Jennie About to Be (42 page)

The plaid, everything, was white with frost. In the east the sky was clear as spring water; the morning star was a dazzling white light. Shivering, and slightly sick from her sudden waking, Jennie wrapped herself in the plaid, making sure of the dry side, and looked from the obdurate goat to Alick. She saw his consternation, and she was afraid.

“What does it mean, tame goats out here?”

“That someone's living near.” He swore in Gaelic, so low he could be barely heard over the brook's voice.

“Dia! We should have been on our way an hour ago. It is my fault. I slept too long.” He seized his damp bonnet before the goat could and jammed it onto his head. “I'll see to my snares first. Don't let her at the bag.” He took his stick and went off through the silvered bracken. Taking the plaid and the bag with her, she backed off a little way and relieved herself, watched with unblinking interest by three pairs of golden eyes.

She had barely straightened up and adjusted her clothes when the three children materialized.

They had come from downstream, probably by the animal path. There were three of them; it would be hard to guess their ages as they were probably undersized, but the girl was clearly the middle child. The boys wore ragged kilts of two different and dirt-dulled tartans, loose homespun shirts. The girl wore a sort of coarse-woven shift that came a little below her knees, and an old tartan shawl was pinned around her. All three were barefoot in the frost. They were grimed with peat smoke, and the pungence of them and the animals moved with them in an all but visible aura.

They confronted Jennie in shocked silence; the goat had all the aplomb. For Jennie it was like being face-to-face with creatures wilder than the goats, and she wondered what they thought of her. That she was a ghost, or some evil spirit from the brook?

Forcing a smile, she said, “Good morning.” There was a flicker of expression like a leaf shadow, a sense of pricked ears. She tried it in Gaelic and got no more response. The goat made a halfhearted snatch at the plaid, then went to grazing on whortleberries, and the kids tried to nurse.

“She is a very nice goat,” Jennie said lamely, pointing. Their eyes followed her finger. “Maith,” she tried. “Boidheach.” Apparently it didn't sound like “good” and “pretty” to them. The combined gaze returned to her face. The older boy's eyes were opaquely dark like a gypsy's, but the younger two were gentian-eyed, the color amazingly vivid in their smudged faces, and red-headed.

Alick emerged from the elder thicket, a dead hare dangling from his hand. If he was dismayed by the children, he didn't show it, but spoke to them softly. The older boy answered, pointing southward down the glen. He volunteered something in a swift rush of words which either angered or alarmed Alick. Jennie couldn't tell which, and she could hardly bear the suspense.

The children's meager faces grew even smaller with anxiety. The smaller boy knuckled his eyes, and the girl hugged her shawl tighter around her skinny shoulders and wiped her eyes with an edge of it. The older boy pressed his lips together until they whitened. All three never looked away from Alick. He shook his head in irritation and spoke across at Jennie.

“They live near the way we'll be traveling. They came out from Fort Augustus; they don't know how long ago. The father was doubtless in trouble of some kind, like me. Now he has left them, and they don't know whether he is dead or not. The mother is sick. They are afraid. Do we pass by on the other side?”

The children's eyes turned toward her. “I suppose we can stop and see,” she said, damning the goats that had led the children to them. She couldn't read his expression. “Would
you
, if you were alone?” she asked defiantly. “Or would you run? I'll do what you say.”

“I would stop and see,” he said with resignation. He put the hare away and slung the bag over his shoulder. She folded the plaid and gave it to him. They picked up their sticks. The children and the goats led the way, then Alick, and she came behind. Oh, God, if they'd only waked earlier! What if the woman was bearing a child? What if she had some deadly sickness they could contract? What if she was
dying
? The new worries charged around and around like panicked sheep that will soon begin throwing themselves over a cliff.

Suddenly she had a picture of herself with Alick, children and goats, all trailing into Fort William as a poverty-stricken, evicted Highland family. But the wife and mother would be wearing a blue riding habit with velvet collar and cuffs, which would dangerously mar the picture. She could wrap up in the plaid, but the skirt, even though frayed and soiled, would show, and the remains of the elegant boots. Maybe the dead woman had clothes that she could wear, and something different for her feet; and so that no one in Fort William could guess that neither she nor her children could speak each other's language, she could pretend to be a deaf-mute.
Or a harmless lunatic, Jennie, she suggested. You could do that with no trouble whatever
.

The children ran splashing across the brook in their bare feet, the goat picked her way from rock to rock, and the kids hopped delicately behind her. Jennie and Alick took the goats' way. On the other side they climbed among alders, rowans, and birches into sunlight and fastmelting frost. The children and the goats scampering through the dapple of sun and shade under the trees belonged to another land and time; the grove should have been olive trees, and the children about to encounter a god in disguise.

The trees thinned out on leveling ground, and the children broke into a run, but the goat turned aside to eat some plant that had caught her tawny eye; the kids pushed their little black muzzles close to hers. The children were running across a broad shelf of open land littered with boulders and random slabs like prehistoric ruins. The site was sheltered from the north and east by a high bulwark of rock; ranged along its spine three more goats stood out against the sky, turned into homed statues as they watched the children and sensed the strangers.

They drew and held the eye at first, until there was an agitated eruption of crows from below. The birds went up into the sky shrieking and came down among the sentinel goats. Then Jennie saw the hut. It was half-masked by the two rowans before it and their broken shadows falling over the heather thatch and the windowless walls of rough stones.

The children were clustering beside the open doorway, with hens squabbling and picking around their feet. Then the children were swept apart by an arm; a man sat on a bench against the wall.

“Father is home,” Jennie murmured. Father, laughing in his beard, was bestowing rough caresses and playful taps on his young, and a woman came stooping out of the low door. She wasn't dead then, or even close to it; she'd gotten over whatever attack had frightened the children. Jennie stood where she was, waiting for Alick to say, “We will be going on now.”

But the man was calling to them in a strong voice made more resonant by the wall behind him, and Alick answered him.

“We must accept his thanks,” he said to Jennie.

A child handed a crutch to the man. He put his hand on the nearest shoulder and stood up, tucking the crutch under his left arm. He was fast, even nimble, in spite of an obviously deformed left foot. He wore a faded kilt and homespun shirt, knit hose to the knee, and the tough homemade brogues she had seen at Linnmore.

Out in the full sunlight his curly hair and beard were a splendid flaming red. The gentian-eyed children got their color from him, but not their fey shyness. He swung himself toward them smiling, speaking in Gaelic. He was smaller than Alick, and the hand he put out was large for the rest of him. While they shook hands, he kept on talking, Alick sometimes spoke, and Jennie waited for it to be over with so they could go on, and stop somewhere to eat.

Unexpectedly he shifted from Gaelic to English and spoke directly to Jennie. How did he
know
? Had she looked
that
blank? Or was it the riding habit?

“It's a fearsome story they've been giving you, and the shame is at me for the great inconvenience. But Jock Dallas thanks you for your kind heart.” His accent was even stronger than Alick's, and his voice had an unhurried and almost amused quality about it.

“There's been no harm done,” Alick said. “We'll be going on.”

“I was off stravaiging and took a fall, you see, already having the bad leg on me, and I had to lay up a wee while on it before I could come home. And the wife had a complaint of her inner parts,” he said delicately, “and when I didn't come, the fear made it worse. Och, it's a great lament she makes when things go wrong. She had the children in a rare burach.” He lifted his shoulders and spread both hands in a mock-helpless gesture, and smiled directly into Jennie's eyes.
My, how ho fancies himself
, she thought. “Now surely you'll be letting me give you a good breakfast for your trouble,” he said. “The oatcakes are still warm from the girdle, and I have trouts that were leaping in their glory not an hour ago.”

Jennie tried to get a clue from Alick. “I'll not be taking no for an answer!” Jock Dallas warned them. “A hot meal now, before you go,” he coaxed Jennie. “And the sight of another woman will rejoice the heart of my Kirsty.”

Something about the tall, gaunt, motionless figure, waiting by the hut as if she hardly dared hope they'd stop, touched Jennie, along with her own poignant desire for hot food.
Any
food.

Apparently it was as much of an obligation to accept Highland hospitality as it was to offer it. Alick nodded. Jock laughed and brandished his crutch like a claymore. “Come along then!”

When they were almost to the cottage, he stopped them. “Sit ye in the sun there,” he said, waving them toward a slab as if offering fauteuils in a drawing room, “and I'll see what else the woman of the house has in her cupboards. She'll be wanting time to set a bounteous table, you might say.” He limped rapidly toward the hut. The children were sitting on the ground under the rowans, and he called to them as he approached, and they got up and ran out around the end of the hut, and out of sight; the hens scattered, clucking, before them. The woman went back inside, and her husband behind her.

“If she has extra clothing laid away,” Jennie said to Alick, “perhaps I could buy something and be rid of this.”

“Don't show her money!” Alick exclaimed. “Ofer to exchange, but don't let them know about the gold. Come with me.” He stood up, and when she hesitated, surprised, he reached for her hand and pulled her up. “Quickly!” He put his arm around her waist and walked her toward a thick tangle of wild rose bushes east of where they'd come from the trees. The mother goat was there, eating tender tips, and she rolled her eyes at them as they went by. Alick pushed Jennie ahead of him around behind the thicket.

“Give me your money, quickly,” he ordered her. She fumbled nervously with her scarf, and he untied it impatiently. She pulled out the velvet bag and ripped it off over her head. He put it over his own head and tucked the bag down inside his shirt. She had a chill at the stomach that took away hunger.

“Why don't we go then?” she whispered.

“If we refused his food, it would look strange to him. We'll make good use of it. Eat well; it's your duty to us both.” Suddenly he cocked his head, listened and made a “wait” signal with his hand, and left her, calling back, “You'll be fine now, mo ghaoil.” From farther away he was explaining suavely, “My wife needed to retire, and she is afraid of meeting an adder.”

“It's too busy around here for those fellows!” Great laughter. Jennie waited a discreet interval while Gaelic conversation went on outisde the bushes. She could hear the goat eating.

She counted ten more seconds by crocodiles, then made her appearance, her eyes modestly downcast as was proper for a lady who has just relieved herself and heard it publicly announced instead of ignored.

“Come along, come along!” Jock Dallas shouted merrily.

The only light came in at the door and from the peat fire on a large flat stone in the middle of the floor; the girdle hung down over it by a heavy chain from a beam, and the trout rolled in oatmeal were cooking upon it. Beyond the fire the woman of the house awaited them, smiling diffidently and adjusting a neck handkerchief she must have just put on. She was lacking a front tooth, and the straggling black hair looked like a particularly untidy bird's nest; the draggled hemlines of a dark short gown revealed a dirty striped petticoat and bare feet. But she had the long throat, the cheekbones, nose, and jawline a Christabel would have envied. The frowsty hair grew back from a widow's peak; the dark eyes were heavily lashed; the eyebrows could have been drawn on by an artist's brush.

Jock Dallas was joyfully expansive in his lilting broken English, but Jennie hardly heard him.
His Kirsty was a beauty once
, she thought in amazement,
and this little red bantam rooster possesses her all to himself out in the wilderness
.

She smiled and walked around the hearth with her hand out. “This is very kind of you,” she said.

“It's you who has been kind.” The woman's hand was shy like her smile. “We will be eating now. If you please.”

The byre end was crudely partitioned off, and the smell of cooking and peat subdued that of goat.

They sat on benches at the roughly built table, and Jennie thought dryly that it was just as well the only light came in at the door so she couldn't look too closely at the dishes. She and Alick each had a heavy earthenware plate for their food, and one three-tined black fork between them; otherwise there were wooden spoons, bowls, and mugs of different sizes. The goat's milk was in a pottery jug. It was cool and creamy to drink, and the warm oatcakes were crisp. They had goat's milk cheese, and heather honey in the comb, a total surprise. “Oh, I'm famished for something sweet!” Jennie exclaimed happily. She was having no trouble doing what Alick had called her duty to them both. Neither was he.