The musicians started with a dirge, a slow, keening song sung by two of the ladies from down the street. Everyone was quiet and respectful. Then the musicians launched into historical songs, marching songs, hymns of the glorious dead, songs to relieve the hurt of a thousand years of battles. The MacLeans listened, and received the energy of the people of Pictou.
There was some furious dancing, legs pounding the wooden boards enough to jostle the table and send a few more sober folks toward the body to make sure it did not topple. It was nigh on midnight when the instruments were put away. People shuffled out, throwing well wishes out behind them; wearily, the MacLeans lay down for bed. Several of the same folks would be back to carry the body to the kirkyard the next morning.
For the first time Neil could remember, he woke late. He felt groggy, but saw that the sun was well advanced and that his mother was up, mixing porridge on the brazier and toasting bannocks in the coals. His siblings lay scattered about. After a somber breakfast, they went down to Mrs. Conaghey’s sitting room in the same funeral clothes.
Their landlady didn’t join them, out of respect. Sheila had already gotten word from her that the gravediggers would extend her credit, on Mrs. Conaghey’s word that she would pay the bill within the year, which was a blessing.
They sat all on different seats at first, until Sheena broke the stillness by leaving her caned chair and coming to sit by her mother’s knee. Alisdair soon did the same, curling up over her lap on the settee. Sheila put her hands on their two heads, looking over at Neil and Muirne, sitting by the fire. Her jaw was tight but a quiver in her throat showed she felt the despair sharing the room with them.
When the mourners arrived, they all made their way to the graveyard behind the rough Presbyterian kirk. The gravediggers were there as promised, sitting propped up against a tree with their shovels. At the MacLeans’ approach, both men straightened with respect. The Reverend Maurice Brown spoke the prayers softly, and the family watched Gillan in his freshly sawn box being laid to rest. They returned to the boarding house to find that Mrs. Conaghey had laid out a spread of cold roast beef and hot floury potatoes and mashed neeps, sparkling with salt and pepper. They sat together eating, a bit of spirit back in them with such food, and talked of Sealladh Cùil, the home on the ridge.
***
***
The next morning, Neil woke first. He started gathering his things together. He shook Alisdair and Sheena awake, then Sheila and Muirne. The common things were packed next: the blankets, the rugs, the few dishes and pots, the small scraps of soap and the last few pages of writing paper. It was quiet in the dim light that filtered into the room. Muirne tore a piece of paper in two, sharpening a pencil with their cooking knife, and scribbling a few lines. Her activity gave off a fervent energy, where Neil’s was business-like, closed. Sheila swept from place to place, back bent, while the younger two children mainly huddled in the corner.
Muirne finished writing and pinned the scrap of paper under one of the legs of the brazier. Neil remembered their finding of the note at the Curran’s house, all that time ago. He looked around. All our worldly possessions, he thought. On the move again.
They filed out in the early darkness, finding it again cool for the summertime. Hoisting their creels, they all followed Neil to the main road, turning east and sighting a soft glow of blue over the hills; they would soon have light enough to guide them through the rougher parts of terrain.
More silence, except for the tramping of feet. Their walking was rhythmic and almost musical, the sound of ten feet shushing and crashing and thumping their way through the bracken and ferns. They camped for the night, exhausted with their burdens and lacking the energy to speak.
When they reached the bottom of the ridge the next day, they stopped to fill up their bottles and pots with water from the stream before continuing. They crested the top of the ridge well after dawn had turned the sky pink, then a hazy white. Alisdair, obedient but sleepy to that point, now looked around as if he hadn’t known this was their destination. “Mam?”
“Yes, Alisdair.” The first words to pass Sheila’s lips for hours came out rough.
“Is this where we live now?”
“Aye. This is where we live.”
“Soon there’ll be a house, lad, don’t you worry,” said Neil.
They looked over at the piles of refuse and salvaged timber. It was yet August, but there was much work to be done for the frame to be up and filled in by the start of the cold season, in less a month’s time. But they would do it. It had to be done.
Muirne got started on the fire for cooking the breakfast porridge, while Sheila took care to place all the important documents from Mr. McLachlan together in one place and carefully weight them down with stones and a marker. Neil directed Sheena where to go to find the ready kindling for her sister’s fire, while he busied himself unrolling the bedclothes.
They broke their fast with porridge and water. Sheila seemed hesitant to begin a morose conversation, just when their camp activity had shaken off the oppressive yoke of somber gravity.
“With Gillan gone, I think we all agree that staying here is best. Does anyone have any other ideas?”
All eyes were downcast, except Muirne’s, who met her gaze evenly. She shook her head slightly. Sheila continued.
“We will all have to work very hard to make this house safe for the cold season. We will have to make do with however much we can get done before the snows start. If we come upon problems, we may have to send for help, but as this could cause delay, I would prefer we solved whatever comes ourselves. Improvements can always be made later, but for now, we need thick sturdy walls and a pitched roof for snow—” She glanced at Neil for confirmation.
He nodded. The list continued.
“—Door and window openings that are as square as we can make them. That’s for the house. We will also have to clear room for planting what autumn crops we can. Potatoes and turnips and onions. That will do us for a few months. Without a gun, we can’t hunt, but we can trap, with string and nail.”
Here again, Neil nodded. He had talked to those shopkeepers during the wake about survival skills for these woods, and hoped to see those skills honed quickly enough to ensure his family’s food supply over winter.
Sheila looked to each of her children in turn. She put an arm around Alisdair. “You are my wealth, children. I have faith we will survive this winter, that this house will become a happy home, in time.” She gave a watery smile and kissed the top of Alisdair’s blond head, then turned toward the pile of rags to start.
A house, and a garden: these were their goals, and the work of them would consume their attention for most of the day, every day, from now until October.
They set to work.
CHAPTER FORTY
They had no visitors. Sheila worried that their abrupt departure may have been too unconventional for the townsfolk, that it might have seemed irretrievably rude. But her spirit gloried in the work, putting aside the mystery that had ended Gillan’s life, the last time she had seen his eyes on her face, whatever he had been unable to tell her.
Any pause from the work of cutting, sawing, tying, or packing in stones found them facing each other around the fire, munching on the rotating oat biscuits and tattie scones. By evening, rest was enforced by the darkness, but one or another of them would be by the fire, knitting, writing on the chalk slate that had been the last gift of Mrs. Conaghey, or otherwise using its flickering light.
Sheena and Muirne had bequeathed the chicks to Mrs. Conaghey for safekeeping and whatever profit she could have by them, good hens as they would be. It would be a paltry start to all they owed for her kindnesses to them, they knew. Their dream of selling eggs to save money up for a loom had joined the many other hopes they’d had for this new world, drowned in the waves of sorrow with which Providence had plied them.
Neil tried the methods of trapping he’d learnt, and referenced the notes he had from a taxidermist’s pamphlet, sh
owing where and how to set a loop trap, how to skin the animals, and more. Another new set of skills, beyond the dock work he’d tried, the mill work his stepfather had done, the boat-tending he’d known at home. Neil often looked at Muirne when she was at work on the house and wondered what she thought of the situation, whether she was not thinking to marry up and move to town.
But there was no time or place to talk privately up here. It strained the quiet sometimes, but also made them feel more completely a unit, acting as one. Everything they did was done in hearing of each other. It did not mean that there were no secrets; indeed, it may have created more.
The days went by quickly. The taxidermist’s pamphlet, along with a picture manual on edible and medicinal plants lent by Mr. Turner, proved vitally helpful in securing additional sources of food for the family: not only rabbit but also berries, nuts, and mushrooms. Neil looked with distaste at the lichen promised to be edible, for it reminded him of the seaweed from home, that cursed substance that started them on this whole journey.
They scraped by until one day, Neil stepped out from under the steeply-pitched roof, from out the solid, filled-in, stone-and-wood walls, to find the land shrouded in a white mist. A dozen feet could he see only, and he watched as his breath issued forth in a steamy cloud. Had summer turned to fall so abruptly?
He looked down and saw a different kind of white mist: tiny ice crystals, lodged in the red masses of dead bracken around the house. Flakes of snow that evaporated upon a touch of his hand. It was beautiful, and he was overwhelmed with the feelings of wonder and gratitude, mixed with desperation and delirium, that coursed through him.
Had they done enough? Only time would tell. He hitched his plaid over his shoulders and hunkered down on the edge of the hill, watching the white curtain float away and reveal the forest, their forest. He was joined soon by his mother, and she took his hand as they watched the remnants of snowy clouds scuttle away from view.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to the many people who have encouraged me and championed my work throughout the writing process. To those on social media who have retweeted, commented, liked, and followed: you have provided many a pick-me-up. Those little measures of attention can mean a lot when you're struggling to get through a tough spot in your work.
Thank you to those who agreed to be beta readers and gave me the benefit of their input, impressions, and thoughtful expertise: Cathy, Gill, Tonya, Sarah, Rooske, and Kindra. And to the first reader, who gave even more, thank you.
Thank you to Claire Rudy Foster, my editor, whose incisive and laser-like commentary made editing almost a joy this time around.
Thank you to the Masterminds, the writing dates, the Monday GSD club, the Gaelic hangers-on, and all those unique, wonderful people I play with, both in Portland and around the world. Whenever I need a kick in the pants to readjust my mindset, I head for a Portland coffee shop to be reinvigorated. My favorites include The Clearing Cafe, NW Coffeehouse, Tabor Bread, Oui Presse, and Maplewood Coffee & Tea.
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About the Author
Margaret Pinard has spent her first few decades traveling the globe in search of adventures to incorporate into her writing, including living in the lands of the Celts, the cities of European fashion, and several dolce far niente Mediterranean cultures.
Her favorite genre is historical fiction, and she especially delights in fiction that makes you feel like you've been transported to a different time and place. Her first novel is Memory's Hostage. Her second, Dulci's Legacy, grew out of her first NaNoWriMo attempt in 2012. The Keening is the first in a new series called Remnants. She resides in Portland, OR.
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