The Betrayal of Maggie Blair

Chapter 30

As usual, the first that we in the kitchens heard of visitors to the castle was an order for a special banquet. The countess sent for Mr. Haddo, who came hurrying back down our steps, wiping his brow, which was furrowed with anxiety, and repeating under his breath the long list of dishes that she had ordered. We were sent scurrying to pluck geese and ducklings, top and tail gooseberries for the sauce, shell crabs, knead the bread dough, and clean the spit for the haunches of venison, while Mr. Haddo made up the stuffing for the woodcock and tossed up a fry of cocks' combs.

"Who's it all for? Who's coming?" I asked a scullion, without much interest.

"How should I know? Here, you've to gut this salmon."

But as I passed a pair of men bringing in fuel for the roaring kitchen fires, I heard one of them say, "It's the Lords Errol and Kintore, from Edinburgh. They've come about the prisoners."

My hand, already greasy with fish guts, slipped on the knife I was holding, and I almost cut myself. I strained to listen.

"Let's hope they're taking the fools away," grumbled the second man. "The way they drone on with their psalms gives me the creeps."

"Are you sure?" I dared ask. "Are they really coming about the Presbyterians? Are they going to take them away?"

"No point asking me," he answered. "Move, will you? How am I supposed to get these logs past with you standing there like a stone?"

***

They brought the prisoners out onto the castle green the very day after the banquet for the two noble lords. Mr. Haddo, exhausted by the effort of preparing the great feast, had relaxed his grip on the kitchens and didn't even try to prevent his minions from pouring out of the bakery, brewery, dairy, and storerooms to stare and wonder at the people they had only heard singing, and had smelled, until now.

The sight of the wretched crowd of skeletons, with matted hair and clothes that had become no more than filthy rags, silenced everyone. The whole castle had come out to look. Maids hung out of upper windows, grooms emerged from the stables, and even the soldiers stood quietly, looking almost ashamed.

The murmur of shocked sympathy died away almost at once to leave an uneasy silence. Then one of the stable boys shouted out, "Serves you right, you stinking traitors. God save the king!"

It was as if the others had been waiting for their cue. The lad's high-pitched voice had hardly died away when a chorus of jeers and catcalls broke out. Voices from all around the green yelled, "Get them out of here! String them up! Where's your precious Covenant now, you fools?"

Suddenly, I saw him. Uncle Blair was standing in the middle of a group of men who looked more like standing corpses than living people. He was shading his eyes, as if blinded by the daylight after so long in the darkness of the dungeon. He was as thin as a pike shaft, and as waxy-pale as a mushroom. I saw him stagger and clutch at the arm of the man beside him. I thought he was on the point of death.

I lost all sense of danger and threw away my weeks of caution in one scream of anguish.

"Uncle Blair! Oh, please! Uncle!"

I didn't even reach him. A soldier grabbed hold of me and clipped my arms tightly behind my back.

"Well, well! So the piper's little girl is a damned Presbyterian after all!"

His voice was grim. He fumbled at his waist, and I heard a rattle as something cold and hard snapped around my wrists. Then I knew what I'd done and shuddered with dread. The soldiers were working their way around the hundred or more prisoners, wrenching their bone-thin arms back, and clamping on heavy manacles. A few moments later, I found myself chained to a woman who was so weak that she could barely stand as we walked forward under the lash of a shouted command. I had to help her to stand upright, and as we were herded down the steep, rough-hewn steps to the narrow castle entrance, she leaned on me so gratefully that I ended up almost carrying her.

I managed to twist my head around as we turned the last corner and caught sight of Mr. Haddo in the middle of a group of kitchen workers. They were staring at me in shocked surprise, shaking their heads in disapproval, and making no effort to rescue me, though Agnes lifted her hand in a daring wave. I turned my back on them, lifted my chin, and marched out of that dreadful place with as much dignity as I could, though my throat was tight when I thought that Tam could not leave with me. He would lie in Dunnottar Castle forever, and I hadn't even stood by the little mound that marked his grave one last time to say goodbye.

***

Was it by sheer chance that Neil Sharpus was one of the soldiers sent to escort the prisoners on their long, miserable march back to Edinburgh? Uncle Blair would have thanked the guiding hand of Providence. Granny would have congratulated herself on the success of one of her lucky charms. At any rate, it was a good thing for me that he was there.

The prisoners were so weak with lack of food and their long imprisonment that many of them could barely walk, and we went only a short distance that day. Once we had been herded into a barn commandeered from a grumbling farmer, our manacles and chains were removed, so that we could at least ease the cramps in our shoulders and move around amongst ourselves. At last, I was able to go to Uncle Blair.

"Maggie," he croaked, laying a trembling hand on my shoulder. "Dear child. I hoped you'd escaped from that dreadful place weeks ago."

"I found work, Uncle. In the kitchens. I was never far away, but I couldn't find a way to speak to you again."

He looked around vaguely.

"Where's your friend, the piper? He should have looked after you better. He should have gotten you away."

I frowned at the criticism in his voice.

"Tam's dead, Uncle. He—I didn't realize how sick he was. I shouldn't have made him come with me. He was good to me. Always."

"I'm glad to hear it. The man didn't seem up to much to me. A lightweight kind of a fellow."

I was stung.

He came to save you, I wanted to say. It was for you he died.

But I could see that Uncle Blair's mind had moved on.

"Is there news from home? Have you heard from Ladymuir?"

As I shook my head, there was a buzz of voices from the big barn doors. Someone even laughed.

"They've brought fresh water for us, Hugh!" a man called out. "Without charging for it. And there are oatcakes and even cheese, at a reasonable price."

"Praise the Lord!" said Uncle Blair, his face lighting up with childlike delight. "Today has brought such happiness! To smell fresh air again, and to see the green grass and the sky, and to see you again, my dear girl, so well and bonny. I've been tormented with fears for you! And on top of all this, a real supper!"

I swallowed my disappointment. The two halves of my life would never be brought together, I could see that clearly now. I felt in my pocket for my precious hoard of coins and threaded my way through the exhausted Covenanters toward the soldiers lounging by the door. Musketeer Sharpus caught hold of my arm and spun me around.

"So, piper's girl, you're a traitor after all. And to think I put myself out to help you. A fine fool you've made of me."

I shook my head earnestly.

"I didn't mean to make a fool of you, sir. It's true that Tam and I came to Dunnottar in search of my uncle, but I'm not a Covenanter, not really. I don't understand about all that. I don't know what I am. I wish I did. I just want to do what's right."

He loosened his grip.

"There's no making you out, girl. I keep tripping over you all the time."

He sounded more perplexed than angry. Encouraged, I smiled at him.

"Please, will you let me walk free tomorrow? I won't run away. I want to stay near my uncle, that's all." An inspiration came to me. I felt in my pocket again and pulled out the pouch of stolen money. "You can have this if you'll let us both go, me and my uncle."

He snorted with scornful laughter.

"What do you take me for? I'd never let a prisoner go. He's an enemy of the crown. His name's written down on the list. I'd be arrested too."

But his eyes were on the money. I began to return it slowly to my pocket.

"Tell you what." His fingers were reaching out to twitch it away from me, and I snatched it back just in time. "I could get you freed. It should be easy. Your name's not down on the charge sheet. A word with the captain should do it."

"If it's so easy, it's worth less than all this money," I said, jingling the coins, and thinking out the bargain. "Look, I'll give you half the money now, if you can free me, and the rest when we get to Edinburgh, if you'll make sure that my uncle's not driven too hard and gets some decent food."

He laughed.

"You're a one, you are. Give me a kiss, and I'll throw in some wine for the man as well."

I drew back.

"I don't sell kisses," I said, my cheeks on fire with blushes as I dropped the coins into his outstretched palm.

I was afraid, as I went back through the throng of exhausted prisoners, that my uncle might have seen me talking to the soldiers and would question me. He would have been disgusted, I knew, by my attempt to win him special treatment with the help of stolen money, and, in fact, my conscience did prick a little as I saw the desperate state of some of the other prisoners.

To my relief, someone started to sing before I'd reached our corner of the barn, and by the time I'd arrived, Uncle Blair was already joining in:

"But blessed be God

Who doth us safely keep

And hath not given

Us for living prey

Unto their teeth

And bloody cruelty."





Some people were already asleep, their mouths open, making vacant, black holes between their hollow cheeks. Others were too weak to make a sound, but they were mouthing the familiar words, and I saw tears slide out from under closed eyelids.

"Ev'n as a bird

Out of the fowler's snare

Escapes away,

So is our soul set free.

Broke are their nets

And thus escaped we."





Uncle Blair and I were lucky to have a good corner, beside a pile of hay bales against which we could lean our backs. He put up his hands to rest them on the front of his filth-encrusted coat, and I saw with a shock that they were roughly bandaged with strips of torn linen.

I put out my own hand and he flinched, as if afraid that I would touch him.

"What happened, Uncle?"

He shook his head.

"It's best forgotten."

"No! Let me see."

He hesitated but allowed me to unwind the bandages, biting his lip hard with the pain. I had to suppress a gasp of horror. His fingers were a pulpy mass of raw flesh, deeply ulcerated. Yellow pus oozed out.

"How did this happen?"

He had lain back against the hay as if the sight of his own hands had exhausted him.

"It was one of their punishments," he murmured. "I spoke out in anger when one of our sisters was forced to give birth in that—that place. She died under their cruel neglect, with the babe. They put lighted splinters of wood between my fingers and blew on them till they had burned away. Oh, don't look so upset, my dear. The Lord has been good to me. One of the brethren lost all his fingers that way. As the Lord Jesus said, 'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you and persecute you for my sake.' If he asks me to suffer, I must do it gladly. Only think of his sufferings for us on the Cross! How little this is to bear for his sake."

"It seems rather a lot to me," I muttered crossly under my breath, then bit my lip, afraid that such a thought was sinful.

Aloud, I said, "You must let me care for them, Uncle. I know how to treat this kind of injury."

He smiled at me.

"Thank you, my dear. If you would add your prayers to mine, they will rise as a sweet odor to the throne of the heavenly grace, and surely the Lord will hear us."

I nodded but thought, with another little spurt of rebellion, Prayers are one thing, but healing herbs are another.

My poor uncle would have recoiled from any remedy if he'd known it had been learned from my grandmother. He would have feared enchantments and spells, and sniffed the sulfurous presence of the Prince of Darkness.

He had closed his eyes. I watched him for a few moments, till I was sure he was deeply asleep. Then I got up and tiptoed through the now-silent prisoners to the barn door. Luckily, the man on guard duty was Musketeer Sharpus.

"Let me out for a little while," I begged.

To my surprise, he didn't look at me and seemed embarrassed.

"You'll run away."

"You know I won't. I told you. I'm here to be with my uncle."

He hesitated, then jerked his head.

"Away you go, then. But don't be long. My time's up in an hour. The next fellow mightn't look so kindly on comings and goings."

I wished with all my heart, as I darted away into the twilight, that I'd taken more notice of Granny's work with herbs. It was true that she had never tried to teach me. In fact, if I'd looked too closely at anything she was doing, she'd driven me off with a curse. But I could remember some things and knew now what I was looking for.

When I was eight or nine years old, I'd burned my foot badly, stumbling into the fire. Granny had said nothing to comfort me but had gone outside, coming back a while later with burdock leaves, which grew near the path on the way to Kingarth. She'd broken an egg, grumbling at the waste, and had crushed the burdock leaves into the slimy white before spreading it on the burn. I'd never forgotten how cool and good it had felt on the painful place, and how fast it had healed.

But my burn was a small one and fresh, I thought anxiously. And there wasn't any pus coming out of it. Anyway, I don't know where to look for burdock. And how can I possibly get hold of an egg?

I'd been walking too fast and aimlessly, and forced myself to slow down and think. In Scalpsie Bay, there had been clumps of burdock growing along the track underneath a stone wall. I'd seen a wall not far back along the way we'd come. Perhaps there would be burdock growing there too.

I found my quarry more quickly than I'd expected and pounced. Then, as I'd seen Granny do, I studied the plant and chose carefully from the leaves, only picking the big, healthy-looking ones.

Success gave me a jolt of confidence. God must have guided me to this precious plant. Perhaps he had listened to Uncle's prayers. Perhaps he would put an egg in my hands too.

Eggs meant hens, and hens meant farms, and farms meant people and dogs and trouble. Tam would have known what to do. I'd seen him many times, slipping shamefaced from a farmstead with a couple of oval bulges in his pocket.

And then I heard it. The track I'd been following ran close to the sea, near the top of the cliff that dropped away down to the rocky shore. The murmuring surge of the waves against the rocks was so familiar that I no longer noticed it, and while I'd been in Dunnottar, I'd become just as used to the shrieks of squabbling kittiwakes and the wails of soaring gulls. But I was suddenly, sharply, aware of them. They were close by but out of sight. They had to perch on the rocky ledges of the cliffs overhanging the sea. The chicks would have hatched and fledged by now, but there were always a few eggs abandoned by their parents, or ones that had never had a chick in them at all. It was unlikely I would find one, but it was worth a chance.

And then my knees felt weak.

I can't, I thought. Not down the cliff. I can't.

But my feet seemed to be moving of their own accord.

I didn't dare walk right up to the crumbling edge, so I lay down on my stomach and crawled forward, till I could look down from the top of the cliff. It fell in one dizzying swoop to the black jagged rocks below, against which the waves hurled themselves in clouds of dazzling white spray. The drop was so terrifying that my limbs felt weak and my head began to spin.

The cliff was alive with gulls and kittiwakes, the whole face of it fluttering with white wings. The birds had not quite settled yet to sleep but were taking off and landing, restless and quarrelsome.

It was hopeless. I knew it was. Surely the ledges would all be empty. Surely this was a waste of time. But then I saw it. An egg—large, spotted, and unbroken—lay on a ledge below me, just beyond my reach.

I stretched my arm down as far as it would go and wriggled a little farther forward. A great white bird came flying at me like a dart from the sea. It shrieked, its neck thrust out, trying to snap at my fingers. I beat at it and lunged for the egg.

There was a terrible shriek and a confusion of flapping wings. As the bird tumbled backwards into flight, its foot dislodged the precious egg, which flew off the ledge and shattered on the rocks far below.

As I watched it go, I felt as if I was falling with it. My whole body began to shake with fright. I'd reached too far and didn't see how I could haul myself back. My hands had nothing to hold on to. My legs were beginning to slip. I didn't dare try to wriggle backwards. The slightest movement, I knew, would tip me irretrievably over the edge.

"Jesus!" I whispered. "Granny! Oh, Jesus!"

And then I felt a pair of strong hands grasp my ankles, and I was being wrenched back from the cliff edge.

"What do you think you're doing? Whatever were you thinking?"

Musketeer Sharpus flipped me over so that I was lying in a heap on the heather, looking up at him. I scrambled to my feet. He grabbed me again and dragged me farther away from the hideous drop, as if he was afraid that I would run back to it and throw myself over.

"Are you crazy?"

His eyes seemed to be almost starting from his head with shock and anger.

I struggled free. I tried to speak, but I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering together.

"Th-thank you," I managed to say. "I would have fallen if you hadn't come."

He took hold of my arm again and shook me roughly.

"Don't you know that self-murder is a mortal sin? You would have gone straight to Hell without hope of Purgatory."

"I didn't want to kill myself!"

"Then what were you doing?"

I swallowed, knowing how silly I sounded.

"I needed an egg. I was trying to take one from the ledge there."

He stared at me, incredulous, then burst out laughing.

"You silly girl! If you wanted an egg, why didn't you ask me? I could have gotten you one from the farmer. You can't eat gulls' eggs, anyway. Any that haven't hatched will be rotten by now." His eyes suddenly narrowed. "Unless you wanted an unborn chick for some uncanny purpose. You don't make spells, do you? You're not experimenting with unholy things?"

"No!" I almost choked in my eager denial. "I'd tell you, but you wouldn't like it."

"Try me."

I saw that I had no choice.

"My uncle's hands are burned. I heard somewhere that if you crush burdock leaves into egg white it's good for healing burns."

"Oh." His voice had changed. I dared to look up at him and was surprised to see that he was frowning. "I never liked that business of burning hands. Keeping traitors close in prison is one thing, but torture and starvation—they're not right, to my mind."

He had one hand in the small of my back and steered me back toward the barn.

"I'll get you an egg," he said. His voice was soft and gruff. "I'll bring it in to you. Go on in now."

Another soldier was guarding the door. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of us and dug Musketeer Sharpus in the ribs.

"You're a sly one. Up for it, is she? Let me have a go, and I won't tell the sergeant."

"You won't tell anyone anything, my lad," Musketeer Sharpus said severely. "Not if you don't want everyone to know about the musket you lifted from the guardroom and sold to that poacher. You won't take any liberties with this girl either. She's respectable."

Inside the barn, not one of the exhausted Covenanters seemed to be awake. I slipped across to the far end and sank down beside Uncle Blair. How still he was, his chest barely moving as he breathed. He looked sad in his sleep and much, much older. His injured hands were lying by his side.

I felt a wave of anger.

Why did you let them do this to him, God? I thought. These people are only trying to be faithful to you. Why are you treating them like this? You said blessed are the persecuted, but they don't look blessed to me.

My mind reeled back to the terrible moment on the cliff. I could see again the waves dashing onto the rocks below and hear the screaming birds. What had really happened then? Had Jesus heard me and sent Musketeer Sharpus to rescue me? But I seemed to remember that I'd called out to Granny too. Had she used some strange power to reach out to me from beyond the grave?

Something had happened, I felt sure, that I didn't understand. There had been a kind of power there among those beating white wings.

"He will give his angels charge over thee," I had heard Uncle Blair quote. "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."

I thought I'd seen an angel once before, but it had only been Tam, when he'd opened the door to rescue us from the tolbooth in Rothesay. I couldn't imagine Musketeer Sharpus as an angel, any more than Tam, but God's ways were mysterious, I'd often been told. Maybe Neil Sharpus was a messenger from Heaven, in spite of being a servant of the tyrant king, and so plain and awkward as well.

I wanted to thank Jesus but didn't know how to do it properly. While I was thinking about this, I saw Musketeer Sharpus stepping through the sleeping people toward me. I watched him carefully as he approached, wondering if the light around his head was shining from him, or if it was the glow of moonlight that was now coming in through the barn door. As he came nearer, I smiled at my silliness. There was nothing angelic about Musketeer Sharpus. He was just a soldier, with a scarred face and a broken nose and thin, straggling fair hair. Then I saw that he was holding an egg in his hand. I began to fumble in my pocket for a coin.

"No need for that." He frowned at my uncle's hands with shocked pity in his eyes. He gave me the egg and hurried away.

***

I don't know if my remedy really did have the power to heal, or if it was the fresh air and the better food that Musketeer Sharpus helped me to provide for my uncle, but at any rate as the days passed and the sad cavalcade of prisoners straggled down the road to Edinburgh, Uncle Blair's hands began to heal. I could see that they would never be quite right. The flesh was too twisted and distorted to mend completely. But at least he wouldn't lose his fingers.

Slowly, our company grew. A few other friends and relatives of the prisoners, hearing of their release, had hurried to meet them and help them if they could. They paid for better food and washed some of the stinking clothes. One or two prisoners were even spirited away, to disappear to freedom in the hills.

Most of the prisoners were farmers like Uncle Blair—men used to hard work, to the rain and the cold. I watched them as they trudged stoically on, thin and ragged, their arms bound, unable to brush the tormenting midges from their faces or ease the ache in their shoulders.

"Why?" I burst out one morning to Uncle Blair, as I watched a soldier kick at a man who had stumbled to the ground and was trying to get up without being able to use his arms. "How can you bear all this? How can it be worth it?"

He turned shocked eyes on me.

"Do you still not understand? After all this time, don't you see what wickedness God is asking us to resist?"

I kept my head down and swiped rebelliously at the bracken growing by the path. Uncle Blair sighed and said patiently, "Who is the true head of the church, Maggie? God or the king?"

"God," I said unwillingly.

He nodded but said nothing more. I looked sideways at him and saw that his thoughts had moved on, to some painful place of trouble.

"What is it, Uncle?" I asked at last.

He sighed.

"The worst is yet to come, dear girl. At Leith, when this journey is nearly over, we will all be asked once again to take the Test."

My heart sank. I knew what this meant.

"One by one," he went on, "they'll question us again. How many times have they asked us, and how many times have we refused! 'Do you accept that the king's Majesty is the only supreme governor of the church?' That's what they'll ask. 'Do you swear allegiance to him in all matters temporal and spiritual?'"

"And if you don't swear?"

He hesitated.

"I didn't want to tell you this, my dear. After all you've done for me. I fear your efforts will have been in vain. We are to be banished, on a slave ship, to the plantations in the New World. There will be no return, on pain of death."

"No!" I cried, so loudly that heads turned to stare at me. "Uncle, you can't! Think of them at home. At Ladymuir! They need you there. How will my aunt manage without you?"

He shut his eyes.

"I think of them all the time. But where does a man's true duty lie? To serve God and to be true to him, or to succumb to the world of the flesh and the ties of human love?"

I didn't even try to answer his question. There was no doubt in his mind, I knew. But in my own head, there was a tangle that I could not unravel. I longed for my uncle to go home safe and sound, to be the father and the husband in the happy family that had so warmed me in my loneliness. But how could I wish him to betray the truest part of himself and live with shame and guilt for evermore?

The dream of the good life at Ladymuir was the strongest in me, and I began, almost unintentionally, to work on his resolve. Was I wrong? I only wanted to save him from the horrible fate that awaited him if he stayed true to his covenanting principles.

"That's a decent crop," I would say, as we walked past a team of men scything the ripe barley. "I wonder if Ritchie's got the harvest in yet at Ladymuir?"

Or, "See that butterfly? I wish Martha was here. She always runs after the big blue ones and tries to catch them."

Uncle Blair never asked me to be quiet, but I think I must have tortured him.

***

A quiet anguish had descended on the prisoners by the time we reached Burnt Island. Only the narrow waters of the Firth of Forth now separated us from Leith, where the Test would be taken. Some of the Covenanters, even after all they had suffered, seemed unshaken in their rocklike convictions. They would, I was sure, suffer torture, banishment, and even death rather than bow to the tyrant king. But I sensed that others were weakening. They had drawn into themselves and walked apart, not singing the psalms in the evening with the same hearty confidence, knowing how bitterly their betrayal would be condemned.

What would Uncle Blair do? I watched him anxiously and saw in him the signs of an inner struggle. At night, as we lay out in an open field or sometimes in a welcoming barn, I heard him groan and grind his teeth as he slept, and I knew that he was in an agony of mind.