what they'll ask. 'Do you swear allegiance to him in all matters temporal and spiritual?'"
"And if you don't swear?"
He hesitated.
"I didn't want to tell you this, my dear. After all you've done for me. I fear your efforts will have been in vain. We are to be banished, on a slave ship, to the plantations in the New World. There will be no return, on pain of death."
"No!" I cried, so loudly that heads turned to stare at me. "Uncle, you can't! Think of them at home. At Ladymuir! They need you there. How will my aunt manage without you?"
He shut his eyes.
"I think of them all the time. But where does a man's true duty lie? To serve God and to be true to him, or to succumb to the world of the flesh and the ties of human love?"
I didn't even try to answer his question. There was no doubt in his mind, I knew. But in my own head, there was a tangle that I could not unravel. I longed for my uncle to go home safe and sound, to be the father and the husband in the happy family that had so warmed me in my loneliness. But how could I wish him to betray the truest part of himself and live with shame and guilt for evermore?
The dream of the good life at Ladymuir was the strongest in me, and I began, almost unintentionally, to work on his resolve. Was I wrong? I only wanted to save him from the horrible fate that awaited him if he stayed true to his covenanting principles.
"That's a decent crop," I would say, as we walked past a team of men scything the ripe barley. "I wonder if Ritchie's got the harvest in yet at Ladymuir?"
Or, "See that butterfly? I wish Martha was here. She always runs after the big blue ones and tries to catch them."
Uncle Blair never asked me to be quiet, but I think I must have tortured him.
***
A quiet anguish had descended on the prisoners by the time we reached Burnt Island. Only the narrow waters of the Firth of Forth now separated us from Leith, where the Test would be taken. Some of the Covenanters, even after all they had suffered, seemed unshaken in their rocklike convictions. They would, I was sure, suffer torture, banishment, and even death rather than bow to the tyrant king. But I sensed that others were weakening. They had drawn into themselves and walked apart, not singing the psalms in the evening with the same hearty confidence, knowing how bitterly their betrayal would be condemned.
What would Uncle Blair do? I watched him anxiously and saw in him the signs of an inner struggle. At night, as we lay out in an open field or sometimes in a welcoming barn, I heard him groan and grind his teeth as he slept, and I knew that he was in an agony of mind.
Chapter 31
They were waiting for us as we stepped off the boats on the cold gray stones of Leith harbor. No time was wasted. The Covenanters were herded at once inside the courtroom.
"Prisoners only," a soldier said, barring my way as I tried to go in with Uncle Blair.
I had no choice but to join the crowd of anxious relatives waiting by the door. It was a hot day, and a haze hung over the spires of Edinburgh on the hill a mile or two away. A few fishing smacks were tied up at the quayside, their catches already unloaded, and the fishermen were peacefully working on their nets, mending the rips in them. Smirking boys strutted mockingly behind a grand gentleman, and some little girls squatted in a doorway, playing with a kitten.
Don't they know what's going on in there? I thought, my heart pounding with anxiety. Don't they care?
I saw that some of the relatives were huddling beneath a high open window, trying to hear what was going on inside. They made room for me, and we stood with our faces turned up, straining to hear.
"Let George Muir stand forward!" called out an official-sounding voice.
There was a clank of manacles inside as the prisoners shuffled about. The judge began to read out the Test. Fragments only floated out to us.
"George Muir, do you swear ... the true Protestant religion ... educate your children ... affirm the King's Majesty ... the only supreme Governor ... Do you judge it unlawful to enter into any covenants ... to take