Shadow in Hawthorn Bay (13 page)

“I guess you could say that, but I sort of feel as if I do. The first time I set eyes on you, back when you was walking from Soames to the
Corners, I looked at you with your black hair all shiny around your white face, and your black eyes, and, Mary, I just figured you was the one I was going to marry.”

“Luke, it cannot be. I will not, I cannot marry—ever.”

“I guess I didn’t pick much of a time to be asking, but …well, I’d be afraid for you living here, Mary. Come home and stay with us. I won’t pester you about marrying, won’t bring the subject up again. But don’t stay here!”

“But I mean to live here, Luke. Henry is mending. He does not need me now. I must come home with you now, for I will not leave your mother or Henry without a word, but I will come here to live in this place until I have earned my passage home. You must not speak to me again about marrying, for I will not.”

Luke did not move at once. His eyes travelled from Mary’s face to the house, to the water, across the road and back again. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s fetch Henry and take him on home.”

The House at Hawthorn Bay

T
he Camerons’ house belonged to Dan Pritchett now, Luke told Mary. So she went to see Dan the next morning. She found him in the new barn, constructing stalls for his livestock.

“Sure you can live there if you want. I’m glad to be able to do something for you, Mistress Mary,” Dan boomed. He was a huge, bluff man. “Three axe handles across the shoulders,” as Luke described him, and at least a head and a half taller than either Luke or his father.

He was glad to have Mary in the house. “Nobody here needs that house just now. Davie and Jean Cameron bought it from Charity Hazen. She and her husband Zeke were Vermont Loyalists and he got so homesick for his hills he took a chance on being imprisoned or done to death, and he went back home—never been heard from again. When the Camerons wanted to sell I was glad to get
another hundred acres, but it’s gonna be a snowy Sunday in July before we get to clearing that piece of land. It’s a bit far from the barn to be tethering a cow and—well, as you know, we’re short a cow now anyways.”

Mary asked if she might tend his sheep for the rent. “Now, now,” he said, “Martha and I, we’re right glad to be doing a good turn to the gal who saved our Polly. Don’t you think on it.” So Mary thanked him and asked if she could tend the sheep for money.

“Well, my girl,” he said, “it’s like this; we don’t let our sheep roam far enough to need tending, there’s too many wolves prowling around the woods. It’s only a couple of years or so we’ve been keeping sheep at all.” He rubbed his hand across his bald head. Then he wrinkled up his face in thought. “Can you read?” he asked.

“I can.”

“Well then,” Dan beamed. “I have just the thing. My sister Sarah teaches some of the young ones hereabouts—girls and boys—to read and cipher, as we ain’t got any real kind of a school going yet. Now Sarah’s a mighty fine woman, but she sometimes has a speck of trouble keeping those older boys reined in. In consequence they don’t get too much learning into ’em.”

Mary thought of little grey Sarah Pritchett scurrying at the sound of her sister-in-law’s voice. “I am not afraid of the children,” she said.

“Do you think they could hear a word you said to ’em?” Dan slapped his leg and roared with laughter. “You people from Scotland, you talk so a fellow has to strain his ears, even big ones like mine, just to catch a word. A pretty sound, mind you,” he added.

“It is all the better, then,” replied Mary tartly. “The great lads will need to be still to catch the sound of the pretty words.”

Dan laughed again. “You’ll be all right. And Martha will sure be glad to get that babble and shouting out of our house, and Sarah will be mighty pleased to have the help! I’ll throw in your winter’s supply of firewood and a share of the flour and potatoes that come our way from the neighbours whose kids is coming to Sarah’s school.”

A winter’s supply of wood plus food. How much faster she could save what she might earn from Julia Colliver! “How many days a week would the teaching be?” she demanded.

“Well, Sarah generally runs to five mornings a week. The folks needs their children to work in the afternoons and, mind you, the older children won’t come until after the harvest is in, anyways.”

“I will do it,” decided Mary.

“Suppose we go tell Martha and see if she don’t rustle us up a saucer of tea and something to eat.” Dan led the way out of the barn.

After half an hour with Dan, Martha, and Polly, who came to sit on her lap and show her the doll Charlotte Heaton had made for her, Mary went to see Julia Colliver about working afternoons in payment for wool and the weaving lessons she had once offered. She meant to do as Mrs. Colliver had suggested—weave for her passage home.

“Mary, you can’t live there!” Mrs. Colliver was scandalized. “You come here to us. You can have that room behind the stairs all to yourself. What’s the matter with you! A young girl like you thinking of living alone? I don’t know what it’s like back in your country but we don’t do things like that here. Why, think of the dangers. Wild animals. In the winter when it gets cold, the wolves come right up to the door. And bears. And there’s Indians. I happen to know there’s been Indians coming and going from that house regular since it’s been empty. Jean was foolish, she used to let them come, and since the house has been empty, they been squatting there by times.”

“I have met an Indian woman. I liked her.”

“Well, you might not like it when the whole tribe moves in on you. These Indians, you don’t know them, they’re Mohawks. Us Yorkers from near Troy knew them back home. They was as like to take your scalp and set fire to your house as look at you. You can’t trust those people.”

Mrs. Colliver paused. Mary said nothing.

“It ain’t just Indians. A young girl like you alone with no husband—it ain’t to be considered. What’s more, young woman, do you know how cold it gets around here in winter? I heard your Aunt Jean say, more than once, if she’d a knew how cold it was going to be in Canada she might not have come here.” Mrs. Colliver paused for breath.

“Dan Pritchett will be giving me firewood for the winter.”

“Is that so?” Mrs. Colliver was a bit taken aback.

“I will be teaching the school with Sarah Pritchett.”

“Can you read?”

“I can.”

“Hmph. Well, you sure have it all set up, haven’t you?”

Mary said softly, “I hope so. Surely I hope so.”

It was agreed that she would work for Mrs. Colliver every afternoon in exchange for a small wage, a hank of spun wool to begin weaving with, and a share of the autumn shearing. Anxious to settle herself, Mary hurried to get her things from the Andersons’.

Lydia Anderson wrung her hands. “Oh dear. I thought you might stay here with us. Henry’s leg and … the cooking … Luke … I need you.” She looked helplessly at Mary.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Anderson.” In spite of herself, Mary had become, if not actually fond, protective of Lydia Anderson. “The sweetest, gentlest, prettiest girl in the Midland district, she was,” Mrs. Colliver had said. “John was besotted over her.” The shadow of the pretty girl was there yet in the drawn, lined face, and although the gentleness had degenerated into unhappy complaint the sweetness was still evident in her childlike concern about Henry, and the wistful way she sometimes looked at her older sons.

Mary was tempted for a moment to change her mind but she did not. “Henry is truly mending, Mrs. Anderson. He does not need me and.…” She looked up to see Luke standing in the doorway. She leapt from her chair as though stung, acutely self-conscious.

“And I will come to see you … and to see Henry. Please tell Mr. Anderson and Simeon goodbye for me.”

“Oh, dear.” Lydia Anderson wrung her hands again, her brow furrowed, and Mary knew that as soon as she had gone through the door she would sit down in the rocking-chair and begin to drink from the jug. She had a fleeting vision of Lydia Anderson struggling against wild wind and snow. “I could not save her from it did I stay,” she thought defensively, but remembering her vow she put
her hand on Mrs. Anderson’s arm and looked at her intently. “Please, Mrs. Anderson, when winter comes do not you go out into the snow.” She turned to leave, glancing at Luke and away again.

“Goodbye, Mary.…” Luke did not seem in the least ill at ease. “Henry and me’ll come by to see you when he can get that far on his leg.”

“Goodbye.” She hurried past him.

Outside she sat beside Henry and told him she was leaving. “I will come to see you,” she promised.

Henry’s lower lip quivered. His eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want you to go.” He sniffed.

“Tell Simeon that if he is hard on you I will put a fine spell on him,” she whispered, “and he will wither and die as did the poor lad the witch hated in the tale I told you. Remember?”

Henry nodded vigorously, but he did not smile. Mary wished she could take him with her.

By the time she reached her house it was evening and the sun, an enormous glowing scarlet ball, was setting over the woods, casting a wide pink reflection over the bay. The crickets were cricking and the frogs were garumphing in the marsh and the great blue herons were gronking hoarsely as they settled for the night in the branches of the oak and elm trees. A raccoon and her young were washing fish at the
mouth of the creek; out on the bay the loons swimming along the surface of the water made ripples and small splashes, calling to one another in their high, hollow tremolos.

Hugging her bundle of belongings tightly to her, Mary surveyed her small kingdom joyfully. Before she entered the house she asked God’s blessing. Inside, she found that someone had put a badly darned but serviceable mattress ticking filled with fresh bedstraw in the bed in the corner. There was a loaf of bread on the table. In the cupboard, besides the five wooden trenchers the Cameron family had left behind, were a tin cup and a blue crockery bowl with only a small chunk chipped out of it. The fire was laid and over it hung a much-mended iron open kettle still sound enough to hold water.

Mary was stupefied. The bundle of clothes fell to the floor as she gazed about her.

“It is the
sitheachean,”
she whispered. “The fairies wish me well. The old ones are looking after me. If Luke and Mrs. Colliver do not understand those of us with the two sights, they cannot gainsay the old ones! I will be well in Duncan’s house with the fairies looking after me.” She hung her two shawls, her spare skirt, and a petticoat Mrs. Colliver had given her on the pine-wood pegs by the door and placed her shoes on the floor beneath. She took Mrs. Grant’s much-smudged, folded, worn letter
from the pocket of her skirt and put it on the top shelf of the dresser. She held the spindle whorl for a moment in her hand.

“You
are
my good fortune. I know it now. It is right what I am doing.” She set the spindle whorl beside the letter. Then she picked up the blue crockery dish, carried it outside to the stream, and filled it with water. She walked three times around the house clockwise—very slowly—sprinkling the water and chanting the house-blessing that had always been used in the glen. She filled the little bowl once more and set it by the door.

“I have no milk for you,
bodach,”
she addressed the house spirit, although she could not see him, “but I will get you bread and soon I will find milk.” She got up and went to stand again in the middle of her meadow. She felt the cool evening breeze and sniffed the sweet milkweed and the cinnamon scent of the rose hips. Then, unmindful of the tall grass, she lifted her skirts to her knees, held her elbows wide, and began to dance. Around and around she danced, faster and faster, her small white feet leaping high, her long black hair flying wild.

Suddenly she stopped. She froze with one foot on the big grey rock at the edge of the water. After a moment her arms fell to her sides. She stared into the bog-black water lapping against the shore. A chill ran through her and
she fled to the house. Her elation was gone. In its place was an uneasiness she could not identify.

That night she woke again from the nightmare of Duncan calling her. She found herself crouched half-way across the room, wakened because she had stumbled on something. It was the spindle whorl. She sat down in Aunt Jean’s rocking chair by the smouldering fire, twisting the spindle whorl around and around in her hands, wondering how it had come there, wondering where she had been going when she had stumbled over it.

The Old Ones Are Looking After Me