The Corn Maiden, page 13
“Last time I galloped a horse—good heavens!—it was in Rotten Row!” In spite of her rising excitement, she could even giggle at the memory of the Prince Regent’s quivering cheeks.
The scene at the bridge below made her gasp with foreboding. Moidart and Coll remained sitting on the bank at the entrance to the bridge, motionless in the saddle and seemingly unconcerned, but on the opposite bank, the three McGregors were, as she looked, being rejoined by the fourth, who was now flanked by five more rough-looking men of the hills on foot. Nell frowned in dismay as she counted the odds of nine to two and, looking back towards the oncoming Lindsay men and forward to the pack of McGregors now advancing triumphantly and in sinister silence towards Moidart and Coll, she wondered what on earth she was to do next.
No etiquette book she’d ever read told her how she should proceed. What was a well brought-up young lady to do in a brawl on a bridge? Go in? Hang back? Have a fit of the vapours? With a surge of elation, she spurred without further thought, down the slope to the bridge, reversing her crop as she drew near.
The sight of her raised a shout of dismay from Moidart and a yell of triumph from McGregor. Without warning and completely taking the momentarily distracted McGregors by surprise, Moidart and Coll charged. Simultaneously, they drove their horses straight at the mounted huntsmen, catching the two leaders, who were now over halfway across the bridge, full in the shoulder. Their horses staggered back and, quick as lightning, Moidart and Coll each leaned low, grabbed the struggling riders by an ankle, and hurled them down from their mounts.
One fell with a scream and a splash over the parapet and into the burn, the other—the odious Tam McGregor, Nell noticed with satisfaction—rolled himself into a ball as he fell onto the bridge and under his horse’s hooves.
The riderless horses snorted and panicked and attempted to back and turn, bumping clumsily into the two mounted hunters behind them. In the confusion, Moidart spurred his gallant black horse forward, parrying blows and flailing with his riding crop, harrying them as they struggled for control. As Nell approached, two Highlanders on foot ran forward through the mêlée, caught Coll’s pony by the bridle, and lunged at him, hitting him brutally with their short sticks. A streak of bright light flashed in Coll’s hand. It was accompanied by a sharp oath from one of the men, who leapt backwards, clutching at a stream of blood jetting down his forearm.
At the sound and sight of their companion’s wound, the rest of the men on foot yelled together and closed in through the milling horses to throw themselves on Coll, reaching up to beat him with their cudgels. Seeing one creep up on Coll from behind, Nell called out a sharp warning: “Coll! Behind you!” and hesitating no longer, urged her horse forward. Leaning perilously out from her sidesaddle, she hit the man smartly across the back of the head. She lifted her arm for a second blow, but Coll twisted in his saddle and caught him as he stumbled, hurling him with ferocious strength and agility off the bridge and into the deep cold pool below.
“Three down, six to go, that’s two each,” Nell counted excitedly and looked about her for another target. Before she could press forward to assist Moidart, who was surrounded like a bear baited by snapping dogs, she felt a first spurt of fear as hands tugged at the thick stuff of her skirt from behind. Turning, she looked down into the savage, bloodstained face of Tam McGregor.
Bruised but undaunted by his roll under the hooves of two horses, he had come up behind her and, grasping her firmly about the hips with his dirty hands, he was dragging her inch by inch from her saddle. He dodged the first slash of her crop, but the second brought out a red weal on the side of his face. His only reaction to the pain was to redouble his efforts to pull her down. His eyes shone with murderous fury, and his narrow mouth leered with triumph as with a last despairing smack at his head, Nell found herself dragged onto the planks of the bridge.
Silently kicking and struggling, she was easily overpowered by the huge Highlander who forced her arms behind her back and began to haul her off the bridge and away to the river bank. “You’ll pay for this, Lindsay slut!” he spat into her ear. “And it’s not the only debt you’ll make good for your arrogant clan!”
But at that moment, a fierce yell exploded from the hill behind them and Moidart’s men burst over the crest. “Lindsay gu brath!” The battle cry rolled down the hill before them as they swept, running with desperate speed, towards the bridge.
McGregor cursed and looked over his shoulder towards the hill. The second of inattention was enough for Nell. Her booted foot crashed backwards into his shin, the spur making contact with hard muscle and bone. Hearing his scream of pain and outrage, she wriggled down and sideways, twisting her right arm free. Her fingers closed over the hilt of the dagger in her pocket and pulled it free. Vibrant with fury, she rounded on McGregor, slashing at the arm that still held her. The dagger came naturally into her grasp, its small size an extension of her hand. She struck out with the speed and precision of a cornered cat.
McGregor stumbled back from her with a hiss and a foul oath as the blade tore once and a second time through his sleeve, drawing a spurt of blood from his upper arm. As he crouched to attack, he was roughly seized from behind by two brawny, panting Lindsay men, who threw him face down onto the ground. The larger of the men sat down firmly on McGregor’s back, holding his arm twisted up behind him in a bone-cracking lock, while the other, aghast with anxiety, hurried to Nell to ask if she was hurt.
“I’m all right,” she gasped. “Look to Moidart! He is hard pressed!” And she watched with a mixture of concern and pride as the reinforcements swept, yelling with enthusiasm, onto the bridge.
At the sight of them, the tide of battle turned in favour of Lindsay. It was clear to Nell, watching every movement and trying to keep her eye on the figure of Moidart, who had remained mounted throughout the skirmish, that although the huntsmen brought a keenness sparked by ancient enmity to the fight, their foot followers were inclined to hang back when they saw that the odds were no longer in their favour. The Lindsay men, defending their lands and their steward, had no such reserve, and soon, Moidart and Coll were relieved of their attackers and clear of the bridge. Charging together, they sent the remaining horsemen flying while their discouraged men tried to run off across the hillside. Those who were captured were dragged back in triumph to Moidart and tossed into the burn.
Moidart spun his horse around and trotted back across the bridge, searching for Nell. He caught sight of her where she stood, dagger in hand, by the prone body of McGregor, whose head was being banged into the ground every time he cursed with a gentle reminder from the giant astride him that there was a lady present, and he should mind his tongue. Moidart, dark and frowning, rode over to her and slid from his horse. In a cold, tight voice, he asked her if she had been harmed.
Nell’s relief to see that he was himself uninjured buoyed up her already elated spirits, and she laughed triumphantly. “Harmed? Not in the least! I would not have missed it for the world!” she said, and then, remembering a gesture she had often seen her brother and his friends use in their war games, she bent and wiped clean her dagger on a tussock of grass.
In disbelief, he looked from Nell’s laughing eyes to McGregor’s blood-stained sleeve and back again, and his face grew tense. He moved towards her and held out his arms to seize her by the elbows, looking down into her face. At the edges of her vision, Nell was amused to see his men delicately turn their backs on this intimate scene and begin to busy themselves clearing up all signs of the skirmish. She began to feel, as he glowered down at her, like an unrepentant child who is about to be reprimanded for something it did not perceive as a misdemeanour, and the thought made her laugh again.
He stared at her eyes, still glowing with excitement, her soft mouth now curving into a devilish grin, and her hair tumbling uncontrolled around her face and, as he gazed, his expression softened. “Lass, you look like a wildcat kitten that’s just made its first kill,” he whispered. “But you were foolish to return…there was a danger…you did not understand…” He broke off, dropped her arms, and in a louder voice for the benefit of the men said crisply: “Lady Elinor, this is not seemly! I was never more shocked than to see you in the forefront of the battle!” But then, relenting, and with the edge of laughter, he added, “But there—I had no idea we had such a moss-trooper on our side!”
“The lady did well, whatever!” said the man sitting on the writhing McGregor and nodded his head.
Nell wondered whether she had ever had such a compliment. Well, she thought, wherever the rest of my life leads me, I shall remember that when it came to the point—I did well, whatever!
Nor was her elation dashed to hear one of the men say, shaking his head with regret, “You could hardly call it a battle, Moidart. More in the nature of a wee spat. But, all the same, they’ll think twice before they try that again!”
Moidart returned to his men and walked among them, laughing and slapping their backs. Nell looked at him in admiration to see him so in his element. A fighter, a natural leader, he swaggered about on the bridge with unconscious grace. In his baggy riding trousers, thick cloak, and jaunty blue bonnet, he would have been a figure of fun in the sophisticated society in which she moved, and yet, here in this wild country, he was as natural and, it seemed, as grand as the hills.
He looked round, seeking her out, and with sudden mischief, said, “Shall we resume our ride, my lady? The lads and Coll can clear up this rabble.”
The lads were amusing themselves hauling their opponents out of the burn, administering a kick up the backside to each, and sending them on their way, dripping, shivering, and shouting defiance.
“What happened after I had gone?” asked Nell curiously as they rode together.
“Well,” he said with satisfaction and flushed with pleasure at his victory, “after a bit of a bluster, one of them was sent off, we guessed to fetch reinforcements. It wasn’t necessary, and it could have all ended in a reasonable way, but I’m afraid yon Tam McGregor is a bad man. He believes he has things to avenge, and such a vindictive spirit will never be at rest. He grows bold under the orders of his English lord. Coll and I thought they’d be back in strength and, indeed, we were right. After a while, the man returned with five more to help him teach the two of us a lesson! If you hadn’t arrived with our lads, I don’t know what the outcome might have been. But you did, and all’s well, and Robin Oig is safe in the House of Lindsay. But,” he continued, “what was that? Just a skirmish! It doesn’t change the position. There are other poor, houseless folk wandering the hills, and yon McCann was right when he said I couldn’t take them all in.”
He brooded on a while in silence and then said, “While Lindsay can hold what Lindsay held, folk hereabouts are safe enough, but what of the future?”
“You are devoted to my cousin, I observe,” she said hesitantly.
He threw her a look of enquiry mingled with—could it be suspicion—and then answered in a level tone, “He would be my kinsman and my Laird, would he not?” as though that was the answer for anything.
She laughed, reminded of the scene at the bridge, before the battle when he and McGregor had exchanged ritual snarls. “So if you can claim also that I am a Lindsay woman—we must be related.”
“That’s right enough,” he admitted slowly.
“And tell me, Moidart, what was the significance of your boast to the odious Tam McGregor? He turned quite pale, I thought, at the reminder of his great-grandfather’s encounter with a Lindsay woman! Do you really remember what happened all those years ago?”
“Of course!” he said in surprise, “as though it were last week! It was a deed so foul we will never let the Gregora forget it!”
He paused, and Nell waited eagerly.
“A young girl, sister to the Lady Lindsay of the time, was overtaken on the hill one day by a dirty McGregor who scrupled not to besmirch her virtue. She escaped and, being a brave lass, told no one. But she bided her time and, discovering where he lived, entered his bothy at dead of night and attacked him with a pair of sheep shears.”
Nell felt an uncontrollable urge to laugh, but Moidart seemed so earnest and so scandalised by this ancient tale of vengeance that she swallowed and asked carefully, “And did she kill the man?”
“No,” he replied and then added, “But he fathered no more bairns after her visit!”
Nell could no longer hold back her peals of laughter. “No wonder Tam McGregor turned pale at the sight of a Lindsay woman!”
Moidart refused to join in her laughter but turned to face her and said seriously, “Memories and lust for revenge are ever keen in the clans, my lady. If Tam McGregor had forced a passage over the bridge and things had gone badly with us, we would have been unable to come to your aid when he dragged you into the woods, where he would perhaps have had it in mind to avenge his ancestor…”
Nell fell silent, understanding at last the danger to which she had exposed herself, but she rallied and replied with spirit: “And perhaps Tam would have experienced the same shearing as his lustful great-grandfather! I may be a soft southerner and, indeed, a lady of fashion unfitted to take part in such primitive scenes, but I am a farmer’s daughter as well and…” She hesitated a moment but concluded boldly, “and it would not have been the first time I’d seen a hog gelded!”
She smiled impudently, taking the dagger from her pocket and offering it to him. “One of the men gave me this. He called it a skian-dhu, I think.”
At the sight of the mischief in her eyes, Moidart allowed himself to laugh, and, once started, he could not stop and fell forward on his horse’s neck, rising at last to give her a look so strange, so concentrated—a blend of admiration and speculation—that she felt suddenly that she had passed a test she had not been aware she was taking.
“Well, put your dagger back in your pocket, then, my lady,” he said. “This is lawless country still, and it’s not only from the McGregors you might be needing to defend your virtue!”
9
Their tired horses walking in step, they rode gently side by side down the track by the burn. He seemed to be disposed to ride on in silence, and this was very welcome to Nell, absorbed in her thoughts as she was. She recalled all that had been said of the Clearance and contrasted the empty hillside beyond the Bridge of Achill with the busy, traditional life on the lands of Lindsay. She thought with pity of the waif-like fugitive and felt once more in her imagination his skinny body shivering inside her cloak as she carried him back to the castle and saw once again his grateful eyes looking up at her. She remembered the men running back with her to the bridge and the end of the battle. She hurriedly dismissed from her mind her own rash intervention, and above all she was conscious of the strength, pride, and purpose of Moidart himself. Memories of the night they had shared and a sense of the fear and fascination he inspired in her caused her heart to beat faster, and she kept her gaze determinedly on the path before her, avoiding his eye.
After a while, the path wandered away from the burn and set out across the hillside. Without a word and by common consent, they let the rested horses out and, trotting on at first, cantered together over the hill. Curlews called plaintively from the surrounding bog lands and, as though a warning shot had been fired, a pack of grouse whizzed across their path. The westerly wind was strengthening behind them and, it seemed, blowing them on, and with it came menacing clouds packed densely above the surrounding hills.
Nell’s thoughts scampered back to Park Lane and the refinements of Hyde Park and to Suffolk and its lavish corn crops, its peaceful fields, the cattle, and the lush water meadows. In her mind she contrasted the easy, smiling people of her home, in their security, with these Highlanders—poised in danger between an old and familiar and a new and threatening way of life. Several times she tried to put her thoughts into words, but the taciturnity of her companion stopped her, until at last he reined his horse and turned to look at her with a regard so strange she was taken aback. For a moment, he seemed to calculate, and then he said, “Rain is coming up from the west. We might be wise to turn aside for shelter till it’s blown over. Just over the hill is a bothy…”
For a moment, his face was illuminated by a smile so friendly and affectionate that Nell was amazed. He continued, “We can shelter ourselves there, and we can shelter our horses. I have not, I’m afraid, been a thoughtful cavalier this morning, dragging you into our primitive squabbles and putting you into danger, but at least I have a venison pastie in my bag, and I have a dram of the coarse peasant spirit that we northern primitives depend on in such situations. You could rest in shelter before the return journey.”
Nell paused and looked at him carefully before nodding her acquiescence, and they swung aside to slant across the hill. As they reached a ridge, he pointed downwards with his riding crop and said, “There—see—until a year ago, a wee family lived there, but I was worried for them. They have two children; the wife has not been well. The house is sound, but the good man works for the most part in the demesne, and with a good croft house falling empty, they moved to something better, where the wife would have a bit of company in the glen.”
As he spoke, the rain indeed began to fall, blowing up with Highland suddenness, and the last half mile of their journey was undertaken at a splattering gallop down the muddy track. On arrival, looping the reins over his arm, Moidart pushed open the door of a small croft house with his foot and, gathering up the reins, led both horses off into what, it seemed, had been a cow byre.
