Authors: Rosemary Sutcliff
‘’Tis my lady,’ I croaked, ‘she fell on the stairs yestere’en, and this morning—’
Claverhouse was on his feet. ‘Is she – how sore is she hurt?’
‘Awfu’ bad – inside. They sent me to fetch you.’
I heard him catch his breath in between his teeth. Then he spoke, quite calmly to the other two. ‘Colin – Ross, you’ll have to tidy up things here; I’ll be back to the regiment as soon as I can.’ He strode past me through the open doorway, shouting for his man-servant, and when the chiel came running, began giving him orders for his horse to be brought round, and for his riding-cloak for he must start back at once for Dudhope. Aye, and orders for me to be dried and fed and put somewhere to sleep.
I cut in on that. ‘Sir – my post-horse is still at the
door, and hard ridden; I must get him to his own stable out of this wind.’
‘Someone else will see to that,’ Claverhouse said. He put his hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll thank you as you deserve, Hugh, when there’s time. Now away with you and get a good night’s sleep.’
I must have shot up like a beanstalk in the past few months, for it was at that moment I noticed, as one notices things when it is no time to be noticing them, that I no longer had to look up at him, for my eyes were on a level with his, and I could look straight into them. ‘It’s another horse I’ll be needing, no’ the night’s sleep,’ I said. ‘I’ll be riding back with you, sir.’
‘That’s daft talk,’ Claverhouse said, ‘ye’ve ridden close on a hundred miles the day.’
‘Ye can knock ten or more off that if ye strike north-east from Cowdenbeath and up through Leslie, ’stead of round by Kinross.’ My voice sounded mulish in my own ears. ‘Do ye ken that way, sir?’
‘I’ve ridden it as a boy. I daresay I can find it again.’
‘It’s no’ that easy to find. I rode it the day.’
‘You’ll hold me back –’
‘No’ if I’ve a horse to match yours. I’m riding wi’ ye, sir.’
His eyes looked back into mine, hard and searching. Then he let go my shoulders and turned to the servant still hovering in the doorway. ‘Two horses, Murray, and no bed, but dry clothes and food. Hand him over to Effie.’
And he went clattering off up another turn of the stairs, as I suppose to his own chamber.
In something like a dream, I heard the quick concerned voices of his two friends gathering up their own cloaks to depart; the whole place seemed springing to
sudden life; and I was in the kitchen, my head suddenly swimming, in the warmth of the fire stripping off my sodden clothes and dragging on dry ones much too wide for me, under the watchful eye (despite all my protests) of a meagre little woman in an enormous night-cap, who assured me, as she set bread and beer and a heel of braxy ham on the table, that she had had brothers of her own.
I had scarcely had time to start on the food when the clatter of hooves sounded outside, and Effie snatched it from me and thrust it into Darklis’s wallet which somebody must have rescued and brought in, bidding me drink up, flinging a dry plaid over my shoulder, thrusting me out to go racing down the stairs at Claverhouse’s heels.
And almost before I could draw another breath I was in the saddle again, and following Claverhouse up the Cannongate. Mercifully the rain had slacked off, and there was even a late lopsided moon breaking through the ragged clouds, as not much after midnight we left Edinburgh by Leith Wynd and took the road to Queensferry.
I had got a kind of second wind, and I kept going well enough; but truth to tell there’s little that I remember about that ride, for when I think of it now, it is like trying to remember a confused dream. It must have been something after two in the morning when we came to Queensferry, and it was in my mind we might have trouble getting across; but ferries that do not ply for the likes of Hugh Herriot ply for the likes of John Graham of Claverhouse, and we made the Forth crossing without trouble; aye, and found all ready for us at Inverkeithing where I had left word, so that we were on
horseback again with the least possible delay. And Claverhouse said something to me about having a head on my shoulders that warmed the heart in me, though I have never been too clear what it was.
He made me rise beside him whenever the road was wide enough; I am thinking so that he could keep an eye on me and see that I did not roll out of the saddle in my sleep. I mind the hostler at Cowdenbeath saying that the bridge was down in Rother Glen, and my own voice pointing out that I had come that way yesternoon… And unless there had been a lot more rain in the hills…
So we took the Leslie road, and I have a dim memory of splashing our way across the still flooded burn, the shock of the cold hill-water waking me somewhat from my dream, and Claverhouse taking the upstream side to come between me and the force of the spate. I mind the Ochills rearing up ahead of us, the heather on their flanks that had been wine-black yesterday turned to hazy amethyst in the late sunlight. I mind the choking taste of spirits that burned my throat like fire being poured into me at the post-house at Ferny and then not much more, not even the Tay crossing, until we were riding into the courtyard at Dudhope in the first dusk.
They must have been keeping a look-out for us, for the lanterns had been lit early, and Dr Anstruther was coming down the steps from the great door even as we reined up. He looked very tired, but there was a half smile lurking somewhere about his face as he came to Claverhouse’s stirrup. ‘The worst is over,’ he said. ‘By God’s grace your lady will live to bear you many sons.’
Claverhouse dropped from the saddle as I took his bridle from him. ‘The sons can wait,’ he said. ‘I may go to her?’
‘Lady Jean is asleep; I have bled her, and now rest is what she needs above all things. But to find you beside her when she wakes will do more for her than any leechcraft of mine.’
Claverhouse took a long step towards the house, then checked and turned a haggard face to look up at me. ‘My thanks, Hugh,’ he said, and reached up for my hand and gripped and wrung it. Then he went on with the doctor.
I led his horse with my own through into the stable-yard, where other hands took both bridles from me, and there were kindly concerned voices all about me as I half slid, half fell from the saddle, and the cobbles came up to meet me, rocking and dipping under my feet.
I lurched away and somehow clawed my way up the loft ladder, and pitched down on to my straw pallet. Someone pulled the rug over me, but before they had done, I had fallen headlong into sleep with the drum of horses’ hooves still beating in my head.
I SLEPT THE
clock round, and woke aching from head to foot, stiff as a board and hungry as a wolf in a famine winter; but a bowl of steaming porridge and a thick col-lop of mutton soon set the one to rights, and the rest wore off as the day went by, until by noon I was within sight of being back to my usual self. Aye me, the powers of recovery one has when one is not yet turned sixteen!
Not that any work was expected of me that day. Word as to that had come down from the house. And so I found myself with time on my hands, and yet not quite knowing what to do with it. It was the day of Lady Mary Fair, which as it were ends and crowns the summer in Dundee; and from below came the distant mingling of voices singing, shouting, quarrelling and crying their wares, fiddles and horse hooves and the blare of side-show drums and trumpets that was the voice of the town enjoying itself. I could have gone down to join it: but I did not feel in the mood for noise and crowds and sword-swallowers and gilded gingerbread. At least not yet. Maybe later, when the lanterns were lit and some of the other stable hands would be going down.
Now in one corner of the stable-yard grew an ancient fig tree. Age had robbed it of most of its power to bear fruit, and even its leaves were not so thick and heavy as they must have been in its prime. And time and again, when the light fell in a certain way, striking through
what leaves there were, and blotting its shadow velvet dark on the wall behind it (but always at a time when I had work to do), the sight of the old tree had as it were made my drawing hand itch. For the knotted trunk and branches were like some fantastic beast, a dragon maybe, caught in its coilings and turned into a tree.
And that afternoon, as I sat on the edge of the horse-trough and wondered what to do, it caught at my awareness and made my drawing hand itch again. And me with the rest of the day before me empty and unmarked as a leaf of virgin paper.
I fetched down the drawing materials which I had bought with some of my wedding silver and kept in a box under the head of my pallet bed, and settled myself on a convenient mounting block, to the delights of trying to capture my vision.
Once or twice as I worked, one of the other grooms or horseboys peered over my shoulder in the by-going, puzzled, and went his way. It had become accepted in the Dudhope stables that I was daft in this one particular; but if I chose to spend my free time scribbling on bits of paper, instead of playing dice or cock-fighting or hanging round the kitchen door after the lassies, there was no harm in it and I would maybe come to more sense as I grew older. Meanwhile, I could make sketches of men or horses or anything else they called for, which amused them from time to time and was maybe none so bad practice for me either.
So I worked on, unmolested, trying to catch the fantastic twists and coils, the ugly-beautiful strength of the old tree, the contrasting textures of rough fissured bark and smooth fleshy leaf and ripening fruit with a brown-black crayon on the blank white paper.
It must have been not far short of supper time when
there came a flurry of feet over the cobbles, and I looked up and saw Darklis with a shawl as glowing-red as rowan berries caught round her.
‘Hugh,’ she said, and crouched down beside me as though to look at the drawing on my knee, ‘Hugh, will ye take a message for me into the town? I canna leave Jean, and—’
‘We heard this morning that she was better,’ I said quickly.
‘So she is; but she canna be easy without me beside her, even now that himself is back; and you’re the only one I’ll trust the thing to—’
‘Trust what thing to?’ said I, under my breath and still drawing away, for it was clear that whatever the thing was, it was secret. ‘Take a deep breath, lassie, an’ begin again, an’ tell me clear.’
She drew her breath and began again. ‘Hugh, ’tis Lady Mary Fair, an’ the Tinkler folk will be gathered to it wi’ all the rest, and – they’re loyal to their own; they have never forgotten that I am of their kin. Always at Paisley at fair-time, one would come up to the house to make sure that all was well wi’ me. I thought that mebbe now I have come away all across Scotland… But one o’ them came up yestere’en, an’ I was wi’ Jean and didna even know he’d come.’
‘An’ you’re afraid he’ll come again?’ I said. Not everyone cares for the Tinkler folk anywhere round their house or horses, and Master Gilchrist the steward was of that way of thinking.
She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid he may
not
come again. I’m afraid that they’ll think me one that breaks wi’ my own kin.’
‘I’ll take whatever message ye give me,’ I said.
‘Oh Hugh, I knew I could trust you! Ask for Captain
Faa – ye’ll find him wherever the horses are. Tell him all is well wi’ me, and I’m no’ in need of rescuing, and –’ She felt inside the berry-bright folds of her shawl and brought out a silver brooch; the bonniest thing fashioned like a sprig of bell-heather, with seven small amethysts set in it where the flowers would be. ‘Show him this for a proof that ye do come from me.’
I took it from her, and without another word she was away, running like a deer, back towards the house.
I drew on a wee while longer, then gathered the scatter of pencils and my sketch-paper on its bit of board, and ambled back to my own quarters, taking care not to seem in any kind of hurry. I put my drawing stuff back into the kist, stowed the brooch among the few coins in my purse and, returning to the stable-yard, strolled out by the side door and headed downhill towards the town and the bee-swarming of the fair.
The first lanterns were pricking out here and there though it was still as good as daylight on the slopes of Dundee Law, and in the light of the flares the gaily coloured booths and stalls glowed with a jewel brilliance that hid their raggedness and dirt, making a kind of gaudy fungus-growth all along the dignified south flank of St Mary’s Kirk, above which the tower soared upward to cut its own dark-edged shape out of the evening sky. But minding Darklis’s directions, I left the bright lights and milling crowds, the tumblers and the gingerbread stalls, the shabby dancing bear and the man in scarlet tights breathing out great gobbets of flame, that had their stands where the lanes of merchants’ booths came together; even the savoury-smelling pie stall, though I was hungry for my missed supper; and made for the open space on the western fringes of the fairground where the horse dealing was going on.
The crowds were not so thick there, but thick enough, all the same, and there was a great coming and going; and as I hesitated on the edge of a knot of men who had gathered to watch a bay gelding put through its paces, wondering if the swarthy horse-handler would be a good one to ask for Captain Faa, somebody jostled against me in passing, and all but sent me flying.
Maybe the man was less skilled at his craft than most, or maybe my own thoughts being so much on my purse and the little brooch within it made me aware of what I would otherwise have missed in the general jostling of the crowd. What I felt was the faintest tug at my pocket.
My hand flew down to it and found my purse gone before the small square man who had brushed me by had quite had time to disappear into the shifting throng.
I dived after him with a yell, ‘Hi! Gi’ me back my purse, ye villain!’ and grabbed him by the arm. He writhed like a weazel and was all but gone again leaving his ragged coat empty in my hands, but I managed to hook his feet from under him as he leapt, and he went sprawling full length on the churned muddy grass, with me a’ top of him.
‘I never touched your purse!’ he squealed with his mouth full of mud.