To A Far Country

by Oliver, Marina

  It was some time later when she became conscious of a shadow, deeper than that cast by the leaves, blocking out the sun.

  'Andrew!' she exclaimed, sitting upright and instinctively pulling up her gown to shield her breast from his intent gaze.

  He shrugged and threw himself down beside her. 'Don't worry!' he said, his voice harsh and his tone resentful. 'I haven't come here for your body. The foreigner's welcome to it!'

  'Why have you come?' Flora asked, keeping her head turned away. She laid Rosie gently on the shawl and finished fastening the strings of her bodice, willing her hot cheeks to cool before she had to face him.

  'I was angry. I didn't mean to insult you,' he said stiffly. 'I came to apologise.'

  She glanced at him through her lowered eyelashes. She had not expected this. Andrew had a fierce pride, like most Highlanders, and deep down she felt he had some cause for resentment.

  'Thank you,' she said quietly. 'Andrew, I didn't mean harm to you,' she went on, trying to make him understand. 'You're still young, plenty of time to have your own croft, and I'm sure Jamie will rent you the next one that's available.'

  'It was your fault I lost my croft, then?' he demanded, suddenly aggressive again.

  Flora sighed. 'Your father made you come and apologise, did he?' she asked curtly. 'You didn't do it for me, or because you knew you were wrong. So how much is it worth, such a grudging apology?'

  'I said it. I don't have to mean it.'

  'Don't be childish!' Flora lost patience with him. 'There's no point in talking to you in this mood.'

  She turned away from him, starting to scramble to her feet, but Andrew stretched out his hand and seized her elbow, causing her to fall back against the branch.

  'Just like Mrs Lennox!' he sneered. 'Too high and mighty to want to talk to her own folk, unless they say what she wants to hear.'

  'Let me go! Andrew, you're hurting my arm.'

  She tried to pull away, but his grasp was hard and unyielding. There would be bruises tomorrow.

  'Old friendships mean nothing to you, do they?' he demanded, shaking her. 'You'll let me go to the devil, so long as your precious cousins are provided for. Why not let them bide with you? You've plenty of land. Your croft's the biggest in the glen, and your family the smallest. Answer me!' he added when she remained silent.

  Flora was blinking back tears of rage and humiliation. She would not let him see how much he was hurting her. Then she let out a gasp of pain when Andrew suddenly flung her away from him and, unbalanced, she fell against the branch and cracked her head against a protruding knob.

  'You bully!' she raged, struggling to her feet and rubbing her temple. Already a lump was rising. She felt the sticky blood, and looked at her fingers, red and glistening.

  Andrew stared at her in dismay. 'Oh, God, Flora, I didn't mean it! I'd never want to hurt you! Let me see. It's not bleeding much,' he added, relief evident in his voice.

  'I'll live, no doubt,' Flora said grimly.

  He pulled out a scrap of rag and when she tried to evade him pulled her closer. 'Let me wipe it away, then I can see how big the cut is.'

  There was nothing else she could do. Flora stood quietly while Andrew, with more patience than she expected, gently wiped away the blood. He held the rag for her to see.

  'Look, it's only a smear. It's almost stopped. Oh, Flora, forgive me! I didn't know what I was doing. Dad says I don't know my own strength sometimes.'

  'No harm done,' Flora said, though her head was beginning to pound, and she wanted nothing more than to retreat to her kitchen and brew a pot of tea.

  'Sure?' He sighed. 'The harm was done when you married that man.' Before she could prevent it, he pulled her towards him. His arms crushed her tightly, and as she opened her mouth to protest his lips covered her own. Too startled to move, Flora felt his lips, hard and warm, and his tongue tracing the inside of her mouth, then connecting with her own.

  With a shudder of dismay, she broke free of him. They stared at one another for a moment and then Andrew, with an inarticulate mutter, turned away and ran off down the track. Flora slowly wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, but could do nothing to quieten the tingle left there by his touch. Damn him! How dared he treat her so? She turned to pick up Rosie, and walked unsteadily back to the house. No man apart from Jamie had ever kissed her like that, like a lover. Quick pecks on the cheek, and the occasional brief one on the lips, from cousins or uncles, were all she knew. Not even in the old days had Andrew kissed her. She had imagined any other man's touch, so intimate, would be repulsive to her. But it had not been. For one crazy moment she had wanted to relax, to respond, to kiss him back.

  She shook her head, bemused. It was the bump on the head, the way she was half asleep when he woke her, forcing her to recall everything while she was still drowsy. If she'd been in her right senses she would never have felt like that.

  An hour later, soothed by a cup of tea, her head had stopped aching. She had applied crushed chervil to both the swelling and the bruises on her arm. With her hair worn more loosely, Jamie would not notice, and she need not mention Andrew's visit. She could not, for her blushes would give her away.

  ***

  Rosie was some months old when pipers woke her early one morning, and she began to scream with frustration. Flora groaned and turned over, burying her face in the pillow. It seemed only a few minutes since she had fed her demanding baby late the previous night. Then she heard the pipes, and realised what day it was. Betty MacDougal from one of the crofts several miles down the glen was marrying Alexander Campbell, and the pipers were making the rounds to fetch all the guests. She forced herself awake and sat up. They would have to hurry if they were to ride in the procession to Alexander's house, where they were to join his family for dinner.

  Jamie was in holiday mood. 'Wear one of your Edinburgh gowns,' he suggested, 'and your pearls.'

  'I don't want to dress finer than the other women,' she protested. 'They would be jealous.'

  'Nonsense. Your father was tacksman. They looked up to him. They feel honoured when you put on a show. And there aren't many opportunities for me to show people how proud I am of you! Put on that apple green muslin gown, and the darker green pelisse with that chip straw bonnet. I always loved that hat, it frames your face so enchantingly.'

  She smiled, and did as he wished, but a small niggle of doubt would not be banished. Arabella had made a point of always wearing shades of green. With her colouring, Flora knew green became her too, but did the colour remind Jamie of Arabella? She thrust away the notion and went to find the garments in the chest, and shake out the creases.

  Alone of the glen's farmers, Jamie kept a small trap for journeys they could not manage on foot. He had already harnessed their small sturdy pony to it, and as soon as Flora was ready, both she and Rosie dressed in their best finery, they set off. Most of the pipers had left, crossing the pass into a parallel glen where they would round up the people there, leaving one single piper to head the procession back down the glen. The two strains of their lively music died away in different directions.

  The pony was accustomed to the track, and needed no urging to trot briskly down. Then, as they caught up with a couple of dozen people he slowed, bringing up the rear.

  'Good day to you, Mistress Lennox.'

  'I'm pleased to see you looking well, Flora, my lass.'

  'Och, what a sweet bairn!'

  Flora nodded to her friends and neighbours, smiling, then glanced across to where Andrew, his parents, and two youngest brothers marched along, unsmiling. She sighed. Eliza had barely spoken to her since Bruce had taken the farm. Just once, since Andrew's visit, the older woman had come to the croft, and Flora still felt sick with anguish when she recalled that conversation.

  'Ye've ruined my family,' Eliza had said without pausing to greet Flora, who was digging up early potatoes from the patch beside the house.

  'What do you mean?' Flora asked, her heart thumping painfully. Had someone seen
Andrew kissing her, told Eliza?

  'It's due to you and your high an' mighty Lennox husband that three of my lads have left home,' Eliza said, arms akimbo as she stood glaring at Flora. 'Three of them! Half my brood!'

  'Left? Where? Why?' Flora asked, bewildered. A part of her hoped that Andrew had gone away, that she need no longer fear encountering him. She was afraid more of the effect his kiss had had on her than of his anger. And, she confessed to herself, shamefaced, she feared that if he wanted more she wouldn't be strong enough to resist him.

  She did not at all understand her feelings, for she loved Jamie with all her heart. She felt doubly alive when he kissed and caressed her, and despite the thunderings of the Minister against the wickedness of enjoying carnal pleasure even within marriage, she always responded joyfully and willingly to Jamie's lovemaking.

  She forced herself to listen to Eliza.

  'They've left, last night,' the woman was saying, and tears streamed down her lined cheeks. 'They're goin' to join my cousin Hamish across the seas, in what they call Nova Scotia. It's a grim land, from what Hamish writes. He wouldn't be there if he hadn't been given land after his soldiering days were done. Ye've driven them away from their home.'

  'Eliza! Oh, my dear, we didn't want this to happen. I'm so sorry!' Flora dropped the spade and tried to take the sobbing woman into her arms, but Eliza thrust her away with quick angry gestures.

  'I don't want your sympathy! It's too late for me and my lads. Their father's a broken man. After all he's worked for, now he'll never see them again, and it's all your fault!'

  She had turned and stalked away, her head held high. Jamie had been to see them later, but they refused his offer to go to Glasgow and try to persuade the boys to return home. Since that day none of them had spoken to Flora, though they had, by way of croft business, to deal with Jamie occasionally.

  They blamed Bruce, too, and most of the crofters took Andrew's part. Bruce was not having a happy time of it. He was regarded as even more of a foreigner than Jamie, coming as he did from the far north. Many of his new neighbours refused to speak to him, and those who did gave him no more than a brief word of greeting if they happened to meet. It was customary for the crofters to help one another at busy times, but Bruce and his children had been ignored, left to get in the hay and harvest their oats and potatoes by themselves.

  Flora fretted at Eliza's hostility, all the way down the glen and through the narrow gorge, to where on the far side it opened out into a shallow bowl with wide pastures, cottages surrounding the small kirk and the ancient tavern. The gorge was a hundred yards long with cliffs thirty or more yards high on either side, where there was just room for a cart to pass alongside the stream, driven deep and rushing in boiling fury to burst out into the more tranquil open ground beyond. She shivered. There was no sun in this defile, ever, and sometimes in winter it was blocked with snow. Then, to reach the kirk they had to make a wide detour further up the side of the mountain, along the tracks made by the deer.

  Perhaps, Flora thought, forcing herself to look cheerful for the sake of the bridal couple, in the inevitable jollities of this wedding day she might be able to talk to Eliza. She hated being at odds with her neighbours, and blamed herself for the isolated existence Bruce and his family found themselves in. Fortunately, they had not been invited to the wedding, so would not have to suffer snubs there.

  Eliza and her family kept well away from Flora, however, during the whole of the protracted dinner, the procession to the church later, and the dancing afterwards to the fiddlers and pipers. She turned her back whenever Flora approached, and Flora deemed it wiser not to risk provoking an outburst. It was not until Flora was retrieving Rosie from an admiring circle of distant cousins, ready to set off homewards, that Eliza spoke to her. She appeared beside Flora as she was arranging Rosie, blissfully asleep, in the basket she used in the trap.

  'Now it seems my Colin's throwing his life away, because of you,' she hissed. 'He's joined the army in that God-forsaken land.'

  Flora was dismayed. 'Joined the army? Oh no! But are there wars there? Will he have to fight?'

  'Does it matter? He'll find a way to get himself killed, no doubt,' Eliza said bitterly.

  'I'm sorry,' Flora said helplessly.

  'And now my Andrew's threatening to leave Scotland. He says there's no life for him here, and he can't afford to rent land elsewhere. He's tired of scraping a bare living as a crofter. He'll enlist too. Soon all my lads will have gone.'

  'Don't, Eliza. I'll talk to Jamie. There must be some land he can rent to Andrew.'

  'If there is, why hasn't my lad been offered it before? Alexander was given his croft, so he and Betty can wed.'

  'That was different, Eliza, and you know that!'

  'It was not,' Eliza insisted.

  Flora shook her head. 'What Alexander is getting was his uncle's croft. He had a right to it, he was the next man in line. Besides, he's all of thirty, years older than Andrew.'

  'Andrew can't even think of courting a girl until he has some land. If he doesn't join the army, he hopes he might get a grant of land in Nova Scotia. If not he says he can save his pay, perhaps buy land in a few years, and then he'll not have to bend the knee to a tacksman ever again!'

  ***

  Chapter 3

  Jamie came through the door rubbing his hands. 'It's raw outside. There'll be more snow tonight,' he said, stooping to pick up Rosie, who had crawled across to him. She chuckled with glee and grabbed at the bonnet he wore.

  'Did you find those sheep?' Flora asked, as he came to hug her. She put aside the small gown she was sewing for the child.

  'Not a sign.'

  'Poor Bruce. That's the second pair he's lost this winter. Hadn't they been where the others were found, up the hillside?'

  'There were no traces of them, but the snow this morning was enough to cover any tracks.'

  Flora began to ladle out soup into large bowls. 'Have that, it'll warm you. Come to me, Rosie, your papa will play with you when he's eaten.'

  Rosie clung for a moment, then settled happily enough on the floor to play with some roughly carved, smoothed blocks of wood.

  'I still can't see why the other pair should wander away from where they had food, and climb so far up the mountain in the snow,' Flora said thoughtfully.

  Jamie tore off a chunk of the new bread she put on the table. 'Who can ever understand the minds of silly animals like sheep? It was only by chance we found their bodies in that ravine,' he said, his voice muffled as he chewed. 'This is good, sweetheart.'

  'So's the soup, eat it while it's hot.'

  'If Janet Murray's two lads hadn't been playing around up there, last October, their bones would have been picked clean by now.'

  'Don't!' Flora shuddered. 'I keep remembering those men who were lost a few years back.'

  Jamie pulled her to him as she stood beside him. 'They're just sheep,' he said quietly.

  'Bruce's sheep. I know we all lose one occasionally, but he's lost four, within three months.' Flora went to sit on the stool opposite, and picked up her own spoon. 'Was he very despondent?'

  'He tried to shrug it off, but he's worried. I begin to think I did him no favour by letting him have the croft. His neighbours shun him, Meg has no female company but you, and Malcolm's simmering inside, ready to get into all sorts of mischief.'

  'Meg's unhappy,' Flora agreed. 'None of the girls speak to her. And she still hasn't recovered from the loss of her mother. Do you think Malcolm will do something stupid?'

  'Not while he's busy, and even in this weather there's enough to do to take his mind off ideas of revenge.'

  'Revenge?' Flora laid down her spoon and looked at Jamie in horror. 'Revenge on who? For what?'

  Jamie shook his head slightly. 'Wild talk. Take no notice. He's young and foolish.'

  'Last time I saw him he was blaming Andrew,' she said, and got up hurriedly to fetch the vegetable stew from where it hung in a pot over the fire. She still could not sp
eak of Andrew without her body growing warm with embarrassment. She had not spoken to him since the day he'd kissed her, but she could not banish the memory of it, and her utter shame that she had wanted to respond.

  'His theory was that Andrew somehow took the sheep to the ravine. A nonsense, as I told him. Andrew may still be feeling hard done by, but he's not fool enough to steal sheep, and risk being hung.'

  Flora was less certain, but she had no wish to talk about Andrew. 'I had a message from my aunt today,' she said instead. 'About the embroidery I sent her.'

  'Those ideas for fans, and reticules? What did she think?'

  'She liked them, and more importantly so do her fashionable Edinburgh friends. She's sure she can sell as many as I make to the shop she mentioned. It will bring in a little more money.'

  'We don't need more, my love. I have enough money and we're doing well enough on the croft,' Jamie said, accepting the plate of stew and sniffing it appreciatively. 'I was fortunate when I married a good cook.'

  'I know we're doing better than most, but there are times, in the winter especially, when I can't bring Rosie with me and help you as I did the first year. I can do the embroidery then. And I like doing it, I always have. You know I'm useless at spinning. There's not enough to keep me busy without it,' she added.

  'It's up to you, but remember, any money you earn is for you,' Jamie insisted.

  Flora nodded. 'I'm teaching Meg, and she's got some skill. If she can earn money it will help them. I suspect all Bruce's savings have gone, but he'd starve rather than ask us for more help.'

  Jamie glanced up at her, and Flora dropped her eyes. He knew she helped Bruce and his family when she could, with food and clothes for the fast-growing Meg. If she had her own money, and if her proud cousin would accept it, she would probably give him that too.

  'Would it have been better for them to have gone to Glasgow?' Jamie asked suddenly. 'They could have been settled into a new life by now, not scraping a bare existence here. And they might have to do it anyway, if there are more disasters.'