Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3)
Read Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) Online
Authors: Ruth Glover
© 2001 by Ruth Glover
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-3934-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Scripture is from the King James Version of the Bible.
To
Ruth McDowell,
a perfect minister’s wife
and my dear friend
Contents
T
he harsh winds had ceased their howling down the glens, but not before they had scoured the ancient hills to their bare bones. The scattered growth of bracken, defeated by a lifetime of battling with the elements, rested, spent and torn, under the touch of a tender sun and a rare, blue sky.
High on the hillside above the small village of Binkiebrae, Tierney Caulder sat on a rock wall, sunning herself. Her hand-loomed skirts were spread around her; with a quick brush of one slender foot against another she was rid of her heavy shoes, and her toes, free of winter’s cumbersome wool stockings, lifted toward the warmth of the sun, wriggling with pleasure at the unaccustomed freedom. Unknotting her kerchief, she tossed it aside and ran a slim, rough hand through the rich mass of hair that tumbled about her shoulders, glinting auburn in the sun’s rays.
Placing her hands on the rocks on which she sat, Tierney leaned back, allowing her hair to fall free, lifted her face toward
the warmth of the skies, and closed her eyes. For the moment, she savored the peace that so easily escaped her in the hurly-burly of her days.
Below her the seashore stretched white in the light of the late afternoon, and beyond, the dazzling sea—ever restless, usually turbulent, always bound to the lives and doings of the people of Binkiebrae. On its tempestuous bosom her father had worn out his youth and his manhood and, eventually, his strength. On it her brother James even now prepared to make his weary way home from a day’s fishing, the size of his catch the indication of his mood.
Under the shading of her hand, Tierney’s eyes searched for and could find no sign of the fishing fleet’s approach; the fine day would keep them at their task for hours yet. God grant each man—she prayed automatically, but no less fervently—first safety, then a bountiful catch. The brief request of the Almighty had been the plea of wives and mothers and sisters for as long as mankind had called this hard region home. Too often, anxious eyes searched in vain; too often one boat, watched for above all others, failed to return. That Malcolm Caulder, hard worker that he was, had survived to the age of fifty-nine, was a wonder and a miracle.
Malcolm had survived; it had been his wife, Tierney’s mother—weary with watching, exhausted by the weight of life and its unrelenting burdens—who had folded her thin hands in a rest not known for fifty-five years, and gave up work and worry for a better land. How true the old hymn they had sung at her burying—“Land of Rest,” they called it.
O land of rest, for thee I sigh!
When will the moment come
When I shall lay my armor by, [they sang “burdens”]
And dwell in peace at home?
Remembering that occasion of a few months past, for a moment the melody ran through Tierney’s mind, and she recalled
the words of the chorus and found them just as fitting, for every Binkiebrae resident, as the verse:
We’ll work till Jesus comes
.
Life, for Tierney Caulder, as for everyone on this windswept Scottish shoreline, had never been easy. She was always aware that her “mither” and her “da” loved her; still that had not prevented her from understanding, early on, that life was hard. If it were not the cruel biting of the wind and the wearing anxiety over the safety of their menfolk that pressed down on their spirits, it was the constant need for peat and coal to warm the wee homes, and the ever-pressing need to provide food. Food and warmth—everything else came second to those.
Like all frugal cooks, nothing went to waste in the Caulder household. Even the
faa
, or insides of an animal, were eaten. Tripe was cleaned, stuffed with meat, onions, and dried fruit, if such were available, then boiled and eaten hot, or when cold, sliced and fried. Oats—for the morning’s porridge and for oatcakes at all times—were a household staple. And of course they were needed to make that less than glorious but famous dish, haggis. Oats were added to sheep’s liver, heart and lungs, onion, and chopped mutton suet; it was all mixed together, stuffed into the stomach bag of a sheep, boiled for about five hours, and served with tatties and neeps (potatoes and turnips). No, nothing went to waste.
Even now, as Tierney basked in the sun, enjoying a stolen moment for herself, the oatcakes were baked and ready, and the kettle was on the boil for tea. Thinking of it and whether indeed the fireplace was burning as it ought, she sought out the one small dwelling that, among two dozen or so, she called home.
“Sma’, too sma’,” she murmured with a sigh and a shake of her head.
And indeed it was. Though snug and warm, the “hoosie” was small. Her father slept in the one bedchamber, she slept in the loft, and James slept at the fireside, pulling out a pallet at night and folding it away in the daytime. A small scullery at the back of the house was used for washing up and storing
dishes and cooking utensils, cleaning vegetables, and similar work. The cooking and baking were done at the fireplace in the main room, the area in which they lived.
Da would be sitting there now, at the fireside, dreaming away his last few days, content just to be warm and fed, free of the need to go out in tempest and storm, snow and sleet, mist and fog, to cast the nets one more time. His once massive frame was pathetically shrunken; the disease eating at his lungs kept his thin body shaken with coughs much of the time. There was no mistaking the touch of death on Malcolm Caulder’s pale face and crimson cheeks.
When Malcolm would be laid to his final rest, Tierney and James would find the house adequate for their needs. She could move into their parents’ room; James could take the loft.
More than likely, however, it would be the other way round. James, young though he was—at twenty-three just five years his sister’s senior—was in love, seriously in love with Phrenia MacDonald. Seriously enough in love to be talking marriage. Tierney approved his choice, even loved Phrenia, whom she had always known. But she shrank from the thought of infringing on the privacy that should be theirs, especially during those first months of marriage. And when the children came, as they surely would, the loft would be needed, and she, with no other choice, would take the pallet by the fire. It was a dreary, even humiliating future, though no different than many a home subscribed to, with a single, unmarried relative to care for.
Never, never would James deny his sister a home, but even that generous gesture on his part pained her by its very necessity.
But she needn’t worry—there was Robbie Dunbar . . .
At that moment, as though stepping from dream into reality, Robbie appeared at the foot of the hill, shading his eyes, looking upward. Looking for her.
Tierney saw him with a quickening beat to her heart that she could no more help than she could stop breathing. Raising her arm, she waved her kerchief, signaling him . . . calling him.
Watching him climb, she went over the sweet story of Robbie Dunbar in her thoughts.
How long had she loved him? If not all of his life, then all of hers. First as a friend of James, then as her own friend and confidant, then as . . . she faced the breathtaking thought fully—as
more
than friend,
more
than confidant. Robbie was—her future.
Was anyone more dear than Robbie? Just to follow his rugged form as he leaped from rock to rock, to note his eyes—which she knew to be as deeply blue as the sea and just as familiar—glancing up at her from time to time, to see his lips curl in a smile meant just for her, filled her heart with happiness.
Tierney’s love for Robbie had grown in such a natural way—not bent and battling like the bracken, but straight and lovely, healthy and true, like her mother’s potted geranium in the window recess. To use Scripture:
First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear
. That’s how her love for Robbie Dunbar had grown.
It had seemed that there was no need to hurry what would last a lifetime. There were no surprises, no problems. It had always been, it would always be—Tierney Caulder and Robbie Dunbar. Together. Forever.
Tierney and Robbie, sometime, someplace, would settle onto a croft of their own, and life would go on as it had, but filled with the supreme joy of being together.
It was so simple, so right. It flowed along, in her mind and heart, as sweetly as the River Dee, and as steadfast. Love—hers and Robbie’s—could be counted on, like the unchanging hills.
That Robbie loved her as she loved him, Tierney never doubted. Unspoken between them, never yet put into words, still that love existed.
And what was the hurry? These were days of sweetness stored up, sweetness to last a lifetime. Tierney and Robbie were young and all of life lay before them, here, where the Dee met the sea. Life for them would be as sure and unchanged as the loves and lives of countless generations before them. From the
beginning, life had gone on as it always had. Tierney, content, counted on it, rested in it, bloomed because of it.
At last, breathless, Robbie reached her side, to throw himself down and stretch himself on the grass at her feet.
To lay himself at her feet, and by a few words, tear her world apart. Her world—so dependable, so solid, so unchanging—came crashing down, never to be the same again.
Her first clue that something was amiss, before ever he spoke, was the fact that Robbie’s blue eyes, usually as sunny as today’s sky, looked hot with something akin to anger. Neither did he give her smile for smile.