Highland Ballad Part 17

Her mother, who in her short-lived happiness she had all but forgotten, had joined him there. She was dead.

Dead.

Her mother, who had suffered so much, whom she had promised both in thought and word to restore, if not avenge..... Gone forever. Small voices, peeping like crickets in the dark silent halls of d.a.m.nation, told her she had done everything she could, and must now surrender her to memory.

"Would have told Anne this evening. . .before she set out for the Talberts. . .from there to send a doctor." All useless now, swept away, as the Lord Purceville had swept away her mother's love, and then her life.

And now, just as surely, she herself was being drawn into the heart of that great spider's web, to be sucked dry and then discarded. She remembered her mother's words: the man you most want to love, but in the end must despise more than any.

Her spirit palled as the door of the plush carriage, like the padded lid of a casket, sealed them in. Fear and cold and grief at last overcame her, as she sloughed in near unconsciousness against the known and unknown woman beside her.

But a moment before all was consumed in the black sleep of despair, a tiny figure stood at the heart of the abyss and whispered a single, heart-breaking word.

The figure was herself, and the word:

"Michael."

Twenty-One

Mary woke to find herself in a strange bed, with monogrammed sheets and a broad, crimson canopy. She lay still and tried to realize all that had happened. It was impossible. Her recollections of the night before were so confused. . .and her present surroundings in such flat contradiction to the naked exposure she felt. . .that the aura of unreality remained.

She let out a bewildered breath, and pressing her fingers to her temples, tried to reshape in some logical pattern the events of her journey, and later installment in this room. Images came to her in sharp detail, but would not arrange themselves to any firm order or conclusion.

She saw again the pale interior of the carriage. Then through the window, the grim Castle looming upon the promontory: above the mists, beneath the moon . She saw the drawbridge raised again behind them, and the spiked portcullis lowered in the arch beyond. And then the great, hulking form of a man, seated as if in Judgment upon a raised throne of oak at the head of a long reception hall, hung with bright banners and fading tapestry. She walked towards him, came closer, then stopped.

At this point, had she known it, she did in fact lose consciousness, collapsing to the apparent (and unexpected) distress of her father. He had been the first to come to her aid, and loudly summon a physician.

Afterward she had been taken to the rooms she now shared with her aunt, who was stationed in the adjoining chamber.

A door opened in the wall to her right, calling her back to the present. The widow Scott entered quickly, seeming no more a.s.sured or at peace than herself. With a troubled look she approached the bed, and took her niece by the hand.

"I fear we have made a serious mistake," she said.

The words were so obvious, and such a gross understatement of their position, that the one reaction the girl felt capable of was annoyance. The widow read this in her face, shook her head.

"That's not what I mean. Whether we did right or wrong in coming here, and whether it will help Michael---" She looked about her, as if fearing the very walls, then went on in a lowered voice.

"Whether or not we can do anything to call off the search. . .I have found a dangerous weakness in our story, and the one physical detail I overlooked. I cannot hope Lord Purceville did not notice." She lifted Mary's hand before her, and slowly she understood.

The ring .

Such a bitter irony: the very symbol of life and enduring love, of the common purpose that bound them together. . .might work to the undoing of them all.

For at that same moment the Lord Purceville sat alone in his study, pondering many things, not least among them that slender band of silver, set with a single diamond.

The contradiction to the facade of innocence which the widow had tried to plant in his mind was obvious. Why did the girl wear a wedding ring, while the woman did not? Who, and where, was the man who had given it to her? And what string had Stephen pulled, perhaps inadvertently, to bring them here? For though in his hard way he loved his son, he was not blind to his shortcomings. It was unlikely that Stephen had, of his own devices, unearthed and exploited some weakness which he himself had missed.

But most puzzling of all was a question far more simple. Why, after facing death to protect her, had the woman suddenly put her niece, his daughter, into the palm of his hand?

Back in their chambers, the two women saw they had no choice but to see it through. To switch the ring back to the widow's hand might prove disastrous, while to change any element of their story (much of which was still unclear to Mary), would prove equally perilous.

It was decided that they should speak of the ring as an heirloom, which had been pa.s.sed on to the sole inheritor of Scott blood and tradition. This might also lend credence to the guardian's fierce determination to protect her. And in this same hurried conference, Anne Scott went over again all that should, and should not be said at Mary's inevitable, and surely imminent meeting with her father.

Still, if she had been summoned to him in that moment, and had he not been distracted, he might easily have picked her story apart, and held them all at his questionable mercy.

But he was distracted, and distraught. A courier had arrived the night before, only hours ahead of his daughter's carriage, bearing news that he was loathe to hear. Earl Emerson Arthur, his sworn enemy of so many years, had been appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. And full of his new-found authority, the vindictive old man had decided to abandon his long siege---waiting for some d.a.m.ning evidence to arise against his rival---and decided to attack instead, on Purceville's own ground, while the tide of disfavor was still strong against him. A review was to be called, if not a formal Inquest, and evidence gathered to dismiss him. And while losing his seat as Governor was not a literal matter of life and death, to the aged and slowly despairing Lord Purceville, the two amounted to one and the same thing.

For no man is so strong that he can hold off forever the grim whisperings of age. His power and station were all that remained to him, a last s.h.i.+eld of illusion, which so narrowly blocked out the sureness and finality of Death. Without it, he would have to look its grim harvest square in the face. And for all his mockery and outward courage (unfeigned), this was something he was consummately unwilling to do.

Now he was cornered. And the cornered beast is most to be feared.

Twenty-Two

Several hours later a man-servant came to the women's quarters to announce:

"The Lord Purceville," (his exact words), "requests a private interview with his daughter."

Whatever their desired affect, upon hearing these words something shook in Mary's heart, as she felt again the sudden pang of the orphan. Because she realized in that moment that this simple phrase, 'his daughter', had never once been applied to her. For an instant the tears started in her eyes; and for all her fear of him, her one desire was to run and fall weeping in his arms.

But then she remembered all that her mother had told her. She remembered, too, the life of empty hatred to which he had driven her, at the cost of all that was gentle and giving inside her. And the way he had burned her very corpse.

The tears stopped. A look of such implacable will came into her eyes that the widow Scott, who had been plaiting her hair in preparation, took a step back in dismay. All the brooding anger that she had once seen in Stephen, the forerunner of violence, now showed itself in the girl, with a keener edge, and yet whiter fire.

"Mary, listen to me," she whispered closely. "You must not do or say anything to upset him. Our lives, all of them, are in his hands."

But her words were without effect. Mary stood like a fierce, enchanted statue, waiting only for the sculptor to finish, to come to life and fulfill its vengeful purpose. And when the last lock of hair was in place and bound she stalked silently from the room, following the startled servant.

After two long hallways she hardly noticed, she pa.s.sed by several doors in a third, then was ushered in to the great man's den. Her eyes took in nothing but his seated form, which stamped itself forever in her mind as the living embodiment of evil, and sole object of revenge.....

If Henry Purceville had harbored any notions of winning the girl over, or of displaying even the most distant paternal affection, he soon forgot them. Her iron gaze quickly despatched the small stirrings of tenderness (and guilt) which he had felt the night before.

But strange to say, the fearless disdain she showed him was not without reward. In truth it was the one emotion he still respected. It at once cut through his predisposition toward women as weak and spineless manipulators, and gave her a separate ident.i.ty. She was his daughter, and she was not afraid.

There could be, for the moment, no thought of killing her.

"Well, girl," he said, settling back in his chair as the servant closed the polished doors behind them. "If you have hard words to say to me, say them."

"I hate you," she hissed.

"And why is that?" His face remained immobile, whatever the underlying emotions.

"You raped my mother."

"Yes, though she did not ask me to stop. And if I hadn't, you would not exist." The thought staggered her, but she pressed on.

"You burned her body! You denied her Christian burial."

"Your mother was not a Christian. By the look of her hut, I'd say she fancied herself a Daughter of the Trees. Such as she are not buried, as you must know."

"If not for your countrymen, and their accursed King, my cousins....."