The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,131
water in the evening light.
The farmer let me sleep in his barn that night, and his wife called me into her kitchen for a bowl of steaming porridge in the morning.
"There's a boat going over to Bute in an hour or two," she told me. "My man's asked the skipper for you. He'll give you a passage for a couple of pennies."
I thanked her, surprised by her kindness and interest in me.
"What did you say your name was?" she asked, watching me as I ate my breakfast.
"Maggie. Maggie Blair."
"I knew it." She clapped her hands down onto her apron in triumph. "I said to Nicholas last night, she'll be that girl, I said, the one who was taken up for a—you know what I mean—over in Rothesay, and who got out of the tolbooth." She paused, her eyes on me, bright with curiosity, and when I didn't say anything, she nodded, satisfied. "There were all kinds of stories at first, about the Devil flying away with you over the chimneys. Of course, I didn't believe them. Superstitious nonsense! But then it got out about the jailer drinking himself stupid and how your granny shooed you out on your own. How did you do it? How did you get off the island without being seen? Everyone wonders. You must have been so scared!"
She had been so kind and seemed so excited to meet me that I felt obliged to tell her my story, though I didn't want to. The memory of that awful time still made me shake inside. Luckily, before I'd had to say too much, the farmer put his head around the door.
"If you want to get to Rothesay today, you'd better run down to the shore now, miss. The sails are up. They're about to cast off."
***
Although it was still August, there was a fresh wind blowing, filling the boat's sails and making me shiver and pull my shawl close around my head. Slowly, very slowly, the Isle of Bute, lying long and low on the horizon, grew up out of the sea. As the hours passed, I could make out first the shapes of the bays, and then the outline of trees, and then the long strips of field at harvest, lying in brown and yellow lines across the hillsides, and then farmhouses with their ragged thatched roofs. At last I could make out people, walking about on the foreshore.
It looks so small, I thought. Even the castle. It's nothing compared to Edinburgh. I'd always thought Rothesay was a grand big place.
Though my heart thudded with fear, I felt an unexpected longing as the boat's prow creamed through the final stretch of water to tie up at the jetty. I'd never known until this moment how much I'd missed my island.
I'd had no clear idea of what I'd do once I arrived, though I'd planned first to walk down to Kingarth to seek out Mr. Robertson and thank him for the help he'd given to Granny and me. But I hadn't bargained for the stir my arrival would cause.
I'd hardly taken my first steps ashore when a woman carrying a basket of oysters on her head cried out, "Look who it is! The Blair girl! Maggie Blair!"
Heads swiveled around. The miller, loading sacks out of the boat onto his horse, almost let one drop as he turned to stare. A couple of fishermen, who were working on the upturned hull of their boat, dropped their tools and came over for a better look. A moment later a crowd had gathered.
I felt a surge of terror. Had Mr. Shillinglaw told me the truth? Or was I walking straight back into the old nightmare?
Then someone called out, "So you've come back, then, Maggie. Good for you!"
He spoke with self-conscious bravery, as if he was afraid he might be going against the general opinion.
"Aye, welcome home, girl," said another, more confidently.
"Look at her! She's grown! Hasn't she grown?" marveled a woman.
"Aye, you always were a bonny lass," another said, her voice almost sickly with affection.
Inside me, something that had been pulled as taut as a fiddle string relaxed so suddenly that I was afraid I would slump down and be overwhelmed with tears. Only Granny's voice, loud inside my head, stopped me.
"Hold your head up, child. Where's your pride? Don't let the loons see you down."
"Well," I said, swallowing hard. "I see they've not mended the castle walls yet. And the tolbooth looks about the same, too."