The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,9

knows."

Her eyes were sweeping the cottage again. They rested disdainfully on Sheba, who was staring at her unblinkingly, lashing her tail from side to side.

"Get me those eggs, Maggie. I've to get on or Mrs. Macbean will be after me."

I regretted my offer now, but there was no going back on it. I went to the corner of the room by the chest, where it was quite dark, and put my hand into the crock where I'd placed the eggs that morning. I could feel them, round and smooth, under my fingers. Three eggs! And all for nothing. Annie wouldn't even tell Mrs. Macbean that I'd given them. There'd be no invitation, however many eggs I handed over.

"Oh," I said, trying to sound surprised, and hoping that the darkness of the corner would hide my lying blush. "There's only one here, after all."

As I turned, with the egg in my hand, I saw Annie move quickly away from beside the shelf where she'd been standing. She was settling her shawl again, tight under her chin.

"I'll be off, then," she said, putting the egg in the basket, and without a word of thanks, without even looking at me, she scuttled out of the cottage as if the Devil was after her.

***

Something woke me in the middle of the night. I don't know what it was, but I knew at once that I was alone. Granny had gone.

She had taken the news of the christening more quietly than I'd expected, though I saw the flesh around her mouth whiten as she clamped her lips tightly together. When she had finally spoken, she'd sounded more contemptuous than angry.

"They'd not have dared in your granddad's day. Mucky midden-crawlers! My man once cleared a room of the likes of them with one swing of his ax." Then, to my surprise, she noticed the tears drying on my cheeks and put a hand on my shoulder. "Don't think of them, Maggie. There's better company to be had than cold-hearted psalm singers like Macbean."

Better company! Her words came back to me as I lay with my eyes open, looking up into the pitch-dark cottage room.

Tam, I thought. She'll have gone to Tam.

I sat up, woken properly by a surge of fury.

They don't want us at Macbean's, and she didn't even ask me to come to Tam's. Well, I'm going, anyway.

I went to the door and looked out. The night was mild for December, the moon full and shining dully through thin low cloud. There was no rain in the air and enough light to see my way to Tam's old shack.

I was going back inside to fetch my shawl when I heard from some way off the heart-lifting, spirit-dancing skirl of the pipes. The sound wasn't coming from Tam's tumbledown hovel under the hillside, but from up near Loch Quien, the little loch that lies half a mile or so between the hills behind the beach. I was running up the lane, called by the music, before I knew what I was doing.

The piping stopped on a half note, and its enchantment vanished in a second. Thicker clouds had crossed the sky, shutting out the moon's thin light. I shivered.

This is daft. I must go home.

As I turned, a flicker caught my eye. A fire was burning up on the knoll at Ambrisbeg, halfway along the edge of the loch.

That's where they'll be.

It was a hard business finding my way up there in the dark, working around thickets of gorse, squelching through bog, and stumbling against stones. I ended up in a dip with the firelight out of sight, and I'd have given up and gone home if the piping hadn't started again. I could hear voices too—whoops and shrieks of laughter. I was closer than I thought.

Something held me back from running into the circle of firelight to join the revelry. I suppose it was the thought of Granny's certain rage. At any rate, I wanted to stay hidden and watch. I knelt behind a boulder and peeped over it, almost sure the tree above me would shelter me from view.

They had lit a fire in the center of a circle of stones, and by its light I could see eight or ten people. Apart from Granny and Tam, there were a couple of soldiers back from the wars who spent the winters lying in barns or ditches, begging for food, and Daft Effie from the Butts, whom the farm boys teased, and Peter the serving