Standing Stones

by Beth Camp

  CHAPTER 61: ARDKEEN HOUSE

  “We should have stayed on Foulksay.” Moira fussed with Rose's blanket. “Someone would have taken us in.”

  Jamie turned away from his sister and stared out the door of the gatehouse at the empty street in front of the Ardkeen House. “I'm not going back.”

  “Jamie, we'll manage. Never doubt it.”

  “I've got a chance to go on a whaler.” He lifted his thin shoulders defensively. “Don't look at me that way. Gibson went whaling and came back with a pile of money. So did Sturgess.”

  Moira's mouth went dry. “You're too young.”

  “Don't be saying that. I'm old enough to work, and I'm old enough to go hungry.”

  “Come home with me. We'll manage, the three of us.”

  “I talked to them already. I'm leaving Thursday.”

  “Ah, you don't have to go.” Moira held Jamie close, Rose between them. Jamie rested his head on her shoulder. “All right, then, but I'm going home.” For a moment, she faltered, remembering the woman she'd found on the path to Selkirk. “We’ll wait for you there, me and Rosie.”

  Jamie touched Rose's cheek. “She'll be walking afore I see her again.” They both looked at Rose, bundled against the cold morning in Moira's shawl. She slept, her mouth slightly open. A crystal of sleep hung on her eyelash. Moira brushed it away, and the baby lifted her hand up, still sleeping.

  “Aye, but she'll know her uncle.”

  “Someday I'll get our house back. I promise.” Jamie turned away, and then he was gone from the gatehouse, striding down the empty street, his hands jammed in his pockets, his head down.

  Moira sat in the stone gatehouse, the baby warm against her breast. She felt as if she could never move again. Jamie was truly gone. Dylan, Mac, Dougal, all somewhere far away. Who here would help her? She was alone. The baby turned in her sleep, nestling close. Ah, Rose, thought Moira. I will not take you to a workhouse. She remembered Granny saying ‘What cannot be helped must be put up with.’ So be it. I’m going home to Foulksay. She wondered who she might stay with and how the island had changed.

  The morning fog lifted. Two women with market baskets walked by the gatehouse, their heads together, their arms entwined. Moira patted Rose, tightened her shawl, and followed the women down the hill to the bay where the ships docked. It was time to make arrangements, she thought. Well enough time to go home.

  “You can't be leaving us.” Mrs. Harcourt nodded to Mrs. Hodkins. “Where are you going?”

  “But you're not recovered from the baby,” Mrs. Hodkins interjected. “And you're barely able to work.”

  Mrs. Harcourt frowned and picked at the finely embroidered shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “We made arrangements for your little one. She would have a good home.”

  Moira rocked Rose in her arms and knew if she stayed, they would take the baby from her. “Enough. It's enough that I was able to stay with you when I needed a place more than anything. I'm thankful, but my brother's gone. He's off whaling, and he's too young to do so.”

  “We can't be responsible for that. We found him work.”

  “Aye, work of a kind. Locked in that factory and him thinner every week. We just as well have stayed on Foulksay. Home. That's where I'm going.”

  “We have only the best of intentions for you. We want you to leave your sinful ways behind you. Here we can help you lead a virtuous life.”

  “You don’t understand.” Moira thought of Foulksay, her hill and the standing stones, the path she walked up to Granny's house, the stories in the twilight that Mac and Dougal told as they all sat around their peat fireplace, the fish smoking slowly on the dampened rocks, oatcakes cooking in a flat pan nearby. “I want to go home.”

  “But you told us your family was gone.”

  “Aye, they're gone now. But they'll come back. I have people there who know me and who'll take me in.”

  “Well, then, you should have stayed there.”

  “Yes, so I should. My daughter will grow up on Foulksay, not here. I thank you for all you've done, but me and Rose, we're leaving.”

  “Once you leave, you cannot return.” Mrs. Harcourt wrote another line in her account book and closed it. “You may stay until the end of the week, then.”

  Moira looked down at Rose. Three days and then home. “Thank you, mum.”

  Upstairs, the women of Ardkeen House gathered around her.

  “You’re leaving us already? The baby's not even a month yet.”

  “Hush, Margaret. 'Tis time. They'll take her child if she stays.”

  “Do you have a place to go to?”

  “It's all arranged. I'm leaving Sunday. Gibson, a fisherman from Foulksay, he'll take me home. I'll find a place there. Mac, me brother, he had friends. And that's where they'll all come back, and I'll be there on Foulksay with Rose.”

  “Good on you,” said Maddie. “I wish I could be going home. I hate the city.”

  “You don't hate it on Saturday night.” The women laughed and drifted away, leaving Margaret behind with Moira.

  “Take this,” Margaret said. “I've put a little by. Enough to give you this.”

  “You shouldn't.” Moira looked down at the shilling and six pence in her hand, enough to buy a week of food.

  “Aye, I shouldn't. But I did. Just take it, and think of me now and then.” Margaret touched her head where the last of a yellow bruise colored her forehead. “I wish I could go home.”

  “Maybe someday,” said Moira.

  “Yeah. Someday.” Margaret turned and went to bed, pulling the covers over her head.

  Sunday morning came soon enough, but Jamie wasn't at the gatehouse. Moira said her goodbyes and was surprised to see some of the women had tears in their eyes.

  “You remind me of my daughter, the one who ran away.” Sarah pushed to the front and hugged her. “God go with you and keep you safe. Take care of the precious bairn, and here, take this for your journey.” She put a small bundle under Moira's arm. “Just a little food,” she whispered with a last hug. “On your way now. It won't do for you to be staying too long. They could change their minds. It's happened before.” Sarah gave Moira a little push out the gatehouse door.

  Their goodbyes echoed in Moira's ears as she walked down the hill, past the pink sandstone of Inverness Castle, the row of shops, and to the docks.

  At first, she couldn't see Gibson's boat among the hundreds of boats tied up on Thornbush Quay. His boat was smaller than the Star, after all. She stepped around the old woman selling fried fish, past the fishmongers shouting their wares, fish eyes staring out of the large baskets, and past the old men who mended nets along the dock, their fingers flashing in and out of the coarse thread. She walked quickly along the quay, ignoring the catcalls of the boatsmen.

  “Come along with us, sweetie. We'll use that bundle you've got for ballast.”

  “Aye, and we got a use for you too.”

  Finally, Moira spotted Gibson, ear deep in argument with another fisherman. “Take that shark fish and shove it right up your nose,” cried Gibson. “That wasn't in our catch, and you can't be saying it was, you bag of scuttlebones.”

  “Throw it over the side then. Don't be saying I put it there.”

  “Mr. Gibson, you still going over to Foulksay?” Moira called out.

  Both men turned to look at her.

  “Aye, I'm going. Come on aboard. And you,” Gibson shook the shark fish over the side. “You don't want my fish, I'll sell them to someone else.”

  “Yeah, and who would that be.” The two men hopped off the boat and stood nose to nose, still arguing. Moira tucked Rose under her arm and climbed aboard. She stepped around the pile of rock cod in the center of the boat, until she found a seat near the prow.

  Another hour passed. Gibson and a few scrawny boys from the wharf emptied the boat of cod and loaded several heavy crates. “Two more of salt and that’ll do it.” He tossed a coin to the leader of the boys and turned to Moira. “Tis good you came now.”
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  Gibson untied the rope holding his boat to the dock and shoved off, oaring past the other small boats nearby. “Fasten yoursel' down, girl. We're going home.” He pulled the center sail up, and the tiny craft sailed out of Inverness Harbor, past Cromwell's Tower, pulled to the sea by a strong wind and the outgoing tide of Moray Firth.

  Moira tucked the blanket more tightly around Rose and looked ahead. A steady row of waves met her gaze, the waves breaking, swelling and rolling, shimmering in the morning light, the fog lifting like a mermaid's siren song. We're going home, she thought. Home.

  They sailed up the coast and stopped for the night at Wick. Early in the morning, Gibson piloted the boat past Duncansby Head, timing his trip for the ebb of the tide before crossing Pentland Firth. “I'll not fight the Merry Men,” cried Gibson.

  Moira nodded. She knew well the tides of the Firth from stories Dougal had told. Her favorite she would tell Rose one day, of a Norse king's magical quern, stolen and then lost in the sea, said to lie at the bottom of the Firth, still grinding away, salting the sea.

  Gibson piloted the little boat west of the Pentland Skerries, then straight north across the Firth, up past Burray and then to Copinsay, where gray seals lined the island's rocky beach with their white pups. He turned the boat at Grimness, and then east to Foulksay.

  Moira fed Rose, her back against the wind, and watched the familiar hump of Barr Auch grow larger as they approached Foulksay Island. She wanted to stand on the beach at Selkirk, to feel the ground with her own feet, to see the men laying nets while the women cleaned the day's catch. She wanted Dylan to come home to her. She looked down at her hands, swollen from the laundry and scarred from gutting fish. They would smell again, and she would be dirty. She hugged Rose tight. “We'll not go hungry, you and me. We'll manage.”

  CHAPTER 62: WESTNESS

  “They've left. All that paper work is done, and your staff is settled. Come, Alice. It’s time to go home to Edinburgh.” Diana stood at the door to the front drawing room at Westness.

  Alice looked around the great room, its furniture and paintings covered with sheets, the candelabras packed away with the Indian and Chinese sculptures she had loved.

  “Your trunks are already at the landing. Everything’s ready.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to leave Foulksay now the time has come,” said Alice. “The house seems like it has its own life, even with everything covered up. You saw Moira’s baby with Mrs. MacNaught? A pretty little girl. I think her name was Rose.”

  Alice held the curtains open. Outside a brisk wind blew along the garden paths so carefully laid out. Her roses, protected by Gordon's stone wall, had been mulched. She felt balanced between two worlds, one in the past, known, but not quite what she had wanted. The other world lay ahead as misty and gray as the sky above her.

  “We’ve a long journey home,” said her sister, glancing at her watch. “We need to be down to the ferry by three. I’m told the strait is choppy today.”

  Alice moved around the parlour, her long black skirts rustling, a widow’s hat of black bombazine dangled from her hands. “You know we weren’t all that unhappy,” she said. “It just seems strange now that he’s gone, his fondest wish will come true.” She didn't want to remember his last weeks in bed, his hands restless and grasping, the doctor's whispered consultations, and finally, that last, awful night when Gordon ceased to breathe.

  “Don’t dwell on the past,” said Diana. “You have the future to think of now.”

  “I’m not worried about the future. His investments were brilliant. Even here, he kept up with the latest innovations. He had a schedule for everything. You know he hoped to return to India one day. His moment of triumph. Listen to that wind.”

  Diana shrugged as the wind rattled at the window.

  “You don’t know how much time I spent in that garden and here in my rooms, worrying about that wind.” Alice turned away from the window. “Even at night.”

  “Don't let the wind worry you, dear,” Diana said.

  “There’s little enough wind in Edinburgh,” replied Alice. “I’ve decided to keep the house in New Town. You can stay with me, if you like.” She looked at the high ceilings painted in the baroque Indian style Gordon had so admired. The wind rattled at the windows again. “He would want me to bring his son here.” She smiled. “Or his daughter.”

  Alice fastened her hat and tied the bow. “I can’t believe this is the last day. That he won’t come through that door again, barking orders, a sheaf of plans tucked under his arm.”

  She walked to the window again and looked through the curtains. “What I mean is this island is beautiful in a melancholy and fierce sort of way. The people here are indestructible. They have their land again. They will raise sheep, and the fishermen will fish.” She shook her head. “I’m so very glad Perkins is gone. I think I came to hate him,” she mused.

  “It’s time, Alice.”

  “Yes, they’ll be all right here. We’ll come back in the summers to visit this island and the standing stones.” She turned to her sister. “I’m ready now.”

  The two women gathered their cloaks and purses. Alice took a last look around the drawing room and closed the door.

  THE END

  Dear Reader. If you enjoyed reading my book, please consider leaving a short review for Standing Stones. Reviews are very important for all authors. Even a line or two can make a huge difference in attracting new readers. Thank you!

  OTHER BOOKS BY BETH CAMP

  In Years of Stone, when the man she loves is sent to prison in 1842, Deidre follows him to a world beyond the seas, Van Diemen’s Land in Australia. Their ship runs aground just as they reach the dreaded penal colony. Can Deidre and Mac McDonnell build a new life for themselves in this rough and tumble penal colony?

  In Rivers of Stone, Catriona McDonnell disguises herself as a boy to join the Hudson’s Bay Company and follow her husband during the fur trade era. Once in Canada, Dougal is sent west with the fur brigade, but Cat remains behind. Can they be reunited? Will they achieve the dreams that brought them to the wilderness?

  NOTE: All my books are available on Kindle Unlimited.

  AFTERWORD: ABOUT STANDING STONES

  Foulksay Island, the home of Mac McDonnell, is entirely imaginary. Only one clearance took place in the Orkneys – at Trumland on the island of Rousay in 1845, though clearances occurred throughout the highlands in 19th Century Scotland.

  The Industrial Revolution did transform estates made up of small holdings worked by crofters (farmers) to vast sheep runs. The crofters, evicted and without jobs, starved. Some managed to emigrate. The resulting diasporas, exacerbated by the potato famine in mid-19th Century, sent Scots to the railroads and factories throughout England and around the world – to the cities in Great Britain, India, the United States, Canada, and Australia. But the abandoned stones of crofters’ cottages still dot the Scottish landscape.

  Many books and online sites contributed to my understanding of this period in Scottish history. Most useful: Erick Richards, The Highland Clearances; T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine; T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People; John Prebble, The Highland Clearances; John McFee, The Crofter and the Laird; and Nancy C. Dorian, The Tyranny of Tide. The online site, Orkneyjar: The Heritage of the Orkney Islands, offered fascinating insights into 19th Century everyday life.

  Although online and library resources were excellent, I was thrilled to travel in Scotland for two months to visit Scotland -- the Orkney Islands, Inverness and Edinburgh, exploring further the sites and history of Standing Stones. I now hold library cards from Kirkwall, Inverness, and Edinburgh, and found their help and generosity unforgettable.

  Thank you, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, for recognizing Standing Stones with an award for historical fiction in its annual writing contest, 2010.

  Ardkeen Tower House (1834), Culduthel Road,

  Inverness (Camp 2009)

  Along the way, encouragement and
critiques kept me researching, drafting, and revising. Thank you, Jane White, Linda Smith, and Natalie Daley, intrepid critics and Scrabble ladies. Beta readers Ruth Nestvold, Carol Kean, and Judith Quaempts provided excellent feedback, as did Rick Bylina and Karen Rice. Generous comments also came from the members of ROW80 (A Round of Words in 80 Days) and from the NOVELS-L group on the Internet Writing Workshop. Closest to my heart were comments from my husband, Allen, and daughter, Rachel.

  ABOUT BETH CAMP

  I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attending some eight schools from Seattle to Phoenix. That pattern continued as I worked my way through college -- as a hospital admitting clerk, an international banker, and a social policy analyst, among many other jobs. After earning my master's degree, I taught writing, technical writing, and humanities at Linn-Benton Community College in Oregon and served as Department Chair there.

  At first, I traveled with my adventuring husband and daughter each summer in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. A sabbatical led me to research the humanities in Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, and Spain, spending a month in each country. My publishing career began with editing and then writing textbooks while teaching; When I retired, I began writing historical fiction, eager to start large projects. I now live in Washington State, ready to travel with husband, camera, and laptop at a moment’s notice.

  BETH CAMP

  Drop me an e-mail. I’d love to hear from you.

  bluebethley@yahoo.com

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