Authors: Highland Fling
Seeing that Chelton and Maria had come into the house, Rothwell moved to intercept them, and noting the look of profound disapproval on Maria’s face, said sternly to her, “Not one word if you value your position with my family. This is no business of ours. Do you hear what I am saying, Chelton?”
“Oh, aye, my lord. Be silent, Maria,” he added when Maria turned away with a disapproving grimace. “It is no business of ours to be interfering with the Scots.”
MacDrumin saw the pair just then and swept down upon them, saying, “Here’s a pair of psalm books for you two, and one for you, Rothwell. Take your places with the others, quickly.”
The Cheltons both looked affronted by the abrupt order, but at a look from Rothwell, they obeyed. More than thirty people, including sleepy-looking maidservants and a fat woman Rothwell thought must be MacDrumin’s cook, gathered around the whisky kegs, which with their covering of white linen over the coffin lid, looked exactly like a funeral bier.
MacDrumin was kneeling at the head with a large, well-worn Bible open in his hand, and all the others held psalm books. When the big front door was thrust open again and a big man strode into the hall, followed by the two excise officers, the people around the bier set up a wail for the dead. MacDrumin made a sign to the officers to stop where they were and began, in sonorous tones, to read the service for the dead.
Astonished, the three men halted in their steps, but the big one paused only briefly before demanding harshly, “What new devilry is this, MacDrumin?”
“’Tis not devilry at all, Fergus Campbell, but the Lord’s own business, and I’ll thank you not to interfere with such.”
“And why would ye be having a funeral at eight o’clock in the nicht, ye auld scoundrel? Ye’ve run yer limit this time. I’ll just be having a look at yon corpse.”
MacDrumin drew himself up and said in measured accents, as if he were explaining a simplicity to a backward child, “We are having the service now because the chief mourner was delayed by yon wicked weather and could not get here before now. These proceedings—as you would know had you half the familiarity with these parts that you boast of to your English friends, were planned two days ago for this very afternoon, and the corpse has been lying here before yon great fire for some eight hours now, and ought to be making its dissatisfaction with that state of affairs known to all and sundry at any moment.” He wrinkled his nose, and Rothwell was so fascinated that he imagined he could smell the rotting flesh.
Frowning, MacDrumin added, “You may certainly look if you insist upon it, Fergus. No doubt you will take no infection. At all events, Granny MacDrumin cannot have been right to say the poor fellow died of the smallpox.” He paused significantly.
“There’s been no smallpox here in years,” Campbell snapped, but Rothwell noted that he stopped mid-stride and seemed hesitant to go nearer.
“Very true,” MacDrumin agreed, “and doesn’t that just show how dangerous it is to our people to be letting all manner of strangers infest our mountains? They wander in from other parts where such dreaded diseases are much more common. Och, but ‘we are all fleet of life, Fergus Campbell, like tree leaves, weak creatures of clay, unsubstantial as shadows, wingless—’”
“Ye’re raving,” Campbell said. “I’ve heard naught of anyone dying, ye auld fraud, and heard naught of strangers neither.”
“Och, but you’re a ‘savage-creating, stubborn fellow,’ and why should you have heard that my daughter and her new husband, the Earl of Rothwell, were on their way to Glen Drumin? For it is”—MacDrumin looked straight at Rothwell—“his lordship’s own servant who lies in this casket, the very same one who brought word of their coming. And though I tell you it was the lad’s own weak English constitution that failed him in our wild Highland country, it comes to my mind that Granny is frequently right, so if you’ve a mind to stare this corpse in his rotting face, Fergus Campbell, do it quick.”
There was a pregnant silence, and Rothwell was careful not to let his gaze encounter James’s for fear that his rigid gravity would desert him. In truth, the old reprobate possessed a remarkably fertile imagination.
One of the excisemen said suddenly, “Never mind the coffin, Campbell. “’Tis the baggage they brought which must be confiscated. There were four carts and a pack horse!”
MacDrumin chuckled and shook his head. “You won’t take them, because his lordship’s servants have already stowed his lordship’s gear away. If you will but look at him, my friends, you will see that he presents—despite the hard day he has endured—an elegant and fashionable appearance. Can you doubt he requires four cartloads of baggage?”
Finding himself suddenly the focus of every eye, Rothwell decided he had suffered enough. Looking down his nose at the pompous Campbell, he said with calm if somewhat querulous authority, “I quite fail to comprehend this interest in my baggage, or by what right you people have interrupted this proceeding. I collect that you two”—he flicked a glance at the excisemen—“are English, but you have already admitted you carry no authority to annoy us. As for you, my good man,” he added, shifting his gaze with contempt to Campbell, “I do not know what business you have to be in this house at all.”
Campbell straightened to his full height and growled, “I’ve authority enough, my lord. I am the rightfully appointed bailie for these parts.”
“Dear me.” Rothwell paused, letting his gaze harden. Then, abandoning all affectation, he added in a chillingly quiet voice, “But you have no authority over me, Campbell.”
“Perhaps not, my lord, but my present duty has naught to do with you, because I mean to—”
“You are in my house, not MacDrumin’s, which is a fact of which, in your position, you ought to be well aware. You have, in fact, trespassed onto my land and broken into my house, for you were certainly not admitted with my permission. You have no business here, Campbell. Go away and take your men with you. Your presence is an affront to what ought to be a most solemn occasion, and your blustering has begun to bore me.”
Campbell’s face suffused with angry color, but he recognized defeat, and with an abrupt sign to his men to follow, left the house. A breathless silence filled the air until MacDrumin murmured, “‘For then, in wrath, the Olympian Pericles thundered and lightened, and confounded Hellas.’ Well done, lad.”
Recognizing the source of the laird’s quotations, Rothwell looked straight at him and replied, “Since the rest of that won’t serve you, sir, I suggest that you quickly ‘bring me a beaker of wine so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.’”
With dawning delight, MacDrumin slapped his knee and exclaimed, “You’ve read Aristophanes, have you? MacKinnon said you were a good man, and I knew he was right the minute I laid eyes on you, for all you dress like a popinjay.” He turned to Dugald and said, “Have some of the lads stow those kegs in a safe place and take others to be certain Fergus and his lot get clear of the glen.” Turning back to Rothwell, he said, “I can do better for you than mere wine, lad, for though I’ve some splendid claret in my cellar, this occasion calls for more than claret. A pair of chopins, someone!” Taking two large mugs from a servant who had anticipated the order, he handed one to Rothwell with a grin and said, “There are two things a Highlander likes naked, lad, and one of them is malt whisky. Many thanks to you.”
Accepting the mug, and noting absently that James had cornered Kate MacCain again near the fire and seemed to be arguing with her, Rothwell glanced at the silent, weary-looking Maggie, then looked at MacDrumin again and said, “I might as easily have betrayed you, you know.”
“Not likely though, now you’re one of the family.”
“I am no such thing, which you must know as well as I do,” Rothwell said, feeling his temper stir again. “After watching your recent performance, I don’t doubt you were party to the damnable trick that was played on me, sir, but no matter what may have been said then, your daughter and I are not married.”
MacDrumin tilted his head a little and with his eyes atwinkle beneath their bushy brows, he said, “Did you not declare yourself wedded to the lass?”
“In a way, I suppose I did, but—”
“And were there not witnesses to hear that declaration?”
“There were, certainly, but—”
“Then you are wedded to her, lad, and I wish you well. She’s a wee bit of a handful, I know, but you look like a man who can tame her well enough if you put your mind to it.”
“Now see here, MacDrumin,” Rothwell said, “that declaration business may mean something under Scottish law, but it certainly is not the law of England.”
“Och, lad, it pains me to contradict you, but you’re very much mistaken. By ancient Scot law yon declaration constituted a witnessed verbal contract, even though you did no more than agree that you were married to her in order to save your hide when you were caught in a compromising position. Not only is such a contract binding for life under ecclesiastical law but it carries with it full property rights in civil law; and, since neither you nor Maggie, bless her heart, denied the declaration at the time, you are well and truly married by the laws of both England and Scotland. The English have failed to keep most of the promises they made before the Act of Union was signed, but one they have kept is that an Englishman is just as much bound by our ancient laws as a Scotsman is. Faith,” he added with a comical look, “when Fergus Campbell recalls that fact, he’ll be plaguing us again. But there’s naught you can do about your marriage, lad.”
“Oh, yes, by God, there is,” Rothwell snapped. “Property rights, you said! That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You contrived the whole business amongst the lot of you, thinking to regain property you believe to be rightfully yours, but I’ll tell you what can be done about it, you villain. I am
not
married to your daughter. I’ve not touched her, nor will I do so.”
“Just as well you hadn’t before the declaration,” MacDrumin said, in no way discomposed. “Prenuptially conceived children cannot inherit either in Scotland or in England.”
“Papa!”
Maggie’s cry was one of outrage, but Rothwell said furiously, “Be silent! There will be no children, MacDrumin. I shall have this … this nonsense annulled, and if I cannot do that, I will, by God, petition Parliament for a divorce. And I’ll get one if I have to manufacture evidence for it myself!”
“Whisst now, lad—”
“Don’t ‘whisst now’ me, you misbegotten old reprobate! You may think yourself a devilish crafty fellow, but you’ll not get the better of me. Not by a—”
The pistol shot startled everyone in the room, silencing all but James, who snarled, “You damned little vixen! By heaven, I’ll serve you as I did before for that. How dare you—”
Rothwell snapped, “James, what the devil is going on there?”
“I’ll tell you what the devil, my lord,” Kate MacCain said furiously, waving a smoking pistol to punctuate her words. “This … this overbearing brother of yours dared to lay hands on me again, and I don’t take such treatment from any man. If he moves another step toward me, I’ll shoot his—”
“Put that damned pistol away, Kate MacCain,” MacDrumin roared. “You’ve gone and put a hole in my ceiling, that’s what you’ve done, and you’ve no business even to have the thing. Are you daft, wench? If Fergus Campbell heard that shot, he’ll come back and clap us all in jail. I’ve told you before, no weapons!”
“Aye, you’ve told me, right enough, but I’ll not take being mauled about by this English lout, any more than I’d allow one of your lads or my own to do such a thing.”
“I wasn’t mauling her,” James said defensively. “I was just talking to her when she drew the pistol, and when I tried to take it away, the damned thing went off. I’ll admit I was angry to see her again, particularly when I found she was responsible for what happened to Ned. Oh, yes,” he said when Rothwell stiffened. “She admitted it was all her own notion—to get even with me, if you please, for giving her a thrashing that was even more well-deserved than I thought. She thought I’d get to Maggie first, because my room was nearer, but now she’s entrapped you, Ned, and she is not the least bit sorry. The innkeeper was in on it from the first, and it was Kate herself who screamed, and who no doubt tripped you and ripped your quilt away.”
“I did not trip him,” Kate muttered, glowering. “He was in such a haste to fling himself into Maggie’s bed, he tripped over his own big clumsy feet.”
MacDrumin said hastily, “Enough, now. Rory, for the love of God, take Kate home. Her granny will be fretting for her. And if you find young Ian about, take him, too. He ought to be in bed. Go on now, Kate, not another word do I want to hear from you. As for you, Rothwell,” he went on with a wary note in his voice, “I ken that you’re angry, lad, but ’twill do no good to rant about it now. If you’ve no desire to share your wife’s bedchamber, I’ll show you to one of your own, which, knowing English habits, I’ve already ordered made ready. Though I cannot deny I’d like you for my son-in-law, since it would solve any number of problems, what you do with your future is yours to decide. I’ll not interfere.”
Rothwell nodded, watching the young man called Rory, unsure that he could succeed in removing the angry Kate, or that James would let her go. James looked at Rothwell, however, and obedient to a nod, he relaxed his hold with a frustrated grimace, whereupon Kate tossed her head and turned to Rory.
“Aye, Rory we’ll leave now,” she said. “Good night to you, Maggie. If you’re unco cross with me, I’ll not blame you.”
Maggie said quietly, “I am angry, Kate, but I suppose I’ll get over it. Go home to bed.”
Rothwell shifted his gaze sharply, wondering what Maggie was thinking. He had known the instant MacDrumin congratulated him on his marriage that someone had told him about the incident at Laggan; and he had been certain from Kate’s mischievous laughter that she had been not only the one who had told MacDrumin but most likely was the one who had tricked him in the first place.
He had been flinging accusations rather indiscriminately since then, and had even wondered if Maggie might have been party to the prank, but he was certain now that she was not. He had seen his own dismay reflected in her face when MacDrumin had said the whole business carried the full weight of law. MacDrumin’s part was more difficult to decide, but in view of the distances traveled, he could imagine no way by which Kate could have received her orders from the laird beforehand or have reached him afterward before Rothwell’s own party had. At best, she and her men could have been but a few hours ahead of them that day.