Highland Ballad | Page 3

it, or so it seemed, a faint strain of
bagpipes. She turned her face to listen. Was it possible: that
soul-stirring sound, so terrible in battle that the English had since
outlawed it?
Was it there, or was she truly mad? She strained all her senses..... No.
The sound was gone. She buried her face and wept once more,
defeated.
Again a breeze stirred, this time more gentle, this time much nearer.

She felt a large hand caress the crown of her head, and brush the side of
her face as she turned again, bewildered. Half blind with tears she saw
the wavering outline of a man, and heard a voice whisper,
"My Mary."
She knew no more.
Two
She was found there by her aunt, pale and shivering. And as
consciousness and memory returned to her, a light of wild hope and
fear widened the deep emerald of her eyes.
"Aunt Margaret, I saw him! He called me by name, I swear it!"
But whether because the wisdom of age had taught her the wishful
fancies of the young, or for some other reason, the hale, grey-haired
woman elucidated no surprise. She helped the frightened girl to her feet,
and without a word, started her on the path to home.
But once Mary had gone the old woman turned, and made her way
back to the grave. Reaching inside a goat-skin pouch that hung from
her side she produced something cold and pale, and kneeling, laid it
upon the heart of the mound. Then rose and looked about her with a
narrowing eye. Clasping a withered hand about the amulet that hung
from her neck she set off, leaving the bit of melancholy white behind.
A human finger.
The amulet about her neck was a raven's foot, clutching in frozen death
a dark opal.
Many hours later the old woman had still not returned to the cottage.
Mary sat with her elbows upon the sill of the loft window, the rage of
thoughts and questions inside her gradually slowing to the one emotion
possible in one who had seen and known such endless disappointment:
disbelief.
But try as she might to resolve herself to it, to accept that it had not
happened, still the phantom touch lingered inside her, denying all peace.
"My Mary." How differently the voice had said those words, than on
the day of her brother's passion! And yet how similar, how full of the
same love and care. And the only thought that would take solid hold in
her mind was that the two feelings, gentle love and hard desire, were
one in a man, inseparable, and that even as a child she had inspired
both in him. My Mary. Mine. She wanted to fall on her knees then and
there, and pray to be taken to him, in death or in life. But the sound of

her mother's voice stayed her, rising angrily from below.
"Mary! What are you about? Come down here at once."
Obediently, though without affection she submitted, descending the
wooden ladder-stair from the loft that served as her bedroom. Her
mother's face and whole bearing spoke of the cold composure, the
loveless discipline which always followed such an outburst. It was an
expression she had come to know all too well. Wherein lay the mystery
of this woman? She did not know, only that there was no
commiseration, no sense of shared loss between them, and that she was
hardly what the younger woman imagined a mother should be.
But on this day there was especial agitation among her classic, though
faded Scot features---round, sturdy face and steady, full blue eyes---and
a greater visible effort to control herself. Of late this usually meant that
she had quarreled with Margaret. And these arguments, Mary knew,
somehow centered on herself.
"Where is she?" the mother burst all at once. Like Michael she often
kept her deepest feelings under lock and key, revealing to the world
only a lesser parody of herself. But now something had happened---
"Go and find her!" she cried, at long last giving in. "And if she has
gone to that witch's hole of hers, then. . .tell her she may just as well
stay there, and the Devil take her! I've had enough of it, do you hear?
Let them burn her at the stake; I'll not have her bring shame upon this
house. It's all the same to me!" And she ran to the armchair by the
fireplace, hiding her face in her hands.
The daughter followed, more confused and forlorn than ever. She loved
her aunt, though she also feared her, and could not understand the
vindictive nature of the words spoken against her.
"Mother, what are you saying? What are you thinking of?"
The hands came down