Free The Book of Secrets by Fiona Kidman Page A

it to his son. The boy smiled and was still.
    ‘You worry too much,’ said McLeod, dismissing her question.
    ‘But what of John’s baptism? Who will do that?’
    ‘Do not question me, Mary. It is unseemly of you.’
    When his wife related this incident to Isabella, the younger woman was full of indignation.
    ‘It’s not good enough, Mary!’ she cried. ‘You should stand up to him. The way he’s going on, Dr Ross is bound to close him down. I mean, can you blame him for being angry? There were only three people in church on Sunday.’
    ‘And were you amongst them?’
    Isabella shifted uncomfortably. ‘You know I was listening to Mr McLeod.’
    ‘And you are different from all the others who go?’
    There was a silence between them. ‘You’re not married to him,’ said Mary, finally. ‘You do not know to what lengths he will go.’
    Isabella looked away out the window. Her friend’s eyes followed her. When she looked back, Mary had taken to rocking quietly in her chair. Under her hands the baby she was carrying fluttered, turned restlessly inside her. It is as well not to try and read her, Isabella thought.
    After she had gone, Mary sat looking out to sea. It is all right for Isabella, she told herself. She is young, and she has always had enough to eat, so that her strength is not sapped. It’s all right for her to have fallen under his spell, she has other chances and will get over it. I am too tired already to fight with him.

    The following week McLeod announced to his wife that John Luther would have to be baptised at Loch Carron.
    ‘But that’s forty miles away!’
    ‘We have walked further before.’
    ‘But now?’
    ‘I’ll carry the child,’ said McLeod. ‘You will have no need to concern yourself about that.’
    ‘Can’t we wait for the summer?’
    ‘We’ve waited too long already.’
    ‘Then can you not appeal to Dr Ross? It is not the child who has offended him?’
    ‘My dear Mary, do you not understand?’ He spoke with a certain solicitude, as if she might be incapable of grasping what he was saying.
    And indeed she did not understand him, but dared not tell him so.
    McLeod explained seemingly with great patience, but there was an underlying agitation in his manner. ‘Dr Ross is a man of the worst temper, to begin with, but that is not the point. We are talking of our son’s baptism, the future of his immortal soul. The man who ministers such a sacrament must be worthy of that responsibility. Allow me to inform you, my dear wife, that last Sunday when Ross preached, he took the text “Ye are the salt of the earth” and all he had to say was about how salt is procured and processed. And the Sunday before that, the learned doctor preached on “Ye are the light of the world” and what did he talk about? Why, the planetary system! Hercules and Herschel and Neptune and Newton were the topics and personalities under discussion. But of sinners and the Saviour, he spoke not a word. There now,’ and his voice had assumed a note of positive triumph, ‘surely you can understand that. Well don’t you, Mary?’
    ‘No,’ she said, but not to him. It was Isabella whom she told of difficulty in coming to terms with her husband’s philosophical scruples.
    Privately, Isabella wondered how Mary would stand the journey to Loch Carron. The skin of her face was softy pleated around the mouth and her colour very pale. The small pulse in her throat throbbed constantly. She had seen it as Mary lay in bed, some days too tired to get up and attend to John.
    ‘What would I do without you?’ she said on days such as this, putting her thin hand on Isabella’s arm.
    ‘It will get better, you’ll see,’ Isabella had said, but sometimes she wondered if it would. It was not so much the state of Mary’s physicalcondition that bothered her, although it was clear that she was not strong, but rather her total disinclination to oppose McLeod, whatever he said even though his suggestions were often