‘Flora.’
The word was a whisper, treading through her dream. James was leading her by the hand towards the cleit, his sheepskin flying jacket draped around her shoulders, her blouse unbuttoned. He was looking at her with a new intensity, his lips reddened from their hungry kisses.
‘Flora,’ he groaned, as they stepped out of the wind and she pressed her body to his again, for warmth, for love, for all the things she had never known until he had come into her life. His hands were heavy upon her hips, holding her close as he kissed her and she wound her arms around his neck, wanting to be closer still.
A moan escaped her as his hands and mouth travelled over her and she was no longer aware of the biting December chill. It could have been a sunny July afternoon in his arms, his hot breath the summer breeze upon her skin. Her fingers brushed the hair on his chest as she felt her skirt released and it dropped, billowing, at her feet.
‘I couldn’t wait,’ he murmured, his hands in her long dark hair and pulling back her head to expose her throat. ‘I had to see you one last time . . .’
‘I miss you,’ she whispered. ‘I think of you every minute. I don’t know how I can bear it.’
‘I know. I feel it too. But we endure this now and then we’ll be together always.’
‘But it’s too long. Another eight months . . .’ Her breath hitched as his hand dipped between her legs, making them both groan. Her body instinctively arched, reaching for him, and he pulled her onto the ground, kissing her deeply until she no longer knew where she ended and he began. She felt their boundaries blur, their bodies becoming one—
‘Save me.’
The words tripped her up, jogging out of synchronicity the pleasure that was rolling up her body in waves. What?
‘Flora, save me.’
She wasn’t rolling, she realized, but shaking. Pressure on her arm—
‘Flora! Wake up!’
Flora’s eyes flew open and she saw Mhairi standing over her, her head hanging. She was panting heavily and the dream – the memory – was whipped from Flora in a flash as she awoke fully.
‘The baby’s . . . coming.’ Mhairi’s voice was hoarse.
‘But . . .’ Flora felt a frisson of fear. It was seventeen days too soon. They weren’t ready for this.
Too bad. Mhairi’s body tensed suddenly, her head throwing back in an agonized silence that seemed to stretch out before a cry came to her throat. It was animalistic, a deep and ancient sound.
‘Lie down,’ Flora said, jumping up and pulling the blanket off the fulmar-feathered mattress.
Mhairi moved with agonizing slowness, crawling on all fours. Flora expected her to lie on her side but instead she sat back on her heels, her weight propped on her hands. From this angle, Flora could see that Mhairi’s chemise was wet and she knew the waters had broken, that the birth was an unstoppable force now.
‘I’m calling Lorna,’ Flora said, grabbing her skirt and reaching for the small bone whistle.
‘Don’t leave,’ Mhairi begged, her voice a rasp.
‘I’ll be right back, I promise. We need her here as quickly as possible.’
Flora staggered from the chamber and through the souterrain, out into the bright night. The sky glittered, strung with stars that dangled and gleamed in a velvet canopy, the moonlight casting a silvered wash upon the sea. The sheep were silent and Flora saw Mhairi’s red shawl sprawled like a bloody puddle on the grass; she must have come out here for some air and dropped it on her way back inside.
Flora looked up at the dark ridge, the wall that separated them from their families and neighbours, the barrier that had kept their secrets. But now it impeded the help they so urgently needed. It was the middle of the night. Lorna and Effie would be asleep, Poppit too.
She blew the whistle sharply three times, though the pitch was almost out of her hearing range. ‘Short pips,’ Effie had instructed her bossily. Flora stared into the darkness after a call she could not hear, for help she could not see. Suddenly the glen felt vast and impermeable and she, as fragile and insignificant as a flower in the grass.
She waited for a minute, then blew again. One – two – three.
She prayed Poppit would hear her; that right this moment she had lifted her head from her paws, her ears cocked, and was limping to her mistress’s bedside. A cold wet nose on warm skin making Effie jump, scold and understand . . . Waken Lorna.
But if she didn’t . . . How long would Flora hold out hope before she realized it hadn’t worked, that they’d all slept through? Was she going to have to help Mhairi through this alone?
Another cry came from the souterrain, a lupine howl, and Flora ran back through, holding her own heavy bump. They needed Lorna more than ever before: nurse, ally, friend.
Their hour of need had come.
But would she?
The day was awakening, the sheep beginning to bleat and call, birds shrieking on the dawn thermals. It was a bright, beautiful morning and Flora sat on the milking stool, feeling the warmth spread on her tired face.
The night had been long. Endless.
Friendless.
Their plan hadn’t worked. Perhaps the wind had been in the wrong direction; perhaps Poppit had slept too close to the crackling fire to hear the pips.
They’d had to do it themselves – the pushing and straining, the constant encouragement in the face of overwhelming pain and fear. ‘When will it end?’ Mhairi kept asking her, begging her, hair plastered to her face, tears streaking her cheeks and Flora’s too.
She watched as the three figures ran down the slope, ants on a wall. It was still early enough to hope that no one else had seen them, for the bag in Lorna’s hand always denoted a medical event. The bone whistle lay idle in her palm. She had been blowing it, three pips and a break, for almost two hours now as mother and baby lay on the mattress inside the cool, dim stone womb.
Flora rose as they approached.
‘Where is she?’ Donald asked, strides ahead of the women, as they galloped into the bowl of the glen.
‘Donald—’ she began, but it had been a rhetorical question and he dashed straight into the souterrain, bending low, his broad shoulders scarcely fitting through the narrow opening.
‘How is she?’ Lorna panted as she and Effie brought up the rear. ‘And the baby?’
Flora swallowed, then shook her head – just as a cry bellowed out. Fresh tears streaked her cheeks. ‘She never drew a breath.’
Lorna visibly paled before her eyes, Effie gasping with such horror that she staggered backwards again.
The nurse took in the news, swallowing hard several times as she stared at the ground. Another villager – lost. The last St Kildan, dead before she was even born. Was it not the perfect allegory for leaving here? Everything she had been arguing for?
Lorna steeled herself and dipped into the souterrain after Donald. Effie began to cry, her face hidden in her hands, but Flora couldn’t console her; she couldn’t move. What she had lived through tonight . . . it had been the stuff of nightmares, the two of them underground, like animals, in the dark, screaming, whimpering. All that suffering, all these months of solitude and hiding and hardship – and for what?
She heard a sound and Donald came back out, cradling the infant in his arms. A low moan left his body as the sun hit the child’s body for the first and last time. She had a thatch of thick black hair, a wee pointed chin and ten wrinkled fingers and ten toes. She had been perfect except for the fact that she would not breathe, and Flora watched sorrowfully as Donald mourned his daughter, as small as a kitten in his arms. He held her like she was made of glass or rainbows, his tears splashing onto her cold cheek as he rocked her fruitlessly.
It was a while before Lorna re-emerged. She looked ashen, visibly shaken by the unexpected loss, and Flora wondered if she felt guilty for having slept so soundly while they suffered.
Lorna came over to where Flora stood. ‘Was the cord wrapped around the neck?’ she asked quietly.
Flora shook her head.
‘Did the baby get stuck?’
‘She slipped out easily.’
Lorna frowned. ‘She was fully grown . . . A healthy foetus. I don’t understand.’
‘. . . I think perhaps I do.’ Flora lifted her gaze to meet the nurse’s. ‘Mhairi birthed some of the lambs the day before last.’
Lorna’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
Donald stopped rocking at the sound of the sharp word and looked over at them. Both women stood frozen as he turned and retreated into the souterrain.
‘One of the late-tups was in distress and she said it was the only way to save them,’ Flora murmured.
‘But . . . the infection risk—’
‘Puerperal pyrexia, I know.’
‘I warned her – both of you – about the risk of miscarrying,’ Lorna protested. ‘The two of you shepherding here was a ruse, not an actual obligation. You’ve got the whistle! We agreed Effie would come to deliver the lambs.’
‘I was all ready!’ Effie agreed urgently.
Flora arched an eyebrow. Precious good the whistle had proved to be. ‘I know that – but after the sheep drama, Mhairi was adamant we couldn’t lose any more for the roup,’ she said tonelessly.
Lorna raised her hands to her head and grabbed her hair, tipping her head back and squeezing her elbows almost in front of her face in frustration. A baby had been lost on account of selling sheep at market? ‘My God, this can’t be happening,’ Lorna whispered. ‘We were there! We’d got through it! The ordeal was done.’
Flora watched her as she paced, holding her head in her hands, and she realized the strain this deception had placed on the nurse – all the secret visits over here, teaching where she could, making emergency plans . . . And still they had failed, toppled at the last hurdle.
‘How is Mhairi now?’ Effie asked, roughly wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, leaving red marks on her skin.
Lorna was quiet for a moment. ‘She has a slight temperature, which is down to the infection, most likely . . . but she’s passed the placenta and there’s no need for stitches.’
‘Is she talking yet?’ Flora asked. It was the silence, the deafening silence, which had been the hardest to endure.
Lorna shook her head. ‘Not yet, she’s in shock.’
Flora looked away. So was she.
‘How long will that last?’ Effie asked.
‘There’s no way of saying. She’s gone through a trauma. How long is a piece of string?’
‘She needs her mother,’ Flora said quietly. ‘We need to get her back over the other side.’
‘Absolutely not.’
Flora looked at her in surprise. ‘She’s just lost her baby! She needs her mother! She’s not capable even of talking, Lorna. She’s devastated.’
‘Aye, and she’ll still be devastated in her mother’s arms. Nothing will change this awful, awful predicament,’ the nurse said, ever pragmatic, ever logical. ‘But it can still get worse for her from here. If people find out about the baby, about the deception that’s been going on over here for months now . . . Does it help her to add shame to her grief?’
Flora looked away. To know that she too was going to have to endure the same horror in a few short weeks . . . She wanted to get off this island, out of her skin. She couldn’t be here, be herself, another moment. ‘. . . Well then, Eff will have to stay here with her – because I can’t. I need to go to the mainland. I can’t have my baby here too. I won’t.’
Both Effie and Lorna stared at her, seeing now her fear too. Mhairi’s baby was dead, but her own trial was yet to come. What mischance awaited her?
There was a silence.
‘If you go over there, even if you go straight to the jetty onto a ship – everyone will still know,’ Lorna cautioned.
‘Let them! I don’t care any more!’
‘You don’t care about your family’s honour? You’d have them leave St Kilda under a cloud? That’s to be the MacQueen legacy – a bastard child born in the shadow of the evacuation?’
Flora gasped at the nurse’s bold words.
‘James is sailing back right this moment—’ Lorna continued.
‘Is he, though?’ In spite of Lorna’s protests that she’d heard and read nothing about the Quest becoming stranded, Flora couldn’t shake the factor’s taunts. He’d found her worst fear and pounced on it.
‘Yes! Frank Mathieson’s a liar! He’d say anything to hurt you. Don’t let his poison into your veins. James is coming back and he can make an honest woman of you within hours of setting foot on the mainland. Don’t act in haste, Flora. Don’t undo everything you’ve striven for these past months.’ The nurse put her hands on Flora’s shoulders, pinning her gaze. ‘I know you’re upset. It must have been awful for you, trying to help as you did. I can well imagine how frightened you must have been. But Mhairi’s baby didn’t die because we didn’t have the right medical care . . .’ Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. ‘It pains me to say this, but the baby died as a result of her own actions. Even if she had been on the mainland, by the time the baby’s distress came to light, the bacteria would already have been in her bloodstream . . . Mhairi’s choice killed her unborn child and she’s going to have to live with that knowledge. Somehow.’
Effie turned away, her face in her hands, her head shaking at the words, at the calamity that had befallen them.
‘I’m asking you to think this through, Flora, for her sake as much as yours. Money can whitewash a scandal on the other side; you may get away with it if James comes back and marries you quickly – which I believe he will. But Mhairi doesn’t have the protection of a rich fiancé. She won’t ever escape it. Mud sticks. This will follow her wherever she goes. What if Alexander McLennan was to hear she’d borne another man’s child? Do you think he’d spare her the rod?’
The nurse was unaware of the late change in Donald and Mhairi’s plans – what would come of their shared future now? – but Flora still looked away, guilt-ridden that she should escape as Mhairi suffered on every count.
‘For her sake, can you not stay another few weeks while she recovers from this? I know a day to come seems longer than a year that’s gone – but she needs you. You’re strong and your future is assured, Flora. You wouldn’t make the same mistakes she has.’ Lorna’s grip tightened on her arms. ‘I will protect you, Flora, no matter what. I’ll come over here every single day and I’ll make sure your baby survives, if it’s the last thing I do.’ She was grim-faced. ‘A month from now, you’ll be a mother and a wife, living on the mainland with the man you love. This will all be in the past – for both of you; if we can protect Mhairi’s reputation, then she has the chance to move on from this as well.’ Lorna leaned forward, catching Flora’s gaze with her own. ‘What do you say? Shall we all look after each other in these last few weeks?’
Flora looked at Lorna, then Effie. They were a sisterhood, weren’t they? They always had been, always would be.
Her heart was pounding, but she nodded. Just three more weeks; she could endure that.