The Betrayal of Maggie Blair - By Elizabeth Laird Page 0,2

of Keames's cattle and drive them east across the hills to sell in Glasgow. He was only meant to stay in Bute for a week or two, while the cattle were rounded up for him, but he chanced on my mother as she walked down the lane to the field to milk Blackie one warm June evening. The honeysuckle was in flower and the wild roses too, and it was all over with him at once, so Tam said.

"Never a love like it, Maidie," Tam told me. "Don't you listen to your granny. A child born of love you are, given to love, made for love."

"Granny said the sea took my father," I asked Tam once. "What did she mean?"

I'd imagined a great wave curling up the beach, twining around my father's legs, and sucking him back into the depths.

"An accident, Maidie. Nothing more." Tam heaved a sigh. "Your father was taking the cattle to the mainland up by Colintraive, making them swim across the narrows there. He'd done it a dozen times before. The beasts weren't easy—lively young steers they were—and one of them was thrashing about in the water as if a demon possessed it. Perhaps a demon did, for the steer caught your father on the head with its horn, and it went right through his temple. He went down under the water, and when he was washed up a week later, there was a wound from his eyebrow to the line of his hair deep enough to put your hand inside."

***

There's nothing like hard work in the cold of a wet December day for cooling your temper, and by the time I got home I was more miserable than angry. My arms were aching from the weight of the sack. I was wet through. The mud on my hem slapped clammily against my ankles, and I wished I'd been sensible instead of running through the bog.

I was expecting another scolding from Granny as soon as she saw the state of my clothes, the rips in my shawl, and my face all streaked with peat and rain and tears, but she only said, "Oh, so it's you come home again, and a fine sight you are too. Running through the bog like a mad child—I saw you."

She took my wooden bowl down from the shelf, ladled some hot porridge into it from the cauldron, and put it into my hands.

"Take off that soaking shawl and put it to dry, and your gown too."

It wasn't an apology exactly, but it was all I'd get. I could see that she was sorry for what she'd said by the way she set a stool and told me to sit down by the fire of peat that was smoldering on the hearthstone in the middle of the room. I was feeling chilled now and was shivering. I crouched low over the weak flames, never minding the thick smoke that curled up into my face, grateful for Sheba, who jumped up into my lap and let me warm my hands in her soft black fur.

The days are short in December. It was soon time to fetch Blackie in for the night and shut her into her byre, which was no more than a room beside the kitchen. For once, Granny went out to find her herself and to milk her too. As she came back toward the cottage, I could hear her talking to someone and laughing. There was only one person who could draw such a happy sound from her.

Tam, I thought, jumping up with delight.

Blackie's hooves clopped on the stone threshold of her byre, and then came a thud against the thin wooden partition at the end of the kitchen as she butted her manger with her head. The kitchen door opened, and Granny and Tam came in.

Tam's shirt was dark with sweat, his short breeks were ragged at the ankles and torn at the knees, and the plaid he wore wrapped around himself was so dirty and stained that the wool's once-bright colors had gone for good. But that meant nothing to me. His front teeth were gone, his face was pitted and scarred with the smallpox, his long, tall body was as thin as a stick, and the hair under his blue bonnet had mostly fallen out, but there was no one who cared for me as Tam did, and no one else that I loved.

"Look at the girl now," he said, setting a black bottle down on