The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  Outside, Isabella caught a glimpse of the boy her mother had seen, staring at the house, then drawing back.

  ‘I think I’ll walk along the sea front,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t feel like it at all today,’ said Mrs Ramsey. She massaged a plump ankle.

  ‘I can go on my own.’

  ‘Can you, dear? All right, but don’t go far from the house, will you?’

  ‘Are you afraid the wild men will snatch me up?’

  But sometimes the effort of responding to her daughter demanded more of Mrs Ramsey than she could muster.

  When Isabella went outside the boy leapt at her from where he had been sheltering behind a boulder.

  ‘Miss Ramsey, ma’am.’ He was almost unintelligible. She searched for her Gaelic.

  ‘I won’t hurt you. How d’you know my name?’ she said softly.

  ‘Duncan sent me.’ He thrust a paper into her hand and disappeared, absorbed by shadows.

  The letter asked that she ride forth to meet Duncan the following Thursday to attend a communion sendee near Lochinver. She was welcome to stay in the home of his sister Willina McRae, a married woman. The service would last until Monday.

  Duncan was waiting for her as she rode by the mountain, on the road to the north, and when she came he did not exclaim or show surprise that she was alone. He was on foot, as she had expected, for few of the crofters owned horses. She dismounted and walked by his side. They travelled for mile after mile then, taking turns to ride the horse. Later, they sat on a rock and she offered him food from a basket she had prepared. She saw that he was uncomfortable.

  ‘Does Mrs McRae expect me?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, aye, of course. Not that one more will make much difference. Haven’t you been to an open-air communion before?’

  ‘It’s different in the east, though I’ve heard of the services.’

  ‘They expect maybe five thousand.’

  She pushed the food towards him, surprised by his lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘It is the fast day,’ he said. ‘We cannot eat.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘I thought you went to the kirk.’

  ‘Well of course. But I haven’t been to the Lord’s supper in the open air like this. You will have to teach me.’

  He looked at the food and smiled. ‘You will know next year,’ he said. ‘As you are not prepared this time, perhaps we should eat after all.’ He tore the bread with strong teeth.

  ‘Won’t you go in mortal sin?’ she asked.

  He looked at her. ‘I’d hardly be going to the Lord’s table with a pure heart, even now.’

  ‘Mine’s pure enough for both of us,’ she remarked, lowering her eyes.

  ‘Yours. Is it now?’ He regarded her with amusement, then more seriously. ‘Well. Yes. Maybe it is.’

  ‘Why should you doubt me? It is true.’

  ‘Aye. I know. My mockery was in return for yours. Never mind, I won’t approach the table this year.’

  ‘Oh, but you must.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’ve already sinned in my head.’ He touched her hand. ‘You’ve got nothing to fear with me.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It matters not.’

  ‘There are others to fear.’

  ‘I shall be modest.’

  ‘Yes. I knew that of you.’

  They came round a corner and saw a valley near to the base of the hills, chosen as a site where the people could watch the proceedings and hear the speakers. In a quiet, expectant way they gathered on the grass, the young women bareheaded, the married women wearing mutch caps, and the old women with cloaks of muted colour pulled around their heads. Their faces were turned towards ‘the Tent’, a wooden shelter with a window for the clergymen, like a small stage where the ministers would perform their roles. Before the Tent was the communion table, which Isabella saw to be a plank on trestles, covered with white linen. The cloth glinted against the heath. Along each side of the stage there was a bench and near that three posts. On the top of each post was a small box where the people would place their donations. Already the elders stood near the boxes, guarding them from theft. Their eyes were darting amongst the crowd as it gathered. One scowling man, with a crest of white hair and a bitter mouth, looked straight towards Isabella.

  ‘Why does he look at me so?’ she whispered to Duncan, although they were well out of earshot.

  ‘He is watching for the wayward ones.’

  ‘You mean there will be impropriety?’

  ‘It is a holiday too, remember, and they come little enough for my people.’

  ‘This is a strict parish, then?’

  ‘It hasn’t always been so, but times are changing.’

  ‘Is there a reason?’

  He turned fiercely towards her. ‘Lax ways stand for the old church, which has done nothing for us here. Its ministers are the pawns of the landowners. They are in the employ of the men who have driven us off our lands. We are the dispossessed, the crofters who have nothing left. The sheep,’ and he spat, ‘the sheep have more than us. The blackfaces. Did you not see them as we crossed the moor? Why do you think the land is so empty? Because the lairds have taken for themselves the place where we have always lived and sent us to the edge of the sea — there is scarce room enough there for a man and his wife and child to stand. There is nothing, nothing that is left to us.’ His voice was rising, and around him people were listening and nodding their heads.

  When he had finished, and the attention of those listening had been diverted to the latest arrivals, she said: ‘But what of you? Are you strict?’

  He shivered, as if a cold breath had touched him. ‘I mean to be,’ he replied in a low voice.

  That night at Willina McRae’s house the talk was the same. Duncan’s sister was large and loose-limbed like him, without an ounce of spare flesh on her big bones, and her eyes burned from far back in her head. Rory, her husband, had lit the fire. It glowed with bog-fir, smoky and thick in the corners of the long room where more than twenty people were gathered. Behind a curtain the children slept. The conversation was punctuated with their stirrings and occasional coughs. Everyone present was staying for the communion. Some of them, whom the others called the Men, were neither ministers nor laymen. They came from wandering bands who acted as intermediaries between the minister and the people. They knew each page of the Bible as well as their own names, although they had scant education. Catechists and mystics, their eyes held the gleam of fanatics. Each of them had long straggling hair and wore a black cloak over his shoulders and a spotted handkerchief around his head. Friday would be their day to speak. Already they were sharpening their oratory.

  Some of the Men were to sleep in the McRaes’ cattle barn. In the firelight, one of them stood in front of Isabella.

  ‘You’re a Sassenach?’ he demanded.

  She shook her head, trying not to show her fear or pull away from him.

  Duncan spoke up. ‘She was raised in the south. She is a Scotswoman.’

  ‘You have English ways.’ She saw as he spoke that his gums were bleeding.

  ‘I was born in London but I lived a long time in Edinburgh, and then in Inverness. My family is of the Edinburgh Society.’

  The man spat as Duncan had done earlier in the day, only this time the hatred was directed towards her.

  ‘Moderates.’

  ‘I do not know what you mean,’ she said.

  But the man had lost interest in her and moved on to others who knew what he was talking about.

  ‘Tell me what he means,’ she whispered to Duncan.

  ‘It is to do with the division in the church,’ Rory said, answering for him. ‘There are ministers who do not attend to their business in a diligent way. They take advantage of the people. But now there are people outside of the ministry who are trying to lead the people back to the word. As God has told it. We don’t have money to squander on a clergy who are idle, and dri
nk. There is William MacKenzie at Stoer, one of the worst. He’s nought but a drunken sot, and he gets rich for doing nothing. People perish every day collecting kelp. They fish when they can and starve the rest of the time. Sometimes they’re allowed to till a strip of the poorest soil, and sometimes not. That’s at the pleasure of the owners. We haven’t even got time to grow our potatoes. The children are dying and the women are wasting away. And if we complain we get turned out, even from that. They’ve got us in the palms of their hands, with just enough money to exist, and if we leave them we’re lost. They know how much they can get away with, for they still need us to gather kelp. Oh yes, they need us all right.’

  ‘And the ministers do nothing?’

  ‘Exactly. Bone idle, most of them.’

  ‘They be bastards,’ said one of the Men. He had not seen Isabella sitting alongside.

  ‘Tomorrow the Men will speak.’ Duncan told Isabella.

  ‘And the ministers will allow that?’

  ‘The ministers would not dare to stop them. The people will listen to them before the ministers. The ministers are afraid.’

  One of the Men had risen to his feet. ‘Will you sleep now, my friend?’ called Rory.

  ‘I go to the hills,’ was the reply. ‘Tomorrow I speak to the question. Tonight I will pray on the hilltop.’

  Isabella stirred restlessly.

  ‘D’you wish you hadn’t come?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘One part of me is afraid. I didn’t know it would be like this. But it’s all right. I’m glad I came.’

  ‘It’s not as soft as you’re used to.’

  ‘It’s something you’ll have to become accustomed to,’ said Willina, who had overheard this.

  ‘What does she mean by that?’ asked Isabella.

  Duncan did not reply but got up to stoke the fire.

  When she returned home, Isabella wrote to her sister-in-law in London, wife of her older brother, Marcus.

  Ullapool, 9 July 1812

  My dear Louise,

  … it was the strangest experience of my life. The Men had their say on the Friday, and what they said was positively scandalous in terms of the company that was present. Any minister whom they did not think worthy of his calling, they got up and said so in no uncertain terms. As many as thirty of the Men ‘spoke to the question’ as they put it, on the Friday.

  The day wore on and on. For a short time the sun blazed down and it was so hot I felt faint. Then, as suddenly, the wind changed, a cloud covered the sun, and within minutes there was a cold misty rain falling upon us. My teeth started to chatter, and we were all as good as soaked. Then again the sun came out, so that we all began to steam.

  Oh, but the people are really poor here. I felt ashamed of my fine clothes, for they wear such pitiful threadbare garments, even the youngest and prettiest of the women. I wanted to apologise for my appearance — I was wearing that pink silk scarf which you and Marcus gave me the Christmas before last and I took it off and hid it in my pocket; I saw Duncan turn and smile a little at this: I had won his approval. Perhaps a little too much, but that is another matter.

  On the Saturday, it was the turn of the ministers to speak. Not many of the ‘Moderates’ spoke. The breakaway movement from the Church of Scotland is flourishing in this parish. The object of hatred is one William MacKenzie, the terrible drunkard of whom Duncan and Rory had spoken.

  It seems he took on an assistant called John Kennedy, or rather had him assigned, for the authorities could see that all was not well in the parish but were loath to remove MacKenzie. That’s ‘Moderates’ for you, you see, this is why they are, and I think quite justly, seen to be useless and hypocritical — they make excuses for bad habits. Well, Kennedy was a fiery preacher — I say ‘was’ because all this happened some years ago — and he won a convert named Norman McLeod, who had been all kinds of spiritual adventurer in his youth: a Papist no less, for a short time, and then latterly a Haldanite before Kennedy came on the scene and led him back to Presbyterianism.

  The story is most curious. McLeod, who was just a fisherman, was twenty-seven when he left to start training for the ministry. First he went to Aberdeen where he won a gold medal for philosophy at the university, and then to Edinburgh to train for his ordination. But they say he is not at all happy there, that he does not think well of his fellow churchmen, and indeed, when he had his say on Saturday, although not yet ordained he laid about him with some very harsh words. There is talk that he may never be ordained.

  Meanwhile he has married a poor young woman who has waited for him for years. I’ve heard they were in school together and that she was cleverer than he is, which is saying something, for he is hailed as near to genius. But she is never allowed to speak out for herself, so whatever brains she has, I’m afraid she must lack the equivalent in spirit. He’s really quite a savage kind of fellow, all blazing eyes and stern jaw. A good figure of a man, the kind you could indulge yourself in dreaming over if only his expression was sweeter, but I do not think he would appreciate the idea … though you never can tell.

  Duncan is truly in awe of him.

  I meant to tell you more of all this but my writing arm is weary. The Sabbath was very holy and solemn, with the goblet passing up and down the table from hand to hand and some people quite faint with the seriousness of it all. I did not take the cup, and true to his word neither did Duncan.

  Duncan is a good man. He has a limp caused through an accident when the laird was out shooting and accidentally discharged a gun in his direction. He has fierce eyes, too, but they are of a more tender light than McLeod’s.

  Much as I like him, though, I think it is time to quit this adventure. I find him disturbing and, because of a difficulty between us, I have decided to continue my explorations of the countryside on my own.

  Yours affectionately, Isabella.

  It had happened on the Saturday, when the ministers were speaking. The gaunt-faced men who guarded the donation boxes were watching the crowd with steely eyes. One of the breezes that constantly swept the crowd that day had risen with a sharp new intensity. Isabella shifted closer to Duncan. The guardian at the boxes, the same one who had looked at her so closely the day of their arrival, came over.

  His voice was like flint. ‘Woman, is this man your husband?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You act like a wife with him, talking to him and casting him looks. When will the marriage take place?’

  ‘Come the end of autumn,’ said Duncan swiftly. ‘The lady stays at my sisters place.’

  He did not look at her when the guardian had gone.

  ‘Why?’ she whispered, for what seemed like the twentieth time.

  ‘Why not?’ he had replied.

  ‘We’re not pledged to each other.’

  ‘You came here with me.’

  ‘Is that what you took from it?’

  ‘We’ll talk of it later.’

  She began to get to her feet.

  ‘No, not now,’ he said, trying to restrain her by force of his words.

  ‘I am not one of the hypocrites of whom you speak.’

  ‘You came here,’ he repeated. ‘D’you not understand what you have done, coming here with me?’

  ‘You didn’t say.’

  ‘You did not ask. I thought you understood.’

  She sank back on the grass, shaking her head.

  Ullapool, 10 June 1813

  Dearest Louise,

  I feel so lost and confused within myself of late. I hope you won’t show these letters to my brother, even though you’re as life to each other. I don’t understand what’s going on in my head. I haven’t felt easy since the time that I so foolishly —yes, yes, I admit it now — went into the highlands with Duncan MacQuarrie.

  He haunts the town of Ullapool and his feelings around here are known, though he does not state them in public, he has too much respect. But people come to sense these things. His love is as great an affliction to him as it is to me who does not care for him in
the same way, and of course father is even less inclined to employ him now than before. Although nothing is said to me, I know that there is encouragement in the town to scorn him. He is so poor, such an easy target, and with his game leg there is little he can do, though he labours on with the kelp. I keep referring to this accursed kelp; in case you don’t know of it, it’s a fine seaweed that grows around the shoreline here. When it’s been gathered it gets dried out and burned on the beaches, so that there is a molten mass which is cooled into brittle blue layers, then that gets shipped off to the glass and soap-works in England. That’s why the lairds are so eager for the people to be nice and handy to the icy sea — which is where they’re living, thousands and thousands of them now, huddled near the beaches. A pretty sight? Does it shock you? I cannot bear it.

  As for Duncan, I feel to blame for his worsening plight, through bringing ridicule upon him. I see now that it was natural for him to believe that I was pledging myself when I followed him. What else could he have thought? I did not understand enough their way of looking at things up here.

  You may wonder that he asked me in the first place. Well, he is one of the terrible suffering lettered men, such as Highlanders often are, despite their poverty; placing learning above all things, and believing firmly in the equality of all men (I should like to say, of women too, but of course I refer to mankind, oh you will see what strain I am under at present).

  Dear heaven forbid, I often think now, that poor people should be afflicted with knowledge and talent and intellect. Ah, that from me! No, don’t listen, it is the deepest irony of which I am capable. But you see, he thought I was some kindred spirit, it seems, making a spontaneous gesture of my commitment. Perhaps I thought so too at the time, but now I do not know what induced me to go on that rash outing. It was an adventure, and adventuresses are not thought well of in this harsh and bitter land.

  As if all that is not enough, and too much, I have had a most disturbing encounter with McLeod. It happened late one spring afternoon, although you would be hard put to think of it as spring for a small blizzard had blown up and died away, leaving in its wake a late fall of snow and the air was still damp and heavy with it. I had a great deal on my mind, on this evening of which I speak. I put on my fur-lined hood, and mittens, and set off. The snow obscured my view. Where there had been black rocks the day before, there was nothing, then the snow died away a little and the rocks began to move, or so it seemed. I cried out, afraid, and then I saw that it was the blackfaces at large upon the moor.