Twelve Great Black Cats (8 page)

“Come, mistress,
mo graidh
,” Geordie coaxed. “You canna bide here. Come along hame wi' Geordie, will ye not?”

The old woman took a firm grip on the doorposts at either side. “I'll nae be flittin',” she said.

The factor alit from his horse and strode up to the door.

“I'll have no more impertinence from you, old woman!” he shouted. “Let this fellow in to bring your furnishings out, or I'll burn them with the house.”

Auld Jeanie looked him straight in the eye. “I'll nae be flittin',” she said.

The factor, furious because she dared to defy him, caught the old body by the shoulder and, hauling her away from the doorway, thrust her aside so roughly that she fell sprawling in the middle of the road.

Young Geordie ran out in alarm and lifted her up, brushing the dust from her skirts. “Come away, now, come to the cart,” he begged.

Jeanie set him aside, and turned to face the factor. She fixed her eyes on his, and he stared back as if unable to turn away.

“I lay a curse upon you, factor,” she said, speaking not very loud but very clear. “I lay a curse upon you! Hark to me! As ye have sowed, so shall ye reap. Evil you have sowed and evil shall be your harvest. I lay a curse upon you that the day will come when you shall hunger, with food within sight, and you not able to touch it. You shall thirst with water near, and you not able to take it and drink. You shall call for help and because of your own folly no help will come. When that time comes you will remember this day.”

“The old woman's gone mad!” the factor muttered, half to himself, and turned away at last. With a curse, he sent the man whom he had brought along with him to fire the other shielings but Auld Jeanie's house he himself set aburning, with all her little treasures inside. Jeanie turned her back to the flames springing up behind her. Leaning upon Geordie's arm she walked with him to the cart, and let him lift her up to the high seat. Geordie climbed up to sit beside her, and the little procession of loaded carts and barrows moved slowly down the road toward the town.

The factor glanced at his workmen, who had come to stand beside him in the road, and he thought they looked at him strangely.

“Ignorant superstition!” he exclaimed, and when they did not answer, he strode to his horse and mounting it, he rode away, leaving the shielings flaming high behind him.

Geordie's mother welcomed the old cailleach warmly. Geordie told his mother what had happened, but Jeanie had little to say. They put the old body into an easy chair in a warm nook beside the fire, with a tuffet to set her feet on, and a pillow behind her head. They thought she had fallen asleep and walked softly as they went about the house, but they need not have put themselves to the trouble. When they went to bid her come eat her supper, they saw that she would never awaken again.

“The poor auld cailleach,” said Geordie. “What with the fire and the flittin' and all, 'twas too much for her.”

“It was so,” his mother said. “And her being so frail, forbye.”

But then, as everybody said, happen it was best that it turned out that way. Jeanie could never have contented herself in any house but her own. And all her belongings gone—not so much as a kerchief or keepsake to bring with her. “Och,” they said, “happen 'twas a mercy she did not live to grieve.”

Early one morning in autumn, shortly after the burning of the shielings, the factor called for his horse to ride out and look about the demesne. The farm lasses were already out in the fields with their sickles, helping the men to harvest the golden corn. All autumn's loveliest coloring was beginning to show. Nuts were browning under the sun, rowan berries and haws red and bright in the hedges, and the early apples beginning to ripen on the bough. A man should have been happy in a world so fair to see, but the factor was not contented. He rode on and after a while came to the desolate spot where the ruined shielings were. He got down from his horse to look about the place. Where the road entered the estate a chain had been stretched across the way. A sign hung from the middle, banning the use of the road and warning all who came by of the penalty. The factor walked down to it, to make sure that the chain was fastened tight to the posts on either side. As he stood there he saw three carts laden with sacks of grain going along the highway below, and he grinned to think their journey would be ten miles longer now than it was before he had denied them the use of the road. He took pleasure in the thought because it showed his power.

But he had other things to think of than carts going to the miller. He turned back to the ruins of the burnt cottages and frowned. All this would have to be cleared away. It was a most unsightly mess. Clear it all away, he thought, and level the ground so that no trace of the houses would be left. He would have a big pair of iron gates put across the entrance of the road, and maybe a fence about the stretch of woodland at this side of the estate. There would be other clearances, too. He wouldn't touch the home farm nor the scattered crofts and grazing lands. They paid more than their keep. But there were cottages here and there in the wood, where laboring men and their families lived. Those houses—little better than huts, most of them—must be cleared away. They would have to be emptied and burned, as these shielings among which he stood had been. What the factor had in mind was that he meant to make a deer park, such as great gentlemen had in England. You cannot have people living in a deer park, frightening the deer. To the factor the deer were most important. The people would have to pack up and go. As a gentleman lived, so would he. Since he was sure the Laird of Kennaquhaur would never dare to claim his forfeited estates, the factor saw no reason why he should not be living there all the rest of his days.

He stood in the midst of the destruction he had caused and looked about him, at the jagged walls that remained, and the stones and bits of burned wood. His eye fell on the well in the garden of Jeanie's shieling, and then he saw the apple tree beside the well. The boughs of the tree were burdened with apples and every one was ripe and brightly red. The sun had not yet risen high and the fruit was still dew-pearled.

It was long since the factor had broken his fast and the apples roused his hunger. He would pluck himself half a dozen or so and eat them as he rode home. So he strode over to the well.

He reached up but try as he would he could not pick an apple. The fruit dangled just far enough out of his way to miss his fingers. There beside him was the well, and over it a cover of stout oaken boards. The well-curb was not high above the ground. Standing upon it he could easily reach some of the finest apples on the tree.

But though the wooden cover looked solid and strong, its appearance was deceiving. Years of dampness, winter frost, and summer sun had set the dry rot and wet rot working on it. Though the surface seemed sound, the wood below it had decayed and crumbled until the cover was like an empty shell. The factor, seeing only that the boards looked thick and strong, stepped up and onto the cover of the well. But the minute he put his weight upon it, the rotting wood gave way and down he crashed into the well—down—down—down. Shocked, bruised, and angry, he used what breath he could find to curse the mishap that had befallen him. But soon he gave up ranting, and began to think about getting himself out.

He tried first to climb out of the well, but there were no jutting stones or ledges that he could set his feet upon nor catch hold of with his hands, and the sides of the well, covered with the moss of ages, were too smooth and slimy to be grasped. Luckily, the water was not deep. It came only to his knees, so he was in no danger of drowning. But until someone came, he would have to stay, willing or not, in the well.

He called to his horse, but the creature did not come. He called for help; he shouted; he whistled; he yelled until he was out of breath. He grew thirsty, but he could not reach the water, nor bend in the narrow well to bring himself closer to it. After a while he became hungry. There were the apples on the bough above the well, within his sight but too far to be touched. He called again for help but nobody heard him and nobody came. He had only himself to blame, for no one passed by on the road he had closed.

It was then that the factor remembered the auld cailleach's curse, and thought of the water he could not touch, the apples he could not reach, and the help that would not come, and shuddered with fear.

His horse had pushed its way through a gap in the hedge and wandered down to the high road, cropping the grass at the side. Some miles up the road it met with a band of tinkers and wandering horse copers on their way to a fair in the islands. Seeing a valuable horse roving about and no owner in sight, they took it along with them. They tangled its mane and muddied its sleek sides so that it would look more like their own nags, and hid it among the horses and cattle they were taking to the fair.

Night fell and day broke, and nights and days followed after, one after another. Wagons and carts rolled by on the high road outside the estate taking the long road, but no one came by on the road across Kennaquhaur. And there was no sound at all from the well.

The factor's wife was not worried when her husband missed his dinner. She was used to his staying away when he felt like it, sometimes for two or three days together, without letting her know. But when a week had gone by with no word from him, she began to fret. She was a gentle lady and terribly afraid of her husband, so at first she hesitated to start folk searching for him, lest he be angry with her, should he come suddenly home. But her kind heart gave her courage, so she sent word about that the factor had ridden out on his horse early one morn the week before and neither man nor horse had come back, so would they all seek for them, and if anybody should see them, let her know. The factor's wife was well-liked so what they would not have done for the factor, they willingly did for her. Men for miles around, from the estate, the towns and villages along the shore dropped whatever they were doing and went about seeking the missing man and his horse. Through the woods and glens they hunted, and over moor and bogland, and along the shore with its high steep crags and its bleak barren rocks and its caves with the sea waves curling and cresting around them. Anywhere a man could go on a horse they searched, but never a sign did they find. But folk have their own affairs to attend to, and cannot keep up a fruitless search forever. After a month or two, with the winter setting in, all agreed that there was no hope of finding where the factor had gone.

The factor's wife sent for Geordie and, knowing him to be honest and dependable, she put the home farm and crofts and all in his hands to look after. Then she shuttered and boarded up the big house and went off to London where she had kinfolk of her own.

Ten years went by, and then great news came to Kennaquhaur. Their laird—their own young laird, mind you—had been given a free pardon by the king! His lands had been restored to him and he was on his way home to take his place among his own folk, which was just as it should be. All the tenants and villagers turned out to get the big house ready for the laird. The boards were taken down, the shutters and doors and windows thrown open, and the house cleaned and polished inside from cellar to roof. The old house servants came trooping back, and soon the place had so much of its old air, one might have thought that time had turned back ten years and the laird away for the day.

The tenants turned out to welcome the laird on his return, and many were the tears of joy that were shed, and not by the women only. Indeed, the eyes of the Laird of Kennaquhaur himself were not dry.

For a week the laird was a very busy man. There were the books to go over with Geordie, who had been acting as factor all the long years. Then the laird had to hear all that had happened while he was away. Daily he went among his people or they came to him and, little by little, he gathered the story of the events of the years while he had been away. He heard about the burning of the shielings, and the closing of the road. “Geordie opened the road again, God bless him,” they said, “as soon as the lady went away.” But Jeanie and the old folk from the burnt shielings were all dead and gone now, and the factor had disappeared. It was all very strange, the way it happened. Auld Jeanie stood there and laid the curse upon the man, and within the month the man had vanished and neither hide nor hair of him nor his horse was ever seen again! There were plenty of folk who said Auld Clootie himself had carried the wicked factor and his horse away.

The laird rode out the next day to look at the place where the shielings used to stand. Time and the weather had worked upon the ruins of the old houses and all that was left were heaps of rubble and stones.

“Have the lads redd the place up, Geordie man,” said the laird. “We'll make a bit of a green here, with benches where folk walking by may sit for a while and rest. Have them gather up the stones of the shielings and build a cairn of them. I'll be having a metal plate made to tell what happened here, and we'll fix the cairn in memory of what happened here.”

The laird looked sadly at the deserted scene. “Och, Geordie,” he said. “I'd not have had it happen, even if it cost all of Kennaquhaur to keep it from being done.”

Geordie shook his head. “I was here when it was done,” he said. “'Twas a wicked thing. Aye, a terrible wicked thing. Auld Jeanie died that night of the shock, ye ken.”

“There's Auld Jeanie's apple tree, there,” the laird said. “It could do with a bit of pruning. Och, the apples it bore were the best that grew in all the land. When I was a wee bairn in leading-strings I often had one of Jeanie's apples for a special treat. And there's that old well beside it. I've had no draught of water as clear and cold as that from Auld Jeanie's well since I had to run away from Kennaquhaur.”

“The well is nae sae good, the now,” said Geordie. “The lid's fallen in and the well's choked with twigs and leaves and the like. I've given it no care at all. Nobody ever comes to the place. Seems like folk took a scunner against it after the shielings were burned. When they come by on the road they hasten on, eager to get by, as if they feared some evil might be lurking here.”