The Rogues (4 page)

“Aye, on condition he threw the people off it first.”

“He was too straight a man for that,” I whispered, “too straight by far.”

I heard her sigh again. “Thanks, young Roddy.”

I sat up so we were face-to-face. “I'm nae trying to flatter ye. It's the truth I'm speaking. All the crofters say it.”

She smiled at me, still dabbing at my head, though very gently. The streaming light hung about her like a golden haze. “I'd be a liar if I said my father wasn't tempted. There was enough money on offer that he could have spent the rest of his days living like a fine gentleman in a fancy house in Edinburgh. It was the clansmen coming to call that made the difference, that reminded him there are bonds between men stronger than anything money can buy.”

Even with the pain, I had to smile back. She made the clansmen calling sound like a wee social visit. But I remembered how word had reached the villages that English merchants were coming to take the land for their sheep. And we'd heard enough tales of what had already been happening in villages in Ross and Sutherland to take alarm at the news. Da had raced from house to house with Lachlan and me hammering on the doors with him. And when we were done with our wee town, we rode out to the far glens with the news. Da had a dram of whisky at every house, and we'd had to carry him home across the horse's back and not a stick of work done for two days after. Didn't we get a lashing of the tongue from Cousin Ishbel then.

“Let's go and see the laird and call for justice,” Da had said at door after door.

By the end of the week, a great straggling line of folk—five hundred at least—had come winding their way up the glen with cattle and goats in tow. Some waved torches, others had brought pipes to play, just as if we were off to the games.

“I remember that when we arrived, yer father came to the door, with ye at his side,” I said. “Ye got a bigger cheer than he did.” That had been the first time I'd seen Bonnie Josie up close, and it was a memory I'd never forgotten.

Josie looked pleased. “Maybe it was the cheering that made the sheep merchants run out the back door and jump onto their horses. They probably thought it was a bloodthirsty mob of Highlanders come to hang them.” She put her head back and laughed, and it was a lovely sound, like water in a burn bubbling over the rocks.

“Hanging would have been too good for them,” I said, my voice slurring once more. “We gave yer father an even bigger cheer when he promised not to lease out the land.”

“Aye, hoisted him onto your shoulders and carried him three times around Kindarry House,” said Josie. “I'm not sure he enjoyed that part of it.” The memory brought a flush to her cheek, and the tiniest of tears slipped from her eye at the thought of how things stood today. For just weeks after her father had been buried, those same English sheep merchants had been back talking to the new laird, Daniel McRoy. And we could all see how that had turned out.

“Maybe we should have given the new laird a shoulder ride too,” I said.

Oh, how she laughed at that. And then, as suddenly as she'd begun, she sobered. “Oh, Roddy, if only it were that simple. But too much has happened ….” She looked out past me, past the door. I wondered if she was seeing past the poor folk of Glendoun crowding her garden, all the way to their burned-out houses and trampled fields. The light seemed to have turned off in her face, and I was sad to see it go.

But my head was sore again, as if filled with new-sharpened knives. I had to shut my eyes. Josie's next words faded to a distant buzz, and I slipped off into a troubled sleep.

4 THE INTRUDER

When I woke up, still in the pantry, Josie had gone and I could tell by the angle of the sun through the window that it was long past noon. I sat up at once, but a shaft of pain in my skull forced me back down with a groan. I touched a finger to my brow and felt a fresh bandage that Josie must have wrapped there.

“Slowly now,” I muttered to myself.

I pushed myself up carefully this time, and the pain was not so bad. I looked around the little room. It was bare of furniture except for the pallet I was lying on. However, the shelves on the walls were crowded with jars of flour and pots full of herbs. I thought of our home, with its large black kettle, its one great hanging stew pot and its porridge pot. Yet we made do and hadn't gone hungry yet.

The door was open, and I could see into the kitchen. No one was there, so I hauled myself up and stepped gingerly over to the doorway, careful not to lose my balance.

Taking three paces across the stone floor into the kitchen, I stopped to lean on the big wooden table that was twice the size of our table at home. I sucked in a deep breath to clear my head and caught the scent of food. On the table was a plate laid out with bannocks and cheese along with a pitcher of water. For me? I shook my head. I would not risk taking the food without permission. This was Bonnie Josie's house, after all.

Wondering if I should call out, I stepped toward the kitchen door, the one that led to the hall. Suddenly I heard voices coming from the front of the Lodge. They had the bristle of trouble about them, and that made me worry about Josie. Would she need help? Could I, in my present state, do anything for her? And what if my very presence here was the cause of that trouble? Would I only make it worse?
Perhaps
, I thought,
I should hide
, though I had no idea what room in the Lodge would be safe. When Josie had led me through to the pantry, my head was spinning and my eyes blurred everything. I had no idea which way to go.

That was when I decided that, without knowing more, I could come to no decision. So, I pushed off from the table like a boatman pushing off from shore and set off down the hallway slowly as if swimming a long river. I had to stop to rest once more, this time leaning against the wall. I followed the thread of those voices.

“Getting easier,” I told myself. “Just take a few more breaths.” I filled my lungs again, and gradually my head did clear.

The voices were clearer too. There were two of them, a man and a woman.

A few more steps took me to another door, which was ajar. I was deep in the shadows, but through the door I could see a small, elegant table with paper on it for writing, as well as two wooden cabinets. On the table sat three tiny painted statues, a shepherd and two dogs. I'd never seen the like before, so fine and delicate they were for so rough a subject. The chairs were of polished wood with pillows to make them soft, the legs of each chair so thin I wondered that anyone could sit without breaking the thing to pieces. Over the windows hung some delicate material decorated with flowers and some gold-colored rope to hold them away from the glass. The room was simple enough for a laird's family, I supposed, but even so there were pieces of furniture I couldn't put a name to and colors of cloth I couldn't begin to describe.

In the midst of this finery a man was talking sternly to a woman seated in a chair. I recognized him at once, for he was our present laird. I had seen him often enough riding up the glen with Willie Rood, surveying his land with satisfaction and his people with disdain, as Da had said more than once. Daniel McRoy. A thin, twisted sort of man he was, who looked like he was made out of sticks and paste instead of flesh and bone, unlike his dead brother, who had been a braw man, fleshed out with his goodness. McRoy wore a long grey coat and had a three-cornered hat tucked under his left arm. With his right, he was drumming on the mantel with his fingers. His lips twitched as he spoke.

“I've warned you before, Elizabeth,” he said, giving the woman a hard look, like a minister chiding a sinner. “If you do not clear these vagabonds off the estate, I'll have my men do it for you. Bad enough you have them here at the Lodge, but I hear from my man Rood that Josie has just been out to Glendoun finding more young ruffians to keep her company.”

The woman's head was bowed, her fingers twined nervously in her lap. “Oh, how can you speak of them that way, Daniel? These are our clansfolk. We are responsible for their welfare.”

Her face was lined and her hair streaked with grey, but there was enough of Josie's kindness in her face for me to be sure she was Lady McRoy, widow of the old laird. When I'd seen her at the clan games, serving wine and whisky to the men, her husband had been alive and she'd been a round-faced happy woman with color in her hair. But—oh—how she had aged. Even I could see that. Everyone knew she'd done poorly since her husband's death. I hardly recognized her now.

Daniel leaned toward her, a long-billed heron poised to snatch a fish out of the water. “In the old days, when a chief needed fighting men at his call, then I'll grant it was worth tending such peasants. But things are different now. The days of war and raiding are over, and a laird must look to the proper cultivation of his lands.”

“You make it sound so heartless.” The old laird's wife sighed. Her voice was hardly a whisper.

“Improvement is what it's called, Elizabeth,” he told her. “I keep telling you this, and one day you will understand and thank me for it. We make the maximum profit from the land, and these peasants are forced to leave behind their shiftless lives and find opportunities to improve themselves elsewhere.”

“I've not your way with words, Daniel,” she answered wearily. “You must take it up with Josephine when she returns.”

The laird let out a laugh that was like a hollow screech. “Talking to your daughter is like talking to the wind. A man might as well save his breath. Do you think I don't know it's her doing that you've a camp outside your door filled with the idle and the useless?”

Josie's mother clenched her hands together and looked up. “When people come to us for help, we cannot turn them away. They are of our blood.”

Hurrah, Madam
! I thought.

“Not my blood, Elizabeth. It runs too thin in those peasants to be counted anymore.”

“Daniel! How can you say such a thing?” The old woman sounded shocked. “Oh, if only my Thomas were here.”

“Your Thomas is gone and his flesh off the bones,” the laird said, almost with satisfaction. “He was too soft for the times.”

She began to weep.

Almost as if realizing he'd gone too far, the laird slowly went down on one knee before her so she could not avoid his gaze, his hat still under his arm. “That is why you should give this up,” he said, his voice oily with false concern. “When Thomas left you this part of the estate for your own, I know he did not intend it to be a burden to you and your daughter.”

It made my skin crawl to hear him, and perhaps it did hers too, for she shrugged hopelessly, as if she had run out of arguments.

“That is why you should take the money I have offered for the Lodge, for Josephine's sake if not your own. I have explained this all to you before.” The honey in his voice was too sweet for eating. “With it you could go live comfortably with your relatives in Lochaber and no longer have a care for what happens in these pitiful glens.”

“For Josephine's sake, you say?” The widow seemed to take some strength from the thought of her daughter's future and leaned forward toward him.

He put a hand on hers. “Elizabeth, my dear, when you die—and may the day be far off—the Lodge reverts to me by right. There will be nothing left for Josephine but whatever pennies you two have managed to save. Unless, of course, we can marry her well. Though with her … odd views … you have to admit, that may take some doing. So take that money now, I beg you.” He was almost convincing, except for that smug look on his face and the oiliness of his voice.

Suddenly I could stand to hear no more. I wanted to burst into the room, place myself at the widow's side like a loyal clansman, and defy Daniel McRoy to his face. I wanted to tell him there were good men aplenty who would take Bonnie Josie to wife, house or no house, views or no views. But in my weakened condition I would hardly make much of a fight on her behalf. Besides, my presence had obviously already caused trouble for Josie and her mother, and I was smart enough to realize bursting in would not help.

I was thinking that I should simply leave by the back door, as silently as I had come, when I heard footsteps emerging from the kitchen. I turned in time to see a skulking figure slip down the hall away from where I stood and go into one of the back rooms.

A warning prickle stabbed at the nape of my neck. Keeping one hand close to the wall to steady myself, I tiptoed back up the hall. The intruder had closed the door behind him, but I could hear him moving inside. Some instinct told me that this was part of the laird's plot against Josie and her mother and that I could not ignore it.

I took a grip on the handle and gently eased the door open. Beyond was a bedchamber. To my right was a bed, larger and softer than anything I could ever have dreamed of. Set into the wall opposite was a stout wooden cabinet and above it a hanging silver platter of some kind.

Willie Rood was standing by the cabinet with a metal bar in his hand. He was pressing one end of the bar into the crack between the cabinet door and the wall, trying to force the lock. It was clear to me he was on an errand from the laird while his master kept the widow occupied at the front of the house. Sheer rage made me forget my injury and my fatigue.

“What are ye about, Willie Rood?” I exclaimed.

Rood spun about, a guilty look on his round, piggy face. When he spotted me, his eyes narrowed and his lip curled. “Am I never to be rid of you, you whelp?” He raised the metal bar, making ready to strike me.

I had been in a few fights in my time, too many to just stand there and let myself be hit. Not again. I flew at him, ramming my shoulder into his belly. He bashed into the wall and slumped down into a sitting position.

“Damn ye!” he cried, flailing out at me with the bar.

I dodged, and whether it was the desire for revenge on him or the urge to protect Bonnie Josie's home that drove me on, I forgot my reeling head, my weak legs, and fought back with a fury. I lunged again, locking my arms around his neck and shoving him right down onto the floor.