A Maid for the Grieving Highlander Read online

  “Then, if you are still alive after the roasting he shall give you, I will go to America with you.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  As she had promised Sorcha, Catriona returned to Ath Tharracail for Martinmas, which in the old calendar was ‘cthe feile na marbh’, the Gaelic ‘day of the dead’, the Samhain. It was the time for the slaughtering of the beasts in preparation for winter, and a busy time in the clachans.

  It was also a time of festivity, with bonfires and lantern parades to mark the month or ‘moon’ of blood sacrifices.

  That year, the eight families of the clachan had a pig to slaughter. It had been rooting around the middens since the spring, and each family had been donating whatever slops they had to the fattening of it. Occasionally, someone would take it down to the Wood of the White Stag to let it root around the forest floor.

  When Catriona arrived, the children were already stocking the fire under a large cauldron in the Murray croft and a multitude of receptacles – bowls, buckets, basins, pots, pans – from every household had been piled up beside a large trough, which had been turned upside down on the green in front of the Cross.

  In the glen, the sun was just beginning to melt the frosting of ice on the grass.

  Old Anna was beside the trough, unrolling her cloth of special knives, testing each of them on the heel of her thumb, and sharpening them all with steel.

  Catriona went up and greeted her.

  “A fine day for the slaughtering,” she observed.

  Anna gave her a toothless smile. Her face was as small and wrinkled and brown as a walnut.

  “It could not be better,” she replied. “A fine day in the waning moon. It is perfect.” Anna cast her eyes back to the distant past. “I remember the first winter after the ’89. It rained for a week, by which time the cycle of the moon was wrong. We were fearful that King William’s soldiers would come and carry off the pig for the slaughter and nothing would be left for the clachan.” She cackled. “But they were too scared of trespassing on the Clanranald.”

  Catriona gave a mighty shiver.

  Anna cast her eye in amusement over Catriona’s servant’s clothes.

  “Ach, lassie!” she said. “It is too cold for you to be waiting out here. Away ben and speak to your mother and your sister. I believe they are making the soup for when after the work is done. They shall be all the gladder for the seeing of you.”

  Thanking Anna, Catriona turned towards Shielfoot. She was suddenly filled with nervousness and trepidation. It had been three months since she had seen her mother and sister; so much had happened and she feared they would be strangers to her.

  She found Floraidh, Sorcha, and a flaxen-haired girl with a harelip fussing over a large cauldron that was hanging above the hearth. They were so intent on the soup-making that they did not hear her coming in.

  “That broth shall be spoilt from having too many cooks!” Catriona declared loudly.

  The three women turned and peered at her through the peat smoke.

  “Och, will you see what the cat has dragged in?” Floraidh cried. “What is she like in those fancy duds? It is her ladyship herself.”

  Floraidh and Sorcha came forward. They each embraced Catriona in turn, long and warmly.

  Catriona found her eyes nipping from the reek.

  “Is this the lass that Eo—Muideart sent?” She gestured at the raw-boned girl who was concentrating hard on the serious business stirring the pot.

  “Aye, yon is Brighde,” Floraidh said, then lowered her voice and brought her head close to Catriona’s ear. “She’s not quite right in the head, but she is a strong and willing helper. Yon soup will not be burning to the pot, you can be sure!”

  Floraidh held her younger daughter at arm’s length and looked her up and down with appreciation.

  “But look at you? You have fairly put on the beef with your easy living at Castle Tioram. And such fine linens and shawls! You will not be wanting to besmirch them with the pig blood. Will you not shift out of them and put on your old arisaid? It is still folded over there by your bed.”

  Catriona went behind the wicker screen and found her old working plaid, freshly laundered and pleated where her mother had laid it out for her homecoming. Her mother followed her and sat down cross-legged on the straw pallet. She looked on wide-eyed as Catriona unhooked her bodice, unbuckled her shoes, and slipped out of her skirt and stockings.

  “How can you endure all those hooks and buttons?” Floraidh wondered with a small giggle.

  “Och, you get used to them.” Catriona smiled. “You even get used to the shoes – eventually.”

  Her mother watched her fold her good clothes in silence.

  “Is your maister good to you?” she asked. There was a timorous reluctance to her voice, as if she was nervous about asking.

  Catriona glanced at her with suspicion as she draped the plaid of her arisaid over her shoulders and kilted up its skirts to buckle around her waist.

  “He treats me well enough,” she replied carefully.

  “It’s just,” Floraidh said, “there is this Deirdre MacLauchlan over at An Aird Mholach, late of Laird Muideart’s service, who is slandering you all over the country as the laird’s wee whore.”

  Catriona bridled.

  “Deirdre MacLauchlan is a slatternly wee minx who should look to her own reputation rather than passing judgment on others.”

  Floraidh picked slivers of straw from the blanket of the bed.

  “Sorcha was spitting like the baudrons when it came to her ears. She was all for going over to An Aird Mholach and tearing the hair from the lassie’s head.”

  “Which would have been no more than the wee bitch deserved,” Catriona affirmed. “She is an evil piece of work.”

  Her mother looked away into a corner of the stall.

  “So,” she ventured, in a small voice, “there is no truth to it?”

  Catriona huffed. How could she explain?

  “It… It is not like that, how she says.”

  Her mother raised her eyebrows with apprehension.

  “And how else is it?”

  Catriona looked about her, as if searching for the words that could explain it all.

  “Muideart… Eoin wants to take me for his wife,” she said hurriedly. “He is to speak with the Clanranald. If the Clanranald will not agree to it, we are going to run away to America.”

  Floraidh stared at her in open-mouthed disbelief. After a moment, she began to laugh.

  “You are serious, so you are? You really believe that this is going to happen? That Muideart, heir to the Clanranald, is going to give up all that for his wee doxy from the clachan, his wee bit toy?”

  “He loves me, Mither,” Catriona said simply.

  “Loves you my arse!” Floraidh snorted. “He’s just missing his hochmagandy, with his wife dead… Christ, and his wife died just this four months gone! You would have thought that the randie loon could have denied himself for a decent period – until the poor woman’s soul was rested.”

  “It is not like that, Mither.” Catriona smiled benignly, for all her mother’s harsh words. “He loves me, he truly does. And I love him.”

  Floraidh stared up at her and realization gradually replaced the cynical sneer on her face.

  “My God, it is true, isn’t it? He has pledged himself to you. You have made your own handfasting. But… America?”

  Catriona laughed.

  “Only if the worst comes to the worst. America shall be our last resort. I am hoping that we shall only have to elope as far as Gleann Fhionnain.”

  Floraidh struggled to her feet and enveloped her daughter in a warm hug.

  “Well, good luck to you, lass. I wish you every happiness. Though I doubt it will be a rocky road for the pair of you.”

  She kissed Catriona’s cheek.

  “And speaking of Gleann Fhionnain,” she added, “I shall be expecting you to attend the kirk this Sunday.” She laughed. “It shall be well for you to pray for your s
oul in any case!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The air was rent by a roar of outrage, followed by squeals of fury and the loud curses of men.

  Floraidh, Sorcha, Catriona, and Brighde flew from Shielfoot and ran to the Cross. The pig protested in terror and bewilderment as the menfolk of the clachan hauled it to the upturned trough, its trotters tied together across its belly.

  It took eight men to wrestle the beast on to the back of the trough. But once they had it on its back, the screaming of the pig and the shouts of the men died away.

  Brighde gave a loud moan, and one of the women had to lead her away, with an arm around her shoulder. To Brighde the victim looked hideously human, a grotesquely fat baby lying on its back, its totters joined like beseeching hands, its ears flapped back and its snout in the air.

  Old Anna picked up one of the knives and again tested its keenness against the ball of her thumb. The womenfolk gathered around her, each clutching a bowl or a basin. In their gray arisaids, moving in unison, they looked like priestesses officiating at a religious ceremony.

  With a single swift stroke, Anna slit the side of the pig’s upturned throat. She stepped aside, and the women filed forward, one by one, to catch the fountain of blood that pulsed from the wound. The first few were spattered by the drops that showered up from the force of the blood hitting their pans.

  The pig shrieked, its harsh scream ululating in time to the spurting of its blood. Everyone watched in reverent silence for the long minutes until the flow reduced to a trickle, and the pig’s cry fell to a sob and then to silence.

  The menfolk then brought buckets of boiling water from the cauldron that had been set up for the purpose in the Murray croft and poured them over the pig. Then they set to, scrubbing it furiously to lift off the bristles, which the children gathered up and put aside to be made into brushes. The women carefully carried the blood into the Murray croft-house.

  The clachan then gathered in Shielfoot for their soup. The wicker partitions had been removed and the room transformed into a Spartan feasting hall. Floraidh ladled the thick mutton broth into wooden cogies and Sorcha, Catriona, and Brighde passed the cogies around. The children were quickly done and ran back up to the Cross to poke at the slaughtered pig with sticks, but the adults hunkered around the Shielfoot hearth, supping their soup and enjoying the craic, until the soup pot and cogies had all been scraped clean.

  Catriona looked around the assembly, resting her eyes on each face and putting a name to it. She knew this was a leave-taking, and she wanted to place a blessing on the head of each of her kinsfolk. This would be the last time she would see them together like this and she was keen to imprint the scene in her memory.

  Her eyes came to rest on Ruairi and Sorcha, who were sitting together by the hearth-stones, their heads nodding against each other like those of courting doves. Ruairi’s flame-red beard was besmirched with long dribbles of soup and Sorcha was tenderly stroking it clean with a corner of her plaid. His large calloused hand rested on her bare knee, and he was gazing into her face with the devoted look of one of his sheepdogs.

  Planting a kiss on his lips, Sorcha rose to fetch water from the drinking pail.

  Catriona rose from her haunches and intercepted her.

  “You and Ruairi seem to have eyes only for each other,” she observed, taking the dipper from Sorcha and helping herself to a draught of the freshly drawn spring water. “How are things between the two of you?”

  Sorcha blushed and smirked.

  “Och, we are getting along just fine,” she said. “He was a bit rough, to begin with, and he hurt me terribly. But when Mistress Murray discovered how badly he had been treating me, she took the besom to him and beat him loudly up and down the clachan, calling out his shortcomings as a son and husband. Ruairi nearly died from the shame of it! At the hinder end, she drove him into the mud of the midden, but Ruairi dared not lift a finger to his mother and accepted his punishment meekly. Then he begged my forgiveness in front of the whole clachan, that had turned out at the racket of it, admitting that he had been thoughtless to me and that he was distraught to learn he had been hurting me so. He said that he did not want to lose me; he declared that he loved me as the sunshine loves the loch or some such nonsense. And since then he has become so biddable and gentle with me that I can get him to do anything I desire.” She put her lips to Catriona’s ear. “He’s a bull of a man and a fine plaything; we are never away from the Wood. We are expecting our first child in late spring.”

  Catriona grasped Sorcha’s hands in her own, and the pair of them beamed at one another.

  “Och, Sorcha, that is wonderful news. I am so glad that things are well between you and Ruairi. I have been so worried about you.”

  With lunch finished, the clachan returned to the Cross. A large tripod was set up, and the pig hauled up by its hind legs on a metal hook until its snout just touched the ground. A large linen cloth was spread out, and Anna selected a long knife from her cloth and made a long, careful cut down the length of its belly. Its entrails tumbled out onto the fabric, which was gathered up by the corners and taken away for the children to clean for pudding cases.

  Meanwhile, the women moved in and began to butcher the pig as fast as they could. The pluck was set aside for the haggis, the lungs for tripe, and the head and trotters for potted brawn. By late afternoon dusk, the entire pig had been divided into its component parts, and each family departed for their steading with a sizeable joint of pork rolled up in a cloth. All that was left of the beast was an echo of its squeak.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The following morning, the clachan assembled to walk the six miles to the kirk in Gleann Fhionnain. The weather had closed in over the glen, and a steady rain fell. The men happed their plaids with their bonnets, and the women did the same with long tapering headscarves. Aonghas and a few other men announced that they would not be going; they had some leaking thatch that would have to be attended to before the rains really set in.

  The track took them east, along the southern shore of Loch Seille. A chilly wind blew off the water and moaned in the trees that peppered the braes by the water’s edge. Fallen leaves lay across the path in deep slippery drifts of yellow and red. The children began by racing ahead and kicking the leaves to the wind. But the morning was so cold and miserable, and the leaves so heavy with damp, that they soon tired of the game and trudged along beside their parents.

  After a two-hour traik, the village of Gleann Fhionnain rose into view from between the trees, dominated by the square tower of St. Finnan’s Kirk, which had charge of the spiritual well-being of the scattered people of Gleann Seille and Muideart. Folk from clachans all over the parish were descending on the kirk from the glens.

  The people of Clanranald’s lands had been obliged to become adherents of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland following the final triumph of the Reformation. After the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty and the Hanoverian succession, Catholicism had been outlawed, and Presbyterianism established as the state religion, with the Kirk taking over the entire network of parishes that crisscrossed the entire country like a spider’s web.

  Although nominally Calvinist in religion and Hanoverian in their political allegiance, the clansmen’s first loyalty lay not with church or state, but with their chieftain, the Clanranald, who remained staunchly Catholic and a Jacobite. While they were obliged on pain of punishment to worship according to the Westminster confession of faith, their allegiance both to the ‘wee German lairdie’, George the First, and to the Kirk was ambivalent, to say the least.

  The same could not be said of Dughlas Middleton, the minister of St. Finnan’s. He was an enthusiast in the literal sense of the term; like his spiritual hero, John Knox, whom he sought to emulate, he believed himself possessed of divine revelations and special communications from God, a person inspired. He rained fire and brimstone down on his charges from the pulpit every Sunday, reminding them that they were the elect, God’s chosen people, and of the sp
ecial obligation of moral rectitude that this placed them under. He suffered no backsliding when it came to enacting God’s Word in one’s daily life; he rooted out and punished sinfulness with God’s own vengeance and with all the authority that Kirk and State had vested in him.

  As his congregation filed into the pews of St. Finnan’s, he sprawled on the large wooden chair that sat like a throne in the shadow of his pulpit on the far side of the communion table from his flock, his cheek resting on his fist, his eyes aflame with righteous wrath, and his lips twitching in prayer.

  As soon as the congregation had settled, Middleton rose.

  “We shall begin this Lord’s day service by praising God with Psalm forty-three, to the tune of ‘Martyrs’.”

  Acting as precentor, Middleton led the congregation in the gloomy psalm, their voices rising to heaven in a keening wail, as if they were lamenting the harshness of their lives in the shadow of death’s dark veil. As the psalm ended, the congregation stood, and their mhaighstir led them in prayer, in which they called on the Lord to be their staff and comforter and to give them the strength to resist the temptations of the flesh, by which Satan sought to divert them from the straight road to righteousness.

  An elder then stood up and approached the lectern to read Scripture.

  “I take our first reading from Exodus, chapter twenty, verse fourteen: ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’”

  The elder lifted over the pages of the heavy Bible to the next marked reading.

  “In Ezekiel, chapter sixteen, verses fifteen to seventeen, we find written: ‘But thou trusted in thy beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. Thou took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be. Thou also took your beautiful jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given you, and made for yourself images of men, and with them played the whore.’”