The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,129

to defend Tam, but even I had to admit that Tam had been extremely disreputable, so I held my tongue.

"...Annie's evidence was called into question. Other examples of her untruthfulness and even instances of theft were brought to light." He dropped his grand manner and said simply, "Everyone on Bute is ashamed of what happened, Maggie. They know you're not a witch. They were glad that you got away. You ask me how I know. I was in Rothesay myself a couple of weeks ago, on business for Mr. Bannantyne. They still talk of you. They want to make amends. You would be welcomed back."

I didn't know what to say. My head was spinning.

"Don't you even want to know," Mr Shillinglaw was saying, "how much money is owing to you?"

"Yes. I do."

"Mr. Bannantyne owed your father three pounds sterling, and Mr. Macbean owed him four pounds, I believe."

Seven pounds! My mouth fell open. I could never have imagined that such sums of money could possibly be mine.

From far away, I heard Mr. Shillinglaw say, "A very respectable dowry. Your husband will be a lucky man. If you would like to return here tomorrow morning, I will have Mr. Bannantyne's money ready for you and will ask you to put your cross on a document in receipt."

"I can write," I told him haughtily. "I'll sign my own name properly. And I haven't got a husband, thank you very much. What's mine will be mine."

I stood up and walked to the door. Then a thought struck me.

"Annie. Do you know what's happened to her?"

"I wondered if you would ask." He had picked a quill up from his desk and was twirling it between his fingers. "The young lady won't be troubling you again. Mr. Bannantyne was greatly angered by her attempted fraud. He had her arrested. She had been living immorally with a succession of soldiers. Other matters—thefts, frauds, slanders, crimes of one kind and another—were proved against her. She's in the tolbooth at present, awaiting transportation on a slave ship to the colonies."

"She'll get away from there," I said bitterly. "She'll make up to the guards. She'll wheedle her way out of it."

"I don't think so. She has been branded, you see, on the cheeks, and her ears have been cut off. No man will look twice at her now."

Chapter 32

My journey with the drovers from Bute to Dumbarton had been quiet and slow, dictated by the leisurely pace of the cattle. On the flight from Kilmacolm to Edinburgh, Tam and I had been fugitives, fearfully dodging Black Cuffs and stealing to survive.

My progress from Edinburgh back toward Kilmacolm with Uncle Blair was quite different. We walked in the open along the public highway, a respectable pair of travelers, Uncle Blair raising his hat courteously to passersby. We paid for our food and lodging with the pennies that Cousin Thomas had pressed upon us.

Uncle Blair was stronger in body now, but his mind was troubled. Often we walked in silence, but from time to time his thoughts would boil over in impassioned speech.

"I've always been a peaceful man!" he would cry out. "I've only wanted to do what's right, and look after my family, and work in my fields, and worship my Savior in the true Presbyterian way! Why? Why has all this persecution happened to us? Why have such wicked men been unleashed against us?"

And he would go over, again and again, the cruelties and slaughter he had witnessed.

They're not all wicked, I thought. Not Musketeer Sharpus, anyway. You can't condemn them all. Tam didn't. He was sorry about the ones who died on the other side too.

Uncle Blair spoke of Tam only once, after the sound of a bagpipe had wafted to us on a distant breeze.

"I couldn't get the measure of the man at all," he said. "A rascally kind of a fellow, I suppose."

"He was good," I said lamely. "You didn't know the half of it. He helped people. Even thieves and poor people that no one else noticed."

Like Jesus, I nearly added.

Uncle Blair was following his own train of thought.

"He wasn't a man of the Covenant, now, was he?"

"No, Uncle. I never heard him talk about that."

"And on the subject of man's free will, were his views sound?"

"He didn't know what it meant."

Uncle Blair walked on in silence.

"I sometimes think," he said at last, with a kind of wondering in his voice, "that we judge wrongdoers too harshly and forget the message of love in the