The Corn Maiden, page 17
They looked with awe as at last they drew near the House of Lindsay, and evidently the man’s fears returned. For the last time, the wife turned beseechingly to Nell and said, “Promise ye’ll no ship us awa’.” With tears in her eyes, Nell shook her head and led the way into the stableyard where they were greeted—as always—by auld Angus and by Coll.
“What have you got there?” Coll asked roughly.
“A family,” said Nell. “Poor folk.”
Coll addressed them fluently in Gaelic and listened carefully to their reply, saying at last to Nell with a bitter twist to his mouth, “Och, they’re no poor folk! Why they’ve only travelled forty miles in the last three days, and look—they’ve got four potatoes. What more in this world would you be wanting!” He laughed grimly and, beckoning them to follow, led them to a door at the end of the stables and pointed their way to a little staircase that led to an upper room. “They can rest there awhile until the Laird can see what he can do for them. I’ll have food sent across from the house. There’s a pump in the yard, straw in the wee room—it’s by way of a hayloft. They’ll come to no harm.”
“Oh, Coll,” said Nell, “have I done the right thing?”
He looked at her solemnly. “I don’t know about the right thing,” he said, “but you’ve done the only thing.”
“But Lindsay—there’s a limit to what the House of Lindsay can do.”
“Limit there may be,” said Coll, “but the bad times will have come forever when Lindsay turns away such as those. God’s curse on the times we live in!”
Deeply moved and thoughtful, Nell gave her horse over to the care of auld Angus, who seemed always to be gladly on hand to greet her returns and oversee her departures, and walked over to the castle. During her absence, the whole aspect of the great hall had changed. For one thing, it was swarming with people, many of whom Nell had never seen before; trestle tables were being set up here and there; sheaves of barley were being arranged in the window embrasures, and, she noticed, a pyramid of apples had been set up on the table in a bower of crimson rowan.
“What is this?” she asked in puzzlement as Moidart emerged from the business room, smiling a welcome.
“Making all ready for the Harvest Dance,” he said. “I don’t interfere—I wouldn’t be allowed to interfere! The Harvest Dance has been arranged like this for years beyond count. The barley sheaves go here because they have always gone here. We have a pile of apples on the table because that has always been so, and Rob McColl has arranged them because that’s the way his father used to arrange them. If I tried to change any of this, all would listen politely because Highland folk are polite, but none would take the slightest bit of notice of me! And see there,” he continued as two men staggering under the weight of the most enormous iron cauldron Nell had ever seen came through the door from the kitchen quarters, “they’ll make the punch in that. They’ll make the punch as they always have—lemons, cinnamon, honey, whisky, ale, all in due proportion—a proportion, I dare say, worked out hundreds of years ago.”
The entry of the cauldron and its bearers had released a blast of cooking smells from the kitchen, and Moidart sniffed appreciatively. “Come with me,” he said, “if you want to see industry!”
Nell followed him into the kitchen to find Mrs. Fraser in command of a roomful of country women. Ranks of pies and pasties were forming up on the long table, and a great cake the size of a cart wheel was, under Mrs. Fraser’s directions, being decorated by Tibbie and Lucy with cherries and nuts and sprigs of angelica. Nell smiled to see Lucy, the elegant London lady’s maid, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, absorbed, in happy equality, in this menial task.
They’ve captured Lucy as well! thought Nell.
In the middle of all this purposeful activity, she was relieved to see a young boy being sent across the yard to the hayloft with a basket laden with food from the tables. Her little family would eat well that day.
Turning to Moidart, she asked, “Cousin Roderick will be here tomorrow?” And as she spoke, the question came insistently into her mind: “And what then?”
He eyed her speculatively for a moment and said at last, “Yes. He has sent no word, but the Laird would never miss the Harvest Dance. He will be here. So—tomorrow it is!”
Aware that her question had created a tension between them, Nell endeavoured to change the subject. “And how many people are coming to your dance, Moidart?”
“Well it’s hard to tell exactly,” he said. “Perhaps a hundred? Perhaps more. All the folk from the estate, and that would be about fifty…but then there will be their bairns…Our neighbour Fergusson of Donuil, his wife and his three strapping children, McPherson of Doune, and I forget how many he’s got…Doctor Jameson and Mrs. Jameson and the Misses Jameson…I think that’s five…Oh, and our English neighbour, young Rob Kintoul, whom you may well have met in London with his new wife, I believe.”
“Lord Kintoul are you saying? Robert Kintoul? Yes…I believe we have met before…And where will you put them all?”
“This is a big house when all is said and done, and Mrs. Fraser and her girls have been opening and airing the company rooms for some while, but for the humbler folk, well, they mostly live hard by and they’ll walk to their home. The Fergussons will drive home I dare say, and Kintoul and McPherson. Doctor Jim and his wife will stay—they’ve a long road—but for the rest, well, they’ll sleep just here and there. There’s always a few whose legs wouldn’t carry them over the bridge, so you’ll find some in front of the fire, some in the hay, you know the sort of thing…As I say—some here and some there!”
Nell’s mind flashed back to the last Servants’ Ball she had attended at Somersham, with Poulson the butler formally leading her stepmother onto the floor to open the dance and with the other servants following in strict order of precedence; Mrs. Maxwell, the housekeeper, was tightly corseted in black bombazine, her gimlet-like eye roaming the room for any possible breach of decorum on the part of the younger staff. Evidently, the Harvest Home at the House of Lindsay was to be of a different character.
One of the men entered, requesting Moidart’s presence in the stables, where arrangements for the accommodation of the guests’ horses needed his attention. He went off, leaving Nell to poke about in the cherry jar and steal the almonds. She had always loved kitchens, and as a child had spent many hours trailing around behind the cook, delighting in making herself useful, and it was almost more than she could bear not to roll her sleeves up too and join in the preparations. But all was so well organised and industrious that she realised there was little she could do to be of practical help, and she wandered back into the great hall.
A moment later, she was joined by Lucy, the cake finished, and they walked around together, admiring the decorations. Fingering a display of barley sheaves crossed and tied with red ribbons, Nell said dreamily, “I wish I could remember how to make a corn dolly like the ones we have at home. Cook taught me how to do it years ago, but I don’t know if my fingers would still have the skill…”
“Oh, I can do corn dollies,” replied Lucy, the farmer’s daughter. “That’s easy. We could have a go, Miss Nell, if you like, but they’ve only got barley straw here. You need wheat straw for a good corn dolly. I wonder if? I’ll go and ask Coll.”
Coll, who was never far away, it seemed, was consulted and agreed to go and fetch an armful of wheat straw from the big barn. He returned in triumph a few minutes later with the right kind of straw and was instantly dispatched by Lucy to get a bucket of water to dampen it. Lucy checked the length, the pliability, and the hollowness of the straw with a knowledgeable eye and pronounced it satisfactory, and they settled down on the floor and started, with much argument at first, to twist up a big corn dolly, dampening, bending, and plaiting.
Lucy began to shape the body and the skirt, while Nell took on the simpler task of forming the head and arms. A crowd gathered and murmured their admiration as the nimble fingers, swiftly gathering confidence, moulded and teased the stubborn stalks into the whirling skirt and rounded bosom of a female figure. They decorated her head with trailing velvet ribbons and berries and stood back, proud and slightly surprised by their own skill, to inspect the result of their efforts.
Coll was loudest in his praise, to Lucy’s dimpling pleasure, and in response to a general call to display the ladies’ work, he climbed a ladder and fixed it with care in pride of place over the great fireplace.
When Moidart returned, Nell took his arm and said teasingly, “Now what would you say, Moidart, if anyone wished to make a change to the harvest ritual here?”
“I’d say, as I said before, that they wouldn’t have a hope! I moved a dish of pickles one year, and it was put back again five minutes later. Every year I try to get the music down the other end of the hall, but it’s a useless effort!”
“Well look behind you!” she laughed. “This year you have an addition to your ritual—you have a Suffolk corn dolly looking down on your Scottish feast!”
His face showed astonishment followed by pleasure, which quickly faded as he said, “I think your corn dolly is beautiful, but just wait until Mrs. Fraser sees it! I’m afraid it will have to come down…”
“Don’t be so sure now, Rorie!” said a cheerful voice behind them. Jennie Fraser had come out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and stood looking up admiringly at the decoration. “There it shall stay! I think a time has come when the south shall be joined with the north, and who knows? Perhaps we shall all be the better for it.”
She smiled fondly at the corn dolly. “I mind when I was a girl in Angus…we had such a one each harvest. The lads would cut the last bundle of standing corn in the last field and bring it home for the prettiest girls in the village to plait it up into a figure. The Corn Maiden, she was called, and it was said that she would bring fruitfulness and prosperity to all in the coming year. There would be food aplenty, the ewes would all have twins, and there’d be babies in the cradles before the next Harvest Home.” She sighed dreamily. “Yes, the Corn Maiden was accounted a sign of fertility—as, no doubt, Lady Elinor is aware…” she finished with a parting glance at Elinor.
Nell had sprung instinctively away from Moidart at Jennie Fraser’s appearance, but her indulgent glance back towards them as she walked away left Nell in no doubt that she knew more than she was supposed to know about their relationship. Moidart gazed tenderly into Nell’s agitated face and asked gently, “What are you thinking?”
“I am thinking, Moidart, that Mrs. Fraser knows that we…that…” she stammered in confusion, turning her glowing cheeks to the fire.
He did not need to consider his reply. “Why, yes, of course she knows! How could you doubt it? A house can never keep secrets from the housekeeper, you know! And I will tell you that everyone in this house and probably for miles around is gossiping about nothing else. Are you disturbed?”
Nell found herself gasping at his frankness. “Of course I am disturbed! What must they all be thinking? Oh, Moidart! I must leave the moment I have seen my cousin tomorrow! I cannot attend the ball knowing that everyone is whispering.”
He stood close to her, captured one of her hands in his, and held it tightly.
“But ’tis no shame, Elinor! They are happy for us! They all know me and respect and trust me and, though you have been with us for but a few days, they have come to love you. You are a proud woman, Elinor, and do not hesitate to crush me with your noble birth and freeze me with your hauteur, but I have remarked that in your dealings with my people you are all sweetness and concern.”
She looked up at him, beginning to smile again, “Crushed? Frozen, you say? I will never believe that! But tell me the truth, man. Are you saying that, truly, your,” and her slight emphasis on the word made him look sharply at her, “your people no longer mistrust me, although it is certain that they all know who I am and the part I might play in their lives?”
“I know that anyone having any disrespectful word to say about your ladyship would find himself being brought to account by auld Angus and Robin Oig,” he said mischievously. “Courage and loyalty, Elinor. If you have these two qualities, be you the devil himself, you will win the heart of a Highlander, and after your intervention on the bridge, I fear that, whether you like it or not, you are forevermore in their eyes and in their stories, a Lindsay. They know what we are to each other, of course they do, down to the smallest shepherd boy, and, they would reason, if we make each other happy, where’s the harm?”
But Nell was more shaken than she had believed she could possibly be and needed time by herself to put her thoughts in order and make her plans for the coming interview with her cousin, an interview that she was growing increasingly to dread, she realised. Suppose a whiff of the scandal reached Roderick before she could see him? How would it change his attitude to his ward and, indeed, his plans to marry her, when he discovered that she had been conducting a love affair with his steward under his roof during his absence? She took the opportunity when a footman entered of saying, “I have preparations of my own to make for tomorrow, Moidart. I will retire early to my room and have a light supper brought to me on a tray. Mrs. Fraser has quite enough to do today without having to prepare a supper for me. Will you please arrange that?” And she hurried upstairs to the haven of her bedchamber.
There Nell settled down with a novel and a small book of Scottish history, found for her by Moidart and pressed into her hand with an urgent wish that she acquaint herself with an unbiased account of the events of the Forty-five. He had seemed uncommonly eager that she should be well informed about her surroundings and the history and traditions of the land, she mused. Her attention to the comings and goings of the Bonny Prince Charlie was desultory to say the least and, although normally a quick and eager reader, she found her thoughts wandering more and more frequently to her own Scottish Odyssey.
After a final excited account from Lucy of the last of the preparations below and a list of the dishes she had helped to prepare for the feast, Nell dismissed her early, suggesting that the girl was quite exhausted and would need to recover her strength for the morrow’s festivities. Nell prepared herself for bed, assessing for the hundredth time her situation, analysing her thoughts, and planning a speech to her cousin.
All day she had been happy and busy and caught up in the excitement. She had relished the sense of purpose and community and tradition that radiated from these people and had been warmed by their approval. In contrast, her London life appeared artificial and meaningless. With a smile, she wondered how she could ever begin to explain to her smart city friends the total happiness she had felt, sitting on the floor of the great hall of a Scottish castle, plaiting up a corn dolly with her maid. How could she explain the sense of freedom and the intoxicating whiff of danger when she rode out by herself on the moor this morning, dagger in pocket, in case she encountered a McGregor? The most alarming thing that could happen to her out riding in London, she reflected, was a chance meeting with Jemmie Fanshawe! With surprise, she realised that this was the first time for days Fanshawe had swum into her consciousness, so distant was she beginning to feel from her Park Lane life. And the destitute family she had brought in to add to the already overstretched estate, she saw as her personal responsibility. She would make certain that her cousin was in a position to support them.
She had been looking forward with as much pleasurable anticipation as anyone to the ball and yet…and yet…Hard on the heels of her pleasure came the thought that tomorrow could well be her last day in the House of Lindsay. If her cousin proved, in the flesh, to be the cold, unsympathetic old reprobate she had every reason to expect him to be, she would have an uncomfortable interview with him and be at once on her way, perhaps even before the ball started, leaving undone the many things she wanted to achieve.
This thought was swiftly followed by the reassurance of the trump card she held. She had decided on her first morning at the castle that she would bargain with Roderick Lindsay. If the cost of acquiring independence was high, she was prepared to go high. She had decided that if her cousin’s hostility to her plans was founded on the simple fact that he would lose his lands if she had her way, then she would trade these lands for her freedom. She would agree to make no claim on them ever, in return for his cooperation in the matter of her marriage. They were not hers, these wild hills, this castle, these people; they could not be and never should be hers, however much she had grown to love them since her arrival. How strange that only by knowing and loving them had she learned that she must give them up! And did this hold true for Moidart also? Must she have known and loved him only to give him up?
And who, after all, was Moidart? Nell had often smiled at the proprietorial airs that he assumed. Did her Suffolk steward’s demeanour change when she was absent? Did Kenton parade about like the cock of the walk? She didn’t think so. But there was something special about Moidart’s deportment, his deep love of the place and the people and the honour in which they so obviously held him, that argued a connection with Lindsay closer than that of servant and Laird. Not for the first time, a polite phrase often heard in London came to her mind—born on the wrong side of the blanket. Were Moidart an illegitimate son of the house of Lindsay, that would account for much!
Bastard sons never inherited. Moidart could only wait and watch while Lindsay struggled to keep the clan afloat. How far did he approve of his master’s plans to marry the unworldly young heiress? Perhaps these plans were the product of the steward’s own resourceful and devious mind? What had he called her jokingly when he’d rescued her on the road? A braw, plump dawtie, flighting north. A well fleshed but brainless bird, an easy catch in the Lindsay nets.
