt only the necessity to keep the news of the bear’s end from the child. He said gravely, “The bear has gone away, Geordie, and I promise you it will not be hurt or suffer again.” He was rewarded by the look of relief and gratitude in Hughie Stirling’s eyes.

Hughie said, “Sir! We heard about what you did last night. You were”—he groped for the word that would convey their admiration and finally found it—“super, sir. Thank you.”

MacDhui said absently, “Yes, yes—” and then to those gathered at his door, “Please go. When it happens, you shall know.” He went inside.

Dr. Strathsay, Mr. Peddie, Mrs. McKenzie, and Willie Bannock were there. The pendulous folds of the doctor’s face were deeper and sadder than ever. But he looked up from his attendance at the bedside and asked with some asperity, “Where the devil have you been?”

MacDhui replied curtly, “Seeking help.”

Mr. Peddie, the eyes in the round face behind their spectacles filled with concern, exhaled softly. He thought he knew where MacDhui sought it. “Did you find it?” he asked.

“No.” MacDhui went over to the bed, picked the child up and held her in his arms, her head tucked beneath the red bristles of his chin. He noted that she seemed to have almost no weight. Pressing her close to his heart, he faced them all with a trace of his old truculence. “I will not let her die,” he said.

“Man,” said Dr. Strathsay almost angrily, “Have you prayed?”

MacDhui replied more quietly, “Aye. I have.”

An involuntary sigh escaped from Mr. Peddie. The veterinary looked his friend in the eye. “I did not attempt bribery,” he said.

The anger was drained out of Dr. Strathsay, as MacDhui tenderly laid the child back in the bed and accompanied him to the door. The doctor said, “If you think there is something more I can do, call me—at any hour—and we will try.”

Oddly, MacDhui found himself wishing he could reassure and comfort the old practitioner, and wondered where from himself this new emotion of compassion welled. What repeated anguish and agony was the share of those who dealt with sickness and health, life and death! And he knew the deep lines of the face to have been etched by the lifetime of sentences pronounced upon so many, greatly loved by others who could not bear to see them go.

He appreciated that Strathsay would not speak those words to him that banished all hope, but in his way was telling him that the child would not live out the night.

When the doctor had departed MacDhui returned to the room and said, “It will not happen yet,” to Mrs. McKenzie and Willie Bannock. “I will call you.” They left. Mr. Peddie lingered a moment, preparing to leave himself when the animal doctor nodded to him and said, “Stay, Angus—if you like—”

The minister asked, “You went to the glen?”

“Aye. I had hoped—if Lori could come— If Lori would but once hold her to her heart—”

“Yes. I see. And she would not?”

“I rang the Mercy Bell. She would not come forth. She must have known it was I. Then—then I lost my head, and made off. She will not come. It is all over now.”

Peddie shook his head decisively. “No,” he said, and then repeated it. “No. It is not too late. Perhaps—” He studied his friend. “You said you had prayed, Andrew.”

“Aye.”

“Were you helped?”

“I don’t know,” said MacDhui.

“Will you try again, Andrew, and I will join you?”

The look that MacDhui threw his friend bore a trace of the old, truculent, unbeaten agnostic, but it was compounded more of the shame and embarrassment of a man who has just come to the discovery that self-sufficiency was not enough, whose old, hard crusts of disbelief had been penetrated but not yet sloughed off.

The Reverend Peddie had one of those rare and inspired flashes of insight that made him what he was. He read the thought behind MacDhui’s brow, now flushed fiery red, knew the words that were forming at his lips—“I will not bend the knee, Angus”—and himself spoke swiftly to prevent their being said, lest by the tenets of his creed and Church he be forced to insist upon what would lose him this sorely tried man.

He spoke from a heart filled with divine and human pity. “You need not abase yourself, Andrew. You will be heard upon your feet as well as upon your knees. You need not even join your hands. Mercy and love are not dependent upon gestures or attitudes.”

MacDhui felt a sudden warmth of both gratitude and love toward this man and he thought he understood for the first time what his God meant to the Reverend Peddie and the manner in which he tried to serve Him on earth. He felt at ease with his friend. As for himself, ever since he had stumbled upon the grave in the glade he had been possessed by that conviction of which Peddie had once spoken and which he knew had been present within him in spite of himself for more years than he could tell. Yet the old habits were hard to break. He said, “It is hard for me, Angus. I do not know how to pray. What shall I say?”