‘A tale,’ she said doubtfully. ‘What tale could I be telling that you have not heard before many times?’
‘All the better for that,’ said Davie Drummond, at the other side of her chair.
‘And our guest has not the Gaelic, and I have no tales in Scots.’
Finally she was persuaded, and launched into a story in Ersche which seemed to be about a cheese, a bannock and a little old woman. The children obviously knew it, and laughed at every sentence; Alys could follow enough of the narrative to smile when the other adults did, but was more interested in studying the faces around her.
The younger Drummonds were all near the door, Ailidh seated on the bench with her lover, the two younger girls now at their feet, Jamie Beag standing by the door-frame. Their likeness to one another was almost eerie, although it could also be seen clearly that Elizabeth was Caterin’s daughter, while the other three were Mòr’s children. The four were obviously close; the tilt of shoulders, the angle of heads, made that clear to the onlooker, though they might not know it themselves.
The older generation was closer to the fire. Patrick Drummond, seated at his mother’s right hand as befitted the eldest surviving son, was a big man nearing fifty, the frizzy family hair receding from his brow, his face and neck and brawny arms burnt red by the weather. He spoke slowly and gravely, his voice deep, and had received his guests with great pleasure. He and his nephew seemed to be in good accord about the work on the farm; Alys had overheard them talking together in Ersche in a pause in the dancing, gesturing at different corners of the infield, nodding seriously from time to time.
The tale ended, with the little old woman catching the bannock and the cheese and eating them both up. The children laughed, the adults chuckled, one or two people offered suggestions as to how the bannock could have been caught sooner, and another volunteer was selected, a man from up the glen who began tale about a calf and a dog.
Next to Patrick, his wife sat twirling a spindle, glancing anxiously from time to time at her son in his long cradle. The boy was a poor creature, with his small twisted figure and sour, whey-coloured face, but he had obviously enjoyed the dancing and the music. Alys looked at him with pity, tracing the family likeness now he was relaxed in sleep, wondering if there was any remedy which would help him.
Glancing up, she met Caterin’s gaze, and suddenly quailed. The woman’s expression was hostile, defensive, bitter. She put a possessive hand out over the cradle; the shadow of her headdress hid her small face, but it seemed as if she still glared at Alys. I only looked at the boy, thought Alys, why should that trouble her so much?
Mòr, the widow of the eldest son, was at Mistress Drummond’s left hand. She sat upright and still, hands folded in her lap; Alys had the feeling this was a rare opportunity for her to do nothing. Between her feet and her good-mother’s, Davie sat cross-legged on his folded plaid, leaning back against the old woman’s knees, her hand on his hair. The folds of his shirt were drawn decorously over his bent legs; it occurred to Alys that despite the strictures of her Glasgow friends about Highland dress these bare-legged people were far more modest than Lowland men with their tight hose and ostentatious codpieces.
After the debate between the dog and the calf ended, the children from up the glen were persuaded to sing, which they did with aplomb, the sweet young voices bridging the great leaps of the tune with precision, the words clear. There was no direct praise for them afterwards, but several people commented on the tune, on how old it was and how appropriate it was for the season. The children seemed to see this as praise, for they wriggled and giggled among the feet.
‘There is music everywhere,’ said Alys, as the refreshment went round again. ‘Everyone sings, and you all sing well.’
‘It is pleasing to God and His saints,’ said Mistress Drummond seriously.
‘A true word, Mammy,’ said Mòr beside her. ‘There is no harm coming to a body or to the work, if you should be singing a hymn to Mary mild, or Brìde, or to Angus.’
‘There is a hymn to St Angus?’ Alys asked.
‘More than one,’ she was assured. One of the children near her began a list, and was cuffed silent by his father.
‘Will you tell me about St Angus?’ she prompted. ‘He is your own saint here in Balquhidder, is that right?’
‘He was a holy man of Dunblane,’ said Mòr, ‘and was walking to Columba’s isle. And he came over the ridge and saw the glen of Balquhidder lying before him in the sunshine, and he was falling on his knees to bless the place, and it is still called Beannachd Aonghais where he kneeled.’
‘And he never left us again,’ said someone else with satisfaction.
There seemed to be many tales of the saint, one or two of them the same as tales she had heard told of Columba or Kentigern. Someone produced a tiny harp with nine wire strings, and a young woman sang to its shining music about the blessing which Angus had left on the glen. He was buried in the Eagleis Beag, the little kirk down in Balquhidder glen, with his image on the stone laid over him, and if you stood on the stone to be wedded it was as if the saint himself conducted the wedding.
‘But you would not be standing on his face,’ said someone.
‘No, no, that would not be respectful,’ agreed another.
‘And will Davie be singing for us too?’ asked a bold voice from the shadows. ‘He could be singing the Oran Mor Aonghais just now, maybe. The lady would be happy to hear it, and so would the rest of us.’
‘Och, not tonight,’ said Davie awkwardly. ‘My throat’s dry from the reaping.’
‘So are we all dry,’ said Patrick.
‘Maybe you will not mind it?’ asked Mòr, with a challenging note in her voice. ‘It will be a few years since you sang it, I suppose, since those ones will not be praising our Angus.’
‘Oh, I mind it well enough.’
‘Then take some more ale, and sing up, good-brother.’ She beckoned, and her daughter Agnes came forward with the ale-jug. Alys, aware of sudden tension in the circle round the fire, watched intently.
‘There are others who should be singing before me,’ protested Davie. This was argued down by several people.
‘Let him alone,’ said Caterin kindly. ‘He’s shy, maybe.’
‘Och, yes,’ said Mistress Drummond. ‘You were always the shy one, David mo chridh.’
‘He was none so shy last month,’ objected Mòr, ‘when he sang all evening before my kin.’
‘It would be good to hear it,’ remarked Patrick, ‘though it were thirty year delayed.’
Davie took a pull at the ale-jug, and gave it back to Agnes.
‘It’s a while since I sang it,’ he said, ‘as my good-sister is saying, though maybe not thirty year to me.’
‘Will we begin it with you, then?’ offered Ailidh from her seat by the door. She looked round in the shadows at the other young Drummonds, drew a breath, and began to sing. They joined in immediately, a slow, measured melody which Davie picked up, first in accord with them and then with odd variations, each time delivered with confidence. Alys was still watching the group by the door, and saw their surprise at the first of these, and the second. Then they reached what seemed to be the end of a verse, and fell silent, leaving Davie singing alone, leaning back against the old woman’s knee, his eyes shut.
The Great Song of Angus was very long, but as when she had heard this voice before, Alys felt she could have sat listening for ever. The delivery was professional and accomplished, the range of the voice surprising, the low notes warm and creamy, the higher ones golden. Such of the hymn as she understood concerned the saint’s miracles and the way he watched over his parish, keeping the calf from straying, the child safe in the cradle, the cattle in the fold and the maiden at the spinning. It seemed to be very old, for the words were oddly pronounced even when she recognized them, and the tune was simple, repetitive, varied by shifting an octave up or down, strangely satisfying. The music seemed almost to float into the house by no human agency, winding into the shadows, spinning a timeless web that linked the hearers with the saint himself. In its midst, Alys’s eye fell on the cradle again, and she saw that even the changeling boy was listening quietly, contented, entranced. But over his head his mother had turned that bitter gaze on the singer. Her expression was like a discord in the Great Song; Alys looked away, and when she looked back the child’s eyes were closed and his mother’s head bent over her spinning.