The Low Road (7 page)

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Then tell me.'

‘Do you promise, sir, not to say that I told you?'

‘I promise nothing, old man.' He was transfixed by what he saw. I think he would have sold his soul to the devil.

‘Very well. I had seen you and Alexander together a few times, in the stable, in your room...'

‘You mean you spied on us?'

‘Yes sir. I'm sorry. I couldn't help it. Once I knew what you were doing I spent all my time trying to catch you at it again. When you moved him into the house I knew that I could creep outside the
window and watch you whenever I wanted. It was too much to resist.'

‘All right. What's done is done. Is that all?'

‘That's all, sir, I swear.'

‘You're a liar.' I made as if to pick up my shirt and leave him.

‘No sir, please, there's more. One day your mother called me into the house and asked me what I had been doing in the garden. She'd seen me, you see, crouched outside your window. I was so ashamed. I didn't know what she thought... whether she'd actually caught me...'

‘Wanking.'

‘Precisely, sir.' His hand went to his cock and jerked it two or three times. ‘I was always greatly given to it.'

‘So I see. Go on.'

‘She asked me what I had heard. I didn't understand at first, but she asked again what conversations I had heard coming from your room. I said I thought you were alone, and so how could there be any conversation? But then she became angry, and said she knew that you kept Alexander in your room. I was going to defend you, sir, I swear it, to tell her that nothing happened between you, but she didn't seem to care. She only wanted to know what was said. Nothing, I told her, just idle conversation. It was the truth; all I had ever heard pass between you were words of friendship. She looked at me for a long time and then swallowed, as if there were a bitter taste in her mouth.'

‘And then?'

‘She told me to go back there night after night, to make my bed beneath your window no matter how cold the air, to listen to every word that I heard and to report them to her every morning.'

‘And what did you hear?'

‘You know, sir, that for many nights there was nothing but the... perfectly natural expression of... your friendship with the young man.'

‘You listened to us fucking.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Until that last night.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And so you went and told my mother that Alexander had betrayed her trust and spoken to me of my father.'

‘I'm sorry, sir.'

‘What did she say?'

‘Very little at the time, sir. That man was with her.'

‘Lebecque.'

‘Yes. Your tutor.'

‘You needn't protect him, MacFarlane. He is no friend to this family.'

‘I told your mother, in his hearing, what Alexander had said to you. She was alarmed; Lebecque was quite businesslike. “It has happened at last, then,” he said. I was dismissed from the room and I heard no more.'

‘You? A spy like you? Come on, MacFarlane, what did you hear at the keyhole, at the window?'

He looked up at me with genuine shame on his face. If he could have escaped from the trap now, I believe, he would have done - and relinquished the taste of my young cock once and for all.

‘Tell me, MacFarlane, or I swear that on my majority I will have you clapped in prison.'

‘I heard a few more words, just by mistake, sir. Lebecque told your mother that she must leave you entirely in his charge, that the safety of more than just the family was at stake if she attempted to interfere. She cried and begged him to leave. That was all I heard, sir, I swear on my mother's life.'

‘Very well. I believe you.' With so much to contemplate, I had lost interest in the immediate prospect of MacFarlane's admiration. He, clearly, had not.

‘Master Charles,' he said, after a few minutes of silence. I had
almost forgotten his presence, but there he knelt, his cock still at full attention.

‘All right, MacFarlane, do what you want. Remember, a word of this to anyone and you end your life in chains, do you understand? '

He looked up at me and smiled. At the first contact of his hand I closed my eyes, put my hands on my buttocks and tried to concentrate on the warmth of the sun, the image of Alexander. MacFarlane's touch was surprisingly adept, and within moments he had me erect in his hands. I opened my eyes just in time to see his mouth engulfing me; my shaft slid straight down to his throat in one slick movement. I gasped and tightened the grip on my buttocks. His right hand was working away at his own cock; his left was pulling and squeezing my balls. Shortly they tightened in their pouch and drew up to my body; I knew I was close. Slipping a finger inside my arse, I pulled out of MacFarlane's mouth and unleashed one, two, three, four huge spurts of come over his upturned face. He licked greedily as far as his tongue could reach, dived back down on to my still-twitching cock and sucked out the last few drops as he spent a great puddle in the sand.

I have never been able to share an orgasm with another man without a moment of tenderness in the aftermath. I cradled MacFarlane's head in my hands as he suckled for a while longer on my softening cock, which finally dropped out of his mouth shiny with spit and sperm. Then I turned, walked into the water and swam a few strokes out into the loch. When I turned to look back at the beach, MacFarlane had gone.

The summer was over. Soon the daylight would stretch to only four or five hours. The waters of Loch Linnhe were cooling rapidly; I took my last swim one sunny October afternoon before the weather closed in for good.

The melancholy of autumn infected me badly. Where before my days had passed in a dream of sunshine, my dick my only distraction, now I spent the time brooding coldly on the mystery of my predicament. I mulled over every word that MacFarlane had told me. I tried to question him further, but he was as nervous as a hare and ran a mile if I approached. It was useless to ask my mother what was going on; as for Lebecque, he continued as he always was, a man of granite. Our lessons fared well; my competent schoolboy Greek and Latin gained fluency and subtlety, my grasp of mathematics and logic not far behind. Beyond that: nothing.

What was the nature of Lebecque's position in our household? What power did he hold over my mother, that she should tolerate his bullying? She had cried and begged him to leave, said MacFarlane, and yet he remained. He was a servant at Gordon Hall, and yet he kept a servant of his own at Portnacroish. He seemed to know more about me than anyone. ‘It has happened at last,' he said to my mother when he heard of Alexander's confession. At last? What prior knowledge did he have? How could a
poor priest, a tutor in a family far from his home, see so deeply into affairs that did not concern him?

My suspicions were growing to a head. Often I saw Lebecque creeping towards my mother's study, where they would stay cloistered for hours at a time. He sent and received letters with far greater frequency than I would have expected from a man in his humble position. When I braved him in lessons, tried to presume on my superior rank, I saw a flash of pride and anger, swiftly quelled, behind those dark brown eyes.

Starved of information but bursting with curiosity, I took the only course open to me: I jumped to conclusions. It dawned on me one day with a hideous clarity that Lebecque, far from being a servant in Gordon Hall, was preparing to be its master. Perhaps I had been reading too many novels (a practice Lebecque condemned as ‘effeminate'), but I was quite sure that he was aiming for my mother's hand in marriage. Of course! She was still attractive, gracious, the mistress of extensive lands and considerable wealth. My father's name, I guessed, was a powerful influence in certain circles. Lebecque, as a Frenchman, a Jacobite sympathiser, entertained God knew what political ambitions - and a platform in the western Highlands, shored up with the Gordon fortune, was just what he needed. Yes: that would explain the hours of silent colloquy, the extensive correspondence (wedding invitations?), the barely-suppressed arrogance. One day soon I expected him to cast off his clerical robes and emerge in his true colours as my new Papa.

The idea disgusted me. Little as I remembered my own father, I had worked him up into a kind of idol, investing him with a romantic glow imparted, I suppose, by the secrecy that surrounded his legend. Something of the love I bore for Alexander had transferred itself to this ideal image of my father - and I worshipped him in private. I stole into my mother's room to unveil the tiny portrait she kept, wrapped in black velvet, in her dressing
table. The resemblance between us was strong - the same sandy hair, the pale skin. He was leaner, sterner, perhaps - an ideal me. My idolatry contained a large measure of self love.

And to see him supplanted by Lebecque - this hawk-nosed, swarthy foreigner - this meddling priest - was unbearable! Insupportable! I should denounce my mother, like Hamlet in the play (another part of my reading of which Lebecque thoroughly disapproved; ‘if you must read
modern
drama, read Racine'.) I should cast Lebecque out of the house. But what if he achieved his dastardly ends before two years were out, before I came into my majority? Then he could produce an heir, disinherit me, rule Gordon Hall alone. I would run away. Then they would be sorry.

So convinced was I of the truth of my conclusions that I interpreted Lebecque's every remark as confirmation of the impending disaster. We had spent an arduous afternoon struggling through the maze of Plato's Republic, Lebecque all patience, I being deliberately stupid just to antagonise him.

Laying down the book and moving the candle away from his tired eyes, he pushed the hair off his pale forehead and reclined in his chair.

‘Ah, Charles, you take a very antagonistic approach to philosophy these days.'

‘I don't. It's just... rubbish.'

‘Well, that's one way of looking at it.' He closed Plato, rose and walked to the window. It was about six o'clock. Our lesson should have been over an hour ago. Outside it was dark; the moon was already up over the loch.

‘Certainly, Plato would have found it hard to understand a great deal in modern life.'

‘Like what?' I was always eager to turn the subject to recent history.

‘Politics. Religion. The vengefulness of the ruling classes.'

‘What are you talking about?'

Lebecque paused with his back to me.

‘Charles.'

‘Yes?'

‘You love your mother, don't you?'

‘Yes, of course.' I felt as if a confession was at hand.

‘And you would trust her to make the right decision, wouldn't you, however strange it might seem to you?'

‘I would wish to be informed of the reasons behind any decision,' I snapped.

‘No doubt. But that is not always possible.' He paced across the room, more disturbed than I had ever seen him before. ‘You know, do you not, the danger that is still at large in Scotland?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That English troops scour the land hunting down any last traces of sedition and stamping them out most ruthlessly?'

I had been brought up to fear and despise English soldiers; I regarded them as nursery spooks meant to frighten naughty children, nothing more.

‘Of course.'

‘Then you must understand that your family stands in a very parlous position.'

‘I don't see why. We are above any suspicion.'

‘Yes, perhaps.' He looked at me, caught my foolish, sulky gaze. His face, for once animated and open, snapped shut again, and the light went out of his eyes.

‘I think, Charles, that you must learn to respect the decisions of your elders.'

‘I must understand them before I can respect them.'

I could see the familiar flash of anger behind his mask. ‘That is not possible. Obedience is the first duty.'

‘My position? And what is that, precisely? The heir to the Gordon estate, to my father's name. Soon to be the master of this house, able to choose what servants I like.'

Lebecque was thinking. He turned to the moon again.

‘Charles, I have never insisted on the respect that my station should naturally command.'

‘Your station? As a paid tutor?'

‘As a priest, Charles.' He ran a finger round the tight collar of his black soutane. I saw for a moment a few strands of hair just below the neck line.

‘You are not here as a priest.'

‘And yet the fact remains.'

‘I give you what respect I can.' I put as much contempt into the words as I dared.

‘Charles...' He was frowning now. ‘I have never asked you to call me “father”, have I?'

Father? What did he mean? I jumped out of my chair.

‘I will never call you father!'

Lebecque swung round, his mouth open. He was shocked to see me so angry. I was red in the face, clenching my fists.

‘Never. Do you understand!'

I turned on my heel and slammed the door behind me, ran down the stairs and out on to the lawn. An owl skimmed a few feet above my head and swooped low over the grass, picked up a mouse and flapped silently over the loch. A dog barked somewhere over by the coppice.

The evening air cooled me quickly; I had to think. So, all my suspicions confirmed! Lebecque to be my father - my mother's husband! Casting off his vows of celibacy in order to clutch at power and wealth! So much for the priesthood. Perhaps the English were right all along; the Church of Rome was nothing but a mask for greed and perversion.