The Rogues (6 page)

I interrupted her. “I know that much!”

“What you may
not
know,” she said, putting up a hand, “is that my father did not trust his half brother—and rightly so, it seems—so he had a separate deed drawn up for the Lodge. He signed it over to Mother before he died.”

“So what could yer uncle do about that?” I asked, though I thought I could guess.

“Well, if the deed to the house were to go missing …” Her eyes had become slits and her mouth pursed as if she'd eaten something sour. “Why, then he could argue in court that the normal rules of inheritance should apply. That way, the Lodge would belong to him along with the rest of the estate. And trust me, Roddy, he's got many a tame lawyer who'll do his bidding and many a friendly judge to see his will carried out.”

So, I had guessed right. “He meant to throw you off your land.” I drew in a deep breath. “Just as he has thrown out the rest of his clansfolk.”

“Oh, what if he had found the deed!” exclaimed the widow, a hand fluttering over her mouth.

“Do not worry, Mother, the Lord provides. Did we not have our own wee terrier on guard?” Josie laughed again, but there was little mirth in it this time.

Wee terrier! I liked that. Though I'd rather she thought me a larger dog. Especially if it would help guard them. I grinned.

“But now that Uncle has made clear his intentions, I will make sure he cannot get his hands on that deed. I will put it beyond the reach of Rood or any other intruder.” Josie turned away from both of us and looked out the window, where the late afternoon sun was trying to break through the mist.

Regaining her composure, the widow stood up. “Let us brew a pot of tea for this young warrior,” she said. “Then we had best pack him off home before it gets dark.”

Tea
. I had heard of the drink. But it was much too dear for any crofter's pot. And then I thought: what a day I'd had! I'd been a warrior and I'd been wounded; I'd been a terrier inside a great house. And now I was to taste a cup of tea. I could hardly wait to tell Lachlan.

“Good thought, Mother,” Josie said. “A pot of tea will be just the thing. You find young Mairi to put the kettle on, and I will find a new hiding place for our much sought-after deed.”

6 HOME

I reached home in the gloaming, the twilight time when the sun dies like an ember behind the hills. Ahead of me on the rocky path I could see our stone cottage. As I got closer still, I could smell the bitter peat fire smoke drifting through the hole in the turf roof. Suddenly the place seemed rough and poor and hardly room enough for one, though four of us lived there. How quickly a person's life can change. How quickly his dreams get bigger.

I wondered if we could ever hope to have a house with high brick walls, glass windows, and a lofty chimney like the Lodge. A house with painted pictures of birds and fruit and shepherd maids hanging on white walls. A house with a separate kitchen and pantry, not just a hearth in the main room where mutton cooking spattered its grease on the wall.

Stopping on the path, I shook my head to clear it of such stupid dreams. Even if the cottage and the land about were ours to sell and not the laird's property, it could never raise enough money for a fine home like the Lodge. Not if we sold all our furniture and pots and pans and Ishbel's horse in the bargain.

Yet as I tried to count up our meager possessions, I thought suddenly of the Blessing, the secret gift my mother had passed down to us from my grandfather Duncan MacDonald. Mother always said that her family had been given the treasure by Bonnie Prince Charlie himself and it was worth a fortune. We were to keep it safe until the Bonnie Prince returned and a Stuart king sat once more on the throne of Scotland. But the Bonnie Prince had died a long time ago in a foreign land, no matter that the old songs said Charlie would come back again. That much I knew. Da had told Mother, and it was hard not to overhear him when they argued. So if the prince was dead, there was no reason to keep the Blessing now when by selling it, we could get ourselves a better life. And maybe help Bonnie Josie as well.

Above me an owl went on silent wings to a nearby tree, becoming a shadow on a branch. I shivered as if the owl were an omen. And maybe it was. After all, the secret of where the Blessing lay hidden had died with Mother. How could we sell what we couldn't find? Maybe the owl meant her death and the death of my dream.

All right, it was just a dream. But after what Josie and I had talked of in the Lodge, perhaps it was a dream worth having.

I tried to recall everything I'd heard about the Blessing. Da had sighed when Lachlan and I had asked him some months past where it might be.

“Yer mother was havering,” he said. “Dying women speak of heaven as though it's but a step away. Dinna fash yerselves about it.” Da still found any mention of Ma painful. He kept her memory like a burr under his shirt.

As for Ishbel, she wouldn't stand for any talk of the thing either. “That was a harmless fancy of yer mother's,” she told us sharply, “a happy dream of princes she used to cheer herself with when things were hard. If it had been real, she would have shown it ye, whatever it is. Or we would have found it after …”

I didn't agree. I believed Ma had hidden the Blessing to keep it safe. In the house or outside the house—that was the question that had no answer. When the fever took her, she died so quickly, she couldn't pass on the secret of where the Blessing lay.

We'd gone through the house after she was buried and after the townsfolk came for the wake. A wild wake it was too. There was much drinking and storytelling and the women in tears. Cousin Ishbel made us clean up after, going through every cupboard and drawer and writing down what was there. Nothing that looked like a Blessing was in our accounting.

But I was sure it was here somewhere, like the Bible story of the pearl hidden in a field. It was as real to me as my heart beating in my breast; indeed, it was suddenly the very heart of all my hopes for the future.

As I entered the darkness of the cottage, Ishbel was bent over the hearth, stirring a bubbling pot of stew over the smoky peat fire. The croft had not the clean, flowery scent of the Lodge. I could smell musky peat, earthy neeps and potatoes, but little else. No one had snared a hare, then. And clearly Lachlan had not caught any of the Glendoun chickens.

“He's back,” Lachlan announced, looking up from his perch on the stool. “See, I told ye he'd be fine.”

Ishbel looked up sharply from the stew and fixed her eyes on me. The flames sent shots of gold through her bushy red hair. “Fine? It looks as if his head's been cracked like an egg.” She pointed the spoon at me accusingly. “If trouble comes to us because of your daft capers, we'll know where the blame lies.” Ishbel had a way of turning our brave adventures into a child's foolish games.

No sooner had she spoken than my head began to ache again, though it had been free of pain all along the road. I touched my forehead and sighed.

Rising from his own stool, Da placed a hand on my arm. “Are ye really all right, son? We were worried, in spite of what Lachlan said. I was ready to ride down to the Lodge to fetch ye back.” It was rare to hear him so concerned.

“I'm fine,” I assured him. “It hardly even hurts anymore.” The truth, though, was that I was suddenly exhausted, and my skull had begun throbbing like the inside of a drum. Rood's first blow with the cudgel had been strong, but then I'd been shaken again when we'd wrestled at the Lodge. Clearly I was not as well as I thought.

Placing the wooden spoon carefully on the pot's edge, Ishbel marched briskly toward me and grabbed me by the arms and Da sat down again at the table. “Come over here, closer to the fire, so I can have a better look at ye.” She maneuvered me roughly into position, then took hold of the bandage and pulled it up to expose the bloody weal. The wound stung so much I gave a grunt of pain.

“Bear up like a man,” Ishbel said. “I dinna have to be gentle with ye, seeing as I'm not yer ma.” She was always saying things like that. I had only recently begun to understand that these remarks were aimed at Da, not me.

“I've had rougher handling than this,” I said, “and this day too.” Then I ground my teeth against the pain, wondering how much I could safely tell them.

“Have ye not enough to do that ye can find time for this nonsense?” she demanded. “I might have to drag ye down to the burn and pitch ye in to wash away the blood and dirt.” Then she squinted at the injury. “That's a bad knock,” she said at last, “but it's been well tended.”

“It was Josie that did it,” I said, “Bonnie Josie.”

“That's Miss Josephine to ye, lad,” said my father. “Keep a respectful tongue in yer head.”

Just then the fire popped a coal onto the hearth as if it too were scolding me.

Ishbel turned and shook a finger at Lachlan because she knew who always led me on. “Best
ye
don't get into such scrapes too,” she said. “We've enough to cope with without making an enemy of Willie Rood.”

“He's already every man's enemy,” I said. “Though the laird seems to like him too well.”

My father slammed his hand down on the table, which made his cup of whisky jump. “That's as may be, but ye need to mind yer place, lad. There's sheep in Glendoun now, so Lachlan tells me, and we must leave them alone.”

“We were just playing a game,” I said. My voice rose in a whine. “It's not like we were thieving. It was Rood who made a great fuss over things. And Rood who tossed out the Glendoun folk. Burning them out. Because the laird told him to.”

Da glowered at me and took another sip of his whisky.

I leaned toward him and said, “Da—they were all burned out of their cottages. There's hardly a wall standing.”

He looked down at his whisky. “So Lachlan says. But that's Glendoun, and this is Dunraw.”

“And will they say that of us down in the valley when we're burned out?” I said.

“Nae one is purposing to burn us out,” Ishbel said. She took Da's empty glass from his unresisting hand.

“What about the Lodge?” Lachlan asked, keen to change the subject. “What was it like? Did they give ye venison and cakes and—”

Ishbel cut him off with a clout across the head. “All ye think about is yer belly, Lachlan Macallan,” she said. “I've a perfectly fine vegetable stew coming to the boil here.”

“Aye, I'm sure it will be good,” Lachlan, answered, lowering his head. “If ye like a thin meal.”

“Is thin my fault, then? Where were the bonnie hares ye could have snared on yon hillside?” Ishbel asked. “Or a bird or two?”

“I'm not hungry,” I said, lying. “I've already had bannocks with fresh butter. And tea.”

“
Tea
is it?” said Ishbel. Hands on hips, she asked, “And what did
that
taste like?”

I shrugged. “Like nothing much,” I replied. “Ye make it by boiling up bits of grass in a pot of water.”

“Sounds bad for the liver!” She turned and gave the stew another stir. “The laird might have lived longer and his wife not be so peely-wally if they'd never touched the stuff.”

Da made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. I couldn't tell if he found her amusing or annoying.

Suddenly I felt as if a great hand was pushing on the top of my head. Going over to the table, I sat down heavily on my own stool, saying, “Things are getting worse for the widow McRoy, Da. The laird tried to talk her into giving up her property. Then I caught Rood with a pry bar in Josie's bedchamber and …”

“Enough!” said my father with a decisive chop of his hand. “That's the laird's family and nae business of ours. If ye've been eavesdropping, Roddy Macallan, ye should have the decency not to repeat what ye hear. Not even to yer own family.”

“But this is
important
,” I protested. “If the laird can push out his own close kin, what won't he do to us, his clansmen? If we don't stand up for Bonnie Josie, who will stand up for us when Rood's men come to torch our home?”

“They'll have to fight their own cause,” said Ishbel. “It's not for the likes of us to stand between the laird and his family.” She turned again to stir the stew. The hearth flung out several more nuggets of fire. But the croft seemed darker with each bit of flame.

“The widow McRoy said we should be loyal to each other, as clansmen and their chiefs were in the old days,” I told her.

Da gave a snort. “Even in the old days, the chief's business was his own,” he said. “Ye've nae call to speak of it or meddle in his affairs.”

“As yer father says,” Ishbel added, looking meaningfully at me over her shoulder, “what's in the family stays in the family, and it's nae business of an outsider. That goes for our family as well as the laird's.” She held up the dipper. “Come now, lads, bring your bowls and eat up this stew. I've been long enough cooking it. It shouldna go to waste.”

Standing, we carried our wooden bowls to the stew pot, and she dished the watery stuff out for us. The smell nearly overcame me, but I managed to get back without spilling a drop. Then we all sat down at the table on our little stools and ate in silence. Even me, though moments earlier I had declared myself not hungry at all.

After supper Da had a second whisky. Lachlan and I talked quietly about the sheep, while Ishbel cleaned off the table and dipped the dishes into a bucket of water. When she was done washing, I took the water bucket outside and sloshed it over the hillside while Lachlan banked the hearth fire. Then we lay down for the night.

Da and Lachlan and I slept in the little room, Ishbel at the end of the kitchen. She had a sackcloth curtain to give herself some privacy, not being strictly a member of the family. The thin, shabby curtain was not at all like the fine carved doors at the Lodge. And as I lay restless on the bed I shared with Lachlan, I realized how uncomfortable the flattened heather mattress was.