Picking the Ballad's Bones (18 page)

And down below stood a man the
spitting image of Willie MacKai from his long elegant legs to his
tousled hair with its gold glints in the sun, his gleaming eyes,
his proud bearing, and the hint he gave of being barely able to
stand still for needing to pace. So if that was Willie MacKai down
there, Willie MacKai wondered, why did he seem to be here? Had he
sprouted a twin? Then he opened his mouth and a soprano drowned in
honey sang out to the handsome devil below, "Ah canna cum noo,
love. My father and brothers are back frae the campaign and they
ranted sae loudly ah had nae time tae explain tae them aboot our
marriage. Be wary o' them—ah had a dream last nicht and ah fear it
portends us ill. Ah dreamed we pu'd t'heather and birk up on yon
hill. Gae there straightwa' an' ah'll meet ye as soon as ah
may."

Disoriented, Willie
asked,
"Who am I?"
and was answered,
"Why. Sarah Scott,
the sorrowfulest woman in the world and yet
—
with only a little luck, I could be
the happiest. Oh look at him, yon laddie, fast and slippery as a
moss ranger stealin 'frae my window. Was there ever sic a
bonny sight as him in the plaidie I wove for him
wi' my ane twa hands?"

For although Willie still
recognized his spirit as himself as well as a part of Sarah, Sarah
only knew him as part of
herself.
To her he seemed to be that little voice
everybody has that chides and counsels and argues with them—the
voice of experience, the voice of conscience, the voice of caution,
the voice that balances and weighs our inclinations with our
restrictions. Willie, with unsettling direct access to Sarah's
thoughts and to her feelings, both emotional and physical, no more
wished to upset or thwart her than he would have himself in his own
body. If he had become part of her, then part of her had become him
as well. He had become her alter ego and she, for the moment, his.
She was, most urgently, his business.

His spirit, joined with
hers, shared her enthusiasms as he looked through her fond eyes
down at her true love.
"No, never. A good
man, a good choice,"
he agreed with
her.
"Look at his seat
on that horse! You've got good taste,
Sarah Scott. He's a very bonny lad
—"

"Aye, a flower among
men,"
Sarah added, sighing so heavily her
breasts ached and a loving warmth melted within her loins.
Delicately, soothing herself as she would soothe a horse, she
smoothed her nightdress over her thighs, then let her hands clasp
over the dome of her
belly.
"I canna see how Father overlooked him though
he's
anely a second son instead of a first
and his brother inherits. He's a better man than a' my three
brothers pu' taegethair, will mak me a better husband and my father
a better son. We'd be happy in a bower in the broom if need be, if
only my family would not stand between us."

"A bower in the broom?
With no fireplace to cook for him and no loom to make him clothes?
No stable for his
horse and no cradle for
the baby? And don't forget the bed.
Without those things how can you be happy? He may be able to
live wild, but you'll soon be a mother. It's not like you can get a
job or go to college. You're going to want to keep house for your
man and your baby. Women are like that. You know it's true. You say
you'd be happy with little, but would you truly?"
Willie knew all about this kind of
reasoning from the girlfriends he'd had who'd
sworn they'd be happy on the road with no money and later, even
without babies, proved dissatisfied with the
arrangement.

But Sarah twirled herself
(and him within her) around as if physically flinging off care and
crowed,
''How foolish tae trouble myself
with such questions. Aye, oh, aye, I could be happy and my bairn
would be happy and so would we all if only we were allowed! It's
that dream has me fey! That and my time bein' sae near. What shall
I wear? The brown dress or the gay green?"

"The green goes better
with our eyes and brings out the
color in
our cheeks. Better go for the green at least until we
get our figure back."
Willie, as a performer, knew the importance of all aspects of
image, even though he'd never had to deal with being pregnant
before.

Sarah grabbed the green dress and
slipped it over her nightie, which Willie realized also served as
their mutual slip—er—shift. The effect was charming, though a bath
wouldn't have hurt them. There was no time for that, however.
Sarah's lover was waiting and Willie, in Sarah's body, felt soft
and glowy and full of hope, yearning toward the man who waited for
his love up on the hill in the den, for his caresses and his loving
words.

And this didn't seem unnatural to him.
He was a part of Sarah Scott and instead of finding her feelings
and her yearnings strange, in her body they felt natural to him,
exotic—impossible to feel so incredibly turned on without an
erection, he would have thought, but he felt it. Maybe it was
because the true love was so much like himself—maybe it was some
kind of an urge for his consciousness to rejoin his real body, to
be one with himself again. On the other hand, hadn't true love been
described that way? He'd never believed in it himself, especially.
Lust, sure. Wanting a woman because she seemed desirable, like a
partner who could expand his life a little. That was
understandable. But that never worked out. And it never started
with this kind of need. Had any of those women ever felt for him
what Sarah felt, what he was feeling, for the man who waited on yon
hill?

“
Yon?” He was even
starting to think with her accent. But it only seemed right. The
landscape outside the window looked very much like that that he'd
been passing through the last two days. More than that, it felt
like home.

"Enough trouble in the
world without borrowin' more,"
Sarah
thought.
"Father will surely be
reasonable
—
will
understand he maun recognize
our marriage now, with the
bairn on the
way. 'Twas just the shock of it cumin' upon him all at once that
upset him."

"And what about the bruise
on your cheek?"

"He didna mean tae strike
me sae hard and he wouldna let my brothers abuse me, for he said I
was but a stupid girl and easily set on my back and my brothers
laughed at that, for often enough they tried to corner me after I
grew bubbies and before they went a-campaigning. He's a rash man
and he had mickle drink inside him."

"You're soft in the head.
Your father's cruel and he'll never relent. Even if he did, how
could it work out?"

"I've my tocher lands that
are a' my ane and we could live there when the babe is born. Cook
says 'tis a boy and she has the Sight. If it is a boy, Father will
forgive me
sartain, for John's wife and
Michael's wife have borne only daughters and Robbie's yet tae wild
tae settle doon. Father
will forgive us
aince I gie him a grandson tae dandle on his knee."

And Willie thought, 'Maybe
this is one of the happy ballads after all?' Sarah should know her
people better than he, and he felt like whistling as Sarah pulled
on their kirtle and tied it up with ribbons so it wouldn't drag in
the grass. Willie enjoyed the grace of her movements as she made
herself ready to meet her lover. She swayed on shapely brown legs
from a central pivot of her hips. How strange to carry nothing
between the legs and so much to balance above, the breasts, the
belly. Her fingers briskly touched her head, loosening pins and
sending a cascade of Rapunzel braids to the floor, long, long
yellow hair. She picked up an end to untwine it, and picked up a
brush with a bone back and boar bristles to tame the unbound
locks.

A flurry of hooves thundered in the
courtyard.

"Oh, Lord,"
Willie moaned. Not a bawdy ballad after all
then.

"Oh, dear
Lord
—" Sarah gave voice to his moan,
flying to her window. Her three brothers, six of their men, and her
father were mounted and riding hell-bent out the front
gate.

"They heard us! They saw
us."
Sarah gasped.

"Wasn't too bright to
arrange a tryst where they could hear us,"
Willie told her.
"Need to warn the
lad. The old man's laid a trap."

"He has, oh, he has and I
must spring it and warn my love else he think I've betrayed
him."

"Can we make it in
time?"

"Every day this
twelvemonth half I've run and never walked tae meet him. Ah, but
I'm sae baig wi child noo. Nae time tae fetch a horse, nae time tae
ask for help. I'll mak' it because I must."

But even the stairs were treacherous,
though she'd climbed down them and up them since she was a toddler.
They were narrower now than her shelf of breast and belly and she
had to stand sidewise to see where to put her feet. Three times
three steps she climbed down and twice as many took her over the
rushes and out into the courtyard and across the footbridge toward
the meadows.

"I
must reach him first! I must! They'll kill him they'll kill
him they'll kill him if only because I love him
—"

"You're killing yourself.
Slow down. Hear how your heart pumps almost through your breast?
Hear your breath roar in your ears? Your lungs will burst if you
keep this up. Your legs have failed and your eyes have failed and
we're blacking out and we won't reach him in time, poor sorry son
of a bitch."

And black out she did,
sprawling to the ground in a swoon where she lay senseless to the
world around her, though her spirit, and Willie's, wandered in the
dream world, where their dreaming eyes opened to behold a horse's
hooves. Next they saw the booted feet and bare legs of Sarah's
lover, so like Willie's own bodily feet and legs, and higher yet
were the lover's strong-veined brown hands clasped on the reins,
his slender waist, and his
chest in its
rough cream shirt with the scarlet scarf at the neck—but above the
scarf, which proved to be no scarf, was nothing, nothing at
all.

The horseman riding toward Sarah was
headless and Willie recognized his own body as the one that sat on
the horse. Sarah screamed a scream even within her swoon, but it
roused her so that she opened her eyes, and the headless horseman
disappeared.

"Too late, too
late
—" she breathed as she ran headlong
forward, tripping on her skirts, her belly and her breasts bouncing
painfully, her insides shooting knives into her groin and heart,
her legs burning as if her bones were fiery brands.

"You'll never make it.
You're too weak, the baby's com
ing, you'll
burst with the effort, it's too far
—"

"There! The hill is there!
Only a little ways!"

"What's that clash like
pots and pans at suppertime?"

"Gramercy, it's the clash
of swords!"

"And that? The horses are
screaming
. . ."

"Maybe they've just
started. If I throw myself between them, they'll have to stop,
won't they? For my sake, as they love me, they
must
—"

"If they don't, it's all
the same, isn't it?"

"Aye."
And all thought was swallowed by the drumming in her ears and
the waves of pain from her belly and loins.

"Listen."

"Silence."

"Why?"

"They've
stopped."

"Who's that riding down
the hill?"

"I see
now
—
it's Father
and my brother John."

"Do you see
him?"

"I do not."

Her father's hand lifted in a
greeting, half weary, half jaunty, and she could barely lift hers
in return, but as he drew nearer she fell against his stirrup
crying, "Father, dear, I'm so glad to see you. I had a most doleful
dream . . ."

"Ye've done o'er much o'
dreamin', lass. 'Tis time noo tae get on wi' real life. We've
revenged ye agin yer seducer, though we lost Michael and Robert and
six men besides in the deed."

He looked down at her with anger
suffusing his blunt features, his thin mouth and his bulbous nose,
his flaccid cheeks huffing and puffing still with the aftermath of
his effort. His hair was gray, his skin lined and cracked with the
weather, but his eyes under brows like thunderclouds were
absolutely cold, staring into her and through her as if she were an
inconvenience, a wart on his hand, a stain on his
sleeve.

"He said to find you," her brother
spoke up, mockingly. "He said to tell you he forgave you your
betrayal o' him. Ah wish ah found it sae easy."

And brushing her off, her father rode
on and her brother beside him.

"They didn't
even ask how you were, and you so near your
time."

"Gin they cared how I
fare, they'd never have let matters come to such a
pass."