‘No, thank you,’ she said and, louder, for Aeneas’s benefit. ‘I came out for a walk and I intend to continue it.’ She wheeled around and strode off towards the mountains and home, head held high.
‘You won’t be half-way before dark,’ MacGillivray protested.
‘The others will soon catch her up,’ Aeneas said, watching Anne’s ramrod-straight back as she marched, determinedly, away.
MacGillivray shrugged. It was pointless trying to dissuade Anne
from any course of action once she’d set her mind to it. But her pride would fade when she was beyond the cause of it. She wouldn’t let her family ride past and leave her on the road.
His new chief clamped a brotherly hand on his shoulder.
‘Time for a drink,’ he said.
They headed for the house, following the fretful Elizabeth and her complaining mother. Aeneas grinned at MacGillivray and nodded to the two women in front.
‘Yours looks a little wet,’ he said.
At Invercauld, young voices shouted.
‘Prosperity and no Union!’ Two groups of children, wooden swords raised, rushed across the training field towards each other and met in a clash of wood against leather targes. One little girl cowered behind her targe, ineffectively trying to stab around it as the boy who’d engaged her thrashed the lights out of the leather shield.
‘No, no,’ Anne called, and stopped them. Crouching behind the girl, she slid one arm round her to slot through the straps of the targe and grasped the girl’s sword arm at the wrist with the other. ‘Like this, Catríona.’ She pulled the targe across the girl’s body to shield her torso while leaving her sword arm exposed, then she pushed the targe outwards and thrust forward with the sword. ‘See?’ She repeated the move. ‘You push his sword away then thrust.’ The girl sighed.
‘Will the Prince ever come, Anne?’
‘Of course he will.’ She gave the child a reassuring squeeze. Nine years old and doubting already. Anne had been hearing and telling the story for twenty. Sometimes she, too, wondered if that was all it was, a fairy story for children. It had become indistinct in the telling, as if the Prince were a fiction and not someone made of flesh and blood. Was a false hope better than no hope? Not that it mattered for battle training. Everyone learned to fight as soon as they could hold a practice weapon, once a week after lessons.
The government had banned the bearing of arms in public, but a clan’s status and security still lay in the number of broadswords it could field. There were always enemies. At any time some rival clan, pushed to the limits of its own land, might decide Invercauld, or parts of it, could be annexed to feed and house their folk.
‘Besides,’ she said to the girl. ‘People who won’t defend their home deserve to lose it.’ She beckoned the boy forward and he swung his sword. Anne guided Catríona’s targe, pushing the blow away. The boy’s targe shielded his body. ‘Good,’ Anne said. ‘Now hold it.’ Moving the girl’s sword arm, she pointed out the boy’s weak spots. ‘If you’re quick, you might get him here.’ She touched the sword tip against his exposed upper right arm. ‘Then his sword arm is hurt and he’ll submit. First blood is all you need draw. But the only way is around his targe. Think fast and move fast. Now, you try.’
She stood up, and the children set to again. A flicker of movement up on the mountain caught her attention. Her imagination must have conjured up intruders. There appeared to be a thin line of distant riders coming through the pass towards them.
‘I got him! I got him!’ Catríona squealed with excitement. Anne answered automatically, still watching the hillside.
‘Well done!’ There
were
riders up there, and people walking. Who were they? What did they want here? She turned to the children. Eventually, they’d become skilled, formidable fighters. Right now, they were messengers. She clapped her hands for attention. ‘We have visitors. Will you put everything away and run home. Quickly, quickly.’ As they ran to throw the practice weapons into their wooden box then scatter back to their various cotts, Anne scoured the slope, squinting to pick out some sign of identity.
High up on the mountain track, the front rider was resplendent in trews, velvet jacket and full chief ’s regalia. An illegal sword glittered at his side. Highlanders, and on serious business. Behind the chief, a clansman led a riderless white horse. Could that mean what it ought to? She scanned the rest of the column. Three black cattle followed, a few sheep and goats and a fat pig driven by a boy with a stick. Other clansfolk drove the animals along, keeping them in line. At the rear was another rider, a second chief. A chief with red-gold hair.
‘Oh, dear life!’ Anne turned and ran to her home. Inside the house, she charged past her stepmother, knocking a chair sideways
in her hurry to get to the window, where she peered out towards the mountains.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Lady Farquharson righted the tumbled chair.
Anne turned to her stepmother just as Elizabeth ran in from outside.
‘Mother! Mother! Oh, Anne, did you see?’
‘Did she see what?’ her mother demanded.
Elizabeth was almost delirious with excitement.
‘M
c
Intosh. It’s M
c
Intosh. And he’s got…’ She flapped her hands, unable to get out the words.
‘Gifts.’ Anne finished for her, cold now, matter of fact. ‘He’s bringing gifts.’
It was enough to restore Elizabeth’s tongue.
‘Marriage gifts, Mother! A bridal horse, cattle, sheep, oh, I don’t know what else. James went to meet them. He’s coming to propose, Mother!
Lady Farquharson grabbed the back of the chair, her knuckles white.
‘
O mo chreach
, my goodness. And look at the place!’ She scooped up her embroidery and handed it to her daughter. ‘Quickly,
greas ort
.
Och
, my hair. I must change. Oh dear.’
‘You said he’d want a wife now he could afford one.’ Elizabeth hopped up and down, hugging the tapestry to her chest. Calmly, Anne walked towards the back door.
‘Where are you going?’ her stepmother asked.
‘Somewhere quiet. Out of the way.’
‘What!’ Elizabeth couldn’t believe her ears. ‘When Mother’s about to receive a proposal?’
‘She’s not my mother,’ Anne said, and slipped out.
Lady Farquharson stared at the shut door.
‘Well, really!’ Then, remembering. ‘Oh, my goodness, my hair!’
Outside, Anne walked a well-trodden path through secluded trees. Behind them, a horse, cattle and people passed by, going the opposite way, towards her home. She caught glimpses through the dark trunks
and low branches: Aeneas, the blue bonnet with its three feathers, long black hair to his shoulders, plaid sweeping down his back, his people, a fat pink pig, an unusually sombre MacGillivray.
Inside Invercauld, Lady Farquharson, in a hastily donned silk gown, silver jewellery flashing, hurriedly fastened herself up. Elizabeth set a tray with a crystal decanter and wine glasses on the table and arranged herself beside it. Food might often be reduced to oats and rabbit, but they could still put on a show when required.
James came in from the front door, about to announce their visitors, but Lady Farquharson, irritated by him spoiling Aeneas’s view of her in all her finery, waved him aside. And there was Aeneas, silver basket-handled broadsword belted at his left side, a black-and-silver-handled dirk on his right.
‘
Fàilte
, M
c
Intosh,’ Lady Farquharson embraced him. ‘It’s good to see you, Aeneas.’
He seemed nervous too, giving only a cursory nod while his eyes flitted about the room. Behind him, MacGillivray stopped just inside the doorway. He, too, wore his full chief’s regalia. Elizabeth rearranged herself by the decanter and flashed him a flirtatious smile. After he’d fished her out the loch at Moy, she’d imagined a great deal more between them. That he was Anne’s lover was neither here nor there. Her sister was obviously not wrapped up in him. She’d walked away from his company more than once recently. And, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, if she could seduce his attention away from Anne, that would make having him even more exciting.
Since neither man spoke, Lady Farquharson rushed into the gap.
‘It’s a few weeks longer than we expected.’ She could hardly believe her tongue would make such a
faux pas
. ‘I mean, before you came to collect your horses.’
‘I had other things on my mind,’ Aeneas said. He seemed somewhat clipped for a suitor.
‘A new chief ’s duties, of course,’ she excused him. ‘A glass of wine?’
Elizabeth picked up the decanter. Aeneas could stand on ceremony no longer.
‘Lady Farquharson,’ he said. ‘I’m here to propose marriage.’
The lady gasped at his directness, fluttering a lace handkerchief to fan her face.
In a clearing among the trees, Anne knelt by a headstone, brushing dust and moss off the words with her fingers. The writing on the stone read: ‘John Farquharson of Invercauld. Died 1738.’ Below was written ‘Beloved wife, Margaret Murray, died in childbirth 1725’.
When she was very small, her father gave her a pony from Shetland. It was half the size of his horse but big for her. Once she could ride it, he said, she could do the estate round with him. Impatient to start, she tried to mount. Tried and failed, repeatedly, till furious with frustration, she threw herself on the ground, beating and kicking the dirt with her fists and feet. He’d lifted her in the air, at arm’s length.
‘You can’t fight your own shadow,’ he said. ‘Learn to live with it.’ When she stopped struggling, he dropped her into the saddle. After that, she rode with him every time. Her stepmother thought the pony a waste.
‘She could have sat with you,’ she complained. ‘The size of her.’
‘And what would she learn,’ her father asked. ‘How to be a passenger? She’ll be out from under your feet.’
It was common enough for children to lose one, or even both, blood parents. To be raised by first, and sometimes second, stepparents. Yet she resented her stepmother, though she’d never known her own. Only her father’s arms ever held her. It was his broad chest she cradled into, or beat her fists against. Her protector, teacher, comforter, he always forgave, always, always loved. She was still hollow from his loss. But it was a mother she wanted now, that tenderness, someone who might understand the need to walk without a shadow. Her fingers traced the date of her own birth, the day that was her mother’s last. From the clump of grass beside the stone, a chicken clucked and scurried
off. Anne parted the clump to reveal a large brown egg, still warm.
Voices called her from around the estate. The new couple required her approval so that the celebrations could begin. Anne picked up the egg, its warmth filling her hand, and rose, resolute. She was a Farquharson, her mother and her father’s daughter, and she would play her role.
Little Catríona, the girl who had finally mastered the targe earlier, ran down the path to the graves, calling for her.
‘Anne, Anne, you’re wanted up at the house,’ she could hardly hold her excitement. ‘The man says we might be roasting the pig.’
‘Then she’ll be out from under our feet,’ Anne smiled and walked past the perplexed child towards the house.
Aeneas turned nervously as the door opened and Anne came in. The doorway crowded with clansfolk, M
c
Intosh and Farquharson. News travels fast by word of mouth. Anne stopped beside MacGillivray, flashed him her brightest smile, took hold of his hand and laid the still warm egg in his open palm.
‘To keep it safe,’ she said. Then she walked over to her stepmother and Aeneas, words of congratulations ready on her tongue. On the floor beside her half-sister’s feet, the crystal decanter lay shattered in a pool of red wine. Elizabeth’s expression appeared to be frozen, giving nothing away. Well-known faces peered in the window, scuffling for space to see. Lady Farquharson seemed waxen, and stiff as an over-starched apron. Anne stopped in front of her and waited, expectantly. The older woman gulped.
‘Aeneas –’ she stopped, then started again. ‘Aeneas has something to say to you.’
Behind Anne, Elizabeth squeaked and grabbed the tray of glasses off the table. Anne looked round at her sister, who cradled the tray in her arms. Did she expect her to explode with rage? It would be good, at least, to have Invercauld to herself and James. She turned her full glittering gaze on Aeneas. But he only stared back at her. No words came.
‘I presume you mean to say it out loud,’ Anne prompted.
‘Will you be my wife?’ he said. It burst out of him, like a sneeze he’d been fighting to control for some time.
It was not what Anne expected to hear. But she had heard and did not need to ask him to repeat it. Everyone in the room had heard. They had heard it before, expected it. That was why the decanter lay broken, why her stepmother and sister stood frozen. Now they anticipated her response. Nobody breathed. The clansfolk in the doorway had heard and passed it on to those outside so it murmured round the house like the wind. Anne leant back on her heels, shocked and becoming more and more so. MacGillivray shifted the egg, still cupped in his hands, to safety behind his back. Elizabeth lifted a protective arm in front of the wine glasses and screwed her eyes shut. Anne let out her breath.
‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I will.’
The egg in MacGillivray’s hands shattered. Elizabeth’s tray tipped and the four wine glasses fell to the floor, breaking in turn like a peal of bells. Lady Farquharson’s spine gave way and she folded like a rag doll into the chair behind her.
Aeneas, not knowing what else to do, moved towards Anne to kiss her. Then he realized his sword and dirk would get in the way and stopped to swing them both behind him. He took hold of her then, but realized he still had his bonnet on. Without letting her go, he whipped the hat off, tossed it on the table. But now he was about to kiss this woman who’d kept running through his mind since that day at the loch and whose deep blue eyes were now dark as flood water he might drown in, wanted to drown in, and she was waiting, and he knew if he didn’t stop now he might never stop, so he stopped.