Shadow in Hawthorn Bay

by Janet Lunn

  There were some evenings when she was grateful to all the spirits of that world in which Sarah Pritchett did not believe. While she spun, the cold autumn wind whistled and wailed through every chink in the little log house, and always it implored her in Duncan’s own voice, “Mairi, Mairi, come to me. Mairi!”

  She had taken to barricading her door from within so that she could not follow the cry in her sleep, and on some nights only her conviction that the fairies were looking after her kept her from running to the Collivers or the Andersons for safety.

  The air was clear, the October sky a cornflower blue; the mosquitoes had disappeared and the flies bothered only during the hottest time of day. The summer birds had all gone south, the little chickadees fluttered about cheerfully, ignoring the noisy jays and the woodpeckers. Occasionally a scarlet cardinal could be seen in the cedars or near the berry bushes.

  Frost had struck the forest and the maples had turned tawny, saffron, and scarlet. The oaks were a rich, leathery brown and the birches and hawthorns deep gold. Woven into all this flamboyant colour were the dark evergreens. On the fringe of the woods and along fences the sumac bushes rose like crimson fountains above the thick clusters of purple and white Michaelmas daisies. Mary had never seen such riotous colour in her life and she was so captivated by it that she actually looked forward to her walks through the trees to Collivers’ Corners.

  It was almost easy to forget her fear in such an atmosphere, and Mary threw herself eagerly into Mrs. Colliver’s autumn work. There were still chokecherries, rose hips, and partridge-berries to be made into jams and conserves. The root vegetables had to be dug and stored in the cellars hollowed out of the ground for them. Onions and cucumbers had to be pickled, beans dried. Late-blooming dye plants had to be boiled, then the flax and wool dyed. Pork had to be salted, and the rabbits and the wings and breasts of the passenger pigeons to be jugged.

  “It is like making ready for a siege,” said Mary.

  “Well, I guess you might call winter that.” Mrs. Colliver slapped a side of bacon onto the table. “I was about half your age when the rebellion began in ’75. We lived near Troy in New York and I mind well sieges and starvation. I don’t mean to go hungry nor see any of my family go hungry through war or winter. Now let’s get them pritters and turnips dug and into the root cellar.”

  Mary liked best the days Patty Openshaw came to help. Patty’s friendliness and her effervescence could make her forget that she was far from home among alien people.

  One day Patty was stirring dye in the big iron pot that had been brought out to hang over the tripod in the back yard while Mary draped the freshly dyed hanks of wool and flax over the fence.

  “Say, Mary, don’t you get awful lonely living in your auntie’s house by yourself? Don’t you wish you was back to Andersons’? I mean, there’s Luke.”

  “I do not.”

  “Ain’t you a funny one? You come all this way alone and now you’re setting up by yourself in that house. Don’t you really want to get married? You’ll be an old woman and still be there by yourself. You’re little but I’ll bet you’re as old as me—I’m fifteen and I figure if I wait much longer I’ll be an old maid.”

  Temper flared in Mary, hot and sudden. “Am I so very funny?” she cried. “Am I more funny than Julia Colliver or Sarah Pritchett or you who bounce around like a great, blue hen shouting out every word that comes into your head, telling all the world that is not like yourself that it is funny? I am not funny! I came here by myself because … because I had good reason. But I will not stay. And I do not mean to marry. Go you yourself to work for Lydia Anderson—the dear Lord knows she needs help—and marry Luke. Go now, this very afternoon, this very moment.” She picked up a dripping hank of red wool and began to wring it savagely.

  “Oh!” Patty dropped the stir stick, spattering sumac juice far and wide. “Oh, Mary, I didn’t mean to say you was funny that way. I just meant … oh, it’s true, I never know when to shut my mouth. Oh, what can I say, I feel so bad!” Patty’s face was nearly as crimson as the sumac in the pot, her bright blonde hair had come undone from its knot and fell untidily down her back, the dye had spotted her face even more liberally than her cap or apron. As the blush faded she looked like someone with measles. In spite of herself, Mary began to laugh.

  Patty’s face brightened. She skipped across the yard and threw her arms around her.

  Uncomfortably Mary pulled away. She straightened her clothes.

  “I like you,” said Patty. “I like the way you laugh sort of like one of them woodbirds, up and down, up and down. I never heard you laugh before but, landsakes, you do have a sharp tongue!”

  “Girls!” Mrs. Colliver’s voice was sharp. “It’s growing late. You’re both gonna be here in the cold and dark stirring sumac juice and wringing out yarn if you don’t busy yourselves.”

  “Yes ma’am!” Patty began to stir vigorously. Mary picked the dripping wool from the ground and put it over the fence. She didn’t know how to react to such affection, nor why she had so lost her temper. She was ashamed of herself.

  Later the two walked home together. When Mary stopped at her own home, she put out her hand. She knew she had been unfriendly.

  “I am not so very lonely, Patty,” she said, “but I should like you to come for a wee visit of an evening.” In a burst of confidence, she added, “I am well in my house, I am protected against the evil by the fairies. They brought me gifts of a fine mattress cover and a loaf of bread and a bit of crockery when I came here.” She stopped. “Why do you look at me in that way?”

  Patty shrugged. She looked embarrassed. “I don’t know about fairies, but I know who brought all that stuff. Luke Anderson was by our house after a mattress cover. I think he got one across to Morrissays’, and maybe they had a crock too. He was mighty keen, I figure, on getting you made comfortable.”

  Mary turned cold. She stared at Patty a moment, then ran down the slope to her house. She heard Patty call after her but she did not answer. She ran inside the cabin and slammed the door after her. Leaning against it, her heart beating as though she had run for miles, she stared at the benches, the table, the embers in the fireplace, as though she had never seen them there before. Everything looked strange, unprotected.

  “It was not the fairies at all. It was Luke. It was Luke.” It was all she could think. Luke had brought the mattress, the crockery, the bread. Luke had been bringing the fish and the birds. “How can I have been so daft?” she thought. “Fairy gifts are not like this. Fairy gifts are not ordinary things like these. How could I have been so daft?”

  Then she had another—worse—thought. “What if there are no fairies in this place? What if there is nothing protecting me at all from the evil spirit that comes for me? Dear Lord, what am I to do?”

  Henry

  All the next afternoon, while she peeled and strung apples and helped to hang them from the rafters in Julia Colliver’s kitchen, Mary chattered so feverishly that Mrs. Colliver asked her suspiciously if she had been “at the whisky”. Patty told her she was “jumpier than a toad”. Mary said, “It is surely the fine day,” but in truth she was convinced that if she stopped talking for a single moment she would scream. The words, “It was Luke, it was Luke, all the time it was Luke, not old ones,” churned around and around in her head. It was as though the earth had shifted, leaving her clinging by a thin vine to the edge of a cliff that had, only seconds before, been a wide pasture.

  Evening came. Mary milked the cow but there was less milk than usual because her song was so poor. The sheep backed away from her. The geese seemed to be jeering at her, the rooster laughing. She stayed to weave with Mrs. Colliver and the weaving had to be all undone. When the work was done at last she sped home, pursued by the night wind.

  When she reached her own door she picked up the bowl she had kept filled with milk for the house bodach. She held it for an instant in her two hands, then in a single, rageful gesture she lifted it over her head and hurled it at th
e moon. In a lull between gusts of wind she heard it splash into the bay.

  “There is no bodach here,” she said. “There is no kelpie riding these sluggish burns—creeks,” she corrected herself scornfully. “How could a kelpie live in a creek?” She looked towards the big rock down at the point. “There are no fairies here.” Shivering, she hurried into the house.

  She stirred up her fire, longing for its high orange flame to be, just once, the soft red of a peat fire. She brought out her spindle whorl and her wool but before long they had dropped unnoticed into her lap. The fire crackled and spat, the wind wailed through the chinks in the logs. She hardly heard it. Her thoughts were too loud, too confused. “What kind of a country is it?” she demanded. “Is there none among them who has the two sights? Is it only the Indians who have the gift of healing?—who speak the charms against ill-wishing here? Och, how could there be fairies in this flat, tree-covered place?”

  “Not here. Not here,” mocked the wind.

  There was a knock at the door. Mary froze. The knock came again, louder. She stood up. The spindle whorl rolled across the floor. The knock came again, louder, more insistent. She put her hand to the back of the chair to steady herself.

  “Mary, it’s me, Luke—and Henry. Mary, are you there?”

  Slowly, step by step, she crossed the room, put back the latch, and pulled open the door. There, in a swirl of dry leaves, stood Luke holding Henry by the hand.

  “Luke!” Mary had a powerful urge to throw her arms around him. Hastily she stepped back and tripped on the hem of her skirt.

  “Steady.” Luke grabbed her arm. She jerked away. “Not so glad to see me, I guess,” he said wryly.

  Mary uttered the first words that came to her. “It is you have been leaving the pigeons and partridges on my table.”

  “Now, Mary, they wasn’t for courting.” Luke looked uncomfortable. “I just figured I could be neighbourly without you getting all riled, seeing as how you was so good to us. Henry and me sort of wanted to say thank you.”

  Mary had forgotten Henry. Huddled under Luke’s arm, he looked cold and pinched.

  “Come away in, laddie.” She took Henry’s hand and pulled him into the house. “Here … why Henry, mo gràdach!” Even in the dim light she could see that his face was as grey as stone and one eye was swollen and black. “Luke? How …?”

  “Him and Sim had a fight.”

  “But Sim is sixteen years old, Luke, and Henry is only.…”

  “Seven,” Luke finished for her. “That’s what we come for. Mary, could Henry come here with you for a time? You and him get along pretty good so I thought mebbe you mightn’t mind.” Luke’s shoulders slumped and his face looked very tired. Mary hated seeing him look like that.

  “Put the kettle over,” she ordered him. “Henry, you sit by the fire.” She led him to her rocking-chair, sat him down, took the shawl from her shoulders, and wrapped it around him. When the water in the kettle had begun to boil she got up and made him a tansy poultice for his eye and a brew of the same herb to soothe him. By the time she had it ready, he was asleep.

  All the while she did this, she was wishing Luke away. She did not want to talk to him. She did not even want to look at him. She knew it wasn’t fair, knew it wasn’t his fault she had thought the old ones had brought all those gifts, but she was angry at him all the same. Furthermore, she couldn’t help remembering how she had almost thrown her arms around him just a few minutes earlier, and she was mortified.

  But Luke had settled himself at the table. He was watching her. When she had finished putting the poultice on Henry’s eye, he said, “I’d have that tea Henry’s gone to sleep over, if you don’t mind.”

  After she had given it to him she sat down across the table. He turned the cup round and round in his hands. He peered into it. His hair was rumpled and standing in tufts all over his head, and he would have been comical but for the deep furrow in his brow, and the despondent downturn of his usually upturned mouth.

  “You might as well know,” he said. “Ma’s not so good. Pa gets himself into a right proper lather when she’s like this, and when he seen Henry bawling in the corner on account of Sim hit him, he give him another clout and told him to take his snivelling face out of the way and not to bother coming back.”

  “He cannot mean that!”

  “Naw. Pa’s not so bad. He just gets so he can’t stand how things are, then he gets himself full of whisky and starts laying for somebody—no matter who. If it wasn’t for Sim being such a … anyways, I figure it would be easier for Pa and for Henry if he was to come here for a spell.”

  “Luke, you are good!” The words came, unbidden. Mary rose hastily from the table, picked up the long stick by the fireplace, and began to stir the fire.

  “I guess I was too shy to tell you about that.” He grinned.

  “Luke.” Mary bit her lip. “It was not that I thought you had come courting. It was.… Och, why do you have to be so good?” she cried angrily. She threw the stick into the flames.

  Luke set his unfinished tea on the table with a bang. “I’ll bring Henry’s duds around,” he said, and left the house.

  Not two minutes later the door burst open again and Luke’s scruffy brown head appeared around it. “Would you rather I was mean?” he bellowed, and slammed the door.

  “I do not know! I do not know!” Mary cried. Henry stirred.

  She flew across the room. He was fast asleep, his swollen eye dark against the pallor of his face, his face dirty and streaked with tears. “There now,” she crooned, “there now.” She took off his boots, not much more than uppers connected by a few threads to soles so full of holes there wasn’t enough shoe leather between them to make one good boot.

  “And how you do need a bath,” thought Mary as she struggled to carry him to her bed.

  She sat up until very late mending Henry’s boots with left-over bits of the old blanket she had got from Julia to stuff the chinks in her wall. She didn’t make a very good job of it—she had only a small, dull knife and she was not adept at either cutting or fitting. Furthermore, she could not get her needle through even the thin bit of leather that was left on the boot. Cursing the pedlar who had sold her both knife and needle in exchange for a week’s wages, she satisfied herself by cutting the cloth and stuffing it into the boots so that at least Henry would not have to walk in the cold in his bare feet. And all the while she worked, Luke’s tired, unhappy face got between her and the boots. “I was so unkind,” she thought, and did not feel good about it.

  Before the sun was up next morning Mary had Henry out in the creek. Over his cries and howls she scrubbed him up and down with the last bit of Julia’s old blanket and sluiced as many lice out of his hair as she could manage. Back inside she told him, as she spooned porridge into her wooden dish for him, “We will wash your clothes after school.”

  Henry said nothing but his face was not only clean—despite the yellow-and-purple swollen eye it was bright as the morning. His hair was soft and, to Mary’s surprise, a bit curly. His feet in their blanket-warm boots swung back and forth against the rungs of the chair and he left nothing in the dish.

  It was soon apparent that Henry with two good legs and a full belly, and without the threat of Simeon’s blows and his father’s quick temper, was a different Henry from the waif Mary had met on the dark road, or the worried little boy she had cared for after his fall. Bolstered by the companionship of Moses Openshaw, Benny Bother, and Matthew Colliver, he would giggle and make rude noises. At supper he became so bold he told her he would rather eat “rotted fish than corn mush”. When Mary told him it was porridge, he said it was the same as his mother’s samp and he wasn’t going to eat it for supper. “Then fish for your supper,” Mary retorted. He would run off when it was time to prepare for school or clean up afterwards, and hide from Mary at bedtime. It was the running and hiding that bothered Mary. She was afraid for him. It wasn’t that she had had an actual premonition but she felt uneasy. She did not
want to let him out of her sight.

  When Luke bought Henry’s spare pants and shirt, and a knitted jacket and threadbare blanket that Mary suspected really belonged to Luke himself, she tried to tell him that there was danger and that Henry might be better off home after all.

  “Don’t you want him here, Mary?”

  “I do!” Mary did not think Luke would believe there was a devil’s voice that called to her in the night but she did not want to send Henry home either. She loved his bright chatter, their shared meals, loved telling him stories—stories of fairies and kelpies and urisks and the magic of the unseen world, stories about her own childhood and the people she had known back in her glen. She liked teaching Henry to read and write, delighting in the way his face lit when he had managed to write a letter or read a word.

  “I do want him here,” she told Luke and she longed to add, “and I will be glad if you will come to see him.” She wanted to tell him she was sorry she had been unkind, but she was proud.

  Luke did come frequently to take Henry fishing or hunting or just out into the woods with him. Sometimes they came back with a rabbit or a grouse or partridge, “for Henry’s board,” he would tell Mary stiffly. The only other conversation he offered in ten days was to say, after he had taken Henry fishing one afternoon, “Henry ain’t a baby, you can give him a bit of slack.”

  But Mary was afraid of a bit of slack. The headache that always presaged danger had begun. Every afternoon that Luke did not come she took Henry to the Collivers’ with her, and she made him promise that he would not ever go near the big grey rock down on the point.

  She wished Owena would come so that she could talk to her about the spirits. But the Indians had gone off in their canoes to the mainland where the big game was.