Patricia Veryan - [Sanguinet Saga 06] - The Noblest Frailty (31 page)

"His name's
Methy-slaw
!" Josie
elaborated with a shake of the head for the density of some adults.

For a moment Yolande was unenlightened. Then, she exclaimed,
"Oh—Methuselah! A biblical name."

Josie nodded. "Like Mr. Craig's horse."

Intrigued, Yolande said, "Lazzy is short for Lazarus, then? Do
you know why?"

"It's because when he was a wee colt, he was caught in a flood
or something," said Maisie, all importance. "He almost drowned, but Mr.
Craig jumped in and got him out, and that's why that funny Red Indian
follows him all over the world, even to Waterloo."

Yolande blinked. Josie, incredulous, demanded, "How do
you
know all that?"

"Me mum told me. She knows all about Mr. Tyndale. I heard her
tell me dad that we ought to make it our business to find out—"

"Maisie! Whatever be ye doing, child?" A thin, nervous,
dark-haired little woman hurried up the path, wiping her hands on her
apron.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. MacFarlane," called Yolande. "Will you
not join us?"

Mrs. MacFarlane not only would not join them, but was
apparently most distressed. "I
told
ye, never to
come up here, you bad girl!" she chided. "Do ye ken what happens to
bairns that do nae heed their mums?"

Beginning to cry, Maisie picked up her doll.

Yolande stood and walked forward, pleading, "Pray do not scold
her, ma'am. I am the culprit, for Josie is so short of playmates I
asked your daughter to stay. It would be lovely if Maisie could keep
her company now and then."

The lady fairly clutched her child and, standing very stiff
and straight, replied a frigid, "We thank ye, Miss Drummond. Is best
they dinna meet." She bit her lip and added with a sort of desperation,
"And besides, we'm moving away verra soon noo. Good day tae ye."

She bobbed a curtsy and backed away, her attitude all but
fearful.

Josie snatched up the other doll and ran forward. "Don't
forget Lady Witherspoon," she said sadly.

Maisie ran to retrieve her doll. A ball that had snared the
chair with "Lady Witherspoon" fell to the floor. Yolande took it up.
"Catch," she called, and threw it to Josie.

Mrs. MacFarlane, standing just beyond the little girl, uttered
a piercing shriek and sprang back, throwing up a protecting arm.

Astonished, Yolande cried, "Oh, I do beg your pardon. Did I
startle you, ma'am?"

The distraught woman returned no answer, but burst into tears,
took her frightened daughter by the hand, and all but ran back across
the park.

It was very apparent, thought Yolande, that she could expect
little help from that quarter. Maybe Mrs. MacFarlane thought they were
all
murderers!

"Now," said Josie forlornly, "I got no one to play tea party
with."

"Not only that, you have no tea party left." Yolande nodded at
Methuselah who was on the table, busily crunching the remaining
biscuits, with the empty cream pitcher overturned beside him.

"Silly creature," Josie giggled."There wasn't no cream in it.
And cats do not like biscuits!"

Yolande smiled, "I suppose no one has ever told him," she
said, thus awakening a little peal of laughter.

As they started back towards the house together, Yolande
thought, "I wonder how Mrs. MacFarlane knew so much about Craig…"

The village of Drumdownie had seen many changes during the
march of the centuries. It was thought to have been extant during the
Roman military occupation, it had endured through the wars of the
tribes, the Norman invasion, and a mighty battle with Norwegian hosts.
It had known Robert the Bruce with pride, and Oliver Cromwell with
hatred. But it had never as yet seen an Iroquois Indian clad in
leathern tunic, trousers, and moccasins, and riding bareback with the
demeanour of a conquering monarch. As a result, Montelongo's process
along the cobbled old street became more a procession, with children,
dogs, and a growing number of adults following in his train, many of
the latter, greatly diverted, calling out eagerly to learn where was
the rest of the circus.

Ignoring the uproar, Montelongo drew his bay mare to a halt
outside the blacksmith's shop where were seated several of the village
elders. He swung one leg across the mare's back, preparatory to
slipping down, but stopped as an ancient man tottered to his feet, his
rheumy eyes as wide as his toothless mouth, to pipe in broad Scots,
"The puir savage will be needin' a body tae translate. Now dinna
everyone press in— he's nae tae be trusted too close, like as not!"

Montelongo decided this old gentleman was as unintelligible as
most of the other Scots he had met, and eyed him imperturbably.

"Dinna fash ye'sel' laddie," urged the aged one. "Me name be
Roberts an' I ask ye tae light ye doon and open y'r budget wi' us. How
much will they be chargin' fer tickets? And d'ye ken whar the tent will
be pitched?"

Very little of this was clear to Montelongo, but one word
stood out. "Tent," he said in his deep, resonant voice. "Where big
wigwam? Where Chief?"

Mr. Roberts cackled. "Not sae fast!" he admonished. "Show us
some tricks, first."

An eager chorus echoed this request, shouts of "Aye, gie us a
show!"… "Whar's a skelpie?"… "Will ye nae dance fer us?"

The minister, a mild gentleman with a soft heart and patient
eyes that blinked behind thick spectacles, managed to work his way
through the throng. "Och! A Red Indian, is it?" said he admiringly.
"Will ye no stand back and give the puir chappie air. They're
accustomed to great spaces, d'ye ken. Are ye lost, me guid mon?" And
then, misinterpreting Montelongo's incredulous stare, he said with
careful articulation, "You… come here… for… why?"

The fathomless gaze of the Iroquois drifted up and down the
good minister and his black robes; around the circle of faces,
variously grinning, mocking, curious, or awed; and returned to the
reverend gentleman. "I have come here," he said in flawless English,
"to hire servants for Major Win—Tyndale."

A new chorus of astonishment arose, a markedly less friendly
outcry.

"What manner o' jiggery-pokery be that?" quoth Mr. Roberts,
indignant.

"A iggeramous aping his betters!" the baker sneered.

"Servants, is it?" laughed the butcher. "Tae worrk at Castle
Tyndale, eh?"

A sharp-faced matron asked snidery, "Why hae ye come all this
way? Could ye no hire at Dramwater, or Kirkaird?"

Ignoring this unfortunate question, Montelongo proclaimed,
"Major pay well. We need housekeeper, cook, parlourmaids, a footman. A
gardener, perhaps. People come early tomorrow morning."

"Ye'd best hae the gates wide, big Chief," chortled the
blacksmith, "else they'll like to be beat down by the rush!"

This witticism sent the crowd into whoops, the following
derisive comments causing many to become so hilarious that there was
much side holding and moaning that no more mirth could be endured.

And the end of it all was that Montelongo returned to Castle
Tyndale, a thunderous scowl upon his face, to inform his employer that
everyone in the village of Drumdownie was crazy as a loon, and there
was no servants to be had there, either. 'Them say," he imparted with a
disgusted glance around the great hall, "castle is bogle-ridden and
they'll not set foot in it!" And taking himself gloomily to the pile of
dirty dishes in the kitchens, reflected that he was much in agreement
with the locals, loony though they may be.

"It passes all understanding!" Mrs. Arabella Drummond tilted
her parasol against the afternoon sun as she wandered with her niece
along the village street. Following, Josie was obliged to adjust her
pace to the meanderings of Socrates since that pampered darling paid
little heed to tuggings at the red ribbon that served for a leash.
"Simply," Arabella went on in high dudgeon, "because my sweet baby
chanced to forget himself in the greengrocer's shop, one might have
thought the world would come to an end! I shall speak to your
grandfather about that wretched man, I do assure you! Never have I been
so insulted!"

In Yolande's opinion the shopkeeper had been quite restrained,
especially in view of the fact that they had entered his neat
establishment in an attempt to gather information, and not as
customers. The greengrocer had been able to supply little more than had
been garnered from her previous informants. Of the inside servants who
might be able to shed new light on the happenings of 1792, few were
still in the neighbourhood. There was the Hewitts, he said
thoughtfully. "But Mrs. Hewitt was a sickly woman who passed to her
reward three years ago, and Mr. Hewitt went for head groom to a
gentleman in India. Their daughter stayed, but she was only a wee bairn
at the time of the tragedy."

Reflecting that it all seemed hopeless, Yolande murmured
something placating to her aunt. That lady, her feathers still ruffled,
remarked that she could not for the life of her see why Yolande must
make all these enquiries. "It is downright embarrassing," she declared.
"Had I known you meant to do so, I should not have accompanied you, for
to be connected even remotely with such persons as Major Winters, er,
Tyndale, is stigma enough, let alone to remind others of it! Were you
wise, my love, you would allow him to do his own investigating. Much
good will it do him, for the locals are not likely to tell him
anything, even was there anything to tell!"

"Which is exactly why I am trying to help," said Yolande.
"They think of—"

"Oh—only look at that darling doggie!" Mrs. Drummond
interrupted, rapturously eyeing a china spaniel in the window of the
draper's shop. "How that would brighten my poor little room at Park
Parapine! Not that I mean to appear critical of the quarters allotted
to me, for I am after all only a poor relation, and your dear mama is
more than kind to allow me to serve as her constant stay and support,
so I can scarcely expect to be given a chamber suitable for family or
guests, can I? Of one thing, Yolande, I am very sure; none can brand me
ungrateful. Not a night passes but that I remember your dear mama in my
prayers! As indeed I should, for it must be so tiresome for her there,
all alone with the children. Save for your father. Sir Martin is not a
garrulous man. Often have I remarked how little he contributes to the
conversation when I am with your mama, which must make her life just
now so very dreary. Though that was not what I had intended to remark,
and…" She paused, at a loss to know what she
had
intended to remark.

Yolande seized the opportunity to remind her aunt of the china
dog (which she herself thought quite revolting, for surely no dog had
such enormous and soulful eyes, or hair the colour of raw liver).
"Should you like to go inside, dear? I can wait out here with Socrates,
if you wish."

Mrs. Drummond did wish. Yolande and Josie remained outside,
but it developed that the lady proprietor was both an ardent faunophile
and overjoyed by the patronage of one of the ladies from "up tae the
hill." As a result, in a very little while Socrates had to be taken
inside to be exclaimed over and, Josie also soon succumbing to the
fascinations of the cluttered little shop, Yolande was left to her own
devices.

It was a beautiful afternoon, the warm sunlight causing the
old sandstone cottages to stand in sharp relief against the blue of the
skies, and a light breeze flirting with the trees and swinging the
weathervane atop the minister's cottage next to the quaint old church.
The door of the church stood wide and, as Yolande passed a woman came
out, head bowed and handkerchief pressed to tearful eyes. Wondering if
she could be of some assistance, Yolande hesitated. The woman looked
up, and Yolande thought she had never beheld so desolate a countenance.
Her kind heart touched, she moved forward, stretching forth one hand
and saying, "Mrs. MacFarlane! Oh, my dear ma'am, whatever is wrong? Is
there anything I can do for you?"

But the gardener's wife only shrank away, uttered a gasping,
unintelligible remark, and hurried past.

"Puir wee lassie," said the minister sadly, walking to join
Yolande. "She carries a heavy load, Miss Drummond. A crushing load,
indeed!"

Yolande nodded. "So I have thought," she agreed, still looking
after that frantic retreat. "I know you cannot betray a confidence,
but—is there any way in which I could help her?"

He sighed heavily. "In company wi' the most of us, ma'am, puir
Mrs. MacFarlane's best help can come frae but one source. Her own self!"

He was probably in the right of it, thought Yolande, and she
said no more. Just the same, when she returned to Steep Drummond, she
sent a note down to the MacFarlane cottage, in which she reiterated her
offer to be of any assistance, and urged that if Mrs. MacFarlane ever
felt the need, she not hesitate to come to her.

"Six days!" Devenish observed wrathfully, following his cousin
down the main staircase. "Almost a week in this miserable damned pile,
and what have we accomplished? Nothing! Not a word! Not a hint! Not a
clue!"

Tyndale frowned. "It is not a 'miserable damned pile'! In
fact, I think the architecture superb for the period. Most edifices of
this type are stately and impressive from the outside, and like a
rabbit warren inside. Castle Tyndale has large, bright rooms; corridors
that are straight and functional; and ample storage facilities."

"As you should certainly be aware," grumbled Devenish, "since
you've paced off and sketched every blasted room we found."

"I really fail to see why that should so annoy you."

But it did annoy Devenish, because he judged it to be a
bourgeois pride of ownership. His disgust had been so obvious that one
day his cousin had met his irked glance, paused in his pacing, and
murmured, "You certainly understand why I do this, Dev?" He had replied
disdainfully, "Oh, it is quite obvious that you cherish every brick and
stone in the place!" To which Tyndale had retaliated, "And, like my
father, you do not." The reminder of his close resemblance to Jonas
Tyndale had further infuriated Devenish. His head flinging upward he
had snapped, "Very true. I am also becoming more aware of the murderous
side of my nature of late. You had best never venture onto the
battlements in my company, cousin!" and stamped away, fumingly aware
that their relationship was fast deteriorating.