As Georgie beat his way around the pond, Mungo turned and called to him. “Hey Gleg — you want to sweep for me?” Georgie was stunned. He couldn’t have been more disoriented had he been hit in the back of the head with a shovel. Sweep for Mungo Park? He couldn’t believe it. Never before had anyone invited him to participate in anything. Though he wanted nothing more. Though he sat for hours and watched them at shinty, football, golf, dying for a chance at it, praying that the goaltender would break a leg and they’d turn to him, Georgie Gleg, slap his back, see him in a new light.
“Welclass="underline" what do you say? You want to or not?”
He nodded, nodded emphatically, his heart beating agamst his ribs like a bird fighting to burst free. “I’ve just got — just got to drop off the ale —” he stammered, already loping across the lot to the schoolhouse, too caught up in it to be suspicious.
He rushed up to the door, out of breath, twin streams of mucus depending from his nostrils. It took no more than five seconds — he set the pot of ale down among the other offerings, slid his copybook into a chink in the wall, and shot back up the path.
His fate was sealed.
Adam grabbed up the tankard as soon as Gleg turned his back, flipped back the lid and took a long hard swallow. He wiped his mouth and took another swig. Then handed the jar to Finn. Finn drank deep, passed the jar to Robbie Monboddo, who took his turn and passed it on. A moment later Adam drained it. And then, with Colin looking out for Tullochgorm, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed into the neck of the jar, fighting for every last drop, pushing, pushing, his face red with the strain. Finn was next. And then Robbie, Colin and the rest. At first Colin couldn’t make his water come and the others coached and cajoled him, talking it up as if they were out on the football field and this were a shot on goal. Tullochgorm had been sighted, the jar wasn’t full yet. Come on, come on: you can do it. Finally, with less than a minute to spare, Colin let loose, sweet music, and filled the jar to the rim. A cheer went up. Tullochgorm thought it was for him, and tipped his hat as he stepped past them to open the door.
In the winter, sessions began at dawn and ran through till sundown, with a half-hour break for refreshment at noon. During the break the boys sat at their desks, shivering, and nibbled at a bit of cold porridge, or took advantage of the free time to skate or curl on the pond. On this particular day, no one left the room. There was a low murmur of lunchtime chatter, Mungo chewed at a cold potato, Colin warmed a crust over the fire. Furtively, they all watched Tullochgorm.
The schoolmaster had turned his chair in order to face the side wall. He’d laid up his rod — for thirty minutes at least — and had already begun to shut out the scene around him, already begun to forget the slate board, the dreary room, the unwashed faces at his elbow. There was a book open on the desk before him — the Bellum Grammaticale—and he was alternately skimming through it, massaging his feet and dicing a raw turnip into a dish of groats. Fascinated, the scholars hung on his every move, as if they’d never before seen a man scratch his feet and spoon up porridge at the same time. When he reached for his pot of ale the room was electric with tension, a wave of quiet hysteria cresting and then as quickly subsiding. It was a false alarm. Abstracted, the schoolmaster put the tankard down again and took a spoonful of cereal instead, his eyes all the while fixed on the pages of his book. Finn Macpherson nearly leaped from his seat. Adam couldn’t resist a low nervous chuckle, Colin wiped his nose expectantly. Only Gleg was oblivious to it, scribbling away in his copybook as if he were immune to the nasty little surprises of life, poor dull unlucky Gleg, the sacrificial lamb blindly nosing round the pillars of the bloodstained altar itself.
Then, like the punchline of a bad joke, the moment passed into history. Tullochgorm lifted the tankard to his lips and took a long thirsty gulp. No reaction. He turned the pages of his book. There followed an instant during which he looked down at the pot of yellow liquid, took a puzzled experimental sip, and then spewed it all out like a whale coming up for air. Thirty-six heads dropped, suddenly absorbed in the intricacies of Latin grammar. Georgie Gleg looked up. The schoolmaster was having a fit of some sort, gasping and retching, pounding on the desk with the flat of his hand, blood vessels bursting in his face like a fireworks display. Georgie was awed, puzzled and frightened at the same time. But if he was surprised, the surprise was short-lived. For Tullochgorm was staring at him. Not staring exactly — glaring. Looking daggers. A froth of saliva and partially digested food on his chin, his eyes piglike with rage and hatred, Tullochgorm was glaring at him.
Georgie Gleg, ten years old, began to feel very small indeed.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was all downhill after that. There were peaks and valleys, of course, but essentially the plane of Gleg’s life inclined toward the nether pole. The immediate result of the incident with Tullochgorm was expulsion, followed by a tripartite thrashing at the hands of Georgie’s mother, Quaggus and the schoolmaster. For the next two weeks Gleg was forced to take a cup of his own urine with each meal, and to stand in the town pillory, erected ad hoc, for half an hour each afternoon. At the end of the two-week period he was unceremoniously booted from the house at the long end of Quaggus’ foot, and sent up to Edinburgh, where he was to live with his uncle Silas and attend the local school.
Surprisingly, Edinburgh wasn’t all that bad. For one thing, no one knew him in the big city. No one knew of the slain eagle and the tiles slathered with blood, no one accused him of harboring the evil eye or of curdling milk by his mere presence. To his schoolmates he was just another gangling, flap-eared object of ridicule — nothing special. Through the hail of abuse he even managed to nurture a friend or two — other misfits, of course — but it was a start. For another thing, Silas Gleg took an active interest in his nephew. He dressed him properly, hired a tutor, gave him an allowance — Georgie began to develop as a laird’s son should. He graduated with high honors.
At this point, Quaggus stepped in. Since there was really no estate left to manage nor any patrimony to speak of, he argued, the boy should set himself up in a professional way, earn a living, learn to maintain himself. Silas Gleg reluctantly agreed. Georgie was first apprenticed to an apothecary, and then later, when the druggist unexpectedly passed on, to Silas Gleg’s old friend, Dr. James Anderson of Selkirk. There he met Ailie, and his life developed into something worthwhile, something beautiful, something that for the first time approached the sublime. When she agreed to marry him he felt as if he’d conquered the world. Alexander, Caesar, Attila the Hun — they were pikers by comparison.
But then, just when life was opening up to him like an orchid in bloom, it snapped shut again, deadly, vituperative, rotten at the core. She left him. Crept off in the shadows as if he were some beast she couldn’t face in the light of day. The relatives and neighbors had gathered. Quaggus and his mother. Uncle Silas. It was to have been the crowning moment of his life.
He left Selkirk the day after Christmas. There were no explanations, no apologies, no farewells. Stoop-backed, valise in hand, he headed off in the direction of Edinburgh. It was cold. The wind swept down out of the north with a sound like the keening of birds, and the crusted branches rattled like chandeliers at a wake. If he’d bothered to lift his head he would have looked out on a ripple of cropped gray hills, sorry gashes of erosion, trees stark beyond any hope of renewal. He didn’t bother. Hunched against the wind. Gleg struggled on, weary and disconsolate, limping along the roadway like some half-dazed footsoldier beating a retreat from an enemy he could neither subdue nor comprehend.