the field toward the byre when darkness was beginning to fall. And if he does die, they'll blame her for it. They'll blame me too.
I had a strange fancy that I could see hostile faces everywhere I looked: evil, grinning mouths leering up at me from the water in the stream, glittering eyes peeping down from the tree, hands with long white fingers reaching out to clutch me from the hedge. I could hear angry whispers too, hissing at me in the wind.
You must leave. You must go away, the voice in my head said. They'll hate you here forever, even if Ebenezer lives.
The idea of leaving the only home I had ever known frightened me so much that I stopped dead, and Blackie, who had been walking behind me, nearly bumped into me and gave a reproachful moo. I had never been farther from Scalpsie Bay than the towns of Kingarth and Rothesay. The Isle of Bute was my whole world. Beyond it were strange realms peopled by fearsome creatures, the monsters and giants and goblins that filled Tam's stories.
I pushed the thought aside. Where could I go, if I left the cottage at Scalpsie Bay? Who would take me in? I had no relatives on the isle. My father had come from a place called Kilmacolm, over on the mainland. A brother of his lived there still, as far as I knew—my uncle Blair.
I had sometimes dreamed of being spirited away from Granny to live with my uncle Blair. I had a picture of him in my head that was as real as the black bulk of the cow plodding along beside me. My uncle would be a big man like my father, with a deep voice, slow in speech. He wouldn't get drunk or shout at people. He wouldn't pinch and slap children. He wouldn't go about with dirty clothes half hanging off him. He would be orderly and respectable and liked by everyone. His family would eat well and often, and they would have fresh linen and a new clean plaid to wear when the old one fell into holes. And Uncle Blair would have a wife. She would be a sweet-faced woman with a soft voice, like—but here my imagination always failed me.
My best memory of my father was of him swinging me up in his arms when I was a little girl. He would do it every time he came home from a trip. I'd scream with fear and joy and clutch at the silver buckle he always wore on his belt. It was his drover's buckle, which had gone with him wherever he'd roamed with the cattle. It had been his surety, he said, his treasure, something he could sell if trouble came to him.
The buckle was mine now. It had been taken from my father's body before they buried him and given to me. I kept it tucked away behind the salt box on the shelf, and often I'd reach up and touch it, as if it was a good luck charm.
Trouble was coming to me, I was certain of it. And the buckle would be my surety, as it had been my father's.
I hurried over the last bit of field, tugging Blackie's halter to make her walk faster, and as soon as she was safe in her stall, I went into the cottage and pulled out the salt box, wanting to hold the buckle and feel its reassuring metal in my palm.
The shelf was bare. The buckle was gone.
I felt along the shelf, sure that I would find it. But I didn't.
Granny's moved it, I thought. She must have put it somewhere safer.
Then an awful suspicion came to me. What if Granny had taken the buckle and sold it? What if it was my buckle that had paid for the food and drink for the riotous night before?
I dropped the idea at once. Granny was hard, she was always angry and often cruel, but she was never underhanded. A strain of honesty ran through her like a thread of gold through a dirty cloth. She might rant and curse and say the harshest things, she might strike out with her fists and send me out to do most of the work, but she could never lie and she would never steal.
I stood there, frowning, as I tried to remember when I'd last seen the buckle. It had been only the previous morning. The salt box had been moved a little way