The Blackhouse Bride

by Fiona Monroe

  "I will," she said, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

  He gave her half a smile, but no kiss or touch, picked up a hoe that was leaning next to the door, and was gone.

  Left alone amidst the breakfast dishes, with no sink or bowl in evidence to wash them in, and no servant to help her - and lunch to prepare somehow on a small fire pit in the middle of what was now her only home - Bridie was engulfed by a wave of dismay close to despair. Was this really the life she had chosen?

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Bridie soon found that her initial misgivings were more than justified. In theory, she had free access to the books on her new husband's single bookcase, and his blessing to study them. In practice, life as the mistress of a blackhouse in a Highland township left her almost no time to open one.

  Not only did she have to prepare meals and clean in the most primitive conditions, she found that she was expected to lend a hand with weaving, gutting and smoking the summer salmon that the men were catching in abundance from the river, tending to the pigs and goats and cattle, and even taking care of the township children. As the tacksman's wife, the other women deferred to her and respectfully addressed her as sibh, but just as Angus worked his own 'rigs' as hard as any of the other farmers, she had to contribute to the communal female work of the township. Sitting around with a book was not a possibility. There was something to do from waking to sleep, particularly - as she gathered - in the long light days of summer.

  A quiet, pretty girl of around her own age called Mairi, who was also recently married, taught her how to cook meat and vegetables together in the same ubiquitous hanging cooking pot, by layering them, and how to bake bannocks and grill fresh salmon on a barred griddle. Bridie's new kitchen, such as it was, boasted the luxury of a second, flatter pot designed to nestle directly in the peat embers and could be used for roasting joints. She also showed her how to milk a cow.

  Mairi had been one of Angus's servants, although the word scarcely seemed to have meaning here. She had divided the work of attending to Angus's domestic comforts, for a small remuneration, with the peculiar Oighrig, and now she seemed happy to concentrate on her own new husband after giving Bridie the benefit of her advice.

  Oighrig, on the other hand, was less easy to dispense with. Oighrig kept house for her father, who rather to Bridie's surprise turned out to be Feargaidh am Fìdhlear, the old fiddle-player - he looked very old to have a daughter so young - but she did not seem to want to relinquish her position with Angus. She continued to turn up unasked and snatch work from under Bridie's nose, doing it with officious competence.

  In one way, Bridie wanted help. In another, she felt undermined and uncomfortable. After a while, she noticed that Oighrig seemed to make a particular point of being there whenever Angus was not out at the rigs, or otherwise absent. When he was not around, Oighrig was happy to let Bridie toil alone. In the mornings she could never relax, for she had to tumble out of bed and run up to the pasture to milk one of Angus's cows before Oighrig swooped in and took over breakfast. Whenever that happened, whenever she was not quick enough, she could feel waves of displeasure coming from Angus. In fact, he was silently disgruntled with her whenever he found that Oighrig was there, doing the work that he must assume that she, Bridie, was too incompetent to accomplish alone.

  Bridie had tried, as tactfully as she could, to suggest to Oighrig that she did not need her help. But Oighrig simply ignored her. The girl was minimally polite and addressed her respectfully, but paid no heed to what she said. Bridie did not want to cause a row by absolutely insisting that Oighrig leave them alone, because it seemed a ridiculous thing to create a fuss about. She also did not want to talk to Angus about it, in case Angus thought she was being foolish. If they had been living what she could not help calling in her mind a normal, civilised existence, it would be her responsibility as mistress of the house to manage the servants. She would never have considered running to her father, for instance, to complain about Peggy. But then Peggy would never, once dismissed from service, have barged into the kitchen and started making pastry.

  The only time Bridie found to read was an hour or so before bedtime, when Angus himself liked to sit in his wooden armchair and study by the light of a tallow candle. Bridie would mix him a water and whisky, then settle herself down on the rushes by the fire next to him and try to make progress on the Gaelic Bible, which she had decided she would read in its entirety before she tackled anything else. It had taken her a little while to accustom herself to the extravagant orthography of the language, and by the middle of August she was still only halfway through Exodus.

  But that hour, and what followed, made everything more bearable. Curled at Angus's feet in the near dark, peacefully puzzling her way through the Gaelic text, reading God's Word for the first time in a different language, she became unconscious of her dismal surroundings. And soon she would feel his fingers stroking and running through her hair, and his book would fall closed with a soft snap.

  When he took her into the closet-bed, and fastened the wooden doors, they were shut together in their own little world. Bridie felt that nothing could reach into it to trouble her, not even the sights and sounds of smoke and dirt and animals. The mattress was wonderfully comfortable, stuffed with wool and fragrant heather, the sheets were fine, the quilted eiderdown was soft and warm. And there, in their own little world, he made her completely his own, night after night.

  #

  On the Sabbath, much of the day was spent in going to church. It was a two-hour walk from Baille nam Breac to Scourie, the first service lasted an hour and a half, and afterwards they would visit in the village until the evening service. In winter, when the nights were dark, Angus said that they usually set off back home after the morning service.

  "I never miss a Sunday, though, unless the road is completely impassable," he said.

  "Is it often impassable?"

  "Aye, sometimes," he answered, and Bridie felt his tone was suspiciously light.

  She wondered, in fact, as she walked on his arm down the road that was scarcely more than a cattle-track across the heather - the sun shining, a breeze blowing, the heather springy underfoot - what this wild and pleasant place could possibly be like once frosts and snows set in, and darkness fell at three in the afternoon.

  This quickly became her favourite time of the week, the walk to Scourie. They were not alone - a fair proportion of the villagers, usually all of those able to make the journey, came with them - but it was still time spent getting to know Angus, who was too busy on his work most days to have much conversation with her. Then, at last, they talked of poetry and history, plays and philosophy, and even of novels; Bridie had guessed from the contents of his bookcase that Angus was not much of an admirer of the form, which did not surprise her. Few men of serious bent of mind had any time for novels. Dr Menzies, she knew, was something of an exception. Still, she found that Angus did not absolutely despise and dismiss them as a whole, and was willing to listen to her defence of the better examples.

  At least, to the extent that her vocabulary would allow her expression. She had, after a few weeks, regained unthinking fluency in the Gaelic in everyday matters, and could talk about dinner and the kale crop and Mother Mairi's bad legs without a struggle; she was conscious that she still lacked the language to discuss the potential merits of the novel as a literary medium. It would have been so very much easier to lapse into English, but she persisted with the challenge he had implicitly set her.

  Scourie, tiny and isolated though the village was, was a welcome change of scene, too. Here she could at last look at other faces, and hear other voices. She could even hear English, spoken from the pulpit; it was remarkable to her that so many of the villagers made the trek to church, without being able to understand the service. It was as if they were Papists, obliged to sit through Latin mass without any idea of what was being said. It went against Calvinist principles.

  "Left to his own devices, I'm sure Farquhar would give the oc
casional service in Gaelic," said Angus, with an amused glance at her, as they walked back one Sunday. "But it's not up to him. The Kirk wants the people to be educated. The minister does his bit with that school he runs."

  "The school is of no use to the children of Baille nam Breac. I think..."

  "Aye, a bhean?"

  "Would you think it a good idea if I taught the children? Just to speak some English, and to read and write?"

  "That may be a bigger task than you anticipate, Bridie. And the township children have work to do."

  "I know, but - just a little every day, perhaps? And I thought..."

  He waited in silence this time for her next idea.

  "I don't think it's right at all that the people are not hearing God's word preached in a language they understand. We have the Bible in Gaelic at home. Why shouldn't we hold lay meetings of our own, on the Sabbath, when we get back from Scourie, perhaps? We could have Bible readings, and prayers, and you could even make - not sermons, perhaps, but expositions on the text for discussion..." She bit her tongue, curbing her own spurt of enthusiasm.

  He laughed, and she coloured, but then he said, "That is actually a very good idea, a bhean. I should have thought of something like that myself. I have been lazy, in fact."

  "No..."

  "It's true. I'm content to plough my rigs by day and read my books alone at night, or I was. I could be offering something more to the people of the township."

  She was pleased that he liked her idea.

  "I studied Divinity at the University, you know," he added after they had walked in silence for a few minutes. "I thought about taking orders."

  "Oh! Why didn't you?"

  He was silent for so long that she thought he wasn't going to answer, or perhaps had not heard her. Then he said, "Ach, my uncle died and Sir Duncan asked me to be his tacksman, and I chose that way instead. You will like Sir Duncan, when you meet him."

  Bridie had not yet so much as set eyes upon the great Sir Duncan Buccleuch, laird and master of every rock and stone in the glen. He and Lady Buccleuch were touring in Europe, and had been for the past six months. None of the family were at home at Lochlannan Castle, for though his mother the Dowager Lady Buccleuch also lived there, she was visiting with her married daughter somewhere on the west coast.

  It was very strange to her to hear her husband talk casually about introducing her to the laird, when she reflected that though he was no great aristocrat, Sir Duncan was as important a person in this world as the Marquess of Crieff was at Dunwoodie. She was mistress of a hut made of dry stones and rushes, she cooked her dinners over a peat fire pit and ate them kneeling on a dirt floor, but her social standing now made it possible for her to be formally introduced to the master of the estate.

  Angus spoke very warmly of Sir Duncan, so she had formed a favourable impression of him. One Sunday, Mr Farquhar handed Angus a letter with a frank from Seville, which proved to be a note from Sir Duncan congratulating him on his marriage.

  Angus would not show the letter itself to Bridie, curious though she was, but he read out portions of it on the walk home. "'I have been urging matrimony on you for years, yet you wait til I leave the country to do it at last. What are you hiding, MacAllister? Did you think I would not approve the girl?'" He chuckled, then said, "And... so forth. Sir Duncan has an idiosyncratic turn of phrase... Ah, now here we are - 'I look forward to meeting... her... and you can be sure that when we return, I'll throw the biggest ceilidh there's been since the last one, in honour of your... wedding'."

  "That's very kind of Sir Duncan! Does he say when he and Lady Buccleuch might return?"

  "He says here..." Angus was silent, and grinned again, as he scanned down the rest of the letter. "He says here that they will journey home via Paris, and hope to reach Scotland before the weather makes travel north too difficult. Ah, then I expect he will sniff the frost in the air when he lands at Dover, and end up wintering in London. I should not be surprised if we don't see them back until the spring."

  Bridie was disappointed. "I should like to hear of their travels. I should like to travel myself."

  "It's overrated. Here - this place - this is the only place on Earth where true happiness abides." He flung his arm wide, indicating the wild beauty all around them.

  Bridie recalled Lady Crieff saying something similar, and she had similar feelings in response; that it was all very well for those who had travelled, who had experienced something of the wider life, to dismiss the experience and declare themselves content. It was beginning to sink in that for her, this was all there would ever be. Six days a week toiling alongside the same handful of mostly illiterate women, and one day a week when she could hope for a little more varied conversation at the minister's table; but that, she took it, only when the path up the glen was passable. What, she wondered bleakly, was life going to be like when the frost and snows came, and there were only a few hours of sunlight each day, and they had only the peat firepit and - she supposed, in dismay - the company of the two cattle to keep them warm? And when, as she had gathered from the women's cheerful information, they might be cut off for weeks at a time.

  She wondered all this, but she did not say it. Bridie was accustomed to keeping her worries inside, and it did not occur to her to change this because she was married. She would do her duty towards her husband, and part of that duty was to be a pleasant and cheerful helpmate to him. It was not a wife's place to be quarrelsome. She kept in mind Proverbs 21:19 - It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious or angry woman.

  Still, a small irreverent part of her thought, they did dwell in the wilderness.

  And she had no idea how soon her pious intentions would be tested.

  #

  On one particularly fine Sabbath a few weeks after her marriage, Bridie was delighted to be handed a letter by Mrs Farquhar when she and Angus went to the Manse for lunch after the service. It was a commonplace for Mrs Farquhar to invite them to dine, and Bridie was always very glad of the luxury of sitting on a real chair at a real table and eating something that was not salmon and kale. It was also not unusual for Angus to receive several letters, for he seemed to keep quite a wide correspondence for someone who did not have ready access to the Royal Mail. She, however, had had only one letter since coming to live in Baille nam Breac, a short note from her father informing her that he had reached home safely and that all at home were well.

  This promised to be quite a different affair. It was a satisfyingly thick parcel, of good quality paper, and with a thrill Bridie recognised the handwriting of her former mistress and the seal of the Marquess of Crieff.

  "You look very pleased with your letter!" said Mrs Farquhar, beaming brightly. She had a very pretty smile. "That is an impressive seal."

  "Oh! Yes! It is from - well, it is from Lady Crieff." She blushed, to claim such an illustrious correspondent, and added quickly, "My old mistress. Is lunch to be served immediately? I would like - "

  "You can read your letter on the way home, Bridie," said Angus, whom she had not realised had been paying any attention. He was sorting through his own bundle of letters, and frowning at them. It was odd, as it always was, to hear him speak in English. "I always do. There's time enough then."

  "Oh, lunch won't be ready for twenty minutes at least," said Mrs Farquhar brightly. "Go into the garden if you want privacy, Mrs MacAllister. Mr MacAllister, you must understand that we women must know the latest news right away! I always prefer to read my letters first alone."

  Bridie was conscious that Angus did not entirely approve of her eagerness, and she could feel him frowning at her as she hurried out of the French windows to the Manse's small garden.

  It was a beautiful day, summer at its shimmering golden brightest, and sweet roses were blooming around the arbour which she had often noticed from the dining room. Bridie sat on its wooden bench and turned the letter over in her hands, savouring the pleasure of the moment. She had been anxious at the back of her mind for Lad
y Crieff, of course she had, but she had had so much else to think of that she had not been dwelling upon it. And now here was a letter addressed in the Marchioness's own familiar flowing hand, which augured well for her ladyship's health at least. Bridie took a moment more to enjoy the direction - Mrs Angus MacAllister - before breaking the seal and unfolding the paper.

  She caught only a glimpse of a closely-filled, neatly-crossed page before something tumbled from the letter's interior. She had not been expecting an enclosure, and could not catch it before it bounced from her lap to the grass at her feet.

  She picked it up. It appeared to be another letter, or rather a note; a simple fold of paper, with a three-word direction written on one side in a strong, dashing, very different hand. Bridie's heart was in her mouth before she could stop herself reading the words My Dark Lady.

  Her hands trembled violently as she opened the note. Lady Crieff's letter lay, unregarded now, on her lap. It flashed through her mind that she ought to burn the thing without reading it, although on such a warm day there would be no convenient fires in the manse hearths. Yes, she could smuggle it home and destroy it on the peat fire in the blackhouse, which was never allowed to die completely, but even the thought of carrying such a guilty object with her all the way home terrified her.

  And it was a guilty object, because her heart was hammering so fast that it made her dizzy, and she knew even as her mind had flitted over the practicalities of burning the note that she did not want to do any such thing. Not, at least, before she had read what he had to say. The other alternative - that she should go straight away to Angus, tell him about Lord John's pursuit of her, and turn the note over to him - she scarcely entertained for a moment. She could not tell Angus the story of her connection with Lord John without lying about her own part in it, because she could never let him know that one of her principal reasons for agreeing to their marriage was fear of her own frailty, of being unable to resist yielding to Lord John's advances. No, she could not bear Angus to know that another man, and an unprincipled gentleman above her sphere, had already touched her where only his own hand ought to have ventured, and that it had set her aflame. It was unthinkable.