Corporal Morison smiled as though that thought amused him, and Jean smiled, too, and Lily recalled what her grandmother had said about Jamie’s family. She’d said: “There’s a difference between us and them. There are some bridges in this life, lass, that ye cannot cross.”
Lily wondered whether God had marked the Graemes differently, so they would be higher than the Aitchesons, and have a nicer house. A better life. A happy family.
Jamie came around each afternoon that week to call for her, but Lily made excuses why she could not see him. Finally Jean, when tucking Lily gently into bed at night, said, “It’s not like ye, to not wish to play with Jamie.”
Lily knew in her own heart that she was not behaving fairly to her friend, but neither was it fair, she thought, that he still had his father. She’d lost both her parents now.
She tried explaining this to Jean, who listened carefully, and bent and placed a kiss on Lily’s hair, and told her, quietly, “Ye still have me.” Jean’s hand found Lily’s smaller one, and held it. “Your brother and your sister and myself, we’re still your family, as we ever were. Ye’ll no more be alone.” Her hand squeezed Lily’s, reassuring. “But ye should never turn your friends away when they’ve done nothing wrong and ye have need of them. Especially a friend as faithful as your Jamie Graeme.”
Lily nodded, and she promised, “When he comes the morn, I’ll go along with him.”
“No, not the morn. Best wait till Thursday.”
“Why?”
“Because the morn’s when Mr. Campbell will be served his justice.” Jean refused to call the Earl of Argyll by his title. In her view, he had no claim to such an honor, since he was a traitor to King James, and son besides to that same Argyll who had stood against the great Montrose. “The streets will not be safe.”
“Why?”
“Because there are many who do think on Mr. Campbell as their leader, and who wish that his rebellion had succeeded,” Jean explained. “While he had his covenanting army in the field, they were content to bide their time and keep their true hearts hid, like serpents in the grass, but now their cause has come to naught there are some will be boldened by it, who will show their anger freely and make trouble for the good men of this town.”
Lily said, “But Captain Graeme will not let them.” She had meant that to sound sure, but even she could hear the waver in her voice that made it come out as more of a question, and Jean lightly squeezed her hand again.
“No,” Jean assured her. “Captain Graeme will not let them. He and Corporal Morison and all the men of the town guard will put themselves between us and all harm. Now, be like Bessie. She’s been sleeping all this time that ye’ve been worrying, with not a care to stop her dreams. Try that, and I’ll be right here when ye waken.”
Lily rolled obediently, snuggling close to Bessie in the blankets, trying to recapture that elusive sense of comfort and security she’d felt when they had been a complete family.
“Lily?” Bessie hadn’t been asleep at all. Her warm breath stirred the hair at Lily’s cheek as, in her baby whisper, she said, edging closer, “Ye still have me, too.”
Lily couldn’t say anything back, for her heart, at that moment, was filling her throat, but she held to her sister more tightly than ever and, after a while, she did sink into dreams.
*
Jean was right. Lily did notice a change in the mood of the town in the days that came after Argyll’s execution.
Like his father, he had been beheaded by the Maiden—that machine of death with its great, weighted metal blade that, when the rope was loosed, dropped swiftly down upon the person who was forced to lay their bare neck on the crossbeam underneath.
Jean had no sympathy to spare him. “He stood and he watched and made merry enough when Montrose was led by to his own execution, I’m told,” she said. “I only wish I could have done the same for Mr. Campbell. But I dared not leave the bairns.”
Corporal Morison touched her arm, offering comfort. “Ye did wisely. We may have our own Scottish rebels dispersed, but their plan from the outset was to act in concert with those down in England who’ve risen to follow the king’s nephew, that traitor Monmouth, and till his rebellion is ended, there still will be those here who wait and have hope. There’ll be danger.”
Jean said, “There will be more danger when the rebellion is ended, I promise ye that, for there’s nothing so dark as a heart that’s lost hope.”