The woman at the fireside stood up, a gaunt, austere figure. ‘Get out. You get out of here this minute. If you’re making insinuations I’ll see to it that you end up in the same place as she is. Just get out this instant.’
Aylie was as furious as she. ‘Don’t you want to help her? She’s a woman like you, she needs your help. Don’t you want to know who was responsible for the child she killed? Don’t you realize she was so mad with fear that she wouldn’t know what to do?’
The mistress summoned up enough strength to push the girl back into the passage. ‘The court’ll decide what happens to her, not me and certainly not you,’ she shouted back through the closed door.
* * *
All the workers on the farm relished the happening as an event to brighten up the boring round of their lives. They gossiped about it constantly, speculating about who had fathered Phemie’s child.
‘She’s been here for three years, she never left the place, so it must be someone on the farm,’ said one of the other bondagers to Aylie.
Aylie kept to herself Phemie’s terrible story, and she discounted the possibility of the old tailor being the child’s father because Phemie had hidden from him all the time she worked at Myreheugh. Some man must be responsible – but who?
Phemie never went out, never flirted, never hung around the stackyard in the evenings like other girls did, and there was no weekend dancing to the melodeon at Myreheugh to entice her out.
In her bed at night Aylie lay with her arms above her head, staring at the moon through the dirty window glass, and wondering, wondering about Phemie until it became an obsession with her.
The Myreheugh kirn was a muted affair, just really an excuse for everyone to get drunk on the last night of the harvest. She was too dejected to enjoy it and sat in a corner huddled up in a brown shawl like a wet sparrow, watching the drinking going on. Men and women were pouring Myreheugh’s whisky over their throats as if it were the last drink they’d ever have.
One of the young hinds came to sit beside her and said, ‘You’re looking very sad. What’s the matter?’
She shrugged. ‘I keep thinking about Phemie. She was my friend, you see, and I wonder what’s going to happen to her.’
He was matter of fact. ‘She’ll go to prison. She killed her bairn and they won’t let her off that. You can’t do anything to help her now.’
‘But I could have helped her if I’d known. I could have stopped her killing it. Women have bastard bairns all the time and nobody thinks anything of it.’
‘It’s too late to think of things like that now,’ said the man, standing up because he was put off by Aylie’s depression. ‘Come on and have a drink.’
But she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to. But tell me something. Does anyone have any idea who fathered Phemie’s child? It must be somebody here.’
He glanced over his shoulder at the table where the boss and his wife were sitting. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be the first time a maid here has fallen in the family way, but it’s the first time it’s turned out like this. I don’t think you’d have to look very far for the father.’ And his eyes went over to the farmer who was drinking as much as his workers.
Aylie followed his gaze and then stared at him with disbelief. ‘Not him? It couldn’t be him? If it was, he wouldn’t have let them take her away like that, would he?’
‘Wouldn’t he?’ rejoined the hind, and walked off to find a more cheerful companion.
Disconsolate, she wandered out of the barn to the yard, where she saw a group of young men crowded round the water trough. They were yelling and shouting, and going up behind them she saw that they were teasing the poor daftie, the halfwitted son of the old bondager.
‘Daftie, daftie,’ they were chanting, ‘the boss says you’re the father of thon bairn that had its throat cut. Did you tup the housemaid, daftie? Do you even ken what to do with a lassie?’
The halfwitted boy stood among them giggling, looking from face to face, not knowing whether to be pleased or made afraid by their attentions.
‘Come on, tell us what you did. Show us,’ said a big, florid boy who drove a pair of horses and drank up all his wages every month. He was more than half drunk now.
‘I dinna ken,’ mumbled the halfwit, still giggling, ‘I canna say.’
‘You can, you can show us, come on, give us a show,’ and the blond giant reached out a hand and pulled down the halfwit boy’s tattered trousers, exposing his flaccid genitalia to the crowd. The boy tried to cover himself with his hands and his face flushed red, but the other lads howled and jeered in delight.
‘Did you do it with that, daftie? My you’re a lad after all. Come on, show us what you did to her…’ cried the big boy.
The halfwit giggled, flattered now, thinking they were approving of him in some way.
‘Take your hand away, come on, show us your dagger,’ yelled his tormentor and wrestled with him.
Then, like a thunderbolt, another figure rushed past Aylie and into the crowd, shouting, ‘Let him be, he’s no idea what’s going on. Let him alone or I’ll duck you all in the panni!’
The saviour was Hugh Kennedy, looking so angry and so fierce that the blond bully backed away from him.
‘Aw, come on, Hughie, it was only a joke. We were just having a bit of fun,’ he whined.
‘Then have it with someone else, not with him. Have it with someone who knows what’s going on.’ And to the halfwitted boy he said, ‘Put your trousers back on, Willie, and go home to your mother.’ Then he put an arm round the confused boy’s shoulders and led him away from his tormentors, with Aylie following.
Wh Hugh opened the door of the bondager’s cottage and pushed the boy inside, Aylie stepped up behind him and said, ‘I saw all that. I think you were very kind.’
‘Kind?’ He looked annoyed. ‘I wasn’t kind. I just can’t stand to see anybody hurting a dog or a horse or making fun of a daftie.’
She shrugged. ‘I still think it was kind of you.’
He grinned at her. ‘Well at least I’m in your good books, little lady. Where’s your mam tonight? Not here is she? She looks after you like a tiger does your mam.’
Again Aylie was surprised at the way he could switch from being nice to being nasty.
‘Don’t talk nonsense, my mother trusts me.’
‘Then she’s sillier than she looks,’ was the reply. ‘Would she trust you to dance with me?’
This was a challenge. ‘Of course she would.’
‘Then come on, they’re playing a reel now. Come on into the barn and we’ll have a dance.’
They danced like adversaries, stamping, advancing and retreating, challenging each other in time to the music. They vied with each other, preening themselves like peacocks, and each time their eyes met they gave back defiance.
When the music stopped he held on to her hand and looked at her with something like respect in his dark eyes. ‘I always remember how you looked on a horse. I wonder if you’d treat a man like you treated your horses,’ he asked.
‘I always treated horses well,’ she replied.
‘That’s what I mean,’ he laughed, showing his magnificent white teeth and throwing back his strong neck with the thick sinews that gave some hint of the immense physical strength he possessed.
He walked her back to the farmhouse and when they reached the back door, she suddenly turned to him and said, ‘Did you hear about my friend Phemie?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I heard. Poor lassie. What’s so wrong about having a bastard?’
She suddenly decided to tell him. ‘It wasn’t that so much. She was out of her mind with terror. And she thought that they’d send her back home if they found the baby – she must have thought she’d get rid of it. Turn the clock back, you know.’
The whites of his eyes glittered like ivory in the moonlight as he listened to her. ‘Why was she so keen to stay here? From what you tell me it’s not such a great place.’
‘Her home was worse. Her f
ather abused her.’
‘He hit her?’
‘Worse than that, he slept with her.’
He drew in his breath with a hiss and said, ‘The old devil, sitting stitching away with a face like a soor ploom and him a church elder too.’ For a second she thought he was going to laugh. If he did, she’d never speak to him again – but he did not laugh and instead became even more sober looking. ‘Poor lassie. She always looked hunted, like a hare in wet grass,’ he said.
It was a wonderful simile, for Phemie did indeed look like a wet, dejected animal.
Aylie spoke rapidly: ‘I want to go to see her. I want to speak to her. You could help me. No one’ll go near her except me. She’s got no friends.’
‘But she’s over in Jeddart, isn’t she? How’re you going to get there?’
‘You could lend me your horse. You’ve always got a horse. If you lend me your horse, I’ll go there on Sunday and see her. I promise I’ll bring it back sound.’
He nodded. ‘All right, I’ll lend you a horse and I’m sure you’ll bring it back sound. There’s nobody I’d trust more with a horse than you, and gypsies don’t lend horses to just anybody.’
* * *
The news that Jane Cannon had moved back into Charterhall spread fast, and the steward – the same man who used to order her around in the fields – went marching down to the ruins to put her out.
When he broke through the thicket of hawthorn bushes which now surrounded the abbey ruins, he saw her digging up a little patch of ground in a southern facing corner behind a tumbledown wall.
‘Hey, you’re trespassing,’ he shouted across a deep grass-covered moat which had been the monks’ main drain and watercourse.
She stared back at him defiantly.
‘I’m not. The Cannons were here before any Glendinnings. Nobody ever comes near this place except for a few burials in the graveyard over there. I’m not doing any harm. I’m going to stay and God help anyone who tries to move me.’
He did not make any attempt to cross the ditch but blustered in an ineffectual way. When he saw that if she were to be removed it would have to be done by force, he withdrew, making threatening noises. She noticed with wry amusement that he was afraid to come close enough to her to fix him directly with her eyes. Her old reputation was still working for her and she would not have been above putting a curse on him to frighten the man away. Though she had no real belief in her power to bring ill luck to anyone, and would not have wanted to use it even if she did possess such a power, there were times when fear of her was a great advantage.
If the steward chose to believe that she was a witch, she would play the part.
Over the first few months she lived in Charterhall, the man came back now and again to shout threateningly at her but his shouts were half hearted and soon he gave up.
The first time Charterhall’s new owner came to look around the place however, the steward was apprehensive of his reaction to having a squatter in the abbey ruins. The heir, a lean, languid Englishman who seemed to think that everything in Scotland was primitive and amusing, walked round the estate swinging a malacca cane and gazing about with haughty disdain, but when he came to the abbey ruins he brightened a little. ‘How picturesque,’ he drawled. ‘Quite romantic really…’
The steward told him how Old Glendinning had began to remove the stones of the ruins but had lost interest before the job was finished. Did he want them to start again?
The new owner shook his head. ‘Oh no, don’t bother, leave it the way it is. It’s quite a feature of the park.’
Emboldened by this the steward confessed that a woman, a witch he said, lived in one of the abbey cellars and, to his surprise, the heir was openly delighted.
‘Our own hermit, what? Very romantic. Down south people used to pay hermits to live in their grottos, I’ve got one for nothing. I’d like to see her.’
Jane was sitting in the sun at her cell door shelling peas when he and the steward took up their position on the moat bank to observe her.
The heir was slightly disappointed. ‘She’s very clean looking, not very savage really, is she? But never mind, let her be. I don’t suppose she’ll make any trouble.’
The growing stiffness and pain in her hands and legs made field work impossible, but Jane was quite comfortably off because many people came walking through the woods to her solitary home seeking cures and advice on their health. She recultivated the old herb garden, and on a pillar in the middle of it a friendly mason chipped out a carving of a rose with two buds which was the ancient sign of the herbalist. The long-neglected herbs, planted by her ancestors, revived under her loving hands and she used them to concoct the recipes in Alice’s manuscripts. Many cures were attributed to her and though she often felt that the patient’s belief was as much a factor in recovery as the powers of the plants, she was proud of her knowledge and expertise.
She had many friends and her life was not lonely because almost every day someone came to see her. The most important of them were still Jock Hepburn and his wife, Flora. Their son Sandy was growing into a fine, strong boy and he too often arrived at the abbey with presents of food or invitations to dinner at the farmhouse, occasions Jane enjoyed because she would sit at the table with Big Agnes, in her eighties now, and reminisce about the old days when they both worked as bondagers at Charterhall.
As he had always hoped, Jock was growing prosperous through hard work and acumen, and his home reflected this growing prosperity. He went to Melrose and bought a piano on which Flora learned to play the old Scots songs, and after their convivial dinners Jane sang to her accompaniment. It was the first piano in the district and on the nights that Jane and Flora gave their impromptu concerts, workers from Jock’s farm would gather in the garden and listen through the open window, marvelling at the wonderful music. Her voice was still capable of casting the same spell over her audience as it had over the audience in the kirn long ago.
One afternoon she was painfully bending over her neatly tended herbs when she heard a noise and looked up to see Hugh Kennedy standing on the paved path. She stared at him but not in a welcoming way because she distrusted his gypsy impudence and flashy appearance. She had heard too much – about his wayward behaviour with women; about the poaching for which he had been hauled before the sheriff more than once; and especially about his espousal of radical politics – for her to like him much. The biggest fear she had, however, was the interest she sensed he had in her daughter. Hugh Kennedy was not the sort of man she dreamed of for Aylie. A well-setup farmer was the husband her daughter should have, not a gypsy who was always on the run from the law.
Her hostility was, however, wasted on him because he stepped cheekily into the garden and squatted down on a log beside the bed of sweetly smelling thyme.
‘I was just passing by and took a deek in to ask if you’d like a wee salmon for your supper. I put it in a bucket of panni at your door.’
‘Was it poached?’ she asked abruptly.
He laughed unabashed and she had to admit that he gave off a strange animal magnetism that would attract women.
‘Who did salmon belong to before rich men started buying up riverbanks? They belonged to people like you and me. You’re a trespasser here, a bit of a lawbreaker yourself. I didn’t expect you to be so fussy,’ he told her.
She had to smile at that. ‘I’m not too law-abiding, it’s true,’ she agreed, ‘and I like a bit of salmon now and then.’
‘Then eat it with my good wishes,’ he told her, rising to his feet and turning as if to go. But after he had taken a couple of steps, he said over his shoulder, ‘Oh, yes, Aylie asked me to tell you that she’ll be over to see you on Sunday.’
This news did not please her because it meant he’d been seeing her daughter. She stood up to her full height. ‘You take your salmon away, I don’t want it. And get out of here before I chase you out,’ she said shortly.
She heard him laughing as he went off down the ruined aisle. When she retur
ned to her cell at night, the salmon, neatly gutted, was in the bucket of water by her door.
* * *
The cell above the gatehouse entrance was as tiny as a dog kennel and very dark. The only time light got in was when the jailer swung open the heavily studded door to push some food in to Phemie or summon her out for yet another session of questioning by men with clean linen and pale hands who had little sympathy with her problems.
When she heard the sound of approaching feet, she did not raise her head and did not see Aylie being shown in by the jailer.
The first she knew of her visitor was when the girl knelt down beside her and threw her arms round the bent shoulders.
‘Oh Phemie, why didn’t you tell me? I’d have tried to help you.’
Phemie raised her blonde head and stared unblinkingly at Aylie. ‘You couldn’t help me. Nobody could. I kept thinking it would go away. I kept thinking it would never happen…’
Aylie squatted on the floor at her friend’s side and whispered so that the listening jailer couldn’t hear, ‘But didn’t you realize? Didn’t you understand you were pregnant?’
Phemie shook her head. ‘I’ve never had regular bleedings. It never happened before and it could have, often enough. When the baby was born I just hated it… the horrible little wrinkled thing.’
Aylie took her hand gently and asked, ‘It wasn’t your father’s, so whose baby was it? You can tell me, Phemie. I won’t say anything to anybody.’
‘I tried to tell you but you didn’t understand. Surely you see it now? The farmer’s the father of that bairn. My father sold me to him!’
Aylie’s face showed her astonishment. ‘Old Myreheugh? Didn’t his wife know?’
Phemie just sounded tired. ‘Oh, Aylie, even if she did would she ever let on?’
* * *
Jane was up early on the Sunday morning preparing for Aylie’s visit. She made curds, her daughter’s favourite dish, and then walked a couple of miles to a cottage where she knew a woman kept a cow, to buy thick yellow cream to pour over them. But as the day passed and there was no sign of Aylie, Jane’s spirits sank. Had that Hugh Kennedy been playing a trick on her, she wondered?
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