The Balmoral Incident by Alanna Knight Read Free Book Online

Devil’s Elbow and the Spittal of Glenshee with their tourists, there used tobe moonlight flittings, ponies carrying a great convoy of whisky kegs, escorted by Highlanders armed with useful cudgels and the like. And not afraid to use them either—’
    As if in timely illustration of Vince’s tale, our road was barred not by men with cudgels but by the sudden appearance of a herd of sheep from a well-used farm road. A few bolder than the rest were heading directly in front of us. Our driver leant on the horn with little avail and the farmer’s collie dog’s retrieving attempts made the sheep even more frantic.
    While we waited, not quite patiently, for some sort of order to be restored, the disturbance caused on that normally quiet road had made us the object of some entertainment from the gipsy encampment on the lower reaches of the hill, presumably remnants of those we had encountered earlier.
    Now children rushed down to scramble onto the crumbling wall and stare at us, adults followed shouting at them – and at us. I expected all gipsies to be dark and swarthy-looking, like the women who came by the Tower selling clothes pegs and wanting to tell my fortune – ‘Ye have a lucky face, dearie’ – which I firmly resisted. Now a closer look revealed that although some of the older men were very Spanish-looking with their weathered faces, some of the young women were quite exotic, and many of the children beneath the grime were fair-skinned, sandy-haired like Meg.
    One of the men pushed forward to seize a small child who had stumbled and was crying. Tall, thin, with a wayward lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. He was at my side of the car nearest the stone wall, gazing down at me.
    The man who almost missed the train? My heart jolted as I saw him at close quarters. Would I never be free of men who reminded me of my lost beloved Danny, who in his dying breath had made Jack promise to take care of me? And Jack had done more than that, he had married me. I was his wife now, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. And I thought of the rewards. Of Meg, the darling of both our hearts.
    The sheep were gone and we were moving on. The man shouted something at Dave, our driver – a gesture which included the motor car and us. The driver shouted back; it sounded like an insult although the exchange had been in Gaelic, I thought.
    ‘Bloody Irish,’ muttered Dave as we pulled away.
    ‘Language, driver, ladies present,’ Vince reminded him sternly.
    ‘Gipsies, I like gipsies,’ said Meg again, looking over her shoulder for a last, fleeting glimpse. She sighed. ‘And I’m not scared of bad weather, like Uncle Vince says. You would come with me and live in a caravan, wouldn’t you, Mam?’
    ‘Of course I would. But what about Pa – you wouldn’t want to leave him behind would you?’
    She began to protest that he would come too, of course. But I wasn’t listening. My mind was still on the gipsy, shaken by the turmoil of emotions his resemblance had conjured up.
    Meg sensed there was something wrong. She took my hand. ‘Are you all right, Mam, did the sheep coming at us like that give you a scare?’
    ‘Of course not, darling.’ I put my arm around her.
    ‘Patience everyone,’ Vince announced: ‘Only a couple of miles now.’
    The journey was almost over and there was Crathie Church nestling close by a bridge over a tumbling river and we were at the gates to the castle. As we drove through Vince said: ‘There are minor estate roads closer to the cottage. Mere tracks for a horseman and not for the likes of us, our Rolls would be seriously offended by potholes and so forth.’
    A long drive almost at an end, full of twists and turns past well-manicured lawns and tall trees, so ordered and regulated to suggest the vanguard of an army watching over us. An occasional distant glimpsed cottage.
    ‘Is that ours?’ asked Meg.
    But it never was until, at last, we glimpsed the turrets of the castle and in