by Jess Smith
Annie’s health slipped forever on a downward spiral. Rachel fussed as Megan tried to bring laughter to her mother’s life, making faces as she recounted how certain people in Kirriemor would lecture her on how not to be a tinker as she hawked there.
When not running through heather moorland with Bruar, she made grand brooms and heather pot-scourers that she could hawk. These handy kitchen implements were made by tying bundles of heather at the base and hacking off the branches lower down; this would expose the rough edges used by country wives for scrubbing stubborn grease and burnt food from iron pots.
It was while hawking in the town one day she met a non-tinker who would prove to be their greatest friend. A saviour in every sense of the word was the local doctor, Doctor Mackenzie. He was a small-set man with a reddened face, flowing moustache and greying hair. A clay pipe seemed to live between his teeth, being plucked out and popped into the pocket of a worn brown waistcoat when he was unhobbling his constant companion, an ancient grey mare.
Megan was heading home after selling a handful of pot-scourers when she accidentally slipped on wet leaves scattered about the doctor’s gate. He’d been trimming a trailing ivy when down she went, grazing both elbow and knee. Taking her to his surgery, an annexe of his parlour, he quickly cleaned and bandaged the injured parts. At first few words were exchanged between them; her kind seldom spoke to strangers. Yet he had soft hands and a friendly face, and soon she warmed to him. A friendship was born from that day on between the campsite dwellers and the elderly medical man who one day would prove more than just a healer.
Doctor Mackenzie was kind to his nomadic neighbours, and he frequently took a morning ride along the winding dirt track road to check them for ill health. To Annie he proved a godsend on more than one day or fevered night.
It was a beautiful day as Megan rose earlier than the rest to fetch some pheasant eggs. Treading softly in bare feet, shoes in one hand, basket for eggs in the other, she whispered through the thin canvas of Bruar’s tent for him to come with her. Hurriedly he dressed, saying to his half-sleeping father and brother that firewood was needed, he wouldn’t be long. Rory was asleep, or at least pretended to be. Jimmy lifted a limp hand in response as he rolled over to claim his brother’s vacant space in the bed.
Soon the young couple were running through the heather-filled moor side. Several times they chased the grouse from their warm nests, making them stretch their wings and reach for the sky. Tiring of that, the pair fell laughing onto the coarse heather. With all the wonder of youth before them, they stared up into the cottonwool sky of that perfect spring day.
Bruar, who had never forgotten his Highland home, threw back his head and said, ‘Oh lassie, what would I give just to be standing with you on my own soil. Aunt Helen would just love you to bits, I know it.’
‘Tell me of this land of yours, then, lad, so that I too can fill my mind with pictures.’
‘I have told you a dozen times before, surely you tire of hearing it?’
‘Never!’
‘Into the northern county o’ Sutherland, where I was born, you’ll find a cotter village, Durness. There, rugged cliffs hold back northern ocean swells that would surely swallow Scotland if it were not for their mighty heights. Once, centuries ago, wild Norsemen tried to conquer that land, but all they achieved was to claim watery peat graves for their lost warriors. Do know you why Cape Wrath is so called?’
Megan gathered her skirt into a bundle and sat down upon a rock, green eyes growing wider with every exciting word. ‘No, no, tell it me quickly.’
‘Those very Vikings gave it that name. It means “the turning point”. No further south would they dare venture in their terror, that’s where they discovered that our peat bogs show no mercy. The Pentland waters north by Orkney and Shetland and across to Norway saw them fill their long boats and flee like scared crows. The place they fled from was to them the land of the South. It was why they called it Sutherland. High puffin-nested cliffs and deep as hell peat bogs frightened them off, tails tight between their legs. You see, Megan, they had the evil intent in them to rape our women, burn the Highlands, and claim the very land, but the inhospitable marshes where Hell-Nick himself dwells claimed their wiry limbs instead. My aunt Helen swore that when she and Dad were youngsters, they unearthed their thick-necked swords and shields once while cutting deep into the peat.’
He was like an excited youngster as he proudly shared with her his story, face lit up as he remembered how wonderful it was on cold blizzard nights when he and Jimmy would huddle around Helen’s knees. The flames of a roasting fire shot up the chimney as they listened to her tell tales of Red Eric, the Dane who scoured around the coastline screaming that one day he would defeat the peat bogs—but he never did.
‘Oh lass, I can feel in my blood how my ancestors would have felt, watching from the peaks o’ Reay. All the way to John o’ Groats slithered a stream of longboats full of terror-stricken warriors dripping brown and black with the bog water.’
‘You’re a vivid teller, Bruar, almost like you were there yourself. I too have a piece of history regarding boggy ground. In Glen Coe a vast expanse of moorland, where they say a whole garrison of Roman soldiers disappeared, spreads itself for as far as any eye can see—Rannoch Moor, it’s called—and I can say with hand on heart, there’s many a night I sat in fear listening to witches and warlocks getting drunk on human blood!’
‘Now you’re pulling my leg.’
‘Yes, but its worth it to see the look on your face.’
They walked on, laughing and sharing tales of a homeland that had been lost in the mists of childhood.
‘What are you thinking now, my love?’ she asked, as he failed to respond and she saw a serious frown replace his earlier smile.
‘Look, if I ask a promise, will you—’ his brow lined deeply beneath his shock of blonde hair. ‘On second thoughts, it’s far over great a request, best I don’t burden you with it.’
‘Ask whatever you want, Bruar. You must know how I care for you. If the power is in me, I’ll do it.’ She searched his solemn face for a response.
He sat down upon a solitary rock seat and for a space of time fell silent. Obviously thoughts of great depth were swimming round his young head. They placed a distance between them. Then he held out his hand to her. ‘Megan, you know that I am the oldest, and that gives me a position among the Stewarts? Now, I am being serious, so listen. Do you know anything of ancient burial sites?’
‘Aye, my late father’s older brother William, who passed on last year, lies over at Glen Coe next to him, in a quiet spot within the Lost Valley. Great brute of a man he was, nobody thought his heart would stop beating, but it did. Now, hurry up and spit it out, what is it?’
‘Well, in our burial ground, which lies on Parbh, there is one place left. It was meant for my father, but he can’t take it because he forfeited it to me.’
‘And why not?’ She seemed surprised. ‘Surely big Rory has more claim than you?’
‘I thought that too, but my father took the right eye from a Seer while filled with anger. It was a terrible thing. It happened because mother was in danger of losing her life during Jimmy’s birth, but you know how important a Seer’s eyes are. There is an unspoken rule in Highland parts: one must never do battle with a foresight man.’
‘My God, I never would have put your Dad down as such a fool—a drinking one, aye, but not as mad as that he would do damage to a seer.’
‘He wasn’t right in mind at the time. I won’t say anything else on the matter.’
‘Oh yes, you will! You started the story, now finish!’ Megan rose to her feet, only to be pulled back down with a forceful tug on her arm.
She kissed his cheek, brushing his hair with moist lips and asked softly, ‘Is the Seer you talk of the one who dwelt in a cave beyond Balnakeil, him with a beard of red flame?’
‘His beard was of red hair, not flames; yes, that’s him.’
‘Gosh, I’ve heard folks f
rom the north who wandered through Glen Coe mention his powers. Some say that in his day he could predict an end to the world.’
‘He predicted my mother’s end, and that’s all I know.’
Gently she played with his thick blonde hair, asking quietly, ‘Did that mean she was dying?’
‘It seems the birth of my young brother Jimmy was too much for her tender frame.’
‘But surely then the Seer was telling the truth?’
‘Yes, but folks thought my father meant to kill the Seer, because with him being a drinking man and the Seer dead against strong alcohol, they thought my father harboured a grudge. It was desperation at his failure to help. He begged the foresight man to bring assistance for mother, but he refused, saying she was dying. Father belted the Seer so hard he knocked the eye clean out of his head. Who could blame him? Mother was dying with the labour.’
‘People can be forced into doing terrible things when worry and fear fills them.’
‘He cursed father, and let mother die!’
‘Oh, don’t torture yourself, my lad. I’m certain big Rory gave the pig exactly what he deserved.’ Her words were for his benefit, but her inner fears went deep, and she felt shivers running through her bones. She’d been warned by her mother that the power of the Seer can bring about the events he foresees, whether good fortune or bad fortune. She whispered to her silent companion, ‘May it be that the red Seer put a curse on your father, and it will pass down to you?’
‘Ha, I don’t believe in rubbish talk like that.’ Shrugging his broad shoulders and changing the topic of conversation, he said, ‘In all of this country there’s no prouder man than me.’
‘And tell me now, why is that?’
‘You, Megan, because I have met you. So if I’m cursed, then that’s fine.’
‘Look,’ she asked, ‘what is this promise that you ask of me?’
He rose from the rock seat they’d shared and held her close until she could feel his heart thumping in his chest. ‘Megan,’ he said, ‘I know at fifteen you’re a mite too young to share my bed, yet surely you feel I’ll love none other. You’ll be my bride when the time is right, because we are meant. But it’s about the future I want to ask of you. In later years, if Death shortens my lifeline, will you make certain I am laid in the ancient burial ground at Parbh? My Aunt Helen will tell you where it is.’
She felt that cold shiver return to run the whole length of her slender spine. It made her push him away, turn without a word and run off into the purple heather.
He darted after her, and soon was holding her again, brushing aside her windswept hair.
‘Lassie, promise me.’ His repeated request grew louder, his jaw rigid, face stern.
‘Bruar, talk like that frightens me. I’ll be your woman when time says, even have a dozen wee bairns, the spit of you. But this talk of death—it pulls a black shadow over us, stop it.’
But he kept on at her, and soon, if only just to hear no more on the morbid subject, she made the promise he asked for.
‘All right, if you die first and there’s breath in me, I’ll take you back to the place on a grand charger. If I haven’t got one of those, then the hind end of a wee cross-backed donkey will have to do. Failing that, I’ll carry you on my back. There now, are you happy? Will you put an end to this serious talk so you can get on with gathering firewood?’
‘That’s all I will ever ask of you, Megan,’
Hands clasped together, in the fullness of youth they skipped and jaunted back down the braeside where their families were stirring from a long night’s sleep. Feeling a wispy breeze lift her skirt and with the previous conversation dead and buried, she pulled him to her, closer then she’d ever dared do before. Now he’d shared his secrets, her promises were given, it was only right from then on, she knew their fates were sealed. ‘Kiss me before we reach the campsite—go on, kiss my body!’
He tried to laugh at her show of lusty affection, as her lungs filled with fresh air, and the buttons missing from the neckline of her dress exposed the swell of youthful breasts. He wanted to touch, to kiss her, but men don’t do that kind of thing until marriage. Aunt Helen had told him once that when he found her, the right woman for him, he had to mind and be a gentleman. With this in mind, he jumped onto a rock, stretched out his strong arms and proclaimed, ‘You will have a tent fit for a tinker queen!’ then added, ‘I’ll build the strongest cart in all Scotia, and have it pulled along with a wild Palomino stallion. That’s when we’re married.’
He’d rejected her advances, and it stung her. ‘Now, what makes you think I will spend the rest of my good days with the likes of you, Bruar Stewart? I’ve changed my mind. I think all that talk of seers, caves and Vikings has made me think twice.’ She tossed back a head of jet-black, curly hair, stared upward at a wood pigeon high above and shouted, ‘This laddie thinks I am in his pocket, and he hasn’t even kissed me full on the lips yet.’
She was inviting him, teasing even as she ran off.
If only she knew how difficult it was for him, the mere smell of those freckled breasts, the pulsations of lust tearing at his loins as the odour from her warm underarms filled his nostrils. It was all he could do not to rip off her dress, run his tongue over all her body’s beauty and be like a wolf, taking his chosen bitch, lost in bestial wildness. But as a man he had something else to prove, not just to her but her sister and mother. The distance between them afforded him one final look as she skipped through the heather, the roundness of her thighs, so smooth, now silhouetted by the fully risen sun. Its rays played like music around her bouncing curves. Suddenly a voice in his head penetrated through his passion. ‘Respect her,’ it whispered over and over again, until the lust subsided and his eyes saw the girl, not the woman.
‘What has our love life got to do with a bird anyway, wee feisty woman?’
‘Well, he’s up in the sky yonder, and until you do the proper thing, then that is where you might as well be.’
They both knew they would join together: it was fate, nothing could change that. Yet she also knew she yearned for him now, so tried again with teasing and playful caresses.
This time he was having none of it. He pushed away her small wandering hands and calmly mused, ‘Come now, my little virgin, where is the shame in you?’
‘Since when was kissing a sin?’ She gave him a long lingering stare, her sea-green eyes flashed; a wink followed, she kicked up her heels and ran off through the heather. He called after her that he was away into the forest for wood, and was certain he’d heard the sound from the campsite earlier of her Mammy whistling. ‘And you’ve not even gathered a single pheasant’s egg neither,’ he added, tousling his blonde hair, grateful all the more to the quiet voice that had broken through his lustful thoughts and calmed a brewing sexual storm deep down.
‘Good God, Bruar’s right, I clean forgot to gather the breakfast! What a fool I can be sometimes.’
Annie’s shrill whistle sent her scurrying back empty-handed, little knowing how much self control she had cost him.
He mopped his sweating brow after the trial of his willpower and clumsily began to build piles of firewood gathered from the forest floor. Soon two large bundles sat comfortably on his broad shoulders. Heading homeward, he heard Megan’s older sister Rachel laying into her.
‘You hussy, have you been working the pants of yourself with Bruar Stewart and forgot the eggs?’
‘I have not! What a bitch. I swear, Rachel, the devil himself forged your tongue. Mammy, this she-cat is saying evil things! Anyway you’re just a jealous cow—I bet there’s not a male within a hundred miles who’d look twice at that pale lifeless face.’
Rachel grabbed at her young sister, screaming that she’d rather live in a rat-infested dungeon than take off at an unearthly hour of the morning to fornicate with a man.
Shaking her head at the disgraceful conduct of her girls, Annie scolded them. ‘Stop that, the both of you. Rachel, fetch water for tea. Megan, I hope the heart�
��s in the fire, you’ve been gone the best part of an hour. I heard you whispering on that Stewart lad, I hope there has been no nonsense. I’m in no mood for you two fighting neither, so put an end to it or I’ll switch the pair of you.’
Annie, still weak, tried hard to stretch her bones and rise from the tent, but the pain in her body turned her stiff instead. She winced at the aches now passing like waves throughout her body; only forty years had she been on the earth, yet she felt so very old. Megan had always been a step ahead of her clutches, uncontrollable. By the age of four she’d sat on a horse’s back; Annie smiled through her pain, remembering how her man had made longer reins for the little arms to reach. ‘She was taking the deer off the hill with him by the age of six. Now the child is growing up and will soon be a wife; she’s chosen a man already, by the sounds of it.’ A look at the girl’s legs also brought a smile. ‘It wasn’t all that long ago two twiglets carried her growing frame in great leaps, and now they are so pretty and shapely. Yes, she’ll be a woman soon, and thank God, because I won’t be around to help her. Better that she’s coping. Rachel has always been steady, I’ll not have any problems worrying about her. Old before her time, never enjoyed the joy of youth, my plain Jane.’
Megan forgot the petty argument with her sister; she was more worried that their mother was in pain. She lied that there wasn’t a single pheasant egg to be seen, saying ‘The bloody birds are becoming more cunning, it’s harder to seek out their nests,’ then went on to blame hedgehogs.
‘Gosh, mammy, are those bones of yours tightening again? I’ll do the chores today if you want another hour or two in bed. Doctor Mackenzie will come if I fetch him,’ she said, putting an arm around her mother. More quietly, she whispered, ‘Mother of mine, Bruar is far too much the gent to take my maidenhead, even though I would offer it on a plate, so don’t fret yourself on that. I’ll keep it a while yet.’
Annie loved both her daughters, but without a father, controlling them was no easy task, especially Megan. She patted her wayward daughter gently on the hand and said, ‘That’s not necessary, pet, I’ll be fine after a cup of hot sweet tea.’ She stroked her face and added, ‘I know you, lassie, and there’s a rising in that woman-to-be body, yet with the Stewart I feel you will be sensible. And Rachel, well, she was only looking out for her wee sister.’
