CHAPTER TWELVE
Glasgow, September 1747
Having ridden into Glasgow from Loch Lomond on a sturdy garron, arriving in the evening, Angus paid for lodgings and stabling just off High Street for two nights. The following morning he was up and about early, having a list of purchases to make on behalf of the clan, including pots, tools, stockings, and lengths of linen and woollen cloth to make dresses for the women and much-hated breeches for the men.
In defiance of the Act banning the wearing of Highland dress, the core group of MacGregor men still waging war on the redcoats wore the feileadh mòr when fighting, partly because it was a far more practical garment both for protection against the elements and camouflage, and partly because they reckoned that if they were captured the fact that they were wearing outlawed clothing would be the least of their worries.
The rest of the men had, with reluctance and resentment, abandoned the Highland garb. The plaids had been dyed in an attempt to get rid of the outlawed tartan pattern and had been refashioned into coats, skirts for the women and other items of clothing. None of the clansfolk, whether waging war or not had handed in their weapons, which was also required by law. It had been illegal for a MacGregor to carry any kind of weapon for as long as they could remember, and having been in breach of the law their whole lives they saw no reason to break with tradition now that law was general to all Highlanders.
To that end, when Angus set out the following morning to make his purchases and to check for any mail arriving from his brother he wore the required breeches, stockings and shoes, as well as a clean linen shirt and coat. He carried no sword, of course, but hidden about his person was a sgian dubh and a dirk, cleverly concealed in a specially added pocket in the lining of his coat. He didn’t expect to have to use them, but you never knew, and he would have felt naked without a weapon of some kind, anyway.
He spent a pleasant morning shopping, and by dint of fierce haggling managed to save enough money to allow him to buy a slender silver bracelet for Morag. Their first child was due in a few weeks, and she had been a bit irritable and low in spirits lately as the baby was lying in a position which made it difficult for her to sleep. Hopefully this would cheer her up a little.
He dropped his purchases off at his lodgings then carried on to the post, where he asked the clerk if there was any mail for James Drummond.
“For James Drummond, you say?” the clerk repeated. His eyes wandered briefly over Angus’s right shoulder, then he dipped his head in a nod. “Aye, there is. A letter came in from London a few days ago, sir.” He went through to the back room, returning a moment later with a folded sheet of paper sealed with red wax. Angus handed over his money and took the letter, putting it in his pocket and thanking the man.
He left the building and looked up at the sky. Another couple of hours yet before twilight. He carried on up High Street in the direction of the cathedral, then, seemingly on the spur of the moment, went into a chop house, where he ordered mutton chops and a pint of porter. He sat by the window gazing idly out into the street, and while waiting for his meal to arrive took his brother’s letter out of his pocket, examining the seal with some care before breaking it and unfolding the paper.
He had intended to take it straight back to his lodgings to read in private, but things had changed, and he wanted to know the news it contained now, in case it altered his plans for the evening. He quickly scanned the missive, which purported to be a letter from his affectionate uncle, Archie, and which contained some information regarding the mislaid parcel of the previous correspondence, which he had hoped to locate. It seemed innocent enough, should arouse no suspicion if a stranger were to read it.
He read it again more slowly, taking the time to interpret the message. Halfway through the letter his meal arrived and he thanked the server absently, before finishing the sentence and inhaling sharply.
“Is it bad news, sir?” the server asked, hearing the intake of breath and seeing his customer’s face contort. Angus looked up, seeing the man as if from a distance, then pulled himself together.
“This?” he said, waving the letter. “No, it’s just a wee note from my uncle. I’ve been having pains in my back. They take me unawares at times, and are very sharp. I’m thinking to see someone whilst I’m here. Would you recommend anyone who kens about such things?”
The serving man thought for a moment.
“Well, there’s John MacKenzie down by the river. He’s no’ a qualified physician though, ye ken, but a good man, even so. He fixed my shoulder the once, when I put it out playin’ the fitba’.”
Angus listened carefully to the man’s directions and thanked him. He put the content of the letter and its import firmly to the back of his mind, having more urgent matters to think about right now. Then he ate his mutton chop and drank his porter, by which time the sun had almost set and it was threatening rain, which suited his purpose even better. He ordered another drink and waited a little longer until the threat of rain became a reality, and then he paid his bill and left, thanking the serving man again and stepping out into the downpour.
Turning his coat collar up he walked briskly along the street, keeping close to the buildings in an attempt to avoid the deluge. At the crossroads he turned down the Drygate, continued straight until he was sure the man following him had turned the corner and could see him, then he turned again, into one of the maze of dark alleys lined on either side by tenement buildings.
Once in the alley he ran at full speed for about twenty yards before diving into the shadows, flattening himself into the recess of a doorway. He reached into his coat, grasping his dirk in his right hand and sliding the sgian dubh into his sleeve where he could retrieve it instantly if needed. Then he waited.
Sure enough, after about thirty seconds the short, squat man who had followed Angus out of the post office after the clerk had nodded to him, had waited down a side street opposite the chop house while Angus had eaten his meal, and then had continued following him when he left, appeared at the end of the alley and started to make his way down it. Angus waited until the man had passed him, then followed him for a few paces before catching up to him and grabbing him from behind. There were the beginnings of a struggle, then the man felt the cold iron of Angus’s dirk against his throat and stilled instantly.
Angus stepped backwards, taking his captive with him, and set his back against the wall so he could not be attacked from behind by any accomplices the stalker might have following behind.
“Now,” he said quietly, “as ye’ve taken such pains to follow me all day, what can I be helping ye with?”
“I wasna following—” the man began, then gave a low cry as the knife pierced his skin. A thin trickle of blood ran down his neck.
“Ye’re in no position to be lying to me, I’m thinking,” Angus said. “Why are ye following me, and who tellt ye to? I’ll no’ ask twice, mind. I’m a busy man.” The man stiffened and twisted slightly in his grip as he tried to reach for whatever weapon he was carrying. Angus pressed the blade harder against the man’s neck, enough to cause the thin trickle to become a thicker one, upon which he seemed to realise that it was pointless resisting and the fight went out of him.
“Mr Mathieson paid me to follow you,” he said, his voice trembling.
“Mr Mathieson? Is he the clerk in the post?” Angus asked.
The man went to nod his head then thought better of it.
“Aye,” he said.
“Right. And why did he want ye to follow me?” Angus asked.
“I dinna ken. No, really, I dinna!” the man cried as the blade bit even deeper. “He just tellt me that when James Drummond came in to collect his letter I was to follow you, find out where you were staying, and then go back and tell him.”
“He tellt me that the letter came in a few days ago. So ye’ve waited at the office every day since then?” Angus asked.
“Aye, he said he’d pay me a pound if you…”
“If I…” Angus prompted, when the man showed no signs of finishing his sentence.
“If you were arrested,” the man finished shakily. “Please, if ye let me go, I’ll go and tell him I lost you, I swear I will.”
Angus thought for a moment. It was a shame he couldn’t see the man’s eyes.
“Ye’re lying to me,” he ventured. “What if I’d no’ come for weeks? Ye wouldna have stood in the office all that time for nothing, in the hopes of maybe earning a pound. There’s more you’re no’ telling me.” He felt the man tense, and knew he was right. “You’re no’ from these parts, I can tell by your accent,” Angus continued, “so let me tell you something. This is a part of town, if ye havena guessed already, where I could dismember ye slowly and no one hearing ye scream would even pause in what they were doing to think about it. If anyone were to walk down this close, they’d step round us so as no’ to get their shoes bloody. Now, if ye dinna tell me everything, I fully intend to prove what I’ve just tellt ye to be true. Is that what you want?”
“No!” the man cried. “I…he…Mr Mathieson, he tellt me that there’s a Jacobite plot afoot, and there’s a spy in London sending coded letters to ye about the gold that was landed by the French, that you’re arranging to ship it to England, or maybe to the Young Pretender, so he can pay for an army to raise another rebellion.” He was so desperate to tell all he knew now, to save his life, that he was tripping over his own words. “He said that if we could catch you, then we could make ye tell us where the gold is, and we’d all be rich! Please, that’s all I ken, I swear it!”
“Yon Mathieson, has he tellt the clerk in London about this plot?” Angus asked.
“No, he said that he didna want the bluidy Sasannachs getting the gold, when he was the one who’d discovered about it.”
“That’s very loyal of him,” Angus said drily.
“Aye, he hates the English. We all do,” the man said desperately. “Please, dinna dismember me!”
Behind the man’s back, Angus smiled grimly.
“I’ll no’ dismember ye, laddie,” he said softly, and removing the dirk from his captive’s throat, he lowered it, changed his grip slightly, then drove it between the man’s ribs and into his heart. The man stiffened for a long moment, then relaxed.
Angus lowered him gently to the ground, then pulled the dagger free, remembering the time – was it really five years ago – when he’d nearly fainted on seeing Alex kill a man in cold blood in just the same way. He smiled to himself, remembering his innocence, and how much he had changed in that time.
He’d had no choice but to kill the man; if he’d let him go, he’d have gone straight back to Mathieson to tell him what had happened. As it was, with luck the clerk would wait a while longer for his man to come back with news, by which time Angus would be long gone. He wiped the dirk on his victim’s coat, sheathed it and carried on walking down the alley, pondering what to do next.
He had to get out of Glasgow right now, that was certain. If the man had told him true, then Alex was not being watched and was in no immediate danger of arrest. In fact, if he’d read the letter correctly, then Alex was almost certainly no longer in London at all, and unlikely to write any more letters to his nephew for Mathieson to intercept. Even if he was still there Angus had no way of communicating with him, as neither this letter nor the previous one he’d received had told him where Uncle Archie could be reached.
Alex would surely be in no fit state to do anything rational, even if he thought he was. He had almost lost his mind the first time he had thought Beth to be dead. To believe her alive, only to find she had died after all, might be more than he could bear.
“Ye should have come home, brother,” he said softly to the night. At a time like this Alex needed his clan around him, people who loved him, people with whom he could vent his grief and anger, make mistakes with no repercussions. He did not need to be walking straight into a web of intrigue and duplicity, which it seemed he was about to do.
But Angus could do nothing about that right now. He thought about what he could do, reasoning that by killing the man, he’d bought himself enough time to collect both his purchases and his pony. Better not stay the night, though. That would be pushing his luck just a bit too far. He turned right, then right again, emerging back on to High Street. Then he turned left, in the direction of the river and his lodgings.
* * *
To Angus’s surprise, Lachlan and wee Jamie intercepted him a couple of miles south of the MacGregor settlement, materialising out of the landscape and waving before heading down the hill to meet him.
“What’s amiss?” Angus said, immediately alarmed. “Have the redcoats come?”
“No, nothing like that,” Lachlan said. “I’m glad you’re back early, though.”
“I havena bought ye anything, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Angus said. “Except a length o’ woollen cloth for your ma to make ye a nice pair o’ Sasannach breeches.”
Lachlan screwed up his face in disgust.
“Morag’s having the baby,” Jamie blurted out.
“What?!” Angus cried. “She canna be! It isna her time yet!”
“Well, she is anyway. Ma shooed us all away, so we thought we’d head south to see if we could meet ye on the way and tell ye.”
Angus threw the reins of the laden garron at Lachlan.
“Bring her back,” he said, and then he was off, running at full speed towards home.
“Ye should have let me tell him,” Lachlan said sulkily to his smaller companion.
“I canna think why he’s rushing, anyway,” Jamie responded. “Ma said it was women’s doing. She’ll only shoo him away as well.”
“There’s nothing ye can do,” Peigi said, as he came to a stop outside his house, gasping for breath. She’d seen him running full tilt along the path and had come to the door to meet him. “She’ll be a while yet.”
“I want to see her,” Angus said between gasps. “I’ve something for her.”
“I dinna think—” Peigi managed, before he gently but firmly moved her out of the way and went into the room. He expected Morag to be lying in bed, but instead she was walking up and down dressed only in her shift, supported by Janet and breathing like a train.
“Morag, mo chridhe,” he said. “Are ye all right?”
She looked up, then her face contorted with pain and she bent over, groaning. After the spasm had passed she straightened up a little and shot him a look of the purest hatred.
“You bastard,” she said. “You keep away from me. You ever come near me again, and I’ll geld ye. Get out.”
He stopped halfway across the room, stunned by her response to his appearance, which was the last thing he’d expected.
“I want to help,” he said, looking at Janet. “Here, let me hold her.” He moved forward to take his wife’s arm.
“I dinna think—” Janet began, unconsciously echoing Peigi.
“GET OUT!” Morag shrieked. Lunging away from Janet, she picked up the nearest thing to hand, a wooden bowl, and threw it at him. It caught him a glancing blow on the side of the head and then bounced off into the corner of the room.
He got out.
“I did try to warn ye. She’s a wee bit fashed the now,” Peigi, who was still outside getting some fresh air, said with spectacular understatement when he reappeared.
Angus reached up to the side of his head and winced. His hand came away bloody.
“She threw a pot at me,” he said disconsolately. “Why does she hate me?”
“She doesna hate ye, ye loon. Women are all different, but it’s a hard time for us. And it’s her first, ye ken. She’s blaming you right now, that’s all.”
“But she wanted bairns as much as I do. Did you throw a pot at Alasdair when you had your first?” Angus asked.
“Well, no, but then he wasna daft enough to come upon me when I was in pain. He kept well away until it was over, which is what you’re going to do.”
“But I need to help her!” Angus cried. “I canna just leave her to get on wi’ it alone!”
“She isna alone. I’m here, and so is Janet, and there’s others will take over later. This is women’s work. Have ye news frae Glasgow?”
“Aye,” Angus said. “But—”
“Away and tell the others then. Morag’ll be a good while yet, I’m thinking, once the pains start properly.”
“Ye mean it’ll get worse than that?” Angus said, aghast. “I must be able to do something!”
Peigi reached out and gripped his face between her hands, pulling him down so he was level with her.
“Angus,” she said, her face inches from his. “Ye’ve done what needed to be done. Ye’ve put the bairn in her. Now go away and let us get it out safely. I’ll come for ye if there’s a need, but in truth I dinna think there will be. The baby’s lying well, and Morag’s strong.”
She let him go and he straightened up, his face anguished.
“I’ll tell her ye love her, and ye wanted to be with her,” Peigi said. “She’ll appreciate that, later. But no’ the now. Go away.”
Reluctantly, he did as she asked. When Lachlan and Jamie appeared with the garron, he unloaded it and personally distributed the contents around the village, to pass the time. Then he called everyone together to tell them what had happened in Glasgow. They all sat in the clearing in the middle of the settlement, Angus facing his house so he would see if Janet or Peigi came out.
“Ye’re back earlier than we thought,” Dougal said. “We didna expect you home until later today.”
“Aye, well I had to leave a wee bit suddenly,” Angus said absently, his eyes fixed on the door of his house, which was firmly closed. “It isna right,” he added. “She tellt me the bairn wasna due for another three weeks, at least.”
“These two arrived four weeks early,” Alasdair commented, indicating his three-year-old twins, who he was currently in charge of and who were digging holes with a stick for a purpose known only to themselves. His five-month-old daughter was asleep in his arms. “And Jamie was early too, if I mind rightly. They dinna always come when expected.”
“Really?” Angus said, relieved.
“Why did ye have to leave early?” Allan asked.
“What? Oh, aye. I bought everything ye all asked for, and then I went to the post, thinking that if there was a letter from Alex I could take it back to my room to read in private. Anyway…”
He related what had happened, from leaving the post office to killing the man in the alley off the Drygate.
“The letter had been opened and resealed carefully,” he finished. “I checked it before I broke the seal.”
“Is there anything in it that would incriminate us?” Kenneth asked.
“No, I dinna think—” A long, agonised scream came from the house. “Christ!” Angus cried, leaping to his feet and taking two paces towards the house before stopping, torn between wanting to go to her and obeying Peigi. Alasdair, Dougal and Kenneth exchanged a look, then they stood.
“Let’s away down to the lochside,” Kenneth said, as though suggesting a turn around the garden. “We’ll no’ be disturbed there.”
“But what if she needs me?” Angus said.
Alasdair called his eldest son over.
“Jamie, I’ll mind the twins. I want you to stay here. If Janet or Peigi come out, ye find out what’s happening and run and tell us. Come on,” he said to Angus. “Ye’ve clearly got news we need to talk about and we canna do that if your mind’s in the house there. Ye’ll be no use to yourself or Morag if ye wear yourself out worrying. She’ll call for ye when she wants ye, or Peigi will.”
He was right.
They adjourned to the lochside, out of earshot of the house.
“What does the letter say?” Dougal asked once they were settled. Or as settled as they could be when their temporary chieftain with the news looked as though he was sitting on an ant’s nest.
Angus took it out and unfolded it.
“It’s very short. ‘My dearest nephew,’” he read, “’I am grieved to tell you that the package I came in search of, although I am assured of its safe arrival in London some time ago, has since been irretrievably lost. You will understand my distress at the loss of such a valuable item. As a consequence, although I hope soon to be reunited with you, I intend first to pay a visit to Aunt Charlotte, in the hope that her company may help to reconcile me to my loss. I am ever your most loving and affectionate uncle, Archie.’”
A profound silence settled over the clan as they digested this letter from their chieftain.
“Holy Mother of God, he must be devastated,” Kenneth said after a while. “What the hell’s he doing going tae Paris? He should come home, where we can comfort him.” There was a general murmur of agreement.
“Is Charlie still in Paris, then?” Dougal asked.
“Aye, as far as we ken. The last news we got frae Cluny said he was, but that was a good while ago,” Angus said.
Allan sat looking from one to the other, puzzled.
“How d’ye ken he’s gone to Paris?” he asked. “Who’s Aunt Charlotte?”
“I’m sorry, man,” Angus said. “We’re so accustomed to you now, I forget ye’ve no’ been wi’ us long enough to ken what the letters say. It’s a code, in its way. The package he’s writing about is Beth. He’s telling us that she got to London alive, so it seems that bastard Richard was telling the truth, but that something has happened since then and she’s…” He stopped for a moment, and swallowed hard. “She’s dead,” he continued after a minute, his eyes moist. “Aunt Charlotte is Prince Charlie. He’s away to France to visit the prince.”
“We canna do anything about that right now,” Alasdair said. “Though I think Alex must be half-mad wi’ grief. We all ken what he was like when he thought she’d been killed at Culloden.”
“He shouldna be going to France now, while he’s like that,” Angus said, his worry about his brother momentarily overriding his fear for his wife. “I was there wi’ him last time. Ye have to have your wits about you all the time. There’s at least three meanings to everything everyone says, and ye canna let your guard down for a minute or someone’ll stab ye in the back. No’ literally,” he said to Allan, seeing the young MacDonald’s look of alarm.
Iain, as was his custom since Culloden, had sat listening to all this silently, looking at the ground. He rarely spoke these days, and as a result when he did everyone listened.
“It could be the best thing,” he said softly. He looked up at them all. “To do something that will exercise his mind. Every day is hard for me since I lost Maggie, but being able to go on the raids, to kill some of the bastards who are destroying our country, it helps a wee bit. I canna imagine what it would do to me to find out she was alive, and then that she was dead again, as Alex has. But I believe the reason he nearly died last time was because he couldna do anything but lie there in bed and think about her. If he has gone to Paris, then he’ll have to stay alert, and that’ll help him over the worst o’ the grief. I think he kens that.”
He had a point. And he’d had the experience of losing the only woman he’d ever love, too.
“Aye, ye could be right, man,” Angus conceded. “I hope ye are. We canna do anything about that anyway. What worries me now is why the post clerk chose to open Alex’s letter.”
“Maybe he opens everything that comes from London, just in case,” Dougal pointed out. “There canna be that many people writing from London to Scotland, apart frae the redcoats. And then when he’s read about the package, he’s come to the wrong conclusion altogether.”
Half of Scotland was talking about the missing gold which had been landed by the French the previous year, and which had subsequently disappeared, been stolen, or was buried in a place unknown, depending on which rumour you listened to. No one seemed to know where it was. Except, in the mind of a Glaswegian post office clerk, one James Drummond, who, in collusion with his uncle was trying to use it to raise the Jacobites again.
“Aye, if yon wee man tellt me true, and I think he did,” Angus said, “then it’s a good thing that he thought Alex was writing about the gold, because I dinna think he’s told more than a few about it, hoping to get it for himself. He wouldna have told anyone in London, because he’d ken that the first thing they’d do is try to capture Alex, and if he was right he’d never see a penny of it once the English got involved.”
“In which case it’s also a good thing that Alex isna in London, in case the man talks now ye’ve killed his accomplice,” Kenneth said.
“I’m thinking that this Mathieson, once he finds his man dead, will try to find out where the gold is some other way,” Angus said, trying to think as his brother would. “He’ll no’ tell the authorities what he was up to or they’ll ask a lot of awkward questions about why he didna go to them in the first place. And James Drummond’ll no’ be going to Glasgow again for a good long while, so I dinna think we need to concern ourselves, as long as Alex doesna go back to London and write from there. I canna see any reason why he would.”
Wee Jamie appeared in the distance running down the hill, and Angus immediately forgot about the letter, Mathieson, and even, temporarily, his brother. He leapt off the rock he’d been sitting on as though shot from a cannon and rocketed up the slope, passing the messenger without pausing.
Jamie carried on to where the others were watching their rapidly diminishing chieftain with amusement, looking disgruntled at not being able to pass his message on to its intended recipient.
“Is it good news?” Alasdair asked immediately.
“Aye, I think so, Pa,” Jamie said, sitting down on the vacated rock. “At least there was an awfu’ lot o’ screaming and cursing and suchlike, and then I heard the bairn cry. And then Ma came out and tellt me to fetch Angus and tell him that everything was well.”
There was a communal sigh of relief. The company cheered up immediately.
“Did she say if it was a laddie or lassie?” Alasdair asked.
His son shook his head.
“Ah well, it doesna signify as long as it’s healthy,” Alasdair said.
“Will I fetch the whisky then?” Allan suggested hopefully.
Kenneth patted him gently on the back, which nearly sent the slender young man sprawling on the grass.
“Aye,” Kenneth said. “We can make a start now, and then once we’ve got the new faither back wi’ us we can celebrate properly.”
The new faither stopped at the closed front door of the house, suddenly extremely nervous, uncertain as to the best way to proceed. He lifted his hand, and then realising how stupid it was to knock on your own door, opened it and took a step inside. They were living in Alex’s house, and Morag was currently sitting up in the bed, which had been brought down from the loft when Alex had been injured and was still there, because if the clan had to abandon their settlement for the cave again, it was easier to dismantle furniture that was on the ground floor, if there was time to do so.
He stood there, not knowing whether he was welcome or not, feeling shy and awkward, a small child again. There was a strong dark smell of blood, and the room was very warm due to the fire blazing in the hearth. Peigi, who was sitting at the bedside, looked up at him and smiled. She stood up and walked past him, squeezing his shoulder as she did.
“I’ll just be outside,” she said.
After she had gone he still stood unmoving, paralysed with shyness and shame at the pain he’d caused her.
“D’ye no’ want to say hello to your son?” Morag asked softly, when it became apparent that he might well stand there forever if she didn’t say something.
He moved across to the bed, looking down at his wife and at the small, neatly wrapped bundle cradled against her chest. Then he knelt down and looked with wonder at the tiny puckered face of his first child.
“My God,” Angus breathed, awestricken. He looked at her, and his eyes filled with tears. “I’m so sorry, mo chridhe,” he said.
Morag’s eyes widened with shock.
“Sorry? What for?” she asked. “Did ye no’ want a bairn after all?”
“What?” Angus said. “Christ, aye, a bairn, of course! He’s…I canna believe he’s real. No, I’m sorry I put ye through all that pain. I didna ken how bad it would be for ye. I swear I’ll no’ touch ye, ever again.”
Morag laughed.
“Angus MacGregor, ye’re the biggest eejit on God’s earth. And I love you.” She looked at the cut on his head, which had scabbed, and at the developing bruise around it. “I’m the one who should be sorry. Are ye hurt?”
“No. But ye tellt me I was a bastard, and no’ to come near ye, and then when I heard ye crying out, it fair broke my heart,” he said.
“Aye, well, I was a wee bit fashed wi’ ye then. But no more. I didna mean what I said. Look at what we made. Is he no’ the most beautiful bairn in the world?”
He was, without doubt, the most beautiful bairn in the world. He was fast asleep after the ordeal of being born, smacked to shock him into breathing, then washed. His eyes were tightly closed, his little brow creased in a frown, his lips pursed. A fuzz of pale hair could just be seen on his forehead, the rest of his head and body being obscured by the blanket he was wrapped in. Angus’s heart swelled with pride and joy, till he thought it might burst from his chest. Tears spilled over his eyelashes, running down his cheeks.
“I canna believe it,” he said. “I canna believe he’s mine. Ours,” he amended. “He’s beautiful, God, he’s so beautiful. Can I hold him?”
“Of course you can,” she said, smiling. “He’s yours.”
He leant over, and with infinite care picked up the tiny bundle, holding it against his chest.
“Welcome to the world, my son,” he said, bending to kiss the tiny nose. “Tha gràdh agam ort.” He looked across at his wife. “I love you too, so much,” he said, leaning across to kiss her as well. She shrank back in the bed.
“I smell horrible,” she said. “And I must look awfu’ bad. Will ye ask Janet to maybe help me clean myself a wee bit?” He looked at her. Her skin was pale and greasy, and her hair hung in lank sweaty strings around her face. She did, indeed, look and smell bad.
Angus got off his knees, sat on the bed next to her and swung his legs up on top of the blankets. Still cradling his son in his left arm, he wrapped his right around Morag, adjusting position until she was resting against his chest. Then he bent his head and kissed her hair.
“You have never been more beautiful than you are right now, mo leannan,” he said with absolute sincerity.
She smiled and leaned into her husband’s warm body. Her eyes closed.
“I bought ye a wee something when I was in Glasgow,” he said. With some difficulty he managed to reach the pocket of his coat, from which he retrieved a small parcel. He handed it to her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed on opening the tissue-wrapped present to reveal a slender silver bracelet, its links carefully crafted into a Celtic pattern. “It’s beautiful!” She slipped it on her wrist and held her arm up to the firelight to admire it. She turned her head and kissed his chest, which was the only part of him she could reach without moving, which she didn’t want to do.
“I bought it to cheer ye, because the baby was lying badly and causing ye pain,” he said. “I didna ken he’d come so soon. I’d no’ have gone at all, an I had.”
“Ye couldna have done anything if ye’d been here,” she said. “Did all go well in Glasgow?”
“Aye,” he replied, not wanting to disturb this perfect moment by telling her that he’d killed a man in cold blood in a dirty alleyway, Beth was, after all, dead, and Alex was careering off to France with his wits no doubt scattered. Time for that later.
“I dinna think he’s early,” Morag said. “Peigi said he’s bonny and full-size. I think we got our dates a wee bit wrong.” She held her wrist up to the light again, turning it so the firelight danced across the links. Angus smiled. It had been a good choice of gift. “I canna wait to see his wee cradle. Have ye finished it yet?”
“Almost,” he said. “I can finish it tomorrow, if I spend the day on it.”
He remembered the previous child he’d made a cradle for, how he’d smashed it to pieces in the throes of grief after the baby it had been intended for had not lived long enough to sleep in it. At that time he had vowed never to make another one. Strangely, it had been Iain who’d come to him, asked him if he was going to make one for his own child.
“No, it doesna seem right. Ye were no’ supposed to ken about it, anyway,” Angus had said.
Iain had smiled.
“We kent ye were making us something for the bairn, though we were no’ sure what,” he’d replied. “It was Beth who tellt us, afterwards, about the beautiful knotwork ye carved into the piece she found. Ye should make one. Ye’ve a God-given talent for the carving, and it wasna you making a cradle that caused the bairn to come before his time. I’d like to see what it would have looked like,” he’d finished.
So Angus had made a cradle for his baby. He had not kept it a secret that he was doing so, but he told Morag he didn’t want her to see it until it was finished.
“Shall I send Allan for Father MacDonald the morrow?” he asked.
“Aye, that would be wonderful,” Morag said sleepily. “Are we still naming him Alexander after your faither?”
“Aye, if it’s what you want too,” he said. It was the tradition, to name the first son after the paternal grandfather. “If his hair stays the same colour, Sandy’ll suit him well, and avoid confusion wi’ his uncle having the same name.”
“I’d like that. Hello, wee Sandy,” Morag said, her eyes closing.
Angus lay there, enjoying the warmth and weight of his wife against his right side and his son against his left.
At this moment, life was perfect.
When Peigi returned a few minutes later, intending to send Angus out while she cleaned the room and the new mother up a bit, the three members of the family were all fast asleep on the bed.
Peigi watched them for a moment, then smiling to herself turned and left them alone, closing the door very carefully behind her.
Then she made her way down to the lochside to join the celebrations, which were already well under way.