Last Writes Page 17

  Susan left the house the next morning with an equanimity that surprised Sid Wetherspoon, an old hand at moving displaced wives. She settled down quite calmly in the cottage at Larking, too, professing little interest in the titbits of information that were fed to her by old friends about the house at Almstone.

  ‘Norman’s back living there,’ reported one of them presently.

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Not alone, I take it?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said her informant frankly. ‘They’ve got two cars outside.’

  It was several weeks later before someone else remarked to her that there had been a pest-control van parked outside Oak Tree House for a couple of days.

  ‘Funny, that,’ Susan said. ‘I never had any trouble like that when I was there.’ She was feeling quite cheerful since she’d just had the cheque for the final settlement from the break-up of her marriage to a man with money. This included a healthy chunk for her share of the going value of Oak Tree House at Almstone.

  It was a considerable while after that when an old neighbour, never a fan of Norman’s, told her that there had been a surveyor looking over the house. ‘He advised unblocking a couple of the old chimneys,’ the neighbour said. ‘I gather they’ve already had all the floorboards up.’

  ‘My goodness,’ exclaimed Susan. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘The smell,’ said the neighbour lugubriously. ‘They don’t know where it’s coming from.’

  ‘What smell?’ Susan asked.

  ‘That’s just it,’ said the neighbour. ‘Nobody knows what it is but believe you me, Susan, it’s awful. They had me in for a drink the other evening and it nearly made me sick. Norman’s had the place practically torn apart looking for whatever’s wrong but they can’t find what it is.’

  ‘Well, I never,’ said Susan, adding with perfect truth, ‘there was nothing like that when I was there.’

  ‘I know that,’ said the neighbour robustly. ‘It was fine then.’

  It was two months later when Susan spotted an advertisement for the house in the local paper.

  ‘The agent’s got a “For Sale” board up outside, too, not that anyone’s going to buy it with that smell,’ reported the same neighbour with that special satisfaction reserved for the trials and tribulations of unpopular others.

  Going through the village herself a month or so later Susan noticed that the sale board was still there but that the house was now empty.

  ‘The new woman announced she was going whether Norman came with her or not,’ said another of the neighbours when Susan bumped into her. ‘Couldn’t stand the smell.’

  Susan, reasonably comfortable in her little cottage at Larking, waited another couple of months before she took any action. It was when she saw Oak Tree House being advertised in the local paper by a different agent that she made an enquiry about the house. She got a guarded response from the agency.

  ‘The property is on the market at a considerably reduced price,’ said the agent with practised fluency.

  ‘Really?’ said Susan. ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘The owner has had to move for urgent domestic reasons,’ said the agent.

  ‘I see,’ said Susan. ‘Would it be possible to see over the house?’

  ‘Of course, although we would need a little warning before we arranged a viewing.’

  This came as no surprise to Susan. When she eventually arrived there with the agent she could sense that every window in the house must have been open hours beforehand. As she entered the front door she sniffed and said, ‘Funny smell.’

  The agent sighed but did not deny it.

  ‘The house strikes one as cold, too,’ she murmured.

  ‘We opened it up earlier to give it a thorough airing,’ said the agent. ‘It’s been empty and shut up for quite a while now.’

  Susan wandered through the house, noting that nothing much had been done to it since she had left. Any inclination on the part of the new woman to expunge Susan’s presence by redecoration had not been implemented.

  ‘It is a terrible smell, isn’t it?’ she said to the agent at the end of her tour.

  ‘Most unfortunate,’ said the agent ambiguously.

  ‘It must be much worse when the central heating’s on,’ said Susan, ‘and the windows are closed.’

  The agent did not attempt to deny this. He took a deep breath and said, ‘I think, madam, you would find the owner willing to accept a considerably lower offer than the advertised one on account of the – er – drawbacks you’ve mentioned. Would you like me to ask him?’

  ‘Please,’ said Susan, although she waited a little while longer before she made her final – and even lower – offer for Oak Tree House. Even so, she was surprised at the alacrity with which it was accepted by Norman.

  Her solicitor congratulated her on a really good deal, the contract to be signed as soon as a few details were settled.

  ‘Details?’ Susan asked, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Only the fixtures and fittings,’ said the solicitor. ‘Oh, and the vendor particularly wants to take the brass chandelier in the dining room with him. Apparently he’s always liked it and technically it’s not really a fitment. Is that all right with you?’

  Susan paused before she answered him. ‘I suppose so,’ she said slowly. Then she smiled and added, ‘Someone else can clean the brass.’

  SPITE AND MALICE

  Sheriff Macmillan received the news of the arrival of his visitor with a certain reluctance. Hector Leanaig, Laird of Balgalkin, was never really welcome at Sheriff Rhuaraidh Macmillan’s home at Drummondreach.

  This was because whilst the sheriff’s writ ran throughout East Fearnshire he much preferred exercising his authority over those who lived at some little distance away from his home rather than those on his own doorstep. He had found that it made for better long-term relationships.

  His current visitor was a case in point. The sheriff’s home at Drummondreach was much too near for comfort to Balgalkin Castle and its stormy owner, Hector Leanaig.

  ‘What is it anent now, Leanaig?’ he said sternly when the man had been shown into the sheriff’s study. It was not the first time Hector Leanaig had come to Rhuaraidh Macmillan’s door with action in mind. Action against someone else, as a rule.

  ‘More trouble down at Culloch Beg – Angus Mackenzie’s place,’ said Hector Leanaig hotly. ‘The man’s nothing but a common reiver.’

  ‘Are you alleging,’ said the sheriff, first and foremost a man of the law, ‘that Mackenzie of Culloch Beg has stolen your cattle?’

  ‘I’m not alleging anything,’ retorted the Laird of Castle Balgalkin on the instant. ‘I’m telling you that he has stolen them. And what I want to know is what you’re going to do about it.’ He shook his fist angrily at the sheriff. ‘And aye soon, I hope.’

  ‘When did this happen?’ asked the sheriff, as unmoved by the shaking fist as by any other threat to his authority. The law was, after all, the law.

  ‘The beasts were on Balgalkin’s policies yestre’en right enough. I saw them myself. Today they’re down at Culloch Beg’s gang. Man, you’ve only got to go down there the day and take a look at Angus Mackenzie’s demesne. Then you can see them for yourself.’

  ‘Presently,’ said the sheriff, not a man to be hassled either. ‘And what does Angus Mackenzie have to say for himself?’

  ‘Say?’ snorted Hector Leanaig, his nostrils flaring like those of one of his own bulls. ‘Say! I’ll have you know that I’m no’ speaking to the man these six months and more.’

  Aye, thought the sheriff to himself, there was the rub.

  ‘He couldna’ have some of my land as tocher, so he’s taken my cattle as well as my daughter.’

  ‘Dowry is the man’s right, fair enough,’ opined the sheriff mildly.

  ‘Dowry!’ spluttered Hector Leanaig. ‘My daughter Cathie was carried away by that blackavised son of his.’

  ‘Eloped is the word you’re looking for,’ said the sheriff. ‘Not
abducted.’

  ‘She was gone in the night without telling anyone.’

  ‘Eloped,’ said the sheriff again.

  ‘Taken,’ insisted Hector Leanaig.

  ‘She went willingly,’ said the sheriff, adding cautiously, since he was indeed a man of the law, ‘from all accounts.’ He did not see fit to say that these accounts had come in the first instance from Elspeth, a kitchen maid in his own household, well in touch with the goings-on around her.

  ‘That’s just not so,’ insisted Leanaig, jerking a burly shoulder. ‘No lassie in her right mind would go willingly with a man like Angus Mackenzie of Culloch Beg’s son. He’s no more than a boy.’

  ‘She’s of full age,’ pointed out Sheriff Macmillan. It was in all honesty all he could say about any lovers. Which maiden found which swain attractive was outwith his – or any man’s – comprehension, let alone his jurisdiction.

  And vice versa.

  Especially vice versa.

  ‘Sixteen! You call that old enough?’ exploded the Laird.

  ‘I don’t,’ responded the sheriff, a father himself, ‘but custom and law does.’

  Hector Leanaig breathed noisily through his flared nostrils. ‘And as for that Callum Mackenzie …’

  ‘He’s of full age, too,’ said the sheriff unhelpfully.

  The Laird of Balgalkin gave an unseemly snort.

  The sheriff carried on. ‘Callum Mackenzie’s a man now, Hector, and your daughter’s a woman and there’s nothing you can do about it. They plighted their troth, right enough.’

  The man scowled. ‘And if it’s not bad enough to take my daughter in the night he goes and takes my kine, too.’

  ‘And you want your kine back – is that it?’ asked the sheriff, adding quizzically, ‘Or your daughter?’

  Hector Leanaig stared at the floor and growled, ‘My daughter’ll no’ come back.’

  ‘But you want your cattle?’

  ‘That I do. I’m not having Angus Mackenzie getting a dowry for my daughter in that back-handed way. And it’s a fine herd of beasts that are down at Culloch Beg just now. My beasts,’ he added.

  When appealed to, Angus Mackenzie did not dispute that they were Leanaig’s beasts. ‘Aye,’ he said readily enough when the sheriff made his way later in the day to Mackenzie’s land at Culloch Beg. ‘They’re Leanaig’s right enough. They were down here on my gang the morn’s morn and I sent a man up to tell him so.’

  ‘You did, did you,’ commented the sheriff dryly.

  ‘Afore noon, that was, but no one’s been down to drive them back.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Angus Mackenzie equably. He waved an arm over his land. ‘And I hope they’ll be quick at Balgalkin about coming for them. I don’t have the pasture for that many head of cattle. You can see that for yourself.’

  Sheriff Macmillan looked over Culloch Beg and nodded. ‘He didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘So what would I be doing with them, anyway, Sheriff?’ asked the man.

  ‘Collecting the dowry for Leanaig’s daughter, Cathie.’

  A slow smile spread across Angus Mackenzie’s weathered face. ‘Ah, so that’s the way of Leanaig’s thinking, is it?’

  ‘Of course,’ suggested the sheriff slyly, ‘the beasts might just have come down on their own accord for water.’

  ‘After a dreich February like we had this year and when there’s water and plenty up at Balgalkin?’ responded Angus Mackenzie, waving an arm towards the heather-ringed hill. ‘Why, even my own spring rises there.’

  ‘So you’ll be sending the beasts back then, will you?’ said Sheriff Macmillan.

  ‘I think,’ said Angus Mackenzie, ‘that Leanaig should be sending his own drover to take them back. Perhaps the same one,’ he said, giving the sheriff a very straight look indeed, ‘as drove them down in the night.’

  ‘Even so, I trust you’ll not be getting your Callum to take them back,’ said the sheriff, who had quite enough legal work to be getting on with already and wanted no further trouble in the matter.

  ‘That I won’t because I can’t.’ Angus Mackenzie jerked a horny thumb in the direction of the west. ‘Callum’s away over the hill just now bringing old Duart Urquhart’s corp’ back to the burying ground. His son’s in Dingwall Gaol and canna’ do it himself.’

  The sheriff followed his gaze. Way beyond and above Castle Balgalkin the ancient coffin road could still be discerned across the heather. Since time immemorial it had been the way over from the west for horses, sheep, cattle and men – men that were dead or alive. The deer merely leapt where they wilt.

  ‘I have the mortcloth here ready and waiting but it’s hard work carrying a coffin so far over the hills and I think it’ll be a day or two before they’ll get back here,’ said Angus Mackenzie.

  ‘That’s good,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan, taking his leave and going back to Drummondreach.

  It wasn’t the last he heard of young Callum Mackenzie, though. Two days later an indignant Angus Mackenzie, his father, was on the sheriff’s doorstep. ‘The Laird of Balgalkin Castle’ll no’ let Duart’s corp’ through Balgalkin land and back down to the burying ground,’ he said, his complexion an unhealthy red. ‘Not all the time my Callum’s in the burial party, that is.’

  The Sheriff of Fearnshire considered this. Land law in the Highlands was a matter of a complex mixture of inheritance and oral tradition. It wasn’t like England where the Crown had held all land by right of conquest ever since William of Normandy had landed in 1066 and where all land was divided into holdings, some large and some small.

  Scotland, on the other hand, had never been conquered and it would have been a brave man indeed who said Hector Leanaig had no right to Balgalkin and its castle, but it was surely an even braver owner of Balgalkin who defied the right of any Highlander the use of the old trackways, coffin carriers or no. Clan burial grounds and the paths back to them over the hills went a long way further back in history than any landholding.

  ‘So what’s happened?’ asked the sheriff briskly, hoping it wasn’t either violence or – worse still – violation.

  ‘Callum’s left Duart’s coffin with the others to bring to the burying ground and is coming back himself through the haughland by the Firth.’

  ‘Good,’ said Sheriff Macmillan. The last thing he wanted to have to deal with that day was a fight over the right of way of a coffin. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘It’s no’ good,’ muttered Angus Mackenzie, going unhappily on his way and leaving the sheriff free to concentrate on the approach of the month of May and the annual celebration of Beltane. This time-honoured Celtic festival was when bonfires were lighted on the hills with much ceremony. Like some other ceremonies – and the sheriff always thought of weddings in this connection – after the solemnities the rite usually degenerated into something like an orgy.

  This year it proved more – much more – than that. On the evening of the first day of May the hill behind Castle Balgalkin was in the long tradition of East Fearnshire lit with a ring of fires. Sheriff Macmillan watched at a distance as the hillside succumbed to more and more of the dancing flames. As darkness fell these were surrounded by more and more dancing figures, just as wild as the flames, Hector Leanaig undoubtedly among them.

  What happened later was more obscure.

  ‘Hector Leanaig says it was just a spark carried by the wind,’ reported Angus Mackenzie to Rhuaraidh Macmillan the next morning, his face darkened with smoke and fatigue. ‘Mind you, it was no’ will-o’-the-wisp, that I can tell you.’

  ‘The foolish fire,’ mused the sheriff. ‘Ignis fatuus.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ said Angus Mackenzie, uncompromising now, ‘but believe you me, Sheriff, it was no spark carried by the wind either that set fire to Culloch Beg.’

  ‘What you are suggesting,’ began Sheriff Rhuaraidh Macmillan carefully, ‘is that the flame that got to Culloch Beg came from the Beltane fire on purpose.’

  ‘There wa
s no wind from there to my land,’ said Angus steadily, ‘and yet it is Culloch Beg that was burnt and burnt badly.’

  ‘Wildfire?’ offered the sheriff, more for form’s sake than from conviction.

  ‘Lightning without thunder?’ said Angus Mackenzie sceptically.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ agreed the sheriff.

  ‘So what about my buildings and my crops?’ demanded Mackenzie, still irate. ‘The law should be on my side, Sheriff.’

  ‘There’s the question of proof, Angus. The law requires proof.’

  ‘There’s the question of my cattle,’ responded the man hotly. ‘They didn’t stand still at Culloch Beg to be burnt. They took to the hills and they’ll be all over Fearnshire by now. And Hector Leanaig isn’t going to come down and round them up for me either, is he?’ He gave the sheriff a very straight look. ‘I’ve a mind to go up to Balgalkin with Callum and …’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing, Angus Mackenzie,’ ordered the sheriff at once. ‘I tell you the law must be obeyed and no man’s hand raised against another in violence.’

  ‘No man’s hand should be tied by the law. There’s no justice in that.’ Angus Mackenzie turned away, muttering under his breath something else that the sheriff did not quite catch. ‘And it’s my land that’s burnt, remember. Not his. Or yours,’ he added over his shoulder as Rhuaraidh Macmillan left Culloch Beg, promising to go and see Hector Leanaig the morn’s morn.

  The sheriff found the Laird of Castle Balgalkin in no mood for apology let alone regret. ‘It was Beltane, Sheriff, and you know what that means.’

  ‘Springtime,’ said the sheriff shortly, grateful that the quarter-days of Candlemass and Hallowmass were winter ones and thus too cold for long outdoor jauntings, but still ready to believe that there was a connection between Beltane and the heathen god of high places, Baal. And to believe, too, that the devil’s boots didn’t squeak.

  ‘The rising of the sap.’ The laird gave him a wicked grin. ‘A time when even a father feels young again.’