Bruar's Rest

by Jess Smith

  It was the sound of familiar hooves making tracks towards them that opened all the half-closed doors of the camp. Dr Mackenzie wasn’t alone: the town’s policeman, Sergeant Wilson, sat by his side.

  Never, no matter how kind and compassionate he might appear to be, did travelling people take to a lawman. Far too many had fallen foul of a uniformed devil with the weight of the judiciary behind him. He was met by turned backs and closed tents.

  ‘It’s alright, folks,’ said the doctor reassuringly, ‘I’ve brought the good sergeant. He’s come for a blether, nothing to worry about, you have my word on it.’

  If any man could reassure them, then it was the good doctor. ‘Come away down and join us,’ said Rory, gesturing that they should sit on the old log seats by the fire. ‘Here, Sergeant, this is the most comfy seat. I hope you take no offence, but we can’t abide a lawman poking his nose in our campsite. We don’t break any laws, and honest is our work, so state your business and be off.’

  His sons stood on either side, backing up his request. Within the security and privacy of the tent, Megan huddled close to her sister. Nicholas suckled contentedly on his mother’s breast, unaware his father’s fate was being decided outside round a low burning fire.

  ‘What brings the law among us?’ whispered Megan.

  ‘I haven’t a clue, for we’re as honest as the day’s long. And O’Connor seldom goes to visit and sup with the ploughmen now, so it can’t be him.’

  Rachel’s answer only made her more curious.

  With straining ears they listened to Sergeant Wilson, who had opened a black leather satchel and was handing round its contents, telling the men how wonderful were the brave Scottish lads who had volunteered for the army.

  Megan needed to hear more, so crept from under the back of the tent and slipped around so that the men were unable to see her but she could clearly view them. Rachel tried to stop her, but only managed to pull off a hairband in her attempt

  Whatever it was that Sergeant Wilson held in his hands, it certainly had the men wide-eyed and eager-faced.

  No matter how hard she wormed herself nearer, Megan could not get a proper look at what held their interest. Rachel hissed at her to get back inside the tent, but Megan refused. With the ‘eagle omen’ still fresh in her mind, she rose to her feet and hurried amongst the men. ‘I’m sorry, husband,’ she apologised. ‘I know that us women have to stay inside when a stranger calls, but the policeman seems to be a bringer of good news, the way you lot are beaming. Here, let me see what it is that pleases you.’ She pulled the paper from Wilson and laughed when she saw it was a picture of big Rory.

  ‘Oh my, would you take a look at this—someone has painted my father-in-law’s face?’

  ‘Lassie, this isn’t a painting of me, this is the King’s representative, Kitchener!’

  Hands firmly held on hips, she tossed back her head and shouted, ‘King of where?’

  Up till then the mild-mannered man of the law was an impassive visitor, only doing his duty. He’d brought the men of the campsite news of the progress of the war. He told them of a drive for volunteers, for men to enlist and protect their country, but at this fiery lassie’s total lack of respect for His Majesty, his cloak of composure collapsed. ‘Listen here, young Stewart, you bring a switch over this she-devil’s hindquarters! If she was mine I’d whip her for sure!’

  ‘She’s a fine wife, I’m sorry but never have I heard her speak in such a manner. Megan, hush your tongue.’

  ‘Don’t you dare speak like that to me! I know why this flat-footer has come with his squirming and pussy words. Sure, he wants you all to wear some bloody stranger’s uniform, to take up arms and fight in some faraway place and what for? I’ll tell you—to save a land that would rather tinkers drowned in spate-rivers, or got thrown over precipices, just so long as we didn’t exist! Chase him from our fire, I say. And you, Doctor, what kind of friend are you to help take away our men?’ With every disapproving eye on her she turned, lifted her skirt and exposed her bare buttocks. ‘See that, Wilson?’ she said, slapping her bare flesh, ‘you can lick it!’

  ‘Megan, for God sake, lassie!’

  Engulfed by fear and anguish, and the note of disgust in Bruar’s voice, she ran from the site. Their talk for months had been of nothing else but war, and now it had come among them. She was going to lose her man and that was unthinkable.

  Rachel, who’d heard snippets of the argument, came to her sister’s defence, appearing from her tent with a wooden mallet tightly clenched in her hand. Jimmy grabbed it off her just in time, before it landed heavily on Sergeant Wilson’s skull. Rory called for calm. ‘Now, stop this at once, the good doctor has not visited us to see a fight. Wilson has come with a request, so sit you down and hear him out.’ Bruar, however, more concerned for Megan, made his excuses and left.

  Rachel, sobbing, went back to her son. Now, with a quieter group round the campfire, Jimmy sat on a makeshift wooden bench next to his father and asked his visitor to tell them what it was Kitchener wanted from the tinkers.

  Doctor Mackenzie spoke first. He popped those familiar thin-rimmed spectacles onto the point of his nose, took the paper from the Sergeant and said: ‘Now, you all know that I have no time for this bloody war, and bless me, I’d say forget Kitchener and Sergeant Wilson’s fancy words, but if the enemy gets this land you will see a lot less of freedom and a lot more of evil. That’s what sickens me—choice is not an option.’ He shook his head as he read from the crumpled paper: ‘Britain is now at war. It is every man and woman’s duty as citizens of this glorious land to take up arms and fight for your country! Your country needs you!”

  The good doctor sat back in his chair, rolled up the poster, and watched the reaction of the tinker men. Rachel, unable to stay out of what concerned her and her child, came from the tent, her baby wrapped in a shawl and tied around her body. It was easy to see the tears flowing freely down her face. ‘Jimmy, we—me and Nicholas—have much need of you. Please, man, don’t you dare say that some King hundreds of miles from this quiet glen can order you away from a loving wife and innocent wee boy, to fight for a country that spits at your feet whenever it can!’

  Jimmy, totally out of character, raised his voice, ‘I’m head of my family, and if I want I’ll take arms for whoever I bloody like. Now go back into the tent at once!’

  Crying at such an outburst from her usually gentle husband, Rachel pulled part of her baby’s woollen shawl over her head and ran back to the tent.

  O’Connor had been silent till then, but he’d no stomach for war and said so. ‘Doctor, I’m not saying this to you, but Wilson, you can go home an tell that bloody Kitchener that he won’t find anybody here to fight his battles for him!’

  Sergeant Wilson, face stretched with fury at the total disrespect to his sovereign from these heathens, said, ‘Come on, Mackenzie, I’m off. The taste left in my mouth from this filth is unbearable.’

  Without waiting for the doctor to untie his horse he was gone, marching off down the track.

  Bruar soon caught up with Megan who was hiding at their favourite meeting place, an old oak tree, twisted by the winds which blew hard through its branches in the deep winter storms.

  ‘Bonny Megan, what is wrong with you? Surely you would not expect my brother and me to stay home like couried rats, while the whole male population is defending our rights?’

  ‘Bruar, did I not witness the Omen? Don’t you see it heralded doom? I’ll lose you to a foreign enemy, who doesn’t bother whether you and I are toffs or tinkers. Rachel’s right, nobody cares a snot about us. To the world we’re “white niggers”, that’s all we are. Not that niggers are bad folks; I’ve heard the women of Kirriemor speaking about rich faraway folk having slaves, poor souls with black faces and snow-white eyes. To this King and his Kitchener, slaves are what we are. Only we’re white ones! If you gave your lives, would the so-called King mind out for us, left behind without our men? We’d die of the hunger in no time. Mark my word,
that’s what would happen, we’d be soon dead. And another thing, what of our plan for having children?’

  The more she went on, the more it was apparent he wasn’t listening. Her hysterics had no effect, and she could see that look in his face. The one she saw when he spoke of the Norsemen in olden days invading Scotland. No, he’d go, she knew that, but would he come back? Was the eagle she’d seen on the hill definitely a message of death? Too tired to run off again, she lowered her eyes to the heather around their feet and asked the inevitable, ‘When?’

  ‘Tomorrow, Jimmy and I will enlist tomorrow.’

  ‘Then take me now, while the longing in my breast beats so strong, for it might be the last time we ever join again.’

  Bruar saw in her a new weakness, she was not usually faint-hearted or limp. ‘Now listen to me, how many times have you solemnly promised with hand on heart that you will rest me in Durness? I will come home, we will grow old together and you will see to my end.’

  Megan nodded through her tormented thoughts, yet at that moment all she could think of was tomorrow, not many days ahead. She felt only the pain of not having him lie by her side, to rise with a hug and kiss at the lifting of each new sun.

  His strong, powerful arms circled her frame. Gently the lovers each removed their clothes and as they sank into the soft heather they made intense, raw and passionate love. It moved them onto a higher plane than any lovemaking they had ever experienced before. For a long time afterward they lay together saying nothing. His head was filling with a mixture of concern and excitement; worry at leaving her and the excitement of standing on a battlefield fighting back an enemy, just as his great ancestors had done to the Norsemen!

  Megan’s thoughts were of one thing—a shadow-winged eagle, gliding and soaring in a misty heaven. She fell asleep exhausted, and when at last a singing nightingale awakened her, he was gone. It would have been futile for her to run home tearing at her clothes and sobbing uncontrollably, because she knew her man had to take his place within the system of war, even though it had nothing to do with their kind. He and Jimmy simply did what every other tinker laddie did in 1914—they took the path of destruction, and made, if need be, the final sacrifice.

  SIX

  Megan, Rachel and her baby, big Rory and their faithful companion O’Connor, continued to fend for themselves in the now tiny circle of nomads. Two months had slipped by since the boys set off to fight. Apart from letters which had been written at their request by an army priest to each of the girls, not much news had reached them. They described France as flat, and before the shelling, a fertile land. Jimmy was in the Cameronians and Bruar the Black Watch. This meant that the brothers could no longer look out for each other, and now they were miles apart.

  Rachel became increasingly worried about her man, and was convinced he’d never see his wee boy again. Many times Megan found her lost in her thoughts within her small tent, cuddling and chanting to Nicholas. Each day Megan would watch from high upon the braeside for signs of old Doctor Mackenzie bringing news of the war’s progress, or better still some words of comfort, if not from Bruar, then from Jimmy, to make Rachel’s burden less.

  She did not have long to wait!

  February froze. Blizzards were more frequent and ferocious than they’d seen before. Layers of hard-packed snow covered every visible dyke, tree and field; although the cold hardened the heather roots and slowed her pace, she still insisted on climbing the hill and watching for the familiar horse and buggy. No sooner had she reached her summit perch one day, when she heard Mackenzie coming up the old road. Unable to hold back her emotions she ran, stumbling and rolling down a good stretch of hillside.

  She’d meant to catch him before Rachel did just in case his news was, heaven forbid, bad. But the sudden fall slowed her down long enough for the man and his horse to be met by Rachel and big Rory.

  Screams of torment announced that the nightmare had come, the dreaded news which halted her dead in her snow-covered tracks. Big Rory fell against a tree as Rachel threw herself inside the tent. O’Connor, shaking his head from side to side, walked off into the forest.

  She grabbed at the doctor’s coat sleeve and was met with deeply pained eyes. ‘He fought well, it says so here in the telegram, lassie. Oh, this blasted war! Just this very morning I had to tell two mothers their laddies were not coming home!’

  ‘Who’s gone?’

  ‘Jimmy!’

  She heard herself say in her heart, before darting off to comfort her sister, ‘It’s not my Bruar, not him!’

  Doctor Mackenzie went into a tent, at first not sure whose, but the smell of stale, unwashed clothes told him it must be O’Connor’s. The kettle simmered, a single cup lay on the ground, and into the cracked receptacle he poured tea, steaming hot, wondering how many more times he would take the news of lost sons to worried relatives. It all seemed to fall at his door since the minister of Kirriemor’s church had long ago left his flock to bring comfort to the many thousands of young men on the far-off battlefield. Young Father Brennan, the priest of St Bridget’s Chapel, was also overseas. The doctor hated this forced coat he wore and cursed all wars because of it.

  He could hear Rachel now sobbing deeply. Once more the sound of hearts breaking filled his head. How long before the next heart would break? But life, as awful as it was, had to go on, and without a word he silently walked the horse up the narrow road, leaving the tinker folks to their grief.

  For a short distance O’Connor joined him. ‘Man, this must leave a bad taste in your mouth, you being a saver o’ life?’

  ‘That it does, friend, but what pains me more is that this blasted fight has hardly begun.’

  When Rachel and big Rory had mourned a week, they did what is traditionally expected, buried Jimmy without his presence. All the procedure, from digging a grave to building a coffin was done. While Rory took a whole morning to break through the frozen earth, O’Connor built a full-sized wooden box. The girls gathered Jimmy’s belongings: a sharp basket-making knife, tools, a coil of snare wire, some twine for tying braces of pheasant and his fingerless gloves. Before he left he’d been whittling a toy soldier for his son, which was almost finished, but that Rachel kept.

  At the foot of the forest, beside Annie’s remains, they lowered Jimmy’s coffin down. Along with his box of tools went clothes; what little he owned was laid neatly in the coffin and buried. Prayers and chants of olden days were offered up, hoping that wherever he was he would find rest. This was the only way travelling folk could cope with the death of a loved one who had failed to come home to them. As far as they were concerned, by this simple act they’d brought their dead back. And it was sufficient to part-mend their broken hearts. This ritual helped Rachel, but Rory only went through with it for his lassie’s sake. She’d want her boy dealt with as tradition dictated. When alone, throwing a handful of soil upon the coffin, he whispered, ‘No matter where you are, my son, you will find your resting. God rest you, my laddie.’

  Rachel later came to say her own farewell, kissed a single sprig of mistletoe and softly tossed it on her husband’s bodyless grave. ‘Wherever you lie, my fallen soldier, part of me shares the cold earth with you. We only knew each other a short while, but from us came a healthy boy. I promise he will not suffer hardship. Rest until we meet again.’ Gently she lowered tiny Nicholas to touch with innocent lips the earth covering his father’s chosen place—the father he would never know, save in the telling of a tale.

  Megan stood away from the grave. It frightened her. Thoughts that maybe her own man lay rotting in some rat-infested trench filled her with dread, her heart beat loudly in her breast until she could not bear it. Covering her tousled hair with a grey woollen shawl, she slunk away from the sight of Big Rory, O’Connor, Rachel and little Nicholas, and was soon hidden from view. Leaning her back against the old twisted oak she looked up at the heavens and cried until the salt from her tears stung the skin around her throat. ‘Oh Bruar, please tell me you are still fighting. Show me
a sign that a heart beats in your chest as one does in mine. Come home safe, my love. Forgive my selfish relief that Jimmy and not you died, but Rachel doesn’t love with the same passion as I do. She needed Jimmy, but not the way I need you. You are my desire, my whole being, nothing matters to me but you.’

  She pulled the shawl round her cold body and tightened it like a vice. ‘Come home, Bruar, else I will not live without you!’ She stayed there, freezing, on that cold spot, and probably would have remained there, had it not been for O’Connor who was, in his own way, trying to help his friends.

  ‘Come you back, colleen, and see to your sister’s baby, for the poor lass has collapsed in her grief. I’ll take Rory down to Kirriemor to drink the passing o’ his son. The fire is all right for the cooking and heat. I’ve seen to the kettle, so begone home with you.’

  Sudden fear and anger gripped her, and a shiver ran the length of her spine. Fine she knew what it would mean. Big Rory hadn’t touched a drop of liquor in ages. If he put it to his grief-stricken mouth, then he’d be unable to stop. He’d be wicked again. She had to have her say. ‘Och man, you mustn’t do this awful thing. Please don’t take him to Kirriemor. You know as I do, he’ll take the devil on himself if the demon drink runs through his veins while he is mourning. I beg you, don’t take that horse to the well, for with the state of him he’ll drink it dry and then kill somebody!’

  O’Connor told her to see to things and not interfere in a man’s grief. It was not for women to have a say in such matters, Rory had to get it out, and a bottle was the only way. She tried again to reason with him but the Irishman told her not to be so selfish. Her father-in-law had lost one son, and for all they knew, maybe Bruar was lying in a trench somewhere feeding worms as well.