“I’m not a bastard!” he shrieked. “I’m not, I’m not! Take it back! Nobody can say that to me! Take it back, I said!”
Jamie stared at the boy in shock. There had been talk, then, and Willie had heard it. He had delayed his going too long.
He drew a deep breath, and then another, and hoped that his voice would not tremble.
“I take it back,” he said softly. “I shouldna have used the word, my lord.”
He wanted to kneel and embrace the boy, or pick him up and comfort him against his shoulder—but that was not a gesture a groom might make to an earl, even a young one. The palm of his left hand stung, and he curled his fingers tight over the only fatherly caress he was ever likely to give his son.
Willie knew how an earl should behave; he was making a masterful effort to subdue his tears, sniffing ferociously and swiping at his face with a sleeve.
“Allow me, my lord.” Jamie did kneel then, and wiped the little boy’s face gently with his own coarse handkerchief. Willie’s eyes looked at him over the cotton folds, red-rimmed and woeful.
“Have you really got to go, Mac?” he asked, in a very small voice.
“Aye, I have.” He looked into the dark blue eyes, so heartbreakingly like his own, and suddenly didn’t give a damn what was right or who saw. He pulled the boy roughly to him, hugging him tight against his heart, holding the boy’s face close to his shoulder, that Willie might not see the quick tears that fell into his thick, soft hair.
Willie’s arms went around his neck and clung tight. He could feel the small, sturdy body shake against him with the force of suppressed sobbing. He patted the flat little back, and smoothed Willie’s hair, and murmured things in Gaelic that he hoped the boy would not understand.
At length, he took the boy’s arms from his neck and put him gently away.
“Come wi’ me to my room, Willie; I shall give ye something to keep.”
He had long since moved from the hayloft, taking over Hughes’s snuggery beside the tack room when the elderly head groom retired. It was a small room, and very plainly furnished, but it had the twin virtues of warmth and privacy.
Besides the bed, the stool, and a chamber pot, there was a small table, on which stood the few books that he owned, a large candle in a pottery candlestick, and a smaller candle, thick and squat, that stood to one side before a small statue of the Virgin. It was a cheap wooden carving that Jenny had sent him, but it had been made in France, and was not without artistry.
“What’s that little candle for?” Willie asked. “Grannie says only stinking Papists burn candles in front of heathen images.”
“Well, I am a stinking Papist,” Jamie said, with a wry twist of his mouth. “It’s no a heathen image, though; it’s a statue of the Blessed Mother.”
“You are?” Clearly this revelation only added to the boy’s fascination. “Why do Papists burn candles before statues, then?”
Jamie rubbed a hand through his hair. “Aye, well. It’s…maybe a way of praying—and remembering. Ye light the candle, and say a prayer and think of people ye care for. And while it burns, the flame remembers them for ye.”
“Who do you remember?” Willie glanced up at him. His hair was standing on end, rumpled by his earlier distress, but his blue eyes were clear with interest.
“Oh, a good many people. My family in the Highlands—my sister and her family. Friends. My wife.” And sometimes the candle burned in memory of a young and reckless girl named Geneva, but he did not say that.
Willie frowned. “You haven’t got a wife.”
“No. Not anymore. But I remember her always.”
Willie put out a stubby forefinger and cautiously touched the little statue. The woman’s hands were spread in welcome, a tender maternity engraved on the lovely face.
“I want to be a stinking Papist, too,” Willie said firmly.
“Ye canna do that!” Jamie exclaimed, half-amused, half-touched at the notion. “Your grandmama and your auntie would go mad.”
“Would they froth at the mouth, like that mad fox you killed?” Willie brightened.
“I shouldna wonder,” Jamie said dryly.
“I want to do it!” The small, clear features were set in determination. “I won’t tell Grannie or Auntie Isobel; I won’t tell anybody. Please, Mac! Please let me! I want to be like you!”
Jamie hesitated, both touched by the boy’s earnestness, and suddenly wanting to leave his son with something more than the carved wooden horse he had made to leave as a farewell present. He tried to remember what Father McMurtry had taught them in the schoolroom about baptism. It was all right for a lay person to do it, he thought, provided that the situation was an emergency, and no priest was to hand.
It might be stretching a point to call the present situation an emergency, but…a sudden impulse made him reach down the jug of water that he kept on the sill.
The eyes that were like his watched, wide and solemn, as he carefully brushed the soft brown hair back from the high brow. He dipped three fingers into the water and carefully traced a cross on the lad’s forehead.
“I baptize thee William James,” he said softly, “in the name o’ the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Willie blinked, crossing his eyes as a drop of water rolled down his nose. He stuck out his tongue to catch it, and Jamie laughed, despite himself.
“Why did you call me William James?” Willie asked curiously. “My other names are Clarence Henry George.” He made a face; Clarence wasn’t his idea of a good name.
Jamie hid a smile. “Ye get a new name when you’re baptized; James is your special Papist name. It’s mine, too.”
“It is?” Willie was delighted. “I’m a stinking Papist now, like you?”
“Aye, as much as I can manage, at least.” He smiled down at Willie, then, struck by another impulse, reached into the neck of his shirt.
“Here. Keep this, too, to remember me by.” He laid the beechwood rosary gently over Willie’s head. “Ye canna let anyone see that, though,” he warned. “And for God’s sake, dinna tell anyone you’re a Papist.”
“I won’t,” Willie promised. “Not a soul.” He tucked the rosary into his shirt, patting carefully to be sure that it was hidden.
“Good.” Jamie reached out and ruffled Willie’s hair in dismissal. “It’s almost time for your tea; ye’d best go on up to the house now.”
Willie started for the door, but stopped halfway, suddenly distressed again, with a hand pressed flat to his chest.
“You said to keep this to remember you. But I haven’t got anything for you to remember me by!”
Jamie smiled slightly. His heart was squeezed so tight, he thought he could not draw breath to speak, but he forced the words out.
“Dinna fret yourself,” he said. “I’ll remember ye.”
17
MONSTERS RISING
Loch Ness
August 1968
Brianna blinked, brushing back a bright web of hair caught by the wind. “I’d almost forgotten what the sun looks like,” she said, squinting at the object in question, shining with unaccustomed ferocity on the dark waters of Loch Ness.