Shadow in Hawthorn Bay (3 page)

She threw herself down on the hilltop, stretched out her arms, and put her ear against the ground. Sometimes, beyond the rustling noises of the grass and of the insects that burrowed beneath it, Mary could hear what might be the pipes and fiddles of fairy music, and once in a great while, in rare moments, she was sure she could hear the voice of the hill itself. It was a singing sound, a low, even, soft, thrumming, humming sound, sometimes joyful, sometimes sad, and it came from deep in the heart of the hill. In that sound joy and sorrow met and from it Mary often felt that she drew all her strength.

On this evening she was too upset to hear anything but the distress in her own heart. “I cannot go to Canada, och, how can I go?” she
whispered over and over. A sob was in her throat. “How can you ask it of me? Are you so unhappy? Why do you not come home? Duncan, I cannot.” Even as she said the words, the frenzy was growing in her. How could she not go to him? She sat up, her hands clenched into tight fists. She knew she had no choice. She had to go to Canada—and as she thought it, the means of going came to mind.

She stumbled down the hill and across the few feet to where the old rowan tree stood. She put her face against it, her arms tightly around it. “Take my wishes,” she whispered brokenly, “and bring me good fortune.” Then she turned and walked stiffly back the way she had come.

The Cairngorm Brooch

I
t was already evening, way past milking time, when she reached the pasture. The little black cow was bawling. In a few swift movements, Mary untied the rope that had tethered it to a broom bush, yanking it impatiently. She made a cursory inspection of the ewe and its lamb and gave a sharp whoo-ee to the rest of the sheep and the goats, neglecting her usual words of affection and encouragement. She all but ran along the path to where the Urquhart cottage lay snuggled into a hollow of Carroch Hill. Moo-ing and maa-ing and baa-ing indignantly, bumping into each other along the way, the animals trotted after her.

With that same speed and impatience, Mary settled the disgruntled beasts in the byre, milked the cow, and carried the wooden pail to the low, hollowed stone by the cottage door. Hastily she murmured the words of greeting to the
bodach
,
the house fairy whose presence brought good fortune to the family. She poured his milk into the stone for him, nervously smoothed the rough blue linen of her skirt, adjusted her shawl around her shoulders, took a deep breath, and went inside.

The cottage was small and its single room was dark and thick with the peat smoke that rose from the round hearth in its centre towards the chimney in the low roof. Mingling with the smoke were the odours of the boiled oats and kale keeping warm in the large iron pot that hung over the fire, and the cheese dripping from its cloth into the sink near the room’s single window.

Mary always felt half smothered by the dark closeness of the cottage but, on this evening, she was too perturbed to notice.

“Slan leat,”
she greeted her mother, her father, and her sister Jeannie, as though she were not bothered in any way, and sat down at her place at the board table.

“Did Sally have her lamb, then?” Mary’s mother rose from her place and dished kale and oatmeal porridge onto a wooden plate and poured a cup of buttermilk.

“She did that. A fine bit of a ewe lamb.” Mary bowed her head, said her grace, and tried to eat. The talk was of the day’s ploughing and spinning, of whether or not Patrick Grant was going to be able to manage his rent, of Jeannie’s
coming marriage to Johnny Fraser, but Mary did not listen. It was such a great thing, such a terrible thing she was going to ask. Suddenly she set her spoon on the table with a bang.

“I will be needing the cairngorm brooch.” She almost shouted, she was so nervous. Someone—Jeannie or Mary’s mother—gasped. Quietly, his face showing no emotion, her father said, “Mairi, I believe you spoke but I did not quite make out what it was you said.”

Mary clenched her hands at her sides. Her pale face flushed but she spoke as evenly as her father. “I said, Father, that I will be needing the cairngorm brooch, it that lies wrapped in its linen in the kist.” She nodded towards the large wooden chest that stood in the far corner of the room. Again there was the sound, softer this time, of sharply indrawn breath.

The brooch was a large, flat silver circlet, marked in an ancient Celtic pattern, the cairngorm stone in its centre the clear, peaty-brown colour of a Highland stream. The brooch had been given to a James Urquhart three hundred years earlier, after the battle of Flodden Field, because he had saved the life of his chief. It was handsome and the only possession of real value the Urquharts had.

Her father’s usually ruddy face was white against his fire-red hair. His words dropped slowly, one by one, into the silent room.

“And what might you think you will be needing the brooch for?”

“It is for passage money.”

“Och, Mairi, what is this?” cried her mother.

“It is to fetch Duncan away home.”

“Mairi, you cannot—”

“Let the lass speak.” James Urquhart had not taken his eyes from Mary’s face.

“He promised he would come and he did not.” Mary’s low voice rose with every impassioned word she spoke as she told about hearing Duncan’s voice. “And I could feel the pain of his pain and the need of his need and what is there in all the world but the brooch itself that will buy passage for me?”

In the silence that followed Mary did not, could not look at anybody. She was remembering a time four years back. At eleven, she had been old enough to go to work as a kitchen maid for Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie at the big house. Old enough to learn something of household skills, her mother had said. Mary had known the rudiments of cooking and spinning. She had always known how to wash clothes but never anything of weaving or knitting, the skills Jeannie had learned so well. And she had had no intention of learning them.

“It is not for me to be spending my life as a kitchen maid,” she had told them. “I am meant for the beasts of the pasture.”

“You will need to learn a thing or two more than caring for the cows and the sheep, my lass,” her father had said. “And what is more, we will be needing the money your service will fetch.”

Argument had been useless. The terms had been drawn up between James and Margaret Urquhart and the Gillespies at Tigh na shuidh and Mary had gone off over the hills and across the river with her change of shift, her Sunday-best skirt, and a precious pair of new leather brogans for her feet tied up in a square of fresh linen. Her hair was combed neatly down her back and she had a set look in her eyes that matched the stubbornness in her heart.

At Tigh na shuidh she had learned the ways of ladies and gentlemen, the workings of a big house, how to scrub fine silver and good pewter and china dishes, and a great deal more English than the dominie at the school at Balnacairn had taught. “Very promising,” Mrs. Gillespie had said, but at the end of six months Mary had tied her spare shift, her Sunday-best skirt, and her brogans into her linen kerchief and gone back across the river and over the hills.

Greeting her father on her own doorstep, she had said, “It is not for me to be spending my life as a kitchen maid. I am meant for the beasts of the pasture.” The money had had to be given back to Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie and Mary had gone back out into the hills to herd
cows and sheep with Duncan. Six months later Duncan left the Glen.

Some memory of that time may have been in Mary’s father’s mind too. He stood up slowly and leaned, palms down, on the table. His grey eyes were almost black with anger, his hair had fallen over his forehead.

“The brooch has stayed in our family these three hundred years.” He turned from the table and left the house.

Mary’s mother said nothing. The set of her head under her white cap, the clatter of the wooden platters as she cleared the table, showed how upset she was. Jeannie reached over and put her hand on Mary’s. Jeannie had red hair like her father, but her features were soft and her nature gentle. “Canada is a far place to go alone. Such a far place. It might be you would get there, Mairi, but you might not get home again.”

“That could not be did I have the passage money.”

“Passage money!” Mary’s mother spun around from the sink where she had been scouring the plates. “Passage money!” Her black eyes—so like Mary’s—were blazing. “You would take yourself by yourself thousands of miles after a voice in your head, and him not sending you thought or word these four years? Though he is my own nephew, son
to my own brother, I say it, Duncan Cameron is a thoughtless and a sulky lad. Do Davie’s or Jean’s letters say that were it not for Duncan’s willing hands they would be lost? They do not! They write of Callum’s willing hands, of Callum’s back-breaking work, and him but ten years old. Mairi, put him from you. You who are so strong-minded, so wilful about everything else, would follow that lad’s restless piping wherever, whenever he cares to lead you. Do not you give your life away to him. There’s better lads than he here in the glen. There’s Callum Grant pining for but a smile from you, and others too. Do not think of this again.”

“Mother!” It was so unlike her mother to speak out violently in any cause. Mary was shocked, then swiftly angered. “Mother, I will not listen. Duncan and I.…” Mary clamped her mouth shut, and with the same stiff back her father had shown, she left the house.

She started straight up the slope in the direction of the
tornashee
. She had not gone far before her steps began to slow and finally halted.

“They are right. How dared I ask for that? How could I have?” Her face grew hot from shame. “What am I to do?” She sat down, her head in her hands. She was shaking from shame, from the sting of her mother’s words and her father’s anger. She longed to go ask for the comfort of forgiveness—but could not. She
needed to go where Duncan called—but could not do that either. Tormented, she began to pace up and down the slope. “Mother, Father, Jeannie!” she cried, begging for their help.

But there was no help for her.

“I must find Duncan. I must. He is in such need.” She started back down the slope towards the path. “I cannot go home now. I cannot face them. Somehow I must go!” On the path she stopped once more. The last of the day was gone. The evening mist had lifted and the moon shone bright over the land. From where she stood Mary could just see the heather thatch of her home. She brushed the tears from her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath. She dropped to her knees and whispered a prayer for her mother, her father, her sister, the animals, the house, and, finally, “all who may come to stay in it while I am gone.” For the length of a single heartbeat she hesitated, then turned away and continued resolutely down the hill towards the road leading to the west.

With the first step the old Gaelic mourning words began inside her,
“och-on, och-on”
and as she went she could hear them echoing from the rushing water of the burns and in the wind along the hills,
“och-on, och-on, och-on,”
alas, alas, alas.

The Andrew MacBride

“A
re you leaving, then, Mairi, without a word of farewell?”

Mary stopped.

“Will you leave without the breath of one small word?”

Mary spun around. It was Mrs. Grant, her tall frame and the white of her bonnet clearly outlined in the moonlight. A sad but affectionate look crossed her strong, old face. She held Mary with her steady gaze for a long minute, then she spoke in low, measured tones.

“You will make your voyage but it will bring you sorrow and many trials. Twice will you refuse your destiny, twice will you seek it before you embrace it as your own.” She paused. “The dark holds grave danger for you, Mairi. Beware the dark.”

An owl hooted near the small loch just below the path. The scent of the whin flowers
was strong on the night air. Mary’s heart was racing and it was a moment or two before she could reply.

“Would it be better that I not go?” she whispered, at last.

“What will be will be,” answered the old woman. “I have three gifts to travel with you. One is for need. One is for good fortune. One is for blessing.” She pressed a paper packet into one of Mary’s hands, a spindle whorl into the other. She laid a fine, soft wool plaid of red and black and green tartan over Mary’s arm. Then she bent down and kissed her gravely on both cheeks, turned, and strode away up the path.