Shadow in Hawthorn Bay Read Free Page B

she spoke as she told about hearing Duncan’s voice. “And I could feel the pain of his pain and the need of his need and what is there in all the world but the brooch itself that will buy passage for me?”
    In the silence that followed Mary did not, could not look at anybody. She was remembering a time four years back. At eleven, she had been old enough to go to work as a kitchen maid for Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie at the big house. Old enough to learn something of household skills, her mother had said. Mary had known the rudiments of cooking and spinning. She had always known how to wash clothes but never anything of weaving or knitting, the skills Jeannie had learned so well. And she had had no intention of learning them.
    “It is not for me to be spending my life as a kitchen maid,” she had told them. “I am meant for the beasts of the pasture.”
    “You will need to learn a thing or two more than caring for the cows and the sheep, my lass,” her father had said. “And what is more, we will be needing the money your service will fetch.”
    Argument had been useless. The terms had been drawn up between James and Margaret Urquhart and the Gillespies at Tigh na shuidh and Mary had gone off over the hills and across the river with her change of shift, her Sunday-best skirt, and a precious pair of new leather brogans for her feet tied up in a square of fresh linen. Her hair was combed neatly down her back and she had a set look in her eyes that matched the stubbornness in her heart.
    At Tigh na shuidh she had learned the ways of ladies and gentlemen, the workings of a big house, how to scrub fine silver and good pewter and china dishes, and a great deal more English than the dominie at the school at Balnacairn had taught. “Very promising,” Mrs. Gillespie had said, but at the end of six months Mary had tied her spare shift, her Sunday-best skirt, and her brogans into her linen kerchief and gone back across the river and over the hills.
    Greeting her father on her own doorstep, she had said, “It is not for me to be spending my life as a kitchen maid. I am meant for the beasts of the pasture.” The money had had to be given back to Mr. and Mrs. Gillespie and Mary had gone back out into the hills to herdcows and sheep with Duncan. Six months later Duncan left the Glen.
    Some memory of that time may have been in Mary’s father’s mind too. He stood up slowly and leaned, palms down, on the table. His grey eyes were almost black with anger, his hair had fallen over his forehead.
    “The brooch has stayed in our family these three hundred years.” He turned from the table and left the house.
    Mary’s mother said nothing. The set of her head under her white cap, the clatter of the wooden platters as she cleared the table, showed how upset she was. Jeannie reached over and put her hand on Mary’s. Jeannie had red hair like her father, but her features were soft and her nature gentle. “Canada is a far place to go alone. Such a far place. It might be you would get there, Mairi, but you might not get home again.”
    “That could not be did I have the passage money.”
    “Passage money!” Mary’s mother spun around from the sink where she had been scouring the plates. “Passage money!” Her black eyes—so like Mary’s—were blazing. “You would take yourself by yourself thousands of miles after a voice in your head, and him not sending you thought or word these four years? Though he is my own nephew, sonto my own brother, I say it, Duncan Cameron is a thoughtless and a sulky lad. Do Davie’s or Jean’s letters say that were it not for Duncan’s willing hands they would be lost? They do not! They write of Callum’s willing hands, of Callum’s back-breaking work, and him but ten years old. Mairi, put him from you. You who are so strong-minded, so wilful about everything else, would follow that lad’s restless piping wherever, whenever he cares to lead you. Do not you give your life away to him. There’s