Dawn on a Distant Shore (68 page)

"English?"

He shook his great
shaggy head. "French."

Hannah might have
asked him more about the visitor, but they had come into the heart of the village.
Saturday market had filled the lanes, and the cart slowed and then stopped in
the thick of it. Jennet jumped down from the cart and Hannah followed.

"Be back afore
the kirk clock strikes four," Geordie shouted after them. "Or ye'll walk
hame, ye wee gilpies!"

Jennet spun on her
heel to wrinkle her nose and stick her tongue out at him. "Dinna lose aa
yer coin at the cockfight, Geordie, or MacQuiddy will box yer lugs." And
they slipped into the crowd before he could seek revenge.

They wound their way
along among the marketers while Hannah tried to take in all at once. It was not
much different than market in Johnstown, the same haggling and laughter and clink
of coin. Chickens and piglets, kale, carrots. A sullen young girl with a rash
of pimples on her chin stood behind a table to brush the flies away from
treacle tarts. A little boy was tied to the table's leg with a hang of dirty
rope, crying piteously and rubbing his eyes with a dirty fist.

Jennet seemed to know
every person by name, and everyone had something to say to her even while they studied
Hannah--some shyly, some with open curiosity.

"How d'ye fend,
wee Jennet?"

"Whit fettle,
lass? And how fares the laird this day?"

"Will ye no' come
an' see oor Harry, Jennet? He's hame frae the
Isis
wi' muny a tale tae
tell."

She answered them all
with a few words and a smile, and it was clear to see that Jennet was a great
favorite in Carryckton.

Near an alehouse two
men were juggling eggs, sending them in endless circles in the air with flicks
of the wrist. One was as tall as Robbie MacLachlan; the other barely came to
his knees, although he was full bearded and the short fingers that worked the
eggs were covered with dark hair. Bells jangled at their elbows and knees and
they bantered with the crowd, hardly watching their work.

Just around the corner
a rough stage had been put up, and the traveling players had drawn a good
crowd.

"Let's bide a
while," whispered Jennet. Hannah had never seen a play, and so she was happy
to watch as a young man with his face painted to look like an old man held out
a vial of cloudy yellow liquid. He threw his voice out in a reedy wobble over
the audience:

Sir doctor, please be
sae kind and examine this piss

Wi' ma bonnie young
dauchter there's somethin' amiss

She stays tae her bed
aa the night, aa the day

Turns awa fra' her
food, an' does naethin' but lie

aboot in a hoose which
is naucht but a mess

Can this be the
plague; can ye hazard a guess?

Hannah had learned
something from the Hakim about examining urine to diagnose an illness, and she
was very curious as to what this doctor would say. With the rest of the crowd
she leaned forward. He rocked back and forth on his heels and stroked his beard
thoughtfully with one hand while he patted a round belly with the other. With
each pat a small puff of feathers escaped from the juncture of breeches and
coat, but the audience seemed not to mind.

Your ailing wee
dauchter is a servant, I see

She takes her work
verra seriously

She swabs the floors
and cooks the food

But the hired man is
the cause o' her mood

When she bent ower her
work he pressed his point

Tae a well laid table
he added a joint

Tae carve her meat he
supplied the blade

For a bluidy gash just
as she bade

Soon her belly will
grow and swell

Nivver fear! in the
spring aa will be well.

Your bonnie Kate is
no' alone,

Young and limber, muny
maidens moan.

They curse and vomit
and wring their hands

'Tis a problem that's
growing across the land!

The crowd laughed, but
Jennet pulled Hannah away, sniffing loudly in her displeasure. "Kate o'
Lauchine, agin! What a lither lot those players are, always tossin' aboot words
instead o' swords. They'll lift naethin' heavier than a filled tankard."

Hannah was about to
tell her that as far as she knew, you could not read pregnancy from the color
of urine, but just then a boy with a cast in his eye shoved himself in front of
them. "Bi crivens, Jennet Hope, look what ye dragged doon the lane the-day.
A heathen. Does it ken oor tongue?"

"Better than you,
Hugh Brown," she snapped, going up on tiptoe to put her face to his.
"Ye'll wish that ye had nae tongue a'tall once the minister kens how ye're
cursin', ye scunnerin wee nyaff." And she poked her elbow in his gut hard
enough to make him turn white.

They darted off into
the crowd while he was still trying to get back his breath. The shadowy lanes were
cool even on this sunny day, the cobblestones smooth underfoot and the smell of
bread baking and brewing ale in the air. They came around a corner to a large
open area of trampled earth with a pillar in its center.

"Och, look,"
Jennet breathed. "Dame Sanderson. There's goin' tae be a bear-baitin'."

"Bear?"
Hannah looked harder and saw no more than a dusty hump of fur chained to the
pillar. "Dame Sanderson?"

"Aye."
Jennet gave her a curious look. "That bear, there. She's called Dame Sanderson.
Have ye nivver seen a bear?"

It was such a strange
question that Hannah didn't know at first how to answer. When she needed more
than her mother's milk she had sucked bear fat from her fingers; she had
learned to recognize bear tracks when she was hardly old enough to walk
herself. Bears played on the boulders above the waterfalls at Lake in the
Clouds, and napped in trees and fished in the marshes on Big Muddy. Once an
eagle had dropped a she-cub--mangled and close to dead--into the cornfield
while they had been planting squash. Hannah had rescued her from Hector and
Blue and tended her wounds until she died, and then she had taken her pelt and
cured it. That pelt was on her sleeping pallet at Lake in the Clouds right now.

"I have an uncle
called Runs-from-Bears," Hannah said.

Jennet's eyebrows shot
up high in delight and interest. "Is he afraid o' them, then?"

"No," Hannah
said, smiling at the idea of Runs-from-Bears afraid of anything. "Not at all."
She could see that she would have to tell this story, even though the web it
would weave might tangle her thoughts for the rest of the day.

"When my uncle
was a baby he was called Sitting-Boy. Wherever Two-Moons--his mother --put him
down he would stay, and while the others played he watched, and when they ran,
he smiled. Two-Moons and her husband, Stands-Tall, worried that the boy was
weak-witted, but for the bright look in his eyes.

"In his third
year, in the Strawberry Moon, Two-Moons went with all the women to pick fruit
for the festival ..." Hannah swallowed, feeling the flush of the sun on
her face and a clench of homesickness so deep and hard that she swayed with it.

"The women were
busy gathering strawberries when a bear came out of the forest with her cub.
The other women hurried the children away but Two-Moons could find no trace of
Sitting-Boy. She looked and called and the bear came closer and closer until
she was so close that Two-Moons could smell the river water on her fur.

"Just then
Sitting-Boy let out a great laugh and he came running out of the field. The
bear cub was chasing him, and Sitting-Boy laughed and laughed as he ran. It was
a laugh so strong and sweet that the siskins in the trees stopped to listen,
and the beaver in the river came to see, and even mother bear turned her head
to watch.

"Two-Moons was
very afraid for Sitting-Boy and she said "Mother bear, I am thankful to
your little one for showing my son how to use his legs. See how well they play
together."

"And mother bear
called her cub to her, and they turned and left the strawberry fields to the women.
That's when they gave my uncle the name Runs-from-Bears."

Jennet said, "I
would like to meet Two-Moons and Stands-Tall and Runs-from-Bears and your aunt
Many-Doves and your grandmother and all the rest of your people."

"Stands-Tall was
killed in battle," Hannah said. "But if you come to visit us in the endless
forests, you will meet the others." She looked at the hump of fur in the
middle of the pit. "I have known many bears, but I have never seen one
such as this. Is she ill?"

"Ach, ne. The
hounds wi' bring her tae her feet soon enough. Last summer I saw her break the
back o' a dog as big as a sow wi' one swipe o' her paw."

"Where did she
come from?"

"A tinker called
Alf Whittle bought her aff a ship come frae America, when she was sma'. They
say he's taken her sae far as the Aberdeen fair."

A little boy came
louping by and began pelting the bear with pebbles. The mass of flesh rippled
and the great head reared up and around.

Hannah felt herself go
very cold, as if a new wind had come down off snowy mountains. The bear was
rolling her head back and forth, her broad wet nose quivering. The eye sockets
were empty.

"She smells
somethin'." Jennet stepped back.

"Me," Hannah
said. "She smells me." She raised her voice and spoke in her own language.
"When a pine needle falls in the forest, eagle sees it, deer hears it, and
bear smells it. Do you smell me, sister?"

The bear was
struggling to her feet now, her head swinging back and forth as she mewled, the
sound a child makes when she is looking for comfort. Hannah stepped into the
pit, and Jennet grabbed her by the shoulder.

"Ye canna,"
she screeched. "She'll lay ye open like a ripe plum."

The bear had come as
close as the chain would allow. She stood up on her hind legs and her paws hung
down before her, claws long and curved and blackened with age and blood. From
toe to the top of her head she was covered with scars, and her fur was matted
and filthy.

"They put out her
eyes," Hannah said. "To keep her in line."

"Aye," said
Jennet uneasily. "But she's a grand fighter any road. Shall we stay and watch?"

"No," Hannah
said. "I won't watch that."

Jennet had a few coins
in her apron pocket and she bought ginger nuts from the sullen girl behind the
table. "For Granny," she explained, tucking them away with one reluctant
look. She led Hannah through the lanes until they came to a little cottage--it could
be no larger than the smallest cabin in Paradise--surrounded by a garden
closely planted with cabbage, leeks, potatoes, and carrots. Beans spiraled up a
fence overhung by an apple tree. Neat beds of herbs clustered around the path
to the door: sage, costmary, gillyflowers and clary, sorrel, chamomile, mint
and verbena, borage and feverfew. Very different from the gardens at
Carryckcastle, and so much more like home that Hannah wanted to sit right down
and stay there for the rest of the day. She paused to run her hand over a
spreading savin bush, the flattish evergreen needles prickling lightly.

When a pine needle
falls in the forest, eagle sees it, deer hears
it, and bear
smells it.

"Granny Laidlaw
was hoosekeeper at Carryckcastle afore her sight began tae fade. She's fu'
blind these five years, but naught else fails her," Jennet said. "And
here's ma auntie Kate."

The woman who came
through the door with a basket over her arm was a younger version of Mrs. Hope,
with blond hair tucked up under a neat white cap.

"Ye've come,
then, she'll be pleased. I'm awa' tae fetch butter--dinna gae until ye've had
some tea."

The cottage had rushes
underfoot and a ceiling so low that Hannah could reach it if she stretched up
on tiptoe. A speckled dog was sleeping near the hearth, where a kettle hung
over the fire.

In the corner two
women were shelling beans, one of them so small and delicately built that Hannah
first mistook her for a child. But the face that peered out from a ruffled cap
was old, indeed, and the blue eyes had gone as cloudy as marbles. Her hearing
was good, for she turned her head toward them at the first creak of the door.

"Jennet, hen. I
was hopin' ye'd come the-day. I smell ginger nuts, and ye've broucht a visitor,
too. Is it the wee Indian lass, Gelleys?"

"Aye." The
other woman peered at Hannah with her whole face screwed into a knot. And then,
with voice raised to a screech: "What are ye called, lass?"

"Red skin doesna
make her deef, Gelleys." Granny Laidlaw shook with laughter. "Come
hen, come closer. Tell me, how are ye called?"

"Hannah Bonner,
mum."