The Betrayal of Maggie Blair (36 page)

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.

They were waiting for us as we stepped off the boats on the cold gray stones of Leith harbor. No time was wasted. The Covenanters were herded at once inside the courtroom.

"Prisoners only," a soldier said, barring my way as I tried to go in with Uncle Blair.

I had no choice but to join the crowd of anxious relatives waiting by the door. It was a hot day, and a haze hung over the spires of Edinburgh on the hill a mile or two away. A few fishing smacks were tied up at the quayside, their catches already unloaded, and the fishermen were peacefully working on their nets, mending the rips in them. Smirking boys strutted mockingly behind a grand gentleman, and some little girls squatted in a doorway, playing with a kitten.

Don't they know what's going on in there?
I thought, my heart pounding with anxiety.
Don't they care?

I saw that some of the relatives were huddling beneath a high open window, trying to hear what was going on inside. They made room for me, and we stood with our faces turned up, straining to hear.

"Let George Muir stand forward!" called out an official-sounding voice.

There was a clank of manacles inside as the prisoners shuffled about. The judge began to read out the Test. Fragments only floated out to us.

"George Muir, do you swear ... the true Protestant religion ... educate your children ... affirm the King's Majesty ... the only supreme Governor ... Do you judge it unlawful to enter into any covenants ... to take arms against the King ... Is this your solemn oath?"

I couldn't make out the confused murmur from within, but the man nearest the window jumped up onto a barrel to see into the courtroom.

"He refused. He's refused it. On pain of banishment," he reported down to us.