“It is very painful, the news I am charged with delivering today, so I will introduce it with a story from the Bible.” He told them the story of the tribes of Israel being cast out of the Promised Land by the Egyptians for many years, the trials and tribulations to God’s chosen people, endured by them because they had their faith and eventually a leader in the person of Moses. He hammered on the fact that although they had to leave everything behind, God took care of them in their new home, the desert, and welcomed to his bosom those who were not strong enough to survive the years of servitude.
Neil wondered if this was not a reminder to help those returned from the war in worse shape than his stepfather had, with the limp and one shoulder that would not set straight anymore. It sometimes made him grit his teeth and exhale loudly, but he never complained. He did the jobs he could do, and they got by fine. He knew there were local boys younger than he who’d had legs sawn off and hands shot off. He reminded himself to ask his mother about saving some food to distribute to their nearest war-wounded neighbors this week.
Mr. McManus was winding down now, his voice dropping to a defeated-sounding murmur. “So stay together as God’s flock, His Chosen People, and keep the faith He gave ye, and ye will have your reward in Heaven.”
“Amen,” replied the congregation.
“Now,” he started, then stopped. Cleared his throat. “I have been charged with delivering the following message from the Laird MacLean.” He unrolled a scroll of paper to read aloud:
“To all crofters who hold lands under me, be advised that from today the Crown will be importing barilla-powder from Spain, as it did cheaply before the wars. This year then, and from this day forward, your kelp-ash will not fetch nearly the price it did formerly, and thus there will be no way to make the rents needed to keep such large families as you all have on the pieces of land that you are on. I am therefore forced to evict a large number of families on the worst land, in hopes that you will find better elsewhere to sustain yourselves. Those families who must leave will receive a notice at their home and must vacate their land by the end of this month to make room for more efficient and profitable uses of the land.
Executed by writ of Sir Hector MacLean, Laird of Torloisk”
There was complete silence among the congregation as the minister finished—all crofters and fishers perched on a precarious edge.
Then, a gasp from one of the women on the right side of the nave, who stretched out her hand to the pew to keep her balance. It was the Widow McKinstry, whom everyone knew had a very poor plot, too close to the ocean’s salty breezes and hardly big enough to furnish the grass for her milk cow to graze on. A murmur swept through the crowd, as wives turned to husbands, fathers looked at sons, and they all thought the same thing: Will it be us?
The Reverend Lachlan McManus, his unsavory task over with, blessed them all and walked out, as slow and erect as ever. He remained at the door to wish his parishioners well on their walk home. Some wanted to know how serious the Laird was, whether it would be like the evictions in other parts of Scotland, the ones they’d heard horror stories about.
“Nay, nay, I’m sure the Laird knows better than to treat his own people like chattel. It is simply a matter of economy. Some of this flock shall have to be the strong ones to go seek new places for the Glory of God. Would ye turn from such an honor, Matthew Dirnley?” he said.
“No,” mumbled the fifteen-year-old Dirnley.
Similar conversations were held as they all filed out, about seventy people in all.
“And what of the Independents? And the Seceders?” Neil heard one old man ask. “If it is a matter of economy, it’ll touch them too.”
“Aye,” replied McManus. “It will.” But that was all the answer he gave. Either he knew and did not want to say, or had not been told. Either way, Neil wouldn’t hear the answer there. He decided to pay a visit to his friend-of-sorts Willy, whose family were one of the few Seceders and lived over the vale further inland. He would discover if they had heard the same distressing news this day.
When the family returned home, the sun was past its zenith and its June heat warmed their backs, but there was little enough room to spare for thoughts of gratitude for the day’s weather. They fell to eating quickly. The stew of kail and cabbage and pork broth was fragrant and warm but stuck in their throats as they meditated on the morning’s news.
At length, Gillan said, “At least there is no note left on our doorstep.”
Sheila looked up from her bowl, but held her tongue.
“And yet, we may get such a notice at any time, like the minister said. So we had best make plans.”
“What sort of plans, Father?” said Alisdair. Even his six-year-old mind grasped the seriousness of the situation, and moderated his tone.
“Well, if we must move quickly, we should decide who could take us in. And I may have to go away to find work that will put a new roof over our heads. Neil, too.” Neil tried to keep his gaze steady, but felt as if a trio of walls was closing in on him, leaving only one way out. No time for a tutor now.
Sheila now spoke. “If it is at all possible, I would wish that we stay together, if we do get the note.” Her voice was quiet but firm, making it sound more like a dictate than a request. They all felt the reason behind this dictate—her previous husband’s long absence—but said nothing. She treated the silence as confirmation.
It was a somber meal. When everyone had done, Neil asked if he could walk over the vale to Willy’s for a visit.
“Aye,” said Gillan. “”Twould be good to see how others are faring, whether—” but he did not finish his thought.
“Can I go, too, Father?” Muirne asked.
Gillan frowned at her, “Do you know anyone in the house?”
“Yes, Ellen from the village school.”
“A’right. Ye may go.”
It was silent again, as the two eldest put on their outer layers again, and Sheena helped her mother wash the dishes.
***
***
Neil and Muirne set out, and both now welcomed the sun’s warmth, after the frigid conversation at the dinner meal. Neil picked the path forward over the blooming bracken beside the little burn that trickled still down to the loch.
Neil asked, “Did you have anything to say to Ellen in particular?”
“No, but I like to listen to you and Willy talk. I know you’ll hear different things, and I wanted to be out today.”
“Mmm,” Neil said thoughtfully.
“Don’t be telling tales, Neil MacLean. I’m not looking to be married off quite yet, and anyway, they’re Seceders. Father wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Maybe that’s true and maybe it’s not.”
“Don’t be silly. Anyway, perhaps I should be asking if you have anything to say to Ellen in particular,” Muirne said.
“Don’t be daft, girl,” he said brusquely. “I can have no thoughts of marriage until we find a more secure way to win our bread. Can’t go getting extra mouths to feed, now can I?”
Muirne nodded. “Who do you think would take us in, if the Laird does go through with an eviction?”
“Mother’s cousins over in Morvern. Or Father’s—our father’s—in Glen Etive. Don’t worry about it too much, Muirne. Family will always be there.”
They were quiet a moment, and Neil could see his sister’s forehead, with the one vertical crease of worry that always cropped up.
“But what if it’s like the evictions in the North and the East, Neil? The ones that Kitty told us of, back last winter.”
Neil remembered, and his hard sense pressed him to take it as accurate, as a possibility for his own family, but he couldn’t manage to see the heritor at Torloisk, a minor head of the Clan MacLean, doing what was said to have been done by the Earls and other big landowners over in the eastern highlands: burning of roofs, dragging out old women in the snow, dogs set on crofters, ears deaf to the cries of decency.
Surely that was part of the old troub
les—a political or clan battle simmering for a long time until one side got the upper hand and used it. That would not happen here. The Laird knew what his tenants could bear, would be fair. People went to different churches but knew each other to be decent, law-abiding, God-fearing. No, it would not come to that here, surely.
Muirne reminded him of a detail he’d managed to forget. “Kitty said her distant cousins had come knocking in the middle of the night, nothing but the clothes on their back and a few handfuls of bread. What would make a family do that, if not the horrors she described? And only last year. It could well come here this year, Neil.” Although it was June and hard to think of being thrown out into the snow, Neil felt a shiver of cold run up his arms.
Muirne shivered too, and Neil put his hand on her back, soothing her as they walked. They dreaded a little what they would hear at the Currans’ home.
The last few minutes along the coast, brother and sister watched the clouds move slowly across a brilliant blue sky. As they turned with the inlet of water, the cottages surrounding a small freshwater loch came into view. The Currans’ house was the one on the far right. No one was outside, but that was normal on the Sabbath for the Seceders. They would be inside, reading or praying together as a family.
“Let us hope they still accept visitors,” Neil said.
“Aye.”
They stopped a few paces from the door. Muirne hesitated, then said, “It seems extra quiet, Neil.”
“Hallo, the house!” Neil called.
But no one opened. He knocked, called out again.
No one answered. He went around the side of the house, where the line for washing was usually extended to a stake in the yard, but there was no line. Muirne met him in the back, shaking.
“All the cabbages and potatoes have been torn up, Neil. That means they’ll not be here for the winter. It means—”
“Hold up, hold on, let’s go back and try again.”
They went back to the front door and knocked. When there was still no answer, Neil lifted the iron latch, which clicked easily down as he pushed it inward.
It was dark inside, after the bright sun, but they stepped in cautiously. When their eyes adjusted, they stared in shock.
Not a scrap of furniture was left. It had all been taken away. The rocks of the firepit and the cupboard for the bed, attached to the wall, were all that was left as evidence that the small house had been lived in. Everything else, which Neil knew included linens, crockery, their loom, more than a case of books, their larder, which had always been well-stocked, and a framed painting on the wall next to the door—it was all gone.
Muirne looked in shock around her, her eyes going to where those things had stood. She teared up, though whether it was for her friend Ellen, any hopes for Willy, or the proof of their Laird’s cruelty, Neil could not tell. His eye caught on the rocks in the center of the room. He advanced and saw that a paper had been pinned down among them.
He eased it out carefully. It had been left to be found by friends. He read it mutely then handed it to his sister. Muirne’s eyes ran over the notice, its official appearance communicating far more of fear than Kitty’s stories had. It was here. Now.
Muirne’s hand cupped over her mouth in fear.
“Wait,” said Neil, as he took it back from her, looking at the back. “They’ve written on the back of the notice: ‘Gone to Glasgow, South Side, Wisham Close, The MacPhersons.’ So at least they had somewhere to go…”
He debated whether they should take the paper with them. Who knew what would happen to the Currans’ little village now? Perhaps it would be best if they held their new address for others who might ask. Yes. He put it in his pocket, and opened his arms to his sister. She put her arms round him and they stood, looking down from this precipice of their young lives.
CHAPTER THREE
Six days later was Sheena’s birthday, and Sheila tried to make it a merry occasion. Gillan would not be swayed; he stayed aloof and would not be drawn into any desperate effort to be cheerful. It had turned out as the Laird had said in his letter: the blue ash cakes had been cut well and showed very high quality work, but the buyer had barely stayed at the crossroads for an hour that Friday inspecting the carts, weighing the lots, before leaving. Gillan had had to agree to a paltry sum for all their efforts of the winter, and felt very bitter about it.
Gillan wrote letters to the neighbors and friends that had left, asking what reception they had had in their new communities. For as it turned out, much of the inner island had already been notified. Friends had not had time to visit them before leaving the island, but left their plans with the minister instead.
After one evening spent visiting a different kirk up-island, Gillan returned late to say that his youngest sister’s family had carted everything off to Glasgow. Sheila’s brother’s family had the bigger news however, as their minister told him they’d gone off to America.
“No!” Sheila scolded. “Surely Kenneth would have told me before leaving the country altogether! Impossible.” She was tired, and fearful, and irritable, after spending extra hours the whole week hurriedly planting extra turnip and potato seeds given by departing neighbors: she hoped that they would still be here to harvest them in the winter.
“I tell ye, woman, the minister said that’s where they went. Took ‘em five days, he said, and they left behind the name of the person who was taking charge of their passage across, as a reference.”
Facing this evidence, Sheila’s mouth fell open in shock. She and Kenneth had always been very close, and she struggled to imagine leaving so quickly that she wouldn’t have had time to bid her own brother goodbye. Not succeeding, she shook her head and turned back to her youngest daughter.
“Now, Sheena, I know you like your pudding, so this year I made two. There’s the flapjack, your favorite, and I thought we all might like some cranachan. I got the raspberries from over Tom’s field, they’re just lovely.”
Sheena beamed her pleasure at the extra treat and took her place to serve each person before herself. She did not seem to sense the struggle it was for her parents and older siblings to muster the good cheer to celebrate her day. She and Alisdair plowed through their sweets, oblivious, smiling and giggling.
The rest of the family savored theirs more soberly, enjoying the summery treats. Muirne eyed her mother and stepfather sitting by the door. Sheila was writing in the last light as he dictated, her fist clamped on the pencil in concentration. If they were writing to Aunt Jenny, she would be able to tell them if there were good working conditions for a family at her new Glasgow address.
“Who are you writing to, Father?”
“Mr. Spigham,” he said. This was the name Sheila’s brother Kenneth had left with his minister, as they had heard earlier.
A look passed between Muirne and Neil, and their mother glanced over at them, sensing their trepidation. Muirne nervously spoke.
“Father?”
“We are writing. You mun wait.”
Muirne turned to Neil, and in a tortured whisper, asked, “What if they turn us out like they did in Sutherland? What if we’re burned in our beds? Hadn’t we better leave now?”
But Gillan overheard and stopped his task to look up. “There’ll be no talk of what may or may not have gone on elsewhere in the country. There’s no telling what other people will do or say was done to them, to avoid—” He was interrupted by Muirne.
“But what if it’s true? Kitty Lee heard it from her cousins, who were there—”
“I said there’ll be no talk of it,” said Gillan gruffly. “Now, I will finish this letter in peace, and we will have some sound sense of what to do when we hear how it is in the city, and perhaps even in America. Nae fear, girl.” His gaze bored into Muirne, and she coughed a few times to hide the lump in her throat that threatened tears. She slowed her breathing, picked up her spoon. Life would have to wait until Gillan allowed it.
***
***
The next day the family
rose early for kirk, setting out together as the sun rose. There was still tension around the matter of leaving, and it seemed the wiser course not to speak of it while Gillan was present. Hence, another silent walk.
They arrived and sat through the service, variously listening to the minister and their own inner thoughts. After their shock of seeing Willy and Ellen’s house empty, Neil and Muirne half expected to see their Presbyterian flock cut down as well, but most of the islanders from the coastal crofts were here.
The sermon this week was about fortitude through adversity: not Moses in the desert, but Job and his desperate pleas for help. If this was meant to strengthen the resolve of the parishioners to survive, it did not have the desired effect, as Muirne saw the woman seated in front of her start shaking, unable to control her body’s response. It was Nancy, Angus’s fair young bride only two months past. Angus, a full head taller even seated beside her, put his arm around her and pulled her in to him, whispering something Muirne could not hear. It sounded like, “Dinna be afraid. We’ll stay together.”
Afterwards, Mr. McManus stood outside the door as usual, bidding his charges goodbye, speaking a few private words with this one or that one. When the MacLeans came out, he motioned for Gillan to step aside with him.
Neil moved to hear their conversation, while Sheila kept the younger children a foot or two away, not wanting to upset the men by seeming to intrude. Alisdair waited by his mother, a serious expression on his face as he watched his father and the minister conversing. They, and the rest of the congregation filing out, could hear every word.
“MacLean. Ye may have heard that some on the island are leaving on ships for the Americas. Your wife’s brother, I believe?”
Gillan nodded curtly. He did not like others knowing his family’s business before he did, even their minister.
The Keening Page 2
