The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (17 page)

It was the moment I'd been dreading. Aunt Blair sat down again at once, and I could see avid curiosity along with disapproval in her face. Ritchie was staring at me with a measuring look, as if he had encountered an interesting new insect, and Grizel's mouth was half open, like a child waiting to hear a story. The little girls leaned their arms on the table and cupped their chins in their hands, their eyes fixed on me.

I took a deep breath.

"You know that my mother died when I was born, and my father was drowned on the drove years ago," I began.

"We heard that, to our sorrow, yes," said Uncle Blair. "
'The Lordgiveth, and the Lord taketh away.'
"

"Up till now, I was living—I lived—I was with my granny." I didn't know how to go on. I'd spun story after story in my head in preparation for this explanation, not wanting to see the horror I pictured on the faces of people who didn't know me when they heard about the trial and Granny's burning and the strange wildness of my flight with the drovers, but looking at Uncle Blair's honest, kind face, I knew that I couldn't lie to him.

I started slowly with the birth of Ebenezer Macbean, Annie stealing my buckle, Granny's party at Ambrisbeg, and the curse at the christening, and then it all tumbled out—the trial, the false witnesses, and the meanness of Donnie Brown, and Tam's clever rescue, Granny's horrible death, and my flight to Rhubodach. I explained Annie's revelation, my swim with the cattle (I shuddered again as I remembered that), the kindness of Mr. Lithgow, and my solitary walk to Ladymuir.

They listened, silent and rapt, to every word, even the little girls. Every now and then, Uncle Blair made a comment.

"Such wickedness!" he'd say. Or "Superstitious nonsense!" or "Danny's buckle, aye, I mind when he first bought it at Paisley fair," or "Archie Lithgow, a good man, indeed."

But it was my aunt's face I chiefly watched. I saw fear, horror, and disgust give way to pity and even a kind of admiration, and I finished more hopefully than I'd started.

A collective sigh went around the table when at last the story was over. Uncle Blair said, "Well, Maggie, you've lived through more in your short life than many do in long ones. You did well to come home to us. You'll stay with us and be a part of our family. The Devil has been after you, body and soul, to snare you in his cunning traps, but with prayer and God's good grace, you'll stay free of him. Now you must submit to your aunt's authority and be a good help to her."

The words sounded judgmental, but his tone was kind and the smile he gave me lit up his eyes with warmth as he went outside to his work. Aunt Blair had been smoothing the linen cloth on the table with her hands.

"I never heard such a story in my life," she said, standing up and crossing to the fire. "And here we are in the middle of the morning and not a pot stirred or a floor swept." She spoke complainingly, but to my relief patted me on the shoulder. "But you're a good girl, Maggie, I'm sure, if your uncle says so, and you'll do your best."

She put a hand into the small of her back, and as she turned, I saw the bulge at her waist and realized that she was expecting a baby. She saw where my eyes were fixed. "So you've noticed. Another mouth to feed soon enough." She sighed but brightened at once. "Now, then, what are we going to do about these old clothes of yours and that stinking plaid? Grizel, go to the linen press and fetch out my old brown gown. It'll do for Maggie just now. It's a fine drying day for once. Take out the soap too. You two girls can get on down to the burn and do a big wash. There's a mountain of clothes in this house to be seen to."

I felt as fresh as a posy of daisies in the clothes my aunt gave me to wear, though they had been put away, she told me, as too old and worn for her to use. The petticoat was linen of a good strong weave, with no more than two or three rips in it. The sleeves of the gown were frayed and it was much too big for me, but the woolen cloth it had been cut from was the finest and softest I had ever touched.

"Th-thank you, Aunt," I stammered, as I stood dressed in front of her.

She looked at me with sudden interest, as if seeing me for the first time. I could tell that she was pleased with her generosity.

"We'll get you a new cap," she said, retying the strings of my old one under my chin. "This old thing's stained and torn past using. Your uncle disapproves of vanity, so we don't talk of such things when he's around, but you're a pretty girl, I must say. When we get you a new gown from the weaver, we'll make sure it's blue to match your eyes."

"Are my eyes blue?" I was surprised. "I'd always thought they were brown, like Granny's."

Aunt Blair laughed.

"Poor child! You've never seen a mirror, I suppose? Grizel, fetch the glass down from the shelf."

She watched with pleasure as I took my first real look at myself, twisting and turning my head to see as much of my face as I could. I'd caught glimpses of myself from time to time in the still waters of the loch at Scalpsie, but it was brown and peaty, and my reflection was always dim. Something had always disturbed the water, shattering even that faint image into fragments.

I
am
pretty,
I thought, trying out a smile.

"That's enough, dear," said Aunt Blair, hearing a step outside. She took the glass quickly from my hand. "Grizel, put this away."

Uncle Blair came in.

"The girls are just away to the burn to wash the clothes," Aunt Blair said, going a little pink.

"That's good. Very good," said Uncle Blair, not listening.

He sat down heavily at the table.

"What is it, Hugh?" Aunt Blair said, touching his hand.

He glanced up at her, and I was pierced by the sweetness of the look they exchanged. I wasn't used to seeing love. It made me feel oddly happy and lonely at the same time.

"It's that man Irving. He's after me for a fine. A heavy one. He'll ruin me if he can."

"The new minister?"

"Minister?" Anger sparked in my uncle's face. "He's no true minister. An ignorant false prophet, put in our kirk to preach over us and lead us astray in the path of worldliness. He's no man of God. A jumped-up servant of Charles Stuart, who calls himself the king. And if..."

Aunt Blair shook her head at him, as if in warning.

"Oh, aye, girls, off you go," Uncle Blair said.

Grizel had picked up a pile of linen and was making for the door. I bundled together my own dirty clothes and my father's shirt and plaid and followed her outside. She crossed to the other side of the courtyard and dropped her armful of clothes into a tub that was lying inside the storeroom. She picked up one handle and nodded at me, in the curt way that seemed natural to her, to take the other.

"Who's Mr. Irving?" I asked, as we staggered together over the few hundred yards to the little stream that ran past the back of the farm.

She looked sideways at me, and I could tell that she hadn't decided if she liked me or not.

"He's the new minister, put into the kirk in Kilmacolm," she said unwillingly, "after the old one was chased off by the king's men. Turned out of his manse, he was."

"Oh. Is that why my uncle doesn't like Mr. Irving?"

"Yes. Master holds to the Covenant." She saw a question in my face and hurried on. "Mr. Alexander was a good minister, and everyone hereabouts liked him. The people had chosen him themselves. They won't have anything to do with Mr. Irving."

"What happened to Mr. Alexander?"

"I don't know. Look, this is the best place for washing. It's muddy up there."

She does know, but she won't say,
I thought.
There are secrets here.

I didn't have time to wonder anymore, because Grizel was already working on the clothes, sloshing water from the burn into the tub with the pitcher she had carried in her spare hand. When the clothes were well covered, she knelt by the tub and began to rub at them with the soap.

I watched, fascinated. We'd never had soap at Scalpsie Bay. In fact, we'd never gone in for much washing of linen at all.

I took my place on the other side of the tub, lifted a shift, groped for the soap, and tried to copy her, but the slippery cake dropped out of my hands into the water.

"Watch out," she said, fishing the soap out. "Mistress will scold if much of it's melted off."

I bit my lip. I hadn't known that soap melted in water. She was looking at me curiously.

"You haven't lived on a big farm like this, then? Over there, in Bute, don't they have soap and that?"

"Not that I've seen," I said shortly.

She had stood up and was hitching her skirts high, exposing her pale legs. She tucked the folds of cloth into her girdle, and, to my amazement, she stepped right into the tub and began to trample the washing with her feet, humming as she went. Her little triumph over the soap seemed to have cheered her, and she grinned at me.

"Come on in and give us a hand—or a foot."

I had to smile back.

"I will if you like."

I hoisted up my own skirts and clambered into the tub. The cold water came up over my ankles. There wasn't much room for the two of us, so we had to stand close with our hands on each other's shoulders, making our legs go at the same time. Grizel suddenly threw her head back and began to sing.

"
The gypsies came to Lord Cassilisgate
..." and before she'd finished the first line, I burst out laughing and joined in:

"
And sang in the garden shady,
"

Together we chorused:

"
They sang so sweet and so complete
That well they pleased the lady.
"

"How does it go on?" she asked, breaking off. "Do you know any more? All the story of it?"

In answer, I rollicked through the long list of verses, which Tam had sung to me hundreds of times, and as we splashed and pranced in that tub of washing, my spirits rose with the cheerfulness of it, and her face shone with friendliness.

"If they're not clean now, they never will be," she said at last, staring down into the murky water. "We'd best get on with the rinsing."

I didn't mind, now, admitting how useless I was with the washing. I was happy to let Grizel showed me how to do it. I felt that we'd made friends.

I was still humming the tune of Lord Cassilis's song as we spread the linen on the gorse bushes to dry.

"Better not sing that while master's around," she warned me. "It's worldly. He'd give us a frown for that."

Grizel's words puzzled me. What was wrong with the old song? But I didn't have time to wonder for long. As soon as we were back at the house, there was water to fetch and floors to sweep and butter to churn.

"Maggie," Aunt Blair said. "Help Martha with her reading, will you, dear? She can't manage the long words."

And I had to answer, "I'm sorry, Aunt. I can't read."

"Oh! Then fetch down the spare distaff and spin. You can look over Martha's shoulder and learn while you work."

"I've never spun either, Aunt," I mumbled with a burning face.

She gave up expecting me to know anything useful at all in the end, and though I was desperate to learn, she didn't seem able to teach me. I watched helplessly while she sorted feathers for stuffing a pillow, skimmed the cream off the milk and set to work at the butter churn, or cut down an old linen sheet to make a dress for the new baby, gently sighing and saying as she worked, "Now, Maggie, there must be
something
you can do. The Devil has work for idle hands, you know."

It was Grizel who came to my rescue.

"Here, Maggie, you turn the grindstone, and I'll pour in the oats," she said, and I sat eagerly at the quern, turning the heavy handle till my arms ached. Grizel taught me how to shake out the springy heather and smooth the sheets back over it in the box beds every morning. She showed me where the hens were likely to lay their eggs in the barn and how to spin a decent thread without making lumps or breaking it. When I tried to thank her, she would smack my shoulder playfully with her beefy hand.

"It's the help I'm glad of. There's more work on this farm than's right for only one maid. And mistress is so particular! Clean shirts and shifts for the whole lot of them every month! And the fuss she makes with the cooking! Go on, tell me again about how you had to swim across that raging torrent with the horse trying to kick your brains out."

Grizel had never been more than ten miles away from Kilmacolm in her life, and she could never hear enough of my adventures, which, I must admit, I colored up a little for her. I think she looked on me as a rare creature, like a bird with strange bright feathers, that's flown in from far away.

***

For the first few months at Ladymuir, I watched and learned and worked without a moment's rest, and I'd drop into bed at night dead with exhaustion, my arms aching and my hands red and sore with work. I was hardly able to keep my eyes open during Uncle Blair's long evening prayers around the kitchen table.

There was one thing that puzzled me, though. For all my uncle and aunt's deep religious faith, their constant Bible readings and psalm singing, they never walked the few miles into Kilmacolm on Sundays to go to church. The Sabbath day was strictly kept. We did no work at all, beyond what was absolutely necessary, such as milking the cows or feeding the hens. Family worship lasted for up to four hours, with Uncle Blair reading to us from the Bible and praying, and all of us singing psalms.

One blustery October Saturday, when rowan leaves were drifting down from the trees like golden rain, the routine suddenly changed. There was a great fuss of preparation in the kitchen. Aunt Blair scraped at Uncle's chin with her scissors to get off his week's beard. The men's coats and our women's gowns were brushed down and the stains worked at with dabs of soap. Aunt produced shoes from her chest and held a pair against my foot.

"These will do," she said. "Try them on, Maggie."

I'd never worn a pair of shoes before, and they felt stiff and cramping around my toes, but I was proud, too, and stammered out my thanks. Aunt Blair, even though she tried to be a good plain Puritan, always softened when it came to matters of dress.