There was a teasing jibe in her tone, and he felt drawn in by the beauty of her. There was nothing left for it. Her eyes held an appeal he could not turn away from. Neil bent, and gently kissed her cheek. Letty stood stock-still as he did so, then her hand flew to her cheek where his lips had touched her. Their eyes met and it was a long moment before either moved.
Letty let her hand down and looked about to speak when her father raised a hoarse grumbling cry from the tavern room. She answered; the spell was broken. Neil dipped his head and bid her good night. His body fairly glowed with energy as she nodded and closed the door. He imagined what she had been about to say, all possibilities relating to how she felt just as he did. He started planning his next opportunity to see her, and floated above the earth on his walk home.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Life took on a new shape. Sheila looked for a house for the family, and Jenny provided her with plenty of advice. It only took a few days of searching for her to find one close by in Laurieston at a reasonable rate that would allow Jenny and Charlie the use of their parlor again. The new place had the same setup as Jenny and Charlie’s: two separate rooms for beds, a kitchen with a stove, and a sitting room with a fireplace at the wall. The privy was shared out back in the yard with the block of houses.
There was no place for a vegetable garden in the new place, but Sheila was kept busy with other tasks. They found a school for Sheena and Alisdair both, paid for in the church rates. They attended the kirk that Jenny and Charlie went to, and met some of the families in their yard that went with them each Sunday. Neil went with Charlie to one of the shipbuilding outfits further west of the city and was hired on as paid apprentice. But over all this settling-in activity, there was a feeling of impermanence. Sheila finally put a name to it one day in early November, after six weeks had gone by in their new home.
“We’re country people, it’s clear enough,” she said, when the younger children were in bed, and she was knitting at the fireside. Neil and Muirne were out at a friend’s ceilidh for the night. “Neil may do very weel with his learning the ship-building, and you’re doing well enough at the mill with Charlie, but I ken ye don’t love it.”
Gillan had snorted at this. “And how can I not love something that puts food on the table for my family, and a roof over their heads?”
“You don’t love it the way you loved putting out and taking in the crops, and fishing in the sea. Oh, well,” she revised. “Maybe you never loved keeping the nets in condition, but you felt it was good, honest work and you said when and how and where.”
“And isn’t this good, honest work I’m doing?” Gillan asked. “What would you have me do here? We’re in a city, on a river, crowded with folks coming in from the countryside. It’s not like there are folk clamoring for people to come work their land and become crofters.”
“Not here,” she said.
“No, not here,” he repeated in a different tone. “And I’ll not go halfway ’round the world looking for something that’s gone, impossible, fantasy now, d’ye hear? I don’t know what rumors ye’ve heard of the settlements in the Americas or wherever, but we’ll stick with what we know and manage to keep the family together.” Gillan’s voice grew quiet. “I couldn’t stand to hear of ye in such trouble again, d’ye ken that?”
“Aye,” Sheila replied softly. But she kept her ears open for opportunities nonetheless, and a short time later, one landed square in her lap.
Sheila and Muirne were paying a morning visit to Mrs. Murray, a woman Sheila had met at kirk and struck up a friendship with immediately. Isabel Murray had come from Mull to care for family one year and ended up marrying up and staying in the city. She’d been there five years now, and had two young children. Her husband worked at the same mill as Charlie and Gillan, but he was in charge of the hiring and wage-giving and seeing that all the government laws were followed.
Mrs. Murray was telling Sheila of a recent stramash over a strike. Of course, organized groups were illegal, but that hadn’t stopped a group of men from walking out in high summer as the cotton production was just getting up again since the war years. It would have been devastating to stop the work then, and so Mr. Murray had commissioned a foreign agent to hire and transport eighty men out of Ireland to come work in the place of the men who were striking to teach them a lesson.
“And this ‘foreign agent,’ Sheila asked, “he goes only to Ireland, or to other foreign places as well?”
“Oh, from my husband’s description, it sounds like he’s been all over!” Mrs. Murray laughed and pondered the details. “I know he’s even been to Australia once, but did not like it there. Disliked it so much in fact that he refused to deal with any fellow agents there, since he couldn’t trust that they wouldn’t be putting transported criminals back on a boat here with new names. The gall! When you think of it,” she clucked her tongue in disapprobation.
Sheila put in delicately, “And the Americas?”
“Oh, them. Yes, I believe Harry’s—I mean, Mr. Young, that is—” she cleared her throat, clearly self-conscious at what she’d revealed. “Mr. Young, my husband’s agent, has been to Canada, the Maritimes, I believe, and Boston, on several occasions. I suppose that means that they’ve been successful scouting trips.” Her voice fluttered. Sheila reached over and put her hand on the woman’s wrist to still her knitting.
“Do you think you could ask Harry if he hears of any land opportunities in the Americas, to let us know?”
“Surely, I could. He’s a devoted friend, working with my husband so closely and all—”
Sheila patted her wrist. “It’s all right, you needn’t worry.”
They exchanged a glance, with fear and relief mixed on one side, and pity and hope on the other. As Muirne watched this exchange, she felt a slight prickle of foreboding. Was her mother truly thinking of leaving for the Americas?
***
***
It took some time for Mrs. Murray to come back with any news, and by that time, Sheila had also discreetly asked their minister, both the teachers at Sheena and Alisdair’s school, and several others she knew with foreign connections, whether they could pass on any news of settlements or open land in the new territories. Sheila saw that while Neil was coping well enough learning his new trade and paying visits to his tavern girl, it was not the learning that she had hoped for him. And as for Gillan, the days inside the mill were breaking down his health, now that they were no longer tempered with outside work since the weather had turned cold and wet.
The fiber-congested air inside was making Gillan cough wretchedly. His chest constricted at intervals when she lay her head on it at night, as if he clenched the coughs down not to disturb her. But he couldn’t fall asleep like that, surely? Perhaps that was why he took the swig of whisky laced with some other substance each night. He said the mill doctor had given it to him, that everyone at the mill took it at night.
Muirne kept busy helping her mother, but made no intimate friends. She stayed close to home, ran errands for her mother, and read the few books that she could get ahold of in the parish library. She felt uncomfortable with how people acted in the city, and talked to Neil about it one day.
He came home from the docks and plopped down into the spindly chair at the table to await supper. His face was relaxed, his eyes closed, and as Muirne watched, a small smile crept in. She tugged his sleeve and indicated the door. He heaved himself back up and followed her out, repeating his exaggerated manner of sitting on the ground in the front yard, where some straggling roses tried to grow. “What is it, Muirne?”
Muirne hemmed and hawed a moment. “You remember saying about how Miss Letty changed from a city person to a real person?”
Neil’s expression of insouciance vanished and he sat up. He spoke low. “Yes. Why?”
“What is it about the city? Why do people go to such lengths, and play at being things they are not? I don’t understand why we can’t have gatherings like we did at home—if we had friends, I me
an.”
“We do have friends, Muirne. Wasn’t Mother just out visiting Mrs. Murray? And there are Aunt Jenny’s neighbors, who invited you to that outing—”
“But Mrs. Murray—” Muirne bit her bottom lip. “It’s true, the girls next door, especially Marjorie, are very kind. But the other folk I meet, they just don’t seem real, or practical, or—I don’t know what I mean, only that people like Mrs. Murray don’t inspire me to confide in them.”
“Maybe you have to wait. Maybe it takes—something real—to make them forget their city manners. Like Letty.” His voice softened.
Muirne crouched down to Neil’s level. She saw the stars in his eyes and reached out a hand to push him off balance. “You.”
“Hey!” Neil rolled over onto the dirt and jumped up to brush himself off. “You’ll find someone, Muirne. Dinna worry.”
“Find someone? Is it back to that again, then? Oh, Neil, if only there was some way I could. I’d love to be able to help, but I didn’t notice any man at kirk that was not married and old enough. Well, there was that Joseph…” She let her voice trail off and rolled her eyes at Neil. Joseph had been the old codger who fell asleep at the last kirk meeting and entertained everyone with his practically-musical snoring pattern.
“Ah, no, he must be near seventy! Surely there are some good young men in the parish,” Neil chided.
“Well, there are a handful of good-for-nothings whose mamas want to be rid of them, but not one man I saw who was in want of a wife that could actually provide for her. They’re all snatched up,” she said. She looked directly at Neil. “I’d help if I could, Neil, but…”
“Ye’ve done all right, Muirne. You’re our mother’s right hand, sure enough. Dinna worry about the other. It’ll come out all right in the end.”
Muirne sighed. Neil didn’t know what would happen any more than she did, but he didn’t worry about it as much. She’d try to adopt the same attitude.
***
***
News finally came to Sheila from her queries, and when it did, she heard it twice in the same day. First, the male schoolteacher paid them a call on a Sunday afternoon shortly before Christmas. He exuded good cheer, and even though the prospect of a thin Christmas loomed before them, the MacLeans smiled at his youthful energy as he sat with them around their rickety table.
“I have heard,” began Mr. Cartwright, after the niceties had been exchanged, “that there is a new settlement party to be launched in the new year to reinforce the one started by the Prince William.”
As no faces showed recognition, he explained. “The Prince William was the ship that sailed from here seven years past to Nova Scotia: New Scotland. It’s one of the provinces of Canada, named by the Scots who have made it their home. Now, I hear it is very cold—”
This brought up a laugh, as they were experiencing one of the coldest Novembers on record in Scotland. “Oh, aye?” said Neil. “I think we’d be well prepared, then.”
Gillan was standing off from this conversation, aloof and detached. He asked Mr. Cartwright the question but looked straight at Sheila. “And how much would it be for the ship’s passage, and for the land once ye got there, sir?”
“Well, that is the interesting part,” Mr. Cartwright replied, pulling a rolled piece of paper from his pocket and spreading it out on the table. “It says that the ship passage is £5 a person if ye can provide your own meal for five weeks. And it says that British citizens in good standing are allowed a fair plot of land that they can clear and make useful, for nothing!”
This statement was greeted with gasps and scoldings, for such a thing certainly could not be true. “No, it is,” Mr. Cartwright insisted. “It seems they’ve adopted the Americans’ public lands model to colonize the wilderness and the natives.” Sheila’s eyebrows raised.
“Yes, you’ll have to get more information on the dangers, it seems,” he said, his enthusiasm moderated a bit. He brightened again. “But I bet you there will be enough people in this next ship that you’ll be able to settle together and have some safety in numbers if the native tribes are hostile. They may not be. You will just have to write and enquire. But I will have done my duty in bringing you the news, and can wish you the best of luck.” He grinned broadly in a decidedly un-schoolmaster-like manner, then shook a glaring Gillan’s hand. He bowed to Sheila, and then took his leave.
Gillan appeared unable to speak until he cocked a finger at Sheila, and they sat in the box bed with the curtain drawn. The bevy of whispered words were indistinguishable, but Sheila emerged after a minute with a grim expression, smoothing her apron and retreating to the stove. Gillan went over to his chair to stare at the fire.
The family should have been cowed by this subdued conference, but instead they were abuzz with speculation about the new ship, which Mr. Cartwright’s notice had called the Amidou. Gillan stiffly rose and went out, saying he’d go down to the pub with Charlie. In his wake came Mrs. Murray, with her baby daughter in tow.
Mrs. Murray skipped the niceties altogether, opening her visit with, “Mrs. MacLean, I have such good news for you from Harry!” And she in turn brought out a rolled piece of paper containing the same news as before: “SAIL TO CANADA, £9 BOARD, £5 OWN MEAL, ABOARD THE AMIDOU.”
When the younger children broke into loud laughter, Sheila hurried to explain they’d had the news from their schoolmaster just this afternoon, but perhaps Mrs. Murray knew more about the situation in Canada?
“Indeed I do. Mr. Young has explained that they need hardy folk, as the winters are very harsh there in the Maritimes, but that you could be sure of Scots neighbors and your right to worship as you like, as well as the sixty acres promised in the settlement incentive.”
“The what?” asked Sheila. She told them that there had been an expedition ship two years before, but the settlement needed reinforcements, especially in order to keep the region firmly under British control.
The visit was finished before too long. Sheila went to set up the dough for the next day’s bread. It came together in her hands naturally, sticky but pliant enough when warmed. Muirne watched her as she kneaded and turned it on the table, kneaded and turned.
She took most of her cues from her mother: when to allow informality, how to convince Gillan of a course of action, when to demand an apology, how to calm Sheena after a nightmare. All these things she’d learned from observing her mother, never explicitly being told one thing or another. But now, Sheila spoke not a word about the radical changes confronting them. Muirne tried to examine her own thoughts, as she knew her mother was doing, with her kneading and turning.
Father seems afraid. Afraid for us, I imagine. Mother seems worried too, but more about what will happen to us if we keep on as we are, not about the unknown. Which is harder, when you come down to it? After you’ve been torn from the place you were planted, what pain is there in continuing to drift for a little while longer? Why not see more of the world before settling for this noisy, bone-rattling city existence? I certainly don’t care for it. And Neil seemed to be doing well with the shipwrights, but he might do just as well in this New Scotland. And perhaps that Letty of his would come too, if he asked her.
“What are you thinking of, Mother?” Muirne asked.
“Oh, just chewing on the news of the Amidou.” She paused in her kneading to plop the dough in the metal tin and set it on the shelf in the wall near the chimney. “What’s in your thoughts, Muirne? Would ye stay or go?”
“Go,” she said immediately.
“Why so quick?”
“Because we’re a family for the country.” She met her mother’s gaze seriously. “I can see Father’s failing. He breathes in that fluff all day. I’ve only been by the cotton yard a couple of times, but when I peeked my head in at the door, I could hardly see through it. It’s a wonder they’ve not all got cotton wadding in their lungs. I don’t know how the others stand it.”
“Aye. It does seem to affect him more. But for yourself? There’s nothing to kee
p you here in Scotland, then?”
“Oh, of course I’d rather stay here, Mama, but there’s no place for us anymore, is there?” Muirne’s gaze dropped to the hearth. She saw their blackhouse again, engulfed in flames.
“You’re right,” Sheila said softly, the same sight imprinted against her closed eyelids for a brief second. “It’s just that your father didn’t see it happen, so it’s harder for him to let go.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Christmas approached with little fanfare. Even with the two men’s wages, the rent of the house and food for the table ate up almost all the income for the MacLeans. Their winter store was sadly diminished, as they’d had to leave all the kail and cabbage, and most of the neeps and potatoes in the ground when they left. The salted and smoked food, the fish and pork, was carefully rationed out by Sheila. She did not want to use any of their precious coin savings; she was hoarding it for their passage on the ship.
The poster had not said when the Amidou would sail, but it was likely not before winter storms were past and calm weather was at least a possibility. With this in mind, Sheila had once again taken out her loom, piece by piece, even the singed bits. She gathered what wool she could find, cleaning it as best she was able, and spinning it by the firelight in the evenings, then weaving the threads into sturdy blankets and clothing that she could sell. Muirne joined her sometimes, watching and taking a hand in.
Sheila had not taught her how to set up the warp, but she had picked up the rhythm of passing the shuttle through the shed and pulling the beater down, passing it back, and repeating the process. Sheila had confided in Muirne her first plan to sell, and so she did with this second. Muirne asked what she could do to contribute, beyond working the weft. Sheila taught her how to make decorative baskets from rushes. They collected the rushes in the mornings after breakfast by the small burn that was untouched by the mill waste, and plaited them in the evenings after supper.
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