The door opened at last, and Mr. Alleway emerged, his face grave as he met his daughters’ anxious gazes. “He’ll live,” he told them, keeping his voice down. “He’ll be scarred, and he’ll know much pain for some while. But Doctor Campbell believes he will live.”
“Thank the Lord!” Sorcha whispered.
But Bonnie, recalling the horrible glimpse she’d had of Calum’s face the night before, began to weep again. “It’s all my fault,” she whispered. “I left the candle burning—”
“Hush, Bonnie,” her father said. “’Twas an accident.”
His words made Bonnie feel worse. She wished he would scold her. She wished he would punish her, and that his punishment might somehow atone for her wrongdoing. But ultimately she knew that no chastisement her father might inflict could compare to the lashings of guilt she already endured.
Before she could ask her father what the doctor had said about Maisie, a servant of the household approached, a letter in his hand. “For you, Mr. Alleway,” he said with a bow.
Surprised, the merchant took the letter and quickly opened it. His eyes scanned its contents, and the further he read, the more disturbed his expression became. By the time he finished reading, he looked so pale that Sorcha urged him to take a seat before he collapsed upon the hall floor.
“What is it, Da?” she demanded even as she led him to the sitting room and pushed him into a chair. Wordlessly, Mr. Alleway handed her the letter. Bonnie watched her sister’s brow furrow as she read, and halfway through the letter, she said a word she could not have learned from her elegant French schooling days.
“It’s gone,” Mr. Alleway whispered, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair and burying his face in his hand. “All gone.”
Through the fire of her tormenting guilt Bonnie felt a sudden sickening of cold. What new sorrow was this that could make her father’s face turn gray? “What’s gone?” she asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“All of our ships have been lost,” Sorcha answered. She tossed the letter to the table by her father’s chair and stomped to the window. Resting both hands on the sill, she stared out into the rain-drenched street. From this vantage, one could still see the smoke rising into the air from the ruins of the Alleway home. It was only by the grace of God—and the timely thundershower of the night before—that this whole street had not been damaged, possibly destroyed.
But this thought could bring little comfort now.
Mr. Alleway, his voice broken, said, “We have nothing left.”
“Nothing?” Bonnie repeated. She looked from her father to her sister and back again. “What about your investments, Da? You have money in other places, don’t you?”
Sorcha cast her father a tortured look then returned to her contemplation of the street.
“We did,” the merchant replied but could not bring himself to say more.
Bonnie opened her mouth to pursue the matter, but Sorcha turned to her and silenced her with a motion of her hand. So instead Bonnie merely whispered, “What is going to happen to us?”
“I do not know,” her father said quietly. “I simply do not know.”
Bonnie’s eldest brother, Donald, came home from school a week later. Mr. Alleway closeted himself away with Donald and his solicitor the next morning, discussing the family’s options. During all this time, Sorcha insisted that she and Bonnie keep themselves busy.
Sorcha tended to Maisie, who, while not burned, suffered from smoke inhalation and lay uneasily in her borrowed bed, breathing roughly and sometimes vomiting from nausea. Sorcha saw to her comfort as best she could and sent Bonnie to sit with Calum.
Because he could not be on hand to treat her brother every day, Doctor Campbell taught Bonnie how to apply a salve of linseed oil, lime water, cerusa, and vinegar, using a soft feather to spread the medicine across the burned area. He then showed her how to apply the dressings, warning her that they would have to be changed every day and the salve reapplied for many weeks to come. “The bad humors will leak out in pus,” he told Bonnie, “and we must keep the damaged area clean.”
Bonnie’s stomach roiled in horror at the sight of those dreadful burns, but she listened with great care to the doctor’s instructions, her hands trembling as she struggled to mimic his actions. Throughout all of this, Calum slept, heavily drugged so that he might not experience the full extent of pain. “He must be kept asleep,” the doctor advised, “or the pain may well make an end of him.”
With those words echoing like mourning bells in her head, Bonnie redoubled her efforts to learn the doctor’s treatments. And after Doctor Campbell left, Bonnie sat beside her brother’s bed, watching him breathe. Sometimes she slipped to her knees and tried to pray but found she could hardly remember the words she had learned as a child.
Mid-afternoon the day after Donald’s arrival, Sorcha put her head into Calum’s sickroom, her gaze first resting on her brother’s sleeping form then finding Bonnie kneeling at his side. “I’m stepping out, dearest,” she whispered when she caught Bonnie’s eye. “Maisie is asleep. I’ll be back soon.”
Bonnie nodded and returned to her attempted prayers.
Later that evening, Mr. Alleway summoned Bonnie to the small drawing room of their neighbor’s house. The family who owned the house had retired to their country home to allow the Alleways some privacy as they struggled to regain their lives. Nevertheless, the room and its unfamiliar furniture felt strangely unwelcoming to Bonnie as she joined her father and her brother Donald, taking a seat on a low stool near the fire.
“Where is Sorcha?” Mr. Alleway asked.
“She stepped out,” Bonnie replied. “I did not see if she returned.”
“We’ll wait for her, then,” her father said, and they all lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Bonnie wished she might slip away to Calum’s room or perhaps to visit Maisie. But she remained where she sat, sometimes watching Donald, who paced the room, and sometimes watching her father, who gazed into the fire like a man lost in a dream.
Suddenly a door slammed open and closed downstairs. Footsteps sounded in the passage, and Sorcha appeared in the drawing-room doorway, her face white and her eyes terrible to behold. She took one look at her family and burst into tears.
“Sorcha!” their father gasped. “My child, what is the matter?”
“The wedding’s called off.” Sorcha wiped her nose with the back of her hand, something just days ago she would never have done. “I told John I would understand if he didn’t wish to marry me anymore, now that our fortune’s gone. I said it was only honorable for me to release him from our engagement.” She sucked in a breath before sobbing out, “He wasn’t supposed to say yes!”
“Oh Sorcha!” Bonnie exclaimed from her low seat. She wanted to rise and comfort her sister but found she hadn’t the strength to move.
Donald, however, strode across the room and put an arm around Sorcha, leading her to a chair and urging her to sit. Even as she took a seat, he growled, “I’ll have a word with that maggoty—”
“Donald,” their father said warningly. He offered his daughter a compassionate gaze. “Sorcha, pet, I can try to speak to John. If I tell him—”
“Don’t!” Sorcha yelled, leaping up from the chair in which she had only just rested. “I never want to see him again! He was supposed to love me! He was supposed to love me.” Her voice broke, and she pushed Donald away and ran out of the room. Her wooden heels clattered on the stair, and the door to her borrowed bedroom banged shut in her wake.
Mr. Alleway rested his head in his hands and groaned. This last was a small blow compared to the others so recently fallen, but it was a bitter one. Bonnie sat wordlessly, observing all from her low seat near the fire. Sorcha had always been strong and fearless, with an ability to contain her emotions. She never cried. Not even the night of the fire. Not even when they waited to learn Calum’s fate. And to see her weep now . . . Bonnie felt as though the world had spun out of control, leaving her no firm footing.
An
d it’s my fault. The words echoed through her mind. Had they a house, they would have at least been able to sell their possessions to clear their debts. Now they had nothing. Even the clothes she now wore were borrowed.
“Father,” she managed to whisper at last, “why did you call us in here? Did you have something you wanted to say?”
Mr. Alleway cleared his throat, his eyes shiny. “I had wanted to tell you with Sorcha present, but she will have to learn later. I have a second cousin up in the Highlands, near Inverness. A crofter of some moderate success who owns his own land. Not a man I’ve spoken with in years, yet he has kindly made arrangements for us to take a cottage near him. It’ll be a roof over our heads at least.”
“The Highlands?” Bonnie felt her heart sink even lower, though she had not believed it possible. She knew little enough of that wild country up north but had always assumed it was peopled with savages.
Mr. Alleway shook his weary head. “We have no choice, my Bonnie wee lass.”
“I have a choice.” Donald came and stood before his father. “Mr. MacDougall offered me a job with him as an apprentice cartographer. And I accepted, which means . . . I’ll be staying here in Burntisland.”
Bonnie looked down at her hands and twisted the edges of her apron. It was stained with the salve she had applied to Calum’s burns only a few hours before.
How foolish I was, she thought suddenly. To think how I dreaded going away to school! How gladly I would go now if it meant we could regain some of what we have lost.
Bonnie drew a deep breath to steady herself, looking up at her father, at his face so worn and drawn in the firelight. He met her gaze and smiled wearily. She wondered how he—or any of her family—could even bear to look at her after how much her carelessness had cost them. The sinking of the family’s ships had come so swiftly upon the heels of their last misfortune that the two seemed irrevocably intertwined.
Though it was a foolish thought, Bonnie felt that if she were responsible for one tragedy, she must also be responsible for the other. Her reason told her how ridiculous the idea was, but her heart and emotions wouldn’t stop convincing her otherwise.
I will never cause them such pain again, she vowed to herself. Never.
Chapter 3
HETTY AND THE other fine horses of the Alleway stables fetched a good price, enough, in fact, for Mr. Alleway to purchase a cart, a massive carthorse (not so handsome as his former steeds but able to haul a loaded cart with little effort), and other necessities for the journey to Inverness. And so he and his family set out from Burntisland only two months following his fall from fortune.
For the first many days of travel, Maisie and Calum rode in the cart, propped on top of the family’s sparse belongings. Mr. Alleway drove, but there was room for only one other on the seat beside him. So Sorcha and Bonnie took turns walking. Walking and walking, on and on, mile after mile, day after day, until Bonnie wondered if she could bear to take another step.
As the days passed, Calum often joined his sisters in their trek. He still wore the dressings on his burns, and Bonnie knew he experienced much pain though he never complained. And he seemed to gain strength as they traveled, his long limbs taking the strides with ease. Maisie, however, remained in the cart. Her lungs were not yet strong enough for such exertion.
They spoke little on the journey; what was there to say? They could not guess what life awaited them in the cold, wild north. They could not bear to contemplate the past they left behind along with Donald. Sorcha bit out the occasional grumble, but Bonnie dared not make a sound. What right had she to complain of any hardship or trial after what she had done?
Weeks of slow progress led them farther from the civilized landscapes they had always known, deeper into the wild north. Summer rains poured down upon them, drenching their clothes and thickening their boots with mud. And whenever the rain cleared, a heavy fog wrapped about them like a clammy blanket, hiding all from view except the road at their feet. Still they plodded on, stopping only to purchase supplies or to sleep. By the time they saw the first stone marker reading Inverness, Bonnie had not the strength or heart to feel anything. Neither relief nor sorrow. Nothing at all.
Under her feet, the wide military road was paved with local stone taken from the rocky heath surrounding. Heath, heather, stony waste . . . all spread before her in storm-gray magnificence and desolation. How, she wondered, could her family make a new home in this land?
“Not far now,” her father said from his seat beside Sorcha. He indicated the stone marker with a nod, but there was no need. Little else in the landscape could draw the eye.
Calum stepped up beside Bonnie and put an arm around her. “We’re almost there, Bonnie lass,” he whispered.
She stiffened and moved out from his embrace quickly. Though she still tended to his injuries every evening when they stopped for the night, performing what she could remember of Doctor Campbell’s treatments, she avoided Calum otherwise, choosing to walk on the other side of the cart from him when she could. The bandages on his face were a painful reminder of her terrible fault—her sin which, she still believed in her heart, had caused their sorry state.
They pushed on through the day, passing by the town of Inverness without stopping. It was hardly what Bonnie would consider a town: Inverness Castle loomed high and impressive on its hill, but other than a few stone buildings the town was made up mostly of simple thatch-roofed huts. Mr. Alleway, following the directions sent to him by his second cousin, took the west road away from the town. “Only eight more miles,” he told his family, his voice as encouraging as it could be through the rain. “We’ll be there by nightfall.”
And so they were. Even as the rain clouds dispersed and the sun set, the Alleways stood at the gate of a rundown yard, gazing upon the crofter’s cottage that would be their home: a hut, such as Bonnie had glimpsed in Inverness, built entirely of local materials, from the stone foundation to the timber framing to the walls of wattle-and-daub panels. The turf roof boasted a thatch of heather, and the low windows and gaping doorway were dark and unwelcoming. How isolated and lonely was the prospect, set in that rocky landscape!
Sorcha led the way inside, braving the dark threshold, and discovered that their father’s second cousin had left a peat fire burning in the fire ring in the center of the cottage; a trail of smoke rose through a hole in the roof. Rude furniture lined the walls, and Sorcha found a small stool and placed it near the fire. “Sit here, Maisie,” she told her sister.
“The walls are made of mud,” Maisie said, her voice disbelieving as she studied her new home by light of the peat fire. “It’s all so . . . small. And dark.” She coughed as she finished speaking and huddled into her damp shawl, taking a seat on the stool.
“At least we have a roof over our heads,” Sorcha said, briskly returning to the yard to assist with the unloading of the cart. Wordlessly Bonnie joined her, and together they, their father, and their brother managed to bring most of their few belongings into the house. They discovered that a cobbled section divided the interior of the cottage in two, and the second side had been used as a stable of some sort. Calum decided to house the horse there for the night, but declared that he would set to work making it into a second living space on the morrow.
Cold, exhausted, heavy-hearted, the family gathered around the central fire and ate the travelers’ fare that had been their diet the last several weeks. As they ate, Mr. Alleway murmured, “I’ll pay a call upon my cousin tomorrow and thank him for his kindness. Perhaps he can tell me where I might sell the carthorse and purchase a few chickens. Maybe a sheep.”
“We’re not to have any horse at all, Da?” Maisie queried, her voice very small in the darkness.
“We cannot afford to keep a horse,” Sorcha snapped, and pressed her sister to eat more. She hid her own fear and unhappiness in managing those around her, and her family had not the strength to resist her stern dictates.
Bonnie did not draw her own seat as close to the fire, bu
t remained a little outside its warm glow. Her meal tasted like ashes in her mouth, and she raised her eyes to the beams overhead which supported the turf roof. She could not have imagined a dwelling more primitive, more horrible. And this was their new reality? It was worse than a nightmare!
She lowered her gaze, looking instead across the fire at Calum and his bandaged face. He would need a new dressing this evening. She would need to tend him, need to . . . need to . . .
Suddenly she found herself at the door of the cottage. No one saw her slip out into the darkness of the Highland night, and she passed through the humble yard, through the gate, and out to the road beyond. There she stood a moment, spinning in place, taking in what she could see by light of the half-moon, which burst through the dissipating rainclouds. All was wild and bare, as far as the eye could see.
She began to walk. Then she began to run, leaving the cottage and the road behind as she fled up the first of the rolling hills. She ran through late-blooming heather, the rain-soaked blossoms breaking as she passed by, petals clinging to her skirts. Paying these no heed, she climbed to the top of the hill, descended into the valley beyond, and climbed again up the next hill, well out of sight of the cottage.
Here she fell, first to her knees, then to her face. She did not even realize she wept until that moment. But her grief poured out of her in torrents she could not stop. She tried to pray but could not recall any of the words she had learned from the Book of Common Prayer as a child. So she simply wept: for Calum and his scars, for Maisie and her breathing, for their lost home, for their new horrible abode . . . even for foolish things, like Hetty, whose foal she would never see, much less name. For Donald, who had stayed behind, making a new life for himself without them.
And all of it . . . all of it was her fault. Her doing.
Five Enchanted Roses: A Collection of Beauty and the Beast Stories Page 32