Blazing Glen

by Oliver, Marina

  'We'll lift Mary up on top of the rest of your goods,' they said. 'You can't stay here, alone.'

  'She's too ill to move,' Janet protested.

  'You daren't stay here alone,' Katherine insisted. 'Those brutes down there, well, you know what they'd do if they found you helpless!'

  Janet knew there was no help for it, but when she saw her grandmother, strapped onto the cart for fear that in her delirious tossings she would fall to the ground, she felt like weeping with frustration and anguish.

  As the sad procession set off along the track Mary grew worse, and the women shook their heads. They all knew the end was near.

  A mile or so from the camp, the track passed through a small wood bordering the river.

  'Help me to get the mattress down. I'll be hidden here, and I can't bear her to die like this,' Janet managed to say. 'I'll stay hidden until - until - '

  Silently they nodded. They found a small clearing and gently lifted Mary down. One of the women milked the cow, and another placed some eggs in a nest of soft grass.

  'You've water nearby. Don't light a fire, though.'

  It was a long, dreadful day after they left. Janet unhitched the pony and hobbled it where it could graze, tied the cow to a tree, and sat beside her grandmother who was sleeping in snatches, between her restless spells when she seemed to imagine she was a girl again. Occasionally she would take a sip of the milk, into which Janet had mixed one of the eggs, but most of the time she fretfully pushed the mug away.

  As the sun began to sink lower the clearing grew cold, and Janet huddled into more clothes she unpacked from the bundles. More, and all the blankets they had, were piled on top of Mary, but she still shivered despite her hot, dry skin. Then, as Janet was despairingly contemplating the long night ahead, Mary opened her eyes and smiled.

  'I'm sorry, lass,' she whispered. 'I'll be gone soon. Send word to Thurso, and get you to Glasgow and Canada. I'm sorry to leave you, but Jamie's waiting, and it's been such a long lifetime without him. Give Iain my dearest love, and God bless you.'

  Mary sank into a deep sleep then, and Janet held her hands, tears streaming down her face. The moon rose and shed its ghostly silver light into the clearing. After a while Janet felt her grandmother shudder, and there was just enough light to see her open her eyes for the last time, give a faint, sweet smile, and stop breathing.

  Janet had managed to restrain her tears all day, but now she collapsed in an abandonment to despair, weeping convulsively as she clutched her grandmother's hand to her breast. Mary had been old, life for her had not been easy these past few years, full of pain, but it was a cruel way to die, driven from her home, out in the open like an animal.

  Cradling the lifeless body to her, Janet eventually fell into a restless sleep herself. Her last thoughts had been a prayer that she could die too, and accompany Mary wherever she was going.

  ***

  Chapter 4

  For a few seconds when Janet woke, she could not think how they came to be lying on Mary's mattress under a canopy of leaves. She was cold, shivering in the dawn breezes, and as she reached for the blankets her hand touched Mary's. It was cold and stiff, and Janet started up with an anguished cry, remembering.

  It was true. She relinquished hope when she looked at her grandmother's peaceful, pale face, and knew she had been dead for hours.

  Janet blinked hard as she milked the cow, wasting the milk for she had no means of carrying it, then sluggishly tried to plan what to do. Mary must be buried decently, but where could she find a Minister, and how was she to carry Mary's body there? She shivered, and little though she wanted to eat, she knew she had to be strong so as to perform the last services she could for Mary.

  She went down to the river and splashed the cold water on her face. She'd have liked to bathe properly, to drive away the weariness and the traces of two nights sleeping in the open, but the water, fed by mountain streams, was bitterly cold, and she was afraid of becoming too numb to do what must be done.

  As she walked back to the clearing she was wondering whether it would be safe to go back past the loch towards Syre, or better to continue southwards. The men who had driven them out were to the north, and would be unlikely to help her. Better to go south, despite not knowing what she might find there. It could take two or three days to reach a sizeable township where there might be a Minister, but the chances of being able to bury Mary decently would be greater. Janet was determined to honour the woman who had been everything to her for the past few years as much as was within her power.

  She had just come to her decision when she arrived back in the clearing. A man, his back towards her, was bending over Mary's body, and Janet, terrified of what he might be doing, ran forward, crying out to him in fury.

  'Leave her alone! What do you do to her?'

  'Hush, Janet, it's only me,' the man said, standing up and taking her by the shoulders. She tried to still her breathing.

  'Murdo! Why are you here? How did you find us? And how is your leg? Has it stopped bleeding?'

  'I'm all right, it's painful, but no more. Janet, they've fired all the houses! I went back, just to see, as soon as it was light, and they're all gone. And the crofters, they'd moved on, and I thought you'd be with them.'

  He tried to put his arm round her shoulders but she moved away to sit on a fallen log. He came and stood with one foot on the log, looking down at her.

  'I saw what had happened to your house. Burnt to the ground, it was. The same as with us. I thought you'd moved with the others and I rode after you. The women told me that Mary was mortally sick, and where they had left you. I'm sorry.'

  Janet nodded her thanks. 'She died last night. I - I still can't really believe it. I have to find a Minister to bury her.'

  'Aye, we'll go back to Syre, and ask where the Minister is. Sellar's men will be able to tell us. Most of the Ministers have been supporting the changes, preaching that we have to accept God's will.'

  'So that they can save their own livings. No, Murdo, I'll not ask for help from any of them. I'll take her south, find someone there.'

  'But, Janet, she'd wish to be buried in her own glen, among her kinsfolk.'

  Janet shook her head. 'The only one who mattered to her was Jamie, and his body was never found after Culloden,' she declared, and rising from the log, went to the cart and began to remove some of the bundles. She tipped the big chair from the top, and it fell crashing to the ground. Murdo uttered an exclamation of protest.

  'Janet, take care! It'll splinter, treated like that.'

  She barely glanced at him as she threw more of the bundles to the ground. 'What does that matter? She has no more use for it.'

  'But we - others might,' he began. 'Janet, I know now's not the time to talk about the future - '

  'I have to think of it,' she said angrily. It had all been too sudden, and combined with their eviction she'd had no leisure to plan or even think beyond the next urgent step. It was fate and the men who'd treated them so harshly she was railing against, but Murdo's shoulders sagged as though she had vented her fury on him.

  'Ye're not alone now,' he muttered.

  'I'll take just what I'll need on the journey to Glasgow, until I can get a ship,' she said slowly. She thought briefly back to the plans they had made a year or more ago, for the time she'd be free to leave Scotland. Now, once she had safely buried her grandmother, she could set off to rejoin her brother. A sudden small glimmer of excitement sprang into being deep within her. There was some sort of future, after all.

  Murdo was picking up the bundles, and stood clutching them to him. 'Others might have a use for them. Be sensible, Janet. You could sell the chair, or we might use it when we've found a place of our own. Ye don't have to risk your life on those pesky ships.'

  'A what?' Janet turned and stared at him. 'What do you mean, a place of our own? I'll be going to Canada, to join Iain, now, and I can't take any of this with me.'

  He pushed back his hair, and a slow blush became vi
sible above his beard. 'I meant, well, Janet, you know how I feel about you, I always hoped you'd wed me one day, and now you haven't to care for your grandmother you're free.'

  Janet sighed. She had been wrong to permit those kisses, when she first came to the glen, but she'd been young, lonely, sorry for him left alone when his parents died, for he had no brothers and his only sister had married and gone to Edinburgh. And, she confessed to herself, she had been curious about what it would feel like to be in a man's arms. She'd tried to avoid Murdo the past year, when he'd attempted to do more than kiss her, and made sure they'd never be alone.

  Suddenly she thought of the kiss the Englishman had given her up on the hillside. It had been so different, so much more exciting.

  'No Murdo, I never said I'd wed you. I'm going to join Iain.'

  'The journey's dangerous, I tell you. So many die. Why not stay here? We'll get to Glasgow, I'll find work, and we can be happy. I love you, Janet, I have done for years.'

  Janet shook her head, and turned back to shifting the bundles about. 'No, Murdo. I'm sorry, but I don't love you, and I'll never wed where I can't love.'

  'You're upset, it's natural, but you'll feel differently soon. I love you, I say, and that will be enough for now. You'll forget Mary, this dreadful time, and I'll make you love me.'

  She knew he was not being intentionally insensitive, but she was feeling too raw to make allowances. 'I'll never forget my grandmother! How dare you even suggest it?'

  He shrugged. 'People do forget. Well, not exactly forget, but the pain gets less. I know, it did when my parents died, and that was only two years ago. Janet, stop throwing useful things off the cart, you'll need them.'

  'She never forgot my grandfather,' Janet said softly, 'and the pain was as great yesterday as the day it happened. I'm making a place to lay her down. I don't need these things, you can have them, but I'm going to Canada.'

  'You don't need a soft couch,' he said, taking her by the arm. 'Mary won't feel the lumps now.'

  Janet shook him off. 'No, but I'll feel them for her. She'll have comfort for her last journey. Now, Murdo, I'd be grateful if you'd help me lift her up onto the cart. Gently, mind.'

  Frowning, he did as she directed, then harnessed the pony and tied the cow's halter to the back of the cart. As Janet was about to set off back towards the track, he protested.

  'You could put the bundles round Mary's body, and then balance the chair on top.'

  Janet turned on him in fury. Would he never understand? Never give up? 'I'm grateful for your help, Murdo, but she is my grandmother, they are my things, and I will decide what to do. If you want to gather them up and sell them you're welcome.'

  He glanced at her, then back at the discarded chair and bundles and then, limping, went to fetch the horse he'd tethered to a low branch. 'I think you're daft, but it's as you wish.'

  'Yes.'

  In silence they went back to the main track, Murdo riding ahead, Janet driving the cart. For a mile or more he stayed ahead, even though the track here was wide enough for him to ride alongside, and Janet wondered whether she had offended him too much. But she could never marry him, and surely he ought to have known that.

  She wondered what he had done with his own possessions. All he carried were saddlebags and a roll of blanket tied to the saddle. Had he not had time to save more, or had he decided that trying to take more would be pointless? She would not have brought so much if it hadn't been for Mary. When her grandmother was safely buried she would abandon all but her clothes and her few precious possessions, sell them if she could, sell the cow and the cart and ride the pony the rest of the way.

  They forded a small stream and Murdo, glancing back to check that the cart didn't get stuck in the mud, waited for her and gave her an apologetic grin. 'Sorry,' he muttered gruffly. 'I shouldn't have bothered you now.'

  Janet forgave him. 'I was upset,' she apologised in her turn. 'Let's forget about it.'

  They travelled on in silence, but it was a comfortable, companionable silence, broken only by an occasional comment. There were other people going the same way, a trailing, dispossessed, angry and fearful group. They all had tales to relate of horrific treatment by Sellar's men.

  'They tried to burn the house before the old man was out, and he bedridden,' one woman told them indignantly. 'It was a miracle his neighbours were able to get to him through all the smoke.'

  Janet and Murdo listened in horror. They had paused beside a large group to eat the bread and meat Murdo had in one of his pockets.

  'Set fire to the heather, and the peat, and what was left in our barns,' another woman said, swallowing her sobs.

  'They forced young Flora out to sleep in the open, and she big with child. She miscarried during the night, poor lass, and none of us could save her, she bled to death.'

  Murdo looked at Janet. 'We can go faster on our own,' he suggested. 'They have so much to carry, their carts are overloaded, and their animals are slow. The old people have to walk, and they can only do a few miles each day. We could get to Glasgow weeks before they do.'

  Janet nodded slowly. 'But wouldn't it be more protection to travel in a group?'

  'What can we do? If the soldiers follow they'll be helpless. Just the two of us, we might have more chance of hiding.'

  He was right, but Janet was reluctant to go with him. He could read more into that than she was prepared to allow. Before she could answer a horseman, galloping hard, was seen coming towards them.

  'It's them!' one woman screamed, and began to run away from the track and into the shelter of some trees.

  Her husband, in a few short steps, caught up with her and forced her to stop. 'Don't be daft, woman! It's only one man, he can't hurt us,' her husband said gruffly.

  Janet was staring at the man, recognising the bright chestnut of the horse he rode before she could distinguish his features. Her heart was beating erratically, and she could feel her cheeks grow warm.

  'It's that devil of an Englishman!' Murdo exclaimed. 'What does he want here?'

  Alastair swung out of the saddle, ignored the men who had jumped up, weapons in hand to defend the small group, glanced briefly across at the cart where Mary's body lay, and strode across to glare down at Janet.

  'Where the devil have you been? How did I miss you? I rode as far as I thought you could have travelled, and I was afraid the men had taken you prisoner.'

  Janet raised her eyebrows in astonishment. 'Why on earth should they do that?'

  'Your brother's a fugitive, a wanted man, and they might think to persuade you to tell them where he is.'

  'He's in Canada, they must know that! It's no secret. But what has it to do with you?'

  He sighed, gave a reluctant grin, and sank down on the turf beside her. 'Mary said you'd be difficult. She's asleep, I see. The upheaval must have been hard for her,' he said, glancing round at the small group of travellers, avidly listening to him.

  'She's dead,' Janet whispered, her voice wavering. All day she'd restrained the tears, but it was hard, and she was bone-weary. 'I need to find a Minister to bury her.'

  'Dead? You poor child,' he said, and flung his arm around her shoulders to draw her close to him. 'Don't worry, I'll see to everything now. I'll make all the necessary arrangements for you.'

  Janet wanted to pull away. She could hear the scandalised exclamations of some of the women. But his arms were so comforting, his chest so broad, and his human warmth so reassuring after the horrors of the past few days that she relaxed, sinking against him, heedless for the moment of anything but the comfort he represented.

  It was Murdo's shocked rebuke that brought her back to reality and made her push herself away from Mr Fenton.

  'There's no cause for such behaviour, Janet,' he said, clearly furious. 'As for you, Englishman, I'll thank you to keep out of our affairs. Your countrymen have brought enough harm to Scotland. I can take care of Janet and her poor grandmother. They are kin.'

  'I'm sure you could do so, but I pr
omised Mistress Mackay I'd take care of Mistress Janet if anything happened to her. She knew the end was near, though I doubt she expected it to come like this.'

  Murdo protested, and was supported by most of the other men in the group, who resented this stranger, this Englishman, coming in and taking charge. Alastair listened patiently to their protests, until, bewildered by his calm refusal to argue, they fell silent.

  Janet thought she now knew why her grandmother had sent her on that trivial errand so that she could talk to Alastair. She was confused, even angry that her grandmother should have trusted a stranger, yet in an odd sort of way he inspired trust. And she had no right to be angry with poor Mary, who had probably thought she was making sensible plans for after her death. Besides, she was reluctant to accept Murdo's help, knowing he would take it as encouragement when she had no desire to do as he wished, and marry him.

  The matter was decided when Alastair smiled gently round at the group and held out his arm to Janet. 'We'd best be on our way. There's an inn of sorts where we can rest tonight, and a Minister no more than ten miles further on. Can you drive the cart, or shall I hitch my horse alongside the cow?'

  The afternoon passed in a haze. It was fortunate the pony was docile, for Janet half-slept as she drove along. They could not travel fast, but they soon left the rest of the group, muttering amongst themselves, behind. Only Murdo, his voice often raised in angry protest, followed.

  As they reached the inn the innkeeper appeared from the door, looking flustered.

  'I'm sorry, I have no room,' he said, holding his arms wide as if to bar their way.

  Alastair swung from the saddle and taking his arm, led the man a short distance away. Murdo drew close to the cart and leaned down to speak softly to Janet.

  'Ye can't just let him take over, Janet,' he said urgently. 'Ye don't know what he wants, but I doubt it's honourable. Not like me, I want to wed you and look after you.'

  'Murdo, it's no good,' Janet said, drooping with weariness. 'He's being kind, that's all I care about, and he probably knows more than either you or I do about all this. You've hardly left the glen all your life.'