'Come on, he'll not shoot now,' Jamie said, and with Bruce and two of the men nearest him plunged into the cottage. A moment later, coughing from the already thick smoke, they staggered out carrying an ancient, wizened man on a straw palliasse. He was gesticulating and swearing at both them and the men who had set light to his home, but when they transferred him to the mattress on the cart he subsided suddenly and tears streamed down his face.
'I've lived there all my life,' he muttered, and turned away his face so that he wouldn't see the flames consuming his byre, and the smoke swirling from the door and window.
Flora clambered back into the trap and took up the reins. 'Let's go,' she said quietly, and they moved off, in silence apart from the sobs of the women and a few frightened protests from the children.
At the foot of the glen, beyond the gorge where it widened out onto the flatter lowland, they halted, fifty or so adults and as many children.
'Where's the Minister,' someone asked, glancing across at the small manse beside the church.
'Gone, the miserable worm. He went at the first sign of trouble, when John Campbell from the inn threatened him, after he'd sided with the laird,' one of the women from a nearby cottage informed them.
'Is everyone else here?' Jamie asked, looking round and trying to count.
'Young Iain's left,' someone said.
'Left? When? Do you know where he's gone?' Jamie asked.
'Last night. He and his brother William went up into the mountains. They've no other family, and they said they'd stay there, living wild.'
'The fools!' Jamie muttered.
'You've no chance of finding them, no chance at all, even if we had time,' another of the men said.
Jamie nodded. 'They can shift for themselves. How many are coming to Glasgow? We'll be safer travelling together.'
Some decided to try their luck in nearer towns, where they had kin to help them. Others meant to go to the coast, even to the islands, where they'd heard there was work to be had picking kelp. They were organising themselves into a separate party, gathering together their cattle and sheep, when one of the children screamed with excitement and pointed back the way they had come.
'Look, look, bonfires!'
Flora swung round and gasped in horror. The cottages at this end of the glen were blazing, flames shooting up into the still summer air. Further away she could see more fires. The cottages themselves were hidden by the curve of the hillside, but she had no doubt about the sources of these flames. She had lived here all her life, knew every cottage, and in her imagination could retrace the way they had just come. She could distinguish every bonfire, locate it with the names of the people who had lived there until that morning.
Most of the women were sobbing. The men, perhaps to conceal their own misery, were cursing freely. Some of the children jumped about excitedly, not understanding, others clung to their mothers and wailed in sympathy. It had been terrible enough to be driven out of their homes, but worse to know they were burning to the ground.
McGregor's men were still with them. 'Move on, you're still on the laird's land,' one of them said curtly.
'Have you a wife and children? Would you like to see them turned out to beg?' one of the women said through her tears.
'I don't make decisions, I just carry out orders. You could have stayed if you'd paid the new rents. You can have an hour, and then you must be gone. We'll fire the houses here then.'
It was useless protesting. They had oatcakes for their immediate needs, and they sat glumly, trying to eat. A couple of men had flasks of whisky, and drank from them freely. By the time they were setting off again both were staggering, incapable of thought. Resignedly Jamie and the other men heaved them onto the top of a cart, lashing them with ropes to prevent them from falling off as the cart jolted over the rough, rutted track.
Where the track divided the smaller party went northwards, and there were many tearful partings.
'We'll never see each other again, and Lizzie was my best friend,' one woman sobbed. 'I won't even know when she has more bairns, or dies.'
The larger group turned southwards, towards the old drovers' road. As they rounded the shoulder of the hill which sheltered the glen, following the bank of the river, a black cloud of smoke drifted across in front of them, and spread like a pall over the track they were following.
'It'll be with me all my life,' one of the women in Flora's trap sobbed. 'I'll never get rid o' the stench from my nostrils.'
It would take them at least two weeks to travel to Glasgow, covering just a few miles each day. It was well after midday now, and though some wanted to walk until it grew dark Jamie insisted on stopping and making camp long before the sun set.
'It's summer, the days are long, and we don't want to exhaust ourselves at the start,' he explained. 'And at least we've come away from the smoke now,' he added quietly to Flora.
'It's all right for you, ye've money to spare. We need to find work at once,' a family with two sons in their twenties protested.
'A few days won't matter. We have enough food for the journey, and you all have the next quarter's rents,' Jamie reminded them. 'That will keep you for a time.'
They looked at one another, and drew apart a short way to confer. Then the father came back to Jamie. 'All the same, we're pushing on. We'll take our beasts. We don't hold ye to blame, Mr Lennox, even though ye're not one of us.'
Jamie shrugged. 'I feel responsible, all the same,' he said quietly to Flora.
'There was nothing more you and Mistress Flora could have done.'
Three other families decided to leave too, when they heard. A depleted party began to organise their camp. Jamie, as tacksman, was regarded by most as their leader, and they meekly followed his directions to draw the carts into a ring and light one fire within it. The women set to cooking what they could, while the men fetched water from the river, and saw to tethering the animals where they could graze nearby. After they'd eaten, mostly in silence for they were too shocked to exchange more than the absolutely necessary words, they settled to sleep.
They all had homespun blankets, some had brought straw palliasses, and they made themselves as comfortable as possible beside or beneath the carts. Jamie and Bruce, with a couple of the stronger and more reliable men arranged to keep watch in turn, for they knew there would be desperate men prowling, dispossessed themselves, made reckless by their misfortunes.
Flora was still wakeful when Jamie, who had taken the first watch, rolled himself into a blanket and lay down beside her and the children.
'What shall we do,' she asked wearily as he slid his arm beneath her and drew her close.
There had been too much to do, so much to organise, that beyond the immediate move of deciding to head first for Glasgow they had given no thought to afterwards.
'There could be work for me with the family, if I humble myself and apologise for the past,' Jamie said reluctantly. 'But I don't want that, nor do I wish to live from cards again. I enjoy farming. And you'd hate living in a town.'
'If we have to, if there's no alternative, I'll live there. So long as we're together.'
He pulled her close, kissing her eyelids gently, then her mouth. Flora, despite their dire situation, felt the familiar urge sweep over her as her limbs went limp with desire. She forced herself to turn away. Here was no place to take comfort from him. Meg lay within a couple of feet, and Flora had heard her sobbing quietly to herself not long before.
'Go to sleep, love. It'll be another long day tomorrow, and we need our rest.'
***
Chapter 5
She was woken soon after dawn by a scream, and sat up in alarm, tangled in the blankets. Jamie beside her sighed and struggled to his feet.
'What is it? Who's that?' he shouted.
By now most of them were awake, groaning and grumbling, easing cramped limbs and shivering in the fresh breeze blowing from the river. One of the women was kneeling, keening softly, swaying as she held someone in her arm
s.
'It's old Donald's daughter,' Flora said quietly to Jamie, and went with him as he crossed the circle towards her.
'He's dead,' the woman gasped, and Flora took the old man's hand in hers. It was cold, already stiffening. 'My poor old father's dead! Those devils killed him!'
Behind her another woman began screaming hysterically, and Flora glanced distractedly over her shoulder. Wasn't there trouble enough without her giving way to her emotions. Then she saw that the woman was clutching a baby to her chest, and another was rubbing furiously at the infant's legs. Slowly, afraid of what she would discover, she moved across.
'The child's dead too,' another of the women said softly to her. 'Only a week old, it was, and small.'
All round them frantic mothers were checking on their own children, roughly shaking awake those who hadn't already emerged from their makeshift beds. Flora turned back, relieved to see Rosie standing up beside the cart, her thumb in her mouth, and Jenny sitting up, staring around her.
In silence the women went about the early tasks, stoking the embers of the fire, fetching water, stirring a huge cauldron of porridge, while Jamie quietly organised the men to rearrange the goods on some of the carts, leaving a space for the two bodies.
'We'll bury them at the next township we come to,' he said quietly. 'There's a minister there, if he hasn't left like our own brave man of God.'
They found a minister, some of the men dug graves, and they buried the oldest and the youngest of the glen's people. It delayed them, and the bereaved families were reluctant to leave their loved ones, so they went only a few miles that day before they stopped once more for the night.
No others died, but it took over two weeks to cover the miles to Glasgow. The weather was stormy, and they endured wet clothes for most of the time, having no means of drying them. They slaughtered one of the cows who fell down a steep slope and broke her leg, which provided them with more meat to add to what they still had. They sold more cows and some sheep at ruinously low prices to farmers along the way.
'What use will cows and sheep be to us in a town?' Andrew had asked bitterly, as they all came gradually to a realisation of how very different their lives would be.
'And they're all getting thin from the travelling, no meat left on them,' another man said. 'We can neither sell them nor eat them.'
It was true. All the beasts had lost weight. Several of the cows were no longer giving milk, some of them were limping, their feet sore from the constant walking. The sheep were in no better condition. Only the goats were still moving at anything like their normal speed and jauntiness.
When the initial weariness and shock had worn off, and the slow progress gave them time to think and talk, Flora and Jamie once more considered what to do. It was a still, warm evening, and Meg was playing with the children. They wandered a little way off to sit beside the river, where they could talk in private, without the constant interruptions when, it seemed, everyone wanted Jamie to give advice, settle arguments, or simply tell them what to do.
'We could go to Aunt Rosamunde in Edinburgh,' Flora suggested. 'They'd shelter us for a while, and surely we could find another farm somewhere.'
'There's fifteen families needing help,' Jamie said wearily.
'But you aren't responsible for them,' Flora protested.
'Perhaps not, but I feel so. I keep thinking there was something else I could have done. I should have gone on to London and spoken to the laird myself.'
'There wasn't time, and he wouldn't have cared, in his big fine London house,' Flora reminded him. The messenger had met them on his way back only two days ago, with a curt refusal of their pleas. 'They're all consumed with greed for fine clothes and society company.'
'I have to try to see them settled.'
She knew there was no point in attempting to dissuade him. Her father had been tacksman, with the same idea of responsibility to his clansmen. After he died, a year later than her mother, she'd been taken to Edinburgh to stay with her aunt. She had no brothers, and her one older sister was married to the owner of a fishing boat on the east coast, near Inverness. When she met and had fallen in love with Jamie, and they'd decided to return to the glen, it had seemed right to everyone that he should take over her father's position, living in the same cottage.
'What do they all mean to do?'
'Some will try to find work. There's a lot of building, Glasgow is expanding fast, and labourers are needed for that as well as digging canals.'
'They're farmers, not builders,' she protested.
'They have no future as farmers, not here in Scotland. And they'll earn good money, enough to keep their families decently. They'll be better off in many ways than trying to scrape a living on too small a plot of land.'
Flora was unconvinced. She hated towns, could not imagine living in one for ever. But she had promised Jamie she would if necessary.
'What do you want to do?' she asked.
'William and Eliza plan to go to Nova Scotia,' Jamie said. 'They'll join her cousin Hamish and their other sons there. Some of the others are considering it too.'
For a moment Flora was too startled to speak. Then she took a deep breath. 'All that way? Jamie, is that what you want to do? Go to a strange land, thousands of miles away, when we know nothing about what we'll find there?'
'We could start afresh. There's land to be had, cheaply. I have enough money to buy land and rent farms to those who can't afford to buy. And though it's an empty, huge land it's not quite a wilderness. People have gone to the far side of the Atlantic for the past two hundred years. They have cities, roads, ships bringing news. It could be a better life for our children than fighting the lairds here.'
She was silent. 'I've never even considered it.'
He took her in his arms 'We don't need to decide now.'
Flora thought of little else for several days, as they drew closer and closer to Glasgow. Gradually the idea began to appeal. Other families were beginning to talk about their plans, now the numbness of their eviction was wearing off. Two families, hearing that the passages from Belfast cost much less than from Scotland, planned to go there first. They shrugged off warnings that these ships were far more crowded and unseaworthy than those sailing from Scotland. When Jamie offered to lend them the money they retorted that they meant to set up as landowners, not be tenants any more, dependent on the whims of a laird.
To Flora's relief she and Eliza were once more friendly. Eliza had come to her one day and begged forgiveness for her harsh words, and they were easy with one another again. But Andrew still kept aloof, and Flora avoided him.
'It's a huge country, we can each have as much land as was in the whole glen,' Eliza said one day. 'If your man means what he says, and he'll rent it to us. And one day we might even be able to buy our own land. All the boys can have their own farms, Andrew can try out his new-fangled notions, they can do as they choose, which they could never have done here in Scotland.'
'If we can cultivate so much land on our own,' Flora laughed.
But it settled some of her anxieties. Andrew could be miles away, she need never see him again, need never be reminded of her bewildering weakness.
'Let's go to Nova Scotia,' she said to Jamie that night as they rolled themselves into the blankets. She stroked her stomach, now swelling with the new life. This time it would be a boy. 'Let's go and make a new life for our children. Jamie, do let's go!'
***
The other families had been discussing what they meant to do. Flora talked to each one and made certain they had somewhere to go.
'But some of them have no kin, and they're terrified about what future they have,' she told Jamie as they lay one night with their arms about each other.
'We'll talk about it together soon. Perhaps some ideas will come out then,' he said.
When they were within a day's journey of Glasgow, and the smoke of the city could be seen in the distance, hovering over the Clyde valley, Jamie called them all together after their eve
ning meal was eaten.
'How many of you have friends or kin in Glasgow who can give you shelter?' he asked.
A few families knew that help would be available. Others said they planned to seek lodgings and look for work. Two of the young men were travelling further to England, where they had cousins who would help. One family intended to go to Edinburgh, where a brother lived.
'And we're for Canada, when we can find a ship' William said.
'And the rest?'
'Och, Mr Lennox, I dinna know what to do,' a worried father of four young children said. 'I've tossed all night, wondering what's best. I'm a farmer, I canna find work in Glasgow.'
'Come to Nova Scotia,' Eliza said. 'Start afresh, give your bairns a chance in life.'
'But by the time I've paid passages, I'll have no more money, none to start with. I canna take my cattle across the seas. They'll fetch nothing here, not enough to buy more when I get there.'
There was a chorus of agreement. Most of them were in the same position. Jamie held up his hand for silence.
'How many of you would like to go to Canada? If you could, without fear of being destitute when you arrived?'
He counted. Apart from themselves and Bruce, with his cousin Gordon, William's family and four others said they would like to go if they could afford to.
'If ye stay you'll have to find work of some sort,' Eliza said. 'And if ye go, there'll be work for you, and land to buy when you've saved. There's no land here.'
'I'm afeard of the sea,' one of the women said, shivering. 'My brother was lost when his fishing boat went down.'
The argument went on for some time, but at last all four families said they'd rather risk drowning than remain in Glasgow.
'Then we'll find lodgings close together until there's a ship available,' Jamie said. 'We can employ an agent, or look in the newspapers. Ships about to sail advertise there. We'll need time to buy enough food and other provisions. And no one is to go short, trying to save money. I'll help.'
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