The Hiring Fair

by Laura Strickland

  She raised his injured hand very gently and placed a tender kiss on the palm. “Stay strong for me, Tam, and we will come through this together—so I do promise.”

  “Not at the price of your—”

  The door behind Annie opened abruptly, and the two of them started. Randleigh stood there, a hard look on his face.

  “Enough. My indulgence is at an end.”

  “My husband needs a physician. I demand—”

  “You demand?” Randleigh raked Annie with a scornful look. “Who are you to demand anything? You are a tenant, like the rest of those who infest Laird Ardaugh’s holdings…just better educated—and better looking—than most.”

  Tam bristled, and Annie stayed him with a hand on his arm. He had already suffered enough on her account.

  She lifted her chin. “If I send a physician, do you agree to admit him? If not, I will no’ consider your other request.”

  “What—” Tam began again.

  Randleigh interrupted him. “Aye, but it must be a genuine physician, mind—none of your old women’s spells and potions.”

  “Agreed. And you will let me send in food.”

  “I will not. I have said it is enough. Step away from the prisoner.”

  Annie attempted yet again, “But I think that—”

  “Mistress Sutherland, you have already had far more leeway from me than you deserve. Would you prefer me to change my mind about the physician?”

  Annie withdrew her hand from Tam’s arm and stepped to the door. She longed to look back at him but hated to give Randleigh the satisfaction.

  They went out, and she watched Randleigh lock the door.

  If only she might overpower him here and now. If she did in truth possess some dark spell she might employ against him—but her mother had taught her none. Would she use such power if she could? Just like Randleigh’s poor excuse for mercy, it carried a price she did not want to pay.

  Yet leaving Tam Sutherland alone and in pain fair killed her.

  Randleigh smiled at her in the dim corridor. “Make up your mind swiftly, Mistress Sutherland, whether you will save him or no. You will not wish to leave him languishing long.”

  Somehow Annie found the courage to glare into his eyes. “Have a care, Ned Randleigh: the harm you do will come back on you threefold. Remember that, even as you unleash your cruelty.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Och, miss, what will you do?” The corners of Sonsie’s misshapen mouth turned down and her hands fluttered in distress. “You simply canno’ give in to that beast’s demands.”

  “Nay,” Kirstie agreed firmly.

  “Nay,” Jockie grunted, his pale blue eyes blazing.

  The four of them, including Kirstie, huddled together over the table in Annie’s kitchen, meeting for what felt very much like a council of war. Morning had come, drear and wet to match Annie’s mood. And she had told these three the truth about Randleigh’s demands. Why hide it from them? Kirstie, of all people, knew the depth of the man’s cruelty.

  She tangled her fingers together and said slowly, “I canno’ just let Tam languish there, can I? His hand…” Her throat closed abruptly when she thought of him suffering alone, and because of her. She had dragged him into this situation; she’d endangered him.

  “Aye, but,” Sonsie said quickly, “you canno’ pay such a price.”

  Annie raised eyes awash with tears to each of them in turn. “I love Tam Sutherland,” she declared simply. “I never meant for it to happen. When all this began, I could no’ have dreamed it. But he is inside me now, and I can no sooner abandon him than my breath.”

  Sonsie looked down at her hands. Kirstie and Jockie exchanged swift glances.

  “Ah, now,” Kirstie said. “Such feelings can well develop when a woman welcomes a man to her bed.”

  All Annie’s instincts went on alert. She studied Kirstie’s face and then Jock’s. Kirstie and Jockie? Surely not. But aye, she had seen Kirstie’s tender way with him after Randleigh’s attack. And even now a flush warmed the lass’s face, while Jockie looked steadier and more certain than she’d ever seen him, a man rather than a boy.

  Well, well… Annie’s heart lifted in joy for them despite her own misery. No wonder Jock had refused to come home.

  He leaned across the table and covered Annie’s hand with his fingers. His face, only partially healed, still bore livid welts, but his eyes burned.

  He fought to marshal his words. “You ha’ been good to me, miss, when no one else was. Your uncle and your ma and you took me in and treated me well.”

  Annie answered truthfully, “You are like a brother to me, Jockie.”

  “Aye. That is why you maun let me help you now, you and your love.”

  The simple sincerity of the words touched Annie deeply, but she said, “I do no’ want you involved in this. Randleigh already has his eye on you. He will take any excuse to hurt you again.”

  “Randleigh.” Jockie spat the word.

  “Stay out of it,” Annie advised.

  “But,” Sonsie argued, “you canno’ fight this battle alone. Folks throughout the district will surely aid you, after all you ha’ done for them.”

  “And give Randleigh an excuse to move on with the clearances? He has only held his hand this long for the power it gives him.” Annie thought about the expression on Randleigh’s face at the laird’s house and his sly smile. “He enjoys holding such power over others and bending them to his will.” Indeed, perhaps that even more than the act itself led him to force the women at his mercy. “If folks hereabouts defy him and come to my aid, he will carry out the threat he has held over us for so long.”

  “You could speak to the magistrate,” Sonsie suggested. “Make your plea to him ahead of Randleigh.”

  “I can try. Laird Donaldson over at Strathmore was appointed magistrate last year. He never knew my uncle or my mother. But Randleigh spoke as if he were unavailable—’tis part of the reason he gave me time.”

  Kirstie returned, “He gave you time in order to watch you squirm.” She glanced at Jockie again. “Sometimes I think ’twould be better to just up and leave, go to Canada as so many others have. If my grandmother would agree to stir, I just might.”

  Leave here—not for a day or a fortnight but forever? Annie didn’t know if she could. Like those of Kirstie’s old grandmother, her roots ran deep in this soil, her wellbeing flowing with the seasons, her spirit tethered to the hills. Leaving would be like cutting out her heart.

  Yet Kirstie spoke true: so many had already gone, and if the clearances continued, many more would follow. Sheep would take their places, their lonely cries echoing where once there was laughter and song.

  “Opportunity waits in Canada,” Kirstie maintained, “and no cruel factor coming to the door.”

  Jockie looked at her thoughtfully, and Annie’s heart trembled still more violently. Might she lose him? Yet he, grown now, in truth, had a right to his own choices and a chance at a future.

  But Jockie shook his ragged towhead and fought to speak again. “Kill him,” he forced out. “Break into laird’s house. Kill Randleigh—break Tam free.”

  Kirstie exclaimed in dismay, and Annie shook her head.

  “Nay, Jock—I canno’ let you attempt such a thing. ’Tis never right to choose violence.”

  “Nay?” he returned surprisingly. “Yet you canno’ stay me.”

  Desperately Annie said, “Tell him, Kirstie—’twill be a course to ruin. He would face the noose or deportation.” The very same fate that awaited Tam.

  Kirstie bit her lip. “Your kindness does you credit, miss, but a man as evil as Randleigh deserves to die.”

  “’Tis no’ up to us to decide what he deserves. And to be sure, Jockie does no’ deserve a life spent in a penal colony.” Deported—from all she’d heard, it truly was a fate more terrible than death.

  Her thoughts flew to Tam, shut into the tiny room where she’d last seen him, trapped with his anger and pain.

&nb
sp; “For now, I need to locate a physician. Jock, if I write a letter, will you take it to Strathmore for me? I believe there is a physician in residence there.”

  “How will you pay?” asked Sonsie, ever practical.

  “I have a few coins.” Very few. “Pray it will be enough.”

  ****

  “Miss, a word?”

  Afternoon had come, struggling through rain and mist, gloomy as the morning. Jockie and Old Rake had gone off westward, bearing Annie’s letter of plea to the physician. But Kirstie had lingered, waiting, Annie thought, for Jock’s return. Yet as soon as Sonsie busied herself in the yard, Kirstie approached Annie.

  “What is it?” Annie, deep in worrisome thoughts, struggled to put her own concerns aside and listen.

  Kirstie sat down at the table. “You know so much about things, miss—some I will never understand. Do you ken the nature o’ Jockie’s affliction?”

  That snagged all Annie’s attention. “Not much,” she said frankly. “He came to us as a young lad, you ken. You must ha’ heard the story.” Though Kirstie would have been very young also when Uncle Dennis rescued Jockie from life in that cage.

  Kirstie nodded gravely. “So ’tis true, then? His own people used him that way?”

  “I do not know they were his people. Tinkers and other travelers often snatch children for their own purposes.”

  “Poor lad. But what made him the way he is? Folks ’round here whisper ’twas dark magic, but I am fair certain whatever afflicts him, ’tis no’ the Devil, for his heart is too good.”

  Annie shrugged helplessly. To be sure, Annie’s mother and uncle had sometimes pondered the matter in hushed voices. She did not know if her mother, for all her wisdom, had reached a conclusion. Jockie’s problems were manifold and affected his body rather than his mind. His right side, though slightly stunted, appeared normal—the left, twisted, had never grown aright. And though his thoughts moved swiftly, he could not easily express them.

  Kirstie, a slight flush on her cheek, went on, “I ha’ found he can speak more readily when he is at ease. ’Tis as if when he stops trying to force the words, they can come from him.” The girl met Annie’s wondering gaze a bit defiantly. “Such times as when we are abed together after…after…”

  “I see.”

  In a rush, Kirstie said, “I never expected for it to happen. But he was so good to me, so brave. So sweet. And ’tis not all about how a man looks, is it? ’Tis about what lies in his heart.”

  Aye, and if only Annie could be sure Tam Sutherland believed that.

  “Only”—Kirstie leaned closer—“what concerns me now is, this trouble that afflicts Jockie, could it be passed to a bairn?”

  “Kirstie, lass, are you telling me you are—”

  “Nay. At least, not yet. I am thankful to say I ha’ not got that monster Randleigh’s bairn, at least. But if we keep on—well, Jockie is healthy enough that way, if you ken what I mean.”

  “Och, well…” Life never stopped delivering surprises. “Kirstie, I canno’ answer your question. I tend to think, as my mother did, that somewhat went wrong when Jockie was born. My mother said that happens sometimes when a woman’s labor is overlong and difficult. But I ha’ no certain answers for you—I simply do no’ ken.”

  Kirstie’s face lit. “Yet Jockie’s bairn might be right and healthy.”

  “Aye, Kirstie, but have a care.” Annie laid her hand on the girl’s arm. “’Twould be ill indeed to let Randleigh get wind of you bedding Jock. I do no’ suppose that man would take well to Jockie having what is now denied to him.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Two days later, Annie traveled to the laird’s house once again, this time in the company of a physician. Master Camden, a sour-faced man in a rusty black frock coat, had demanded his payment up front and made no secret of the fact that he disliked the idea of treating a prisoner. But at least, in answer to Annie’s letter, pleading and persuading, he had come.

  Now he stared down his long nose at her and said, “Your letter did not advise me we would have a further journey. Nor did your servant.”

  “Does it matter?” Annie challenged. “Are you no’ sworn to alleviate suffering wherever you find it? Besides, my husband is falsely accused and being held unjustly. He has no’ seen the magistrate, nor has he been convicted.”

  Camden snorted. But he stopped his complaining once they arrived and Annie faced off with Ned Randleigh again, at last gaining admittance to the strong room. As soon as the physician saw Tam’s hand and his general condition, which had worsened mightily since Annie had been with him, he went silent, a new gravity in his eyes.

  With Randleigh standing by, he performed a thorough examination, questioned Tam about the origin of his injuries, and inquired as to how he had been treated since being taken into custody.

  Tam, pulling no punches, told it plainly, a sheen of perspiration caused by pain on his skin.

  “I would I had seen this injury sooner,” Camden said then, after taking a long look at Ned Randleigh. “You have at least three broken bones in that hand, and they have all begun to set—badly, I am afraid.”

  “What can you do for him?” Annie asked.

  “The best course now is to rebreak the fingers and then attempt to set them properly. It will be very painful, and I cannot do it here. I will need more room—air and light.”

  Faced down by the physician, Randleigh allowed them to repair to the dining room under guard, where Annie witnessed one of the most horrific procedures she had ever seen. Tam kept from hollering, no doubt refusing to give Randleigh—in the next room—the satisfaction. But Annie did not know how.

  Afterwards, with a hard look at Tam and another at the guards, Camden said, “I advise this patient be given a strong tot of whisky. Where is his jailer?”

  As Annie suspected, Randleigh had been listening and came in with the familiar sneer on his face.

  The physician gave him a scathing glare. “Is it true, sir, that you caused this man’s injuries and then left them untreated?”

  “Not quite; the prisoner exaggerates.”

  “No exaggeration that those broken fingers should have been set properly days ago. Why is this man being held in these conditions?”

  “He attacked me and now awaits justice.”

  “I shall return in two days to reexamine him, and he’d better be in good condition then—bandaging clean and no signs of further ill use. Do you understand, sir?”

  Randleigh blanched. “I do.”

  “Good. It is unconscionable to leave even an animal in such pain.”

  Randleigh said nothing, but he shot a look at Annie that told her, You will pay for this.

  The physician continued, “Why has he been held so long without facing a magistrate?”

  “The magistrate is away,” Randleigh replied shortly, and added to his men, “Put the prisoner back in the strong room.”

  “Please,” Annie spoke swiftly, “if I might have another moment with him—”

  “You have had enough favors from me,” Randleigh growled. “Put him back, I say.”

  Annie, tears in her eyes, had to satisfy herself with exchanging a long look with Tam as he was hauled away.

  As she turned back to Randleigh, the physician asked, “Who is laird here?”

  Sourly, Randleigh replied, “Laird Ardaugh MacCallum.”

  “And you are his hired agent?”

  “I am—and with full authority.”

  “Where is the laird now?”

  “In Edinburgh,” Annie replied. “I ha’ been to see him just recently.”

  That earned her another dangerous glare from Randleigh, and she wondered if Tam would suffer for it once she and the physician had gone.

  “I shall return,” Camden reminded the factor. “Fair treatment, mind.”

  When they went outside, the physician paused and eyed Annie. “A most unpleasant man, the factor.”

  “Aye, sir.” He had no idea.

  “Give
me your laird’s direction—I will write and inform him of what I have observed here.”

  “Och, would you?” Annie’s heart struggled to rise. “I would appreciate it ever so much.”

  “As you so aptly pointed out, mistress, I am sworn to alleviate suffering in whatever way I can. Did your husband attack that man?”

  “Nay, sir—he but got in the way when Master Randleigh sought to harm another.”

  The physician grunted. “I will meet you here in two days, at ten of the clock.”

  For the first time in days, a ray of hope pierced the darkness in Annie’s heart. “Thank you, Master Camden.”

  ****

  Tam lay flat upon the floor of his prison, watching the sliver of light that was all he could see through his window. Since the physician’s visit, the pain in his hand had slowly abated from a raging storm to a steady throb, yet the storm in his heart refused to quiet. He wanted to throw himself at the door and walls of his prison, shout out his anger. Remaining quiet required self-discipline he’d never suspected he possessed.

  He hated this helplessness, had believed he’d reached the height of that emotion the night he watched his mother die. But seeing Annie and beholding the agony in her dark eyes, knowing he could do nothing to ease it, felt almost worse.

  He could scarcely bear to think what Randleigh might ask of her for his, Tam’s, sake. As he’d told her, he now understood her capacity for self-sacrifice.

  He’d wanted to shout at her when the physician came, forbid her to pay Randleigh’s price—to let him rot here in this room if he must. He was not worth her spending all her warmth, her caring, her dignity.

  He could say none of those things now, so he thought of her instead—lay with his eyes on the light and remembered each individual moment they had shared.

  The first time he saw her moving about the fair clad in her green cloak and gown, the broad-brimmed hat with Sol’s feather sweeping down to her cheek…the first time their eyes met and the sheer life he’d encountered, dark and curious as the gaze of a crow. Wee Crow—the name suited her, for she possessed vast and fundamental wisdom.