Kitabı oku: «The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories», sayfa 5

“They killed your mother, Rory: her with the eyes like the sloe and the neck like snow. Swear by the Holy Iron that the man with the halt we ken of gets his pay for it.”

Rory swore on the iron. It is an easy thing for one when the blood is strong and the biodag still untried. He lay awake at night, thinking of his mother’s murderer till the sweat poured. He would have been on the track of him before ever he had won his man’s bonnet by lifting the clach-cuid-fear, but Murdo said, “Let us be sure. You are young yet, and I have one other trick of fencing worth while biding for.”

At last, upon a time, Murdo found the boy could match himself, and he said, “Now let us to this affair.”

He took the boy, as it were, by the hand, and they ran up the hills and down the hills, and through the wet glens, to wherever a Diarmaid might be; and where were they not where strokes were going? The hoodie-crow was no surer on the scent of war. Blar-na-leine took them over the six valleys and the six mountains; Cowal saw them on the day the Lamonts got their bellyful; a knock came on them on the night when the Stewarts took their best from Appin and flung themselves on Inneraora, and they went out without a word and marched with that high race.

But luck was with the man with the halt they sought for. At muster for raid, or at market, he was there, swank man and pretty but for the lameness he had found on an ill day on Tom-an-dearc. He sang songs round the ale with the sweetness of the bird, and his stories came ready enough off the tongue. Black Murdo and the boy were often close enough on his heel, but he was off and away like the corp-candle before they were any nigher. If he had magic, it could have happened no stranger.

Once, a caird who went round the world with the jingle of cans on his back and a sheaf of withies in his oxter, told them that a lame Diarmaid was bragging at Kilmichael fair that he would play single-stick for three days against the country-side. They sped down to Ford, and over the way; but nothing came of it, for the second day had found no one to come to the challenge, and the man with the halt was home again.

Black Murdo grew sick of the chase, and the cub too tired of it. For his father’s fancy he was losing the good times – many a fine exploit among the Atholmen and the brosey folks of Glenstrae; and when he went down to Innistrynich to see the lads go out with belt and plaid, he would give gold to be with them.

One day, “I have dreamed a dream,” said Murdo, “Our time is come: what we want will be on the edge of the sea, and it will be the third man after dawn. Come, son, let us make for Inneraora.”

Inneraora lies now between the bays, sleeping day and night, for the old times are forgot and the nettle’s on Dunchuach. Before the plaid of MacCailein Mor was spread from Cowal to Cruachan, it was the stirring place; high and dry on the bank of Slochd-a-chubair, and the dogs themselves fed on buck-flesh from the mountains, so rowth the times! One we ken of has a right to this place or that place yonder that shall not be named, and should hold his head as high on Aora as any chief of the boar’s snout; but mo thruaigh! mo thruaigh! the black bed of Macartair is in the Castle itself, and Macartair is without soil or shield. How Diarmaid got the old place is a sennachie’s tale. “As much of the land as a heifer’s hide will cover,” said the foolish writing, and MacCailein had the guile to make the place his own. He cut the hide of a long-backed heifer into thin thongs, and stretched it round Stronbuie. There is day about to be seen with his race for that! Over to Inneraora then went Murdo, and Rory clad for fighting, bearing with him the keen old sword. ‘Twas a different time going down the glen then from what it was on the misty day Murdo fetched the Skilly Dame; for the Diarmaids he met by the way said, “‘Tis the Lochow taibhsear and his tail,” and let them by without a word, or maybe with a salute. They went to the Skilly Dame’s house, and she gave them the Gael’s welcome, with bannocks and crowdie, marag-dkubh and ale. But she asked them not their business, for that is the way of the churl. She made them soft-scented beds of white hay in a dirty black corner, where they slept till cockcrow with sweet weariness in their bones.

The morning was a grey day with frost and snow. Jumping John’s bay below the house was asleep with a soft smoke like a blanket over it. Lean deer from behind the wood came down trotting along the shore, sniffing the saltness, and wondering where the meat was. With luck and a good sgian-dubh a quick lad could do some gralloching. The tide was far out from Ard Rannoch to the Gallows-tree, and first there was the brown wrack, and then there was the dun sand, and on the edge of the sand a bird went stalking. The old man and the young one stood at the gable and looked at it all.

It was a short cut from below the castle to the point of Ard Rannoch, if the tide was out, to go over the sand. “What we wait on,” said Murdo, softly, “goes across there. There will be two men, and them ye shall not heed, but the third is him ye ken of. Ye’ll trap him between the whin-bush and the sea, and there can be no escaping unless he takes to the swimming for it.”

Rory plucked his belts tight, took out the good blade wondrous quiet, breathing fast and heavy. The rich blood raced up his back, and tingled hot against his ruddy neck.

“What seest thou, my son?” said Murdo at last.

“A man with a quick step and no limp,” quoth the lad.

“Let him pass.”

Then again said the old man, “What seest thou?”

“A bodach frail and bent, with a net on his shoulder,” said Rory.

“Let him pass.”

The sun went high over Ben Ime, and struck the snow till the eyes were blinded. Rory rubbed the sweat from his drenched palm on the pleat of his kilt, and caught the basket-hand tighter. Over Aora mouth reek went up from a fishing-skiff, and a black spot stood out against the snow.

“What seest thou now, lad?” asked Murdo.

“The man with the halt,” answered the lad.

“Then your time has come, child. The stroke worth the fifty head, and pith on your arm!”

Rory left the old man’s side, and went down through a patch of shelisters, his mouth dry as a peat and his heart leaping. He was across the wrack and below the pools before the coming man had noticed him. But the coming man thought nothing wrong, and if he did, it was but one man at any rate, and one man could use but one sword, if swords were going. Rory stepped on the edge of the sand, and tagged the bonnet down on his brow, while the man limped on between him and the sea. Then he stepped out briskly and said, “Stop, pig!” He said it strangely soft, and with, as it were, no heart in the business; for though the lame man was strong, deepbreasted, supple, and all sound above the belt, there was a look about him that made the young fellow have little keenness for the work.

“Pig?” said the Diarmaid, putting back his shoulders and looking under his heavy brows. “You are the Lochow lad who has been seeking for me?”

“Ho, ho! red fellow; ye kent of it, then?”

“Red fellow! It’s red enough you are yourself, I’m thinking. I have no great heed to draw steel on a lad of your colour, so I’ll just go my way.” And the man looked with queer wistful eyes over his shoulder at the lad, who, with blade-point on the sand, would have let him pass.

But up-by at the house the taibhsear watched the meeting. The quiet turn it took was beyond his reading, for he had thought it would be but the rush, and the fast fall-to, and no waste of time, for the tide was coming in.

“White love, give him it!” he cried out, making for the shore. “He looks lame, but the pig’s worth a man’s first fencing.”

Up went the boy’s steel against the grey cloud, and he was at the throat of the Diarmaid like a beast. “Malison on your black heart, murderer!” he roared, still gripping his broadsword. The Diarmaid flung him off like a child, and put up his guard against the whisking of his blade.

“Oh, foolish boy!” he panted wofully as the lad pressed, and the grey light spread over sea and over shore. The quiet tide crawled in about their feet; birds wheeled on white feathers with mocking screams; the old man leaned on his staff and cheered the boy. The Diarmaid had all the coolness and more of art, and he could have ended the play as he wanted. But he only fended, and at last the slash worth fifty head found his neck. He fell on his side, with a queer twisted laugh on his face, saying, “Little hero, ye fence – ye fence – ”

“Haste ye, son! finish the thing!” said the taibhsear, all shaking, and the lad did as he was told, hocking at the spurt the blood made. He was pushing his dirk in the sand to clean it, when his eye fell on the Skilly Woman hirpling nimbly down to the shore. She was making a loud cry.

“God I God! it’s the great pity about this,” said she, looking at Murdo cutting the silver buttons off the corpse’s jacket. “Ken ye the man that’s there dripping?”

“The man’s no more,” said Rory, cool enough. “He has gone travelling, and we forgot to ask his name.”

“Then if happy you would be, go home to Lochow, and ask it not, nor aught about him, if you wouldn’t rue long. You sucked your first from a Diarmaid rag, and it was not for nothing.”

Murdo drew back with a clumsy start from the dead man’s side and looked down on his face, then at the boy’s, queerly. “I am for off,” said he at last with a sudden hurry. “You can follow if you like, red young one.” And he tossed the dead man’s buttons in Rory’s face!

THE SEA-FAIRY OF FRENCH FORELAND

ONCE I saw a fairy King, and it was in the Castle up-by. The Castle took fire, and a fine blaze it made at the foot of Dunchaach. A boy, I ran with the rest to carry out the MacCailein’s rich gear, and behold! I wandered and lost my way in that large place where is a window for every day in the year. Up the long stairs and through the far passages, and over the shining sounding floors went I, barefoot, with a feared eye on every hole and corner. At every door it was, “Surely now I’m with the folks at the fire”; but every door was a way into a quieter quietness, and the Castle was my own. I sat at last on a black chair that had a curious twisted back, and the tears went raining on the lap of my kilt.

Long, long I sat, and sore I grat, my mind full, not so much of my way lost, but of the bigness of things, and the notion of what it would be to have to live in a castle at night, with doors on every hand for ghosts to rap at, and crooked passages without end for gowsty winds to moan in. Thinks I, “The smallest hut in the town for me, with all plain before me, with the one door shut and my face to it, and the candlelight seeking into every crack and cranny!”

It was then that the fairy King came on me out of the sewed cloth hanging on the wall.

He was a dainty wee man, in our own tartan, with a steel plate on his breast baronly-style, and strange long curly hair. I ran my wet eyes down seven silver buttons the shape of salmon on the front of his vest before I let myself go, but go I must, so I put fast heels on my fright. I galloped with a frozen tongue through miles of the Duke’s castle till a door brought me out on the grass of Cairnban, in front of the friendly bleeze that my own folks were pouring the stoups of water on.

That was the only time the quiet folk and I came to a meeting, though our family was always gleg at seeing things. A cousin-german once saw the fairy bull that puts up in Loch Steallaire-bhan behind the town. It came on a jaunt to the glen in the guise of a rich maiden, and my cousin, the son of the house, made love to her. One night – in a way that I need not mention – he found himself in her room combing down her yellow hair, and what was among her hair but fine sand that told the whole story? “You are a gruagach of the lake!” cried the lad, letting the comb drop on the floor, with his face white, and the thing tarned to its own shape and went bellowing to the shore.

And there was a man – blessings with him! for he’s here no more – who would always be going up on Sithean Sluaidhe to have troke with the wee people on that fine knowe. He would bring them tastings of honey and butter to put them in a good key, and there they would dance by the hour for his diversion to the piping of a piper who played on drones of grass with reeds made of the midge’s thrapple.

Still, in all my time I know but one body who could find the way to the den of the Sea-Fairies, and she was a lass whose folks were in Ceannmor at the time the French traffickers were coming here to swap casks of claret wine for the finest herrings in the wide world.

It was her custom to go down on the hot days to the shore at the Water-foot when the tide was far out, and the sand was crusting with salt in the sun, and the wrack-balls burst with the heat, and the water lay flat like oil, and lazy, for want of a breath of wind. Sometimes it would be the French Foreland she would seek, and sometimes Dalchenna; but when the Frenchmen were at the Foreland she kept clear of it by the counsel of a cautious father.

Up the loch they would sail, the Frenchmen, in their gabberts, and hove-to with their casks to change for the cured herrings. A curious people they were, not much like our own good Gaels in many a way, but black-avised and slim; still with some of the Gael’s notions about them too, such as the humour of fighting and drinking and scouring the countryside for girls.

But it happened that one year they left behind them only a wine of six-waters, and did some other dirty tricks forbye, and there was for long a feud, so that the Frenchmen behooved to keep to their boats and bargain with the curers over the gun’le.

On a day at that time, Marseli that I speak of had been bathing at the Ceannmor rocks – having a crave for salt water the Ceannmor folks nowadays are not very namely for. When she had her gown on again, she went round to Dalchenna sands and out far to the edge of the tide, where she sat on a stone and took to the redding of her hair, that rolled in copper waves before the comb – rich, thick, and splendid.

Before her, the tide was on the turn so slow and soft that the edge of it lifted the dry sand like meal. All about on the weedy stones the tailor-tartans leaped like grasshoppers, the spout-fish stuck far out of the sand and took a fresh gloss on their shells from the sun.

You might seek from shire to shire for a handsomer maid. She was at the age that’s a father’s heartbreak, rounding out at the bosom and mellowing at the eyes; her skin was like milk, and the sigh was at her lips as often as the song. But though she sighed, it was not for the Ceannmor fishermen, coarse-bearded, and rough in their courting; for she had vanity, from her mother’s side, and queer notions. The mother’s family had been rich in their day, with bards and thoughtful people among them.

“If a sea-fairy could see me now,” said Marseli, “it might put him in the notion to come this way again,” and she started to sing the child-song —

 
“Little folk, little folk, come to me,
From the lobbies that lie below the sea.”
 

“So agad el” cried a gull at her back, so plainly that she tamed fast to look, and there was the fairy before her!

Up got Marseli, all shaking and ready to fly, but the fairy-man looked harmless enough as he bowed low to her, and she stayed to put her hair behind her ears and draw her gown closer.

He was a little delicate man the smallest of Marseli’s brothers could have put in his oxter, with close curled hair, and eyes as black as Ridir Lochiel’s waistcoat. His clothes were the finest of the fine, knee-breeches with silk hose, buckled brogues, a laced jacket, and a dagger at his belt – no more like a fairy of the knowe than the green tree’s like the gall.

“You’re quick enough to take a girl at her word,” said Marseli, cunning one, thinking to hide from him the times and times she had cried over the sands for the little sea-folks to come in with the tide.

The fairy-man said something in his own tongue that had no sense for the girl, and he bowed low again, with his bonnet waving in his hand, in the style of Charlie Munn the dancer.

“You must speak in the Gaelic,” said Marseli, still a bit put about; “or if you have not the Gaelic, I might be doing with the English, though little I care for it.”

“Faith,” said the fairy-man, “I have not the Gaelic, more’s the pity, but I know enough English to say you’re the prettiest girl ever I set eyes on since I left my own place.”

(Ho! hoi was he not the cunning one? The fairies for me for gallantry!)

“One of such judgment can hardly be uncanny,” thought Marseli, so she stayed and cracked with him in the English tongue.

The two of them walked up over the sand to the birch-trees, and under the birches the little fellow asked Marseli to sit down.

“You are bigger than I looked for in a sea-fairy,” said she when the crack was a little bit on.

“A fairy?” said the little fellow, looking at her in the flash of an eye.

“Yes! Though I said just now that you took one fast at her word, the truth to tell is, that always when the tide went out I sang at your back-doors the song you heard to-day for the first time. I learned it from Beann Francie in the Horse Park.”

The stranger had a merry laugh – not the roar of a Finne fisherman – and a curions way of hitching the shoulders, and the laugh and the shoulder-hitch were his answer for Marseli.

“You’ll be a king in the sea – in your own place – or a prince maybe,” said the girl, twisting rushes in her hand.

The man gave a little start and got red at the face.

“Who in God’s name said so?” asked he, looking over her shoulder deep into the little birch-wood, and then uneasy round about him.

“I guessed it,” said Marseli. “The kings of the land-fairies are by-ordinar big, and the dagger is ever on their hips.”

“Well, indeed,” said the little fellow, “to say I was king were a bravado, but I would not be just denying that I might be Prince.”

And that way their friendship began.

At the mouth of many nights when the fishing-boats were off at the fishing, or sometimes even by day when her father and her two brothers were chasing the signs of sea-pig and scart far down on Tarbert, Marseli would meet her fairy friend in a cunning place at the Black-water-foot, where the sea puts its arms well around a dainty waist of lost land. Here one can see Loch Finne from Ardno to Strathlachlan: in front lift the long lazy Cowal hills, and behind is Auchnabreac wood full of deer and birds. Nowadays the Duke has his road round about this cunning fine place, but then it lay forgotten among whins that never wanted bloom, and thick, soft, salty grass. Two plantings of tall trees kept the wind off, and the centre of it beaked in warm suns. It was like a garden standing out upon the sea, cut off from the throng road at all tides by a cluster of salt pools and an elbow of the Duglas Water.

Here the Sea-Fairy was always waiting for the girl, walking up and down in one or other of the tree clumps. He had doffed his fine clothes after their first meeting for plain ones, and came douce and soberly, but aye with a small sword on his thigh.

The girl knew the folly of it; but tomorrow was always to be the last of it, and every day brought new wonders to her. He fetched her rings once, of cunning make, studded with, stones that tickled the eye in a way the cairngorm and the Cromalt pearl could never come up to.

She would finger them as if they were the first blaeberries of a season and she was feared to spoil their bloom, and in a rapture the Sea-Fairy would watch the sparkle of eyes that were far before the jewels.

“Do your folk wear these?” she asked.

“Now and then,” he would say, “now and then. Ours is a strange family: to-day we may have the best and the richest that is going, to-morrow who so poor, without a dud to our backs and a mob crying for our heads?”

“Ochanorie! They are the lovely rings any way.”

“They might be better; they would need to be much better, my dear, to be good enough for you.”

“For me!”

“They’re yours – for a kiss or two,” and he put out an arm to wind round the girl’s waist.

Marseli drew back and put up her chin and down her brows.

“‘Stad!” she cried. “We ken the worth of fairy gifts in these parts. Your rings are, likely enough, but chuckie-stones if I could but see them. Take them back, I must be going home.”

The little man took the jewels with a hot face and a laugh.

“Troth,” he said, “and the same fal-fals have done a lover’s business with more credit to them before this. There are dames in France who would give their souls for them – and the one they belong to.”

“You have travelled?” said Marseli. “Of course a sea-fairy-”

“Can travel as he likes. You are not far wrong, my dear. Well, well, I ken France! O France, France! round and about the cold world, where’s your equal?”

His eyes filled with tears, and the broad-cloth on his breast heaved stormily, and Marseli saw that here was some sad thinking.

“Tell me of Fairydom,” said she, to change him off so dull a key.

“‘Tis the same, the same. France and fairyland, ‘tis the same, self-same, madame,” said the sea-prince, with a hand on his heart and a bow.

He started to tell her of rich and rolling fields, flat and juicy, waving to the wind; of country houses lost and drowned among flowers. “And all the roads lead one way,” said he, “to a great and sparkling town. Rain or shine, there is comfort, and there is the happy heart! The windows open on the laughing lanes, and the girls lean out and look after us, who prance by on our horses. There is the hollow hearty hoof-beat on the causey stones; in the halls the tables gleam with silver and gold; the round red apples roll over the platter among the slim-stemmed wine-beakers. It is the time of soft talk and the head full of gallant thoughts. Then there are the nights warm and soft, when the open doors let out the laughing and the gliding of silk-shooned feet, and the airs come in heavy with the scent of breckan and tree!”

“On my word,” said Marseli, “but it’s like a girl’s dream!”

“You may say it, black-eyes, mo chridhe! The wonder is that folk can be found to live so far astray from it. Let me tell you of the castles.” And he told Marseli of women sighing at the harp for far-wandered ones, or sewing banners of gold. Trumpets and drums and the tall chevaliers going briskly by with the jingle of sword on heel on the highway to wars, every chevalier his love and a girl’s hands warm upon his heart.

That night Marseli went early abed to wander in fairydom.

Next day the sea-gentleman had with him a curious harp that was not altogether a harp, and was hung over the neck by a ribbon.

“What hast here?” asked Marseli.

“A salve for a sore heart, lass! I can play on it some old tunes, and by the magic of it I’m back in my father’s home and unafeared.”

He drew his white fingers over the strings and made a thin twittering of music sweeter than comes from the clarsach-strings, but foreign and uncanny. To Marseli it brought notions of far-off affairs, half sweet, half sad, like the edges of dreams and the moods that come on one in loneliness and strange places, and one tune he played was a tune she had heard the French traffickers sing in the bay in the slack seasons.

“Let me sing you a song,” said he, “all for yourself.”

“You are bard?” she said, with a pleased face.

He said nothing, but touched on the curious harp, and sang to the girl’s eyes, to the spark of them and the dance of them and the deep thought lurking in their corners, to her lips crimson like the rowan and curled with pride, to the set of breast and shoulder, and the voice melting on the tongue.

It was all in the tune and the player’s looks, for the words were fairy to the girl, but so plain the story, her face burned, and her eyes filled with a rare confusion.

“‘Tis the enchantment of fairydom,” said she. “Am not I the oinseach to listen? I’ll warrant yon have sung the same to many a poor girl in all airts of the world?”

The little one laughed and up with the shoulders. “On my sword,” quo’ he, “I could be content to sing to you and France for all my time. Wilt come with a poor Prince on a Prince’s honour?”

He kissed her with hot lips; his breath was in her hair; enchantment fell on her like a plaid, but she tore herself away and ran home, his craving following at her heels.

That night Marseli’s brothers came to knives with the French traffickers, and the morning saw the black-avised ones sailing out over-sea for home. Back to French Foreland they came no more, and Finne-side took to its own brewing for lack of the red wine of France.

That, too, was the last of the Sea-Fairy.

Marseli went to the Water-foot and waited, high tide and low; she cried the old child tune and she redded her hair, but never again the little man with the dainty clothes, and the sword upon his thigh.