Little Bird Lands

by Karen McCombie

  “Dr Spicer! I’m here!” I call out, though with the wind’s walloping strength I’m being blown back and forward and sideways as I try to dismount and keep hold of Pip, and so no words, I think, will reach the struggling lady and Easter inside.

  “Hello!” I hear Will’s mother boom in her loud, friendly voice as she jumps down from the gig and bursts straight in through the door with no pause. “My name’s Agnes Beaton, ma’am, and I’m here to help…”

  I’ll surely get myself inside to help too, just as soon as I can get Pip unhitched and into the earthen-brick stable next to the low-slung house. But again, the forceful, jousting wind is out to confound and confuse me, playing with me like a cat plays with a half-dead mouse. The cut on my hand opens and bleeds again as I struggle to keep my balance and unfasten the thick leather straps and buckles and set the pony free from the now rocking, tilting gig that threatens to tip clean over.

  “Here!” yells a voice in my ear. “Hold this!”

  And I find that I have the reins of a grey-muzzled mule pushed into my hand, and that I myself am being pushed to the side by Will.

  But I am grateful for his actions and his energy, and while he takes over my wrestlings with the trappings of the cart, I grab both Pip and the mule by their head harnesses and hold tight, though the tossing of their strong necks near wrenches my wrists from my arms.

  “Go!” Will shouts just as I worry that my weak hand can’t keep a grip of Pip half a moment longer.

  We both run the animals to the stable, where I pull aside the wooden door of it and we haul them into the gloom. I tie Pip to a post by one wall, while Will looks around, spies a post by the opposite wall, and fastens his mule to it. At least they are far enough away not to kick each other in their panic. And now we must get out before the foam-mouthed creatures kick us.

  As I fasten the door tight shut on them, I turn and finally take a proper look at what terrible mischief is happening in the sky.

  The bank of dark grey that rises up from the horizon – it has a blacker shape forming inside it now.

  “It’s a tornado!” Will shouts in my ear, holding me tight by the arm. “It’s going to touch down!”

  As the moving, shifting funnel fixes on the ground in the all-too-near distance, I feel the rushing swoop of air still for just a second.

  A second where I can clearly hear a baby’s frail cry of life in the midst of the storm’s madness…

  The sounds in the busy dining room are of cutlery chinking against plates, of polite chatter – and Will’s storytelling.

  “That was the very minute you were born, Franny, when the tornado came down, down, down and the tip of it crashed into the ground,” says Will, bouncing the baby on his knee in time with each dramatic word.

  Franny, tiny scrap that she is, named after the father she’ll never know, has her blue eyes wide and fixed on Will’s face. We are all of us quite mad for her, but perhaps I the most. Is she not another girl born too soon, in a storm, just as I was?

  And like me, here she is, hale and hearty. She is exactly eleven weeks old and on her first adventure, taking a trip to the bustling town of St Paul. My little Sugar Moon I call her, for being born in the month of April.

  Easter – savouring the last of her sugared honey biscuit – pulls a face at me, amused and charmed by Will’s devotion to Dr Spicer’s child.

  “Lucky for you the winds turned and the tornado headed away east from us,” Will carries on, “or a wee thing like you might have been taken up, up, up into the twister, like this! Whee!”

  Will lifts the baby clear up into the air.

  “Hey!” Easter calls out.

  “Don’t frighten her, Will!” I add to my friend’s protective warning.

  “Ist, Little Bird! She loves it!” He laughs as Franny gurgles and wriggles.

  “What makes you so sure about that, Will Beaton?” I ask him, pushing aside the empty plate in front of me now that I have finished my own biscuit.

  “Well, look how she’s smiling,” he says, clearly delighted.

  “She’s not smiling – she’s pulling a face,” Easter points out.

  “Yes, the poor child’s probably troubled with wind,” I add.

  “Och, you’re just jealous, Bridie,” Will says lightly to me. “Franny obviously likes me more than she likes either of you two.”

  “You think we’re jealous of you?” I say, pretending to choke at the very idea, while Easter throws her head back and laughs. “That’s like saying a fine horse such as Sultan is jealous of a dirt-grubbing gopher!”

  I cannot say how fond I am of this merry bickering and teasing. Oh, how I have missed it!

  “Don’t you listen to them, Franny!” Will orders the rosebud-lipped babe, who stares at him hard as he lowers her back down.

  Others are staring too. Fellow customers here in the dining room look upon Will with differing opinions, I think; the ladies smiling with melting hearts to see a young lad so caring to one so small, while several of the men scowl, as if Will is a fool to do a woman’s work when two girls sit right by him.

  “You know, Little Bird has never been kind to me, Franny,” he jokes, jiggling the cooing child. “There was a time when I waved and waved to her from the top of a hill on an island, but she kept on sailing away…”

  I freeze at those words of his. The memory of escaping from Tornish and having to leave Will and so many folk behind to an unknown future still cuts me deep.

  “And it was the same again when she set off from Glasgow,” he cheerfully continues. “Can you believe she didn’t have the ship stopped and turned right around?”

  Yes, he has already confirmed it; when the Ailsa Craig took its leave from Scotland with Father, Lachlan and myself onboard, I did not imagine that I saw Will waving at me… He was standing by my sister Effie on the flatbed cart, his arms windmilling in my direction. His family were newly arrived in Glasgow and had been at the Anchor Line ticket office trying to decide what their overseas destination should be.

  And I can only give thanks that we did not miss each other here in Minnesota, though that was a close call. I am so very happy that Will’s parents have changed their minds about setting off further west now they know my family is settled in the district of Hopetoun. In fact Mr Beaton is at this moment toiling alongside Father, Lachlan and the neighbouring farmer, all helping build our new lumber house.

  It is painfully disappointing, however, to find out that Will has no news of what became of Ishbel and Effie. In the confusion of the crowds at the harbour, he was quickly parted from my sister and the rest of our farewell party…

  As Dr Spicer often says, it may be hoped that modern wonders like electricity and better medicine will improve and save the lives of folk in the future. I just hope too that there will come a day when someone invents a means by which loved ones will never be lost to one another, no matter where in the world they may be…

  “And Little Bird didn’t even want me to come with you all today!” I hear Will prattle on to the baby.

  Easter smirks my way when she hears that fake self-pitying comment.

  “Look, it’s not that I didn’t want you to come with us, Will – we’re glad of your company. We just didn’t need you to come,” I try to explain. “It’s Father I’m cross with, not you. Dr Spicer and Easter and I hardly required an escort to ‘protect’ us!”

  “Aw, it’s just because he cares about you so much,” Will replies, turning his face to me. His grin is cheeky and his raised eyebrows are knowing.

  “Stop that!” I tell him off.

  Will just grins all the wider. I understand his meaning quite clearly; he is certain that Father is smitten with Dr Spicer and will have none of it when I tell him again and again that they are just friends, as he and I are.

  Oh, but I’d forgotten how infuriating he could be!

  “Right, that’s done. Our bill is paid,” I hear Dr Spicer suddenly announce as she strides over to us, picking up the cradleboard from where she
leant it against the wall.

  Putting her arms through the two leather straps of it, the doctor expertly hoists the birchbark board up on to her shoulders and back, and waits while Easter whisks the baby from Will and carefully slots her into the beadwork embroidered bag that is fastened to it. I quickly help tuck Franny into her cosy cocoon lined with the softest rabbit fur – Jean’s gift to Dr Spicer before we all left Hawk’s Point.

  “Let’s go!” Dr Spicer announces, completely blind to – or unbothered by – the renewed stares of the other customers, who have probably never seen a respectable white woman stride about St Paul with a baby in a Chippewa cradleboard.

  All their jaws appear to hang open, as if a shoal of herring watches us make our way out of the tinkling-belled door.

  “So, the instructions say that the mansion house is in this direction,” says Dr Spicer, weaving in and out of the folk that mill this way and that, some calm and clear-eyed locals, some new arrivals that must have just stepped or stumbled off one of the many magnificent riverboats moored here after churning their enormous circular paddles up the wide Mississippi river. These newcomers gawp at the noise and chaos of the new town that is being frantically built about them, just as we have done since we disembarked from the stagecoach that brought us here earlier.

  Who knows what has brought so many new arrivals to St Paul, what hopes and dreams they might have. But I know our reason; it so happens that the phenomenally rich gentleman who owns most of the riverboats – as well as the Minnesota Stage Company – is one Mr James C. Burbank. I have only very recently found out about his existence, not being previously aware of him in our particular corner of the state.

  I have also found out that Mr James C. Burbank is not satisfied with simply being rich and well-respected; he also wants to show the good people of the territory that he is an extremely cultured man. He wants to be admired for his taste, not just in the mansion he has had built and furnished overlooking the town, but by showing his interest and patronage of the arts. And as a man of the modern age, he has chosen to show an exhibition of a revolutionary style of photography at his house this afternoon. Attending this exhibition will be state dignitaries, fellow business magnates, plenty of other fancy folk I suppose – and me.

  “You have your invitation, Bridie?” Dr Spicer checks after we have gradually wended our way uphill for some time, passing grander and grander houses and gardens at every turn.

  “I do,” I reply, patting my skirt pocket as we finally find ourselves looking across vast lawns and trees to a house on its own at the crest of the hill.

  I can scarcely believe that I have been included in this gathering at all, but I have the gilt-edged, thick-papered invitation to prove it, along with the explanatory letter Jakob Wahle sent with it. The letter was addressed simply to: “Little Bird, care of the Post Office, Hopetoun, Minnesota”. It got to me with little trouble. (If only ALL letters could find their recipients so easily, wouldn’t that be a fine thing?) It read:

  Mr James C. Burbank is kindly displaying many of my ‘Combination Printing’ portraits and landscapes.

  Your portrait is his particular favourite, and when he found out you live just a half-day’s journey north by stagecoach, he was quite determined that you come, as guest of honour!

  To be guest of honour – truthfully, it fills me with as much dread as it does excitement, considering the events that unfolded after the last time I was singled out for such special treatment back at the mine manager’s house in Hawk’s Point.

  “Is that it?” asks Easter, pointing to the remarkable-looking, three-storey house, one that would sit very well in the most fashionable neighbourhoods of New York or Glasgow. It is quite awash with arched windows and ornamental turrets and what seems like an excessive amount of porches.

  “I should think it is,” says Dr Spicer with a nod.

  “I bet Miss Kitty would’ve liked to see such a fancy place as this!” Will adds, as we start up the long drive to the big house.

  “I bet she would not care for it at all,” I reply, remembering that Will has not quite forgotten (or forgiven) the spoilt, rich girl that she once was.

  But the truth is, Miss Kitty has no interest in going anywhere but Hopetoun these days. She is happy at the farm, and happy working at Mrs Campbell’s drapery store, where she impresses the customers with her pert English accent.

  “So, are you ready, Bridie?” Dr Spicer turns and asks me as we see some suited gentlemen ahead of us being greeted at the front door, just as their glossy carriage and prancing horses are driven away by a liveried driver.

  “No,” I reply, feeling my heart start to race.

  “Well, take a deep breath and remember—”

  “There is nothing that can stop me doing whatever I set my mind to!” I finish for her, hoping my heart doesn’t burst out of my chest as, with a shaking hand, I hold out my invitation to the gentlemanly servant at the door (a butler, or footman, perhaps?)

  I am in a little of an agitated state as we are ushered inside the mansion. The buzzing chatter of the milling crowd in the large room we are shown into feels almost as if there is a fog of bees about me, and I struggle to take in the beautifully dressed men and women, the mirror-panelled walls, the layered chandeliers, the many framed photographs displayed on their tall wooden stands.

  “Little Bird! You are here!”

  Suddenly my good hand is lifted – and kissed, would you believe?

  “Mr Wahle! I— We— Hello!” I say in a stumbling fashion.

  “I am so pleased you could come,” says the photographer, looking very smart in a chocolate-coloured suit and waistcoat.

  He appears both delighted and quite beside himself, as he should do. From a hard-working but undoubtedly poorly paid travelling tintype salesman, he has elevated himself to something quite splendid. An artist, no less.

  “Hello, Mr Wahle. I’m Dr Stephanie Spicer, friend of Bridie’s – Little Bird’s – family,” says the doctor, introducing herself since I seem to be unable to. “And this is Easter and Will, also friends of the family…”

  “Ah, yes! I recall seeing you in Hopetoun, Miss Easter, on the day that peace was declared,” says the photographer, making my friend smile in surprise as she finds her own hand kissed.

  Then he turns his attention to the youngest of our group.

  “And this little one?” Mr Wahle laughs as he plays peekaboo at Franny in her cradleboard.

  “My daughter,” the doctor explains. “Now which gentleman is Mr Burbank?”

  Dr Spicer’s eyes are bright; I know that offering to accompany me here today was a kindness to Father who was too busy back at the farm to come away. But Dr Spicer has reasons of her own for wanting to meet Mr James C. Burbank. He and other wealthy gentlemen of the city are talking of the possibility of a university being built in St Paul. She would like to converse with him about whether that will include a medical school I think. One that will be happy to train women I have no doubt, and might require an experienced female physician to teach them!

  “I am not sure where exactly Mr Burbank is at the moment,” Mr Wahle replies, looking round at the crowds. “But for now, let me show you your portrait, Little Bird! I have just been told that there is a group here very taken with it. They are newly arrived from Italy! Come…”

  And so I find myself drawn forward, the sea of people parting as Mr Wahle ushers us towards the largest of the photographic portraits, set on an easel in the middle of the vast and bustling room.

  “Look at you, Bridie!” I am vaguely aware of Easter saying with her usual joyful laugh of surprise.

  Equally, I am only vaguely aware of the fancily dressed folk – the Italian group Mr Wahle mentioned – that stand closest to the framed portrait. The two women and the man who holds a baby in his arms turn as I come closer, and kindly step aside to let me see myself.

  And there I am; or a version of me. A girl lost in thoughts and dreamings, set against a backdrop of prairie grass and Minnesota
skies. But the sight of it is so strangely, wonderfully familiar. For Mr Wahle’s photographic image is so very like the sketch that Samuel Mitford once drew of me long ago and far away in Scotland…

  “Little Bird!” Will’s urgent voice catches my attention.

  Before I can ask him what the matter is, I feel a gentle hand rest upon my arm. Turning, I see that one of the ladies of the Italian party is gazing intently at me, her light-coloured eyes pooling with tears.

  The elegantly dressed young woman is like a painting herself, her high cheek-boned face and neat black hair visible below her daintily perched hat with its cascade of ribbons and silk flowers.

  But then my heart nearly stops as I stare at her, as her face becomes known to me. For – rather than a painting – didn’t Father always compare my striking eldest sister to some statue of a Greek goddess from antiquity.

  “Oh, Bridie… Bridie!” Ishbel whispers my name as if she has seen a spirit.

  “Are you truly real? How can this be?” another voice adds, laughing, sobbing. Effie. It is Effie!

  But I am no spirit, no ghost, no will-o’-the-wisp.

  Shock may have temporarily stolen my words away, but I quickly throw my arms around both my sisters so they can know I am flesh and I am blood and I am theirs now and always…

  Once upon a time, in a wee box bed in a snug stone house, three young sisters slept.

  Though in truth only the elder two girls slept soundly, tossing in their nightly meanderings, blissfully unaware of the sharp elbows and knees they inflicted on the littlest sister, who herself slept – fitfully – between them.

  My, how far we three have come from those quiet days on our small Scottish island where we expected to live our whole lives! And now I can barely believe my luck, that I have Ishbel and Effie standing beside me in the warm June sunshine, here on Clarice’s Hill in Minnesota.

  What twists and turns we have all taken to get here! My lost letters never reached either of my sisters because fate took them far from where they expected to be. Effie left Glasgow after her mistress’s death and went to join Ishbel … but not in London. Samuel’s work there fell through and instead he took another commission in Italy. The pleasant party of Effie, Ishbel, Samuel and Caroline – along with Patch the old terrier – set off for Europe.