Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

" W hen are ye goin' tae stop daein' this?" Lorna demanded as she braided Minna's hair into a tight plait, ready for her fifth nightly excursion in a row.

"I will stop when there is no need to do it any more, Lorna," she replied firmly. "How would you like it if you were hungry and you knew someone who could help you, but that person did nothing? It is not something I do to make myself feel good. It is my duty."

Lorna sighed, but nodded in agreement. "Ye're right, hen, but I worry about ye."

She looked so distressed that Minna turned around and hugged her. "You have told me so a thousand times, Lorna, and you have asked me to stop a thousand times too." Her voice was gentle. "Believe me, I would stop if I could, but I can't. As long as my brother is treating his people this way I have to do what is right." She looked into her friend's eyes and saw the love in them. They had been together for so long that they could not live without each other.

"I am comin' with ye," Lorna said angrily.

"Indeed you are not!" Minna's face was a mask of anger. "It is bad enough that I have to do this, but I am not dragging you into it as well. Stay here."

Lorna was stunned into silence. Minna rarely raised her voice unless it was something very serious, and it had been a long time since she had seen her so angry.

"Aye, hen," she said meekly, then turned and picked up the tray that had held Minna's supper then walked out to the kitchen.

Minna felt wretched. She had just taken the anger she should have directed at Jamie and poured it onto her best friend in the whole world. Damn Jamie! This was all his fault. She vowed to apologize humbly when she came back.

Usually, when Minna arrived at the village most of the inhabitants were asleep, and she dropped her packages off in their barns for collection in the morning. It was normally only young mothers with tiny babies still breastfeeding who were awake at that time, so she was surprised to see candles in a few of the windows. She was even more astonished when many of the villagers began to come out of their cottages to greet her, all of them smiling.

"To what do I owe the honor?" she asked, laughing as they gathered all around her. "You are usually all asleep at this time."

"We wanted tae thank ye, Mistress." Davie Donaldson, the oldest man in the village spoke up. "We found the deer ye left for us. We have decided tae eat a wee bit o' our share now an' dry the rest for winter. It willnae go very far between the lot o' us, but it is more meat than we have seen in a long time. We are a' very grateful, so thank ye."

"Aye!" cried Jack Aitken, one of the adolescent boys who hero-worshiped Minna. "Did ye shoot it yourself, Mistress?"

Minna looked at the faces all around her, baffled. "I am sorry, Jack," she replied, "but I did not shoot anything, and I hardly know how to use a bow. I know nothing about a deer."

The villagers looked at Minna, surprised and puzzled.

"Then how did it come tae be there?" the boy asked, frowning.

Minna shrugged. "I have no idea. It was obviously a gift from a benefactor." ‘Or a trap,' she thought. It would be just like Jamie to do such a thing then blame the villagers for stealing his game.

"I smell a rat here," Davie said grimly, frowning. "If it is no' from ye, then who can it be, Mistress? It might no' be somebody wi' good intentions at a'."

Minna thought for a moment. "Exactly what I was thinking myself, Davie, so what I suggest you do is keep the deer a secret for now, no matter how tempting it is to discuss it with your friends and family outside the village. I will have to find out more about it. Was there an arrow in it? I may recognise it."

"No, mistress," Mary McPhee, one of the young mothers, answered. "It was shot clean through the heart. Looked like somebody that knew how tae use a bow. They knew what they were daein' a' right."

‘Like one of the castle guards,' Minna thought. Aloud, she said: "I will look into it. Now, take your food, for I must be going back. The nights are becoming shorter, and I must be home before there is light."

"Before ye go, Mistress," Dan McGowan, a big, burly man in his middle years, spoke abruptly. He was usually a man of few words, and the fact that he was speaking at all made Minna realize how desperate the situation was. "We need tae ask ye tae beg the Laird for some help yet again. I am sorry, but our crops are failin' once more, an' even wi' your generous help, we willnae be able tae get through the winter, because we will have nae corn or barley tae sell."

Minna gazed at the big, proud man and felt a mixture of both sorrow and anger. This should not be happening, and it was all the fault of her lazy, idiotic brother, who cared more for his own selfish desires than for other people's lives.

"I know how desperate things are," she conceded, "but I don't know what else to do."

"Wi' the greatest o' respect, mistress," Dan said. "I dinnae think ye know how bad things are. The food ye give us - we know ye bring as much as ye can but it is no' enough, an' we try to give what we have tae the bairns so they grow up right. The Laird needs tae see that without enough tae eat we cannae produce crops we can sell, an' then we willnae be able tae pay rent. He might end up turnin' us oot o' our hames, an' then where will we go? An' he will have tae find new tenants, an' that will cost him." Minna saw tears standing in the big man's eyes and heard his voice becoming hoarse with emotion.

She sat on the ground and was silent for a moment after Dan's heartfelt plea. She could think of nothing else to say. Nothing she could do would make any difference without Jamie's help and he had said over and over again that he would not give it. She felt utterly powerless, and worse still, useless. All she could do was promise to try - again. Then, abruptly, she burst into tears.

At once everyone was around Minna, hugging her, patting her shoulders, wiping away her tears and offering her words of comfort. She found a mug of ale thrust into her hands and drank it because everyone pressed it upon her, but she felt guilty taking away from them what little they had.

Eventually she stood up. While she had been weeping, her anger had crystallized into an iron-hard resolution. She would force Jamie to listen to her. There was a way. She just had to find it.

Unfortunately, the villagers kept Minna talking too long that night as they tried to think of ways to make Jamie Darroch see sense that the first fingers of dawn light were streaking the sky as she mounted Caesar and went on her way.

She sneaked Caesar into the stables with the help of one of her friends and went via the kitchen and the servants' stairs to her room. She was relieved when she realized that no one had yet risen from bed, so she silently crept upstairs and opened the door only to walk straight into Lorna's arms.

"Where have ye been?" she asked, her voice a mixture of fear and fury. "I was worried tae death!" She shook Minna so hard that her teeth rattled, but Minna wrapped her arms around her and hugged her tightly, wondering what she would have done had she not had her friend to come back to.

"I am so sorry, Lorna," she said tearfully. "I am sorry I fought with you before I went out, and I am sorry I took so long to come home. You must have been so scared - please forgive me. It was very - oh, Lorna, it was terrible!"

Lorna put Minna away a little, then searched her face minutely. She had never seen her so distressed. "Sit down," she ordered gently, ushering her into a chair. "Ye need one o' these." She held up a carafe of whisky. "But no' on an empty stomach." She proceeded to set out a tray of bannocks, cheese and black pudding with a glass of milk and put it on a table, then tucked a napkin under Minna's chin.

"You take such good care of me," Minna said warmly. "I don't deserve you, Lorna."

"Pfft!" Lorna waved a hand dismissively. "Ye're an awful woman! The puddin' is cold, but it serves ye right for keepin' it waitin' sae long. Now eat."

The last thing Minna wanted to do was eat, but she forced the food down valiantly so as not to upset her friend till there was nothing but crumbs on the plate.

Lorna disposed of the empty plate and poured the whisky. "Is it not a wee bit early in the morning for this?" Minna asked, looking at the amber liquid doubtfully.

"It is no' an ordinary day," Lorna replied, "an' I think ye need it just this once. Ye look a bit green."

Minna nodded and took a tiny sip of the fiery liquid. She was not too fond of whisky, but she reasoned that she had upset Lorna enough for one day, and now owed it to her to indulge her for a while.

Lorna led Minna to the couch where they sat by the fire in companionable silence for a while.

"You said somethin' was terrible," Lorna asked at last. "What was it?"

Minna gave a loud and angry sigh. "Those poor people in Cairndene, Lorna. I don't know what to do for them. There is only so much I can find in our food stores before they run out, and I fear I have taken too much already. I am at my wits' end. Begging Jamie does not work. I may as well bang my head against a brick wall, but I will have to make him hear me somehow." She took another sip of her drink and moved nervously to the window.

"I stayed out too late and I think I may have been seen by the cook or one of the kitchen maids as I came back in again. You know how much Missus Morrison dislikes me."

This was true. Their head cook, Emily Morrison, had harbored a deep dislike of Minna since she was fifteen, when she had disliked one of her dishes and made it plain in no uncertain terms. This had earned the cook an extremely stern reprimand from her father in the form of a physical beating, and she had never forgiven Minna. Emily Morrisom was a champion grudge holder.

"I am terrified that one of them will tell my brother." She took another sip of her whisky as she looked out of the window. Her bedroom overlooked the steep side of the hill and she could see the village and the haunted woods a little way away.

She knew in her sensible mind that there was no demon in the forest, yet something had always kept her away from it. "The villagers had a gift yesterday," she told Lorna, turning away from the window to look at her friend again. "A deer. Someone had left it in the village for them. They all thanked me for it, but I was not responsible, and I told them so. Now I am wondering if it was a trap set by Jamie - you know how possessive he is about the game." She paced towards the window again. "Damn, Lorna! I wish I knew how to change Jamie's mind!"

Lorna folded her arms and gave Minna a thorough top-to-toe inspection. "Maybe ye can think about it while ye are in the bath," she suggested.