Chapter and Hearse (19 page)

‘He's still outside,' she said, pointing over her shoulder in the direction of the wood behind the house. ‘He called out to me on my way across the steading, but aye softly … and only after he'd seen I was alone.'

Sheriff Macmillan shot her a keen glance. ‘And where exactly is he now?'

‘In the little bothy behind the steading, sir.'

‘Alone?' Men had been known to have been ambushed before now by messages such as these. Good men and true …

‘Yes, sir.' She curtsied again. ‘There's just himself.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Please, sir, I looked specially when I went back to get the peats for the fire.'

‘And did you ask him who he was?' If there was ever to be ‘a chiel among them, taking notes' it had better not be this sharp-witted youngster or they would all be doomed.

‘Yes, sir, but he wouldn't be after telling me his name.'

‘Ah…' The Sheriff of Fearnshire was not totally surprised at this; only that whoever it was who wanted such secrecy had risked coming to Drummondreach in daylight in the first place. The burden of his spiel must be important, that was for sure. And urgent too.

‘And he had his face hidden by his plaid,' she said, as if she had read his mind. ‘But –' she gave him a mischievous sideways glance – ‘I ken't well enough who it was anyway.'

‘Tell me,' he commanded her.

‘It's Murdo Macrae from Balblair, sir.'

‘And how did you know that?' Sheriff Macmillan knew Murdo Macrae all right. Murdo had always been a sound man, in favour of the rule of law and order even in distinctly shaky times: unhappy times, such as they were in just now, when no man knew who was his friend and who was his foe; and, more worryingly, knew who was a government spy – or, even worse, a double agent – whose aims and objects were not the administration of justice but the furtherance of the power of his political masters. He knew without being told that if Murdo Macrae had something to say then that something would be important, more important still if he deemed it to be a clandestine matter.

‘Please, sir,' the girl was answering him, ‘Dougal, the ferryman, brought Murdo Macrae over the firth last night.' Her gaze was resting in wonder on the wall hangings in the room as she spoke. She was looking at them as if she hadn't seen tapestries before. ‘He'd come from the west…'

‘Well?' Now that the Sheriff came to think of it, little Elspeth from the kitchen probably hadn't ever been in his private sanctum before, let alone seen a minor work from Angers. She might not have even been in this part of the house at all until now.

‘Dougal, the ferryman, knew who he was and he told Fergus Macpherson and Fergus was at the house this morning with fish and Fergus told us…' She paused to take breath.

‘It doesn't follow that Murdo Macrae is the man in the bothy,' objected the Sheriff sternly, quite forgetting that he was talking to a mere girl – and a kitchenmaid at that – and not addressing learned men in a court of law.

Quite unfazed by his words, Elspeth from the kitchen held out her own thin right hand. ‘Dougal told Fergus that his passenger had a bloody bandage on his right hand and Fergus, he told us in the kitchen.'

‘So?'

‘The man in the bothy has a wound on his right hand too, sir. I saw it when he was holding his plaid tight against his face.'

The Sheriff gave the girl a quizzical look. At this rate he would soon have to look to his own laurels – she hadn't missed a single thing that should be marked by a sheriff too.

Elspeth was still speaking. ‘And the mannie outside said I wasna' to tell anyone but the Sheriff himself that he was there in the bothy. That was very important, he said.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan gestured towards the hearth. ‘So that's why you brought in the peats that the fire didn't need.'

She bobbed up and down. ‘I don't ordinarily get to come in here, sir, and I thought if anyone saw me coming this way…'

‘Quite right, Elspeth,' he said gravely. He would have to consider how he himself could best cross the steading to the bothy behind without causing comment. Scotland wasn't what it was. Or rather, perhaps, what it had been. And there might be men watching him too, as they watched others in these troubled times. He knew well enough that Drummondreach was no safer than anywhere else in Fearnshire these days. He waved a hand. ‘Now, away with you, lassie, while I think. Keep your tongue to yourself, mind.'

She didn't make any effort to take her leave. Instead, she stood uncertainly between the fire and the door while the Sheriff looked up at the sky and tried to calculate how long it would be before the darkness was deep enough to allow him to slip out to Murdo Macrae unseen.

‘Sir,' she began tentatively.

He turned. ‘Yes?'

‘Calum Beg will be after bringing the horses back soon from the fields.'

‘What about it?' The girl should know that such mundane matters were outwith the concern of the Sheriff of Fearnshire.

‘They have to go across the steading for their feed.'

‘You're not wanting me to ride to the bothy, surely?'

‘No, sir.' She bobbed again. ‘But if we were to stop Calum on the road in front and you were to take the horses in instead of him…'

‘Then I could lead the horses round towards the steading and into the bothy in his coat without being recognized,' finished Rhuaraidh Macmillan, appreciative of her use of the royal ‘we'. If only the daughter of James V had had half as much sense – no, there was a better word for what he was thinking of, a Greek word ‘nous', that was it – as this youngster had, then Scotland – and probably England too, for that matter – wouldn't be in half the turmoil that it was now.

*   *   *

Calum Beg's coat was old and dirty but it covered Rhuaraidh Macmillan well enough. The Sheriff didn't have Calum Beg's accomplished way with his equine team but somehow he got the pair round the front of the demesne and into the steading behind. He hitched the horses to their post and slipped first into the steading. He came out with an old bucket and then, thus laden with this unsavoury touch of verisimilitude, went into the bothy.

‘Thank God you've come, Sheriff,' said a voice out of the darkness at the back of the unlit building. The bedraggled figure of Murdo Macrae emerged from the shadows. ‘Macmillan, we need your help ower badly.'

‘We?'

‘There's a great trouble brewing over Loch a'Chroisg way.' Macrae didn't answer him directly. ‘I got away yestre'en, but it was a near thing…'

‘And sore wounded…' observed the Sheriff, pointing to Macrae's blood-caked hand.

The man winced as he moved forward. ‘This wound, Sheriff, is why we need your help. I'm a marked man now.'

‘And you can't go back without a working sword arm anyway,' observed the Sheriff, ever the realist. ‘You'd no' be able to defend yoursel'. You'd be cut down in an instant.'

Macrae acknowledged the truth of this with a jerk of his head. ‘You need to know that the blackguards are laying siege to the house by the loch.'

‘The Rogart rebels?' Sheriff Macmillan didn't really, need to ask. That band was only one of those roaming the Highlands bent on causing trouble for the forces of law and order, but its men were the most prominent of the marauders presently terrorizing Fearnshire. And the best armed.

‘Aye, and that's not the worst of it.' Murdo Macrae's face twisted into a grimace of pain quite separate from that caused by his injured hand. ‘There's women and children in the house without men there able enough to guard them. The doors'll no' last much longer. They've taken a deal of battering already.'

The Sheriff nodded. It was a tale he had heard many times before over the county.

Murdo Macrae's voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And,' he said hollowly, ‘a rowan tree by the track here has been set about.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan acknowledged the seriousness of this. A rowan tree by the track roughly hacked down was an old Highland indication of trouble to come nearby and soon. ‘They've taken the cattle, no doubt…'

‘And torched the hay…' His shoulders sagged. ‘Sheriff, I'm sure they're bent on laying waste to the whole strath and there'll be no stopping them unless we get help.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan said in his measured way, ‘There's no enemy like an auld enemy…' Highland memories went back a long way but he had no need to remind Murdo Macrae of Balblair of that. ‘And the men of Rogart are auld enemies with the people from Loch a'Chroisg, right enough.'

‘That's half the trouble,' said Macrae.

‘And the other half?' asked the Sheriff, although he was sure he already knew the cause of the present troubles at Loch a'Chroisg.

Murdo Macrae lifted his shoulder in something like a shrug of despair. ‘That there's still some for the Queen and some that are not.'

‘That leddie'd not be wanting bairns starved out,' said the Sheriff firmly, ‘whoever they're fighting for. She had one of her own, remember…'

‘Not that she ever got to see him over much from all accounts.' Murdo Macrae grimaced. ‘And that's not natural for a mother or her wean.'

‘Aye.'

There was no denying that the Crown that had come in with a lass and was well on its way to going out with a lass – or even two, if rumours about the health of the Queen of England were true – was not what it had once been. Rhuaraidh Macmillan was profoundly grateful for one thing, though, and that was that the county of Fearnshire was a long way from Edinburgh and even further from Fotheringhay Castle, where he'd heard Mary Queen of Scots was presently imprisoned.

‘So it is said,' he murmured noncommittally.

There was an even older Highland tradition than a savaged rowan tree: one that went, ‘A silent tongue got no one hung.' He knew well enough that words could be as dangerous as swords; would that the Queen had known it too. But earlier.

Murdo Macrae said eagerly, ‘If, Sheriff, we could get word to the Lord of Alcaig's Isle, I know he'd take up his men to Loch a'Chroisg and see the men from Rogart off…'

‘Aye, Murdo, that's true. Old Duncan Alcaig would deal with them right enough,' agreed Rhuaraidh Macmillan, adding thoughtfully, ‘And he has sons, too. Big men now.'

‘But he's an aye careful body,' Macrae pointed out. He sounded rueful. ‘He'd no' trust any messenger, any more than I would myself … not these days.'

The Sheriff acknowledged the truth of this. Old Alcaig was nobody's fool. ‘Messengers are not always what they seem,' he conceded.

Nothing, you could be sure, he thought to himself, was what it seemed these days. There had been those letters famously found in a casket first and now, he'd heard, letters concealed in a firkin of beer. None of those letters had been what they had seemed either. And all of them had caused a deal of trouble for a certain Queen – enough trouble to dissuade any man from trusting that any missive sent off into the blue would reach its destination without being tampered with and reported on to the man's – or the woman's – enemies. Moreover, no man could rest assured that, even if letters did reach the right reader, they would be seen only by the eyes of the man to whom they had been addressed. Not any longer.

Murdo Macrae struggled to get his good hand inside his torn jerkin. ‘I have letters for the Lord of Alcaig's Isle here, but I'd need to know that they will get to him and him alone, mind you, otherwise…' His voice trailed away and there was a moment's silence in the bothy, broken only by the stamping of the hooves of one of the horses in the steading. ‘Otherwise, Sheriff,' he went on hoarsely, ‘I'm worse than a dead man.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan did not attempt to contradict him. The slashed rowan tree was evidence enough that Macrae spoke the truth there.

‘Wait you, man,' he said, ‘while I think…'

The wounded fighter stood in front of him, anxiously scanning the Sheriff's face. ‘There's men hiding up in the wood,' he said, ‘who'll take letters to Alcaig, right enough, but he'll not know they're safe to act on and not a trap.'

Rhuaraidh Macmillan didn't need reminding of the dangers of a trap. Fearnshire might be a long way from London, but even they had heard about the uncovering of the Babington plot.

‘I have a small chest indoors,' the Sheriff began slowly, ‘with a good lock on it…'

Murdo Macrae's shoulders promptly sagged in despair. ‘Locks need keys, Sheriff, and keys are no more safe than messengers these days.'

‘Aye, man, I know that fine…' All Scotland knew that. The boy William Douglas had obtained the key to Loch Leven Castle when he had released Mary Queen of Scots. He had thrown the key into the loch as he rowed her and her maid across the water. ‘But I wasn't thinking of your parting with the key of the casket…'

Murdo Macrae stared at him, nursing his blood-stained hand. ‘Is Alcaig meant to break the casket open, then?' He looked even more weary now. ‘And if so, how's Alcaig to know that that isn'a a trap too?'

Sheriff Macmillan stroked his chin. ‘The messenger that takes the casket is to tell him to put his own lock on it too – a barrel padlock – and keep the key of that himsel'.'

The wounded man looked at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Why is that, Sheriff?'

‘And when Alcaig has done that, he's to send the casket back to you.'

‘Without his key?' asked Macrae dully, moving over to the bothy wall for support, clearly now beyond thought.

‘That's right,' said the Sheriff briskly. ‘Then all you have to do is to unlock your lock with your key and send the casket back to him with his own lock still on it…'

‘So that he can open it with his own key,' said Murdo Macrae, his mud-bespattered face clearing and some of his weariness dropping from him.