The Keening

by Margaret Pinard

  One man had a cart with jars of milk, the cream sloshing out of several as his horse stumbled a few times. The driver was grumbling, glancing back at his load and cursing the horse. Another horseman trotted past, a finely-dressed clergyman, perhaps out on an errand for his patrons. Two fishermen walked together, each holding two long handles with metal tines pointing sideways at the top. Neil wondered if they were after trout with those cleeks, or on their way to the sea for the skate. He nodded acknowledgement of all whom he passed.

  As day broke full on him, the sleepiness left and some of the urgency returned. He clucked his mare into a trot for long periods, trying to cover more ground. He guessed that they would be traveling only by day, laden as they were and not knowing the road. So now they would be up and moving. He had said he would wait at Crianlarich, since that would be the logical point of intercepting them, but his heart wanted to continue, not sit waiting. The problem was he didn’t know if they would come through one of the glens from Glencoe, or travel down the east shore of Loch Linnhe. He supposed the latter was safer, but they were probably going on advice from other travelers and his mother’s intuition. Not a bad guide, but definitely not something he could predict.

  He sighed, deciding to make camp at Crianlarich that night and to wait there the next day at least. By the time he reached the end of the long Sabbath, his back ached and his stomach was growling; he’d finished the bannocks and fried pie from Letty’s basket for his noon meal. Instead of avoiding the next outcropping of buildings huddled together near the crossroads, he went up to knock at the door of a small stone-built cottage next to what looked like a kirk.

  There he found a meal with the minister’s family, the wife saying as how she knew her Christian duty well enough. He was well-filled when he hopped up onto his horse again, and thanked the family with a wave before trotting up the road.

  Mindful of the warnings of his stepfather, he led the horse off the road at the point where he could see the western approach. He hobbled her feet again and sat to watch the last light leave the sky. He thought of the day he left Mull, when he’d looked back to see the same brilliant sunset over the island. His heart was heavy, but he prayed for his family on their way, that they not meet with trouble before he could protect them.

  ***

  ***

  The night was cold, September starting to turn its pretty head and blow the autumn winds that would bring stinging rain and ice to the highlands. Neil curled himself tighter into a ball, but did not sleep long. He awoke with the sounds of the birds stirring, perhaps two o’clock, and gave the whistle for the horse. She ambled over a few moments later, and he used a few handfuls of grass to rub against her coat, cleaning off the sweat from the day before. The work warmed his hands.

  Neil wished he could find shelter from the wind, but the land was treeless. The best he could do was work his way farther off the road to where he remembered seeing the rise of a small hill. As soon as he felt the ground rise under his feet, he also felt the wind drop. He could hear it still, rushing around the small tussock, but he dropped gratefully down and kept the horse nearby. He could lay on his right side on the slight incline of the hill and still keep his gaze to the west. He watched for any lights or movement in the shadowy vale before succumbing again to sleep.

  His skin was cool and he was shaking a bit when he woke up, crouched over his knees. Pale pink stretches of light reached out from the east, and now the road was visible. Few people were on it that day though, and soon it was raining, a light rain, but steady. Neil thought about his post on the river. He hoped he’d still have it when he returned, for he liked it well enough and did not want to work indoors at the mill. The very thought of it made his throat start to close up, but he forced his thoughts to where his mother might be right now, struggling. He would do anything to protect them, even work in that bloody mill.

  The first person he saw was mounted on a hardy highland pony. A dog trotted at its heels. Neil deemed it time to start asking for help, and raised his hand high in salute, hailing the rider down an the bend in the road.

  “Good day to ye, sir,” Neil said.

  “And ye,” the highlander returned.

  “I am waiting for some of my family that are traveling from Mull. Have you seen three women and a little boy walking this way?”

  The man’s eyes betrayed no reaction, but his words softened. “Nay, but God go with them, and thee.” He nodded, Neil thanked him, and he walked on. Three more men reacted the same way when Neil posed his question to them throughout the day. Pity it was he saw in their faces. Either they had had their families removed as well, or they feared it might happen to them. No travelers this way had been well-dressed. How did the wealthy manage to get from north to south then? He’d seen no carriages. Just the one mail coach going north, making a great racket with its four horses and great big wheels.

  It was nearing suppertime on the Monday, and Neil was wrestling with the decision to continue waiting in the smirr at Crianlarich, or whether to strike out to find them sooner. If only one of the travelers had seen them, he’d have a hint as to which way they were coming. Before he could decide, another horse came into view.

  It walked with a quick step, as if nearing home. Neil saw that there were in fact two riders, a big man and a smaller woman, riding in front. He stepped out to hail them, and the horse plunged sideways. The man kept his seat, a trained rider, but the woman clutched the mane in front of her with a death grip. Neil saw the man speak some words low in her ear before turning murderous eyes on him. From twenty feet away, Neil still felt his heart quail from that look.

  “And what do you want then? We’ve nothing to give or steal, if that’s what you’re after.”

  “No, sir, good e’en, sir, good e’en, lady,” replied Neil, trying to remember his manners. “I am looking for news of my family on the road from Mull. Have you seen three women and a little boy on your way?”

  At his question the woman looked up at him. “Yes. We passed them near Ballachulish early yesterday. They were moving—they had to go quite slowly. From there, they’d come through Glencoe. They’ll probably spend tonight there.”

  Glencoe. Witness to clan betrayal and government treachery. Scene of the massacre of 1692, when almost a hundred Scots perished. Valley filled with angry and unforgiving spirits.

  “Thank you!” Neil all but sang out. “Thank you very much. I am sorry for scaring your horse. A safe journey to you both,” Neil called out over his shoulder as he whistled for his horse and picked up the basket and his plaid and stowed them in his pack behind. At last, a sign. He ignored the shiver that ran low up his spine at the mention of Glencoe, and rode at a gallop to the north.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Muirne’s pain came and went in flashes: when the bite at her shoulders from the heavy creel got to be nearly unbearable, her attention would be pulled to the burning at her wrist, where she carried the loops of bags of clothes rescued from the blackhouse. She looked in the blueing of the light and saw her sister Sheena was dropping tears from the tip of her nose. Their feet, normally calloused and serviceable, all had burst blisters from the roads and cuts from the rough bracken they’d scrambled over, fearful of losing the way.

  She felt the permanent grooves on her shoulders where the heavy creel base had been sitting, every day for almost a week now. Her hands shook from alternating clutching the front of the basket to keep it balanced, and the fingers felt like claws as she flexed them painfully. She hid her hands when she felt her mother watching her.

  Muirne motioned to Sheena. “Let’s go down to the burn to fetch water for supper and some for our hands, eh?”

  “Do ye look out for any willow trees beside it then, for the leaves make a good numbing herb,” their mother said. “We can make a paste of it for after supper.”

  “Yes, Mama,” replied Muirne.

  The night was going to be cold and windy again. There were no trees in the glen to shake in the wind, but there was the stra
nge noise that was the wind whipping through the upper hills. It would soon make its way down to the corrie in which they’d made camp. Sheila got out the griddle for making supper and looked to where Alisdair had stopped cold and knelt down to the ground with his burden.

  They’d made him up a pack with a plaid on his back, but his job was to collect any kindling they could find along the way for the fire at the day’s end. There was not much, but the small pile he’d been able to spy out would have to do them for a supper fire.

  “Come here to me, Alisdair.” He came, as if in a trance, the pack still tied to his back. Sheila released it and set it down gently, then hugged her to him. Gradually he melted back into a little boy, and he burrowed in for a closer embrace. After a few moments, Sheila whispered to him. “Time now to be doing your job and building up the fire, m’lad.” She felt his little body shake, and sigh, and then straighten.

  “Yes, Mama.”

  Sheila removed a few more of the old potatoes from a sack, put them next to the leeks she’d collected at their last stopping-place. Soup it would be, with the last of the fresh-killed hen meat, tonight. She lugged the kitchen pot over near where Alisdair sat building the fire, and started scrubbing at each of the items before tossing them in. When the girls came back with the water in their clay pot, most of it was dumped into the stewpot, with the rest reserved for the morning’s porridge.

  ***

  ***

  They heard the hoofbeats in the late evening long before anyone appeared, and immediately they took up the defensive position their mother had taught them the first day. They crouched in front of their piled belongings, Sheila standing in front of them. It was rather late, and only the last of summer’s long light was visible to the west from the valley entrance.

  From their position in the corrie, a ways up from the main glen road, Sheila could easily see the main road through Glencoe. By the time the rider was even with them, however, it was too dark to see who it was. His head was turning this way and that, searching. Finally he slowed, seeming to peer their way.

  “Hallo? Anybody there?”

  “Is that—Neil, is that you?” Muirne asked, jumping up. She felt Sheena’s hand grasp her foot.

  “Muirne! Mother?” The figure immediately jumped off the horse and scrambled toward them. Their fire had long died, but they didn’t need its light to recognize his voice and his walk as he clambered over the rocky ground.

  “Are ye all right? Is everyone well?” Neil asked, as he was engulfed in tearful hugs and laughs of relief.

  “We are, they are, God help us. But why—how—how did you know to find us here, Neil? How long have ye been—”

  “It’s all right, Mother. I’m only four days from home. I chanced to meet someone who’d seen you back at Ballachulish early yesterday, and they told me which way you’d be coming through. Thank God I’ve found you.”

  “Aye.” Sheila looked briefly up toward the darkening sky, but said nothing more.

  “I’ve been praying that it wouldn’t break the children’s health to make this journey, praying that there would be no early September snow, as there sometimes is. But now we have another pair of arms, a man’s arms, with us.” She smiled approval at Neil’s courage, her hand clutching his arm.

  “And a horse as well, and you’re within four days of shelter, or maybe a bit more,” Neil told them, nodding.

  But it had been close, Muirne thought, looking at her mother. She put the thought away, and met Neil’s gaze. He knew.

  ***

  ***

  Neil watched his family closely when they moved off the next morning, leaving the glen behind and turning south. In the initial round of storytelling last night, none of them had touched on the burning of their house. It was clear they were exhausted, and when the initial excitement at Neil’s arrival wore off, they’d fallen asleep quickly. Now in the light, he saw just how depleted his sisters had become from the week of hard travel. And his mother, though she saved her breath to refrain from appearing short of it.

  They redistributed the loads in the creels, with Neil crafting two sacks from his traveling blankets and laying them atop the horse for balance. He caught the smiles between Muirne and Sheena as they shouldered their baskets and realized how light they felt now. But still, the base sat on the same sore points of their shoulders, and after a while, they were once again head down, teeth gritted. They continued on the same schedule as before even with the new distribution, and stopped every hour for a few minutes to straighten their backs.

  These short rests were when they talked, and Neil heard of the night visit, or ‘inspection.’ His stomach roiled with anger again as he heard how they’d been so carelessly tossed out of their own home. Surely that was not the action of an honorable laird, he thought. He heard of the milk cow left with neighbors who could be trusted and the hens who were killed and eaten in the past week. He heard of other neighbors’ houses they’d passed, where nothing remained but smoking timbers and blackened pots. In turn, he told them of the jobs he and Gillan had taken, the people they’d met, and stories recounted at the supper table in the past few weeks. He had them all laughing at some of the escapades on the docks.

  They were able to set a pace a bit faster than before, and reached the place where Neil had camped before at Crianlarich just after sunset the second day. Alisdair still held the job of collecting any sticks for a fire, but the winding road south toward Glasgow seemed picked clean, well-traversed as it was, and so they had no fire that night. They shared a bit of cold smoked fish from a pack, and slept out in the fields by the road, using their pile of belongings as a wind break, all snuggled together.

  It took them five days to reach Jenny’s house in Hutchesontown. They were met by a bustling Jenny, who brought out a special side of smoked salmon to be braised with the abundance of vegetables from her garden. The smell of it made Muirne’s mouth water freely, so long it had been since she’d had a real meal. Gillan hung back in the house at first. He was choked up until Sheila came to put her arms around him, and then tears of relief flowed freely down his cheeks.

  They ranged themselves around the fireplace and fell to sleep immediately, bellies full and glad to be at home with family, free of the burden of all their worldly possessions. With a great effort, Muirne stayed awake to tell Neil what had taken place in more detail. They held hands as she told him, and he saw what she’d seen in her retelling. She spoke in barely a whisper, mindful of the younger children asleep, and their parents on the other side of the wall. After such an unburdening of the soul, Muirne wept a little and fell asleep quickly, even curled against the wall. Neil crossed his arms against his chest, not feeling the warmth from the fire as Muirne’s words sunk in.

  ***

  ***

  Neil woke up earlier than the others in the sitting room. He was stiff from riding and sleeping sitting up, but he tried to stretch out the soreness as he helped himself to porridge on the stove and dressed for work. Gillan had told him he thought it would be all right after one week to go back to work and explain what had happened with his family, but Neil was feeling nervous anyway. He did not want to end up at the cotton mill.

  But Gillan was right; he’d chosen a good company, and the foreman listened to his short tale silently before nodding, saying that he understood, and his post had not been filled. Neil heaved a sigh of gratitude, nodding to Mr. Carter his thanks, and took up his duties just as before. Some of the men had eyed him with distaste, but at the dinner hour, he revealed what had taken him away for the week, and they clucked in sympathy, shaking their heads at the madness of the lairds and the changing times. A barrier, it seemed, had been breached.

  Many of them were highlanders or islanders like him, and had come down from the hills and glens in the last year or two. Others were older transplants, having come out of the north a generation or two ago, after the ‘Forty-Five. Glasgow was growing even then, although it wasn’t until the past thirty years that the trade on the River Cly
de had expanded so quickly that it was hard to hire fast enough.

  Besides freight, Neil was hearing that ship-building further west on the river was a booming industry. It was just as physically demanding, but took longer to learn, and so you had better security—you couldn’t be replaced easily. Neil turned this over in his mind, resolving to check out some of the ship-building yards on his day off to see if he could manage a job there. Perhaps even Gillan could find a job there as well, and they could work together.

  On his way home, he did not forget to stop in at the tavern and pay a call to thank Letty for her help. He wanted her to know his duty had been discharged, and his mother and younger siblings were all now safe and together. Letty’s eyes went wide even with this brief retelling of the errand that had taken him away, and her forehead creased with concern.

  “Don’t be worried,” he said. “It’s all right now, thanks in part to you.”

  “I’m so sorry for it though,” she said. “I do hope things will go better with you now.” She crossed her arms.

  “Today has been going well, for me, at any rate,” he teased, and she blushed. She looked down, hiding her gaze. He admired her eyelashes, dark and long against her pale skin. She looked so different when she spoke to him from her heart—a very different picture from her early cool appraisal.

  She looked up at him. “Oh, ye think so, do you?”