Dawn on a Distant Shore (18 page)

Moncrieff raised an
eyebrow at the weight of the candle. Then he tested the narrow end with his
thumb and jerked in surprise. A bead of blood appeared, bright on his grimy
skin.

"It's a wise
woman wha' kens the worth o' a guid strong candle," said Robbie grimly as he
tore off another chunk of bread. "An' should we meet wi' Pink George on
the way oot o' his filthy gaol, I'll demonstrate the truth o' that tae him wi'
great pleasure." He narrowed an eye at Moncrieff. "Did Adele ha' any
news o' Somerville?"

Nathaniel caught his
father's eye. Robbie was determined to pay Pink George back for the shooting of
his dog. If all went well he would never have the chance, but there was no good
reason to point that out.

"Aye," said
Moncrieff, filling the tin cup again. "Giselle is to be married."

There was a moment of
surprised silence.

Hawkeye grunted, his
gaze fixed on the food before him. "He'll have a struggle on his hands,
whoever he is."

"Perhaps,"
said Moncrieff. "But Horace Pickering is no man's fool."

Robbie sputtered a
mist of ale. "The fish-faced seadog is tae marry Giselle?"

Moncrieff inclined his
head. "She might ha' done far worse. Now she'll be free o' her faither,
and awa' fra' here. I think it will serve her weel."

"Aye," said
Hawkeye lightly. "A husband gone to sea nine months out of twelve may suit
her just fine." He stared for a moment at Nathaniel, and then grinned as
if he knew full well what his son must be feeling: surprise, some curiosity he
would not indulge with questions, and relief. He need think on Giselle Somerville
no more.

"Perhaps he'll
take her home," Moncrieff said thoughtfully. "He has a house outside
o' Edinburgh. Have I told ye about the countryside around Edinburgh?"

The others snorted.
Angus Moncrieff had asked the Bonners for a single hour to present his case for
Scotland and Carryck and had had their attention, day and night, for a good
month. He had paid a high price for the opportunity--for a day at least, Nathaniel
had wondered if the cold in his chest might kill him--but he made good use of
it. And his easy way with a story was welcome in the long dark days of March
when boredom and desperation vied for the upper hand.

Moncrieff's histories
were told in a long, comfortable ramble. He spoke of kidnapped kings, land
grants and treaties, treacheries and lost opportunities, brave men with weak allies,
traitorous Norman nobles. There were complicated tales of English perfidy, clan
rivalries and border wars, banking disasters, famines and clearings. Moncrieff
gave them such a vivid picture of his homeland and its people that Nathaniel
sometimes daydreamed of places he knew only by name and would never see:
Stirling and Bannockburn, Falkirk, Holyrood.

Nathaniel had heard
many of the same stories from his mother, but Moncrieff told them with the
voice and vision of the men who had fought the battles. He was so skilled at
spinning tales that it was some good time before Nathaniel noticed those
subjects he avoided. He never told his own story in any detail, said almost
nothing of his own family or his unshakable allegiance to the Carryck line; and
in all his recounting of tangled politics and divided loyalties, he spoke of
religion in only the most passing way. Stranger still, while they heard of
every battle fought with England for independence since Robert the Bruce, Moncrieff
never spoke of the most recent and disastrous, the Rising of '45, although he
sang of it now and then. When the mood was on him, Moncrieff would throw back
his head and sing in a profound, clear baritone so that even the guards playing
dice in the courtyard quieted to listen.

The folks with plaids,
the folks with plaids,

The folks with plaids
of scarlet,

And folks with
checkered plaids of green

Are going off with
Charlie.

were I more'self
sixteen years old,

were I as I would fain
be,

were I more'self
sixteen years old

I'd go more'self with
Charlie.

Nathaniel thought
Moncrieff might be unwilling to talk of the Rising out of sensitivity to Robbie,
who had fought for the exiled Catholic king and escaped to the Colonies in a complicated
set of circumstances. For his part, Robbie seemed content to let Moncrieff's stories
lead where they would go without comment. More than once Nathaniel had wished
for privacy in which he could ask some very pointed questions out of Moncrieff's
hearing.

Most of all, Moncrieff
talked about Carryck. Sometimes Nathaniel fell asleep at night listening to the
stories, only to escape in his dreams in the opposite direction, to Elizabeth
and Lake in the Clouds, to their children, and to the Kahnyen'kehâka, who were
truer family to him than any earl in a stone castle could ever be. They had had
no word of Otter and no way of knowing if he had made it home, but deep in his bones
Nathaniel was certain that he had. He could almost see Runs-from-Bears on the
path. He was on his way here, or he was dead.

Nathaniel knew
Moncrieff was probably right, that he was a Scot through and through; but it
made no difference. None of it--not the farms or fields or mines or titles--had
any claim on his heart or mind. He would go home to Lake in the Clouds and
never leave the mountain again. Nathaniel could see the same thought on his
father's face now.

"You'll be off
home to Scotland," Hawkeye said to Moncrieff. "Glad to see the last
of Canada, I'll wager. You came a long way and stayed a long time to be goin'
home empty-handed. I'm sorry for it, man, but I can't help you."

The narrow shoulders
lifted in a shrug. "It was worth the chance," he said. "I would
ha' gone twice the distance to save Carryck. It will ne'er be the same
again."

"Nothing ever
is," said Hawkeye, but his tone was kind. He understood what it meant to
lose homelands to an invading army that never seemed to lessen, or tire.

"I saw Carryck
when I was no' but a lad," said Robbie, almost to himself. "I was on
the road tae Glasgow. A summer nicht, and the midges were nippin' aye fierce,
but the sicht o' the castle lit up wi' torches was a gey wonder tae behold. It
seemed tae me tae be filled wi' a thousand fine folk."

"The hospitality
o' the auld earl was well kennt," agreed Moncrieff. "Men came from as
far as Paris and London to hunt wi' him--and he welcomed them all. Even Pink George
came to Carryck, back in forty-four. I remember it weel."

"You must have
been a boy yourself," said Nathaniel, truly surprised. "That's fifty years
ago."

"I was
thirteen," said Moncrieff. "And in training under my faither, who was
the earl's factor before me. Pink George was no more than twenty himself. I
recall that hunting party weel, for the banquet was my first and my faither's
last. He died the following year." Moncrieff cleared his throat again,
rubbing a hand over his face. "It was that very banquet where our fine
host, George Somerville, Lord Bainbridge, earned the name Pink George."

Robbie's head snapped
up. "Ye've been sittin' here wi' us in this stinkin' hole for weeks,
Angus, and no' tolt the tale? I've lang wondered aboot that name."

"I was saving it
for a rainy day."

"The sun is
shining," said Hawkeye. "But tomorrow will be too late if luck is
with us."

But Nathaniel could
not sit still, not even for a well-told story. He got up to pace the room. The
warmth of the spring morning touched his face with a tenderness that would have
made him despair, if it weren't for his faith that tomorrow they would be away.
He would never turn back, of that much he was certain, should the whole city
burn to the ground.

"... more than
fifty rode out wi' the hounds that day, Bainbridge among them. He came back empty-handed,
lopsided wi' drink, and in an amorous frame o' mind. Kitchen lassie or duchess,
he wasna particular. Bainbridge's appetite for women was the talk o' the
land."

"Much like yer
own," noted Robbie with a wink, but Moncrieff only raised a dignified brow
in his direction, and refused to be drawn into a discussion of his own habits.

"The trouble
began when he caught sight o' wee Barbara Cameron, a servin' maid. Just fifteen,
with eyes o' lavender, and hair like the moonlight itself. A bonnie lass was
Barbara, virtuous, but canty. She was serving drink that evening, and had the
poor fortune to come across Bainbridge, who thought he would dispense wi' the niceties
and get right to lifting her skirts. But whisky made him slow, and she was
quick. She left him wi' nothing but her scent in his nose and a ribbon he
snatched from her hair as she slipped awa'."

Moncrieff paused to
take another deep swallow. The telling of a story seemed to give him a thirst.

"Now, he was no'
so bad to look at himself as a young man, was our Bainbridge. There were other bonnie
faces in the hall that night who might've made him forget wee Barbara, if it werena
for the fact that she had shunned him in front o' all the other men at his
table. "Oho," says one o' the stupider Drummonds--just a month later
his horse did us all the favor o' throwing him on his heid--"have ye lost
your touch, Bainbridge, or is the wild rose of Scotland too thorny for a soft
English hand?"'"

There was a guffaw
from Robbie, who was bent over in a bow, his hands folded between his knees and
head cocked.

"From the little
ye've seen o' the man, you know verra well that Pink George is the kind that canna
thole laughter at his own expense. And so he made a wager wi' softheided
Geordie Drummond. He would have Barbara Cameron in his bed before the dawn,
plow the field, and leave a bit more of England putting down roots in Scottish
soil when he gaed awa' hame."

Moncrieff shrugged as
if to disavow responsibility for what had happened so long ago.

"That was his
mistake. Ye see, he drew the auld earl's attention on himself, chasing after a serving
maid all evening, for he decided in his drunken state that once she kennt him
weel, she couldna withstan' his charms. In the end, his lairdship sent my
faither off to get to the bottom o' the matter. And when he came back wi' the
whole tale, the earl got a particular light in his eye.

"He was a wily
one, the auld earl, sharp as they come and wi' a wicked sense o' humor. Young Bainbridge
was an opportunity he couldna let pass. So he goes after the lad--no' to tell him
to leave the lass alone, for what game is there in that? No, he asks if there's
anything the viscount desires to make his stay more comfortable!"

Pépin had inched a bit
closer and was listening hard, although Nathaniel thought he was probably not getting
more than half of the story. Denier had gone back to sleep.

"Bainbridge is
too deep in his cups to see the strangeness of it, that the Earl o' Carryck
should be asking after his wishes personally, and him no' but a lad. But his
blood is up now --watching Barbara move through the room, her skirts swinging
and her cheeks aa bright wi' color--and he doesna see what is plain to every other
man. And the ladies, too, Scotch and English alike, laughing behind their
hands.

"Aye, the lass is
on his mind and he's blind to all o' it, is George. He winks and nods, and
winks again, and presses wee Barbara's hair ribbon into the earl's broad palm.
"What a lovely pink it is," says he, winking in Barbara's direction.
"I am quite taken with it.""

In the shadows of the
gaol cell they all smiled broadly, for Moncrieff was a mean mimic and had got
Pink George down exactly.

"Now, the earl
can barely keep a sober expression, but he nods. "Aye" says he. And
"Certainly." As if it were a weighty matter between men o' the world.
He sends Bainbridge off to his room. "Guid things come tae him wha'
waits," says the earl."

Robbie sat up
straighter. "Tell me that Carryck didna send the lass in tae Somerville,
or I'll lose ma mind."

Moncrieff raised a finger.
"If there's anything to ken about the auld earl it is this: he could turn
almost any quirk o' fate to his own advantage or amusement, and he never gave awa'
what was his.

"S. Off
Bainbridge stumbles to his bed, and awa' marches the earl in the other
direction wi' most of the party behind him. My faither and I gaed along, too,
carrying torches. So lang I live I willna forget the sight o' it--the ladies
and gentlemen in their fine clothes, high-stepping through the muck and mud,
slipping an' sliding in shite and laughing like boobies on their way tae the
barn. More than a few o' them gaed astray in the hayricks, for the moon was
full and Bainbridge wasna the only man wi' an eye for the lassies."

Moncrieff stopped to
scratch his thinly sprouted beard, extracting a louse that he examined closely
before crushing it. Then he looked around the circle of faces, meeting each man's
eye.

"And while the
laird was seeing to things in the barn, the drink got the better o' Bainbridge and
he fell to sleep waiting. But he woke in the morning to find the earl was so
guid as his word, for he wasna alone under the kivvers."