“We’re not staying here, are we?” asked Geoffrey, recoiling from the sound of an untuned bagpipe. “I would have nightmares of moose in labor.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Elizabeth assured him. “We’re staying in one of those tourist cabins on the creek. The clan reserves one every year for the Maid of the Cat.”
“If you have to clean up after him, you will earn the title,” said Geoffrey, frowning at Cluny. “What do we do now?”
Elizabeth stopped the car beside a whitewashed cabin with a tartan ribbon tied around a porch railing. “Chattan colors. We’re in here,” she announced. “Let’s take in our suitcases, and then go to the meadow and register. We’ll get a schedule of events, then decide.”
“Is he coming?”
“Cluny?” Elizabeth smiled. “He’s the guest of honor!”
The tourist cabin was sparsely furnished but clean, and its pine beds and dressers smelled of lemon oil. Geoffrey wandered over to the picture above the table and began to study it with interest. In it a kilted young man was bending over the hand of a pretty woman in green.
“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” said Geoffrey cheerfully. “I’d always thought of Lady Macbeth as older somehow.”
Elizabeth set down the ice chest beside the small refrigerator. “Let me see that.”
“I wonder if it’s unlucky to have Macbeth pictures in your room? Of course, I just quoted from it, so we’re doomed anyhow.”
“Except for your theatre superstitions, you are practically illiterate,” Elizabeth informed him. “That woman is in an eighteenth-century costume. How could it be from Macbeth?” “David Garrick production, I expect.”
“That,” said Elizabeth, tapping the painting with her forefinger, “is a print of a Joy painting of Bonnie Prince Charlie bidding farewell to Flora MacDonald.”
“Who is…?”
“After Culloden, the British were searching the Highlands for Bonnie Prince Charlie, so he hid out on the Isle of Skye. Flora MacDonald helped him to escape from Scotland by disguising him as her maid and smuggling him across the inlet in a rowboat.”
“I suppose that involved putting him in a longer skirt,” murmured Geoffrey. “He seems to be back in full kilt for the farewell scene, though. Say, are you sure this is supposed to be the prince?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why?”
Geoffrey pressed his tie against the kilted figure in the painting. “Because he’s not wearing the Royal Stewart tartan!”
Elizabeth sighed. “Clans have more than one plaid, Geoffrey. There are patterns for dress, for hunting, for-Well, never mind. I don’t have time to explain it to you because I have to change into my kilt. Which bedroom do you want?”
“Whichever one he doesn’t sleep in.”
“I thought I’d put him in the bathroom.”
“Not unless you brought a bedpan.”
“All right, I’ll keep him in the room with me. He’ll be good protection.”
“Protection from whom? If you’re referring to me, cousin dear, the dust bunnies under the bed are all the protection you need. More than enough.”
Elizabeth smiled sweetly. “I know.”
The Highland festival was held in a large meadow several hundred feet below the peak of Glencoe Mountain. Already the well-mowed field was ringed with open tents, each bearing the standard of a different clan. Early arrivals were strolling about, visiting the hosts at the various tents and studying clan displays. Others gathered around the wooden dance platforms to watch the costumed dancers practice, or inspected the wares at the souvenir stalls. By far the largest crowd had collected around the refreshment tent, a testimony to the effect of ninety-two degree weather on persons in wool outfits.
“How do you stand it?” asked Geoffrey, fanning himself with his program. “You look like a stewed sheep.”
Elizabeth dabbed at her forehead. “Well, perhaps this velvet jacket is a bit much, but since I’ve got Cluny, I think I ought to be in full dress.” She straightened the lace jabot at her throat. “Thank goodness I have an extra blouse. Isn’t this a pretty kilt?” She twirled to show off the red and blue plaid of Clan MacPherson.
“That’s right,” said Geoffrey. “Shake and bake. I’m going to the refreshment tent. Want anything?”
“Not now. It would only give me more to sweat. I’m going to check in at the Chattan headquarters, and then I’ll see if Marge and her dogs have arrived.”
“I’ll find you.” Geoffrey nodded toward the bobcat. “You’ll be easy to spot.”
Elizabeth started off in the direction of the clan displays. Cluny, who was by now used to Highland festivals, put up only a token resistance when his leash was tugged. He could behave perfectly if he chose to, but he always made it clear that his cooperation could not be taken for granted. His yellow eyes flickered around the meadow, sighting nothing of interest, just the black-and-white shapes of noisy primates which matched the sweaty man-smells he’d been getting all afternoon. Cluny yawned.
“Isn’t this exciting, kitty?” Elizabeth was saying. “All these beautiful colors! Let’s go to the Chattan booth and see who’s on duty now.”
The first tent on Clan Row belonged to the Campbells. They were flying the family standard: a boar’s head emblazoned with the motto Ne Obliviscaris (Forget Not), and a cardboard poster on an easel listed the family names associated with Clan Campbell. A woman in a white sundress was straightening a stack of brochures while several other people sat in lawn chairs under the canopy watching the milling tourists. Elizabeth, who felt that being Maid of the Cat obliged her to be friendly to all festival participants, waved and smiled.
The woman with the brochures smiled back, but a voice from the tent called out, “Just a minute, young woman!”
Elizabeth flinched. She recognized the voice.
A gnome of a man in a green and white kilt marched out from the shade of the tent, squinting and scowling.
“Would you like to pet the kitty?” asked Elizabeth innocently.
“I would not,” snapped the old man. “I suppose you’re the Chattan’s Maid of the Cat this year?” Elizabeth nodded. “It’s a lot of damned foolishness. Not traditional at all. But if you’re bound to do it, I think you ought to observe the Highland customs.”
“Oh, really?”
“Women… do… not… wear… kilts!” He seemed to be strangling with rage.
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “And MacPhersons do not take orders from Campbells!”
“At least we don’t permit our womenfolk to go around pretending to be men,” snapped Dr. Campbell, who was enjoying himself hugely.
“This isn’t Scotland; it’s America. And a lot of people here would say that you were in drag!” Elizabeth jerked Cluny’s leash and stalked off.
Colin Campbell’s face turned Stewart-of-Appin red. “Young woman, do you know who I am?” he thundered after her.
Elizabeth looked back over her shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “I recognized you from your picture on the banner.”
It was a good exit line, Elizabeth thought as she swept off in the direction of the Chattan tent, but she felt guilty about having used it. Mother would kill me, she thought. She had just been-never mind the provocation-openly rude to an elderly gentleman, something that well-brought-up young ladies did not do. But, she told herself with a giggle, Geoffrey will love it!
Even so, she decided to be more diplomatic henceforth. She was Maid of the Cat, after all, and she saw that role as a variation of the beauty-queen-on-the-float function: be pretty if you can but be charming if it kills you.