The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,119

any remedy if he'd known it had been learned from my grandmother. He would have feared enchantments and spells, and sniffed the sulfurous presence of the Prince of Darkness.

He had closed his eyes. I watched him for a few moments, till I was sure he was deeply asleep. Then I got up and tiptoed through the now-silent prisoners to the barn door. Luckily, the man on guard duty was Musketeer Sharpus.

"Let me out for a little while," I begged.

To my surprise, he didn't look at me and seemed embarrassed.

"You'll run away."

"You know I won't. I told you. I'm here to be with my uncle."

He hesitated, then jerked his head.

"Away you go, then. But don't be long. My time's up in an hour. The next fellow mightn't look so kindly on comings and goings."

I wished with all my heart, as I darted away into the twilight, that I'd taken more notice of Granny's work with herbs. It was true that she had never tried to teach me. In fact, if I'd looked too closely at anything she was doing, she'd driven me off with a curse. But I could remember some things and knew now what I was looking for.

When I was eight or nine years old, I'd burned my foot badly, stumbling into the fire. Granny had said nothing to comfort me but had gone outside, coming back a while later with burdock leaves, which grew near the path on the way to Kingarth. She'd broken an egg, grumbling at the waste, and had crushed the burdock leaves into the slimy white before spreading it on the burn. I'd never forgotten how cool and good it had felt on the painful place, and how fast it had healed.

But my burn was a small one and fresh, I thought anxiously. And there wasn't any pus coming out of it. Anyway, I don't know where to look for burdock. And how can I possibly get hold of an egg?

I'd been walking too fast and aimlessly, and forced myself to slow down and think. In Scalpsie Bay, there had been clumps of burdock growing along the track underneath a stone wall. I'd seen a wall not far back along the way we'd come. Perhaps there would be burdock growing there too.

I found my quarry more quickly than I'd expected and pounced. Then, as I'd seen Granny do, I studied the plant and chose carefully from the leaves, only picking the big, healthy-looking ones.

Success gave me a jolt of confidence. God must have guided me to this precious plant. Perhaps he had listened to Uncle's prayers. Perhaps he would put an egg in my hands too.

Eggs meant hens, and hens meant farms, and farms meant people and dogs and trouble. Tam would have known what to do. I'd seen him many times, slipping shamefaced from a farmstead with a couple of oval bulges in his pocket.

And then I heard it. The track I'd been following ran close to the sea, near the top of the cliff that dropped away down to the rocky shore. The murmuring surge of the waves against the rocks was so familiar that I no longer noticed it, and while I'd been in Dunnottar, I'd become just as used to the shrieks of squabbling kittiwakes and the wails of soaring gulls. But I was suddenly, sharply, aware of them. They were close by but out of sight. They had to perch on the rocky ledges of the cliffs overhanging the sea. The chicks would have hatched and fledged by now, but there were always a few eggs abandoned by their parents, or ones that had never had a chick in them at all. It was unlikely I would find one, but it was worth a chance.

And then my knees felt weak.

I can't, I thought. Not down the cliff. I can't.

But my feet seemed to be moving of their own accord.

I didn't dare walk right up to the crumbling edge, so I lay down on my stomach and crawled forward, till I could look down from the top of the cliff. It fell in one dizzying swoop to the black jagged rocks below, against which the waves hurled themselves in clouds of dazzling white spray. The drop was so terrifying that my limbs felt weak and my head began to spin.

The cliff was alive with gulls and kittiwakes, the whole face of it fluttering with white wings. The birds had not quite settled yet to sleep but were taking off and