by Fiona Monroe
Instead, Baille nam Breac was nothing but a collection of long, low huts built from dry-packed stones that must have been gathered from the surrounding land, with roofs of thatched straw and heather reaching almost to the ground. Most had no windows, and only a flap of leather to serve for a door. There was no kind of paving, the huts were built directly onto the mossy grass, clustered loosely around a salmon smoking rack and pig sties. The smell of kippering fish combined with the pungent odour of pigs and, above all, the rich reek of peat smoke.
Old women in dark woollen gowns, with shawls over their heads and faces tanned like leather, came forward to greet them. Young girls, dressed more gaily in lighter check - some with loose flowing, uncovered hair - had faces made fresh and pretty in the sun and wind. There seemed to be half-naked children running around everywhere, but few men. The men, she supposed, were out working the dreils.
All eyes, from the rheumy gaze of the crooked old man on a stool by the smoking rack to the round, bright stare of a tiny two-year-old, were fixed upon Bridie. The road, such as it was, ended here. They were, it would seem, at the very ends of the earth.
She felt ridiculously out of place in her simple, elegant white muslin gown, new bonnet and decent walking-boots, like a lady come amongst savages. She was no lady, she was just a simple farrier's daughter in her one best outfit, but she came from another world.
One old woman came forward out of the huddle of curious, but silent watchers. Her face was wrinkled like a walnut and tanned brown as leather, a face more weathered that Bridie had ever seen, with bright blue eyes piercing through wrinkled lids. She was a tiny figure, swathed in black and plaid, but she moved nimbly enough.
"Mother Mairi," said Angus, taking Bridie's hand and putting into the old woman's withered one, "this is my wife. This is Bridie."
"Oh, Angus," the old woman wavered, in a high thin voice that was like the Highland wind. "Where did you find such a beautiful Bridie?"
And that was the start, to Bridie's intense mortification, of her being known as Brìghde Bhòidheach, Beautiful Bridie; not a nickname calculated to win her favour with the other young girls of Baille nam Breac, even though she was married already. Bridie was not personally vain - she struggled with pride, but hers was all invested in her intellectual gifts - and indeed she felt her beauty had brought her nothing but trouble and sorrow up to this point in her life.
But the pronouncements of Mother Mairi were not by any means to be disregarded. Bridie soon learned that Mairi was the oldest woman in the township, had had fourteen children and seen ten of them grow up, was related somehow to almost everyone, and was looked upon as a repository of the wisdom of ancients. She was illiterate, and could not speak a word of English, but she was regarded as an infallible source of knowledge.
Introduced to Mother Mairi, and named by her, Bridie found that she had been initiated into Baille nam Breac. The other women flocked around her, introducing themselves in a confusing babble, until Angus held up his hand and said, "Whist, all of you. Give my wife a little room to breathe. Shall I make a guess? There's a ceilidh planned for tonight."
The women fell back, and most looked abashed.
Mother Mairi said, "Aye, we've been waiting and watching ever since you went down the glen."
"I thought as much. You'd all better go and get things ready, in that case, while I show Bridie around her new home."
#
Bridie had, when first stepping down from the cart, cast her eyes around looking for a dwelling of superior appearance that might be the tacksman's house. She could not deceive herself for long. All the huts that made up the township had quite clearly been built by the hands of their occupants, from whatever materials they could scavenge from the ground. No stone mason, carpenter or professional thatcher had ever made the long trek up the glen to this lonely spot, let alone any architect.
Angus led her, his big hand gentle on her elbow, to the largest of these buildings. Like the others, this house looked to be almost all roof. The thatch of dried reeds and moss reached almost to the ground, with a small opening to serve as a door covered by a curtain of animal hide.
Angus lifted this flap, and gestured that she should enter.
Even Bridie had to stoop to pass under the low, rough lintel. She passed from the brightness of a summer's day into almost complete darkness; a fuggy, hot darkness, stinking of peat smoke and something distinctly animal. Bridie knew the smell of warm horseflesh, and it was not something she expected to find inside a house.
As her eyes adjusted, she saw that she had stepped right into what must be the central living area of the blackhouse, a narrow room under a black-beamed ceiling open to the thatch above. Right in the middle of the rush-strewn floor, protected only by a ring of stones, a peat fire glowed low. Although on this warm summer's day it was reduced to embers, steady wafts of smoke drifted from it and made the air in the little room thick and pungent. A great iron cooking-pot was suspended over the fire by means of a chain and a bar that hung from the roof rafter above.
The low outer walls were bare stone, blackened to ebony by years of peat smoke, and the room was bounded on each narrow side by wooden partitions that did not reach to the ceiling. The furniture was sparse but surprisingly good; a wooden armchair, a dresser of carved oak displaying fine china plates and silver tankards, a bookcase as tall as the slope of the ceiling filled with cloth and leather-bound volumes, a small table stacked with papers that evidently served Angus as a desk, and a long wooden bench along the length of one wall.
"The library," said Angus proudly, indicating the bookcase.
Bridie stepped gingerly across the rushes, skirting past the fire-pit - she wondered how many girls had managed to set the hem of their gowns on fire in these houses - and peered through the gloom at the titles on the closely-packed shelves. There was Homer in Greek and Virgil in Latin, and Gibson's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the New Testament in Greek, and all of Milton and all of Shakespeare. The modern poets were well represented, including Burns, Wordsworth and even Lord Byron. Neatly arranged on a shelf of their own were the promised works in Gaelic, including a translation of the Bible, the Iliad he had mentioned, and various poets whose names she did not know. It struck her that there were no novels at all, and she wondered sadly if he disapproved of such works.
She had already read most of what was here, in fact; everything in English, anyway. She quickly consoled herself with the thought that she was a long way from knowing enough Latin, or any Greek at all, to tackle those authors in the original, so there was much to learn there. And she had never really read anything in Gaelic, only having spoken the language before. She tried not to make useless comparisons with the great library at Dunwoodie House, to which Lady Crieff had added hundreds of books of her own.
She could not see where they were expected to eat their meals. There was no table, other than the one that did service as a desk.
"It's bare of comforts now, I know that," said Angus, standing now in the middle of the room next to the fire. "I've been told it lacks a woman's touch. I'm sure you can see to that."
Bridie could say nothing. She had never seen an interior like it. She thought of the wretched cottages of the poor around Bridge of Auchtie and Kirkton, the one-roomed hovels of the farm labourers. They might have no fine furniture or plate, and no books, but at least they had a proper hearth, and paved floors, and windows. This blackhouse was a dwelling from a dark, primitive age, for all that it contained a few rich furnishings.
"This is the top of the house," he continued.
Or that was what she thought he had said. Uachdar an taighe - yes, literally 'the top of the house'. It was not an expression she had heard before, but she deduced that it must mean the living area of the blackhouse.
She wondered what the bottom of the house could possibly be like.
"And through here..." He lifted up a curtain of what looked like sacking, which hung in place of an internal door over the gap between one w
ooden partition and the outer wall, "is the cuilteach."
It was a word she did not know at all, but she soon once again gathered its meaning when she accepted his invitation to step through the sacking door into the next compartment of the blackhouse. Here, the gloom was almost total. The living area had been partly illuminated by light from the door and the low fire, but this compartment was windowless. She could see nothing until Angus came in behind her, carrying a candle.
She then saw that what she had thought was a wooden partition between the 'top of the house' and an adjacent room was in fact a large item of built-in furniture that filled the width of the hut. It was a beautifully-constructed wooden box bed, double sized, with polished hinged panels that could be shut across its open side. At present these doors were folded back, revealing a spacious but cosy-looking interior. She glimpsed a bolster and a patchwork eiderdown within.
Her marriage-bed, she realised with a rush of shock. The sight arrested her, froze her breath. She could make out nothing else in the small bedroom beyond a general impression of trunks and chairs and clothing. It was too dark, and she was too overwhelmed by the sudden reality of her situation. There, right there, she would enter into the most intimate of all congress, with a stranger, within hours.
Perhaps her new husband was conscious of this too, because he led her back out of the bedroom without a word.
"And through here, is where Beasag and Beathag live." He lifted the door-flap on the other side of the living room.
Bridie had a moment of confusion, wondering whether Beasag and Beathag were servants whose accommodation she was now to inspect.
"Am batach," he added.
She blinked. Had he really said the byre?
The next room was not dark. There was a proper door at one end, at the short end of the building; or rather an opening to the outside, barred by a wooden gate. The floor in here was pungent with the stench of livestock, explaining the odour of animal that competed throughout the atmosphere of the house with the reek of peat smoke. It was quite clearly a barn, with a feeding-trough and water-bucket its only furnishings. Involuntarily, Bridie put her hand over her mouth and nose and coughed.
"Finest Highland cattle you'll ever see," he said. "I could win prizes with them at the cattle show in Inverlannan, if I could be bothered to drive them there. Can you milk a cow?"
"I... have never done so."
"It's easy. I'll teach you, tomorrow."
"The... cattle. They live in here? In the house?"
"Oh aye. At night I bring them in, in the winter months. They're out grazing at the moment, of course. They help keep the house warm in winter."
"But... the smell?"
"Ach, it's nothing. You'll not notice it after a while. I keep the straw clean," he added, with a smile. "I'll admit, on dark winter nights, I like to hear Beasag and Beathag moving about and lowing as I sit at my books. It makes me feel like I have company."
Again, Bridie could say nothing.
"And that's it. This is your home. How do you like it?"
What could she say? She could not blurt out the truth, even if she had had the words in Gaelic to express her dismay, her horror. Her father's house was a palace compared to this dark, smoky, reeking peasant's hut, books or no; she could not think of the elegant interiors of Dunwoodie, or she would cry. She could not see how she could even begin to keep this place clean, for a start, with reeds on the floor and smoke blackening every surface.
She swallowed, then asked tentatively, "Do you have no servant?"
"Oh, aye, two of the girls cook and clean for me, but they live with their own families."
"Will I - I mean, will they continue?"
"I'd given it no thought," he said, after a pause.
She sagged in dismay. It was to be her duty to run this house, such as it was, and provide for her husband's domestic comfort; but she had no idea how she would cook anything on this primitive apparatus, a mere cauldron-like pot hanging over an open fire. There was no oven, nor did there appear to be any place to prepare food. How could she bake a pie, or even a loaf of bread? She was both ashamed of her own inadequacy, and annoyed that she had been thrown into this situation. He had given it no thought. He had given her no thought. As with the language issue, he had simply assumed she would cope.
"Anyway," he said heartily, perhaps seeing her anxiety, "the women will be preparing a great feast for us, to celebrate our marriage and welcome you to the township. Let's worry about all of that tomorrow."
Tomorrow. After tonight.
#
They had killed a stag in honour of the tacksman's wedding, and roasted it in great joints over three fire pits which the villagers had set up in a flat area just next to the township. Whole smoked salmon and big round cakes of unleavened barley-bread, which they called bonnach, and bowls of steamed kale, were the only other foodstuffs offered at the feast. They were all offered in abundance, however, and above all there was whisky. The whisky came not in bottles but whole oak barrels, from which the men - and many of the women - drew generous cupfuls.
Bridie remarked upon this, and Angus said, "Aye, best not think too hard about why we can get it straight from the distillery."
There were gales of laughter from the villagers near enough to hear this, and Bridie felt her face grow hot with confusion. She felt more and more like an outsider, as she sat at her own wedding feast.
The arrangements for the celebration were exceedingly simple. There were no tables or chairs; the women spread out rugs over the dry moss, and everyone knelt around to eat from plates laid on the ground. As befit her status, Bridie found herself seated beside Angus on a natural throne formed by a small hump in the ground, having plates full of the sweetest cuts of smoky venison, salmon and greens put before her.
She had not eaten breakfast, having been far too apprehensive about the wedding, so found she was hungry for the carved slices of juicy venison and flakes of hot fish that were put before her on a fine china plate. It seemed odd to be kneeling on heather in this impossibly remote place, eating from a plate that had been made far away in the pottery towns of England and would not have been out of place in the dining room at Dunwoodie. The villagers, she noticed, had more modest crockery of plain earthenware and wooden trenchers.
She sat on her grass throne, eating the plainly-cooked but rich fare with a silver fork from a plate on her lap, the centre of attention but also, isolated. She could feel curious eyes on her all around, but nobody spoke to her directly. Perhaps they thought she would not understand them.
In truth, as she listened to the chatter all around, her ear was becoming more attuned to the sound and rhythm of the language and she found that she was beginning to comprehend almost every word without conscious analysis and translation. Her mother had spoken nothing but Gaelic to her, while they had been alone at any rate; and now that she thought about it, she was sure their servant at the time had spoken it too. So she had spoken Gaelic every day until she had been eight years old. She supposed it was her first language. It only needed to be awoken in her mind, and she needed to acquire the vocabulary of an adult.
After everyone had had their fill of venison, and the carcass was carved to the bone, Angus rose to his feet and held up his hand. At once, the chattering ceased and all the people of the township attended to him.
"I'm not a man of many words," he said, beginning abruptly.
Bridie was not sure, even on such a short acquaintance, that this was true. She felt herself smile.
"I can only say how delighted - how proud I am to bring home this lovely bride. Brìghde NicIain, now my own Brìghde bean Aonghais, is as quick as she is fair, and I hope you will all make her welcome."
There were cheers, and a man at the back of the gathering called, "I'm sure you'll make her welcome enough, Aonghais Mhoir." This provoked a gale of coarse laughter, quite as much from the women as from the men.
Bridie felt her face flame, and a prickle of something that might have been embar
rassment or might have been excitement broke out across her skin.
Angus produced a shallow vessel that was like a small bowl or a large cup with two flat handles, and held it aloft. It was carved from wood, but rimmed in silver. Unbidden, one of the younger women ran forward with a jug and poured a pale creamy liquid into it.
Solemnly, Angus held the strange cup towards Bridie. She was uncertain of what was expected of her, but this was clearly a ritual of some significance. Angus was fixing her with those very blue eyes, and she held his gaze as slowly, she raised the cup to her lips.
The liquid was smooth and sweet and had a distinct oily tang of something she knew must be liquor, probably whisky. Bridie had almost never drunk alcohol before, as her father would not have it in the house; Dr Menzies had occasionally offered her a glass of wine, but she had never much liked the taste. She did not want to appear reluctant now, however, so after the first tentative sip, she drank a full measure.
Angus took the cup from her, tipped back his head, and drained the rest in one gulp. Then he held it high above his head again, and the villagers as a body cheered.
The unaccustomed spirit spread through Bridie in a warm tingle, and she could not help but smile too. The cup was refilled and passed between the villagers.
"The quaich," said Angus. "It's traditional."
"Yes, I thought so."
"Roses are blooming at last in that pale cheek, a bhean," he said, his matter of fact tone belying his poetic words. Or perhaps, she was simply not fully understanding him.
He had taken her hand, too, and was not releasing it.
"I am not... used to - " She had hit one of the gaps in her vocabulary. Strong liquor had hardly been an item of much discussion between her mother and her eight-year-old self. She gestured at the cup as it was handed between two old women. "Whisky," she added quickly, suddenly remembering from the earlier discussion about barrels.
