The Lost Pibroch, and other Sheiling Stories

“Later the pipes, Paruig Dali, the best player in the world! to thy story this time.” Is the cup to my right or left? Blessings! The Castle and Barge were my story.

Up and on, then, under the bridge, went Adventurer and his company of twelve, and he trailed white fingers over the low side of the boat, the tide warm like new milk. Under the long arch he held up his head and whooped gaily, like the boy he was in another dream, and Mactallamh laughed back from behind the smell of lime-drop and crotal hanging to the stones. Then into the sun again, on the wide flat river, with the fields sloping down on each hand, nodding to the lip with rush and flower.

“Faith and here’s fortune!” said Adventurer. “Such a day for sailing and sights was never before.”

And the Blue Barge met nor stone nor stay, but ever the twelve fine lads swinging cheerily at the oars, till they came to the white stairs.

Off the boat and up the clanging steps went Adventurer as bold as Eachan, and the bushes waving soft on every side. The gravel crunched to his foot – the white round gravel of Cantyre; kennelled hounds cried warning from the ditch-side; round him were the scenting flowers and the feeling of the little roads winding so without end all about the garden.

“Queer is this!” said he, feeling the grass-edge with his feet and fingering the leaves. “Here, surely, is weed nor nettle, but the trim bush and the swinging rose. The gardeners have been busy in the gardens of old ancient Castle Dark!”

When he came to the ditch, the drawbrig was down. To the warm airs of the day the windows, high and low, were open; a look of throng life was over the house, and in-by some one plucked angrily at the strings of a harp. Reek rose lazy and blue over the chimneys, the smell of roasting meats and rich broths hung on the air.

Under a tree got Adventurer and deep in thought. And soon the harping came to an end. A girl stepped to the bridge and over into the garden. She took to the left by the butter-house and into My Lady’s Canter, lined with foreign trees. Along the wide far road came a man to meet her, good-shaped, in fine clothes, tartan trews fitting close on leg and haunch, and a leather jacket held at the middle by a crioslach.

Under his tree stood Adventurer as they passed back, and close beside him the courtier pushed the hilt of a small-sword to his back and took the woman in his arms.

“Then if ye must ken,” said he, shamefacedly, “I am for the road to-morrow.”

The girl – ripe and full, not over-tall, well balanced, her hair waved back from over brown eyes, gathered in a knot and breaking to a curl on the nape of the neck like a wave on the shell-white shore – got hot at the skin, and a foot drummed the gravel in an ill temper.

“For yon silly cause again?” she asked, her lips thinning over her teeth.

“For the old cause,” said he; “my father’s, my dead brothers’, my clan’s, ours for a hundred years. Do not lightly the cause, my dear; it may be your children’s yet.”

“You never go with my will,” quo’ the girl again. “Here am I, far from a household of cheery sisters, so lonely, so lonely! Oh! Morag and Aoirig, and the young ones! were I back among them from this brave tomb!”

“Tomb, sweet!”

“Tomb said I, and tomb is it!” cried the woman, in a storm. “Who is here to sing with me and comfort me in the misty mornings, to hearten me when you are at wood or hill? The dreary woods, the dreary, dreary shore – they give me the gloom! My God, what a grey day!”

(And yet, by my troth, ‘twas a sunny day by the feel of it, and the birds were chirming on every tree!)

The gentleman put his hands on the girl’s shoulder and looked deep in her eyes, thinking hard for a wee, and biting at his low lip in a nervous way.

“At night,” said he, “I speak to you of chase and the country-side’s gossip. We have sometimes neighbours in our house as now, – old Askaig’s goodwife and the Nun from Inishail – a good woman and pious.”

Up went the lady’s head, and she laughed bitter and long.

“My good husband,” she said, in a weary way, “you are like all that wear trews; you have never trained your tracking but to woodcraft, or else you had found the wild-kit in a woman’s heart.”

“There’s my love, girl, and I think you love – ”

“Tuts, man! I talked not of that. Love is – love, while it lasts, and ye brag of Askaig’s wife and the Nun (good Lord!), and the old harridans your cousins from Lochow!”

“‘Tis but a tirrivie of yours, my dear,” said the man, kindly, kissing her on the teeth, and she with her hands behind her back. “Tomorrow the saddle, Sir Claymore, and the south country! Hark ye, sweet, I’ll fetch back the most darling thing woman ever dreamt of.”

“What might his name be?” asked the girl, laughing, but still with a bitterness, and the two went round to the ditch-brig and in-by.

Adventurer heard the little fine airs coming from the west, coiling, full of sap-smell, crooning in turret and among the grassy gable-tops, and piping into the empty windows.

‘Twas a summer’s end when he went on the next jaunt, a hot night and hung with dripping stars. The loch crawled in from a black waste of sorrow and strange hills, and swished on the shore, trailing among the wreck with the hiss of fingers through ribbons of silk. My dears, my dears! the gloom of hidden seas in night and lonely places! ‘Tis that dauntens me. I will be standing sometimes at the night’s down-fall over above the bay, and hearkening to the grinding of the salt wash on rock and gravel, and never a sound of hope or merriment in all that weary song. You that have seeing may ken the meaning of it; never for Paruig Dali but wonder and the heavy heart!

“‘Tis our thought a thousand times, just man; we are the stour that wind and water make the clod of! You spoke of a second jaunt?”

As ye say. It was in winter; and the morning —

“Winter, said ye, Paruig Dali? ‘Twas summer and night before.”

Winter I said, and winter it was, before faoilteach, and the edge of the morning. The fellow of my sgeul, more than a twelvemonth older, went to the breast wall and cried on Barge Blue that’s ever waiting for the sailor who’s for sailing on fairy seas.

In she came, with her twelve red-shirts tugging bravely at the oars, and the nose of her ripping the salt bree. Out, too, the carved plank, made, I’ll warrant, by the Norwegian fellow who fashioned the Black Bed of MacArtair, and over it to the cushioned seat Adventurer!

The little waves blobbed and bubbled at the boat’s shoulders; she put under the arch and up the cold river to the white stairs.

It was the middle and bloodiest time of all our wars. The glens behind were harried, and their cattle were bellowing in strange fields. Widows grat on the brae-sides and starved with their bairns for the bere and oat that were burned. But Adventurer found a castle full of company, the rich scum of water-side lairds and Lowland gentry, dicing and drinking in the best hall of Castle Dark. Their lands were black, their homes levelled, or their way out of the country – if they were Lowland – was barred by jealous clans. So there they were, drinking the reddest and eating the fattest – a wanton crew, among them George Mor, namely for women and wine and gentlemanly sword-play.

They had been at the cartes after supper. Wine lay on the table in rings and rivers. The curtains were across the window, and the candles guttered in the sconces. Debauched airs flaffed abroad in the room. At the head of the board, with her hair falling out of the knot, the lady of the house dovered in her chair, her head against George Mor’s shoulder, and him sleeping fast with his chin on his vest. Two company girls from the house in the forest slept forward on the table, their heads on the thick of their arms, and on either hand of them the lairds and foreigners. Of the company but two were awake, playing at bord-dubh, small eyed, oozing with drink. But they slept by-and-by like the lave, and sleep had a hold of Castle Dark through and through.

Adventurer heard the cock crow away at the gean-tree park.

One of the girls, stirring in her sleep, touched a glass with her elbow, and it fell on its side, the dark wine splashing over the table, crawling to the edge, thudding in heavy drops on the shoe of the mistress of the house, who drew back her foot without waking. But her moving started up the man at her ear. He looked at her face, kissed her on the hair, and got to his feet with no noise. A sour smile curdled his face when he looked about the room, drunken and yellow-sick in the guttering candlelight.

Stretching himself, he made for the window and pulled back the curtain.

The mountain looked in on the wastrel company, with a black and blaming scowl – the mountain set in blackness at the foot, but its brow touching the first of a cold day.

Tree and bush stood like wraiths all about the garden, the river cried high and snell. George Mor turned and looked at the room and its sleeping company like corpses propped in chairs, in the light of candle and daybreak.

The smell of the drunken chamber fogged at the back of his throat. He laughed in a kind of bitter way, the lace shaking at his neck and wrist-bands: then his humour changed, and he rued the night and his merry life.

“I wish I was yont this cursed country,” said he to himself, shivering with cold. “‘Tis these folk lead me a pretty spring, and had George Mor better luck of his company he was a decent man. And yet – and yet – who’s George Mor to be better than his neighbours? As grow the fir-trees, some of them crooked and some of them straight, and we are the way the winds would have us!”

He was standing in the window yet, deep in the morning’s grief, running his fingers among his curls.

Without warning the door of the room opened, and a man took one step in, soft, without noise, white-faced, and expecting no less than he found, by the look in his eyes. It was the goodwife’s husband, still with the mud on his shoes and the sword on his belt. He beckoned on the fellow at the window, and went before him (the company still in their sleep), making for the big door, and George Mor as he followed lifted a sword from a pin.

Close by Adventurer the two men stopped. It was on a level round of old moss, damp but springy, hid from the house by some saugh-trees.

The master of the house spoke first. Said he, “It’s no great surprise; they told me at the ferry over-by that strange carry-on and George Mor were keeping up the wife’s heart in Castle Dark.”

“She’s as honest a wife as ever – ”

“Fairly, fairly, I’ll allow – when the wind’s in that airt. It’s been a dull place this for her, and I have small skill of entertainment; but, man, I thought of her often, away in the camp!”

He was taking off his jacket as he spoke, and looking past George Mor’s shoulder and in between the trees at the loch. And now the day was fairly on the country.

“A bit foolish is your wife – just a girl, I’m not denying; but true at the core.”

“Young, young, as ye say, man! She’ll make, maybe, all the more taking a widow woman. She’ll need looks and gaiety indeed, for my poor cause is lost for good and all.”

“We saved the castle for you, at any rate. But for my friends in-by and myself the flambeau was at the root o’t.”

“So, my hero? In another key I might be having a glass with you over such friendship, but the day spreads and here’s our business before us.”

“I’ve small stomach for this. It’s a fool’s quarrel.”

“Thoir an aire!– Guard, George Mor!”

They fought warmly on the mossy grass, and the tinkle of the thin blades set the birds chirping in the bushes, but it could not be that that wakened my lady dovering in her chair in the room of guttering candles.

She started up in a dream, and found George Mor gone, and the mark of muddy brogues near the door fitted in with her dream. She wakened none of her drugged company, but hurried to the garden and in between the foreign trees to the summons of the playing swords.

“Stop, stop, husband!” she cried before she saw who was at the fighting; but only George Mor heard, and he half turned his head.

She was a little late. Her man, with a forefinger, was feeling the way to the scabbard, and a gout of blood was gathering at the point of his sword, when she got through the trees.

“Madame,” said he, cool enough but short in the breath, and bloody a little at the mouth, “here’s your gallant. He had maybe skill at diversion, but I’ve seen better at the small-sword. To-night my un-friends are coming back to harry Castle Dark, and I’m in little humour to stop them. Fare ye weel!”

A blash of rain threshed in Adventurer’s face; the tide crept at his feet, the fall of the oars on Barge Blue sank low and travelled far off. It was the broad day. Over above the river, Castle Dark grew black, but the fellow of my story could not see it.

“And the woman, Paruig Dali? What came of the woman?”

Another peat on the fire, little one. So! That the fellow of my story would need another trip to see. But Barge Blue is the ferry for all, high tide or low, in the calm and in the storm.