he was still my sire,’ she said aloud to her reflection. ‘It would be nice if I could come up with one happy memory on the day we bury him.’
But she couldn’t, though it was not for the want of trying. For old Lord Munro had been a long time dying, grimly clinging on to the thread of his existence long after his wife, his children and his doctor had given him up for gone. As in life, so in his exit from it, Lord Munro had been determined not to depart his mortal coil until he was good and ready. ‘So we can’t really be blamed for being more relieved than sad,’ Ailsa said, continuing to speak out loud to herself, a habit developed as a child, when she had invented several friends to keep her company. Being the laird’s daughter, she had not been allowed to mix with the village children. ‘At least he’ll have a grand send off, for this must be the most long-awaited and best-planned funeral there has been in the Highlands for many a year.’
She fixed a pretty gold brooch intricately worked with an ancient Celtic design to her dress, and surveyed her appearance in the long mirror with a critical eye. Almost without exception, everyone acquainted with Lady Munro, an acknowledged beauty, commented on the strong resemblance between mother and daughter, but Ailsa found the comparison wearisome. Frankly, the last thing she wanted to be told was that she was like her mother, but there was no getting away from it. In the last few years her hair had lost its girlish fairness, taking on the same burnished gold shade as her mother and both her brothers. Like herself though, it seemed to have rather too much of a mind of its own, and was never tamed for long. And as to her eyes—yes, they were the same striking colour as her mother’s too, though not, as one swain had claimed, royal purple. They reminded Ailsa more of the purpley-blue colour of a bruise. Her face was a nice oval, and her features on the whole seemed to please people, though in her own opinion her mouth was a little too large. Did that amount to beauty? She didn’t know. What she did know was that unfortunately there was no escaping the mirror’s evidence—she was her mother’s daughter.
Ailsa pulled a face. In her opinion, her mother had more reason than most to be relieved by Lord Munro’s death, for it had by no means been a happy marriage. How could it have been, with the laird expecting unquestioning obedience, and his lady forced to forsake all others for him? Even her own children. If his death was a welcome relief, Lady Munro was doing her celebrating in private. ‘Whatever it is she’s feeling, she’s keeping to herself as usual,’ Ailsa muttered to her reflection. ‘I swear it is ice and not blood which runs through Mother’s veins.’
She gave the neckline of her dress a final twitch. Like all her clothes, it was an expensive garment, something her mother had insisted on since she had turned sixteen.
‘I’m going to have to take you in hand, Ailsa,’ Lady Munro had said firmly. ‘You’re not a child any more. It’s time you started dressing, and behaving as befits your position as a Highland laird’s daughter.’
Lady Munro had insisted on stays and lacings and stockings and all the other trappings of wealth and status, too. Not that Ailsa had anything against pretty clothes, but she felt constrained in them. Sometimes she yearned for the feel of her bare foot on sand, the sun on her neck, the freedom from corsets and lacing without having to face the recriminations that inevitably followed such minor aberrations.
Today’s toilette was an open robe made of silk woven in the Munro colours over a dark blue petticoat. As was the fashion, the bodice was tightly laced, showing off the curve of her bosom and the contrasting tiny span of her waist. Voluptuous, is how most men would describe her, but in this one respect Ailsa would have preferred to resemble her mother’s slimmer, less curvaceous figure. She was rather self-conscious about her body and despised the way it drew men’s attentions. The arisaidh, a traditional plaid shawl of blue-striped silk, which today she wore belted and pinned, went some way to disguise it.
Her indifference to the fulsome compliments she attracted and her rejection of all attempts to make love to her seemed, perplexingly, to encourage her admirers to try all the harder. Intimacy of that sort left Ailsa cold. Her handsome dowry and position as the rich laird’s only daughter ensured she had no lack of suitors, but despite the sheer volume of them, none had ever come close to touching her heart. Not in the way that …
Automatically, Ailsa put a sharp brake on that strain of thought. What was the saying? Once bitten, twice shy. She was in no need of a second lesson. Not that love entered into the equation, in any case. She existed for the sole purpose of making a good match—her father had made that abundantly clear six years ago.
The slow tolling of the bell in the castle tower began, rousing Ailsa from her reverie, its low peal reverberating out across the flat fertile Munro lands, bouncing off the mountains that bordered Errin Mhor to echo eerily in the still of the morning. The bell warded off the evil spirits that everyone knew lurked at a wake, ready to take advantage when people’s defences where down. It also marked the beginnings of the funeral rites.
It was time. Pulling her arisaidh up to cover her hair, Ailsa quit her chamber and made her way quickly down the stairs.
In the great hall her brother Calumn, cutting an imposing figure in full ceremonial Highland dress, readied the chief mourners for his father’s last journey. The low drone of the bagpipes being inflated was the signal for all to assemble in good order. The new Laird of Errin Mhor kissed his wife lingeringly on the lips. Madeleine, who was expecting their first child, would stay behind to be Lady Munro’s chief comforter—not that the newly-made widow would accept comfort from anyone, but it was the custom. As it was the custom that Ailsa, too, should remain with her mother while others formed the funeral procession, but in this Ailsa had been adamant. She would pay her last respects with the men, not sit meekly at home with Lady Munro’s chosen group of gentry women.
The dead laird’s piper struck up the mournful lament of the pibroch. Ailsa took the black cushion bearing her father’s gauntlets and hat from Calumn and made her way outside. The dead man’s champion, Hamish Sinclair, waited, astride a horse with a black-velvet cover, to lead the procession. Lord Munro’s own horse, similarly draped in black, was pawing nervously at the ground. Saddle-less, it was a stark symbol of the laird’s absence.
Four long poles were inserted under the coffin. By tradition, the first eight bearers were the deceased’s closest kin. Calumn and his half-brother Rory Macleod took the lead, a decision that had caused some controversy since Rory was not a blood relation of the dead laird, being the product of Lady Munro’s first marriage. Lord Munro had insisted his wife surrender her first born upon their own marriage. Lady Munro and Rory had been estranged ever since, but Calumn had insisted that his brother have his place at the funeral regardless.
The coffin was hoisted up from the bier. The pipes wailed. The bearers walked slowly down the front steps of the castle, keeping their eyes firmly focused ahead and concentrating on the task at hand, for it was a precarious job, balancing the heavy coffin on four thin poles.
Ailsa stood at the head of the mourners. Behind her, the long winding line of men and women fell in, ranked in order from the clan chiefs and their women to the castle servants, the laird’s tenants and serfs, crofters and cotters, drovers and fishermen. She knew most of them, if not personally then by reputation. Almost without exception the men wore the two plaids, the filleadh beg and the filleadh mòr, in defiance of the law that banned Highland dress for any but the aristocracy. Most of the women wore their best Sabbath blacks. Expressions were suitably sombre. The two horses, one mounted, one riderless, led the way.
The procession wended down the castle’s imposing driveway, through the heavy wrought-iron gates emblazoned with the Munro coat of arms, to the village of Errin Mhor where the first change of bearers took place. ‘Twas customary for this to happen while the procession continued, so the new bearers stood ahead in formation, two lines of four men performing the transfer of weight in pairs. Since dropping a pole was believed to signify the death
