Carried Away

by Jill Barnett

  Amy looked up from the open mackerel tank at Calum MacLachlan’s angry face. “What am I doing? I do believe I’m getting seasick again.” She raised a hand to her clammy forehead and swayed a little.

  He swore.

  She blinked up at him, then winced. “Would you please stop weaving back and forth? You’re making me dizzy and I’m already quite lightheaded enough.”

  “I’m not weaving. I’m standing perfectly still, lass.” He bent down and scooped her up out of the tank so fast it felt as if she’d left her stomach behind.

  “Ohmygod! Don’t move!” She gulped down deep breaths of cool sea air.

  He must have been deaf because he ignored her and walked over to the side of the boat. He propped her up and kept her pinned against the rail, his strong arms on either side of her.

  “Take deep breaths, lass. If you need to, go ahead and empty your stomach.”

  There was nothing in her stomach to empty. “I haven’t eaten,” she groaned.

  He grumbled something that included the word stupid and picked her up again.

  “You know, Calum, I think I’m getting sicker from you flinging me up into your arms than I am from the motion of the sea.”

  “You’re lucky I’m not flinging you into the sea.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Don’t test me.” He took her below to the small cabin in the bow of the boat and set her on the edge of a bunk that was built into the wall. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a few things, evidently found what he was looking for, and came back to her. He knelt down in front of her with a cracker tin under one arm.

  “Here, lass. Try to eat these.”

  She moaned and sagged back flat against the bed, a hand slapped to her forehead. “My stomach is somewhere around my throat right now and you want me to eat.”

  “You’ll feel better if you eat a few crackers. Here. Come on, now. Just try one.”

  She raised her head and stared at the white crackers in his outstretched hand. She took one and held it up, turning it one way, then the other.

  “Are you going to eat it or memorize it?”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “Take small bites and chew it well. The salt will help your stomach.”

  She did as he told her. The first time she swallowed she thought it was going to come right back up. It didn’t. So she took another bite, then another. Before long her stomach was not as queasy.

  “Now I want to hear why you stowed on board.”

  “I didn’t want to leave.”

  “But Eachann shouldn’t have taken you, lass. I thought you’d need to get home, where you had your people around you.”

  “I have no people I want around me.” She looked up at him. “Except you.”

  “Lass, that’s not wise.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Use your head.”

  “According to Georgina, I don’t want to be known for my brain. She claims beauty is better because men see better than they think.”

  He began to chuckle, then laughed out loud. “I think in Eachann’s case that might be true.” He was still laughing. “I can’t be with you now, Amy-my-lass. I have work to do. I can’t be taking care of you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  His look was disbelieving. “Like you did in the cave and just now when you were sick?”

  “I’ll help.”

  “You’ll help,” he repeated without inflection.

  “I can help you. Just tell me what to do.”

  “I can’t, lass. Not now. I need to get topside. Will can’t handle this boat alone along the stretch of coast that’ll be coming soon. We’ll be in Bath soon. I have to make certain those people on that ship are fed and clothed and have safe transportation to their land.

  “Can I come with you? I want to know how all this started. What exactly it is you do. I want to watch. I want to help. I feel so, so worthless. If I can help someone, then perhaps I . . . well, I don’t know exactly what, Calum, but I do know I need something to do.”

  He stood there for a long time, as if he needed to come to some decision, then he crossed the room, turned a small latch in the wall and pulled down a desktop with a drawer hidden behind it. He rummaged through and took out a leather-bound book that looked like a journal.

  He handed it to her. “Here. When you’re feeling better, you can read this. It will tell more about what I do than I can.”

  She took the journal and watched him walk to the companionway.

  He stopped and looked back at her. “How are you feeling now?”

  “Better. You were right about the crackers. Thank you.”

  He nodded at a small metal tank across the room. “There’s water in there if you need it.”

  “Actually what I need right now isn’t more water. I need to rid myself of some.”

  He laughed and pointed to another cabinet. “The necessary is in there.”

  She flushed, then muttered, “Thank you.”

  He turned and opened the door to leave, but turned back around. “Why didn’t you just ask if you could come with me?”

  “Would you have taken me?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why.”

  He just shook his head and left the cabin.

  She opened the journal and first skimmed through the pages. On the first pages there were newspaper clippings and editorials pasted to the pages. She began to read the first one.

  We have been pained beyond measure for some time past to see in our streets so many unfortunate Highland emigrants, apparently destitute. Their last shilling is spent to reach this new land, where they are reduced to begging. Their case is made worse by their ignorance of the English tongue. Of the hundreds of Highlanders in and around the city at present, perhaps not a half dozen understand anything but Gaelic. We may assist these poor creatures for a time, but charity will not keep so many for very long. Winter is approaching and then what? Are they to starve and freeze in the streets?

  Amy felt sick. This was a terrible thing that was happening. She read on, each article more horrific than the last. Then the pages in the book were handwritten. In Calum’s own hand there were journal entries of what he had seen. What he felt. His experiences.

  I saw a funeral today. A long line of Highland emigrants walked down the silent street. On their shoulders that were bony and narrow with starvation was a small coffin, not much bigger than a cradle. It was a child’s coffin, made of crude material, rough boards that looked like the kind of old splintered wood planks that were left to rot along the dockside. Children followed the mournful train, and when asked, they told of their friend, the small eight-year-old boy who had in healthier and happier times played with them in their native glens.

  Their looks, their faces were indescribable. The sorrow and grief were there, but there too was a look and sense of an inevitably hopeless future that creased their faces like wrinkles of age. Their faces could break the heart of a grindstone.

  Their mourning weeds were little more than rags that had once been clothes. The child’s mother walked along behind the small coffin, her clothing torn and her eyes empty and vacant as the promises made to these poor people by their lairds and benefactors—those desperate men whose grandfathers had protected them. Now the grandsons threw the crofters off the land they had farmed for centuries so they could graze sheep.

  The procession walked on toward the grave site, where their hopes and the promises for a future would be buried in that shallow grave along with the coffin.

  I am a clan laird, by birth chieftain, by title the MacLachlan of MacLachlan. I have no Highland lands, for they were taken from my great-grandfather many years before. I have no clansmen like my grandfathers did. Just my small family. But I have Scots blood and I can’t help but feel a strong sense of anger at what I am seeing here. I cried as I watched that funeral. I cried for that mother, for that child. It could, but for the grace of God, have been me or my brother or eve
n Kirsty or Graham.

  I vow, today, with everything I have and everything I am, that this will be no more. That no more Highlanders will starve and die and freeze in the streets. I will not let it happen. If I do nothing else in my short lifetime, this will be enough.

  When Amy finished reading she was crying. The tears were pouring down her cheeks the way they must have poured down Calum’s. She read on, every newspaper article and Calum’s entries. She could see what he did, how he provided these people with more than just food and clothing and a place to live. Calum gave them back their pride.

  She closed the book and sat there, staring up at the wood on the ceiling. Then she closed her eyes against all the images she saw, vivid painful images from Calum’s journal. They haunted her, those images, until Amy finally fell asleep with tears still streaming from the corners of her eyes.

  Chapter 41

  When the bold kindred in the time long vanished,

  Conquered the soil and fortified the keep,

  No seer foretold the children would be banished,

  That a degenerate lord might boast his sheep.

  Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand,

  But we are exiles from our fathers’ land.

  —Canadian boat song

  When she awoke it was to the sight of Calum leaning against the wall, his black hair ruffled by the wind and probably from his habit of driving his hand through it when he was frustrated. He wore no coat, only a white shirt with the cuffs rolled up and a leather vest.

  His breeches were tucked into tall leather boots and he rested one foot on the steps of the companionway. He was absently rubbing his chin with a tanned hand and staring at her like a missionary who’d been stuck with the job of converting all the tribes of Africa.

  “You’re awake.” He straightened and his hand fell away from his chin.

  She sat up, still drowsy, until she realized the boat was not moving. “We’re in Bath.”

  “Aye.”

  She swung her legs over the side of the narrow bunk and spent a moment or two straightening her twisted skirt. She glanced up at him. “You’re being very quiet.”

  “I’m trying to decide what to do with you.”

  “You could let me help.”

  “I could send you back to Portland in a wagon.”

  “What would you do with me when I came back? Besides, you cannot make me go if I don’t want to. You have no right to tell me what to do. You are not my father or my husband.”

  She stood and raised her chin the way she had seen Georgina do when Eachann was trying to tell her what to do.

  He just watched her for the longest time, not saying anything, but he was thinking. She could see it in those dark blue eyes of his.

  “I never thought you to be such a stubborn lass.”

  “I never thought you to be autocratic and unfair.”

  “Autocratic? Me?”

  “Yes.” She gave a sharp nod. “It must be a family trait. You sound like your brother.”

  “Good God . . . that bad?” He shoved away from the wall and walked toward her. He looked at her for a long time before he finally placed his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t look away.

  “I don’t think this is good thing, lass.”

  “What?”

  “You being here.”

  “Then tell me, Calum. Where should I be?”

  “Back at home where you can get on with your life the way it was before my brother made a mess of it.”

  She laughed facetiously. “Oh, now that’s funny. My life was so wonderful before.” She shook her head, then looked up at him. “My life was nothing but one big heartache. It was a mess long before Eachann ever came into it.”

  “You’re too young for your life to be a mess.”

  “I don’t feel young. I feel very, very old.”

  “But you aren’t old. You are young.”

  “No, listen to me, please, Calum. I might be young to you, but I feel all used up. I’m a person who doesn’t fit in anywhere. I just don’t think like other people, Calum. Life isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, at least the way I thought it would be.”

  “It never is.”

  “But I’m so confused all the time. I don’t even know where I belong anymore. Even my home doesn’t feel like home since my parents died.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “My father had quite a few business interests. He and my mother traveled to Baltimore. I was supposed to join them in a week, but there was a fire in the hotel, in the middle of the night. They were on an upper floor and couldn’t get out.” Her voice cracked.

  He pulled her into his arms and just held her, while he slowly rubbed her back.

  It had been so long since someone cared enough to comfort her, she began to cry into his shirt. “This is so silly.”

  “Grief isn’t silly.”

  She turned her head and rested her cheek against his shoulder. “They couldn’t get out, Calum.”

  “I’m sorry, lass.” He stroked her head. After a few minutes he asked, “You have no other family?”

  “No. My father was an orphan and the last of my mother’s family died when I was a baby. My parents were the only family I’ve ever known.” She looked up at him. “So you see, I have nothing to go back to. When your brother took me, my life seemed like nothing. In here.” She pointed to her heart. “I was all shriveled up inside.”

  “Time will change all that, lass. Sometimes we have to wait. When we’re young, waiting is very hard.”

  “I’m not that young.”

  He laughed. “You have a long life ahead of you.”

  “If I do, then I need something in my life. I read your journal. How old were you when you first began to work with the emigrants?”

  “I was nineteen.”

  “I’m twenty, Calum.”

  “I’m a man.”

  She frowned at him, then stepped away. “What does that have to do with it? You were nineteen. I am twenty. You’re a man. I’m a woman. Because I’m a woman, does that make me less capable of caring?”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Just what did you mean? Do you think because I’m a woman I shouldn’t feel a calling, like you did? Am I supposed to sit around and drink tea and sew samplers and ignore everything else?” She planted her hands on her hips. “If that’s what you meant, Calum, then that was a stupid thing to say.”

  He looked completely perplexed. “You’re twisting my words around.”

  “I’m trying to make you understand how I feel. This is important to me.” She crossed over to him and placed her hand on his chest. “You are important to me.

  He looked down at her hands as if he didn’t know how to take her touch, then he covered them with his own hands and they stood like that for a while.

  She tried to explain. “I want to help. Perhaps if I can help someone else, if I can make a difference in even one person’s life, then my life won’t seem so wasted and empty. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Oh, Amy-my-lass. I understand all too well.”

  “Then you’ll let me help?”

  He shook his head as if he didn’t want to agree, but he said, “Aye.”

  She grinned up at him. “That’s good, because I wouldn’t have left.”

  He laughed and turned her around by the shoulders. “Well, you need to leave now. I have something to do here. Go up on deck. If you hurry you can watch the ship come in. It’s a sight you don’t want to miss.”

  She looked back at him over a shoulder. “Will you come?”

  “I’ll be up soon enough.”

  She went up the stairs and out onto the deck where she stood by the railing and just looked all around her.

  In the distance, the hills had turned a deep heather purple. The outline of the thick pine forests that topped those hills cut a jagged line across the horizon. The river inlet looked like a thin silver ribbon coming down from th
ose hills, where it flowed past ploughed green fields, the small farms and houses that dotted the river’s rolling hillsides, on past the docks and wharves to the edge of the wide open bay.

  There was a strong breeze with the incoming tide and gulls wheeled about the blue and cloudless sky, screaming and calling as if they were heralds. Amy walked to the other side of the boat, where the ship was a clear and vivid image as it came toward them with sails full, slicing through the tidal water and up the river.

  An American flag flew high in the masts, its red and white stripes rippling like May ribbons in the wind. She could see the people gathered at the ship’s rail, watching like she was, and she wondered how many of these ships and how many people had come up this same river before.

  She could see the sailors scurry about the masts and upper decks like starlings in the tallest trees. They pulled lines and maneuvered the ship up the river toward the wharf. There was an eerie silence about the passengers. No one called out. No one pointed. They only stood and looked around them.

  She heard a noise and turned.

  Calum stood on the deck facing her, but he was watching the ship. No one who looked at him would have any doubt who this man was. He didn’t looked like the man she’d first seen on that foggy night or like the man who had saved her in the cave.

  He looked like what he was: the clan chieftain, for the MacLachlan of MacLachlan was wearing the kilt, his muscular legs showing from beneath and his feet in leather brogues. He wore a black woolen jacket with silver buttons and his red plaid swagged over one broad shoulder. A bonnet with a feather was cocked on his dark head and he stood as tall and as proud as any man could be.

  The sight of him took her breath away. As if he knew it, he turned, gave her a long look, then moved to the dock where he was joined by the men he had met with in Portland, the MacDonalds, who were dressed in their own green plaids.