The Book of Secrets

by Fiona Kidman

  ‘She did not,’ he replied, speaking into the night. ‘She would not speak your name in my house. We brought better things with us, better morals to this country than you have found here. Our journeys were not made in vain to be sacrificed to such mischief. Your name will be as a curse under my roof and within my hearing. Goodnight, Maria McClure.’

  At the gate he paused. ‘You may till the garden if you wish,’ he called.

  Later, she woke again from one of her dreaming sleeps, the names ringing in her head … from Assynt in Sutherlandshire from Applecross and Skye, Lochalsh and Harris, the Man said I must be patient Maria. And were you patient mother? Oh aye, I was. And I was the child mother?

  Aye, yes you were the child, the grass Branco it smells so sweet, the sweet scent beneath us, oh but why d’you need ribbons and embroidery when you’ve got a crown of hair like that Maria oh mother it is a little bit of ribbon …

  all flesh is as grass …

  … my own fair lass, my bonnie girl …

  the grass withereth …

  … from Loch Broom and Lock Tollachan, Dunrunie and Badinscallie from the Summer Isles and Corry Halloch, return return return we never, streaming on across the seas, to Nova Scotia across the Atlantic, to Pictou and St Ann’s to Australia by the green Indian Ocean on the good barque Margaret and on the Highland Lass, by the Tasman Sea, and the Gertrude and the little ship Spray and on the Breadalbane and the Ellen Lewis, the sails of the ships billowing before fair winds and bad, great white canvas sheets on the rigging, mother I dream dreams as you must have dreamed and my grandmother before me …

  I am betrayed by my own people.

  Grandmother, why did you leave the cave? How can I live my life out in this place? How did you? Grandmother, they will not keep me forever, will they? Isabella, oh Isabella, I wish you were alive, or that I were dead.

  Later again, it came to her that this could be her cave, safe and secure, where they could never reach her. Towards dawn she took the candle and opened the book once more, reading what Isabella had written of McLeod’s arrival at the cave to prevent her and her child from perishing in the woods one winter long ago.

  Watching the sky lighten she thought, so this is what it has all come to. And wondered if McLeod had seen his followers perverting the course of morality. Or had he long ago lost sight of what it was all about himself? What natural savagery had overtaken a community which had begun with such kindness in its intentions?

  But Isabella had been a married woman who had been taken against her will. While she was a single woman who had lain, from choice, with an enemy. For that was how they must see him, though she did not. No enemy you, Branco, nor yet a lover; a friend between seasons.

  Perhaps McLeod would have left her in the cave?

  I am the last sacrifice.

  Taking her cloak from behind the door, she stepped outside amongst the dew. Across the paddock, a watcher waited. She turned the other way and another dark shape loomed against the scarlet tongues of morning. To her left, another. The house was surrounded. She made to run, but the child kicked inside her with such force that she staggered. Again the world loomed black. While she could still stand she made her way back inside.

  It will only be for a little while, she told herself. I will stay here for a short time, until the child is born. They cannot watch me forever.

  Just a little time.

  Did she imagine it, or did one of them call her?

  You are a murderer, Maria.

  No. No. I didn’t kill her. Mother, where are you, tell them I did not kill you.

  As if with an axe, Maria, as if with an axe.

  The voices, maybe they are in my head. Perhaps there is no one out there.

  Was it the wild men in the woods? Men? What men? I don’t think there were any men … No, I never saw strange men in the woods. Ghosts perhaps … mother, long ago, telling me at night there were no ghosts, or only ghosts for people who had been bad. Now what did I ever do that was bad?

  Just a little time, alone in the cave.

  Maria’s hand brushed an object, like beads only rougher. It was lying beneath a packet of letters. She uncovered it and saw that it was beads of a kind, though not like any she had ever seen before. It was a string of human teeth, the teeth of young children.

  She took them out, fearful, fascinated, and half-disgusted at first, but the shiny teeth were smooth like small white shells on the outside, and only the crowns were rough, with a few brown pits here and there, old toothaches preserved forever, and the roots curved down to sharp scratchy little points.

  What would they say, if I told them that I wore my children’s teeth strung around my neck?

  She counted the teeth and in all there were fifty-six, three complete sets of milk teeth less four.

  Her eyes widened. In her hands, as if they were flesh, so alive had they become, were the teeth of Duncan Cave who had died before she was born, of Annie her mother who was now dead, and of Uncle Hector.

  She held the beads in her hand a moment longer, then carefully placed them around her neck and covered them over with the collar of her dress.

  twenty-two

  Throughout the winter Maria made fires, collecting wood from the paddock around the house. The boundaries were clear and she no longer sought to cross them. At first she had thought of staying inside so that she would not have to touch the soil that her uncle now claimed was his, but that seemed self-defeating. She needed warmth and food if she and her child were to survive. The real battles must wait until after the baby was born.

  She put her arms around her belly then. I am holding you now, she told the baby. Whatever her uncle might have accomplished over the land, she thought he might have more difficulty convincing the law that they should take her child from her, even if it was considered the proper thing to do.

  Often Maria returned to the journals of Isabella. It worried her that Isabella had survived for so long in the cave only to succumb to McLeod in the end. She kept likening her own situation to that of her grandmother’s, in spite of the clear differences between them. Isabella had chosen to leave her community but McLeod had coaxed her to return to it. His reward for her compliance had been to ordain the course of her life. And it seemed to Maria that it was McLeod who breathed on her, too, ordering her days and the progression of her life.

  In the mornings she baked bread, as her mother had done, although she could never eat a half of what she made and took to feeding the birds with the crumbs on the rough lawn outside. Seven wax-eyes and four fantails came early each morning before the arrival of the blackbirds and thrushes, busy and outrageous in their behaviour.

  At lunchtime she cooked meat that was left for her twice a week by darkness at the gate. As winter had come and the flies had vanished during the cooler weather, it usually stayed fresh, though sometimes when it was delivered it smelt as if it had been hung overlong. One night a brace of pigeons was waiting for her; she had a curious conviction that they had been left by a different person from the one responsible for the other provisions. She plucked the birds with care and stuck the brightest feathers around the edge of the mirror. There, baby, she said aloud, those are for you, feathers and finery you’ll have, my pretty girl.

  Girl. Yes, it will be a girl, she decided as she prepared a sweet pigeon pie. I wouldn’t know what to do with a boy. All my life I have lived in the presence of women, and my dealings with men have come to difficult ends. I have little faith in men. She shook her head. That is unfair. You haven’t really given them a chance, Maria. Oh but have they given you a chance? Well, I can’t altogether blame Branco, I gave him plenty of chances. Pshaw, Maria, it wasn’t a man you were after, it was an escape. Well, he didn’t help much, did he, look at you now.

  Ah, but you did, Branco, for look what we made. Now there is you. And again she would touch her stomach and under her hand a fist or a foot would bulge against its walls.

  Whoever prepared her provisions appeared to think carefully of he
r requirements. On another day there was a parcel of soft white wool. She sat down straight away and began to knit, her hands busy again, plying the soft yarn as she made garments like cobwebs for the baby. The next time there was a towelling cloth to sew into napkin squares and a note which read, ‘The baby will be going south, it will need to be dressed warmly when it leaves.’

  By the fire that night she put down her knitting. ‘I do not want this baby to be born,’ she said aloud. ‘There is no way I can keep it to myself except that it stays inside of me.’

  Later she lay in the dark and placed her hand on the fluttering birdlike creature within her, counting its heartbeat. Wind blew through the cracks in the bedroom wall. The bright summers of the past, and the billowing fires, had dried the timbers in the house and all winter it creaked and crackled, talking to her. We are a good trio, she thought, the house, the child, and me.

  She was glad now, that for the time being she was there.

  Winter ran on that year, frostier than usual in a climate where children were in the habit of running barefoot summer and winter. She could see them passing along the track that led past her gate, and from where she stood they looked pinched and buttoned up more tightly this year.

  None of the children looked in her direction. Often she saw ones she knew, the younger brothers and sisters of her friends, and once or twice she called out to them, but after the first time or two she knew better. They looked straight ahead and pretended they had not heard her.

  One night seed potato was left by the gate. ‘It is early to sow,’ read the note left with them, ‘but when the frosts are over you should turn the ground and plant these.’

  So they expect me to be here for the summer, eh? To lay in provisions for the next year? She turned the note over inside the house, for she never showed any sign of interest where they could see her in what they left.

  ‘When is your time?’ said the next note.

  She smiled to herself with pleasure. There was something they did not know about her, after all. She, too, would like to know. Though she had an idea now. She had cleaned the house for a fortnight. It should be spotless when the midwife comes, she told herself as she turned out cupboards.

  She sat back on her heels then, almost toppling with the effort, and wondered why the midwife might look in the bottom drawer of her mother’s chest where her old clothes were stored.

  She sat on the floor then and wept. In the drawer were the clothes she remembered, a navy dress in fine wool, worn at the elbows, white collars which had become yellowed with age, a mob calico hat which her mother wore on wash days, and a shawl which came as near to being ornamental as anything her mother had ever worn, made of dark green handwoven cloth which she pinned in front with a large cairngorm. The brooch still lay in the top drawer of her mother’s chest. So much that was familiar, so little that was memorable. She had been her mother’s work of art, her ornament, and she had failed her and destroyed her. Or so they were saying, and she supposed that in a sense it must be true. She could remember the last days when she and her mother lived together, how Annie was often short of breath and her colour bad. Why hadn’t she noticed? Her mother must have been ill for a long time, all that summer when she was unable to find Maria on dusky evenings.

  The drawer stuck as she tried to push it shut, jamming against a hard object at the far corner. She slid her hand inside and running it along the edge came to a book. Another of Isabella’s journals.

  For a long time Maria sat looking at it.

  ‘I am not ready for it yet,’ she said aloud. The past already felt as if it was cramming her head from all sides. ‘Enough is enough. When I can bear more, I will read it.’

  It was difficult to sleep at nights. There was no way she could arrange herself comfortably in bed. Three nights in a row she walked up and down. In the morning she would forget to light the fire, and the sight of food repelled her. Half-frozen, she would scrape out the ashes and set some kindling. When the fire was alight she put on a log big enough to burn all day and sat there until it was ashes, then shivering, made her way to bed. Within an hour the walking and pacing would begin again. Pain spiked the small of her back. Her legs felt like jelly. Weals stood out across her stomach. She half expected to see the skin begin to break as the child emerged but it only stretched more tight and hard. On the third morning after the marks appeared she took a handful of butter and smeared it on her stomach, rubbing it in to soften the skin which looked as if it would surely split that day. This gave her relief straight away, but when she sat by the fire the butter soaked through her clothes and she could smell herself then, rancid and sour. Her hair felt clammy as if she had been sweating and hung in lank matted knots around her face.

  ‘Please come out, please,’ she said to the child.

  Immediately she regretted her comment, fearing that the child had heard her and might obey and they would be parted. ‘But at least I’ll see you,’ she commented, relenting. ‘And I will take care of you. I will. And you can love whom you will, lass. Eh, will you be a girl? Will you have fair yellow down on your head like a young chick … oh that’s my own mother’s voice for you … or will you have a black crown, like — him? Like my mother herself? Or my father perhaps? Now there’s a thought for you. That, the greatest absence in this house. Perhaps it’s as well. Or would it have made a difference? Strange how little I think of him, your father. That is my injustice. And Annie’s. He had a right to be heard.

  ‘Yet I can hardly recall his name or where he came from. Francis McClure of Prince Edward Island. Well, it’s neither here nor there. It is nothing … Except a half of me, and who I am. Fancy, I had not thought of that. Was he a wildcat, a joker in the pack? I’ve heard he was a quiet enough man. Were there things they did not tell me? Ha, was it easier to blame it all on poor old Isabella?

  ‘That’s who this baby girl will be like. Isabella. Yes. And I’ll call her Belle. For her. Belle, yes, come out little one. We’ll work something out, you and me. We’ll keep the midwife at bay, and when it’s all over there won’t be much they can do about us, you and me together. Who’s to know, eh little Belle? They stick their noses in the air and come by dark … well you and I can do a little of that.’

  The birds waited outside on the grass but she did not go out to them. They would have to get used to not seeing her around; they and the watchers. If indeed there were still watchers. Perhaps they knew she would not stir for now. Maybe they had gone away. But she could not take a chance.

  The japonica bush was flowering, its blooms like blood spots on the shining tangled branches which needed cutting back. The flowers shimmered as she stood looking at them, but the more she stared the more harsh and urgent their colour became. She felt as if she had taken opiates, and she needed to go to the lavatory but it was too late, the water gushed around her feet and now there was blood as well and at the same moment the first pain began.

  It was night. The pain had passed. The baby had stopped moving inside her.

  ‘I think you ought to fight a bit,’ she murmured to it. She lit the candle beside her but her eyes blurred. It was curiously difficult to see.

  Then, like a tidal wave, the pain came surging again and she felt like a ship far out at sea hit by a monstrous wall of water and having nowhere to go except run with the elements. Maria thought she would drown.

  But she knew now where the baby would come. In the mirror above her bed she could see herself thrashing in the raging shadows of her room and she remembered the white cloth at the window.

  In the mirror’s reflection she saw herself, her knees drawn up and parted, and her body open. In its entrance, a sleek wet crown of hair amongst her own matted and bloody bush.

  She needed them then, the watchers outside.

  They can come if they will save us, she thought. The pain washed back, receded again. I can bear it, she told herself. I will not call them. They think I’m beaten but I am not. There. There, see how it goes. We will be all right.

&
nbsp; But in the next wave she was lost, and abandoned the hope she had held so briefly. Mother, where are you? They cannot have taken you away without seeing me. Mother, I know you are listening to me, why don’t you come?

  Panting then. Not this bad, please not this bad. She pulled herself upright on the bed, squatting on her haunches. Pushing down, it was easier now, rocking backwards and forwards on her heels, triumphant as the crown began descending into her hand.

  No, I will not take the white cloth. I will not put it in the window.

  She shouted then to whoever might hear. ‘I need none of you, you hear me, none of you.’

  Then it stopped, the baby wedged inside her. Too weak to bear down now, she collapsed forward on her hands and knees. She could hear her voice, whimpering far away. Asking them to come.

  They cannot have heard me. Or surely they would be here. Do I have to beg them? Is that it? Yes, it has come to that, I want them. The white cloth. The white cloth. Too late, I cannot get to the window, oh dear Lord. Mother. Oh please God.

  A small wailing voice replied. By the candle-light she looked down on the blanket and saw the baby lying between her legs. There, it was done. Joy, like a fresh wave, engulfed her. It will be all right, she said to the baby. I have you now. She slept again, and heard in her sleep the songs of the Gaels, and the echoes of a lament.

  When she woke she was stiff and cold, and between her legs there was a cold solid mass. She could not remember for a moment what it was that had so tormented her in the night. The candle had burned down and gone out.

  She put her hand on the baby, knowing without looking that it was dead.

  A quiet still voice inside her said, ‘There isn’t any God.’

  And then she repeated this blasphemy aloud.

  With the spade she turned the hard earth. The paddocks were misty and cool but they held the fragrance of approaching spring. The curious wax-eyes stood a careful distance away from her.