Highland Ballad Part 16

This was too much for her. For the first time in her life, hatred flared into animal violence.

"You will do no such thing! Check the funeral record at the vestry, then take yourself to the Devil!" Seizing her husband's stout walking stick from its place in the corner she flew at him, screaming. "You get out of my house! Get out, you G.o.dless b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

And though she was but a woman---though her blows were blocked and the stick taken from her---the suddenness of her fury served its purpose.

The man believed her son was dead, and saw plainly there was nothing more to be got out of her.

Yet in his answering rage he might still have done her serious injury, if his son had not intervened. Henry Purceville pushed her back against the stone hearth wall, and c.o.c.ked his great fist for a blow which might well have killed her. Stephen caught his father's arm and pulled him away from her, slowly but firmly.

"You don't want to do this," he said.

"No one speaks to me like that. I'll kill her!"

"And give Earl Arthur the weapon he needs to call an Inquest? Destroy yourself for a moment's pa.s.sion?"

"She has defied me! I will have my daughter brought before me."

"Then leave her to me, if that is all you want. I know more of this family than you do. Promise me now, in front of her, give me your word, that you will do nothing to harm the girl, or put her on trial for conspiracy." His father only struggled more fiercely, outraged that anyone should force on him such a condition.

But he found himself breathing too hard: his chest ached, and the exertions of the day had begun to take their toll on him. He was tired. He felt old.

Still, had the request not come from his son, and had he not already been willing..... With a last sweep of his arm he broke free, and relaxed his great limbs. Then looked his son full in the face.

"I will do it for you , to show that I am not what you think. If you bring the girl to me, tonight, I will drop all charges. And I never meant to harm her.....

"You accused me of many things last night. You are very naive. Since your mother's death, it is true that I have not been kind. Kindness gains a man nothing, nor does the illusion of love, as you will find.

Yes, I sent the MacCain woman away, as the scheming s.l.u.t she was. But I have no intention of hanging my own daughter. Perhaps you will not believe it, but as much as anything..... I just want to see her." He threw up his hands in disgust. "I promise, d.a.m.n you all! Bring her to me, tonight, and the charges will be dropped."

Stephen stepped away, and to the center of the room, feeling awkward and stiff. This was the closest thing to a confidence that his father had shown him in many years.

"Thank you, Father. That should be agreeable..... You might as well start back. If I may speak to Mrs. Scott alone, I think I can convince her that it is the only way."

"See that you do!" he growled, turning on the woman once more. "If you can't, bring her instead. I'm not over-fond of hostages, but they usually bring the desired result. Good day , Mrs. Scott." Without further speech he filed past and out the door, remounted his fierce gray, and rode off.

Stephen was silent for several minutes, as if confused in his loyalties. Then turned again to face the woman. He spoke stiffly.

"Mrs. Scott. I must apologize to you for my conduct at our last meeting. You have no reason to believe it, I'm sure. But I am not the same man now, that I was. Your niece, my sister, has forced me to look at myself in a new light. I don't much like what I see. I make no excuses, except to say that I am my father's son, and was raised without..... Nevermind. I am sorry, too, that you had to endure his wrath for so long. There was no other way. Had I spoken before I did, it would simply have made matters worse."

The woman could only stare at him in disbelief.

"And now all you ask," she replied, "in exchange for my own freedom, is that I turn an innocent young woman over to the man who burned her mother at the stake, and threatened to violate my son's grave. To say nothing of what you yourself have done. Why should my answer to you be any different than the one I made your father?"

His face flushed with anger, which he then suppressed. "First, because I am trying to protect her. And you, though you don't believe it.

Second, because he didn't kill her mother, or even strike her, as he told his men. She was dead when we arrived..... You don't believe me.

Here. She left this note for Mary."

He handed her a single sheet, on which was written the woman's dying message to her daughter. The hand was weak and failing, but undoubtedly that of her sister. Anne Scott read it quickly, then looked searchingly into the young man's face.

"The third reason, and I do not say it as my father would..... I know she's here, Mrs. Scott. The soiled cloak on the peg, is hers. She was wearing it yesterday when..... When I found out what kind of man I had become. I can't forgive myself for that. I can only try to make amends, by seeing to it that she is never again brought to such a pa.s.s.

"But I'm afraid the first step toward that end, must be the visit to my father. You must believe me, he will do nothing to harm her, so long as I remain as her protector. He is angry now, and afraid that she may pose some new threat, when his skies are already darkened for a storm. But when he learns her true nature, as I have, he will realize his mistake. And if I have anything to say about it, he will make rest.i.tution as well, for the years he left her dest.i.tute.

"Mrs. Scott. I don't ask you to forgive the wrongs that were committed in the past, only that you trust me to know the realities of the present. If he is defied, my father will only become more ruthless. He will scour the countryside; he will never stop. You must let me take her to him. There is no other way."

The woman moved wearily to her chair, and sat down. Violence she had been prepared to withstand, and treachery. But a seemingly genuine offer of help, from the one man with any influence over their most deadly enemy. . .confused her utterly.

Where did her responsibility lie now? For though she tried to suppress it, another thought had occurred to her. If Lord Purceville dropped the charges against her niece, and sent to Edinburgh (or merely buried) the body of Mary's a.s.sailant as prisoner number 406, would that not end the search for her son, and make him, in time, a free man? Try as she might, she could not help but wonder at this chance, and weigh it against the possible danger to her niece.

"Will you do something for me?" she asked him. "Will you return to me in an hour's time? My niece, as you guessed, is close by. But I must have time to think, and speak to her at length, before I can come to any decision."

"You understand that I cannot go far? And that if either of you try to escape, I merely become an extension of my father---just as hard, just as ruthless."

"Yes," she replied. "I ask nothing more."

... "Where would you suggest I go?"

"Our ancestral gravesite lies in the wooded dell, a quarter of a mile from here, by the back path. There you may satisfy yourself that my son was in fact killed in the war. Nay, don't be angry. I saw the look that crossed your face when your father said those things about him.

If you are to remain as Mary's protector..... It's important to me that you know they were not true."

"All right. I will remain in the dell for thirty minutes, no more.

Then I will ride in wide circles

about the house, to insure that no attempt is made to escape. I must take her back, tonight. And the day is already growing long."

"Thank you," said the woman. "If you will truly act as the friend and benefactor of my niece..... You will not only have my forgiveness, but my grat.i.tude as well."

Stephen nodded with an unreadable expression, and left the house. As soon as his horse's hooves could no longer be heard, she went to the trap.

Despite all Michael's objections, when she learned the chance existed to free him from the pursuit and persecution of the English, Mary too insisted that it must be taken, the plan tried. And his mother told him plainly:

"You are unwell, and a wanted man. If nothing else, this buys you time to recover from the harrows of your affliction. You are the one among us most in danger, and most in need. We are going to do this for you; there is no time for pride and fear!"

He would never have consented, no matter how great the pressure, if he knew that Stephen Purceville himself had a.s.saulted Mary, and that his father had violated the grave of James Talbert, to obtain for him this 'chance'. But he did not know. And it soon became clear that the only way to stop the two from going---Anne Scott accompanying her as a guardian---would be to try to restrain them physically, to the possible undoing of them all. For at irregular intervals they heard the hoofbeats of Stephen's horse, now nearer, now farther away. And the hour was nearly expired.

As it was he was far from pacified, and had nearly to be forced down the steps as Purceville drew rein, and approached the door.

And when two more hours had pa.s.sed, and he forced open the trap door beneath the added weight and resistance of the carpet..... They were gone. The house was dark and empty. Purceville had ridden ahead to send a carriage back to meet them, as the two women he loved more than his own life, advanced slowly north along the road to MacPherson Castle.

Twenty

When the carriage at last arrived for them, looming up out of the fog like a great floating skull, it was full Night, and the shadows had again grown long across the young girl's heart.

Walking beside her like a wraith in the gloom, explaining to her the 'details' which she withheld from Michael, Anne Scott had seemed less and less a loving guardian, more and more the whispering narrator of the black comedy into which she had so suddenly returned, after a brief and unreal respite of light and hope.

But of all the things the woman said, only one would take solid hold in her mind, dimming and obscuring all others like the wreathing mists that had engulfed her fated cousin upon the margins of Death's Kingdom: