Standing Stones

by Beth Camp

  “Aye, care of Mr. Scott,” said Dougal. “Keep letting him know where you are. And you write us care of the Company.” Dougal moved restively, pulling Catriona close. “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to pull this off.”

  Colin ran back from the edge of the pier. “Sean says it's time.”

  “No need to speak of it. You’re breaking my heart,” said Moira, clinging to Dougal and Colin.

  “Safe passage,” cried Deidre.

  Moira and Deidre watched Sean's boat turn south toward Kirkwall, bumping along the white-topped waves, a few gulls screeching overhead.

  Moira thought of the journey ahead for her two brothers and Catriona. First they’d go to Stromness, to the agent’s station. They'd join the ship from Gravesend there, then sail direct across the Atlantic to Hudson Strait. She said a quick prayer and grabbed Deidre’s hand. “It’s hard to say goodbye.”

  The two women looked at each other and made their way off the pier, shivering a bit in the cool morning wind.

  CHAPTER 45: MAC

  Mac twisted the manacles on his wrists. He supposed he was luckier than those who had been sent down to Edinburgh for trial and most likely hanging. His stomach growled. He studied the locks on the large wooden door as he waited on the cold sandstone bench.

  At least he would be out of this pit of a jail, worse than the dank, barred rooms set aside for prisoners in Stromness. He wished he could see Deidre, though as he looked down at his chained hands and his dirty clothing, he was glad she wasn’t there.

  The two guards dragged another prisoner down the dimly lit hall; they weren’t gentle about it. They pushed their prisoner onto the grimy bench next to Mac.

  “Move down there, McDonnell. We’ve got two more to bring,” said Ranald, kicking at Mac. “This ain’t the palace.”

  Mac flushed with rage, but he ducked his head and moved down. They wouldn’t have treated him this way when he was free. He would have liked to return the many favors Ranald had given him since he’d arrived.

  Mac felt along the side of his pants where three pieces of gold had been sewn.

  “It’s all we can do,” Dougal had said two weeks ago. Dougal had bribed a guard to let him in and brought clothing and food from home, fresh oat cakes and a rare piece of meat.

  Mac had shared some of the food through the bars with William, a twelve-year old who faced a flogging for stealing. Mac had made the oat cakes last as long as he could for the two of them, a precious bit at a time, for it was the right thing to do. He had savored every morsel, thinking of Moira and Deidre and his brothers back home.

  “Thank you, Dougal,” he had said. "'Tis glad I am that Deidre didn’t come with you.”

  “But she did.” His brother's face had creased with concern. “The bastards wouldn’t let her in. I’m to give you this,” Dougal had said, holding out a letter.

  Mac had tears in his eyes that he didn’t want his brother to see. “Thank you,” Mac folded the letter into his pocket. “Tell her she should forget about me.”

  “She means to wait for you.”

  “A sentence of seven years, and she’s going to wait for me? Look at me.”

  “You’re alive, Mac. We heard some get pardons for good service.”

  “And I’ve heard not so many make it. I don’t want her to waste her life waiting for something that may never happen.” Mac felt like he was going to throw up. “Tell her I don’t want to see her.” But he had touched the letter again in his pocket, a thin sheet he already knew he would memorize.

  Mac hadn’t seen Deidre, not then and not now. He closed his eyes, the pungent smell of the man next to him crowding his nose. Today, he would leave Inverness for London, assigned to one of the prison ships on the Thames. Work makes me valuable to the Crown, he thought. Thank God I’m strong. If I’m patient and steady, I’ll get out of this, and Lord Gordon be damned.

  “These be the last two of the men,” said Ranald. “Up with ye now. A nice carriage ride awaits you, all the way down to the docks.” He pushed and shoved the men out of the stinking jail and onto a horse-drawn cart with a wooden cage affixed on the back. Two draft horses stamped their hooves on the cobbled street in front of the Sheriff’s Jail as they waited for the cart to fill.

  Just when Mac thought there was no more room in the cage, Ranald and two guards came back out the prison doors with a group of women and children, prisoners all, William among them.

  “There ye be,” Ranald said, when the cart could finally hold no more. “Accommodations fit for such as you, all nice and cozy.” He shoved the door to the cage shut and locked it, amid groans and grunts.

  “May God rot your soul,” spat one of the prisoners through the bars.

  Mac’s gloom lifted even as bodies pressed around him so tightly he could barely breathe. The sky was bright above, and he could see Inverness about him, a city of churches, their spires lifting to the sky. The cart clattered along the Inverness River, past Old High Church, on narrow cobbled streets that bustled with carriages and people headed to market, strangers all.

  Ah, sweet, sweet air. Mac, wedged in one corner of the cage, forgot the manacles that remained on his hands and ankles. He squeezed his head around to look back up the hill at Ranald standing in front of the squat pink stones of Inverness Castle. He'd never see that piggish face again.

  The cart maneuvered by wagons and passersby along Bridge Street, down to the docks. It passed crammed rows of three-story buildings, their chimneys smoking, windows partly open. The smell of fresh bread from a bakery made Mac's stomach growl again. Four crows drafted on the afternoon wind. They circled and landed on the stepped gables above him. Mac turned his head away. One crow for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for death.

  The cart wobbled past Mercat Cross at the center of the Inverness market, crowded with farmers, merchants, traders, sailors, and servants out for the day’s shopping, clutching their market bags full of produce. Mac watched a few washerwomen leaning their laundry tubs on the Stone of Tubs, called the clach-na-cudainn, as they walked from the River Ness. Many believed if the stone remained, Inverness would continue to prosper. Would that I had a piece of that stone to take with me, Mac thought as someone elbowed him.

  Closer to the docks, the crowds on the streets grew rowdier. Mac flinched as a few boys pelted rocks and shouted at the cart as it passed. The first floor shops changed to inns and taverns. Mac glimpsed a drunken sailor arguing with a woman in an alley.

  The cart lurched to a stop. The pressure in the cage finally eased as guards hauled the prisoners onto the dock. They lined up by the HMS Caledonian Rose, an old war ship that had survived the Napoleonic Wars. Its guns had been removed, its ports boarded over, and its hold converted to carry prisoners down along the jagged east coast of Scotland and England, 500 miles to London.

  Mac stood in line and took great breaths of fresh air, knowing it would be his last until London. He looked south. If I were higher up, I could see Culloden Moor. The English. Bastards every one of them.

  He grimaced at the smart red uniformed guards as they methodically marched the prisoners on board and into the hold. Three sailors pulled the cover of the hold over the top, slamming it shut. As long as the Caledonian Rose remained in port, the prisoners remained below, without light or air. Mac settled himself against the wall of the hold, ignoring the groans and arguments around him. It was dark and dank. He felt something flit over his feet as an outcry went up.

  “Rats,” someone cried out. “God, they’ve rats in here.”

  Mac felt the ship move with the current and tried to imagine the route the Caledonian Rose would take from the mouth of the River Ness, past Fort George and into Moray Firth to the North Sea. Behind the ship, the church spires and the red sandstone towers of Inverness Castle gradually grew smaller, until only the green rolling hills of the Ben Nevis range remained. Below decks, Mac sat in the darkness and wondered if he would ever see home again.

  BOOK 5: THE JOURNEY


  Summer - Fall 1842

  CHAPTER 46: INVERNESS

  “It’s bigger than Kirkwall." Despite the rain, Jamie hung over the side of the fishing boat and pointed at Fort George, his thin face bright with excitement.

  Moira leaned next to Jamie, away from the netted pile of fresh caught cod, sea-weed lined crates of crab, and barrels of lamb meat stacked on the deck. They had spent last night wrapped in blankets in a cove close to Wick after passing Duncansby Stacks, sheer rock pillars several hundred feet high that rose from the sea near the headlands.

  At dawn, the four-man crew had cast off, stepping around Moira and Jamie as if they were not there. The fishing boat then sailed down the coast, holding off at the mouth of the Moray Firth until the tide changed and swept them in to the port of Inverness.

  Fort George took up the entire spit of land that jutted into Moray Firth. Pairs of red-coated and kilted soldiers patrolled the ramparts as hundreds of workers crawled along the muddy base of its stone fortifications. Men carted stones to masons who chipped them into place on fortifications three stories high.

  “Can we go there?" asked Jamie.

  “Perhaps." Moira touched the letter to Mrs. MacKinnon safely pinned inside her bodice. “God knows where we'll sleep tonight. I don't.” She wondered again if they had made the right decision in leaving Foulksay.

  Large fields scattered with sheep marked the rolling green hills that rose above either side of the mile-wide Moray Firth. The wind picked up, the waves swelled to bumpy white caps, and the boat edged to the side of the Firth. They passed the Black Isle and turned into the protected bay fed by the River Ness. The banks narrowed as they approached Inverness.

  Whitewashed buildings with crow-stepped gables gleamed in the afternoon sun. Their boat tacked into the dock area and joined a forest of masts. The crews shouted at each other as they angled for a spot to unload their cargo. Finally, they docked.

  As she clambered ashore, Moira glimpsed the pink sandstone of Inverness Castle on the hill above the city. “Jamie. Keep close, now." Moira called her thanks to the crew, and they were on land again, for the first time in three days. She grabbed her bundle in one hand and Jamie's hand in the other.

  The wharf was crowded with fishermen, sailors, and vendors. Men stood around, hoping to be hired for the day, and old men mended nets. Bare-footed children ran underfoot, begging for half-pennies or bread. Boys armed with brooms cleared the streets of horse dung.

  “No, we don't need anything," Moira said again, pushing her way past a woman selling pasties, the smoke from her open grill spiraling upward. Finally free of the docks, they walked up the wooden docks to Inverness, past Fever Hospital, shaded by a giant sycamore, to Bridge Street, lined with inns and open shops.

  Moira stood in front of a tailor's shop for a moment, looking up and down the cobbled street, busy with horse-drawn carts and carriages. People sidestepped around them, intent on their own errands.

  “Excuse me, mum.” Moira stepped in front of an older woman with a white cloth twisted over her hair who carried a worn straw basket filled with carrots. “Can you tell me the way to Academy Street?”

  “You're nearly there,” said the woman. She tucked her straw basket close. “Go over to Friars Lane, then go up to Academy Street.” She waved her arm up the street and continued on her way.

  Moira turned onto Friars Lane with Jamie pulling on her arm.

  “Look at that.” Jamie pointed to a tall brick tower ornamented with a clock.

  “Later.” Moira stepped around a drunken man asleep on the street. “Mrs. MacKinnon’s school is somewhere along here.”

  Finally, they stood across from the Claron School, a large two-story brick building facing Academy Street. Peaked turrets perched over the windows, while smoking brick chimneys implied warm fireplaces within. Two large bay windows jutted out from the front of the building. Greek revival columns embellished each side of the front door. A low rock wall and a small yard with two tall pine trees separated the school from the street.

  “Are we going in?” asked Jamie.

  “Just me. Wait here.” Moira set her bag down next to Jamie's bundle.

  Jamie pulled the bags to the side of a tree and settled down on top of them.

  The house seemed bigger as Moira walked along the stone wall, past a large wrap-around porch, and through an arched stone gate until she came to a door at the back of the house. She rang the bell. A young woman entirely in black answered.

  “I'm to see Mrs. MacKinnon, please, if she's in,” said Moira.

  “And you are?”

  “Mrs. MacInerney.”

  “Please come in. I'll fetch her.”

  Moira sat on a side chair in the back hallway and watched two young girls working in the kitchen. They added wood to the fire and brought pots and bowls out, directed by a cook that Moira couldn't see. A long trestle table was loaded with empty bowls, cheese and various greens. Moira smelled fresh bread and some kind of a stew cooking. She loosened her cloak and reveled in the warmth. Her eyelids felt heavy. I should have brought Jamie in with me, she thought.

  An older woman tapped Moira gently. “I'm Mrs. MacKinnon.”

  Moira shook herself awake. "Yes, mum. I have a letter for you from Miss Scott of Foulksay Island.”

  “Hmmm." Mrs. MacKinnon sat next to Moira and read through the letter. She pursed her lips, looked at Moira, and read the letter again. She was a small, stout woman, with graying black hair piled in a crown on her head. Her black silk dress was relieved by a small white lace collar.

  "When does the little one come?" asked Mrs. MacKinnon.

  “I think winter, mum. Martinmas at the latest.”

  “I have nothing for you here at the school. Not as you are," mused Mrs. MacKinnon. "But Lady Thomas on Culduthel Road may take you in. Her husband is responsible for the Caledonian Canal. They always seem to be needing help. Let me write a note for you.”

  “Thank you, mum.” Moira wondered if she could ask for some bread.

  Mrs. MacKinnon hurried down the hall to her office and came back to the entry with an envelope. “First bells for class are to ring soon,” she said. “Take this to Lady Thomas. Oh, I suppose you'd like something to eat?”

  Moira nodded.

  “Mrs. Bean,” called Mrs. MacKinnon. “Make up a lunch for Mrs. MacInerney.”

  “Thank you, mum.”

  “Lady Thomas is quite kind. Come and see us again when you can.” With a quick, light step, Mrs. MacKinnon hurried out of the kitchen and returned, bringing a brown paper bag for Moira. “It's time for classes,” she apologized.

  Moira crossed Academy Street, the bag of food warm in her hand. Jamie had taken shelter under a large mulberry tree. Its leaves glistened with wet, but the rain had stopped. They sat on their bundles and ate thick bread crusted with butter.

  “Are we staying?”

  “No," said Moira. “I'm guessing it's another hour of walking.”

  A tall man stopped to cross the street, his face narrow under a black top hat.

  Moira scrubbed her face with her sleeve. “Please, sir. Can you tell us the way to Culduthel Road?”

  “The best way to go, miss, is this way,” he said, pointing down the street. “Go down here until you get right by the River Ness. Stay on that road past the bridge. Then you'll be on Castle Road. You'll have to walk a good bit then and uphill. You'll see where the road turns to Edinburgh. Don't take that road. Keep going straight, and you'll be on Culduthel Road.” The man tipped his tall silk hat as he continued his way.

  “Did you see that?” Jamie hissed. "He tipped his hat at us.”

  “It don't mean anything. You can't eat manners.”

  The pair made their way along the River Ness, past the bridge that led to Inverness Castle, and marveled at how shallow and calm the river was. On the opposite side, fishermen pulled their nets, baskets nearby to carry their catch to town.

  “Can we go there?” Jamie pointed at Inverness Castle.

  “Ma
ybe," replied Moira. “That's where Mac was held, there in the Sheriff's Jail.”

  “Right there?” Jamie looked again at the two-story pink castle with its high turrets and towers atop the hill behind the town.

  “Yes.”

  “Will we hear from Dougal soon?”

  “I don't know. Most likely not for a long while."

  “They should have taken me with them," said Jamie.

  They walked along Castle Road without talking and stepped off to the side when a wagon or carriage passed by, the horses sweaty and heaving as they trudged up the steep slope of Hangman's Hill.

  At first, Moira asked everyone who passed for a ride, but no one stopped. Around them rolling hills, almost mountains, rose, now bright, now gray, as the clouds passed overhead. They passed small whitewashed farmhouses, their yards swept clean. They heard pigs grunting in the mud. Green shrubs grew everywhere as they picked their way along the rutted road, muddy in spots from the recent rain.

  After several hours of walking, they came to Southcot House, a pink sandstone building dotted by large windows all along the front and a rounded tower on one side. Smoke rose from six chimneys; the house sprawled in an open area surrounded by formal plantings of juniper and pine trees. Moira and Jamie walked through the park and up the rounded graveled lane that served as an entry way.

  “It's a grand house, grander than Westness.” Moira brushed the dust from her skirts and resettling her hat over her hair as they stood under a pine tree. “How do I look?”

  “Look? You look hungry,” said Jamie. “Do you think we'll get something to eat here?”

  “Just wait here. I'll do the best I can.” Moira gave a final brush to her skirt and walked around the colorful two-story corner tower, careful not to glance in any of the windows. At the back of the house, she found a gated kitchen garden. Two gardeners with worn jackets and caps were digging up the back garden. Their spades piled up mounds of cabbages.