Inheritance Feud

Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Aunt Galadriel meant Hermione to make a rich marriage, he knew; she was bringing the girl up for that purpose, turning her into a correct, pretty, spiritless thing. Uncle Sandor had stopped Peter Melrose from mooning after her last year, he said he didn't countenance marriage of cousins, but it was more than that. There wasn't anyone else hereabouts. Once or twice Theon had heard talk, drifting down into the black smith's cottage of an evening, that the debts on Baron could still not be cleared by any means and the house must be sold. Baron sold! Sold to strangers!

But no strangers had come. The roads were bad from the south, and no one in the north had any money. Baron, the inheritance of Doons forh centuries, since King David's time that had the wanton queen, was safe still. Theon would lie, as now, watching the house, and thinking of how ever since King Davie, who liked his English comforts, Doons had fought in Scotland for the true king: for Montrose; for Claver house at Killiecrankie; for King James at Sheriffmuir, for Bonnie Prince Charlie. His own father Richard had been the last of the name of Doon to draw a sword for the royal house. And the result of all that had been that he, the heir, was left now landless ... and poor.

What was to be done? What could he do, not yet being rich, to save Baron for himself and his sons? For he must breed sons. If the prim, timid, correct wax doll Hermione had lately become since aunt Galadriel whipped the life out of her had run out today, and up the hill to him, should he have r***d her to settle the matter? He'd have done it-he had thought of that answer sometimes-if there had been any help in law, by so doing, for Baron. But he and Hermione were still minors and the debts must be cleared. He'd be left, in the event, with Hermione and not the house: shackled to a girl who had no interest for him. Anyway, she hadn't come today.

His thoughts drifted from present to future and he rolled over on his back, staring up at the silvery gean trees. Tomor row, Aaron had said, they were going out, the pair of them, without the fire-signal, when the tide should be right after midnight. The moon would be in the dark quarter and with the wind right they could make all speed to Man, and back again by next evening. 

There would be bales off a French ship to bring home. Theon grinned, showing teeth white as a fox's. Respectable Abel Judd, Aaron's elder son who owned the Fleece as a careful taxpayer, would come later with his dray; a certain number of excise-approved barrels were always on it. There would be stronger stuff than ale hidden among the straw in the double bottom; not only the dray, but Aaron's cellar at the smithy also, had that. So had the Fleece. Abel however was too careful to come out with them in the boat himself; Theon and Bart would see to the stowing, and the hiding afterwards of other packages, and their delivery elsewhere. 

The list of high-ranking customers was a fairly long one; all the names on it were those with whom Uncle Philip and he used to visit, and drink wine brought no doubt from somewhere or other, tossed over the throat in one another's stately halls. But not now. He, Theon, in a woollen cap and leathers, would come after dark, oh, ay, and hand in a pack age through a closed shutter, while they snuffed the candles. And afterwards, they'd leave the money by arrangement.

Money. It was what he himself needed, much, much more than he already had-and he had made a little in such ways to save Baron. His will was like a coiled serpent inside him, ready to spring at need; he had spent little or nothing on him self all these years; he still wore his old clothes, or Uncle Philip's. He hadn't had a woman or cast a guinea at play, or drunk ale in Abel's Fleece that he must pay for. Mean as the devil, they'd begun saying he was, young Theon. Sometimes he wondered if the red blood of the Doons in him, and of his wild Highland dam, might be running thin and sour; but there was always the sight of Baron, to set it pounding again. One day, when the plan was perfected, he'd be the laird there, and play chess in the evenings by his own fire in the great hall, with his boots eased off, like Uncle Philip; and when he dined it would be in powder and ruffles, with a servant at his elbow plying wine, and the candlelight shining on the long polished table among the meats. Doon of Baron, he'd be then. There was a woman at the opposite end of the table, but he couldn't see her face.

He still lay about on the grass of the spinney, relaxing his lithe thin body in its patched shirt that had once been Philip Doon's. He had given up expecting Hermione, or thinking of her; his thoughts drifted now to women in general. Of these he was ignorant; except for the fading memory of his uncle's resigned wife, and the legends of his own mother: aunt Ret ford he hardly classed as a woman at all, and Sir Sandor Melrose's wife had been always ailing before she died last year: no one latterly saw her. Aaron was a widower and had been for years. Women were, accordingly, a closed book; but Theon felt that, if he opened this, he could read it without difficulty. He had not yet, however, had a woman or attempted one, and Bart laughed at him for it: Bart, s****l as a tomcat, spent his own free time, his money and all his landward thoughts on legs and bosoms, generally those of the lasses in the Fleece kitchen, who were handy; or young casual workers on the farms.

 There were bastards everywhere already with Bart's hook nose and sloe-dark eyes, though he was only twenty. He, Theon, wasn't like that; a certain fastidiousness took him when confronted with easy wenches, or perhaps he was in any case cold, his only real love being Baron. For Baron, he'd marry... but before then, no doubt, he should find out about women, as his father had perhaps done before taking the untamed, green-clad Highland creature he'd met at the famous Holyrood ball in 'Forty-five. Richard Doon had married her next day in her green silk dress. There were those who said all the misfortune had stemmed from that; there was never any luck in green..

 Theon pulled a stalk of green grass now and thoughtfully nibbed the pale, juicy end nearest the root. Luck! He'd no faith in that; one made one's own. With a trifle of common sense and caution, there was no need to be caught doing what didn't suit other folk. Society had made an outcast of him for no fault of his own; he would take his own way with his life. The will in him was, he knew, his mother's; she had followed easy Richard south, then north, then come home to Baron to have her son and passed the waiting time striding the rooms and corridors like a caged tigress, before taking at last to her tower. From it there was the sight of the road along which tidings never came, except of disaster. She'd left the wish that her son should be called not for his father, in the end, but for her own land, Theon of the blue hills which she would never see again. He had her eyes, pale as water: and her thin wiry frame. The silky thatch of brown hair was his father's.

He himself had no wish yet to see Theon of the north. His heart was here, in his father's country, which they said had such charm that no man could willingly leave it. Every stone and every cranny was known to Theon Doon, the least c***k and mark on the long flight of stone steps running down from Baron's steep back to the sea. He knew that well, and also the caves deep under; there was a place where the seals came in from the open seas to lay their young, that no man could reach for long because the tide ran inwards to the concealed shelf of rock within minutes again, except for one single day in the year. Theon had been, that day, for the allotted hour: he'd go again. He was free to come and go as he would, no man owning him.