Highland Ballad Part 21

"Dear G.o.d, I cannot look at you, for the very sight is bile in my throat. When ignorance leads the blind, how black shall the blindness be?"

He walked out of the room, with all feeling gone from his soul.

Twenty-Seven The widow Scott opened her eyes in the chill hour of dawn. Indirect sunlight filtered through the high window, silhouetting the statued form of her niece, who stood in silence before it. At her side the girl held something metal that gleamed dully. Her eyes looked out unseeing.

"Mary? What's that in your hand?"

Slowly, as from a distance. "I've got to kill him."

Once more Anne Scott felt herself in the presence of a will, a force that was beyond swaying. But she knew that she too had a part in the unfolding drama, and she would not watch idly as her niece destroyed herself.

"Because of your mother? You think that you must follow her down the bitter road---"

"You speak of what you cannot imagine."

There was no answering obsession. The woman did not try. "How will you do it?" she asked simply.

"They did not think to search us." Mary held up the slender blade that the witch had sewn into a fold of her dress, then forgotten.

"Surely that, of itself, would not kill a man."

"Human excrement makes a very effective blood poison." All said evenly, without emotion or remorse, without living movement of any kind.

... "Mary. Your mother left something for you." At this she turned, like a sleepwalker disturbed by the calling of her true name. "Stephen brought me this note. Her dying words."

"A forgery," she stammered, "meant to dissuade me."

"No," said Anne Scott firmly. "After twenty-nine years, I ought to know my sister's hand."

"Don't come any closer." She raised the knife halfheartedly. "I don't want to see it." But Anne Scott continued forward, held out the folded sheet.

Mary's left hand could not stop the right. She took the page and held it open against the angled sill. She read.

A single tear escaped her, then another, till at last she dropped the blade and leaned heavily back against the stone. The tortured grip had managed but five words, the last broken and trailing, but undeniable.

Mary, I love you. Forgive

Anne Scott moved closer, and took the forlorn head to her shoulder.

Mary did not resist. She only wept, unable for a time to speak.

"But, if I do not avenge her. . .then her story is truly ended. She lived, and died, for nothing. Oh, it is too terrible."

"No, Mary. Her life, and broken love, brought about your life, and a love that is real. You must never forget that." The widow paused, understanding at last.

"Listen to me, girl. You carry a part of her in yourself: in your flesh, and in your seed. The story never ends, it only changes characters. And those who have left something beautiful behind them, never die. They live on in the thoughts, the hearts, the very lives of those who loved them." And the woman found that she too was crying, the most profound tears of her life. For in this, most unlikely of moments, she had seen beyond the grave, and touched the face of G.o.d.

"When you bear a child of your own, you will understand just how very much that means. For now, my sad Mary, just cry. Cry, and love her."

"Oh, Anne, I'm so cold." And she began to s.h.i.+ver, her trembling flesh once more a.s.serting its will to live. Anne Scott took their two blankets, joined them together, and sat with her closely huddled in the straw. Both wept, and held each other, knowing fully and without illusion, what it was to be a woman.

Twenty-Eight

Life would not go away. There was no room for fatalism or self-pity, and he knew it. Nothing else mattered, nothing was real, until Mary and his mother were set free.

Michael put on his coat, and climbed down from the loft. Going to his mother's room, he unbuckled the fallen officer's sword, and put it about his own waist. Then he took the man's pistol and slipped it under his belt.

Moving to the kitchen, he filled a dipper with water from the urn, and walked with it into the main room. By now the morning was full, and sunlight pushed against the heavy curtains. The two men saw each other clearly.

"I thought you might be wanting this," said the Highlander. Stephen Purceville eyed the dipper, then the man, suspiciously.

"I'm not going to poison you, Purceville." Stephen's eyes then s.h.i.+fted to the pistol. "I'm not going to shoot you, either. If you'll drink this, and promise not to try anything foolish, I'll untie you as well.

We've got to come to an understanding."

"First tell me who you are," said the Englishman. "And what you're doing here."

"My name doesn't matter. All you need know is that I'm a friend to Mary, and the widow Scott. My one concern now is to get them out of your father's prison. Here, drink." And again he held forward the dipper.

"Why is that so important to you?"

"Because I want you to know where your sustenance is coming from. And your freedom, if you'll help me."

"But why---"

"For the love of G.o.d, man, drink! I cannot untie you while I am holding this. Time enough for talk while we dig the grave..... For your comrade , Purceville. I don't intend to kill you. Just remember I've a gun and sword both, and know how to use them."

Reluctantly Stephen drank, then followed the Highlander's every move as he untied him.

But if he had harbored any thoughts of attacking him once he was freed, the painful stiffness of his limbs dispelled them. There was nothing for it now but to play along, and keep watching for a chance..... But in spite of all he could not fully submerge a feeling of relief at being set free, and a raw animal grat.i.tude as they moved to the kitchen, and he drank his fill of water from the urn.

With the pistol in his hand but not pointed, Michael led him next to the small, attached toolshed behind the cottage. Pointing inside it to a shovel, he instructed the Englishman to take it up, then walk ahead of him slowly to the gravesite of his clan.

"You're not going to bury him here?" said Stephen as they reached it.

"Yes, I am. He may have been an honorable man, and he may not. But he died among us, and among us he will lie."

"Us?"

"Master Purceville, you have a nasty habit of questioning the inevitable. We are in a place of burial, because a man is dead. I am a Scot with a pistol, and you are a Brit with a spade. There is the earth; now dig . I will ask the questions." Muttering, but having no choice, Stephen did as he was told.

Michael leaned back wearily against a tree. And shaking off the melancholy of both the place and the task at hand, he forced his mind to think. He must unravel the mystery of the man before him.

So speaking with the half-truths and feigned ignorance which had become habitual with him among strangers, he began.

"The first question is simply put, and simply answered. I expect nothing less than the truth....." Nothing. "I have heard it said that Mary is your half-sister. Is that true?"

Bluntly. "Yes."