Behind them, from the doorway, Marion asked, “Celebrate what?”
Lily said, “I am having a birthday, and—”
“We could go skating!” Excitedly, Marion told Mr. Bell, “We have all those skates you made year before last, and we’ve not used them once yet this winter, and it has been ages since we’ve been to Duddingston. Lily, have you ever been? There, you see? We must take her to Duddingston Loch!”
Lily wanted to go, but she tried to explain such a thing was impossible. “Saturday I have a half day and Jean is expecting me home and my sister will not soon forgive me,” she said, “if I don’t spend my birthday with them.”
Marion posed the solution. “We’ll bring them along with us. Couldn’t we, Father?”
Mr. Bell looked at both girls with indulgence. “Of course we could. I’ll speak to Corporal Morison. I’m off to find him now, in fact, to see if he’ll be witness to a bond for my apprentice, who I’m told did nothing wrong.”
And with a smile and wink at Lily, he went out.
*
The day began brightly enough.
It was difficult to fathom that their hired coach could carry them to Duddingston in no more than an hour. It seemed so distant from the town, though Lily only had to gaze up at the high crags rising as a backdrop in their winter shades of mottled green and gold and grey beneath a cobweb cloak of snow, to realize those belonged to Arthur’s Seat, which lay within the royal park of Holyrood. Were she to climb it and go down the other side, she’d find the palace and the abbey church still standing at the bottom of the Canongate. Another world.
But here, beneath a sky that held few clouds, the sunlight struck the ice upon the frozen surface of the loch and made it sparkle, while around the shore the frost grew thickly on the trees and banks and, catching that same light, turned all to diamonds.
Down the whole length of the loch were countless people skating round and standing still, in groups and pairs and singly, with the rasping of blades carving ice a constant sound beneath the play of cheerful talk and laughter.
Overlooking them, besides the looming hill of Arthur’s Seat, there was an old square-towered church, and the thatched roofs of a cluster of small houses Lily took to be the village.
And of course, there were the swans.
Marion told her that when summer came they ruled the loch and sailed its water with their cygnets in regal procession, but the ice had stolen most of their domain now so their kingdom for the winter months was limited to where the ice lay thin enough that they could break a path through with the power of their breasts and keep the water open so that they could feed. They’d opened a small pond of sorts close by the shoreline near the church, and Lily counted five swans swimming tightly pressed together.
Bessie saw them, too. The instant Jean set Bessie down, the little girl became a blur of motion, running straight toward those swans.
A second blur followed her, nearly as fast. Corporal Morison. “Bessie!”
But the little girl had already gone several steps onto the ice before she heard his voice and turned. Where she stood, the ice would not have borne the corporal’s weight. Taking up a tree branch that had fallen near the shore, he edged toward her on his knees and held it out.
Lily, who’d been chasing close behind him, saw the worry on his face but he was careful not to let it touch his voice as he said calmly, “Lie down, Bessie, on your belly. That’s my lass. Now, pull yourself towards me. Come and take a hold of this, and I’ll give ye a ride. Aye, that’s the way.”
When Bessie grasped the branch, the corporal pulled hard and she slid to him across the ice, away from where the swans were floating on the open water.
Bessie’s giggle was a joyous sound. “I slided!”
“Aye.” The corporal let his breath out in relief. He dropped the branch, and with one arm he swept the small girl up and, holding her securely, took her back to where Jean waited for them, Lily walking alongside.
“Now,” he said, and settled Bessie in the little sledge they’d brought, with wee James bundled on her lap in blankets, “this is where ye stay while we are on the loch, ye hear? I’ll not be losing either one of ye.”
Jean looked at him with meaning, and he caught himself and turned to Lily with a smile. “Nor ye,” he added.
But the words were said, and she had heard and understood them, and the morning that had started off so brightly had been dulled by them. A slap would have been easier to bear, somehow, than being made an afterthought.