Michael Innes - Lament for a Maker

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When mad recluse, Ranald Guthrie, the laird of Erchany, falls from the ramparts of his castle on a wild winter night, Appleby discovers the doom that shrouded his life, and the grim legends of the bleak and nameless hamlets, in a tale that emanates sheer terror and suspense.

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It must have been a daunting sight to the schoolmistress did she think to make Kildoon by her mountain paths that night. But if her eye was on Erchany the storm came fell convenient; within miles and miles around was no human dwelling save the meikle house and the deserted home farm hidden among the larches away below. So when the full blast came down, fit to blow the bit things from off her as she rode, she held on past her usual track and was presently dropping down to the biggins of Erchany farm.

More than half-way she’d got and could see through the smurr of the storm the shuttered windows and silent cattle court, right desolate in that savage desolate place, when over a dip and towards her, white and hurrying like it had been an uneasy ghost, came the slim figure of a quean. Next minute the schoolmistress saw it was Christine herself – indeed it couldn’t well be another in that remote spot – and she thought Christine must have seen her from down by the farm and was hurrying to meet her, friendly-like, in the storm. So she gave a wave, and a bit call that was straight snatched from her lips by the wind, and hurried down the path as fast as the machine she was wheeling would let her. But syne it came with a bit shock to the schoolmistress that Christine hadn’t seen her after all; the quean was holding up the brae slantwise away now, climbing fast with the long loon’s limbs of her and with nothing against the blast but some light woollen thing that was soaked already and clinging as she strode. Real alarmed for her, Miss Strachan said she was; maybe she was a bit alarmed for herself too, for with the storm coming down she was in sore need of welcome at Erchany and now the Gamleys were gone only Christine Mathers was certain not to shut the door on her. Anyway, she dropped her bicycle by the side of the path and half walked, half ran to intercept Christine as she climbed. And presently she came full in front of her and called out: ‘Miss Mathers, Miss Mathers, isn’t it awful weather to be out?’

This time the schoolmistress could hardly believe that the quean had failed to hear her – but hearing or not she strode straight on unheeding. The schoolmistress stopped in her tracks, right taken aback and not knowing whether to be affronted or alarmed, she wondered was Christine sleep-walking or was she gone clean skite with the awfulness of Erchany and the laird. And at that her heart near louped into her mouth, for at the thought of Guthrie she saw – and it was as if a flash of lightning had split the driving storm clouds above her – the Guthrie in Christine. That was what had ever stammagasted the gossips – that the quean showed nothing of the Guthrie stamp on her – and now here she was striding out as if she would scale Ben Cailie, looking neither to right nor left but gowking at the middle air, her cheeks whitened to real pallor and with flaming spots of colour to them, her lips moving as if it were in some prayer or chant. Just so, like a creature possessed, would Guthrie himself go by, you might speak to him if you dared but devil the answer would you get.

Miss Strachan’s revelation, the judicious reader will think, would count for little in a court of law, being but the fancy, in a dramatic moment, of a body whose head was choke full of scandal and prejudice. But certain she was that struck with the thing had come to her she made fient the effort to stop Christine again, but stood and watched her in her uncouthy course until she was fair lost in the drive of the storm. And fair lost the schoolmistress must have felt herself, for the wind was rising and rising, the fall of night wouldn’t be long, and sleet was coming down enough to sore damp the Athletic Ideal of a whole Olympic Games. The home farm, where syne she got a cup tea from Mistress Gamley, was, she well knew, deserted; and with Christine gone off on her mad rampage there would be none at the meikle house but Guthrie and Tammas and the creature Hardcastle with his doddered old wife. And attractive as the mystery of the dark ancient place may have seemed from the snug security of the Kinkeig schoolhouse, it was something she found she had little stomach for now: we may take leave to think the silly body stood there in the sleet and cursed the lure of the wanderer roundly. But that didn’t help her to as much as the lithe of a dyke or a bit dry straw. As the stationy might have said, she could distinguish three alternatives: she could stay where she was, or she could go on and break her neck as Christine was surely like to do, or she could struggle down to Erchany and the doubtful hospitality of Ranald Guthrie. And it came to her then, poor soul, what a fell awful place the meikle house was and how ill the douce quean Isa Murdoch had fared there, so that almost she decided to struggle on and try find Glen Mervie. Then from somewhere came a rush of good sense to her head, she went back for her bit machine and syne faced the old wives’ horrors of Guthrie and his eye and swords and gallery.

That resolution lasted her till she was up with the home farm; then she minded what a grand loft the Gamleys had had, Geordie and Alice had used to sleep there and awful fun they’d known, the two nickums, on the outside stair that climbed to it in the lithe of the cattle court. Like enough, she thought, the Gamleys had left behind the pallets the weans had slept on; could she get up there she’d be snug enough till morning, her having two–three cakes of chocolate with her such as wanderers and them that go in quest of Scotland and such stite always carry. So she made into the court and pushed her mucky bicycle into a byre and mounted the long stone outside stair, slushy and unchancy as it was. She tried the sneck of the door, sure enough nobody had thought to lock it, and sure enough there were the pallets, right cosy seeming after the snell wind and the louring lift. She’d be better here on her lone, she thought, than seeking the company of the uncanny folk at Erchany.

She was soaked to the skin despite the fine mackintosh she had, and going to the far end of the dim-lit loft she started to get out of her clothes. She was near stripped, she says – and you’ll notice there must always be a bit nakedness in Kinkeig gossip – she was near stripped when suddenly it darkened in the loft. The door must have blown right to, she thought, and she turned to keek at it and what did she see but the figure of a man in horrid silhouette against the waning daylight. More, she recognized that spare figure. It was Ranald Guthrie himself.

So you see the schoolmistress had got herself into a situation not unlike wee Isa Murdoch’s: I don’t know but what the author lad will scent some danger of monotony here. But certain Miss Strachan was far from feeling the position monotonous; she gave a yelp that would have startled the laird as much as he had startled her if he hadn’t at that moment banged to the door and thrust home a great bolt on the outside. For fient the thing had he seen of the dripping Bethsabe at the far end of the loft, nor maybe would his reactions have been much like King David’s if he had; he was only concerned to make the place fast against the storm, and a minute later the schoolmistress heard his feet going slush-slush down the stair again.

Syne when she’d recovered a bit from her start she saw the position wasn’t so bad if only Guthrie would go away. She wasn’t hopelessly a prisoner; there was a trapdoor down from the loft to the house, only never used and with no loft ladder to it, forbye she had her clothes and the pallets and she could still maybe swarm down an improvised rope-ladder like she had used to do at the training college when they were dinging the Athletic Ideal into her. And once down she could surely get out by one window or another when she wanted to. Meantime she huddled on her wet clothes again, there seemed nothing else to do with a man about the place.

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