“ ‘Twere rumored that the Master denied that Garth be his son.”
Knowing glances were again exchanged between the sisters. This was what they had wanted to know.
“See, gossip will tell all,” May-Jewel whispered to her sister. “We might not have to worry about Garth after all.”
Katherine shushed her and questioned Molly. “There’s a family cemetery?”
“Aye, an’ the second Lady Craig be there too, with her wee boy. They died o’ the epidemic. Same as Charles’ Da an’ half o’ the village.”
“Where is it?” Katherine asked.
“I’ll tell ye where ‘tis mistress, but I wouldna go there, it being daylight or no.”
“Spare us the superstition, Molly,” May-Jewel rebuked, “just tell us where it is.”
A worried look flitted over Molly’s face. “I wouldna go there,” she repeated.
“Molly!” May-Jewel insisted sharply.
“It be a mile or two doon the hill.” Molly pointed toward the back of the manor. “On the back side o’ the house there be a road that goes through the shaw an’ then divides. One way leads ta Carstairs, t’other to the kirk. The older minister who lives in the manse be Earnan Macailean. T’other be Vicar Hawes. They’ll tell ye who be buried here and there, if you’ve a mind to know such a thing.”
* * *
The stableman, Brice, had a hard, sly look about him. He reminded Katherine of a weasel as he darted quickly in and out of the barn, readying their horse and carriage. May-Jewel took an immediate and thorough dislike to him. Though his hands were busy with the hitch, his eyes were locked on the women.
“Will ye be gone long?” He mumbled, hardly moving his lips as he spoke as if he disliked speaking to them at all.
Katherine shook her head in reply as she and May-Jewel got into the carriage.
May-Jewel started to question Brice, “How far to the…”
But Katherine didn’t let her finish. She snapped the reins, and the horse loped away.
“Why did you do that?” May-Jewel asked, holding onto her hat. “I wanted to know how far we had to go to get to the cemetery.”
“I didn’t want him to know where we were going. I don’t trust him.”
“Oh,” May-Jewel replied, looking back at the stableman who was staring after them.
“Besides, I’ve been down part of the road earlier and the cemetery can’t be that far away.” Katherine urged the horse forward. Thinking about where they were heading, she considered, It’s a shame we have to go to the dead to find the truth about the living.
Chapter Nine
The clerics’ house, called the manse, was of stone and was situated close to the side of the church as if it wanted to touch the sacred building but didn’t dare. As there wasn’t anyone around to hinder them, the women entered through the rusted gates to the cemetery and wandered about the grounds at leisure. Though the sun had started toward the west, there would still be plenty of daylight in which to investigate. Most of the stones had little etched on them, only a flower or a small cross. There were those that were inscribed in the old Gaelic, but Katherine, unaccustomed to it, gave up deciphering anything that wasn’t in the Anglicized form.
The bushes grew thicker and taller toward the back of the cemetery blocking most of the sunlight. Some stones were almost completely hidden. May-Jewel followed after her sister, becoming increasingly tired of the briers and branches that reached out to catch her as she passed by them.
“There’s nothing of any interest here,” she whined, detaching her skirt from a thorny branch. “Let’s go back.”
“Wait a moment.” Katherine approached a large grave stone situated close to the iron fence. It had an angel with one broken wing sitting on top of the headstone. Not seeing any inscription on the stone itself, she looked down and saw in the ground before it part of a bronze tablet. She bent down and pulled away the weeds that had grown over it, exposing the lettering. “May-Jewel, listen to this:
HERE LIES LADY ROSEMARY, SECOND WIFE OF
SIR ROBERT CRAIG, AND INFANT SON, WILLIAM.
DIED JUNE 23, 1852.”
“Two wives,” May-Jewel exclaimed bitterly, “one for his youth and one for his middle years. What kept him from marrying either of our mothers? He had time between wife number one and wife number two!”
Katherine scowled as she pulled more weeds from around the tablet. “It took you long enough to get upset over Robbie’s antics.”
Ignoring her sister’s quip, May-Jewel asked, “I wonder why she’s buried here and not in the family plot.”
Katherine shrugged. “I guess she offended Sir Robert as well. Maybe he questioned her child, too?”
“Hmmm.”
As they stood looking at the stone, a twig suddenly snapped in the thicket behind them. Spinning around, they sought the source of the noise but only silence surrounded them.
Scanning nervously about, May-Jewel asked, “Do you think someone else is here?’
“No one is here but us,” Katherine whispered once she found her voice. “Come on, there’s another large grave stone over there.” She pointed to the furthest corner of the cemetery. “I can see the top of it.”
Lady Edythe’s grave, unlike the others, was in a clearing. Neatly trimmed rose bushes encircled the plot of well-cared for ground. The polished tablet embedded in the base of stone read:
ONLY THOSE WHO REMAIN FAITHFUL SHALL ABIDE WITH ME.
EDYTHE, WIFE OF ROBERT CRAIG, MOTHER OF GARTH WILLIAM,
BORN 1811 DIED 1841
“What an odd verse,” Katherine said, shivering, against the chill in the air or the cemetery’s atmosphere, she wasn’t sure. “And it doesn’t say anything about a baby girl.”
“I wonder who has taken such good care of her resting place. Charles?”
