go aside into the other room and pray, to prepare myself," said Mr. Renwick.
Everything seemed duller—the light dimmer, the colors more gray—when he had left the room.
"Girls, take the children now and get on up to the meeting place," said Uncle Blair. "Grizel, you know where to go. Watch out all the time for Black Cuffs. If you see them coming, call to warn the others, then creep home down the gully, where you'll be hidden."
Aunt Blair gave a little bleat of anxiety. "Don't take Andrew and Nanny. Just Martha. I'll bring the little ones with me." She snatched Nanny's hand out of mine as if she was afraid she was about to lose her forever.
It was a relief to get away from the tense mood inside the house. The morning was fine and fair, the sun not long risen, and everything bright and gleaming after rain. Heavy droplets clogged the heather and sparkled on the new green grass. I took a deep breath and felt my anxious heart lift. Surely nothing bad could happen on such a beautiful spring morning, out here on this ordinary, familiar hillside?
In all my time at Ladymuir, I had never been to the place where the meeting was to be held. Grizel led the way to the stream, which I knew well enough, but instead of jumping over it, as I had expected, she turned along the bank and followed a little path that led up around the curve of the hillside. Below, the stream ran along the bed of a deep gully.
It was easy to see that many people had just passed that way. The print of feet was fresh in the mud, and the wet grass along the edges of the path was beaten down. I looked up to the hilltop above, where a young man was standing, scanning the horizon, his gun on his shoulder. Then ahead, as we rounded a spur of hillside, I saw a slow-moving family walking wearily along, the small children's sleeping heads nodding over their parents' shoulders.
A quarter of an hour later, we came around the last curve of the stream, and though I was expecting it, I was still astonished at the sight of hundreds of people, men and women, the old and the very young, milling about on a high flat bank above the fast-running stream. Opposite us, spouting down the black rocks, was a waterfall, rushing and foaming white. The pounding of the water as it fell into the pool below was so loud that it muffled the buzz of the people's excited voices. It was a perfect place to hide a crowd of people, out of sight of anyone looking across even from the highest vantage point of the hills above.
Above the flat space was a slope dotted with mossy rocks. Some people were already settled on these, as if they were sitting on their own stools in their own kirk, while others stood about, talking eagerly and looking down the burn as they waited for Mr. Renwick to appear.
"Is there news of Stephen Barbour?" I heard someone ask.
"He's been taken to Glasgow, to the tolbooth. There's to be a full trial."
"A trial! There's many who don't even get that. Muir of Rashiefield was taken up last week, told to renounce the Covenant and swear loyalty to the king, and when he refused, he was shot dead, right there in his own field."
Looking up, I could see the young men now posted about on each side of the gully. Ritchie himself stood on the highest point. He was signaling to Mungo to get into the right position. High above them, dark against the blue sky, a buzzard wheeled on tilted wings. On the far side of the narrow gully rose a steep hillside, covered with trees.
In the same quiet way that he had appeared in the farm kitchen, Mr. Renwick slipped into the crowd milling about the hollow so unobtrusively that at first no one realized he was there. People had arranged themselves in groups. Some were already praying together, their heads bowed. Mothers were calling sharp warnings to their children, who, unused to being with so many people at once, were running around excitedly. Silence washed in like a slow wave as people realized that the preacher had arrived. Uncle Blair signaled with a sweep of his arm, and everyone began to settle themselves against the hollow side of the hill and on the flat ground below. They laid their thick