Eleven Pipers Piping (7 page)

“Thank you,” he said belatedly.

“You’re welcome, Mr. Christmas,” Kerra responded crisply, slipping a steaming bowl in front of John.

“I intended that for you,” Tom murmured to John, as Kerra passed on to Will, seated at the head of the table. “Hmm,” he added, inhaling the heady aroma, grateful for its unchallenging familiarity, “chicken soup.”

“Cock-a-leekie.”

“Of course.” He picked up his soupspoon and poked it into the broth, pausing over the garnish, which appeared to be a crosshatch of glistening black leather.

“Prunes,” John said, either reading his mind or noting his hesitation.

“Ah. I’d been told to expect a surprise. I doubt this is it, though.” Tom avoided the garnish and lifted a spoon of the broth. “I didn’t realize until we had the Moirs at ours for lunch Sunday last,” he said in a low voice, seeking a conversational gambit, as John, he had discovered at PCC meetings and at church services, was a man of few words, “that Will’s son worked with you at Noze.” He flicked a glance at Will, concerned lest his host think he was talking out of turn. But Will was looking away, engaged with Roger, who sat to his left.

“Adam’s been with me for a while now. He’s a good lad.”

“Just he and you?”

“That’s it. These days, you don’t need the full-time staff to manage a small shooting estate like Noze. On shoot days, we hire locals for beaters and pickers-up and such.”

“Quite the operation.”

“Nothing like when I was young. My father was gamekeeper at an estate up north, much bigger than Noze. There were seven men on staff.” He turned to look at Tom. “Why do you ask?”

“About Adam?” Tom lifted his spoon. “At lunch, he told us about a professional forager, so called, Fergus somebody, camping out on your land—”

“Not my land. Earl of Duffield’s.”

“—harvesting dandelion leaves and chickweed and berries and the like—some of it for sale in town at the Tuesday market. Something about you nearly shooting him?”

Tom smiled, but John looked offended. “I thought he was a poacher—”

“And he turned out to be a fervid vegetarian, his jacket stuffed with purslane or something.”

“I didn’t ‘nearly shoot him.’ ” John flashed a dark glance in Will’s direction as he bent towards his soup. “I don’t know how that got about. But he was trespassing, so I escorted him off the estate. In my dad’s day, you could still crack a few heads, but the law’s different now.” The last words were tinged with bitterness.

“A friend of Adam’s, it turns out, this Fergus.”

“Took courses in gamekeeping with Adam in Hampshire, but some anti turned his head.”

That prefix again, Tom thought, lifting his spoon. Anti-development? -vivisectionist? -war? “You mean, not keen on shooting?” he asked.

“An anti-blood-sports townie bitch, is what I mean.”

“Ah,
cherchez la femme
,” he responded, startled by John’s uncharacteristic eruption of feeling.

John bent towards his soup and nodded. “Jago’s daughter holds the same views,” he said in a low voice.

“Kerra?”

“No, the older one. Tamara. She’s up at Exeter these days, at university.”

“Yes, I know. She came to lunch with Adam. They seem to be paired.”

“Which is why Adam said nothing to me about this Fergus character trespassing. Tamara has her hooks well in.”

Laughter rose in Tom’s throat. Tamara struck him as eminently sensible, Adam as rather gawky. Love-and-marriage, horse-and-carriage, a cosy-cottage-just-for-two seemed an unlikely outcome. They were both so young.

“Are you suggesting Tamara is out to convert Adam to all things green and environmental?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Be patient.”

“I’ve learned to wait.” John leaned away as Kerra came up behind to retrieve their soup bowls. Tom glanced at his profile and thought his words oddly freighted. There was a certain gravitas to John Copeland; his seriousness helped lend Sunday-morning services at St. Nicholas’s an added dignity. He suspected John still carried the burden of at least one private sorrow: His wife had died more than a decade before; they’d had no children. He had not remarried. Perhaps he was reluctant to commit himself, or, Tom thought worriedly, watching Kerra round the table and pick up Roger’s and Nick’s bowls, perhaps John had worn a rut down life’s pathway and become set in his ways.

A high-pitched shriek snapped him out of his reverie. He glanced through the candle flame to see Kerra jerk her body, her laden tray tipping dangerously towards the unfamiliar man seated to Nick’s left. The shadowy light captured the smirk on Nick’s face;
little imagination was needed for anyone on Tom’s side of the table to suss what had passed. Seated on Nick’s right, however, Jago merely raised a startled glance.

“Kerra?” he said.

“It’s nothing, Dad.” Kerra’s free hand straightened her skirt.

“Nick!” Will barked. “We’re having none of that here.”

“It’s just a bit of fun.” Nick cast his brother-in-law a look of cold disdain.

Understanding flickered across Jago’s face. “You keep your bloody hands off my daughter.” He elbowed Nick’s shoulder.

“Dad, it’s all right!” Kerra was insistent.

“Sorry,” Nick muttered, his sour expression giving lie to his words. Then he shot out of his seat. “I’m going for a pee,” he announced, petulant as a child.

“Nick, for heaven’s sake, we’re about to have the haggis. And that’s the
servery
door … oh, never mind.”

“Make sure that’s all you do out there!” Jago shouted after him as Nick pushed through one of the two doors on the far wall. He folded his arms over his chest and glowered.

“I apologise for my brother-in-law’s behaviour.” Will’s cheek twitched below his left eye.

Jago shrugged. Roger, to his right, shifted his bulk. “Vic?” he prompted. “You might—”

But Victor Kaif was already rising to leave. Tom watched him pass through the second door into the connecting hall, an awkward silence descending in his wake. Tom glanced at the other pipers down the table, men he didn’t know, roast-beef faces above black bow ties red with discomfiture or drink. Many, as if orchestrated, reached for whisky glasses all at once; others found a point of interest in their silverware or the arrangement of thistles and heather in a crystal bowl in the centre of the table.

And then, suddenly, everyone broke into conversation, as if kindled by the tension in the room. Mark Tucker, who was sitting to his
right, said in Tom’s ear: “Did you know the ancient Romans had a kind of haggis?”

“I was rather hoping it was confined to a single ethno-cultural group.” Tom glanced at Mark, who seemed to be fiddling with something along the side of his leg.

“Your first?”

Tom nodded. “You?”

“Third. I’ve been with the Thistle But Mostly Rose for four years, but Ruby was born at the New Year two years ago, so …” He trailed off. “Anyway, I was going to say that there’s a story that Marcus Aurelius poisoned his co-emperor, Lucius somebody or other—can’t remember the chap’s name—by using a knife smeared with poison on one side. You see, he gave old Lucius the half touched by the poisoned side of the blade. Clever, yes? Well, wicked, of course, but quite clever. I think I could use that.”

“Should you, though? The consequences might not be wholly agreeable.”

“No, I meant in some writing.”

Tom regarded his seatmate. Mark was almost ridiculously fair-skinned, round-jawed, and cherubically curly on top. With his black horn-rims, he looked every inch a young accountant, which he was. He had accepted an appointment the previous year as the new treasurer on the parochial church council and Tom was enormously pleased with his proficiency at accounting and his ability to explain some of its more abstruse aspects without making everyone else in the group cross-eyed with boredom. It was as though Mark were born to accountancy. Both his father and his uncle were accountants, and he worked for them at Tucker, Tucker &Tucker in Totnes. Tom suspected he had been a sweet, agreeable little boy who had never questioned following in his father’s footsteps, until recently. He was reminded that Violet Tucker, Mark’s wife, and a young member of the Flower Guild, had broadly hinted that she wished he might sit down and have a bit of a man-to-man with Mark, who was
having his midlife crisis well in advance of his peers. Mark, it seemed, was thinking of throwing accountancy over to—and here Violet rolled her eyes in despair—write. And not simply novels, but “bestsellers.” Possibly including poisoned knives.

“You’re not by any chance reciting the address to the haggis, are you?” he asked Mark.

“How did you guess?”

“Well, for one thing, you just pulled that knife out of your sock.”

“Ah, my
sgian dubh
.”

“And your anecdote about Marcus Aurelius suggests research.”

Mark lifted the black-handled knife, the tip of which looked worryingly sharp. “Yes, I was rooting around. I wanted to make sure I
plunge
the knife in just so.” He made a stabbing motion with the instrument. “There was some jolly useful stuff on YouTube.”

“I thought the master of ceremonies made the address.”

“Yes, well …” Mark hesitated. “Will called earlier in the week and asked if I wouldn’t mind. And of course I didn’t. I’ve been practising for days. You did well with yours.”

“Mine was only four lines.”

Mark patted his chest. “No danger. I’ve written it out, just in case. I’ve always fancied a bit of acting, but putting bits of Gaelic to memory is a task.”

“I wonder why …,” Tom began, then stopped himself. The change of personnel was none of his business.

“Because …” Mark seemed to intuit the question, then hesitated, adding in a low voice, “He said he simply didn’t feel up to it.”

They both stole a glance across the gleaming linen at Will. The low light cast unforgiving shadows on his lean features, accentuating the heavy lines on his brow and the bracketed flesh around his lips, downturned now as if he had descended into some private rumination. His lids then sank slowly over his eyes, not, Tom thought, in fatigue, but more in prayer attitude. But when a weary sigh followed,
and Will’s body slumped a little in his chair, Tom felt an odd flicker of alarm. Indefatigability was Will’s usual mien. But then, Tom reflected, Will had seemed preoccupied much of the evening, as he had been at lunch the previous Sunday. He was about to turn back to Mark and lob a question about his adventures in writing when Will’s eyes shot open. He stared at them.

“What?” he said.

Mark replied. “I was just telling Tom that I would be addressing the haggis.”

“Instead of you,” Tom added.

Will cracked a small smile and scratched his nose where a vicious bouncer from a fast bowler had broken it during a cricket match when he was younger. “I thought I wouldn’t make you Poms suffer Scottish with an Aussie accent. Pretty awful. And shouldn’t you be out there, Mark? You’re part of the procession. Fill your glasses everyone,” he added in a raised voice.

“Oops!”

Mark scrambled out of his seat and out the door to the corridor. Shortly after, an unearthly wheezing noise intruded. From behind him, Tom sensed the French doors to the main dining room opening; in front of him the candles flickered, teased by the onrush of new air. The noise expired, mercifully, but then a rude wail burst forth, so loud and uncannily thrilling that Tom jolted against the back of his chair, nearly tipping it. Everyone at table rose at that moment, Tom following, and began clapping in rhythm. The wail formed into a recognisable tune, and then, there was Victor Kaif, his cheeks puffed before a reed, his expression concentrated, his arms cradling what looked like a black velvet pig jabbed with sticks, rounding the table followed by, of all people, his wife, Molly, in cook’s whites, holding a silver platter high over her head. Tom hadn’t seen husband and wife in the same room together for months. Mark trailed behind. They rounded the table twice—Tom prayed the
archangel Michael would manifest with earplugs—then Molly set the dainty dish before Mark’s seat. The haggis, unadorned as it was by any sissy garnish, resembled nothing so much as a pale, perspiring football, insufficient to feed twelve men. Tom’s stomach lurched.

Molly stepped back into one corner, while Victor stood sentinel in another. Nick returned through the servery door with a mumbled “sorry” and resumed his place. Everyone sat, and Mark, with great solemnity, began,

After which, as the second verse piled on the first, Tom’s mind went a bit walkabout. Perhaps one needed a Berlitz course in Scots dialect to appreciate the finer aspects of Robert Burns’s verse, though Mark, he noted, was performing the wild-eyed Scot with admirable aplomb.

Mark continued, picking up the dirk, which flashed gorgeously in the candlelight. His voice rose to a fierce grunt on the words,

and he plunged the blade through the bladder’s taut skin, sending a plume of steam into the air, followed by another smart cut, St. Andrew’s cross fashion.

Reekin’, yes. Tom suppressed a gag, his salivary glands uninspired by the—several descriptors suggested themselves:
reek, stench, stink
—that the dish emitted. He didn’t think he was a fussy eater, but there was something awful about offal.

Mark paused dramatically. Tom hastened to pick up his whisky glass, as the others were doing.

he concluded with a shout of bravado.

the company roared in response.