by Janet Lunn
Mary said little. Although she had promised herself, Mrs. Grant, and God in heaven to warn people of the danger she saw for them, she had made up her mind that she would not tell another living soul in this neighbourhood that she had the two sights. She just smiled and assured Martha that she was unhurt.
“Dan would have come along,” Martha said, “but he’s got too much to do today. He’s finding a place for the other three pigs and the cow, and a pen for the sheep, and he’s got the boys down clearing for the new barn. You know Dan lost other children back in the war, and he lost his first wife. He’s a sight older than I am. Moses Heaton down by the South Bay’s my pa. Him and Dan was friends back on Staten Island. Losing the barn is hard but—” She looked down at Polly, who had fallen asleep in her lap.
Mary promised she would go to the barn-raising to meet Dan and his sons and the other children.
The raising was the following week. Because Henry begged so hard, his father said he might go. And because it was more than four miles from the Andersons’ to the Pritchetts, John Anderson asked the Whitcombs for a place in their ox-cart for Henry.
By the time they reached the Pritchetts’ the barn was well along and trestle tables for dinner had been set up in the yard. Dan Pritchett was a respected and popular man and people had come from over ten miles around to help him raise his new barn—and, of course, for a party. There seemed to Mary to be at least a hundred of them, all wanting to come and cluck over her, shake her hand, marvel over her bravery, and tell her how sorry they felt about her aunt and uncle leaving with their boys.
They began even before she had got Henry settled under the big maple tree near where the carts were gathered.
“Welcome to our little community, you brave gal! My name’s Hannah Foster and I live down to Partridge Hollow. You’ll be a welcome sight in my front room any time you care to come by!” The stout old woman grabbed Mary’s hand and shook it vigorously.
“Now then, Hannah, don’t hog the girl. So you’re Mary Urkit, are you? Well, well! Not much of you to be so brave, is there? And I hear you been right smart with young Henry Anderson. Looks like them Andersons struck it lucky.”
“Lucky is right!” It was Julia Colliver. “But she’ll be back with us before long, Betsy Armstrong. Well, Mary, I guess you been making quite a name for yourself, ain’t you? I’m right proud of you.” Mrs. Colliver beamed as though Mary were her cow that had just won first prize at the fair.
“Thank you,” was all Mary managed to say to Mrs. Colliver before there was another. “So here’s the little gal who came along too late to find her family and just in time to save little Polly Pritchett. Well, we’ll all have to be your family now.” It was a kindly old woman Mrs. Colliver introduced as Charlotte Heaton. Then came Phoebe Morrissay who put her arms around her and told her she was “blessed if ever there were blessed folk” and others named Bother, Yardley, O’Casey, Schneider. There was a sour old lady who told her she was sure that she’d “come along, a perfect stranger, to take the good husbands away from our fine girls.”
Patty Openshaw came charging through the crowd in her bright blue clothes. “There you are,” she cried happily. “I was hoping you’d come along. Come on, leave Henry be a minute.” She grabbed Mary by the hand and pulled her over to the lunch tables. “I got to stand here and keep the flies away when Ma and the rest sets out the food. You can keep me company. Do you figure on marrying Luke Anderson?”
Mary’s mouth fell open.
“Do you?”
“I … I.… Where did you get such a notion?”
“Ain’t you interested in marrying Luke?”
Mary blushed, deeply embarrassed for this outspoken girl.
“You are.” Patty’s face fell.
“I am not. I am not interested in marrying Luke. I am not interested in marrying anybody.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Och, indeed, I.…”
“Then you got no objection to me setting my cap for him?”
“Does he like blue?” Mary was beginning to be more amused than horrified.
“Huh? Oh, well, it’s my ma, not me.” Patty laughed, looking down at her dress, “Pedlar sold her a whole bolt. Come on, let’s go on over and watch the men, the flies will keep!”
Mary did not want to watch the men. She had had enough of the women, too. They had all been kind, but she was not used to large gatherings and, what’s more, she had really come to the barn-raising so that she could go along the bay to her meadow. She glanced at Henry. He was showing off his sprains and breaks to an admiring audience of small children.
“I will come soon,” Mary told Patty. She headed through the crowd towards the bay. Paying no attention to anyone, she all but bumped into a little, grey-bonneted, grey-gowned woman going in the opposite direction, her head lowered, her hands folded.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” The little grey woman gasped. “I didn’t see, I mean I didn’t … oh, I’m sorry.” She reminded Mary so much of a timid old ewe that she almost patted her back reassuringly. In an effort to stifle a giggle she introduced herself.
“Oh, I am pleased to meet you. I am Sarah Pritchett, sister to Dan Pritchett. We are so grateful to you, Mary. You have been our angel of mercy. We will never forget … oh, dear, there’s Martha looking for me. Excuse me, I’d better … oh, dear!” Sarah scuttled off nervously towards the house.
Mary flew across the yard and through the thin line of trees to the shore. She hurried along the edge of the water, not stopping until she reached the meadow, her meadow, Duncan’s meadow.
She intended to go into the house but, somehow, she found herself kneeling on the big, grey rock out on the point. There was something about that dark water that drew her. She leaned into it until her face was almost touching it. She had almost lost her balance when a small sound made her aware that she was being watched. She leapt up and whirled around. A dark-skinned woman was standing by the stream up near the cabin looking intently at her.
The woman was small and round—round-bodied, round-faced. She was dressed in deerskin leggings and her knee-length leather shift was decorated with tiny many-coloured beads and fringed at the bottom. On her feet she wore soft leather moccasins, also fringed. Her shining black hair hung down her back in two long braids. Mary realized that she was an Indian and remembered her terrifying encounter with the man in the swamp on her way from Cornwall. This time she had no wish to flee. The woman did not smile but her face was kind. “Owena,” she pointed to herself.
“Mairi,” Mary pointed to herself and walked across the grass.
“I come for the mint Jean planted. It is for tea. There are good herbs here on the island.” Mary said nothing for a moment. She was thinking of the other half of what she had to learn in order to fulfil the destiny Mrs. Grant had said was hers. A healer, Mrs. Grant had said, and it was time. She thought of Henry’s accident and how she had needed to care for him. Maybe Owena would teach her about these herbs.
“You will teach me?” Owena inclined her head. She stooped and began to pick the tall mint growing along the verge of the creek. Mary turned her attention to the cabin. She paused by the little rowan tree and touched its bark affectionately.
The cabin was about the same size as the Andersons’. It had a bark roof, no front porch, one glazed window, and a plank door. There was a garden in front, overgrown with ripe melons and squash. Mary paused at the door. She asked the house’s permission to enter, lifted the latch string, pushed open the door, and went inside.
It was as though Aunt Jean and Uncle Davie, Callum and Iain had only just left, but that the fire had gone cold on the hearth. A black squirrel scampered into the rafters and a mouse scurried across the room to hide in the log wall. Except for a bit of chewed-up rag and small animal droppings near the cupboard, it was tidy—so unlike the Andersons’ squalid place. Otherwise it was much the same: the large fireplace and chimney against the back wall, a tall dresser at right angles to it along one side wall, t
he bed built into the back corner, the square pine table in the centre of the room, a rocking-chair and a three-legged stool by the fireplace. Beside the front door was the glass window and coming halfway across the room was an open loft with a ladder leading to it.
In the loft were three more wooden bed-frames. Aunt Jean would have taken the bedding with her and thrown out the straw, Mary knew. There was a little triangular window-opening from which she could see out over the bay. “How Callum and wee Iain must have liked this window,” she thought, then realized with shock that she hadn’t thought of Duncan looking through the window, hadn’t thought of Duncan at all, in the loft or downstairs.
“He is not here. He is nowhere in the house.” She had felt Aunt Jean’s presence so powerfully in the way the house was kept, in her rocking-chair by the hearth. She had felt Uncle Davie in the painstakingly fashioned dresser, the table, stool, and benches. Callum and Iain were there too, sitting by the fire, at the table, and upstairs, “But you are not here, Duncan. I cannot find you here!”
She went back outside. Owena had gone. She went around behind the house and across the road to a clearing in the pine forest where there were chokecherry and hawthorn trees and a small barn. Behind it was a single grave marked by a crudely squared granite boulder with the words chipped into it.
DUNCAN GRANT CAMERON
BORN 2 MAY 1800
GLEN URQUHART SCOTLAND
DIED 10 JUNE 1815
HAWTHORN BAY UPPER CANADA
She sat down and slowly ran her fingers over each letter, each number, hoping desperately to bring Duncan’s presence to her.
“You called me! You were thousands of miles from home and when I came you were gone. The tenth of June. I was on my way! Here am I now and I cannot reach you, I cannot find your spirit.” She grasped the sides of the gravestone and put her head down on its rim.
“When I see so much,” she cried in grief as she had once done in rage, “so much that I do not wish of others’ lives, why can I not see this that matters so much to me?” She shook her fist up at the dark trees. “You have stolen him from me. You have swallowed him whole. Give him back!” She stayed there a long time, tracing Duncan’s name over and over, then, when the shadows of the giant trees were long across the meadow, she went to stand once more on the large grey rock and peer into the dark water.
Again she was interrupted, this time by the sound of someone running down the road. It was Luke. He came across the grass towards her. “I knew I would find you here.”
At once Mary became alarmed. “Henry? Has something happened to Henry?”
“Henry’s all right. He.… I didn’t come to talk about Henry. Mary, why did you come here again?”
“I mean to come here to live.” As she said the words she knew she meant them. “I do. I mean to come here to live.”
“Why? It’s not good here.”
At first Mary made no reply. “There are no trees,” she said, finally. It was all she was willing to say.
“No people, neither.” Luke wandered over to the stream where Owena had stood earlier, bent down and picked up a pebble, stood up, tossed the pebble back and forth from one hand to the other. “Mary, I.…”
Mary remembered the conversation she had had with Patty Openshaw, knew what he was going to say, and desperately did not want him to say it.
“Mary, I’d like for you to marry me.” His words rushed forward as if bent on getting said before she could stop them. “I didn’t mean to speak so soon. I know what a bad time it’s been for you, but it ain’t going to help for you to come to live in this place. You’d be here all alone. Before you come along I never thought to git married. But I’m nineteen years old with a bit of money saved for a piece of land. I ain’t one bit like Duncan Cameron with his good-looking face and his fine fluting that could get us all laughing and crying, but I cut a fine reel on the dance floor and—well, the cows like me well enough and I’m mighty well thought of in the barn yard at feeding time,” he grinned, “and … well, I wish you would marry me, Mary.”
Mary almost said, “Marry Patty Openshaw—she wants to,” but she stopped herself. “Luke, you do not know me!” She managed a steady voice though she did not feel a bit steady.
“I guess you could say that, but I sort of feel as if I do. The first time I set eyes on you, back when you was walking from Soames to the Corners, I looked at you with your black hair all shiny around your white face, and your black eyes, and, Mary, I just figured you was the one I was going to marry.”
“Luke, it cannot be. I will not, I cannot marry—ever.”
“I guess I didn’t pick much of a time to be asking, but …well, I’d be afraid for you living here, Mary. Come home and stay with us. I won’t pester you about marrying, won’t bring the subject up again. But don’t stay here!”
“But I mean to live here, Luke. Henry is mending. He does not need me now. I must come home with you now, for I will not leave your mother or Henry without a word, but I will come here to live in this place until I have earned my passage home. You must not speak to me again about marrying, for I will not.”
Luke did not move at once. His eyes travelled from Mary’s face to the house, to the water, across the road and back again. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s fetch Henry and take him on home.”
The House at Hawthorn Bay
The Camerons’ house belonged to Dan Pritchett now, Luke told Mary. So she went to see Dan the next morning. She found him in the new barn, constructing stalls for his livestock.
“Sure you can live there if you want. I’m glad to be able to do something for you, Mistress Mary,” Dan boomed. He was a huge, bluff man. “Three axe handles across the shoulders,” as Luke described him, and at least a head and a half taller than either Luke or his father.
He was glad to have Mary in the house. “Nobody here needs that house just now. Davie and Jean Cameron bought it from Charity Hazen. She and her husband Zeke were Vermont Loyalists and he got so homesick for his hills he took a chance on being imprisoned or done to death, and he went back home—never been heard from again. When the Camerons wanted to sell I was glad to get another hundred acres, but it’s gonna be a snowy Sunday in July before we get to clearing that piece of land. It’s a bit far from the barn to be tethering a cow and—well, as you know, we’re short a cow now anyways.”
Mary asked if she might tend his sheep for the rent. “Now, now,” he said, “Martha and I, we’re right glad to be doing a good turn to the gal who saved our Polly. Don’t you think on it.” So Mary thanked him and asked if she could tend the sheep for money.
“Well, my girl,” he said, “it’s like this; we don’t let our sheep roam far enough to need tending, there’s too many wolves prowling around the woods. It’s only a couple of years or so we’ve been keeping sheep at all.” He rubbed his hand across his bald head. Then he wrinkled up his face in thought. “Can you read?” he asked.
“I can.”
“Well then,” Dan beamed. “I have just the thing. My sister Sarah teaches some of the young ones hereabouts—girls and boys—to read and cipher, as we ain’t got any real kind of a school going yet. Now Sarah’s a mighty fine woman, but she sometimes has a speck of trouble keeping those older boys reined in. In consequence they don’t get too much learning into ’em.”
Mary thought of little grey Sarah Pritchett scurrying at the sound of her sister-in-law’s voice. “I am not afraid of the children,” she said.
“Do you think they could hear a word you said to ’em?” Dan slapped his leg and roared with laughter. “You people from Scotland, you talk so a fellow has to strain his ears, even big ones like mine, just to catch a word. A pretty sound, mind you,” he added.
“It is all the better, then,” replied Mary tartly. “The great lads will need to be still to catch the sound of the pretty words.”
Dan laughed again. “You’ll be all right. And Martha will sure be glad to get that babble and shouting out of our house, and Sarah will be migh
ty pleased to have the help! I’ll throw in your winter’s supply of firewood and a share of the flour and potatoes that come our way from the neighbours whose kids is coming to Sarah’s school.”
A winter’s supply of wood plus food. How much faster she could save what she might earn from Julia Colliver! “How many days a week would the teaching be?” she demanded.
“Well, Sarah generally runs to five mornings a week. The folks needs their children to work in the afternoons and, mind you, the older children won’t come until after the harvest is in, anyways.”
“I will do it,” decided Mary.
“Suppose we go tell Martha and see if she don’t rustle us up a saucer of tea and something to eat.” Dan led the way out of the barn.
After half an hour with Dan, Martha, and Polly, who came to sit on her lap and show her the doll Charlotte Heaton had made for her, Mary went to see Julia Colliver about working afternoons in payment for wool and the weaving lessons she had once offered. She meant to do as Mrs. Colliver had suggested—weave for her passage home.
“Mary, you can’t live there!” Mrs. Colliver was scandalized. “You come here to us. You can have that room behind the stairs all to yourself. What’s the matter with you! A young girl like you thinking of living alone? I don’t know what it’s like back in your country but we don’t do things like that here. Why, think of the dangers. Wild animals. In the winter when it gets cold, the wolves come right up to the door. And bears. And there’s Indians. I happen to know there’s been Indians coming and going from that house regular since it’s been empty. Jean was foolish, she used to let them come, and since the house has been empty, they been squatting there by times.”
“I have met an Indian woman. I liked her.”
“Well, you might not like it when the whole tribe moves in on you. These Indians, you don’t know them, they’re Mohawks. Us Yorkers from near Troy knew them back home. They was as like to take your scalp and set fire to your house as look at you. You can’t trust those people.”