Chapter and Hearse (10 page)

Puzzled, he went forward.

His father's friend had said there had been nothing to the east but he could see trees in plenty, and established scrub vegetation much more than – as the boys' book had it – ‘twenty years a'growing'. Tall, well-grown trees …

It was nearing noon now and the desert was at its hottest, shimmering in the heat of the midday sun. He advanced over the rough ground as quickly as he could in that oven-like temperature but seemed to get no nearer to the trees. Muttering under his breath something about mad dogs and Englishmen, he forged on. He got no nearer, though, to the thick band of growth to the east.

Perspiring heavily, he was aware that the ground was falling away a little now, giving a better view of the heights of the Kisra Pass. That meant that ‘B' platoon would have been especially vulnerable to fire from the north … ‘If you can see them, they can see you' was a hard lesson learned in the First World War.

So was ‘Know Thine Enemy.'

He was still no nearer the trees.

He stumbled on, weary now and more than a little thirsty. There was a disturbing heat haze coming off the desert and soon the broad swathe of trees ahead began to dance before his eyes. He would go as far as the trees and then turn back.

But walk as far and as fast as he could, he couldn't get to them.

It was then that he stumbled and almost fell. That stopped him for a moment, and when he looked up again the trees had gone.

All of them.

He rubbed his eyes.

There was nothing ahead but sand and desert.

Nothing at all.

Yet he hadn't been dreaming.

He was quite sure about that.

He stood stock still while he gave the matter thought.

His father – that unknown figure in a hallowed photograph, and dead before his son was born – could well have led his platoon to their deaths because of a mirage.

Probably had.

*   *   *

‘Sorry, Mum,' he said later that night. ‘I don't think the desert's going to give up its secrets.'

‘There was no harm in hoping,' she said.

‘Not after all this time,' he said.

‘Your dad would have done what he thought was right at the time,' said Mrs Stubbings confidently.

‘That's what you've always said,' said her son, nodding. ‘All you can ever do, really, isn't it, if you've got to live with it afterwards?'

‘Which is something he didn't have to do,' she reminded him, ‘not coming back.'

‘True.' It was something he hadn't thought about until now: the burden of living with military mistakes.

‘Always knew his own mind, did your father,' she said.

*   *   *

‘A complete mystery,' he announced to the East Calleshire Regimental Association at dinner on their last evening in Lasserta.

‘We may never know what really happened.' He paused and gave a little, rather patronizing, smile. ‘I'm afraid that war's like that – full of unsolved enigmas that have to be lived with.'

‘And Anthony Eden?' enquired the Ambassador with genuine interest. ‘What action did you say he should have taken at Suez?'

‘Done a deal with Nasser,' said Colin Stubbings unhesitatingly.

‘Reached a compromise?' translated Heber-Hibbs.

‘Bought into the action more like,' cackled Stubbings. ‘Saved a lot of trouble. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'

‘Ah…' said the Ambassador.

‘Costs less,' said the representative of the new generation. ‘Nothing wrong with a bit of baksheesh anyway, is there?'

‘Well…' temporized the diplomat.

Stubbings smirked at Heber-Hibbs. ‘As long as you keep it secret. That's what's important.' He winked and added, ‘For more than thirty years, mind you…'

Handsel Monday

Sixteenth-century Scotland

The little girl lay motionless at the foot of the east turnpike stair. She was sprawled, head downwards, just where the bottom step fanned out into the great hall of the castle. How long she had been lying there, tumbling athwart the first three steps, the Sheriff of Fearnshire did not yet know. All he knew so far was that the child's cheek felt cold to the touch of his ungloved hand.

Quite cold. She was dead.

The air too was cold, bitterly cold, just as cold as it had been the last time that Sheriff Rhuaraidh Macmillan had come to Castle Balgalkin. To make matters worse – if they could be any worse than they already were, that is – it was snowing hard today as well. The cold, though, was the only thing that Sheriff Macmillan had so far found that was the same on this visit as it had been the last time he was at the castle.

Then – it had only been the Monday of last week, although now it seemed much longer ago – the whole of Fearnshire had been
en fête
for the feast of hogmanay. Or should, he mused as he took off his other glove, he start thinking of hogmanay by its French name of
hoguinane
now that everything in Scotland was being influenced by a queen from France?

That day – Hogmanay, he decided obstinately – there had been, as there was every year at Castle Balgalkin, a great ceilidh – and he wasn't going to change that good old Gaelic word for any French one – to celebrate the ending of the old year and the coming in of the new one. And that night, in the best Fearnshire tradition, the Laird of Balgalkin himself had answered the door to the first-footers.

Rhuaraidh Macmillan moved his hand from a cold cheek to the girl's outflung arms, the better to see her hands.

Today it was all very, very different. For one thing, when the Sheriff had arrived there had been no welcoming Laird at the door of the Castle Balgalkin. ‘The ancient place of the stag with the white head' was what the desmesne had been called in olden times – Scottish times, not French ones. He wasn't surprised: this winter alone had been hard enough to bring any number of stags down off the hills in search of forage.

Macmillan lifted a limp little hand and started to examine small fingers with surprising tenderness.

On New Year's Eve, only the week before, Sheriff Macmillan and his lady wife had been acclaimed as they had arrived from Drummondreach by a piper who had taken up his bagpipes as soon as he saw the couple get near to the castle. There had been no piper at Castle Balgalkin today and no pibroch heralding his approach with ancient tune. Instead there had been only a distraught servant waiting at the gate, anxiously watching out for the coming of himself and his little entourage.

The child's fingers didn't seem broken to him. And the fingernails definitely weren't.

At the first sight of the Sheriff, the retainer had turned and run back inside the fortillage in a great hurry. Macmillan had heard quite clearly his urgent shout apprising his master of the Sheriff's arrival. His voice had echoed round the castle's sandstone walls with a diminishing resonance, but any sound made by the Laird as he crossed the great hall towards the Sheriff and his clerk had been muffled by the reeds and the rushes that were strewn about the floor.

Those same rushes, deep as they were, noted the Sheriff automatically, had not been deep and soft enough to save the girl as she fell. Even though her head was half covered by them, he could see from where he was standing that her face was badly discoloured by both blood and bruise on the left-hand side.

‘It's a bad business, Rhuaraidh…' The servant's call had produced the man himself – Hector Leanaig, Laird of Balgalkin, He too had presented a very different picture from the genial host of the week before. A veritable giant of a man, he was sufficiently blackavised to have gone first-footing himself on New Year's Eve. He had come forward to meet the Sheriff, shaking his head sadly. ‘A bad, bad business…'

‘Tell me, Hector.' Macmillan had inclined his head attentively towards Hector Leanaig and waited. It would have been quite impossible to discern from the Sheriff's tone whether this was an invitation or a command.

‘My Jeannie's dead,' the Laird had blurted out. Big and strong though he was, nevertheless the man looked shaken to his wattles now. There was an unhealthy pallor about him too, contrasting sharply with his raven-coloured hair. ‘My poor, wee bairn.'

The Sheriff nodded. This was what he had been told.

‘She's just where we found her,' Leanaig had struggled for speech but only achieved a rather tremulous croak. ‘This way…'

Although at first the Laird had taken the lead through the castle, he fell back as soon as they neared the broken figure spread-eagled across the bottom three steps of the stair. The Sheriff had advanced alone, his clerk and the Laird lagging behind.

And now Rhuaraidh Macmillan was gently turning the girl's hands over and taking a long look at their outer aspects. There were grazes here and there on both and some dried blood over the back of the knuckles of her left hand.

‘Poor wee Jeannie,' repeated the Laird brokenly.

‘Aye, Hector,' agreed the Sheriff noncommittally. That, at least, was true enough, whatever had happened to her. He straightened up and changed his stance, the better to take a look at her head.

Seemingly Hector Leanaig could not bear to watch him going about his business, because he took a step back and averted his gaze from the sad scene.

The child was in her nightclothes, her gown rucked up on one side. A dreadful bruise disfigured the left-hand side of her face and, even without stooping, the Sheriff could see that her cheek was broken on that side. He dropped on one knee and, with great care, put his hand to her skull. That too might be broken. It was certainly cold to the touch and what blood was visible there was brown and dried: the girl, he concluded, must have been dead for several hours.

Hector Leanaig licked dry lips. ‘She's just where we found her.'

‘We?' queried Rhuaraidh Macmillan sharply. ‘Who was it exactly who found her, then?'

‘One of the women,' said Leanaig, jerking his head roughly over his shoulder but not turning round.

The Sheriff's gaze followed the direction of his gesture. In the far corner of the hall a buxom young woman was lurking in the shadows. She was weeping, stifling her sobs as best she could. Her face was almost invisible under a woven kirtle, but what he could see of her visage was swollen by tears. Here and there strands of blonde hair extruded from under the woollen garment. She would have been comely enough, he thought, had it not been for her obvious distress.

‘Morag,' amplified the Laird, still not letting his gaze fall on her. ‘Jeannie's nurse.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan, though, took a good look at the weeping woman. Irony of ironies, she was standing under the traditional Christmas osier and evergreen kissing bough – the ivy and the holly there to ensure new growth in the spring to come. This had been suspended from a handy rafter – not too low to kiss under, not too high to be too difficult to secure. The apples and mistletoe in the kissing bough would have been an important part of the hogmanay festivities until those had come to an end the night before – Handsel Monday, as ever was. The kissing bough would have been fixed firmly enough for sure: it was considered very bad luck if it were to touch the ground, because in nature the parasitic mistletoe plant always hung downwards …

Perhaps, he thought, that was what had happened at Castle Balgalkin, because there was ‘nae luck aboot this house, nae luck at a'. That was beyond doubt, whatever had befallen the girl.

The young woman under the kissing bough let forth a loud sob as she saw the Sheriff's eye rest upon her. Wrapped tightly round her shapely shoulders was a shawl; this she held with its edges closed together, as if for greater protection against the outside world. Rhuaraidh Macmillan, no amateur in these matters, was well aware of how frightened she was. And no wonder, if the dead child had been left in her charge.

‘Morag Munro,' said Hector Leanaig roughly. ‘She'll tell you herself…'

‘The bairn wasna' there in her bed when I woke up,' said the young woman between chattering teeth. ‘Handsel Monday or no'.' She stared wildly at the Sheriff. ‘And I'd warned her…'

‘What about?' asked Macmillan mildly. No good ever came of frightening witnesses too soon. He'd learned that a long time ago.

‘Handsel Monday, of course,' said Morag, visibly surprised. ‘Did ye not mind that yestre'en was Handsel Monday?'

‘Tell me,' he invited her. Nothing was to be assumed when Sheriff Macmillan was going about his business of law and justice, nothing taken for granted. Not even the ancient customs attached to Handsel Monday.

‘“When all people are to stay in bed until after sunrise”,' she quoted, ‘“so as not to be meeting fairies or witches”.'

Hector Leanaig said dully, ‘The first Monday in January, that's Handsel Monday. You know that, Rhuaraidh Macmillan, as well as I do.'

‘Jeannie knew it,' Morag Munro gulped. ‘And I told her she wasna' to leave her bed until I came for her in the morning.' The young woman dissolved into tears again. ‘And when I did, her bed was empty.' Her shoulders shook as her sobs rang round the hall. ‘She was gone.'

‘And Mistress Leanaig?' asked Sheriff Macmillan, suddenly realizing what it was that was missing from the
mise-en-scène
and what it was that he had been subconsciously expecting as a backdrop to this tragedy: the unique and quite dreadful wailing of a mother suddenly bereft of one of her children.

‘She's away over at Alcaig's,' said Leanaig thickly. He jerked a shoulder northwards in the direction of the firth. ‘They say her father's a-dying.'

Macmillan nodded his ready comprehension. Mistress Leanaig, he knew, was the only daughter of the Lord of Alcaig's Isle.

‘Her brothers came for her yesterday afternoon,' said Hector. ‘She went at once.'

‘In her condition?' asked Macmillan. If he remembered rightly, Mistress Leanaig was in the ‘interesting condition' that the French called
enceinte.
At least, that was the reason the other guests had been given for Hector Leanaig spending most of New Year's Eve dancing with a high-spirited young woman called Jemima from Balblair. There had been a memorable Orcadian version of Strip the Willow which no pregnant woman could have danced with safety. And which he, Rhuaraidh Macmillan, for one, wouldn't forget in a hurry – even though he himself had danced it featly with his own lady wife. Nor, he thought judiciously, would the fair-haired young woman from Balblair called Jemima, with whom Hector Leanaig had danced most of that evening, be likely to forget it soon either.