The Betrayal of Maggie Blair

Chapter 12

Fifteen miles is a long way to walk on nothing but a piece of bread and bite of cheese, and by the time I'd reached the northern tip of the island, my feet were sore, my bundle hung heavily on my shoulder, and my head was spinning with hunger and tiredness. I was beginning to think I would never get there, never see those little islands and find the drovers, and I couldn't help but go slower and slower, weighted down with hopelessness. Then, suddenly, I heard the blessed sound of cattle lowing. It came from over the hill ahead. I ran up it with a burst of fresh energy, then slowed down as I reached the crest and went on cautiously, keeping my head low, afraid of being seen.

The coast is rocky at the northern tip of Bute, where the channel of water flowing down from the sea loch above divides around it. There's a good expanse of flatland below the rocky outcrop. I crouched under a tree and looked down onto it.

A hundred or more red, curly-backed cattle were milling about on the expanse of grass and bog reed, shaking their long-horned heads, restless, not settling yet to graze. Beyond them, across the water, were the three little islands. The channels of water between them were no more than a bowshot in length, but they looked terrifyingly wide to me.

Across on the other side, the hills of Cowal rose steeply from the water's edge, dark and forbidding. I felt a dreadful ache of loss for the cottage by the bay, and the beach beyond the field, and the endless change of light on the sea and in the sky, and Blackie, and Sheba, and Granny herself. I sat down and put my head on my knees and cried. I don't know how long I cried for, but you can't go on forever, especially when there's no one nearby to comfort you, and in the end the attack of tears stopped.

Mr. Lithgow knew my father, I told myself sternly. He'll look after me. And he knows I'm innocent too. He'll want to help me.

The midges were out now that the wind had dropped and the evening was coming down. They were in my hair and all over my bare legs and arms, biting. Girls' clothes protect you. Your cap, to start with, covers your ears, and your skirts go down to your ankles. But boys' clothes leave you more exposed, as I was finding out. I needed a better place to hide and watch, where Tam had told me to go, under the overhang. Then I could untie my bundle and wrap my gown around the bits of me that my father's shirt and belted plaid didn't cover.

I was about to scramble down the rocky wall to the shelter below when I heard a voice, and peering around the tree, I saw a man standing in the doorway of a little stone bothy that I'd not noticed before. He had his thumbs stuck in the belt that was holding his thick plaid in place, and he was looking over the cattle as if he was counting them.

Even from this distance, I could see that he was a solid sort of person, reassuringly big and strong-looking.

That's got to be Mr. Lithgow, I thought, feeling better. I felt as if I'd made a friend of him, even before we'd met.

I nearly fell the last bit of the way down the rocks and landed heavily on a boulder, but luckily it was covered in thick moss, and I did no more than bruise myself. I felt my way along under the overhanging rocks and found a cleft with a good soft floor to it. It was damp and very full of midges, but it was a good place to hide, and I decided to stay there, covering myself from the little biters as best I could. I could see well from here, too, and was unlikely to be seen. The sun was setting behind the hills, and my cleft was in deep shade.

Now I could see another man. He was down by a stream that ran near to the little house, squatting to collect water in a leather bag. He had a dog with him. That worried me. If the dog got wind of me, I'd be found out at once. But the man stood up and whistled to the dog, who trotted obediently at his heels back to the little house. They both disappeared inside.

Without my knowing it, my fingers had been picking at the thick moss covering the boulder on which I was sitting. There was already quite a pile of it at my feet.

Make the best of things, Granny's voice said in my head. Don't fuss.

Granny! Was she in Heaven now, or had St. Peter turned her away from the Pearly Gates and sent her down into the spitting fires of Hell? He'd have to have been a sharp man to see the good in her. But there was no telling with salvation, I knew that much. God had decided at the beginning of time who was to be saved and who was damned, I'd heard the old minister say, so I supposed there wasn't much you could do about it.

The midges were on me now, in clouds. I opened my bundle, took out my girls' clothes, and put them on. They felt comfortingly familiar after the strange freedom of my legs in the trousers. My cap was on a moment later, so that my head was protected.

I gathered up the moss I'd collected. It was damp, but it made a soft place to lie on. I needed to get some sleep. I was tired to the bones, as I had been the day before, and tomorrow would be worse. I lay down, wrapped my plaid around the rest of me, and was asleep a moment later.

***

A clatter of stones and a gasp of surprise woke me up. For a moment I was confused, not knowing where I was, then everything came back to me. A jag of fear made me scramble to my feet and crouch, ready to run.

"Don't—don't hurt me! Please!" came a girl's voice.

I knew it at once.

"Annie!" I was up and snarling like a springing cat, claws out, reaching for her face to hit and scratch it. "Thief ! Liar!"

"No, Maggie, please, you don't know, you..." she babbled, her hands over her face.

I hit out at her with a great blow, and she fell backwards onto a soft boggy patch, luckily for her. Before I could attack again, she had curled up like a little animal and started to cry loudly.

"Shut up, you little fool. They'll hear you. Or is that your plan—to get me caught again? If you do, I'll kill you."

"No!" she cried, much too loudly. I looked over my shoulder in the direction of the drover's bothy, but it was still too dark to see that far.

"Will you shut up?" I hissed at her, but she'd won the first battle. I'd lost the wish to hit her again. She disgusted me so much, I didn't want to soil myself by touching her.

"Maggie, I'm really, really sorry. You don't know—I never thought things would go so far. It was Mr. Macbean who made me say all that, about the ashes up the chain and flying and you taking your clothes off and everything. I didn't want to at all! I..."

I wanted to lift my foot and stamp on her, like you would on a nasty insect, but then I remembered the look on her face when she'd spoken against me, the second time. She had been frightened and even sorry, I had to admit.

"Just let me tell you. You'll understand, I know you will." Her wheedling voice made my skin creep. "You can kill me afterward if you want to. I wouldn't blame you. I wouldn't even mind very much."

"Very good, Annie. You think you can get around me, like you get around everyone else. Keep trying. You won't succeed."

"No, please, Maggie!" She was half sobbing. "Listen! I'm going to have a baby! It was Mr. Macbean. He—came to me. Often, in the night."

I was so astonished that I sank down onto a boulder. I wanted to burst out laughing but kept it in for fear of the noise.

"The old goat! The old hypocrite!"

"Yes," said Annie eagerly, seeing her advantage. "He's so awful, Maggie—you've no idea—and really hard and stern. And he promises things, and he preaches and prays, and all the time..."

She was coming closer to me, and I was afraid she was going to touch me. I moved back hastily. I didn't want to laugh anymore. The harm this girl had done was rising up in me, and anger was threatening to choke me again.

"He promised me things. Mrs. Macbean was ill before Ebenezer was born, and he said she was sure to die, he knew the signs on her, and she'd never live through the birth, and he'd marry me, and I'd never have to go hungry, and I'd have a nice new plaid and gown every year. If I didn't do what he wanted, he said he'd send me home. I would have died first! You don't know my daddy, Maggie. He's a drinker. He beats me. There's never enough to eat at home. I never had anything pretty to wear till I started working at Scalpsie."

She started crying again.

"Stop sniveling," I snapped, knowing as soon as I'd spoken that I sounded just like Granny. Annie made an effort and drew in a shuddering breath.

"And then—that night, you remember, you were there! Mrs. Macbean started having Ebenezer, and I saw that he didn't want her to die at all, because he rode down quickly to fetch your granny, even though he hated her, because he knew she'd be able to get the baby out. And then afterward he made such a fuss of Mrs. Macbean, calling her 'my dear' and 'my darling,' and he was in a good mood. So I told him I was going to have a baby too, and he turned on me and said I was nothing but a sinful slut, and it was all my fault for leading him into temptation, and he'd send me off back to my father if I didn't do what he told me. And then he said that it wouldn't be difficult, and if I did it he'd look after me and the baby, and give me everything I wanted."

"So you told all those lies," I said harshly. "You sent my grandmother to be hanged and burned, and you tried to have me murdered too, just to save yourself from going home."

"But I never thought it would happen!" she said desperately, managing this time to seize my arm, though I shook her off at once. "I never thought they'd kill her! I didn't know they'd take any notice of a story of mine. Anyway, it wasn't all lies. I saw them all up at Ambrisbeg, dancing and carrying on. The Devil might have been there. It looked as if he might have been."

"And what were you doing out in the middle of the night at Ambrisbeg?"

She hung her head.

"We used to meet outside, near the loch. That's where he ... I heard the music, and I went to look. I was curious."

I heard her smug little voice again in my head.

"Maggie took off all her clothes," I quoted, "and danced around a stone."

"Oh, Maggie, I wish, I wish I hadn't said it, because now I've committed another terrible sin, and the Lord Jesus will never forgive me, and it didn't even do any good because Mr. Macbean broke every promise he'd ever made and said I would disgrace his good name, and he'd deny he'd touched me, and I was to go back to my father without a penny in my pocket. And then I had to watch everything, what they did to your granny. It was so horrible. I thought I was going to be sick. I felt like a murderess."

"That's what you are," I spat at her. "A thief, a liar, and a murderess. Not many people can manage all that."

"At least I won't be a thief anymore," she said, and the sigh she let out was the sincerest sound I'd ever heard from her. She fumbled inside her bodice, and I saw a faint gleam of silver in her hand.

"Your buckle." She handed it to me. "I only took it because I was frightened. If I went home to my father, he'd beat me half to death. I thought if I only had a bit of money, I could manage on my own till the baby's born, and then I'd see. I'd try and find..."

I'd stopped listening to her. I'd suddenly realized the answer to the question that had been bothering me.

"Tam sent you, didn't he? That's how you knew where to find me. You cried all over him and told him all this, and he's so soft he was sorry for you and said he'd help you."

She sniffed, and I could tell that she was peering at me, trying to see my face in the growing dawn light.

"Yes, he did. He said he'd fix it with Mr. Lithgow. He said I could get across to the mainland with the cattle."

"Oh, he did, did he?"

I was enraged all over again, furious with Tam for saddling me with Annie, and jealous too. Tam was mine, my only friend. I didn't want to share him with anyone, especially not Annie.

A whistle sounded behind us, and we both jerked our heads up.

"Tam!" we said together.

He slithered down the rocks and collapsed onto the mossy bed I'd made for myself.

"I'm too old for running around the country in the middle of the night," he groaned, massaging his calves. "If you girls aren't grateful to old Tam, then I'll die a disappointed man. Now let's get you down to the bothy. Those drovers will have the fire lit and porridge cooking on it, or they're not the men I think they are."