by Janet Lunn
That night she dreamed again that Duncan was calling her. In the dream she could see him so clearly, black hair hanging over a dark face contorted with pain, and hear his voice growing louder and louder, “Mairi! Mairi! Mairi!”
“Wait for me, Duncan!” she cried and began to run fast, faster, without getting anywhere. As she moved forward at last, she was overcome by such dread that she woke up, strangling a scream in her throat. She was halfway out of bed.
Her heart pounding, she sat on the edge of the bed. “Duncan, you have gone where I cannot go.” She pushed her heavy, hot hair from her face and rubbed her eyes. She felt so far from home, so far from her own people, so far from her own heather-covered hills.
The next few days Mary hoed and weeded and helped with meals, too stunned, too unhappy, to think about what she was going to do.
“My land, you don’t seem very handy in a kitchen for such a big girl. You’ll want a heap of learning before you’ll make any man much of a wife,” Mrs. Colliver grumbled at her.
After a few days Mary took on the care of the farm animals. For that work Mrs. Colliver had only praise. In fact she bragged to all her neighbours that there was “twice the number of eggs and twice the yield of milk since Mary Urkit come.” In the evenings the small children came to Mary to be told stories, to listen to her “queer talk”, and to bring her their chronicles of the day’s events.
But the nights were a torment. She dreamed the same dream of Duncan over and over again, always waking in fright. One night she woke stumbling along the road in the dark, far from the house, calling out, “Wait for me!”
Still shaking from the nightmare, she thought at first that she was still asleep. Then she realized that she was wearing Julia Colliver’s oversized nightdress. It was several minutes before she figured out where she was.
She sat down on a boulder beside the road to calm herself. The air was hot and heavy and so still there was no sound from the treetops. The sudden bark of a fox, the hoot of an owl deep in the woods seemed as close as the gurrup of the frogs and the rusty crik-crik of the crickets on the roadside. Mary shivered.
“The woods are worse than the nightmare,” she said aloud.
“Is it someone?” a voice quavered from behind her. Mary leapt to her feet. She stood in the middle of the road, her hands at her throat.
“Is someone there?” the voice pleaded. It wasn’t much more than a whisper.
“It is Mairi Urquhart. Who is there?”
“Henry.”
“Come out then, Henry.”
Within seconds a small, spindly boy appeared from the woods. His eyes were large and scared. His thin face was black with tears and dirt. His hair hung limp. His clothes, what Mary could see of them, looked filthy and ragged. He was the most woebegone creature she had ever seen.
“Henry,” she demanded, “where did you come from?”
“In there.”
“Do you live there?”
“No, miss.”
“What were you doing in there?”
He burst into tears. “Sim said he was gonna skin me for taking his hat and I run off and then I got lost.”
By now Mary’s own fears had quietened. “Why did you take Sim’s hat?” she asked softly.
“I needed it for the bird.”
“Ah.”
“It was sick.”
“Did it get better?”
“It died.”
“In Sim’s hat?”
“Yes. It was my friend.” Henry began to cry again. Through his sobs he managed to tell Mary that the bird was a crow he had rescued from an owl earlier in the summer. As a result of the owl’s attack, it had never been able to fly. “And,” Henry finished, “it got et by a fox. I seen its miserable red tail.”
“So you buried what there was left in the hat?”
He nodded, unable to stifle the sobs.
Mary sat Henry beside her on the big rock where she had perched herself earlier and told him of the time she and Duncan had found a bird. “An owl, I fear, Henry.” She looked at him. “It was a wee, downy, white thing and, Henry, a wee thing is a wee thing and you must love it. We did not take it home for we knew where its mother had the nest—in a hollow in a bit of old heather not far from where we was—so we left it and said the words over it that the mother would not fear our scent. We went back the next day and it was not there nor any sign of feathers to say some beast had caught it. We was glad.”
“Yes.” Henry’s tears had dried, his sobs had stopped. The sky was lightening over the treetops. “I can see where we are,” he cried joyfully. “We’re just up the road from the mill, up by the Corners.” Without another word, he sprang to his feet and ran back into the woods.
Much relieved herself, Mary saw the tall outlines of the Collivers’ mill not three hundred yards down the road. “I hope Sim does not beat Henry,” she thought as she made her way up the road.
Outside the house she stopped to look again at the forest across the road. “I fear this place. I fear its evil spirits. May the old ones who dwell in this country be friendly to me and help me to get home.”
Not half an hour later a small boy pounded on the kitchen door.
“Ma’s took bad. Pa says will the missus please come.”
Mrs. Colliver began at once to give orders to Mary, to the children, to her husband, as she got ready to leave. A second knock came. It was Luke Anderson.
“It’s baby,” he told them. “It’s awful sick. Ma’d take it kindly if Miz Colliver could lend a hand.”
“I can’t, Luke. I’m just readying myself up to go off to Jenny Heaton.” Mrs. Colliver paused, looked doubtfully at Mary. She sighed. “Mary, you’ll have to go. Sam and the young ones can look after themselves. My land, what kind of a bad-luck day is this?”
Mary did not move from where she stood by the fireplace. Everyone was looking at her. Another moment passed.
“You’ll just have to go, Mary,” Mrs. Colliver repeated. “Pack up your clothes. You may be a day or two.”
“I will go.” Mary tied her spare clothes in a bundle and followed Luke out the door.
Baby
The finches and waxwings were chirping and calling fitfully through the trees as Mary and Luke set off. The patch of sky visible above the road was grey and hazy.
“I guess you’re feeling a mite better now you been here a while.” Luke’s voice was friendly. Mary nodded.
“Julia Colliver’s a good woman,” he said.
Again Mary nodded.
“You’re all right there?”
“I am.”
Luke gave up his attempt at conversation and they tramped along silently until he headed into the woods. “Short cut,” he explained.
“I will not go there,” Mary declared flatly.
“We’ll be all right. It’s broad daylight. The bears won’t bother you none unless you go after their cubs and the other fellers—the foxes and lynxes and wolves—will run at the sound of you. We always cut through here. The Indians blazed the trail for us—a while back, I guess.”
Mary did not budge.
“Come on.” Luke spoke firmly but gently, as though coaxing a small child or a frightened calf. Still Mary did not move.
Luke frowned. “I’m gonna head through the woods. You can walk around if you’ve a mind to.” He started off again. Mary marched briskly up the road ten paces, eleven paces. The crackling of dry leaves and twigs under Luke’s feet ceased.
“You ain’t coming,” he called, astonished.
“I am not.” Mary marched on. In a moment Luke had caught up with her and they continued without speaking. Although she was strong and well accustomed to walking, Mary had to work to keep up to Luke’s long-legged, purposeful gait. Now and then she felt him look at her and she wished he wouldn’t. She had a feeling he was laughing at her.
“Like a great urisk, he is,” she thought crossly. It was believed in the Highlands that the big, awkward, shy goat-man lurked behind the high rocks to play joke
s on people. Mary was sure she had seen its shadow at least once. Searching for a lost lamb on a summer’s night near the shieling, scrambling high up into the crevices of the highest rocks where lambs so love to climb, she had seen a huge black shadow. For an instant the hair on her neck and down her back had prickled in fear before she realized it must be the urisk, although as she said later she had seen “not an ear of him”.
“Urisk,” she had called softly, so as not to alarm or offend him, “Urisk, it is the wee uan that has got himself lost. I would sing a song of gladness for that wee uan.” There had been no response, but not three minutes later the lamb had appeared from behind the rocks. Mary had sung her song and, ever after, had stopped by that outcropping to hum or sing to the urisk.
Luke was not awkward and Mary had no reason to believe he was stupid. He was big, however, just under six feet tall. He had a round face, bright brown eyes, a snub nose, and a wide mouth. His thick chestnut-coloured hair looked as though it had been cut with a knife. Not handsome, he had a warmth and kindliness to him that made him pleasing to look at. As well, he had an air of determination—or stubbornness—that spoke of capability. And in spite of the fact that his pants were none too clean and hung from a single suspender, and his shirt badly needed mending, he had a neat look. He certainly did not look like a goat-man.
A picture came to her of Luke carrying a small boy. She could not see the child, as his back was to her, but the expression on Luke’s face was so distraught that instinctively Mary turned and put her hand on his arm. The picture disappeared. She shook herself.
“The skitters and midges are fierce.” Luke smiled sympathetically. When he smiled it was with his whole body—from his warm brown eyes to his big, broad feet. Hastily Mary withdrew her hand.
They had walked three miles when Luke turned off the government road onto a narrower one, not much more than a path through the woods. Mary thought of her horrible flight along such a path the night she had walked from Cornwall. She shivered and halted.
“It’s the only way to get there.” Luke looked down at her. He grinned. “You want I should carry you the rest of the way?”
Mary blushed. “I do not mind the road.” She stalked ahead. Luke stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants and began to whistle.
In single file, preceded by the nervous scolding of the finches and bobolinks and small animals, the two made their way over a log bridge, up a rise, and along the path for five more miles to the Anderson homestead.
“Here it is.” Luke pushed open the door and led the way into the house. From somewhere in the smoky room there was a loud laugh. “Ain’t much good bringing us a itty-bitty little stick like that, Luke.”
No one else said anything. A cat mewed.
All Mary could think of was the seven weeks she had spent on the Andrew MacBride. It was the stench and the small dark space. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw two boys sitting at the table in the centre of the room. One was a large, red-haired, red-faced boy, more or less her own age. The other was Henry. A woman sat by the smouldering fire in a rocking-chair. In spite of the suffocating heat she was huddled under a large shawl.
“This here’s Mary.” Luke took Mary’s arm and drew her into the room. “Miz Colliver’s off nursing Miz Heaton.”
“Can’t be helped, I expect.” The woman sighed plaintively. “Git the jug for the girl, Sim.”
“Good morning to you, Henry,” said Mary.
Henry dipped his head shyly but made no sound. His brother poured from a large jug into a battered pewter cup. He lumbered across the room.
“Here y’are, have a good swig. Helps the bugs.” He laughed.
It was whisky. Mary had only ever had whisky in small measures. Her mother and father had brought it out at the feast of Beltane, at New Year, at births, funerals, or for chills. She was tempted, all the same, to gulp down the entire contents of the cup.
“Sim, Mary don’t want no—” Luke began.
“You shut your mouth!” Sim glared.
Just then a big, red-haired man burst through the door. “Which one a you young apes left the white-faced cow on the other side of the road untethered?” he bellowed. “She’s calved in the swamp and I can’t find the goddamn calf nowheres.”
“Please, John, don’t swear,” Mrs. Anderson whimpered.
John Anderson let loose a stream of words only a few of which Mary had ever heard before, and those only by chance. Mrs. Anderson sniffed. Sim roared with laughter. “I don’t need no lip outta you, Simeon Anderson. Git yourself—and you others too—out there and find that calf.” His father reached across the table, lifted the whisky jug to his mouth, gulped from it as though it held spring water, turned on his heel, and left the house. Simeon, Luke, and Henry followed.
Still holding the whisky Sim had given her, Mary stared, mesmerized, at Mrs. Anderson drooping in her chair. From the corner the cat mewed again.
“Would you mind fetching me a drop from the jug, honey? I been feeling poorly since the baby come.”
Mary took the woman the pewter cup. The mewing in the corner grew louder.
“Oh, do see to baby.” Mrs. Anderson lifted her hand to push back the lank, fair hair from her face, then sank back into her chair. Mary realized, with shock, that what she had thought was a cat was the baby.
He was in a box in the corner behind Mrs. Anderson’s chair. As she looked at him Mary saw the grey mist of death around him. She sighed. He was thin and as blue-white as skimmed milk. He was wet and dirty and wrapped only in an old matted shawl. Flies clustered around his face.
“Och, the poor wee uan,” murmured Mary as she lifted the baby from the box. “Come, come,” she crooned. She rocked him until he had stopped his wailing, too weak, too ill to go on—too weak, too ill to raise his fist more than halfway to his mouth.
“He must be hungry,” she told Mrs. Anderson indignantly, “and he needs a clean cloth. Because he is dying is no reason to leave him like this.”
“Don’t talk like that, honey. I don’t know what’s to be done. We allus gets Miz Whitcomb to come. She knows. She knows what.…”Mrs. Anderson closed her eyes, her voice trailed off into a thin snore, and her head fell back against the chair.
Rocking the baby on her arm, Mary searched the cabin in vain for a clean cloth. “Nor is she likely to have a drop of milk in her to give the poor wee mite,” she muttered angrily, “and had she one it would surely be all whisky.” She opened all the crocks and jugs in the cupboard, hoping to find milk. “For,” she reasoned, “they have a cow.”
“Please, miss.”
Mary jumped, whirled around, and all but dropped the baby. It was Henry. He looked scared but he stood his ground.
“Would you send us all into the arms of Auld Clutie before he has made ready for us in hell?” she cried.
“Please, miss,” he repeated, “Emily’s freshened if you wants milk fer baby.”
“I do.” Mary nodded and Henry ran off. He was back in a few minutes with a small crockery bowl full of warm milk. Mary dipped her finger into it then put the finger in the baby’s mouth. He sucked it feebly. She did it two or three times more, then he turned his face, too tired to suck.
“Henry, the bairnie is needing water and a nappie. Is there a scrap of cloth we might get?”
Without a word Henry went to a box under a bed in a corner of the room and brought out a rag. He ran outside and came back with it dripping wet.
“Is there not a wee dishie?”
He looked puzzled.
“A dishie like this with the milk in it.”
He went to the cupboard, brought out a wooden trencher, was off again, and brought it back full of water. Mary took the baby closer to the fire where there were fewer bugs. She took off his dirty rags and sponged him off as best she could. He scarcely made a sound.
Henry brought another rag which Mary wrapped around the baby for a diaper. She did not want to put him back into the same dirty shawl in which she had found him b
ut she could find no other clean cloth in the entire cabin. Tight-jawed, she crossed the room, grabbed her bundle from beside the door, hauled out her clean shift, and tore it in half. Back she went and folded it tenderly around the baby.
“What name has he?” she asked Henry.
“He don’t got a name.”
“No name?”
“Nobody got to it yet, I guess.”
“Well, the poor, wee thing, to have no name at all.”
“Will he die?”
“He will.”
Henry said no more. Under Mary’s instructions he put the box by the fire and while she cradled the baby in her arms, walking slowly around and around as she had walked with so many sick lambs, she sang him a lullaby in her own language.
After a time John Anderson came in with the older boys close behind him. “You young scoundrel!” He cuffed Henry sharply on the back of his head. “You—” He noticed Mary. “Who the hell are you?” he growled.
The baby let out a shrill cry. Mrs. Anderson started up in her chair.
“I am Mairi Urquhart, come from Collivers’ Corner to—”
“Speak up, gal, speak up. I guess you come to help. Ain’t much to be done for the kid. Ain’t much to be done about anything.” He went to the cupboard, brushed the flies from a chunk of cold cooked pork, cut himself a thick slice, picked up a boiled potato, and went back outside.
“Crazy old man,” muttered Sim.
“Did you find it, Lukey?” whispered Henry.
“Yeah, we found it,” Luke answered tiredly.
“Is it dead?”
“Naw,” Luke grinned, “nice little white heifer. It’s outside by its ma.”
Henry went outside. Luke looked at the baby asleep in Mary’s arms. “Ain’t you good!” he said. “Have you et?”
Involuntarily Mary’s eyes darted towards the fly-covered meat on the cupboard. “I am not hungry,” she replied quickly. Luke flushed and went back outside. Simeon grabbed some meat and followed.