The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,115

if the musketeer hadn't shaken my shoulder.

"We'll look after him now," he said kindly. "I'll come and tell you where he's to be laid. Don't come unless it's me who calls you. Neil Sharpus. Remember the name. Now you'd best get out of here."

He almost dragged me to my feet and pushed me toward the stairs.

"You'll need to watch out for yourself," he warned me. "The old man protected you more than you know. There are too many sparky lads here who like a pretty girl."

And he was right, because before I was out through the barracks door, there came a chorus of whistles and guffaws, and hands reached out to paw at me.

"Come on, boys, have a heart, will you? The lassie's just lost her granddaddy," said Musketeer Sharpus, hustling me through.

"Yes, and he can't curse us now. He can't play 'The Unlucky Soldier' now," came the laughing answer.

My grief was swallowed up in a red tide of rage. I turned on them. I felt in my voice and in my face the power of righteous anger.

"He can haunt you," I hissed at the mass of greedy, stupid faces. "He can come at you from beyond the grave. He'll be in your nightmares, he'll infect your blood, he'll drive you mad..."

I stopped myself. Their mouths had fallen open, and they were backing away from me, afraid.

Be careful, a little voice inside my head warned me. Don't use the power of anger or they'll take you for a witch.

Somehow, I stumbled back to the kitchen, and there I was surprised. Agnes and the scullions and even Mr. Haddo himself showed me such sympathy and gruff kindliness that for the rest of the day I was overwhelmed. The sorrow came, and I was allowed to go and huddle in the corner by the salt box and cry and cry until I had no more tears.

***

They laid Tam to rest in the little cemetery within the castle walls. The minister who attended the Marischal said a perfunctory prayer, yawning as he did so. I wanted to shout at him, Make sure he goes to Heaven! Ask the Lord Jesus to take him in! But I knew that no one could help Tam now. He must stand alone before the Throne of Grace while God weighed his sins in the great balance.

Musketeer Sharpus stood beside me at the open graveside. He was holding the bag in which Tam had kept his pipes.

"They're yours, I suppose," he said, handing them over.

"They're his to take," I said, and I leaned over the gaping hole and laid the bag on Tam's crude coffin.

The musketeer was silent as we walked away. At the entrance to the passageway leading to the kitchens, I touched his arm.

"Thank you. You were kind to him and me. I don't want to lie to you. Please don't tell anyone, but Tam wasn't my real grandfather, only he looked after me all my life and rescued me, and he was all I had."

I couldn't go on.

"No need to cry," he said gruffly. "What are you going to do now?"

I was tempted for a brief moment to confide in him and ask for his help in rescuing Uncle Blair, but I could see that he was impatient already and wanting to be off.

"I don't know. I'll see," I said. "I don't have any money."

I saw a struggle in his face, and then he reluctantly put his hand into the pouch hanging from his belt and pulled out a little leather purse.

"I found this under your—under his pillow," he said. "I was going to buy whiskey for the lads to raise a toast to the old man, but I suppose by rights it belongs to you."

He dropped into my hands the purse that Tam had stolen at the city gate of Edinburgh and was gone before I'd had a chance to thank him.

***

I have never felt so alone as I did in the weeks that followed Tam's death. The last link with my childhood had been cut. The last person who had truly loved me had gone.

As the days passed, I started to feel as if I, too, was a prisoner in Dunnottar. The kitchen walls were as thick as a dungeon's, and the endless routine of work had closed around my mind like a trap, enclosing me in a kind of dull helplessness.

I'd been surprised, at the end of my first week at work, to be given a couple of coins as wages, and