The Silver Darlings (27 page)

“But——” She paused. “Do you mean,” she asked, with widening eyes, “that our house will be burned down?”

“Of course,” said Roddie. “We’ll burn it into the ground.” There was an inexorable quality in his quiet voice, a restraint that suggested a terrible strength, a strength balked and turned in on itself.

“I’ll have to run,” said Catrine. “The spasms come on her suddenly.”

His eyes narrowed and she saw that it would not take much for him to walk in, snatch her under an arm, and stride away with her, caring as little for her protests as for anyone else’s.

As she ran, giving him a wave and a smile, he stood quite still and, inside, she listened, ready to block the door against him. Once or twice at a market it had taken a few men to hold him. But that was with a drop of drink taken. Now he was sober, and the plague was not a thing he could break on his knee.

She felt heartened and looked at herself in the small glass. She was pale, perhaps, but her eyes were larger and browner than ever, and the lips of her wide mouth had colour still. While she smiled at her eyes, they looked back at her and filled with tears. She hastily wiped the tears away. She was thirty-four, but her skin was smooth as it had been in her twenties. She felt in her twenties, in her ’teens. She moved quickly about the kitchen. She didn’t feel she was going to die. She was not going to die. Burn down the house? Her house and Finn’s? Somehow that awful thought had not attacked her before.

All day she had kept going, cleaning, washing, looking out sheets and clothes, shifting the tethers, mucking the byre, feeding the horse, and attending to Kirsty, the visits
outside being swift sallies from which she returned panting the good air. The early morning tiredness passed away entirely, and she felt she could spend another night without sleep easily.

Only there was nothing much more to do now, except wait for sounds from Kirsty. And outside there was the spectral light again. She feared it. The grey light of dawn and gloaming. The hour when the spirit walked alone—one’s own spirit, out through the eyes; and the spirit of a dead loved one, in the strange brightness that can inhabit the grey light, coming down, drawing nigh….

Kirsty’s stick tapped, and with a quick catch of breath, Catrine went into her room. Already the face was in shadow, and she lay quietly; then looked up at Catrine standing by her bed, a basin in her hand, asking gently if she felt the spasm coming.

“Why didn’t you leave me when I told you?” The voice was clearer than it had been, but also weaker.

“I couldn’t leave you, Kirsty. You know that.”

“Why?”

“How could I, and you ill? You have been so kind to me, to me and Finn.”

“Not been kind. You more than worked your way here. But while I’m alive, I’m mistress here, and you should have obeyed.”

“I couldn’t. Please don’t hold that against me now. Please, Kirsty,” pleaded Catrine.

“Very well,” said Kirsty. “But I could have died alone. Could you not think of yourself? Isn’t one enough?”

Catrine did not answer, seeing in that clear moment Kirsty’s inexorable common sense. It was selfless and austere, yet with a final pride in it. Everything had been hard and clear, matter-of-fact and precise, with Kirsty always. Waste not, want not. Her sense of economy was still at work!

“Would you have left me if I had been ill?” asked Catrine.

There was a pause. “Nothing to do with it. The end is not far off now and we have a little business to do. Sit down.”

Catrine sat down on the wooden chair beside her bed. Kirsty’s hands lay extended on the patchwork coverlet and her eyes stared over them down the bed.

Sometimes her voice was little more than a whisper. She spoke in a monotone, with intervals of silence, and at times indeed it seemed that the spirit alone was talking through the gaunt, exhausted flesh. The eyes were deeply sunk and, in an interval, when the spirit seemed arrested by its own thought, the pupils tended to roll upward.

But the intellect was clear and the burden of what she said was:

“My father wanted you to inherit this croft. That was right. I would not want the home of my people to pass to a stranger. But this was never our home. We, like you, were driven out. But I do not want brother or sister of mine, who left us here, to benefit now. I told my brother that when he arrived too late for his father’s funeral. He knows. But when it comes to worldly goods, trust no one.
Remember
that.” Her head nodded slightly but firmly. “So—feeling this was coming on
me—I wrote it down on a paper. That paper—in the shottle of my kist. Keys are there, in that small box. Get them.”

Catrine found the keys, under some brooches and faded letters, coloured beads and other “bonnie things”, surely as old as her childhood.

“Open the kist.”

The rectangular wooden trunk was solidly made. When Catrine had lifted its lid, an old scent of wild thyme came up from folded dark clothes. Fixed to the back, like a rectangular sleeve, was the narrow, boxed-in shottle. From this Catrine took the letter.

“Take purse, too.”

It was a large, heavy purse, the home-cured leather
darkened and shiny. Kirsty motioned Catrine to put letter and purse beside her and sit down.

She groped for the letter and purse with her left hand and tried to lift them towards Catrine. “Take them—from me.” Catrine at once took them. “Yours now. That will save trouble. What I give, I give. You need mention purse to no one. Refuse. It’s yours. Understand?”

Catrine understood. Kirsty could do what she liked with her own before her death. Afterwards—it would have been a different matter.

“Count,” ordered Kirsty.

Catrine counted forty-one golden sovereigns.

Kirsty nodded. “You will pay funeral expenses. No debts.” Then she made a special effort with her
articulation
: “Always keep a little in the shottle of your kist, so that you may die decently, and be beholden to no one.”

“Yes,” answered Catrine, troubled with her emotion. “Thank you.” She bit her quivering lip.

Kirsty closed her eyes. Her mouth fell open, emitting a sobbing moan and then, after a long interval, another. But presently her eyes opened and her expression seemed to lighten. “If He gave you a soft heart, He gave you willing hands. You have always been a brave, good girl.”

Catrine strove her utmost, but it was no use. The sobs came and she got up and turned away, muttering, “I’m sorry.”

While she was composing herself, Kirsty had another spasm, but it was not violent, and after it she seemed a little easier.

“Have you thought what you’ll do with letter and purse if you get plague yourself?”

There was silence.

“I could,” said Catrine, “talk to Finn, when I felt it coming on me. I could—I could put it in a hole in the wall of the little bam. There is one thing of my own I would like him to have.” Her voice quickened, almost eagerly. “I could do that I could easily do that.”

Kirsty nodded. “Now my mind is at rest.”

After a little she said, “You’ll never keep that boy from the sea. If you wish him well, don’t try.”

Catrine was silent.

Kirsty turned her eyes. “You are still against him?”

“I do not want him to go to sea.”

“More ugly deaths on this land now than ever on sea. If you put boy against his nature, you’ll warp him.
Remember
that.”

Catrine bowed her head.

“Remember that,” muttered Kirsty in a little while. “I know.”

The last two words came from a distance in thought, and Catrine saw that Kirsty’s mind had gone back to the young man who, against his wishes, had been sent to a lucrative position in the West Indies. His mother had high notions of her social position, and Kirsty was not the daughter-
in-law
she envisaged. The lad’s private idea was to save money and return. But the generous hand was native to Hugh. There was high social scandal, and a rumour of Hugh’s bitter words on presumably the woman in the case, the last words he uttered: “That scheming bitch”, as he went out on the ebb of dysentery, following a drunken orgy.

Catrine had learned all this only a few nights ago; in fact, after she had told Kirsty that a certain Captain Mackay had been asking for her in Helmsdale. The Captain, it turned out, was Hugh’s first cousin.

That fairly long, lucid spell was Kirsty’s last. Presently her whole body shivered so violently that her lower jaw shook and chittered, and the bed itself trembled. In addition to the warming-pan and the earthenware bottle, Catrine heated two stones, wrapped them in flannel, and put them to the soles of Kirsty’s feet. As the shivering subsided, her mouth opened, but her throat, as if plugged, held even her breath back. Her body slowly writhed, the breath came in choking gasps, and she moaned from the pains of cramp.

Catrine massaged the lower part of die shrunken body
as best she could. When she felt the rigor relaxing, she withdrew the cloths from under the abdomen and went
outside
, turning her face away, until she got the sweet air. She felt dizzy for a moment and breathed deeply. It was now almost quite dark.

Life was so strong in Catrine, she had so healthy and vigorous a body, that fear for the moment touched her and she leaned against the door-jamb, breathing the cool air off the heather. Two peewits started crying up towards the edge of the moor, a restless, anxious crying, urgent with life. They drew near and she heard the silken beat of the wings. They filled her with inexpressible sadness, a sense of beauty for ever lost; their wings beat in her breast. They passed over her, and fell away towards the moor.

She leaned the back of her head against the jamb and closed her eyes. Opening them, she felt cool again, as if the wings had fanned her face.

She lit a tallow candle (Kirsty had her own mould for making candles) and went into the sick room. In the
indifferent
light Kirsty’s face was all protuberant bone and sagging wrinkled skin. Her breathing was slow and very laboured, Catrine put her hand on the brow and found it icy cold and clammy with sweat. The lids of the half-closed eyes lifted slightly, and Catrine, inclining her ear, divined rather than heard in a gust of breath, “The Books”.

The Holy Bible lay on the little rounded table, and as Catrine set down the candle and lifted the book, she
wondered
what she would read.

But there was only one thing she could read that would be real to her heart now, that did not frighten her, that had peace in it.

“
The
Lord
is
my
shepberd
,
I
shall
not
want.
He
maketh
me
to
lie
down
in
green
pastures;
he
leadeth
me
beside
the
still
waters.”

Catrine had not much of a high-singing voice, but, as Finn knew, she could croon away at one of the old child lullabies in a way that turned the heart to water and all
rebellions to peace. Her soft voice caught the very core of the lullaby’s intention and bore it in a rhythm as natural as the rhythm of a long sea wave. At such times there was an ancient innocence in her voice that was almost too much for the humours of ordinary flesh; in a sense, hardly fair, as of something that could take advantage too easily.

“
Yea
,
though
I
walk
through
the
valley
of
the
shadow
of
death
,
I
will
fear
no
evil
,
for
thou
art
with
me
…”

Kirsty heard the words and knew them. Catrine’s voice was the stream in Kildonan, a burn in some far comforting paradise. No minister of the gospel could have borne her on the flood of death so softly.

Looking up from her reading, Catrine thought that Kirsty had fallen asleep, for the eyes were closed and the body at rest. She lifted the candle and went into the kitchen. She was beginning to feel an insidious weakness in her flesh, and assured herself it was due to lack of sleep. I am terribly tired, she thought, wanting to throw herself down and let sleep have its way. She had not the energy to wash.

Kirsty’s quiet body remained with her, and in a little while she went in again, leaving the candle outside the door so that the light would not fall on Kirsty’s eyes and awake her. Kirsty was exactly as she had left her. Catrine did not know whether to take the candle in or not, and retreated again to the kitchen. But now she had no peace, seeing the body stretched out, and soon was stealing into Kirsty’s room once more. She listened for breathing but heard none. “Kirsty!” she whispered. Then she brought the candle in.

She’s dead! thought Catrine. But how could she be sure? “Kirsty!” She did not know what to do, and her head turned as if she were trapped. “Kirsty!” She put her hand on the bedclothes over Kirsty’s chest and pressed the breast-bone. Kirsty emitted a heavy, sobbing breath. It seemed to be her last, for now her breathing completely stopped. Her skin was shrivelled in a livid purple, and the face was so unlike that of the woman she had long known,
that Catrine’s fear was touched with horror. A deep,
shuddering
sob broke from Kirsty again. Catrine gave a small choked cry. Kirsty’s half-closed lids slowly lifted and the pupils lowered to look at Catrine. There was now such clear intelligence in the eyes, such sane consciousness, that Catrine’s fist gripped against her heart. “Oh, Kirsty, I thought …” Was that understanding a gleam of the old grim humour? “Kirsty!” called Catrine. The lids fell and a shuddering breath came from the livid lips. There was a long pause, then a final deep convulsive sob.

There was no doubt about death, now that Catrine looked down upon it.

All at once, outside, several peewits began to cry.
Disembodied
cries, anxious, frightening cries. Catrine tried to open the little window. It was stuck. She tugged fiercely, desperately. It gave—to let the spirit out. She hurried to the outside door and pulled it open. She hardly knew what she was doing. What had made the birds cry? In a quiet, ghost voice from a little distance came the word, “Mother.”