back to work. After the third or fourth visit, Mr. Haddo lost his temper completely and told Tam not to show his face again if he didn't want me to get a beating.
I'd been able, even in those short visits, to see that Tam looked different, though I wasn't sure if he was better or worse. The dreadful gray tinge in his face was not so noticeable. The drink had reddened it, and his cheeks had filled out a little.
"It's not that terribly bad here after all, Maidie," he told me cheerfully. "The lads are great ones to listen to a tale or two, and they're not stingy with the bottle either."
"No need to tell me that," I said severely. "I hear it in your piping every night."
"Well now, darling, an old man must have his comforts."
When I told him I'd seen Uncle Blair and how dreadful his situation was, he shook his head. His eyes, dulled and softened after nights of drunkenness, filled with tears.
"Cruelty," he said, squeezing my hand sympathetically. "Unkindness. That's a thing I could never abide. I've been thinking and thinking, but there's no trick that even old Tam could pull to get the good man away from here."
***
I worked hard in the kitchen. There wasn't much chance of doing otherwise, but in fact I wanted to. The work took my mind off my worries, and I even earned the approval of Mr. Haddo, who began to send me out of the kitchens on errands to the stores or called me to go with him up to the green to check over the fresh supplies brought in daily from the mainland. I didn't tell him that I could read and write. I was afraid he would become suspicious of me.
Whenever I left the kitchens, I kept my ears and eyes open for anything that might tell me how the prisoners were, but it was as if those cruel gray walls had swallowed them up. They were a dark secret, a dreadful horror at the heart of this fearful place, which everyone seemed anxious to ignore.
I learned after a while that the female Covenanters and even some of the men had been moved to other rooms in the castle, but I had no way of knowing if Uncle Blair was among them. I took comfort, though, from the fact that they must now have a little more room in which to move around and more air to breathe.
There had been an uproar one day when a group of the prisoners had wriggled out of the tiny window over the cliff. At least one had fallen to his death. A few had gotten away, but most had been rounded up and caught. Even behind the thick walls of the kitchens, on the other side of the castle, we heard the poor souls cry out in agony at the tortures that had been inflicted on them.
Uncle Blair can't be one of them, I kept telling myself. He's too big. He'd never have got through that tiny window.
But doubt nagged at me. I was wound up with anxiety all day and woke each night in the grip of nightmares. I prayed constantly and fervently, as I knew that the Covenanters would be doing.
I longed for the certainty of their faith. I wanted to stand on the sure rock of conviction on which they were grounded, but under my own feet I could feel only shifting, sinking sand.
I'm not one of the Elect, I told myself miserably. I can't be one of the saved. God hasn't chosen me for his own. He doesn't hear my voice.
My worries were all centered on my poor uncle, but I didn't know—how could I have known?—that it was my dearest, my oldest friend, Tam, who should have been in my thoughts and prayers.
I won't forget a single detail of that dreadful day. I was hurrying back to the kitchens from the cowshed with a pail full of cream when a man came out of the door to the soldiers' quarters and called out to me, "Hey, girl! Aren't you the piper's granddaughter?"
"Why? What do you want?"
He came over to me, and I stepped back warily. There was no threat in his manner, though, only a kind of rough sympathy.
"You'd better come. You're needed."
I looked at him stupidly, not understanding.
"Come where? I've got to take this cream to the kitchen."
He took the pail from my hand.
"I'll take it. I'll tell them. Go in there, lassie. He