Jennie About to Be by Elisabeth Ogilvie Page A

shepherds, and three dogs.”
    She wished she were sitting next to Nigel, so she could put her hand through his arm and draw from the contact the assurance that the Highlands were all she had dreamed them to be: wild, free, and uncorrupted. She was defensively angry with Mr. Sinclair; she wanted to tremble with indignation that he should so abuse her hopes.
    Deliberately she turned to Mrs. Sinclair. “You must come to see us at Linnmore. I shall write you when the house is settled.”
    Mrs. Sinclair nodded comfortably.
    â€œAnd the ministers are hand in glove with the lairds,” said her husband. She leaned forward and gently touched his hands, folded over the head of his stick.
    â€œThere’s nothing you can do about it, my lad.”
    â€œIt’s an ill thing to exchange men for sheep, and they’ve barely begun. Before they’ve done, the Highlands will be a wilderness ridden with ghosts.” He sat back in the corner, his face turned to the window, his black shoulder cutting them off as if he were repenting his eloquence.
    Mrs. Sinclair told them what they were passing, and insisted upon a stop at Elgin to stretch their legs and show Jennie the cathedral.
    One felt that no human voice should be raised in the silence among the magnificent ruins. Battered, broken, given over to birds and little wild four-footed things, it rose in scarred grandeur toward heaven as its builders had intended. The successive destroyers, beginning with the Wolf of Badenoch in 1390 and ending with Cromwell’s men, were dust now, but the cathedral still stood.
    Nigel had been brought here once as a child. “There was an old man who could give you the whole story, chapter and verse, but all that stayed with me was the Bloody Vespers, when the Inneses and the Dunbars had an infernal row during a service. I always hated being dragged to church, and I thought it would be topping to have a battle instead of a sermon.”
    Mr. Sinclair, who had been gloomily poking around with his stick, said, “Aye, it would be an improvement on some of the sermons I’ve had to endure.”
    â€œThey were great glovemakers in Elgin,” Mrs. Sinclair said. “Saint Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers and glovers. There he is, knocked about a bit, and here he is again.”
    Jennie hardly heard her. She was reading an epitaph on a tomb:

    Who had composed this cynical epitaph? The man who lay in the tomb? There was nothing pious, reverent, or hopeful about it. It appealed to her, yet it gave her a touch of the cold grue, and Nigel was too far from her, walking away down a long grassy aisle.
    She went to him at once, trying not to run.

Ten

    T HEY DINED on fresh salmon at an inn in Elgin where Mr. Sinclair was well known. He announced that the Gilchrists were his guests.
    â€œOh, come, sir,” Nigel protested. “It’s too much. You’re already carrying us in comfort to Inverness.”
    â€œSilence, lad.” Sinclair lifted his glass toward Jennie. “Let us drink to the bride.”
    His wife winked at Jennie and said, “And may your husband never cease to astonish you even after thirty years.”
    Thirty years! It was more than her present lifetime. We’ll be grand parents then , Jennie thought. She could not imagine it. Thirty years with Nigel. Bliss .
    They drove on toward Inverness. The Sinclairs drowsed; Nigel and Jennie smiled at each other, looked away, were drawn back again, not able to touch except with their eyes and their low voices as they called each other’s attention to some sight along the road or out on the firth.
    There was more traffic on the way now. Sheep and cows accompanied by drovers and dogs. Riders on horses or garrons, the sturdy Highland ponies; carriages and carts, farm wagons. Walkers: those who looked as if they had errands, and the others who looked as if they lived on the roads. Were these the dispossessed? She didn’t want to know,