Jennie About to Be (50 page)

Now a breeze was ruffling and darkening the loch, and small craft were raising their brown sails to catch the wind. The tide looked to be full. There was a good deal of activity aboard two of the ships. The decks were crowded; men climbed the rigging, and the great mainsails went slowly up, the topsails were unfurled, the huge anchors rose dripping from the loch. The rowing boats pulled away and waited at a little distance; she could see handkerchiefs and scarves waving from the ships, and in the small boats the men and boys swung their bonnets over their heads.

Then the sails began to fill, and with massive and leisurely grace, one slightly ahead of the other, the two ships moved down the loch, their stained canvas nearly black against the hills that now became a sunlit green as the freshening north wind dispersed the haze.

At this moment Alick Gilchrist was leaving Scotland forever.

The soft voice was in her ears.
You will be giving the ship a day's start, if you please
. . . . Obediently she calculated. Tomorrow at high tide the two vessels would be twenty-four hours on their way, well out to sea past Mull if they didn't make a stop at Oban or Tobennory to take on more passengers. She had better wait another day to be sure.

The ships were going away down Loch Linnhe, gliding steadily and sweetly before the wind like a pair of dark swans. Why did she feel so bereft? She and Alick were not brother and sister, not old friends, not lovers.

But they had been something closer than any of these. The successful parting at the end was the consummation of their hopes: safety in exile for him, home for her. Now she should be breathing as easily as the two ships moved. Appalling visions could be exchanged for that of Sylvia serenely plump with child in the rectory, and William saying, “My dear,
dear
Jennie!” A blissful visit to Pippin Grange, Sophie's strangling hugs, and Nelson rolling his eye at her as if to say, “But didn't you bring me anything?”

This was what should be, except that she could not find it. She had been too long and too intensely somewhere and something else.

I never even wished you a safe voyage, Alick
, she thought. “Beannachd leat mo coraid,” she said aloud. “Blessings on you, my friend. I shan't watch you out of sight.”

She went and lay down on the bed, shut her eyes, and tried to call the other faces. They came but only unsubstantially, like ghosts. Only Alick was solidly there, simultaneously dominating the room and standing on the deck of the immigrant ship in his old coat and breeches and scuffed boots, the plaid over his shoulder and his bonnet over his eyes. Between that and the beard, and with so much weeping going on all around him, nobody else would see or care if he looked his last on Scotland through tears.

A
PEREMPTORY RAP
at the door startled her so that her hands flew up and the coverlet slid off her shoulders. The message had come, then.

“It's me, love!” Nancy came in. She carried the fresh undergarments, a pair of clean cotton stockings, and the brogues.

“So you're starting for America, the two of you, in just the clothes you're standing in. They'll rot off you before you get there.
If
you get there without going to the bottom or dying of the cholera. The only way I'd be on one of those ships, I'd be dragged aboard in chains as a convict. 'Owever, everyone to 'er taste, said the old woman as she kissed the cow. But, Jennie, m'dear, you need something else to wear.”

“I know,” said Jennie. So the message hadn't come yet; meanwhile she must go on pretending. “Does anyone ever sell clothes at the market? I wouldn't care what they were, so long as they were clean. Alick should have a change, too. ”

“You two should 'ave planned your elopement better. ‘Ere's your toothpowder and brush, and you can take that soap. It's 'ard-milled; it'll last if you don't use it every day but make do with a good scrub in seawater. I've brought you a comb, too.”

“Thank you,” said Jennie meekly. “I'll go out and see if I can find some clothes for us. And perhaps a carpetbag.”

“Old clothes—yes. Maybe. But the folk around 'ere don't know such things as carpetbags. They tie up everything in a plaid, and Alick's got one, besides that satchel of his. ”

“Then I'll look only for clothes.”

“Yes,” said Nancy contemptuously, “and if just one of our brave English lads just 'appens to pass by and 'ears a lidy speaking from that fancy dress of yours, not to mention offering a gold sovereign—which none of these folk would be able to change—” She made saucers of her eyes and lifted her hands in eloquent resignation.

Jennie looked forlorn, but not for Nancy's reasons. Until Nancy knew for a certainty that Jennie had been left behind, she had to believe that the two hoped to be embarking by nightfall. But once the message came, Jennie could take to her bed in apparent shock and grief at her betrayal, and not be well enough to stir for two days. Then some officer's wife would doubtless lend her a decent outfit to travel in, and a nightgown for the inns, while despising her for eloping with a peasant who'd ruined and deserted her.

Let her
, Jennie thought.
If I'm a fallen woman, it's no skin off anybody's nose but my own. My family will believe me anyway
.

“Give me one of those gold coins,” Nancy ordered. “I'll change it out of my money and do what I can for you.” She sighed ostentatiously. “I don't know why I put myself out like this, I'm sure. But Niall would want me to. Thick as thieves, these 'ighlanders.”

“I don't know how we can ever thank you,” Jennie said.

Nancy snorted. “You're young, but '
e
should know better! Off on a ship just like that! When you're out there in the middle of the ocean, with the sails ripping and the masts splintering, you'll be thinking that whatever you ran away from is a deal better than the way you're dying!” She went out and slammed the door.

Her visit had been as reviving as a cold plunge into a mountain stream, accidental or otherwise, and this time Jennie had struggled out by herself. There was still a faint soreness of her scalp from Alick's grip on her hair when he'd saved her, and her bruises had now gone from purple and blue-green to pale chartreuse.

“Well, Jennie, love,” she said, sounding as much like Nancy as possible, “get on with it!”

The underclothes were too large, but Nancy had provided pins. After the homespun linens, the cambric felt like gossamer against her skin. The white cotton stockings wouldn't have lasted or warmed in the wilds like the woolen ones, which now lay crumpled and forsaken on the floor, and she picked them up and rolled them neatly together. They needed only to be washed; she wouldn't desert them after the way they'd befriended her.

Angus had done a masterly job of cleaning the brogues. She was of half a mind to keep them to show the family. Besides, she felt a genuine affection for these sturdy and reliable companions of the journey. She'd find some way to carry them; she could even giggle, though feebly, at the thought of doing up her souvenirs in the guilechan and arriving at the rectory with a small tartan bundle on her back.

She cleaned her teeth and combed her hair. Then she sat down at the table to stare out and wait for the message, but it was a mistake to go to the windows. She poured more tea and made herself sip very slowly, all the while looking everywhere but out at the place where she had last seen the two ships.

Somebody ran up the stairs and came in without knocking. It was Alick.

She was as dumbstruck as if she were seeing his fetch, his
Doppelgänger
. And he, after one miserable look at her from his gray eyes, turned his head away. He poured Nancy's cup full and drank the tea without milk or sugar.

She said quietly, “What happened?”

He picked up the bread and butter she hadn't eaten, folded it, and ate it in two bites, washed down with more tea. Then he sat down across from her and spoke just as quietly, as if he were holding in shouts and curses.

“There were two ships sailing on this tide, and they had no room! Nobody lost heart so he couldn't be making his feet leave Scottish soil. How could this
be
? Just because
I
must go or hang?” His eyes were glistening. “Hundreds, between the two ships, and not one give up or drop dead on the shore with the great grief and the excitement? All I am hearing of the immigrant ships is about the great wailing and moaning and taking on, so you could stand on Ben Nevis and hear the keening as the ships go down the loch. Dia, there was weeping enough, between those going and those staying, and some were as wild-eyed as cattle with the great fear on them, but”—he threw up his hands—“no one stayed back.”

He finished the rest of the tea and drank the milk from the jug. “I was waiting even after the anchors came up, thinking some soul might be desperate enough to jump overboard and swim for one of the little boats. But, man, if there was, his friends were laying strong hands on him and dragging him back.”

“What would you have done if someone had come ashore?”

“Hired the wee boat to row me out. The captain would be taking me when he knew I could pay. Why not? He would be getting two fares for one passenger. They were sister ships, too. Six crossings they have made already. Lucky they'd be, I was thinking. I was watching them as long as I could see them, and I could still hear the pipes playing ‘We Shall Return No More.' ”

And all the time I was wishing you safe voyage and blessings
, Jennie thought.
Well, at least now I can say it to your face
.

“What do we do now?” she asked. “There's one ship still out there, and I see masts above the roofs. Are any of them immigrant ships?”

“I was about to be asking questions around the shore when the soldiers came. Search parties boarding everything, even the wee craft where a man could never be hiding. They rowed out to that one.” He nodded. “American, she is.” He sat back and folded his arms across his chest. His fingers pressed hard enough into his biceps to turn white at the tips. “For me, I was thinking. They'd come just too late to search the sister ships, and if I'd been a lucky man, they'd have been too late to catch me.”

“Where could you hide?”

“I was not running off to call attention to myself. So I was standing there with my bonnet over my eyes, leaning my arms on a hogshead of herrings like a lazy Highlander sleeping on his feet, while they passed not this far from me.” He unlocked his arms and stretched one of them out. “I could have touched them.” A glimmer of pride lightened his voice.

“I'd have dissolved on the spot,” said Jennie.

“Och, well, I was glad of the hogshead to hold me up.” He gave her a twisted grin. “And it was so busy there, too, they would not even be noticing me.”

“What do we do now?” she asked. Her doubled fists went up to press her mouth in her old childish gesture.

“But it wasn't me they were seeking. I saw them bringing him off a boat from Lewis, a poor devil of a deserter. My heart, for all its mad jigging, went out to him. But perhaps they'll be giving him his chance yet, to volunteer to be killed in Europe instead of hanged in Fort William. But I'm shaking yet.” He held up his hand to show her. “And I was thinking before that I was ready if they took me. Dia, who is ever ready to be hanged?”

She reached over and took his hand between hers, as much for her own comfort as his. “Remember, I said there would be a ship for you. Now let us go downstairs and eat a good dinner and look like any Highland husband and wife in the crowd.”

“We will be looking like that as long as you are keeping your Sassenach accent to yourself.”

“I shall be mute.” She put the small plaid over her head and gave him a demure smile.

When he opened the door to the taproom, Jennie almost lost her already weak courage. The place was packed and smokey from cooking and tobacco, but she had an awful expectation that at least one pair of eyes resting upon them was about to light up with a fearsome intelligence. Then Angus whistled through the shifting blue haze and the noise, and beckoned them to seats on a bench at the end of one of the long tables. He brought them plates heaped with well-done mutton with plenty of gravy, potatoes, and mashed turnip. Jennie couldn't eat much of hers, but Alick cleaned both plates. She wished they could be back in one of the boxes along the walls, where high-back settles gave an illusion of privacy, but these were all occupied. However, she and Alick were mercifully ignored, except when someone asked for the salt or the mustard. With her shawl over her head and her eyes kept down, she looked like a shy wife frightened by the crowds, and Alick was so obviously keeping himself to himself that it was only manners for the rest to leave him so.

Nancy was behind the bar; her strident voice whooped in laughter, clanged out orders to Angus and greetings to newcomers. Occasionally she called something in Gaelic which, with a Cockney accent, sounded like no other language on earth. This was always received as if she were the great wit of the world.

Alick told Angus he would settle with Nancy later, and they went out into the hall. He said at once, “I'm off to the shore now.”

“Let me go with you.”

“It's no place for a woman.”

“That's ridiculous, after all we've been through!”

“So I am being ridiculous,” he said stiffly.

“Are we
quarreling
?” She was aghast. “Alick, I meant only—” She broke off as two men came out, burly in their serviceable thick homespun, plaids over their shoulders. They touched their bonnets and went into the street. She recognized them as two who had been eating in one of the boxes. She said rapidly, “I meant only that I'm no longer a delicate, protected, garden flower. I'm as tough and prickly as gorse. So if we are not advertised as fugitives, let me go. I promise I won't speak a Sassenach word. ”