'Darling, lie down, you can watch her still,' he persuaded when he found her swaying from exhaustion.
'If I lie down I'll sleep,' she said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. 'Oh, Jamie, I'm being punished! I can't even pray any more.'
'We're all praying too,' he said quietly.
Suddenly there was a commotion on deck, the sound of running feet above them. Jamie grasped Flora's hand. 'Listen!'
'Land ahoy!' The cry was clear, and Flora lifted her head.
'We'll soon be able to find what you need,' Jamie said. 'We can get fresh food and medicines as soon as we can land, and then we can make Rosie better.'
Flora looked down at the child in her arms. As she tried to believe it, tried to have faith that help was at hand, the child gave a small convulsion, and then lay still.
Flora looked at her in dismay, and began to weep. 'It's too late,' she moaned. 'It's too late. Oh, Rosie, I failed you! My lovely little one, I'm so sorry!'
***
Chapter 8
Flora was inconsolable, until Eliza, brusquely telling Jamie that she had to be made to sleep, gave her a strong sleeping draught.
'Come, lass, it's poppy juice, and the last of my stock. I can only pray they grow here,' she added grimly.
Obediently Flora swallowed. Deep down she knew Eliza was right, and for the sake of Jenny and the unborn child she had to overcome her grief.
It was the following day before she woke, and remembering the tragedy stretched out her hand to where Rosie normally slept. She met only empty space, and sat up in a flurry of alarm.
'Where's my baby?' she demanded, looking wildly round her.
Meg, sitting close by, took her hand. 'Hush, Flora, she's being cared for. Dad and Jamie have made a coffin, and they mean to take her ashore and give her a proper burial.'
'I want to see her!'
Jamie had been resting in Bruce's berth, and he came swiftly to fold Flora in his arms. 'You shall, darling.'
Forcing herself to overcome her weakness, Flora allowed Meg to help her into a gown, and comb her tangled hair. The tiny coffin was in the next berth, and Flora knelt beside it, looking on her child's peaceful face.
'She's so thin,' she whispered. 'She was so plump, so healthy before we came here. It's all my fault!'
'You did what you could, no one could have saved her,' Jamie tried to convince her, but she shook her head.
'You don't understand. I never loved her, not like I love Jenny. I tried, but when she was born I so wanted a son, and I was angry. Now I've been punished.'
After a while Jamie persuaded her to go on deck. 'You must see this harbour. We'll be docking in a few hours.'
Listlessly Flora went with him. The ship was sailing up the arm of a bay, and the coast looked unwelcoming. It was rugged, jagged cliffs rising from the sea, and bare. She shuddered. It looked so bleak, it matched her mood.
'You can see Halifax in the distance. Look,' Jamie said, pointing. All Flora could distinguish was a huge harbour, with what looked like hundreds of ships moored, and behind them massive fortifications.
Bruce joined them, with Jane Cameron, Annie's aunt, a pretty woman only ten years older than the girl. Annie's mother, Isabella, ten years or more older, had lost her looks, but it was obvious where Annie's beauty came from. Briefly Flora wondered how the girl had fared, imprisoned by the captain for his pleasure, but her own misery was too overwhelming for her to spare much thought for others.
'That must be the Prince of Wales Tower,' Bruce said, pointing to a solid fortification overlooking the harbour. 'The Duke of Kent named it for his brother. I heard that he and Clarence spent some wild times here ten years ago. And there's the castle, up on the hill. Colonel Cornwallis built that, sixty years or more ago. They have strong defences.'
'Who do they fight?' Jane asked.
'The French, I suppose. Or the Indians, though I don't suppose they have ships. And since the American colonies rebelled, perhaps they expect trouble from them too. No doubt we'll soon hear all the local news.'
'You know a lot about it,' Jamie said.
'Well, there's been little enough to do these past weeks apart from talk. One of the sailors, a Scotsman, told me. He comes from a farm further inland, and I thought I might find out what conditions were like.'
Slowly the ship drew closer, and Flora began to distinguish the buildings of the town. As they manoeuvred into their berth she could see hundreds of men strolling along the waterfront.
'They're all sailors or soldiers,' she said to Jamie. 'There doesn't seem to be a single man not in some sort of uniform.'
He nodded. 'I suppose it is some sort of garrison town. There's been a lot of soldiers here ever since the French gave it up.'
As they watched, and the ship was helped towards the wharf, small groups of women came running out of the houses fronting the harbour. They were dressed in gaudy finery, their hair flowing freely, and bodices cut too low for decency.
'Look at the whores coming to market their wares,' one of the younger voyagers said, laughing. 'I fancy the one in red. I wonder what she costs?'
'She's old,' another scoffed. 'The paint's thick on her face. I'll take the one in that green and white striped gown.'
Jamie urged Flora away, and she was glad to retreat below, where she occupied herself packing up their belongings. It was probably Rosie's death that was affecting her, she tried to believe, but this arrival gave her none of the pleasure, the anticipation she had expected. Not even the thought of once more walking on firm ground, being able to eat palatable food, sleep in a comfortable bed, and have room to move, could banish the desolation in her heart.
***
Rosie was buried in the churchyard of St Paul's two days later. Jamie had gone ashore first, hired a cart to transport all the goods of the families they'd travelled with, and a sedan chair to carry Flora to the lodgings he'd found for them all. Once more he was their leader, and they all, feeling hesitant and bewildered after their long weeks at sea, and the strangeness of their new home, turned to him for guidance and reassurance.
Flora still felt limp from her agony over Rosie's death, but she was sufficiently recovered to take notice as they waited to disembark. Everyone looked much thinner, she realised. Now she could see well-nourished people walking about on land, she contrasted them with the haggard, pale appearance of the emigrants. They'd been two weeks longer on the journey than expected, food had been chronically short, and many had suffered so badly from seasickness they'd been unable to eat for days at a time, whenever the weather had been stormy and the seas rough.
Then she caught sight of Annie, emerging from the captain's cabin. The girl was thin too, and pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She walked as though in a dream, none of the earlier liveliness in her step, and when her mother, seeing her, ran to embrace her, she burst into a storm of weeping.
'Get her off and into the cart I've hired for the women to ride in,' Jamie said urgently to Bruce. 'I'll make sure her family come.'
Flora discovered that the lodgings he'd hired included rooms for Annie and her family. She wondered what they would do, without her father. Meg looked on, grim-faced, as Andrew helped carry their belongings off the ship.
'I wonder if she's fit for anything but the stews on the harbour?' she asked. 'I'm amazed Andrew can still be attracted to a whore.'
'Meg!' Flora roused herself from her own misery to remonstrate with the girl. 'Poor Annie had no choice. She's no more a whore than you are, and you did have a choice. Are you jealous?'
'Jealous? Of her?' Meg laughed. 'Of course not,' she insisted, but her voice was shrill. 'But there are plenty of others anxious to help, so I don't see what call Andrew has to go rushing.'
'He's being kind,' Flora said. 'I suggest you are too, and don't show your resentment too clearly, or he'll perhaps forget you. Men don't like women trying to tie them down.'
Meg gave her a horrified look, but was silent, and a few moments later went across to th
e cart and clambered in. Flora saw her smile briefly at Annie, and touch her hand, and hoped she'd be able to maintain some semblance of friendliness in the following days. More quarrels within their small group would be unendurable.
She had protested that she was well enough to travel in the cart with the other women, but Jamie shook his head. 'You're much weaker than you feel,' he insisted. 'You will have what comfort I can provide.'
As she was carried along through the streets, all straight, unlike the towns she knew, with no winding alleys curving away in all directions, she reflected that Jamie might provide her with physical comfort, but could supply no other. They had drifted apart. Outwardly they were always polite and considerate, but Flora knew their early passion for each other had waned. She'd blamed him for not challenging Duclos, and in response he had withdrawn into an inner fortress where she could not follow. Did she want to, she wondered, and was amazed that the question had come into her head. When she'd met him, she had known no other man would do for her. Now she began to wonder if that was true. She had responded to Andrew. She could, perhaps, love someone else. But it would never be the same as their first few blissful years together.
Their lodgings were clean, unimaginably spacious after the cramped conditions on board, and as they settled in for a few days during which they could bury Rosie's body and recover from the journey, the spirits of the immigrants rose.
Because of this burial, and in deference to Flora, who had lost her child, and Annie's family, without their father, celebrations were muted within the lodgings, but most of the men went out that evening to taverns, and many came home merry with drink. A couple had to be carried home by their friends.
Flora had tried to persuade Jamie to join them, but he shook his head. 'I mean to stay with you. You need me. Are you feeling able to discuss what best to do?'
Flora sighed. 'I don't like it here,' she confessed. 'Though part of me wants to stay with Rosie. It seems unfeeling to leave her alone in a strange place.'
'I know.' Jamie sighed. 'But she'll have a proper grave, unlike the poor devils who were thrown overboard.'
Flora nodded. 'And is there land near here suitable for farming? Ought we to move further?'
'That's what most of the group want to do.'
'Most? Some want to stay here?'
'Betty and Alexander and Robbie Campbell and his family want to stay. They say they want to leave farming, and they seem to think they can find other work here.'
'Do any of them want to farm here?'
'No. This coast looks wild and inhospitable, and we're told there's much better land elsewhere.'
'What about Eliza? They've been insisting they don't wish to rent from you, they'll make do with however small a piece of land they can manage to buy.'
'Hamish sold his land. It's in demand here, from settlers who can't bear to go further.'
'Who can blame them,' Flora sighed. She was tired to death of travelling.
'He apparently got much more for it than he'd expected, so has moved to Quebec to buy a bigger plot at lower prices.'
Flora suddenly paid more attention. Quebec? Wasn't that where Arabella's husband was stationed? Did Jamie want to go there in the hope of once more meeting her?
He went on, oblivious of her quickened interest. 'William and Eliza's sons are in Quebec. She wants to join them, and I'm told the land there is fertile. But we need to move quickly, before the winter comes.'
'Winter? But it's August still, and hot,' she protested.
'Canada's a vast country, far bigger than Scotland. We could be travelling for weeks more.'
'Weeks?' Flora's heart sank. She was so weary of journeying. 'How far is it to Quebec?'
'Several times as far as it was for Bruce to travel from Sutherland to Glasgow.'
Flora stared at him. 'But – he took two weeks to get to us, and we took two to reach Glasgow! A month? Several months? No, it's impossible! What about the baby?'
'There's a simpler way, if we can bear it. We can take ship again, up the St Lawrence River. It's further, but faster than travelling overland. But we must go soon, before it freezes.'
'How long would the journey take?'
'Three weeks, perhaps. But once we're through the Cabot Strait and across the Gulf of St Lawrence we'd be on a river, probably for half that time, and they tell me the ship calls in at towns on the way for supplies, fresh food. It's not at all like a sea voyage. There would not be such storms and that dreadful tossing.'
'Three more weeks? I don't think I could.' Flora was calculating rapidly. If Arabella were in Quebec, she would face up to it. She would fight to keep Jamie. She loved him, however little he seemed to love her at the moment, and she would keep him.
'Then we'll stay here,' Jamie said.
Flora shook her head. 'No, that would be worse. I just need to rest for a while.'
'We could stay until next spring, until after the child is born. He – or she – would be old enough to travel when the weather improves. But the others want to go as soon as they can. Bruce too.'
'No. He and Meg can't want to leave me,' she cried in panic. 'I couldn't manage without Meg.'
'She wants to go with Andrew, and Bruce, I suspect, has some interest with Jane Cameron.'
'Bruce? And Jane?' Flora forgot her misery. 'Of course, he helped them a great deal after Annie's father was killed.'
'And Margaret's been dead for three years. It would be good for him.'
'But – we'd be alone.' Suddenly Flora decided that would be worse than yet more travelling, and made up her mind. 'We'd best go with them. How soon do we have to start?'
***
It was two weeks before they embarked once more, two weeks during which Flora visited Rosie's tiny grave every day. The others were restless, their money was decreasing every day, and despite the relief of being on land once more they wanted to continue, to see more of their new country, decide what the future held for them, and start their new lives.
This time the ship was less crowded, so they had more room for each family. It was transporting supplies to Quebec, the captain told them, and he took passengers when there was enough space. Fortunately there had been enough for their depleted party. Themselves, Bruce, Gordon, the O'Briens, Eliza's family and one other from the glen, with Annie's family, made a party of twenty-four people.
The captain of this ship was a Scotsman, Niall Fraser, whose family had lived in Nova Scotia for three generations. A big, bluff, hearty man, he was utterly different from Duclos. He did his best to make the conditions comfortable for the passengers, and apart from the nausea which returned for some, the journey was much more pleasant. They were within sight of land for most of the way, and as they entered the river itself, there was much to interest them on the shores, as well as opportunities to go ashore for short periods when they halted to deliver supplies or buy fresh food.
'But I am getting so tired of fish!' Meg complained. 'We've had it every day for over a week now.'
Her father laughed. 'Be grateful, child. It's fresh, not dried cod, and more variety than ever we knew back home.'
'I'd eat fish every day if I could watch the glorious colours of the trees,' Jane said.
'That's mainly the maple trees,' Bruce explained. 'The captain tells me they get syrup from the trees, and it's sweeter than sugar.'
'I swear there are hundreds of shades of yellow and gold and red and bronze in those woods. I wish I could use them all when I'm dying the wool for the plaids.'
Jane, they had discovered, was a skilled weaver, and she had with her some examples of her work, which everyone had admired.
'If you can find things to use as dyes, you could invent new patterns,' Bruce suggested. 'People won't always want the old tartans from home. You can start a new fashion.'
As Flora's pregnancy advanced she began to suffer from severe backache, and her ankles, formerly so trim and neat, began to swell.
'At least the weather's cooler, thank goodness,' she said to Eliza,
who had insisted on her resting on deck, in a comfortable seat the captain had organised, with her feet up on a box.
'It's the end of September. I wonder what the winters are like? They said in Halifax they had more snow, even, than in Scotland, in the high mountains.'
'We won't be able to do much farming for months, then.'
'I hope everyone has enough to live on. It could be another year before we can grow enough food to support ourselves.'
'We'll manage,' Flora said. 'When this babe's born I shall have more energy. At the moment I find it difficult even to think.'
She smiled at the older woman. Their quarrel seemed forgotten, and Eliza treated her as a daughter. They were once more comfortable with one another. Andrew, though, without appearing to ignore her, kept apart as much as he could, and she was grateful. She had no wish to explore her feelings for him or for Jamie at the present time.
'Andrew's causing the usual havoc,' Eliza said suddenly, her voice full of amused affection. Flora jumped. Had the older woman read her mind, known she was thinking of him?
'What do you mean?' she asked cautiously.
'Up to his old tricks. He's paying attention to both Meg and Annie equally, and I can see they're both becoming more and more frustrated, poor lasses. There's times they can barely manage to be civil to one another. It was what he used to do in the glen. He never had one girl at a time, my Andrew, for fear he got caught, I expect.'
'Annie seems to have recovered her health and spirits, and that's thanks partly to Andrew.'
'Thank the Lord she wasn't pregnant,' Eliza said. 'Apart from having a bastard, who'd want a child fathered by that brute Duclos?'
Flora nodded agreement. 'That would have been a disaster, to have a perpetual reminder of that dreadful man,' she said. 'She won't speak about it, Jane says, even to her mother.'
'Wants to forget it, no doubt. I can't blame the lass. So would I if I'd been that devil's plaything for all those weeks.'
Flora stifled a laugh at the notion of Duclos and Eliza together. It was not in the least amusing. But the fact that she could begin to smile meant she was coming out of the black misery that had enveloped her since Rosie's death. She felt guilty, but as Eliza repeatedly told her, all sorrows passed in time, and Rosie would not want her to live the rest of her life regretting something that could not have been prevented.
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