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It was bitterly cold before dawn, even on this late May morning. Neil rose from his bed of wool and straw and went out of the blackhouse. As he splashed some water from the trough onto his face, he heard Sheila roust his sister Muirne. She came out soon after, and they stood in the shadow of the croft house and ate their first meal of the day, cakes of dried oatmeal from the day before and a chunk of their mother’s cheese. It would last them until noon.
They bundled up in layers of wool and thriftily patched linen, ready to be shed as the morning sun and the heat of work warmed their bodies. Neil, older by a year, led the way up the hill. The high, flat ground above their house looked westward to the Atlantic and the Carnaburg isles. The western horizon showed a dark blue above the slate grey sea.
The deep pit was full of dried kelp stems, arranged carefully so that they would burn cleanly together. Neil could see that Muirne was worried by the way she kept glancing toward the large cover over the hole, imagining rocks that had fallen in or an empty pocket that would slow down the fire. Muirne had done most of the ferrying of the kelp from the cliffs below where it dried up to the rough kiln. There were weeks’ worth of work tied up in this pit: the gathering, the laying out to dry, and the transporting of the kelp to the pit to be laid in, layer by layer. And this every time there was a winter storm that threw up more of the weeds from the sea.
It had been a cold winter, but not a meager one, since their family had had the comforts of a salted side of pork, and their walled vegetable garden, as well as the fishing not five minutes’ walk from their home. The blackhouse had stood for three generations, its two rooms and thatched roof welcoming many a neighbor and protecting the MacLeans from many an ill wind. And there seemed to be a lot of those in recent years. The high rents they had paid the year before, made possible by the high price paid for the kelp ash, had stood them in good stead with the Laird of Torloisk, and he had allowed them free access to the turf-cutting beds for their winter supply of peat.
Neil was hoping for some of that extra money to go for a tutor from up the island, who could further his education. At sixteen, he was more than finished with the parish school’s curriculum, but they hadn’t had enough money two years ago to send him out for more. Maybe this year, he thought.
He looked over at Muirne as they arrived and bent to remove the cover that protected the kiln. She was done with the village school as well, even earlier than Neil. She was needed to work with the wool, and cook the meals, and tend the garden, and all those other homely tasks. Well, he thought, and that will put her in a good way to being a wife.
Me, I’m happy to do a bit of everything here on the Laird’s land: fish, farm, hunt—even though it’s strictly forbidden. But it might be better if I had a bit more education, to see all the mechanical improvements that are happening put to good use.
Just as Muirne had stamped down the last of the kelp, and the first light had shone off the hilltops of the mainland, their stepfather arrived from fishing around the Carnaburgs. He was the one to bring the fire starter and long paddles. They waited for him as he scaled the hill, his limp barely slowing him down.
“How was the fishing, Father?” Neil asked.
“Tol’able good, Neil. I’ve packed it away already in the smokehouse, so it’ll keep this day while we do the burning.”
“That’s good,” replied Neil, as he glanced at his sister who, as he expected, looked relieved not to have to pack the day’s catch in salt.
She took the flint from Gillan and braced the steel against the ground. “Ready?” she asked.
“Ready,” they replied, and she started striking while they waited with paddles raised. As the sparks floated onto the tufts of gathered dry grass, she tossed one down, half-lit. Small embers glowed in the half-light of dawn, and Neil and Gillan stayed alert, watching for the first curl of fire strong enough to encourage with the paddles.
“There,” said Gillan, and one side of the pile was crackling to life. Muirne moved around the circle and struck again until the next section had caught. She did this four more times. The little bits of explosive fires reached out toward one another in communion.
Her arms hung from her shoulders without strength, and she rested as the men dragged the paddles over the kelp stems, prodding and rustling to get the fires higher. Another few minutes and Gillan was sure they had it going, so he sent her back to the house. Next year’s rents would depend on this day’s work.
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Sheila watched Muirne’s return to the house. She stood in the vegetable garden at the back of the house to check on the dairy cow still sheltered on one side of the house. It would soon be put out to pasture to graze, but she liked having the cow close to home, warming the smoky air. She ducked back into the house, letting her eyes adjust back to the darkness. By the time Muirne came in, she was squatting next to the pot on the fire, stirring with one hand and reaching into the sack of potatoes with the other.
“Good morning, Mathair,” said Muirne softly. Her two younger siblings were still asleep. Her mother didn’t look up from the pot but nodded.
“How did it start?”
“It looked well by the time I left.”
“Aye, that’s good.”
“You’re cooking their dinner?”
“Yes, love. They’ll need more than bread and cheese after six hours,” chided Sheila.
A yawn cracked through the quiet moment they shared. Muirne looked over at the corner bed and saw Alisdair turn over and continue sleeping. At six years old, she might allow her stepbrother that, but Sheena was also asleep, and eleven. Past being the baby of the family.
Muirne shook her shoulder, trying to avoid moving Alisdair. “Sheena, you should be up and helping by now. It’s burning day and there’s more weeding to be done.”
A groan escaped before Sheena shook her head awake and nodded. “Aye,” she whispered.
Muirne went back to her regular tasks: milking the cow, feeding the cow and hens, cleaning the spare pot, taking in more peats from their stack outside. Sheena soon went out bundled in her own layers, and set to work in the garden rows to clear out the weeds around the potatoes.
Sheila tried to tamp down the worry she always felt on burning day. So much depended on her son and her husband, up there all day and into the evening, stabbing and stirring the kelp until it was all burnt to ash. Not too hot, not too cold, they had to work poised like miners to keep it going. True, everyone else in the village had the same little drama unfolding. There were those that didn’t have enough menfolk to perform the task, so the mother had to be up there too.
Thank the Lord I’ve no cause for that, Sheila thought. Bad enough when I was five years without a husband while Alec worked on the canal, and we had the never-ending war with the French. She shivered, thinking of those long, lean, and lonely years. Three children on practically no income, just what food she could eke out of the garden and what Alec’s family or the church members came by with.
Now she had the four, and they all seemed healthy, so there was an end to her worries over that. Well, Sheena’s never been strong, she amended. Not after her first years spent practically starving. She sighed. Gillan would help her with them now. Perhaps this year she would even be able to see one of her children tutored in Tobermory, maybe even attend a university on the mainland. Sheila experienced a little thrill as she thought of it. Here she was in her kitchen, scouring potatoes and stirring soup, but her son Neil might become an educated lad, catch the Laird’s eye, and make something of himself. It all depended on the ash—and the buyers, too, of course.
She’d listened to her neighbors who’d done the kelp before, and relayed it to Neil and Gillan that first time, in the winter of ’17: make sure to have good quality ash, no stones, make sure to let it cool sufficiently before trenching, be careful loading the heavy bricks of ash onto the cart, and make sure to be on good terms with the man doing the weighing. They’d had several years of it now, and thank the Lord, as their rents had gone up just as fast as they were able to make money from the kelp-ash.
The final phase was the easiest for her husband Gillan. From what her neighbors had told her of the weighing process, it was bargaining like at any county fair. You told them it was a prize cow; they told you it looked like a starving beast. You told them you’d used best sea salt in the curing; they told you the color looked off. That was nothing to be afraid of, no—just country bargaining and shinning at its best. Gillan could bargain anybody out of his hat, she’d always said.
True, it depended on who you were bargaining with. Can’t never trust those English. They didn’t know the game, or else they refused to play it. The week before her marriage to Alec in 1803, her memory was burned by the treatment she’d received at a lace shop on the mainland, run by an utterly disdainful Englishwoman, who’d made her feel like dirt before she consented to sell her a dear piece of lace for her dress. Her mother had been right, she should have just used her own skills, but the new machine-made lace was so white, so regular, so perfect-looking.
Ta for that, she reminded herself. Look where those machines have landed England. Riots, Combination Laws, chaos. Serves ‘em right, thought Sheila, after all they took from us. At the thought of what they’d taken from her family, she felt the familiar constriction in her chest at Alec’s absence, and tried to breathe deeply to calm herself. Several others from Mull had lost family to the conscription for the Caledonian Canal, and many more had lost men to the wars against Napoleon. Most seemed to have moved on fine.
Old news, Sheila thought. Not worth the crying.