Lark Returning by Elisabeth McNeill

Author:Elisabeth McNeill
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788636339
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Jane received the news of the wedding with a grim face.

‘I hope you did all the right things; I hope you carried a nosegay of herbs to drive away the devil and had a silver coin in the heel of your shoe,’ she said to her daughter.

‘Oh Mam, that’s all old rubbish, all witchcraft. People don’t do things like that now,’ Aylie protested.

Jane shook her head. ‘Well, they should,’ she said before turning on Hugh, who was silently watching the mother and daughter. She glared at him and said, ‘Will you look after my daughter, young Kennedy? Will you look after her truly?’

His face was as grim as hers when he replied, ‘I love Aylie, I really love her. You can feel safe about that. I’d never do anything to hurt her. She’s in my heart…’ And he put a clenched fist on his chest in an expressive gesture that allayed some of Jane’s fears about his suitability as a husband. She remembered only too well the power of love and could not bring herself to argue against it.

Before he came to take her to Coldstream, he had found them a place to live in one of the abandoned farmhouses that dotted the Bowmont Valley a few miles outside the hidden village of Yetholm, which local people said guarded its isolation because it was inhabited by two kinds of outcasts – gypsies and smugglers.

The valley was a lonely and empty place, peopled only by sheep belonging to a nearby grazier and dotted by a few isolated farmhouses left empty by families who had emigrated to Canada in the early years of the century.

The house Hugh had taken over and repaired was huddled down behind a man-high drystone dyke, a strong protection against the driving wind and snow that swept up the valley in winter time.

When she stepped inside her own front door for the first time, Aylie was surprised at the size of the house. It was like a mansion compared to the cottages in which she had lived her life, for there were two main rooms downstairs and another two rooms above with tiny windows staring out at the hills that closed in around them like the rim of a bowl. Hugh had made the place watertight and built a brick oven beside the open kitchen hearth, so it was a snug hideaway. Outside there was a line of old stone sheds and byres where they would keep a cow, a pig and, of course, their horses.

His father, old Gilbert, was waiting in the house for them to arrive and he embraced her warmly. ‘My word, I’m glad he had the sense to pick you for a wife,’ he told her. ‘You’re the best woman on a horse I’ve ever seen in my life and I’ve seen a few. I’m going to give you a wedding present, I’m going to tell you the Horseman’s Word!’

He caught hold of her head and whispered in her ear… ‘Belthazar, Melchior, Achitophel… Guard it well, never write it down.

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