For a long moment, Helen looked at her without comprehension. "What are you saying?"
Now that she had told her daughter the secret she had kept hidden from everybody for those twenty years, Mary looked completely drained. In an flat voice she repeated: "He is your half-brother. He is my son."
The ground was slipping away from under Helen. Everything around her began to spin. She stumbled and tried to hold herself up against the wall. And then she wailed plaintively: "Mother, tell me it"s not true. Mother, please! Tell me that this is all a bad dream! Mother!"
Helen"s heart-rendering distress released the tears blurring Mary"s eyes. She took her into her arms, rocking her gently from side to side, like a little child. Helen just sank into her mother"s arms, weeping, whispering time and again: "I love him."
After a while she fell silent, listening to Mary"s confession: "When I lived at the castle in Inveraray, I fancied Lord Archibald, the brother of the duke. Stupid, gullible girl I was, I believed him when he said that he loved me. But he just saw me as his plaything. He had no intention of marrying me. I got pregnant. His mother kept me secluded in the castle until after the birth of the boy, and then sent me home. n.o.body ever knew about it. That was twenty years ago. Much later I learned that the boy had been named Andrew. Helen, he is your brother... And now you have to promise me that you will never reveal to anybody what I just told you. You"re the only living soul who knows it besides Lord Archibald."
Helen disengaged herself and leaned against the wall, hunched over.
"Helen, look at me!" Her mother was pleading. "You understand now why you cannot see him again."
Helen nodded slowly. It was a major effort. Then she murmured: "I"ve to tell him. I owe it to him."
"No, you"ll never see or speak to him again. I"ll tell him myself... Where do you meet?"
"At the lochan... He"ll come down to the goat hut when you call." Helen"s voice was completely resigned. There was almost no sound to it.
"When will he be there again?"
"In two days ... In the early morning."
As Helen had told Mary, Andrew came down from the boulders and rocks at the back of the glen when she called him. His face betrayed his apprehension of seeing her, rather than Helen. In turn, Mary"s face was stern, but her eyes were fearful.
"Master Andrew, I want to thank you for all the food you gave Helen."
He only nodded in acknowledgment.
"But this isn"t the reason I came to see you." Her voice faltered.
"Did Helen tell you that I want to marry her? ... I love your daughter, Mrs. MacGregor." It was said firmly, with utter conviction.
Mary did not answer his question. "You must never see her again, master Andrew... Never again."
Andrew"s stubborn expression revealed his defiance. "I want to marry her... We will marry. You can"t prevent us."
"You must not... You cannot... She is your sister... You are my son." She painfully wrenched each sentence from her throat with rising vehemence.
Andrew stared at her in disbelief. "You"re my mother," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, and then he croaked: "No, no!"
Suddenly he turned and ran to his mare at the back of the glen. He jumped on her on the run, instantly slamming his boots hard into her sides. The horse reared frightened and then shot off. He galloped toward the crest and then sharply tore the steed around, heading straight back to her. She saw him coming, saw the cold hatred in his eyes, braced herself to be run over. But he didn"t. He reined the mare brutally in front of her that she reared again, screaming in terror.
"I curse you, woman. You abandoned me. I never had your love, and now you take away the only love I have! You brought me nought but misery!" he cried, his words echoing back from the crag above, and then he galloped off.
Each word cut deeper into her. How she had mourned for her baby son herself! And now that son was cursing her. His harsh words kept ringing in her ears. Her legs trembled from the delayed fright of seeing the horse aim straight for her. She sank to the ground, weeping bitterly. Finally, the tears dried up. Her pride of a MacGregor, her resolve to protect her family at all costs, returned. She got up and washed her face in the water, feeling suddenly years older. She would never tell her daughter of Andrew"s curse.
Helen did not see Andrew again. Deep in her heart, she hoped that he would come by and see her once more, dreading it at the same time. She searched her heart. Did knowing that he was her brother change her love for him, make her love him like a brother? But she knew, it didn"t.
Her heart constantly ached for him. She craved for the gentle touch of his soft palms, his loving green eyes in whose depth she had lost herself so many times. She found solace in daydreams, only to become even more morose when the present rea.s.serted itself again. Many a night she cried herself to sleep silently, often holding on to Betty, desperately. The first time, her sister asked: "Has mother found out about master Andrew?"
Helen nodded.
"Did she forbid you to see him again?"
Again, Helen just nodded. She didn"t trust her voice. Betty stroked her back.
Almost overnight, she lost her color. The sparkle in her eyes was gone. Often she did not hear when somebody spoke to her, and when she did, she seemed to be coming from far away. She showed no interest in anything, not even reading.
Mary watched her, worrying. Several times she spoke to her, tried to talk sense into her, but the girl always closed up, unwilling to listen, her eyes, red from crying, an accusing reminder of her deep hurt. One time, she lost her patience and shouted at her. Without uttering a word, Helen ostensibly took the tool for making fir candles and left the cottage.
Helen"s spirits sank deeper and deeper. Added to her loss was her remorse of having given in to Andrew, of having sinned with her own brother. She prayed for G.o.d"s forgiveness, but it did not help. She felt betrayed even by G.o.d.
Some weeks later, she learnt that Andrew had left the castle and that the earl had appointed a new factor in place of the bedridden Dougan Graham. For a while, she clung to the hope that Andrew would write to her. After all he was her brother. But no letter ever came, no message, nothing. At first, she became resentful even toward him. If he did love her so much, why didn"t he give her a sign that he still thought of her? But then she understood that for him the discovery that they were born from the same womb had been twice the blow. She finally gave up hope of ever hearing from him again.
And then came the news from Glengyle that her father"s brother, his wife and her oldest daughter-Helen"s favorite cousin-and several other distant relatives had been slain in a skirmish with Argyle cavalry. They had been lured into a trap and when the MacGregor men refused to lay down their arms, the cavalrymen charged them, killing all those who could not get into the safety of the forest-men, women, and children. Her contempt of the Campbells, held in abeyance and suppressed by her love for Andrew, burst out with even greater vehemence, turning into hatred. At times it even included him. She asked herself whether her love for him had been doomed in the first place, even if he were not her brother. It brought her MacGregor pride and fighting spirit to the fore again, and as autumn gave way to winter, and the world coc.o.o.ned itself into a mantle of snow for the long sleep to a new spring, she shook off her depression. With renewed fervor, she began to read. It took her mind away from the ever more confused love that could not be. She even braved the heavy snow and went into Killin to borrow books from the minister of the church. Often, she and Betty read together and talked about it. Her reading ventured into anything she could lay her hands on-history, politics, and travel in foreign countries. Yet at times she yearned to discuss things with Andrew and a dull hurt rea.s.serted itself.
Her relationship with her mother never regained the warmth it had felt before she met Andrew. Where there had been filial love, there was sad bitterness, and it made her feel guilty.
When they moved up to the shielings the following June, the memories of their short summer of bliss. .h.i.t her with renewed hurt, but tinged now with the MacGregor blood spilled by the Campbells, and she felt empty for days, until she willed herself to lock them away, never to be opened again.
9.
Early June 1750, Andrew dismounted from his horse at the Bear in Killin after almost four years of restless traveling. First, he had been simply running away from himself, paying scant heed to where he went and what he did-the more dangerous, the better. He was playing a game with death. It started with smuggling French brandy from small Scottish ports into England, cheating the excise tax collectors. On his last run they were jumped by English customs guards. The leader of their gang got shot in the fray, and Andrew made off with his purse-over four hundred pound sterling in gold coins.
With money to burn, he went to London, then Paris. At that point he was not running away from himself any longer, but trying to forget Helen. Young, good-looking, an attentive listener, women in the Paris salons flocked around the soft-spoken Scott who spoke French fluently with a quaint accent. There was something mysteriously sad about him that attracted the more mature ones, particularly those married to older husbands, women in their late twenties and thirties. He went from lady to lady, always coming away dissatisfied, empty, but at the same time hungry for more.
Restlessness finally drove him out of Paris. He traveled on horseback through the Swiss Alps into northern Italy, on to Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, and finally Greece, only to go back to Paris in the end. But after a few months there, an empty boredom caught hold of him again, and he had outstayed his welcome in the Paris salons. He ended up as the go-between for a group of French brandy smugglers. Working out of St. Malo, they dumped their wares on the Cornwall and Devon coast. It offered a welcome diversion, something with an occasional taste of danger and a quickening of the pulse.
Finally, older and more cynical, he spent the last Winter in Devon in the manor of the old Baronet Coville. He was hired as the tutor for the seven-year-old heir by the baronet"s young wife. He quickly discovered that Lady Coville had other designs on him. Within two weeks, they were lovers. At the end of six months she tried to snare him into a plot to speed up her partially infirm husband"s death, so they could get married and live from her inheritance. At that point, he thought it wise to disappear.
He had started to care for life again. The idea of emigrating to North America, Boston or Philadelphia, began to take slowly form in his mind. Having largely lived off other people, mainly women, he had acc.u.mulated a sizable purse of close to one thousand pounds, most of which was invested with a reputable London merchant firm on which he could draw, should he need cash. It would be enough to give him a solid start in the new world.
So this trip to Scotland was to say farewell, probably forever, while he waited for the Spring storms on the Atlantic to blow themselves out. The first two weeks he spent in Edinburgh, most of it reminiscing of his student days at the university. Then he went north to Perth, through the mountains to Inverness-he had never been there-and down the Great Glen to Fort Williams and on to Argyle. He wanted to know if he still felt bitter about his childhood days and discovered he didn"t.
The Highlands were full of reminders of the ravages following the rebellion-numerous burned-out clachans, untended fields going to waste, but life in the villages and cities seemed to be teeming. It was so strange to find practically no Highlanders wearing a plaid, and all of them unarmed, except in remote mountain regions. He discovered that this useful, healthy, and highly adaptable form of clothing had almost completely disappeared with the 1747 disarming act that also prohibited the wearing of Tartans and Highland garb.
Inveraray had not changed much. It didn"t awake any feeling of coming home, and he realized that it had never really been home for him. He felt completely detached and looked at the castle only from the outside. Searching his heart for any feelings toward the man-his father-who ruled there, he found nothing, not even resentment, just emptiness. He had no desire to say h.e.l.lo to anybody. In fact, with his neatly trimmed black beard and the foreign clothes, speaking English, n.o.body even seemed to recognize him, except for that old woman at the inn he stayed overnight.
She was sitting on a bench next to the hearth, stooped forward toward the embers, and as he walked past her after dinner she grabbed hold of his hand and murmured: "It"s master Andrew, isn"t it?"
When he bent down to see her gnarled face, his hand still in hers, she said: "Don"t you recognize aunt Lorna anymore? ... Come, sit by me for a while, as you did so often in the castle kitchen when you were but a wee boy."
"Aunt Lorna," he whispered. "What an unexpected surprise!"
"You thought me long gone. They all do," she chuckled hoa.r.s.ely, coughed briefly, and spit into the embers. "So you went to see the world." She touched his velvet jacket. "I always knew you would ... and now you have come back?"
"Only pa.s.sing through. I"m going to America."
"That is a long way to go. Tell me."
They talked for a while about his travels, his plans. Then he got up, holding her hand, and said: "It was good to talk to you, aunt Lorna. Keep well. Are they looking properly after you?"
"I"m fine. Don"t need much anymore, you know. But you have grown into a fine young man and from your looks, you seem to be doing well. G.o.d bless you!"
He was just about to go, when a thought struck him. He sat down again and asked on a low voice: "You were there when I was born, weren"t you?"
"Yes, master Andrew, I washed you... You were such a sweet wee baby, not at all wrinkled like they often are... And your mother wanted to see you, but Lady Argyle forbade it. I had to take you away immediately."
"My mother ... Mary MacGregor from Glengyle?"
"Ah yes, you never knew, didn"t you? ... Lady Argyle made me swear that I would never tell. But she"s been dead for years now, so it won"t do any harm telling you."
Andrew looked at her in tense impatience.
"What name did you say? Mary ...?"
"Mary MacGregor."
The old women pondered that for a while, looking into the hearth. "The redhead from Rob Roy"s clan?"
"Yes."
"She was a haughty one. Thought herself better than the other la.s.ses sent to the castle for grooming... Very pretty though and fell head over heals for Lord Archibald, the silly la.s.s... They all had their dreams of becoming Lady Argyle." She fell silent for a while. "But why do you think she is your mother?"
"She said so herself, a few years back, when I was at Finlarig."
"She did? ... Strange woman... Why would she say that?"
Andrew felt on tenterhooks. "Is she my mother? Aunt Lorna, please, tell me."
"No ... she had a boy a few months earlier and he died shortly after birth."
With great effort, he forced to keep his voice steady. "You say her boy died?"
"Yes, he only lived a week or so. Didn"t take to feeding. That happens sometimes. Maybe if he had been left with his mother, he might have lived."
"And she was never told her boy died?"
"I guess not ... she was sent home a few days after the birth ... before he died."
"So, who is my mother?"
"Oh, let me think. She was dark haired ... she was ... yes, she was a MacDonald ... yes, I think Elizabeth MacDonald. Married one of her cousins a year after you were born and died in childbirth, the poor la.s.s... would have done better to enter a convent, as she had wanted."
Andrew did not sleep much that night. He wondered what difference it would have made, had he known. But that could not be changed any more. He might as well bury it in the deepest recesses of his mind.
He had planned to go from Argyle directly to Glasgow and then make for Liverpool to catch a boat to Boston. But when he reached the top of Loch Lomond, rather than go south to Dumbarton, he was irresistibly drawn east into Breadalbane. He couldn"t understand why. There was really nothing there that he wanted to be reminded of. Helen, the girl he had loved and lost, thinking of her as his sister these last four years? The wound of losing his love had suddenly been ripped open again. She was not even his sister anymore-only a la.s.s that had crossed his path. Or did he want to tell the woman he had believed to be his mother? He had forgiven her and felt ashamed for having cursed her-she had only done what she thought she must do to protect her daughter and her family. What would change if she knew that he was not her son? He was still a Campbell of Argyle and she a MacGregor. She would never let her daughter marry a Campbell. What was he thinking of? Anyway, by now Helen was surely joined with another MacGregor. She might already have a child or two. Nevertheless he continued east along Glen Falloch and down Glen Dochart and so came to Killin.
After an early dinner at The Bear, he decided to go for a ride. Before long he found himself on the ridge leading down to Lochan nan Geadas. It hadn"t been a conscious act. As the sun reappeared below the bank of clouds over the western horizon, he rode down to the little lake and walked up to the promontory. Sitting against a boulder, he watched the reddish glows of the setting sun bathe the landscape, the shadows slowly fading away. He closed his eyes and leaned back. He saw Helen standing on the path, like on the day when she had come to tell him of her love. The image was so real and so vivid that he opened his eyes, startled, searching. n.o.body was there.
He got up and went down to the water. Everything was completely overgrown. He could not find the entrance to the cave and was giving up, when he almost stumbled onto the little tunnel. He crawled in. After a while, his eyes adjusted to the dim light. The piece of driftwood, the round white rock, the bit of crystal were still on the little shelves. The pine cones had lost most of their scales. He opened the book left there, badly damaged by rodents. It was Chaucer"s Canterbury Tales. She had called it naughty. A smile crossed his face.
It was night by the time he got back to the inn.
Next day he visited Finlarig Castle. It felt more like coming home despite its dank starkness. He had been strangely happy and content there. The stable master told him that Dougan Graham had died in the Winter of 1746. Andrew was glad that neither of the McNabb brothers, nor James Campbell were there. All three were still in active service with the English army, last known to be serving in Flanders, he was told.
Mr. Nichols, the innkeeper of The Bear, joined his only guest for the evening meal, making polite but insistent inquiries about Andrew, where he came from, where he was going, which drew no more than vague answers.
Over coffee, Andrew asked: "Is Dougal Campbell, you know, the MacGregors, still farming on Loch Tay?"
"Ah, you"d know him?" retorted the innkeeper suspiciously. "He"d be any relations of yours, if I may be so bold to inquire, sir?"
"You may... No, I made his acquaintance, what ... it must be six years ago already."
"That"d be before the rebellion, sir."
"That"s right. Is he still here?"
"He joined the rebels, you know, but seemed to have gotten away unscathed, except for losing his cattle. But shortly afterward had a full herd again. I always wonder how these MacGregors manage to flout the law of the land so brazenly and go scot-free, sir."
"So he has left the area?"
"Oh, no. He and half a dozen other families still farm a glen off Loch Tay. I"d guess if you stayed here for the Spring dance this coming Sat.u.r.day, you"d be able to meet him. The MacGregors never seem to miss any festivities. Has two mighty pretty daughters, you know."
"Unfortunately, I"ll have to leave before then. I"ve got a ship to catch, as I told you."
"That sure"s a pity. All the pretty la.s.ses of the glen will be here. It"s their last outing before they go into the shielings for the summer. You sure wouldn"t want to miss that, sir."
"I"m afraid I"ll have to be gone tomorrow, but thank you for telling me." Andrew rose from the table. "That was a mighty fine dinner, Mr. Nichols. But now I better retire to get a good night"s rest."
However, sleep escaped him. The opportunity of seeing Helen had stirred him up, old feelings haunting him. By morning he had changed his mind about leaving and went for another ride on Beinn Leabhain.