Johnson Johnson 04 - Dolly and the Doctor Bird (28 page)

Across the bridge. I heard the brigadier preparing his pipers; I heard Krishtof and Wallace shouting with laughter but I wasn’t laughing. Five bridges had fallen under the chief of the MacRannochs. No MacRannoch had succeeded in building a bridge between the shore and his castle since the thirteenth, and he had had the help of the fairies. I said to Wallace, “I don’t want them to go over the bridge.”

He broke off at once and came over. He said, “Look: I know what happened in Scotland. Believe me, it won’t happen here.”

“No?” I said after a pause. “But you don’t know my family. It’s a legend.”

A man in full piper’s uniform fell at my feet, someone took him by the armpits and dragged him away. Wallace Brady said, “I’m going to cross that bridge, and so is your father. We’ll break the legend between us. We’ll make a new one, Beltanno.”

Brigadier McCanna said, “Doctor MacRannoch?”

“Lay him down somewhere cool and let him sleep it off,” I said, without turning.

“Doctor MacRannoch,” he said again, and I turned at the alarm in his voice. “That was the only damned man among them who could play the solo
The MacRannoch Forever
.”

They all looked at me in my silver wig and my silver suit with the white ostrich feathers, and they saw nothing at all. They saw a woman doctor who could play on the bagpipes.

I lifted the pipes. I tucked the bag under my arm and threw the drones over my shoulder and put the blow pipe to my lips and settled my grip on the chanter. I nodded. Then the massed pipes struck up and we marched, Brady and Krishtof on either side, out of the marquee.

My father fell in before us as we passed the main stand. He had the Begum with him and they were both smiling politely because of the roar of applause that had gone up when we three emerged from the tent. James Ulric patted me on the back and muttered something about Mr. Tiko.

I wasn’t playing, but the massed pipe band was. “What?” I said. The pipes had switched to
The Bonawe Highlanders
.

“He says the place on your right ought to be occupied by the heir,” shouted the Begum. The rest of the two thousand were shuffling into place behind us, but we couldn’t hear them and they certainly couldn’t hear us. “It’s a shame about Mr. Tiko.”

I shouted back, “What happened to him?”

Wallace Brady cupped his hands around his mouth and aimed it at my father. “They wouldn’t let him in,” he yelled, “because he wasn’t a MacRannoch.”

“Mr. Tiko,” I shouted. “We’re talking about Mr. Tiko.”

“I know,” yelled Wallace. “He wasn’t a MacRannoch.”

I said, “But he said…”

“No, he didn’t,” yelled Wallace. “He just said his name was hard to pronounce. And that he was a doctor as well. It was you who said he was called T. K. MacRannoch.”

What with rage and astonishment and confusion, I had almost nothing to shout with. I croaked, “But his name was on the Paradise Island golf register.”

“No, it wasn’t,” said Krishtof Bey, flicking a strand of silver off his impeccable Lincoln Center filibeg and plush doublet. “I played a round of golf just behind Mr. Tiko. It wasn’t his name you saw in the book, it was mine.”

The pipers switched to
The Garb of Old Gaul
and got halfway through it quite uninterrupted. I could hear my father’s F.E.V.’s revving up. The Begum was smiling, strolling along. I said, “What?”

Krishtof Bey said mildly, “I am T. Krishtof MacRannoch. It is a bizarre name for a ballet dancer. I do not use it.”

My father said, in a fixed voice, “The name of my heir after Beltanno is T. K. MacRannoch. A Japanese.”

“A Turk,” said the Begum dreamily. “James, I ought to have told you. But after Wallace mentioned what Krishtof’s real name was, I went over the papers again. The genealogical people didn’t mean to mislead you, darling. It was a typing error. T. K. MacRannoch, Turk. Krishtof Bey is the heir to the chieftainship.”

“And?” I said thinly. It was another damnable plot. It was a plot between the Begum and Brady. I remembered she had even got James Ulric to agree to my marrying Krishtof. “What about me? What about Mr. Tiko?”

“Mr. Tiko is polite,” said the Begum. “He will marry you if you insist, but I believe he would be rather relieved not to have James Ulric for a father-in-law.”

“And Krishtof?” I said.

Krishtof was admiring the swing of his kilt. “I? I never interfere,” he remarked. “I am interested in love, not in chieftains or marriage.”

“I’ve noticed as much,” said James Ulric. His face had brightened. “But I’ll not deny you’re a treat at the sixteensome. You’ll mind, Beltanno, that
The MacRannoch Forever
is due at the bridge?”

His words fell into a wheezing withdrawal of bedlam. The pipes had ceased. The files were opening and halting, displaying before me the dazzle of concrete under a flock of bright, floodlit banners, with the standard of the MacRannochs flying over it all. Ahead, in the darkness, on either side of the white arch before me, I could hear the low chuckle of water, and smell the salt, soft air of the sea. Here was the new bridge. And here was I, at the head of two thousand, to pipe the forty-fifth chief to his castle.

The MacRannoch Forever
is not a difficult solo, but there is a knack to it. I had the knack. I settled the bag and put the blow pipe into my mouth and sent up a prayer and drew in all the sea air I could muster between there and the Florida coast. The drones started up, and then the first note, clear and steady; and I launched into my father’s own tune as I set foot on his bridge.

I played steadily as I walked over, and behind me I could sense the trample and thud as the MacRannochs flocked after the piping, whether as rats or as children it is not for me, a MacRannoch, to say. I filled my own ears with my music so that no lesser rumble could reach me: no crumbling chasm of concrete; no cracking and sliding of piers.

Beneath my feet the new bridge was solid. Solid to the midway reach of the strait, with the lights twinkling in front and behind. Solid as the far end came nearer, and the lights of the castle shone sharp cut and welcoming there.

I walked on, and James Ulric walked firmly behind me; and when we both stepped onto dry land, he moved forward and, laying his hands on my shoulders, he embraced me for the first time since childhood.

“The curse is broken,” he said.

He underestimated his reticuloendothelial system; but success is an excellent doctor. I kissed him back fondly. And through the fronds of his tall chieftain’s bonnet, I saw not MacRannoch Castle before me, but a palm tree with a banana bird in it, and beneath it, B. Douglas MacRannoch — mistress to the man on my one hand, or wife to the man on my other; or both. Thank you, Johnson. Thank you for everything.

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[August 15, 2007]