by Janet Lunn
Wishing she hadn’t hurt Luke’s feelings, Mary resumed her rocking and walking. The baby whimpered and she began to hum, thinking again, as she had done when nursing Kirsty Mackay’s baby on board ship, that babies were not so different from lambs. “I will call you Uan Beg, which means, in your language, tiny lamb.”
The baby clung to life all through the day. But that night he died.
Fire
Mary stayed at the Andersons’ for the burying. It was not the custom in the Highlands for women to attend burials but this was in a little square of ground at the edge of the clearing just behind the house. John Anderson did not bring the neighbours in to help or to mourn. He put together a tiny cedar box. Mary washed the baby, chanted a song for the dead over him, wrapped him in the two pieces of her linen shift, and put him in the box.
Mrs. Anderson kept back by the house. Mary stood by the grave with Henry’s hand held tightly in hers. There was no preacher to come as there was none in the district. John Anderson, such a different man than he had seemed the night before, read the Twenty-third Psalm from the family Bible in a deep, quiet voice and they all recited the Lord’s Prayer. Carefully Luke and Simeon put the box in the hole they had dug, covered it with earth, and left the baby beside the five other Anderson infants who had not survived their first year.
Mr. Anderson had just closed the Bible when a small, grey-haired woman came tramping briskly up the road with a basket on her arm. She took in the scene with one sweeping glance, crossed the yard, and stood for a moment beside the new grave with her head bowed. She took Mr. Anderson’s hand. “It’s hard losing a baby,” she said quietly, “as we all know well, but you and Lydia have lost too many.” She clasped the boys’ hands one by one, nodded towards Mary, and went at once to where Mrs. Anderson leaned against the back of the house.
“Come, Lydia,” she said gently. “We’ll find some coffee and fix things up a mite for you.” Like a lost child, Mrs. Anderson gave the woman her hand and went with her into the house.
“Miz Whitcomb will likely get you something to eat, boys,” Mr. Anderson said wearily and he went across the road, picked up his axe, and began to swing it fiercely at the base of the nearest tree.
Mary sat down on a big stump near the door of the cabin. Suddenly she began to weep.
“What are you bawling about? Miz Whitcomb’ll put out a good feed. Come on.” Sim had already recovered from the awe and sadness of the burial.
His words made her tears come faster. She could not stop them. She wept noisily, in great sobs.
Luke knelt beside her. He put his hand awkwardly on her shoulder. “The little mite hadn’t no more than just opened his eyes.”
“I know. And I did know he would die.” Mary could not tell him that it was not only the baby, it was also Kirsty Mackay and it was Duncan.
Luke got up and went into the house. He was back promptly with a mug in one hand and a slice of bread and some cheese in the other.
“Here’s coffee. Dandelion root. Miz Whitcomb brung it. And I got some grub, too. Eat it, you’ll feel better. You ain’t et a thing since you come here yesterday.”
Sniffing and gulping back her sobs, Mary drank some of the coffee. It was bitter but it was hot and comforting. She took a bite of the bread and cheese, realizing with surprise that she was very hungry. She did not look up until she had finished. “Is there more?” she asked.
Henry, who had been watching her every bite, ran to get it. Luke grinned, obviously relieved. Mary saw that he had been afraid she would retreat into herself as she had done when he had told her Duncan was dead. She smiled weakly. Henry returned with another slice of bread and cheese for her while Luke went to get his own breakfast. Henry sat down on the ground near Mary.
“Will you stay here with us?”
“Och! I cannot do that, but I will not go while you eat your meal.”
Watching her from the corner of his eye, Henry went into the house. She was not there when he came back out. It wasn’t more than two minutes after he had gone that Mary had a clear premonition of a barn on fire. With it came a compulsion to warn someone, a compulsion that always accompanied such visions. She didn’t know whose barn it was, but she knew that if she started out, her feet would take her there.
She forced herself, against the pull of every nerve in her body, to sit still. “It is not my country. I will not go. These people do not know I have the two sights. I do not need to let them know.” But the compulsion to run and warn set her on her feet even as she pronounced the words. She looked around, frantic for some means of keeping herself from racing off. Her eyes fell on the privy off behind the cabin.
“Nobody will quiz me about that!” She ran towards it as though all the devils in hell were after her, slammed the door shut, and shoved the wooden bolt across it.
“What a dreadful place.” She shuddered. The privy stank, the flies were buzzing noisily, a large grass snake wriggled off between the floorboards. The only fresh air came from a slot above the door. Her feet not quite touching the floor, Mary sat on the edge of the seat, clinging to it with both hands, willing herself not to touch the bolt. From a distance she heard Henry call. She heard Luke and Simeon come out of the house, heard Simeon say, “Shut up, Henry. The gal’s run off. Didn’t like our company, I guess.” And Luke: “I expect she had enough sadness. Come on, Henry, she ain’t left the face of the earth, she’s only took off for the Collivers’. We’ll go see her after supper if you want.”
Henry made no reply. Before long the ringing sound of John’s axe against the tree was joined by the chorus of Luke’s and Simeon’s axes. Closer by, there was the scritch, scritch of a hoe. Mary was sure it was Henry working among the pumpkins and squash.
After five more minutes the stink, combined with the stuffy heat in the privy and her overpowering urge to warn of the fire, were too much. Mary slid back the bolt and pushed against the door. It did not open. She pushed again. Still it did not open. She leaned against it with all her strength. It did not budge. She climbed on the seat, stood on tiptoe, and put her hand through the opening over the door in order to reach down to whatever was holding the door shut. She could not get her arm down far enough.
She shouted for help but the sound of the axes was too loud. Finally she gave up and slumped down on the seat. “I need not worry about the fire, then,” she thought, and after a time, exhausted from her efforts and the wakeful night, she fell asleep.
Hours later, when the sun no longer streamed through the slot above the privy door, she woke. Outside there wasn’t a sound. She climbed up on the seat and peered out. The axes stood against a fresh stump. A tiny, sleek, squirrel-like animal with stripes along its back was sitting on the stump, washing itself. There wasn’t a person in sight. She began to shout. No one answered.
“It is nothing but a wooden door, surely I can get out through it,” she thought crossly. She put her hand through the slot and reached down until her arm was on the outside up to her shoulder with the rest of her on tiptoe inside.
From somewhere near there was a cry. Mary pulled her arm in and began to shout loudly for help. At first there was no response. Then she heard Simeon: “Don’t be a simpleton, Henry. There’s no one in there. No one but Ma uses it in summer.”
“You gotta come and look, Sim. I seen an arm sticking out of it. Honest.”
“Henry, you’re a—” The door was flung open. “Well, I’ll be dang-blasted!”
“Thank you,” said Mary. She hopped down from the seat and shoved past him into the bright afternoon sun.
“I told you I was not going away while you ate your meal, Henry,” she snapped.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Henry. He shot off across the front yard before Mary could say another word.
By this time Simeon had recovered from his surprise and was hooting with laughter. “In the honey box,” he shouted, pointing his finger at Mary. “In the honey box. All afternoon. You’d a been there all night, too, if I hadn’t got you out. What am I
gonna get for my pains, Miss Uppity? Come on, let’s have a kiss.” He leaned over her. She drew back.
“May you grow garlic in your chin whiskers,” Simeon Anderson, “and an onion on your ugly red nose!”
Simeon’s hand flew to his nose. “Ha!” He laughed, embarrassed by his action. “What did you say that for? What a queer skinny little gal you are. You talk funny, you act funny, but I want my kiss anyways.”
Mary thrust his arm from her and started off across the yard. At that moment, Luke rounded the corner of the house with Henry in his arms.
“It was Henry. Dear Lord, it was Henry,” Mary cried. “I saw! It was when we were walking through the woods. I saw you but I did not see it was Henry. I did not realize.…”
“He’s fell out of a tree.” Luke’s usually cheerful face was grim.
Henry was unconscious. Luke and Simeon laid him on his bed. Mary took charge. While they looked on she felt all his bones carefully. He had broken a bone in one leg, and probably sprained one wrist. He had also had a severe knock on his head. But everything else seemed all right.
Simeon left. Mrs. Anderson had gone to bed. Mrs. Whitcomb had gone home. Frantically Mary searched her memory for what to do. How she wished now that she had been willing to learn all Mrs. Grant had wanted to teach her about healing. There were a few things she could bring to mind and, with Luke to fetch what she needed, she made a poultice of egg whites and cornmeal for Henry’s head, muttering all the while that it should have been barley. For a splint for the break Luke found two straight sticks and wound lengths torn from Henry’s own shirt around them.
“Are there eels to be had in this country?” Mary remembered Mrs. Grant wrapping eel skins around her own ankle when she had sprained it falling down a badger hole.
“Eels?”
“Fishes—long, thin, snaky fishes.”
“I know what eels are.”
“Then will you please catch me two as fast as you can.”
“It’s gonna take a bit of time. I gotta get to the lake and.…”
“Luke, two eels, I must have two eels.”
“All right.” Still eyeing her uneasily, Luke went off to do her bidding.
Mary straightened up at last, noticing for the first time that Mrs. Whitcomb had washed all the dishes, swept the dirt floor, laundered the clothes, and put some kind of order into the house. The table was set with plates, mugs, and inviting-looking humps hidden under cloths to keep the flies off. Under the cloths were a bowl of cold potatoes, a platter of freshly boiled sliced pork, a loaf of bread, and a bowl of butter.
“So much meat in this country,” breathed Mary, “even for plain folk.” She hesitated a second, then hunger got the better of her. She snatched a piece of pork from the platter and stuffed it into her mouth.
At that moment John Anderson and Simeon came through the door. Mary started guiltily and quickly turned her back.
“Ha,” Simeon jeered. “I wouldn’t think a dainty little gal like you would want to eat anything when you spent the whole afternoon in the shit house.”
“What’s wrong with Henry?” There was panic in John Anderson’s deep voice.
Mary told him and showed him what she and Luke had done. By the time she was through explaining, Luke was back with two long, black eels.
“Zeke Bother gave’ em to me. He was out fishing this morning with Jim Morrissay.”
Under Mary’s instructions, Luke peeled off the eels’ skins and wrapped them tightly around Henry’s sprains.
“Put the eels in a pot to cook,” Mary commanded. “The broth will be good for Henry.”
“You’re a right smart little gal,” said Mr. Anderson gratefully and went to wash himself at the well.
By the time Henry came around half an hour later he was bound and poulticed like a grafted tree. He looked up at Mary’s anxious face leaning over him, smiled, and closed his eyes. “I was after a honeycomb for you,” he murmured, and would have gone to sleep but Mary insisted on his having a bit of thin gruel first.
“Shall I fetch Miz Whitcomb?” Luke asked his father.
“I guess you’re gonna have to.”
“I will not be leaving Henry until he is well,” Mary declared firmly.
She pulled the rocking-chair over beside Henry’s bed and chanted a healing charm for him in Gaelic:
Cnèimh ri cnèimh
Cuisil ri cuisil
Céirein ri céirein
Ris a’ chois chli.
Henry woke. “What’s them words, miss?”
“Healing words, Henry, and I will tell them to you in English, my wee lamb, if you will say my name to me. It is Mairi.”
“Mary,” mumbled Henry shyly.
She put her hand on his good arm and recited softly:
Bone to bone
Vein to vein
Balm to balm
To the left leg
Then to the ankle
And then to the wrist
She got up quietly and brought another dish of cornmeal gruel from the fire and insisted, despite his protests, that Henry eat.
“Good night, Henry.”
“Good night, miss—Mary,” he whispered. “I like your singing.”
All the next day Mary stayed close to him. She would not let him get out of bed. She made him eat more gruel and the eel broth she had cooked for him and she kept everyone else away. His father came once to stand by the foot of the bed, his tall frame sending a shadow along the full length of it.
“You gave us all a bad scare, son,” was all he said but it was not difficult to see how relieved he felt—or how tired he was.
Simeon, as much to torment Mary as Henry, shouted at him every time he came into the room, “You all right, Hank?”
“I hate that name,” Henry whispered to Mary, but Mary said nothing to Simeon. She knew well the teasing ways of people from her own childhood. How Callum Grant and Johnny Fraser had teased!
Late in the afternoon, exasperated by Mary’s protectiveness, Luke pulled her from her chair and propelled her towards the door. “Out!” he thundered, deepening his voice to a low baritone. “You’re like a mama cat. I ain’t no owl after your kitten. I just want to sit a spell with Henry!”
Mary twisted away from his hand. “You …” she began, but stopped at the smile on his face and went outside. She scrubbed her hands and face at the well, braided her hair and straightened her clothes, then walked across the road to where the cow was browsing by the verge, its calf close beside it. She stroked the cow, knelt by the calf and hugged it. She listened to a pair of goldfinches singing in a willow tree and looked long at the chicory blooming at the edge of the Andersons’ dooryard. The comfortable feel of the cow and the calf, the familiar birdsong in the willow, and the blue of the field-flower brought a kind of warmth she had not felt since leaving her own glen. One of the small squirrel-like animals Luke called chipmunks scooted along a fallen tree, a groundhog dove into its hole beside the road. Mary wondered for the first time since she had come to Upper Canada where the unseen creatures dwelt, where the fairy hills were. She went back to her nursing with a lighter heart.
The days settled into a routine. Lydia Anderson stayed in bed. Mary got meals, recalling, if somewhat imperfectly, her days at the Gillespies at Tigh-na-Suidh, and did her best to keep the cabin as neat as Mrs. Whitcomb had left it. She thought about Mrs. Whitcomb’s kindness, about the Collivers’ kindness, remembered the mean-spiritedness of the man and woman on the road from Cornwall. “They are not all inhospitable, the folk in Upper Canada,” she decided. She did not love the work but she had come to care for Henry. She thought he was like a solemn old bodach with his big grey eyes in his thin face and his wispy fair hair, and she told him stories and made funny faces to make him laugh. She slept on a blanket on the floor by his bed. She woke nights from troubled dreams, but she never found herself out on the road. She was glad, all the same, that she was not alone.
Luke went to tell Julia Colliver that Mary would be staying for
a while and Mrs. Colliver sent her, along with a great deal of advice, a change of clothes and the message that she would be expected back at the Collivers’ as soon as Henry was recovered. Mary caught Luke’s eye as he was delivering all these messages and saw that he was as amused as she by Mrs. Colliver’s overbearing ways.
After a couple of days, Mary allowed Henry to get out of bed, and with her arm and a chair to support him he hopped on his good leg to the table for meals and to the front porch. There he sat, his thin face aglow from the cossetting and the leisure, watching his father and brothers work.
Mrs. Anderson got out of bed when Mrs. Whitcomb came to see how the family was managing. “You need to be firm with Lydia,” Mrs. Whitcomb told Mary.
They were sitting with Henry on the porch. His mother was dressing herself in the house. “I can see you’re taking good care of everything else.” Mrs. Whitcomb smiled. “And I don’t even know who you are. I’m Jane Whitcomb and I live down the road a piece, two homesteads on through the bush.”
“I am Mary Urquhart, niece to Davie and Jean Cameron who were staying nearby. But they have gone home.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Whitcomb’s voice held sympathy. “I knew they had gone but I didn’t know you had come. We were so sorry about their son. How that boy could play that wooden flute of his! We used to go up to the head of the bay some summer’s evenings just in the hope of hearing him. Jim Morrissay was making him a really fine flute when he … well, I guess he must have been pretty unhappy though you wouldn’t have known it from that music. He wasn’t around much with the other boys. Kept to himself.”
“He was not happy here,” Mary said stiffly.
“Alas, there have been many not happy here. These are difficult times for us all. We are refugees and that’s not easy for anybody.”
“Refugees?”
“When we were children we came up here from the old Thirteen Colonies with our parents—those colonies that are called the United States now. We came up through the woods with little more than the clothes on our backs. Our parents wouldn’t fight against the King in the rebellion in ’75, so we all had to flee to Canada. We didn’t think we had to go to war to let the English government know we didn’t like a few laws. The rebels called us traitors—dirty Tories—but we called ourselves Loyalists. We were the ones to stay loyal to the King. We left good, settled homes—my father was a school-teacher in New York, my husband’s father was a preacher in Albany—but that didn’t make any difference. Dan Pritchett who’s my neighbour now, he came from Staten Island. He was a wheelwright. Like the rest of us, he wasn’t for revolution. He went to jail, his wife was left destitute. She died, four of his nine children, too. Dan finally got out of jail. He left New York City with five sons and his sister Sarah. We all came together in the refugee camps at Yamaska near Montreal. We were pretty badly beaten down. Some had been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on rails by our own neighbours, some had been strung up—hanged like common criminals. My cousin David was and he was only fourteen years old.” Mrs. Whitcomb looked down at her hands clenched in her lap. “Then, when we hadn’t more than just gotten ourselves settled into these backwoods—not quite thirty years later—didn’t those old Yankee neighbours come along and start another war! They thought they’d kick us out of here too. Well, I guess they got a surprise! That war’s over now, too—over a year ago and it didn’t bother us much down here on the island—though it came close enough. After all, the Americans are just across the lake. Joey Bother was killed at the battle of Chrysler’s Farm and we lost Billy Ansel at Sackets Harbour, but we were luckier than many and we had no battles here on the island.”