Redlegs

by Chris Dolan

  I pray that your education of me will be ample to sustain me through the hard choices that no doubt lie in wait of me in my new land.

  Let me say in writing what I could not pronounce in speech. I do not blame you. You have given your lives to me. Everything I am I learned from you both. I will endeavour always to follow your teachings and your fine example. I will write as you have taught me. Perhaps distance will dispel the silence between us, and once I am gone you will find the explanations for our exile that you could not speak to my person.

  I will not let go of the hope that I will return, though you have never encouraged the prospect of it. Every prayer I utter will be to that end. Why should the God to whom we have dedicated our lives sunder us now?

  I hear you weep, mother, and am glad of it. The next time I will hear your tears I shall be holding you in my arms and the weeping will be cries of joy at my return.

  Stay well, I beg you. Care closely for one another, as we girls shall care and guard ourselves. Stay well so that I might see you again, though I will be less a maiden and you both old.

  Diana

  VII

  Early on an overcast morning at the end of August, not quite four years after her own crossing, Elspeth stood on the bluff and looked out over the ocean, eager to catch the glimpse of a passing ship.

  The women would of course disembark at Carlisle Bay, but she hoped that the absence of a decent trade wind might force the ship to tack close by the eastern coast of the island. It was bright the day she herself had first caught sight of this island, and windless like this morning, so that Captain Douglas had sailed close in to land, possibly within sight of North Point, though the place was unknown to her then. About mid-morning a ship did appear on the horizon. A large, slow-moving three-masted clipper of a type she had seen many times before docked near Bridgetown slipping subtly past the Lyric. Less elegant than the schooner she had come on, the ship sat heavily in the water, freighted to the gunwales, so that it looked like it was already scuttled and sinking into the horizon. She waved though she knew she could not be seen from such a distance. Then she returned to the house to see off the cane-wagons which would bring the women and girls tomorrow.

  It would not be a pleasant journey for them. There was only one carriage at the Coak Estate fit for a body to travel in but it could not contain so many people. The road from Bridgetown was rough and the poor ladies would be tossed around on the planks of the three carts with a jolting that not even the Atlantic could have inflicted on them. Elspeth would make up for the inconvenience by preparing a hearty welcome. An elderly cutter who had been with Lord Coak since the earliest days could still remember a tune or two on an old patched bagpipe, and he would play them in – a jovial march to rid them of their aches and pains. A roster had been drawn up to allow each of the girls to wash in a tent especially mounted at the back of the house. A generous meal was prepared for them by Annie and Dainty – the only one of Mr. Overton’s servants to survive the storm of ’31 and the infections that came in its wake. Elspeth, hearing her old housegirl’s name in passing, had asked Albert to bring her to Northpoint, which he did within the month. She had been delighted to see Dainty again – a real person from those golden days in Bridgetown. She’d run to her when the black girl stepped in from the kitchen with Annie. Dainty had not run to her, but simply smiled. She had, however, brought her old mistress a present: the dress that George had bought her for her debut.

  “I foun’ it on Tuesday’s back, but it too small fuh her. Anyway, she dyin’ o’ the pestilen’.”

  “Did you find the tunic and slippers that go with it?”

  “Didn’ see no slipper, mu’m.”

  The wagons trundled up through the trees towards the house – William McNeill playing an air he claimed to have written himself, entitled Mr. Patterson’s Voyage to Darien. Elspeth came out to see the girls leaning out perilously from their open-ended carts. Their hair glinted gold and auburn in the sun and their first words, caught by the wind, took wing and danced around her ears.

  “Hallo!”

  “There’s the wumman!”

  “Lookit the fancy hoose!”

  Their plain burr spoke of home and honest guilelessness, words and shouts sang of lapping of lochs and the smir over rowan woods; they echoed the songs of her mother, and the laughter of her sisters. Not until that moment had she felt a single pang of homesickness. She remembered Shaw’s father – no matter how much the Captain reviled him, Elspeth could not help but like him. Still, yearning for that old dreich home was a nonsense. Nothing could befall her in this land that would be worse than the dreary trudge of her old life. But for a heartbeat, as the trio of sugar-wagons rattled up the drive, as if fresh from a mild Lowland morning, she remembered shade and peat fires and the shelter of home.

  The wagons girned to a halt on the stony path, and the hallos and shouts stopped dead with them. Elspeth counted twenty women, and checked her tally twice over. The weary cautious travellers stared back at her. And she recalled something else: it’s as weel t’ gang as tae get there. Her father had always said so, along with other dire warnings about knowing your place and never getting above yourself. The women’s hunched shoulders and furtive glances reminded her why she had so gleefully waved goodbye to the land of her birth when the Alba slipped into the Atlantic.

  The girls ranged in colouring from oaty to ruddy, their locks pale as the bark of birches and dark as rowan leaves at the turn of winter. Freed from the wagon they stood there eyeing the ground and shuffling. Until the last of them descended, a woman a little taller than the rest, wearing a clean linen gown, the only arrival bedecked with millinery, a simple bonnet that gave her a religious air. She made her way to the head of the queue forming haphazardly in front of Elspeth, and turned to address the women.

  “None of you drowned in the ocean, but perhaps your manners did. Let us introduce ourselves. You say your name, and ‘Thank you, Mistress Baillie’.” She turned and gave Elspeth a little bow. “Diana Moore, Ma’m, at your service. Please excuse us – we have had a long journey and perhaps are not at our most mannered.”

  Elspeth had not considered how the women ought to address her. She had no proper position in this house; was merely a guest like them, albeit dwelling at the owner’s personal request and expense. “I have not long made the journey myself and remember how it empties the mind.”

  Diane Moore introduced the women one by one.

  “Mary Fairweather. Seventeen years. Plenty of experience of the fields… Eliza Morton. Twenty-three years old. Has had some experience of service in the Laird’s scullery, but also practised in agricultural work. A curtsy, I think, Eliza?”

  Eliza, a sharp-featured woman with bright, peering eyes, curtsied grudgingly and moved quickly aside.

  Diana listed all the names, like a litany of saints. Twenty girls in total. Mary Fairweather and Eliza Morton followed by Mary Riach and Mary Murray. Mary and Margaret Lloyd. Martha Glover. Sarah Alexander. Jean MacNeill. Jean Homes. Bessy Riddoch. Moira Campbell. Jean and Mary Malcolm. Mary Miller. Susan Millar. Rhona Douglas. Elizabeth Johnstone. Martha Turner. And Diana Moore herself.

  “Aren’t there four short?” Elspeth asked Diana.

  “One may yet arrive, ma’m. Another was inconvenienced before we set sail from Scotland. Misses Lorna Johnstone and Elspet McLean sadly took ill en route.”

  “Poor mites.”

  “They are enjoying at this moment a welcome even greater than this, ma’m, if that were possible.”

  Elspeth led the twenty successful pioneers into the house, as a thunder shower threatened. The table was set and fresh mauby made. Elspeth busied herself between the kitchen with Annie and Dainty and serving the nervous incomers in the dining room. Some of them opened up a little, having had a wash and a refreshment. Elspeth glad for the bustle and chatter they caused in this hinterland that had been so deathly quiet. The girls lowered their eyes whenever she came near, save for Diana and Mary Miller, being older and
evidently having earned some authority over the others during the sailing. They volunteered to help Elspeth and the maids. After they had eaten, all were dutifully respectful of Elspeth’s rendering of Scots songs, and the “Out damn spot” soliloquy of Lady Macbeth. Some, as the night wore on, shed a tear or two for families or sweethearts thousands of miles away. One girl – the Fairweather lass who, scrubbed clean, shone moon-like and meek – became bold enough to sing.

  “I’m wearing away, Jean,

  Like snow when it’s thaw, Jean,

  I’m wearing away tae the land o’ the Leal.

  There’s nae sorrow there, Jean,

  Neither cauld nor care, Jean

  The day’s always fair, in the land o’ the Leal.”

  Elspeth smiled encouragingly at the rude rendition and squeezed a tear from her eye in solidarity with the sentimental girls as they mournfully chorused “Lochaber no more!”

  Diana and Mary confided in Elspeth the strengths and weaknesses of the contingent – those who were likely to slack, and those who would work hard; the delicate lasses prone to sickness, and the hearty and thrawn ones; the girls likely to have an eye for their male associates, and the God-fearing decent women.

  “Few can read or write, alas, Miss Elspeth. I have been using the excuse of letters to teach them. I hope I may find time to continue to do so.”

  “You most certainly shall, Diana.”

  When night came down, and the girls began to tire, Diana, following Annie Oyo holding aloft a blazing torch, led the group out through the trees and shrubs to their new homes. Elspeth stood on the porch and surveyed her now complete community. Some skipped behind their leaders, peering into the darkness of their strange new world; others hung their heads, walking towards long prison sentences.

  At the far end of her herb garden – now neatly organised into flowerbeds, vegetable patches and herb plots – sat the long-serving workers of Coak. The Endmondson family, who rented a narrow rig of land from Lord Coak on the southern side of the estate, sat a-staring from the shadows, to show their loyalty on this grand day. The white labourers, in their hodden grey, faces scratched and dusty from work, stood silently, smoking with Shaw. There was a brawny black man – a more gnarled version of Henry. Five or six younger negro men – day-workers – and a gaggle of children stood in the shade of the bluff. The whole group was muted, veiled in the smoke of cheroots and pipes.

  Early in the morning, Captain Shaw made his formal address to his new recruits.

  “There is a war going on in the heavens, and we are its reflection on earth. We are the footsoldiers – yea, even poor uneducated women – not only of God but, perhaps more importantly, of Progress. For Progress is the Lord’s gleaming sword, lighting the darkness.”

  The women hung their heads. More, Elsepth thought, to conceal their bafflement at what their overseer was talking about than in humility. Sweet Sarah Alexander stared hard at him as if she might get the hang of it from his carved features. Mary Fairweather’s tresses shone through the dowdy cloud of fustian jackets, dingy dresses and oaty skins, her plain face made plainer by the Captain’s flowery words.

  “‘Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee. And I will make of thee a great nation.’” No matter how much vigour Shaw gave his words they fell like dead birds from the branch. Only Diana seemed to be moved by his speech, giving him her full attention, nodding subtly at every pause. “You have been chosen, each and every one of you. Have pride in what you bring to this New World. The Scot is the most dependable of the Races.”

  “Aye,” Elspeth heard Susan Millar mutter to Bessy Riddoch, “tae talk shite.”

  “You are staunch, but not obstinate; adept without being wily. With God’s grace and good planning, you will find here men of other races appropriate to your own natures: Saxon and Nordic, who will compensate for your deficiencies and together with whom we shall build a new nation.”

  “Christ, Susie, we’re in for a servicin’.”

  “I’ll hae Elspet’s and Lorna’s too. I wouldna have them die for nought.”

  “You will work hard,” Shaw continued through the sniggers at the back of the group, “but I promise you a fine future. Where the battle is being lost in the old world we will restore the advantage…”

  Shaw droned on for nearly an hour until the assembled company were dead on their feet.

  “Cane cuttin’ canny be ony worse than this.”

  But there was indeed worse to come. Captain Shaw lined up his new recruits and inspected each in turn. He asked them their age, interrogated them on their working lives to date, then pawed at their arms and thighs, checking muscle, then teeth, and finally holding a burning torch close to the women’s eyes. Mary Murray, the girl who was already squinting in the light of the sun, cried out when the flame touched her lashes.

  “Watch out wi’ your caundle, Captain,” Susan called out.

  “Ach, let him be,” another shouted. “If e’er a lassie needed a glint in her ee.”

  Shaw assigned each girl to either a domestic or agricultural duty or a combination of the two. No discussion was permitted and he did not for a moment reconsider after he had made a decision. These were verdicts to last the full length of the women’s lives. Elspeth shuddered at the Captain’s gruffness, but there could be no doubt he knew his business.

  Mary Miller was appointed head housekeeper; Diana Moore was responsible for crockery and cutlery, and commissioned to supervise all the women outwith the house. None of the domestic staff would have the luxury of working in the big house all year round. All would be needed at harvest – a rotation of three in different parts of the estate in any given month. Elspeth had informed Shaw of Diana’s plan to teach the girls writing by helping them with letters home. Although the time he allotted to letter-writing was not generous, the Captain agreed to have their dispatches sent home from Bridgetown.

  The girls worked for only a few hours on their first day, before returning to their shacks to wash and eat. Elspeth came down from her room and accompanied them, making sure none of them got lost.

  She was not the best person to be their guide. Elspeth had never visited the workers’ shacks, segregated from the house by lines of jacaranda trees and several huge figs. Diana Moore, after only one day at Northpoint, knew the route better than she did. On coming through the trees into the clearing south of the cove and west of the house, Elspeth was amazed at what she saw. A cluster of tiny brick buildings, dun-coloured and cold-looking, sat squat and glum under in the evening light. Each chattel-house consisted of only one room, no chimneys or windows, just four grey stone walls and a stone roof, a simple wooden door. Their new homes contrasted starkly with the liveliness of the girls as they walked, unperturbed, to the hovels they would spend every other night of their lives.

  Susan, Bessy, Rhona Douglas and Eliza Morton walked in a group around Dainty.

  “D’ye see in colour, Dainty?”

  “Course I do.”

  “Can I touch your hair? You can touch mine.”

  “I’ve touched mo’ white ladies’ hair then ever I wanted to.”

  “Is it just as spikey down there, Dainty?”

  “Wheesht, Bessy. You’re richt bonnie, Dainty. Did ye ken that?”

  “I can’ mek yuh out, what yuh aksin’?”

  “Whit?”

  Captain Shaw had a good eye for which lass would settle well with which man, and permitted some minutes dallying during the working day to allow them to become acquainted each with the other. Conversely, whenever he saw an association being struck up between two parties wholly inimical to each other, he intervened, and saw to it that their shifts and duties did not coincide. Slowly, some good liaisons were founded. But not without a little heartbreak and one or two catastrophes along the way. The process, to Diana’s sorrow, was hindered by the absence of a minister – and the distressingly little time spent on matters religious generally.

 
It was Diana who had the idea of communal evening eating. Allowing simple labourers and maids into the big house for reasons other than cleaning or mending was at first preposterous to Captain Shaw, and not much less so to Elspeth herself. Diana insisted that it would allow the Captain to address his workforce on a daily basis.

  “And wouldn’t it give our girls a chance to talk civilly with the better class of hinds and orramen, allow them to meet respectably and pursue compatibilities? All under supervision, in full view of the community.”

  Such gatherings would also allow for vigilance over those romantic alliances that could only end in disaster. The factor was not completely convinced of her arguments, but Elspeth saw the sense in Diana’s idea, and the evening teas that were to last for a generation were begun within the month. Every night, all those not deployed in duties elsewhere, sat around a large square table, specially made by Robert Butcher and his men, from the birch trees Albert’s father had apparently planted seventy years before behind the wild little forest running along the northern coast. Elspeth sat at one end of the sturdy table; Shaw at the other. Annie and Dainty, with the help of the Scots scullery lasses, prepared a meal of eddoes, coo-coo mash, chicken when there was enough to go round, and mauby. The Captain timed the meal, ensuring it lasted no more than forty-five minutes.

  Shaw used the events for the purpose Diana had suggested. He perceived who was fiery of spirit and would settle better with a meeker partner. He predicted – in terms that gave Diana cause to blush – which men were likely to be productive of seed, and which women physically capable of bearing and weaning numerous offspring. He lectured Diana on the merits of matching males of Germanic origin with women who had some Gaelic in their past. The efficient and the spiritual would make for a peaceful marriage, and balanced progeny. So too, those men of English stock would fare better with women whose names suggested a more northerly east-coast ancestry – both were reliable but would complement each other in matters of fidelity, and in times of difficulty.