The Blackhouse Bride

by Fiona Monroe

  I do not propose that you flee your husband and take refuge in my protection...

  Her eyes filled with fresh tears as she indulged, for a wild moment, in this imaginary scene. At a line from her, he would send a carriage and horses to meet her at Scourie, and whisk her away to somewhere far from anyone who knew who they were.

  How could she even think of such a thing? She would never do it, of course, but how could she even allow herself to imagine it? Because her lawfully married husband, to whom she had surrendered her body with joy and eagerness and trust, had desecrated that union. Her perspective was very different now, too, from what it had been when she had been a maiden.

  She closed her eyes and murmured firmly, "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart..."

  It was no comfort. The Lord's words simply reminded her of the horrible fact that her husband had committed adultery in the very real sense.

  She took out her small supply of writing paper, pen and ink, and without giving herself time to think about what she was doing or what she could possibly say, she plunged into words.

  My lord

  I must thank your lordship for the honour of your letter, which arrived so unexpectedly yesterday morning. I am replying as soon as I find myself able, to entreat your lordship not to trouble yourself to enter into further correspondence with a person as undeserving of the distinction as myself.

  I will always remember with pleasure the kindness your lordship bestowed upon me while I was in the service of your sister-in-law the Marchioness, but now that I am married and settled in a far distant country I do not think it likely that our paths will ever cross again. I am very sorry for the perturbation and indisposition your lordship is suffering, and I am convinced that the best remedy is distance and a complete cessation of all intercourse.

  Indeed, my lord, you must not try to write to me again. It is only by chance that I opened Lady Crieff's letter while I was alone, and discovered yours without it being observed. Think what distress you would have involved me in had others seen it. You say you love me; if you mean that, spare me this vexation.

  I remain your lordship's sincere friend

  Bridie MacAllister

  Even signing her new name caused her pain. She thought of styling herself Brìghde bean Aonghais Mhic Alasdair, to make a point, but she could not bear that. Quickly she read over what she had written - surely it was firm and clear, and not open to misinterpretation - folded it shut, and sealed it. Then she wrote the direction - Lord John Dunwoodie, Dunwoodie House, Aberdeen-shire - very carefully in a hand that looked nothing like her own. If anyone who might recognise her writing, such as Lady Crieff, should bother to glance at the tray as Greaves brought round the post, she was sure that it would not betray her.

  She would discover a sudden need for new sewing needles, which could be obtained in Scourie, and use the opportunity to take it to the post as soon as possible.

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  She said nothing to Angus about what she knew. They continued, outwardly, as before, and she did not attempt again to dismiss Oighrig from service. She could not bear another confrontation with the girl. She let her intrude with her cooking and her milking and her sweeping, and stopped even trying to intercept her breakfast-making.

  Angus tended to be silent and ill-tempered when Oighrig was around, and miserably Bridie realised that he was wishing that she, Bridie, would go away and leave them alone together. She had thought before that his displeasure meant that he thought she ought to be doing the housekeeping tasks without Oighrig's help, but now she knew that there was an entirely different reason for his scowls.

  There was nowhere for her to go, even if she had been inclined to give up and let them be together. If Lady Crieff had thought Bridie's home lacked privacy, her ladyship would have been astonished by the forced communality of township life. The tacksman's house was the only one with a cuilteach, a bedroom separate from the main living area. In the houses of the common farmers, the 'top of the house' meant the area where the animals were not. Families cooked, ate, slept and gathered around the peat firepit in a single room. The only possible private space was provided by the leabaidh-dhuinte, which in the common folks' houses was in this single living area, and most households possessed only one of these.

  Everything was therefore known to everyone, particularly as much of the common work of the township was done together. Bridie realised that, as Oighrig had implied, the whole township must know about her husband's relations with the girl. All of them, all the women at any rate, had been quietly laughing at her - pitying, of course, but scornful too - ever since she had come to live amongst them. It was no wonder that she had not found a friend. She had thought it was because of her imperfect fluency in the language, or because they were wary of her as an outsider, or because they were uneducated. Now she knew that everyone, even sweet little Mairi, had been reticent because they knew her husband was unfaithful.

  The shame - it was absurd that she should feel shame, but she did - competed with the acidic torment of what she realised now was jealousy to cause her the most pain. She went on with her work, she sat and read the Gaelic Bible at night, she continued to submit to Angus's embraces behind the closed doors of the bed, and she said nothing.

  It was only the third Sunday after she had made her midweek expedition to Scourie to purchase sewing supplies, accompanied by the illiterate and incurious Mairi, that Mrs Farquhar handed her another letter with an innocent smile.

  A single glance told Bridie that this was not from Lady Crieff, though it bore the Dunwoodie seal. She thought it must be glaringly obvious that the hand was a gentleman's; fortunately, Mrs Farquhar seemed to assume that it was further correspondence from the Marchioness, and Angus, though he was present in the room, did not see the direction.

  There was no possibility of retreating to the garden again, as the day was rainy and cold. Though only September, the weather had in the past couple of weeks taken a sudden dismal turn, which portended ill for the coming season. Bridie was obliged to hunch in an armchair in the corner of the parlour to open and read the letter, while Angus and Mr and Mrs Farquhar all stood nearby, chatting. There was some time to go until lunch would be ready, and it would have looked odd had she not taken the opportunity to read it.

  My beloved Dark Lady

  Your cruel words say go, your eyes - could I but see them, I am convinced of it - say come. You cannot fool me with weak dismissals and half-hearted admonishments.

  Bridie, Bridie, I have read your dear letter a thousand times over and nowhere in it do you come close to denying that you love me still. Nowhere, do you suggest that you love or even care one straw for the coarse barbarian to whom you have so foolishly tied yourself. I know why this is. I know your shining, sincere nature, honest and true to the core. You cannot tell a lie, you cannot frame an outright untruth.

  Be brave, my love, and cleave to that honesty. Acknowledge our love, admit your feelings, have the courage to be true to yourself. In my last, I said I would not ask you to flee your husband; but I would not be a man if I did not offer to save you from your current misery. For I know you are miserable. Every line in your letter speaks it.

  My Dark Lady, I will take you anywhere you wish, anywhere you have visited in your dreams. We could go to Paris, Verona, Rome. Arabella tells me that you long to travel to all the places you have read about - how I would delight in sharing these wonders with you! We could stand in the great shadow of the Colosseum in Rome, we could walk the ancient streets of Pompeii, we could gaze together across Homer's wine-dark sea.

  Be not a 'flower born to blush unseen', Bridie my love, my Dark Lady. Quit your exile of wretched obscurity and the arms of a man whom you do not love. Remember the sweetness of our kisses, as I remember the delicious softness of your secret places.

  I can write no more. I am overwhelmed. I shall pitch this little bottle into the wide ocean and hope
it fetches up on your distant shore. With it go a thousand kisses and all my heart.

  Your ardent and devoted admirer

  JGD

  Bridie's face flushed scarlet, and her heart swelled with the first pleasant feelings she had experienced for weeks. It was a dark, guilty, dangerous pleasure, but it was not pain.

  "Does her ladyship have any interesting news?" Mrs Farquhar asked brightly, from across the room.

  "Her child is growing well," said Bridie, folding the letter and tucking it into the reticule of woven tweed that one of the women in the township had made for her as a wedding-gift.

  It was the first conscious outright lie that she had ever uttered, or at least as a rational grown woman. She tried to tell herself afterwards that it was not really a lie, as she had not said something like 'her ladyship writes here that her child is growing well'; and it must be true in a general way anyway, for what did babies do other than grow?

  Mrs Farquhar made cooing noises, and wished she could see the precious dear, and then was safely off into talking about her own child and how advanced it was. Bridie pretended to listen and mumbled appropriate replies, but all through lunch she sat in a daze of distraction.

  She was conscious of Angus often watching her over lunch, though he did not directly address her. For the first time since Oighrig's revelation, she found herself thinking of something other than him.

  #

  He had no idea what had happened, not at first.

  The change had come over Bridie so suddenly, that initially Angus was at a loss to know what was troubling her. It seemed that one day she was happily proposing starting prayer meetings in the township, and returning his kisses eagerly at night; the next, she was tense and withdrawn, seemed always to be brooding, scarcely spoke to him and, while she never tried to refuse him in bed, she lay beneath him passive and unresponsive.

  Everything had started so promisingly. He had not even meant to consummate the marriage on their wedding-night, but she had lit up in his embrace like the sudden flare of flame on peat, and no power could have stopped him. He knew, because he had been watching keenly for her reaction, that the basic nature of her new home had dismayed her. But she seemed a strong and willing girl, and he had really thought she was beginning to adapt. He began to hope that she could learn to be happy in Baille nam Breac.

  He began to hope that she could come to love him, as he had loved her on first sight.

  Instead, her spirits had gone into a decline that he could not, after two weeks or more, continue to persuade himself was a temporary moodiness. She was rapidly coming to regret their union now that the reality of blackhouse life was setting in, that much was obvious; and it was when she received her second letter from her old home, that Angus realised when her discontent had started.

  He had been a fool not to have thought of it before. She had behaved oddly over that first letter, now that he came to think about it; running out into the manse garden to read it in a kind of desperation, though lunch had been nearly ready, and then for some reason pretending not to have read it at all, though he had watched her do so. He recalled the thick, creamy paper and the fat red wax seal, speaking of the luxury and ease of her former life. She had been some kind of lady's maid or companion to the Marchioness of Crieff, and lived in Dunwoodie House, which he had never seen but knew to be amongst the finest stately homes in the country. Much as he himself loved Highland life, Bridie had to feel that the township was a come-down for her. The letter from her former mistress must have brought that home forcibly, and set her on her sudden downward path.

  What was he to do? He pondered this as they walked, mostly in silence, back up the glen that afternoon. Again, Bridie had said very little about the contents of her letter from Lady Crieff; and now that Angus had realised that her correspondence from Dunwoodie was provoking her discontent, he was starting to wonder if there was something more specific troubling her. News from home, perhaps, which she was concealing for whatever reason?

  It was impossible to ask her directly, because as usual, to his great irritation, Oighrig was dogging their footsteps. The girl had elected to go to church that Sunday, and was walking abreast of them. Angus had seen that Oighrig's assistance in the home was useful to Bridie, and he by no means wanted his wife to bear the domestic burden alone when he could continue to employ her. For that reason, he had decided not to formally dismiss Oighrig, and tried to tolerate her presence in their home. It was as much as he could do to keep his temper around her, however. In fact, he was beginning to think that he wanted nothing more than never to see her again.

  When he had announced his betrothal to the unknown girl from Aberdeen-shire, she had made the devil of a scene. She had actually followed him up to the pasture when he had gone to milk Beathag and Beasag, and tearfully accused him of betraying her.

  "I never courted you, Oighrig," he said, as calmly as he could.

  "You kissed me! You dandled me on your lap! Everyone knows we were to be wed! And now I am put to shame - a laughing stock - and you are a vile scoundrel! You who pretend to be so pious!"

  "We were never going to be wed, Oighrig."

  "Then shame on you. I'll tell my father!"

  He was silent. He did not want to encourage her in her own twisted version of events by having more interaction with her than it was possible to help.

  She had obviously been waiting for him to ask what she would tell her father, and when she got no response, she huffed. "I'll tell him you lay with me. Then he'll make you wed me, not this dubh-ghall!"

  "You'll tell him no such lies, Oighrig Ruaidh. If you do, so help me - I'll put you over my knee and blister your hide myself."

  She had turned on her heel and stomped back down the mountainside slope towards the gently-smoking roofs of the blackhouses, clustered so peacefully below.

  They had not exchanged private words since, and he had hoped at first that she would simply absent herself from his presence as much as was possible in the social confines of the township. But she had done just the opposite, and he felt as persecuted by her now as he had before his marriage; the difference was, of course, that she no longer represented a real threat. There was no danger of being pressed into marrying her. But Dr Menzies's theory that she would simply give up when presented with his wife now seemed naive.

  If only she could see fit to accept the attentions of Padraig the blacksmith's boy, she would be safely settled in Scourie and would haunt him no more. But she always turned her head from him when he tried to talk to her outside the kirk, with a scornful toss of her cloud of red hair. Padraig was a fine lad, big and gentle and hardworking, who stood to inherit his father's modest blacksmith's shop and who never missed a service on Sundays. He would make a good husband even for a wayward, silly girl like Oighrig, especially since he seemed to like her well enough to persevere patiently.

  Angus had assumed that upon his own marriage, Oighrig would have immediately taken up Padraig's offer. She could not hold out any further hope of him, Angus, so why should she not accept this well-looking, ardent suitor?

  He had reckoned without her bizarre stubbornness, her lack of pride in herself. But, he told himself grimly, she was of use to Bridie. And anything that made Bridie's lot easier, anything that might help to reconcile her to life in the township, he would endure.

  But it was hard to have her dogging their very steps as they walked, at a time when he might have hoped to have some talk alone with his wife.

  When they got back home, twilight had settled over the glen. They would not be able to leave the trek back from Scourie as late as they had, for even another week. It would not be long before even staying for lunch at the manse, at least on days when there was no moon, would be inadvisable. The long, long dark nights were drawing closer.

  "I have a headache," Bridie said, almost as soon as they were alone in the house. She knelt to put some more peat on the fire and stoke it, her dark locks tumbling over flushed cheeks. "Would you mind if I went straight
to bed after I make dinner?"

  "Is everything at home all right, Bridie?"

  "At home? What do you mean?" She was opening the dresser and taking out crockery and cutlery, not looking at him.

  "At your old home, I mean. Dunwoodie, and your father's house."

  "Oh! Yes! Of course. Why do you ask?" She turned to the small meat-closet, where a joint of mutton cooked the day before was wrapped in cloth.

  "I thought that there might have been bad news in your letter from Lady Crieff, something you didn't want to share with Mr and Mrs Farquhar."

  "No! Not at all. I don't know why you should say that. Not - certainly not."

  She simply was not telling the truth.

  Her hesitancy was nothing to do with lack of confidence in her spoken Gaelic. She had become almost entirely fluent, and only stumbled in more serious conversation when she tried to reach for a word she didn't know.

  But how could he counter such a barefaced denial, with no evidence of his own? He sat on the low chair by the fire and accepted the plate of cold sliced mutton and day-old bannock that she handed him. Before he could muster another attempt to get her to talk about what was troubling her, she had said a brief goodnight and was gone through to the bedroom.

  Angus chewed his supper alone, letting the darkness and smoke coalesce around him, not bothering to light a candle or open a book. Though sunk in his ever-grimmer thoughts, he had heard one distinctive sound from the bedroom.

  It was easy enough to hear things happening in the other room, as the partition between them - the bed itself - did not even extend to the ceiling. It was a small sound, but he knew exactly what it meant. It was the gentle thud made by wood falling onto wood, as she closed the lid of her travelling-trunk.

  #

  Angus wrestled with his conscience, all that night and half the next day while he hoed weeds from the rigs of neeps and kale. He had pledged to make her happy, she was not happy, and she refused to tell him why. She had been more distracted and strange this morning than ever, so he had to conclude that whatever had been in the letter she had received the day before, it had made her feel worse.