by Jane Stain
“Call me Aideen, and it is well come you are, lass.”
“Call me Vange please.”
Aideen looked uncertain.
“It’s short for Evangeline, but only my mother ever uses that, and only when she’s angry.”
Everyone laughed.
“Where is she lass, your mother?”
Vange fought tears. “Far, far away.”
“Your man took you far from her, then?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“It is in good company you are. Nora and Isleen and Cara also allowed men to lure them away from all they knew and to cause them to make this their home.”
“Hello Nora, Isleen, Cara. I’m Vange.”
The three smiled at her as they worked.
Aideen thrust a plate into Vange’s hand.
“To that table with you and eat, Vange. It is needing your strength you are.”
The food was strange but good, and Vange surprised herself by asking for seconds and finishing the second plate.
“Where do I put my dirty dishes?”
“Show her, Cara.”
Cara put down her paring knife and the carrot she was working on, brushed her hands off on her apron, and walked to the door opposite where Vange had entered the kitchen.
“It is in here.”
Cara spoke halting English with such a thick Gaelic accent that Vange was glad she basically knew what the woman was saying as she followed her.
“Thank you.”
About a dozen children aged six to ten were working in the next room: heating water over a small fire, pouring it into the wash basins, taking dirty wash basins outside to empty them, bringing water up from a well, washing dishes, drying them, putting the dishes away on shelves they climbed up to on a ladder…
Vange could see the dining hall through one of the room’s three doors when a boy about nine brought in more dirty dishes. It was full of what she figured must be Irish soldiers, clothed in leine with no kilts over them. She didn’t see Tam, so she counted her blessings that he didn’t see her as she ducked out of view behind a drying rack for towels.
A girl unceremoniously took Vange’s plate and plunged it into one of six wash basins.
And then Cara took Vange’s hand and led her back into the kitchen, where she approached Aideen at the fireplace.
“Thank you for letting me eat in here, away from Tam. Do you know where I’m expected to spend my time while my husband, Peadar, is away?”
Aideen stood up from her chair at the kitchen fireplace and put a hand on Vange’s shoulder.
“Oh dearie, he will be away more of the time than not, your man.”
Vange took a deep breath and fought tears again.
Aideen patted her shoulder.
“I say it in kindness, lass. Best you be knowing this, it is.”
Vange nodded and sobbed as the tears came.
“I … just don’t know what … to do with myself … while he’s gone.”
Aideen gave her a handkerchief.
“Do what the other young wives do, my dear. Help me here in the kitchen, where the likes of Tam will never think to find you.”
Vange looked at Cara, who nodded.
And then Vange looked down at her Scottish finery.
Aideen laughed and opened the third door in the kitchen.
“Come, lass. You can wear one of my shifts in here, then change back to your fancy clothes whenever they summon you out there.”
Vange followed Aideen into her room, which was quite crowded.
Hooks and nails covered one wall. There hung not only half a dozen worn and faded leine like those Cara, Aideen, and the other two wore in the kitchen, but also three sets of Irish finery, in colors that would look good on the other three young wives.
The room also had a washstand, a small bed—and three sleeping pallets made up on the floor.
“I will be making up a pallet for you as well, if you so desire, Vange.”
“I do. I hate to think what would have happened if Tam had entered my room while I still slept. Thank you so much.”
Aideen crossed herself and nodded. “Choose a shift and change, dearie.”
So Vange helped out in the kitchen—chopping, mixing, measuring, stirring, and generally doing work she’d been doing to help her mother in the kitchen since she was six and tall enough to reach the counter. Barely.
Vange also helped in the vegetable and herb gardens—weeding, watering, and picking.
She went out to the hen house and collected eggs.
All in all, she was happy to be busy and hidden away from Tam and men of his ilk, which Aideen said all the men who stayed behind pretty much were.
The hidden women let the children serve the meals and bus the tables.
Out there with the remaining men some of the stranded wives chose to remain, and Vange didn’t judge them.
Vange had been helping in the kitchen for a week, and eating very healthily. She only left the kitchen to go into the garden in the courtyard. She and the other women kept each other company telling funny stories from their childhoods and avoiding all talk of their deployed husbands.
Cara told of getting into her grandmother’s blackberry patch and then lying and saying she hadn’t—all the while covered head to toe in blackberry juice.
Isleen had come home with blood all over her face. Her mother had screamed and cried about her murdered daughter—only to find a small cut on her forehead that had been the source of all that blood.
Nora had run away from home—only to come back as soon as her food pouch was empty an hour later.
Of course, Vange had to edit her stories quite a bit. For example, instead of her long dress getting caught in her bicycle chain and ripping clean off her body, she said it got caught in a tree branch, which knowing her, it might as well have.
On the surface, Vange was content, but deep down she was getting depressed. Not only was she stranded in this backward time away from her parents and Emily, but also she’d been abandoned by Peadar. Not by his choice, but she still felt abandoned. With no hope of escape in sight.
Aideen laughed while she stirred the soup.
“Heh heh heh.”
Vange flicked the last of the onion skins off her cutting board.
“What?”
“Tam keeps asking for you, but the other women want him to themselves, so they make excuses for you. They say you’re sleeping in the children’s room … that you’re embroidering with another of them …. or—closest to the truth—that you have taken ill and are recovering here in the kitchen where I can tend to you.”
“Huh.”
Vange threw down her knife and twirled to face Aideen.
“What if he comes in here looking for me.”
“Soft, soft. It is not that he will be doing.”
“How can you know for sure?”
“He will not brave sickness. Surely you know that?”
“I suppose.”
“No need.”
“But why would you put a sick person in the kitchen?”
“Because warm it is, of course.”
“But what about getting germs in the food?”
“I have never heard it called ‘germs’, lassie, but that sounds like old superstition to me. There be no such thing as germs, lass. That be the sort of thing we old folks tell children in order to get them to obey us, that be all it is.”
Vange had to bite her tongue to keep from arguing with that.
“Dust on the road.” Nora yelled as she poked her head in the door and then disappeared.
“Dust on the road?” Vange asked Aideen.
“Lassie, wonder where you come from, I do, and you have not heard of dust on the road.”
“There are no roads where I come from. It’s an island, and we get around on boats.”
“Oh. Well, dust on the road means some of the men are returning, lass.”
Maybe Peadar is one of them.
“I have to change c
lothes.”
“Go, go.”
Aideen’s shooing motions were not the least bit necessary.
Vange was changed and ready in under five minutes, and out the door she went, into the courtyard to join the pack of women waiting to see their husbands.
They jostled for places where they could see the greatest distance along the road, out to where the dust came up. They all smoothed their dresses and neatened their kerchiefs.
The men who remained at the castle went out to meet the men who were returning.
It was all Vange could do to keep from running out the castle’s courtyard gate to join them, but she did restrain herself.
She replayed over and over again in her mind Aideen’s comments on Vange’s need of restraint.
“Lassie, sorry I am that you ever left your island. It does seem everyone was equal there, and that we women could comment on what the men did or said.”
“I don’t—”
“You do comment on the men’s behavior, child.”
“But I—”
“With your very body if not with your words.”
“No I—”
Aideen stopped shaking the pans to turn and face Vange with her hands on her hips.
“I have seen it, and so have Cara, Nora, and Isleen.”
“Like when?”
How could she give credence to anything said by a kooky old woman who thought germs were superstition? These people were like children. They were full of the funniest ideas and beliefs.
“Many times, lassie.”
Aideen was shaking her finger at Vange.
“I see the rolling of your eyes, lass, whenever you hear Tam’s bragging. I hear the snort of air from your nose whenever someone says his name.”
Vange was listening now. She hadn’t been aware she was doing those things, but they sounded just like her.
“What can I say? I like making jokes.”
“They’ll whip you for joking like that, lass. Or worse.”
“What. Of all the male chauvinist crap I ever heard, this takes the cake.”
Aideen met Vange’s eyes and looked at her dead seriously.
“Get angry now about it, lass, but then put that behind you. Quit those contemptuous thoughts if you cannot keep them from showing in your actions.”
“But how?”
“How?”
“How do I quit having contemptuous thoughts about men who behave contemptuously?”
“I do not know, child, for most of us fear them enough to keep from having those thoughts ever at all.”
Vange took a deep breath and let it out.
Aideen hugged her.
“You should have never left your island if women were equal with men there.”
Vange jostled some more with the other wives, hoping for a glimpse of their returning husbands.
And then all the women cheered when the marching men came into view.
“Oooooooooooh.”
Vange stood there smiling as all the men came filing in, grabbing their wives for rare public kisses and then running off to their bedrooms.
She still stood there smiling after the last one had come in, standing on her tip toes and looking out at the road, daring to hope that Peadar was just a little behind the rest of them, and at the same time dreading that he had been killed in action.
“He is not with this group,” said Tam, who was suddenly right next to Vange.
She turned her questioning tear-filled eyes to him.
“Your husband is with the O’Neill, and we shall see the O’Neill’s banner flying ahead of the group when he returns.”
All Vange could do was nod absently. This was good news. Peadar’s absence from this group didn’t mean he’d been killed, as she had feared.
Tam offered his arm.
In Vange’s disappointed stupor, she was on the verge of taking it.
And then Cara breezed up in her Irish finery and grabbed Vange.
“Come to my room for wine and commiseration. My husband didn’t return with this group either.”
Vange woke up from her stupor and smiled at Cara. She didn’t even give Tam a parting glance.
Three more groups returned and three months passed before Peadar finally did come back to the castle, hale and hearty.
Vange threw herself into his arms.
“Peadar. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in all my life.”
He picked her up and spun her around, laughing.
“Aye, lass. Neither have I.”
Hand in hand, they ran to their bedroom, where they hugged and kissed and hugged some more.
Words came pouring out of Vange’s mouth amid her tears and sobbing.
“Peadar, we have to get away from here. Tam is after me so bad that I have to hide in the kitchen, and three other women are hiding in there with me. Aideen the cook is nice to us and helps us hide, but Peadar, it’s no way to live. Please, you have to take me and run. We can get a ship to take us to Scotland once we get to Newry. I remember the way. Please, let’s go first thing tomorrow.”
“Aye, well enough, lass. We cannot take any of the horses, as that is thievery payable with death. We will have to walk, and we will have to pray that the folk here in the castle do not find retrieving us worth the trouble.”
“Thank you, Peadar. I’m sure Aideen will give us food for the journey. Oh Peadar. I’ve missed you so much.”
“And I have missed you, Vange, more than words can say.”
“So don’t use words.”
They got up at first light, put on the most travel-worthy clothes they could find in the trunk, and snuck down to the kitchen without running into anyone on the stairs.
“Aideen, pack us as much food as you can, please. We’re running away. Thank you for all your company and everything you have done for me.”
Vange hugged the old woman.
Aideen stroked her hair.
“Peadar, if you wish to leave, I cannot stop you. But please, consider the child your wife carries in her womb. A journey on foot in the winter would almost surely make her lose it.”
15 Vange & Peadar 3
Vange fought the news at first. No, she couldn’t be pregnant. She was stranded in 1560, for goodness sake. She wanted children, yes, but she wanted to have her babies in a modern hospital where the doctor gave you an injection and you didn’t feel the pain. She wanted her children to be vaccinated. She wanted them to get an education, not spend all day drawing water from a well so they could wash dishes.
She wanted her mother.
She tried denial. Didn’t a doctor have to diagnose pregnancy?
“Oh, how do you know I’m pregnant, Aideen? Are you trained in such things?”
But as soon as Vange said that, she realized that Aideen had probably seen hundreds of pregnancies. Her official job was cook, but really she was the matron caretaker of the warriors’ wives at this isolated Irish castle fortress.
The old woman just shook her head and put her hand on Vange’s belly, which Vange had to admit showed a distinctive bump.
“Be it really a mystery to you?” Aideen said.
“Yes.”
Aideen cocked an eyebrow.
“Well, no, not really. How long have you known?”
It was months later when Vange realized Aideen hadn’t answered this question. She had replied, to be sure, but she had skirted around the question rather than answering it directly.
“Surely you have noticed the child growing out under your leine? I have seen it nigh on a month, now.”
“No, but I noticed that my period hadn’t come.”
“Mm, a strange way you be saying it that is, but yes. That be a true sign of motherhood.”
There it was.
She was pregnant.
Stunned, all Vange could do was watch Peadar’s face, waiting for his reaction.
He grabbed her and held her tightly to him. Wait, was he weeping?
“A child, lass. We are to have a child. I cann
ot count a child as a misfortune. Nay, a child be a blessing.”
Vange had been trying to convince herself she’d been ravenously hungry and missing periods only because of stress. As she had far too often lately, she succumbed to tears, started sobbing, and got all choked up.
“Yes, a child is a blessing, but I want to go home.”
Peadar looked … frustrated with her.
Aideen started lecturing, but she stroked Vange’s hair while she did, which kind of prevented Vange from getting mad at the old woman. Not too mad, anyway.
“Hushhhhh. Hushhhhh. Surely your island home is too far for you to go. That is the younger Vange speaking, it is. But now you are a mother, and you must grow up and be strong, for the sake of the life that grows within you.”
What the old cook said was true, of course, but Vange wasn’t ready to grow up. Not here. Not if it meant having a baby under these conditions. But she couldn’t say that to anyone but Peadar, and being from this time himself, he wouldn’t understand. A mix of terror and frustration made her sobbing all the worse and her tears flow all the more.
“Is there no way at all we can leave?”
Aideen turned Vange around and looked into her face, plainly willing her to come back to reality and see how silly she was being.
Well, I can’t tell her my main reason for wanting to leave, but she can help me tell Peadar my second reason.
“I hate it here. Tell him how awful Tam is, Aideen.”
Peadar stiffened.
Aha. That’s working. Please, Peadar, rescue me.
But Aideen calmed him.
“Sure and Tam is a womanizer. But Vange, soon your pregnant belly will put him off, it will. Your belly will help you be rid of his advances, mark my words.”
Vange was glad the other three young wives hadn’t made it down to the kitchen yet. It was bad enough having this breakdown in front of Aideen and Peadar. But what Aideen said made sense, and it calmed her just enough that she could breathe again and stop sobbing.
Aideen gave Vange a handkerchief.
“Anyhow, the winter will stop the fighting for now, and Lord willing, Peadar will remain here with us for a time.”
Vange wiped her eyes and blew her nose, and then she hugged Peadar tight again. Yes, he was frustrated with her, and yes, she was getting frustrated with him. But she was pretty sure his ten-year stint as a Scottish slave on a faraway English settlement made him empathize with how stranded she felt in his time.