Wild Island (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

Blood on the rose

Slowly Jemima took a measured look at the flag-bearer.

He was in fact an extremely young man. He had the black curly hair and blue eyes, the kind of bull-like looks traditionally associated with Ireland. He was wearing a kilt, and a white t-shirt on which a large red rose was emblazoned - or perhaps splashed would have been a better word-for there were splashes of red emanating from the rose. It took her a moment to realize that the rose was in fact intended to be dripping blood. Beneath the rose, also in the colour of blood, was the emblem which she had noticed on the station platform.

And behind the man's ear - improbable touch - was a real red rose. The shirt was pristine. But the flower was overblown and slightly wilting. Jemima did not think it would survive many more expeditions of this sort.

'Up the Red Rose,' repeated this unlikely dandy, shaking his flag. His expression was quite amiable.

'If you say so.' To her own ears Jemima's voice sounded over-gracious.

'And may the Red run White,' joined in Duncan for the second time.

'Quite correct. Ah, Mr Duncan, it's you driving, is it? I thought mebbe it would be Sandy.' There was a pause. 'And you'll be Miss Jemima Shore?'

'Yes, I'm Jemima Shore. And who might you be?'

'He's Lachlan Stuart from Torran,' said Duncan.

'Captain Lachlan, ADC to the Chief of the Red Rose.'

'Captain Stuart, why don't you lower the flag,' said Jemima persuasively. She was happy to give him his military rank. Captain Stuart. Captain Shore. She thought for an instant of her father. A very different kind of military man. More like Colonel Beauregard, as glimpsed in the Railway Hotel. The image vanished. She went on, 'And then we can talk.'

Captain Stuart seemed a harmless enough crank, Scottish style.

'Aye, it will be a pleasure to talk to you,' said Captain Stuart. 'A guid talk. I've a guid deal to tell you of the greatest interest. Never you fear. But no' just now. Just now I'm inviting you on behalf of the Red Rose to view the coffin of his Majesty.' This flummoxed Jemima completely. The coffin of his Majesty. Were there two coffins ? Was the glen full of coffins ? No, that was going too far, even in this fantastic world in which she found herself.

'Mr Charles Beauregard's coffin.. ‘ she began cautiously.

'The coffin of his late Majesty King Charles Edward of Scotland. Who you'll mebbe be knowing by the name of Charles Beauregard,' replied Captain Stuart, drawing himself up into a passable military pose.

Heaven have mercy, thought Jemima. What on earth was he talking about? She wished she had a firmer grasp on Scottish history, to know what on earth Captain Stuart could be meaning, with his reference to majesties and kings. Scottish history was an absolutely closed book to Jemima apart from a few salient points like the '45. She had been busy studying Scottish topography for her holiday, and had brought with her the poems of Burns and a couple of Walter Scotts in paperback. The Burns-the love poems-had been a present from Guthrie Carlyle. He had inscribed it: 'Maybe you will invite me to your island ...' Jemima had accepted the book and made a mental resolution to do no such thing. The Scotts on the other hand,
Old Mortality
and
The Heart of Midlothian,
had been recommended to her as 'the good Scotts' - as though there could be bad Scotts like bad people-by Marigold Milton, her brilliant if didactic girlfriend from Cambridge days, now suitably teaching English to a widening circle of terrorized but fascinated students at London University. Neither Burns nor Scott, national heroes as they might be, struck her as likely to be particularly helpful in the present situation.

It seemed that she should have been studying the ancestry of the Scottish royal family. There was some kind of Stuart pretender; she dimly recalled ceremonies in which, surely, a white rose rather than a red had been involved. But wasn't the fellow a Bavarian prince anyway?

Of course it was up to her whether she chose to discover the answer to these questions. She imagined she was perfectly free to refuse Captain Lachlan's courteous invitation on behalf of the Red Rose. She would simply express her wish to reach her destination as soon as possible (true enough) and pass by on the otherside from the flag-waving self-styled ADC to the Chief-... Curiosity, at once her best and her worst quality, got the better of her. The funeral was hardly likely to last long, and she was keen to satisfy a certain low desire to find out more about this surprising Beauregard family in a painless manner.

But with Lachlan installed in the front seat of the car, she discovered almost immediately that she was wrong on one count: the funeral was not intended to be brief.

'We intend to see that the late monarch gets a full royal funeral,' explained Captain Stuart. 'As far as is possible in the present circumstances. And will ye be driving with more care, Mr Duncan. We don't want anything to happen to Miss Shore while she's under the protection of the Red Rose.'

Well, thought Jemima, he may be a Royalist nut, but at least we agree about Duncan's hair-raising driving ...

'So ypu got yourself a job, did you now ? An ADC, do you call it ?' countered Duncan sarcastically to the quip about his driving. 'After you were thrown off the Estate.' But he did slow down his driving, Jemima noticed.

Lachlan Stuart gave Duncan an extremely dirty look. Jemima thought it wise to intervene. 'Look here, Captain Stuart—*

'Captain Lachlan, if you please, Miss Shore. We have no surnames in the Army of the Red Rose. For security reasons, you understand.'

Security with regard to surnames was surely an idle matter, with Duncan there to provide the necessary information, like a vindictive chorus. Nevertheless Jemima was not disposed to argue the point.

'Captain Lachlan, what on earth is my part in all this? I'm simply on my way to Eilean Fas—'

'Aye, we know that-. We had the information from the Castle.'

'From whom?' He ignored the question.

'And we're taking you along purely as an observer.'

'But an observer of what—'

'Why, to tell the world of the royal funeral of his late Majesty. You'll be representing the world's press and television. And then we'll let you go to make your report. It'll be the making of your career, mebbe,’ added Captain Lachlan kindly, 'to have such an opportunity.'

Curiouser and curiouser. Madder and madder. The press and television indeed! Did he imagine that she carried television cameras with her, somehow concealed in her expensive luggage, to say nothing of travelling crews.

'And what's the Colonel going to say to all this? And Mr Lucas the MP, all the way from London?' enquired Duncan gleefully. It was a question which had been vaguely worrying Jemima.

'The usurper, Colonel Beauregard as you call him, won't get here. By orders of the Red Rose,' responded Captain Lachlan confidently. 'My men are posted further down the road.'

'He was the Colonel to you quick enough. When you worked on the Estate,' Duncan put in in his sing-song voice, apparently unable to resist intervening.

'There's blood on the Red Rose now, Mr Duncan,' answered Captain Lachlan with intensity. 'You know that. Everyone on the Estate-as you call it, but I've another name for it-everyone knows that. Who killed Mr Charles Beauregard? Tell me that now. Never tell me he drowned. Him knowing the river all ways since he was a boy. Who would go fishing in Marjorie's Pool ? Just when he was setting up the memorial and all ?'

Duncan said nothing. His silence worried Jemjma more than the presumably wild accusations of Lachlan Stuart. She had expected him to rebut them furiously. But he said nothing.

'And where was Mr Ben Beauregard on that occasion ? Fishing down the river,.. His own cousin, and who hated him since they were boys—* Captain Lachlan stopped. There had been genuine emotion in his voice. He seemed ashamed of having expressed it.

'Drowned,' he repeated much more calmly. 'Aye, there's blood on the Red Rose.'

Duncan's only response was to drive faster as though to get away from Captain Lachlan's passion.

'Mr Duncan, I warned you,' said Captain Lachlan after a brief silence. 'The Red Rose wouldna like it if anything was to happen to Miss Jemima Shore.'

The road was descending into the plain. It seemed appropriate that the brilliant sun, coruscating on the waters of the loch, and which had accompanied Jemima since her arrival in Scotland , had now disappeared. Clouds were massing at the head of the valley. The heads of the high peaks had vanished. Even the heather had lost its vivid purple. How very sombre was its colour without the sun, she thought. And mountains; so often allegedly blue, were actually grey, anthracite grey, or even something darker. The loch, reflecting the sky, had not so much lost its colour as gained an angry positive darkness.

By the time they reached the simple white-washed church, there was no feeling of light or sun in the valley at all.

Standing round the church were a group of men. Some wore dark clothes, but the majority wore kilts with dark jackets. She noticed that no one wore a t-shirt splashed with blood on the rose. These were presumably the mourners for Charles Beauregard. There were no women outside the church that Jemima could see. Above the church there was a small white arch with a bell inside it. And above that was a flag. In the gathering breeze, the flag stirred and fluttered. On a white background, a vast rose could be clearly seen. There seemed to be some royal arms of sorts there as well. Below that the red emblem - UR
2
.
Of course. Up the Red Rose. Jemima had always been rather good at guessing riddles.

Now she saw that the mourners outside the church all had red roses in their buttonholes.

Where were the rest of the congregation-the Beauregard family ? Jemima suddenly felt rather ill-equipped to attend this strange funeral and regretted the half-frivolous impulse which had brought her to the church.

With his debonair courtesy, Captain Lachlan ushered Jemima up the gravel path through the small lych-gate. Church of St Margaret and All the Angels, Glen Bronnack. Mass 8 am daily; 8 and 11.30 Sundays. For the first time Jemima realized that this plain little valley structure was in fact a Catholic church. Its plainness had deceived her. How very different from the ornate chapel of the Convent of the Blessed Eleanor where she, as a Protestant living nearby, had been educated during the war.

Jemima suddenly wished passionately that she had Mother Agnes by her side. Mother Agnes, the young but increasingly formidable Reverend Mother of that convent, was, she often thought, the only truly serene person that she knew. Her serenity added to her strength. Mother Agnes would know how to deal with Lachlan, of that she was quite convinced. Lacking the nun at her side, Jemima tried to imagine at least how Mother Agnes would behave in these circumstances. Calm, but forceful calm, seemed to be the watchword. As it was, she would have to content herself relating it all to Mother Agnes afterwards in a long, long letter once she had reached Eilean Fas. And peace.

There were graves on either side of the path. Most of them looked old, forgotten, mossy. But one newly dug, surrounded by red roses, caught her attention. Beyond, surrounded by a little low hedge of green bush, was a separate enclave. Here were situated a number of graves. All very freshly tended. No moss here. And there, quite clearly to her surprise, was another freshly dug grave. By its side, also, was grouped a flower-shop of wreaths, white chrysanthemums, touches of yellow, predominantly white flowers. Conventional funeral floristry. And not a sign of a red rose to be seen.

Still gallant. Captain Lachlan ushered Jemima to the front door of the church. As Jemima entered the church itself, heads, a multitude of them, or so it seemed, turned round, as though according to a single command. A blur of white faces, all quite unknown to her, all looking as reproachful as a herd of sheep in a field disturbed from grazing by a strange dog.

The small church was packed. The walls, like its exterior, were white-washed, and punctuated here and there by brass plates and other memorial stones. The Stations of the Cross were there to remind one of its Catholicism, otherwise it resembled a simple Scottish church of some lower denomination much more than any Catholic church Jemima had ever visited. But there was an extraordinary glass window above the altar. Greens and blues swam in front of her eyes like a lighted aquarium. Figures, knights on horses-perhaps crusaders-swirled among the vivid colours in what was some kind of battle scene. Gazing at it a moment, Jemima lost all sense of her surroundings.

The next moment a rich harsh voice rang out in a very strong and - for once - ugly Scottish accent:

'Lachlan Stuart, you have no right to bring your wicked flummery into the House of God. You are making a mockery of Christian burial.'

The sheep-like faces of the congregation, continued to stare in their direction. Striding down the aisle towards them was a truly enormous man, his long black cassock flapping behind him. Over it, the white surplice hardly seemed to come half way down. Thick black eyebrows, in contrast to the shock of white hair above, dominated the face above the surplice. The man must be at least six and a half feet tall, thought Jemima. And he was gazing at Captain Lachlan with blazing fury. Jemima herself got a scathing look. Of all the absurd things, she was suddenly embarrassed to find herself wearing trousers in church.

'And, wummun, whomsoever you may be, will you not cover your head decently in the House of God ? And in the presence of the dead.'

It was then that Jemima became aware of the coffin, draped in black velvet, behind the priest. An enormous wreath of red roses was centred on top of the black velvet. There was a surround of some kind of tartan, and tartan flags were hanging from poles at each corner of the coffin. Her eyes travelled to the altar. Once again red roses - that most unlikely accompaniment to a funeral—were here placed, defiantly as it were, in vast vases.

Jemima felt in her handbag. It was no time to be arguing about the relaxation of the Church's rules concerning head-covering. Which as far as she knew had occurred many years back in the rest of the world, but news of which had evidently not penetrated Glen Bronnack. A chiffon scarf, Hanae Mori, printed with a design of hearts, emerged and fluttered nervously in her fingers as she tried to tie it rapidly over her hair. Its pale pretty colours must make her, she thought, look even more unsuitable among the sea of black hats and veils which stretched before her.

Captain Lachlan himself was in no way discomposed by the priest's anger.

'Father Flanagan, you may now-proceed with the funeral of his late Majesty,' was all he said, with a calm Jemima envied.