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Another week of patchy, warm, and wet July weather passed. Sheila was dedicating hours to her loom weaving, making ready for the festival in Tobermory on the first of August. She’d passed the tasks of hoeing and weeding to Sheena, while Muirne did the daily mending and cooking for the house.
Gillan had managed to have the talk with Alex and came back thinking it had come up well, with no bad feeling. He spent his long evenings repairing nets, while his days were spent checking the lines of small oats and barley and the furrows of potatoes on their ten acres. He talked with other men about the Laird’s announcement and the effect it had so far had. For, aside from Neil and Muirne’s discovery that Willy and Ellen’s family had fled, it did not seem to add up to much. Further up the island, yes, some of their family had already cleared out, but then they finally received word from Gillan’s sister in Glasgow.
They had moved so quickly because there was a job held for her husband at a cotton mill just south of Glasgow. Unwilling to let such a chance go, they had moved with their two children to the site immediately. She invited them to come visit if Gillan was thinking of moving, but he only replied that he was glad to know they were safe and comfortably set up. No promises.
To Sheila, Gillan seemed more anxious about the reply from her family in the Carolinas. Finally, at the end of a hard week, just before a storm was about to come up the island’s west side, a messenger arrived with a letter from across the ocean. The wind whistled outside and the sky darkened as Gillan took the letter and the rider rode away on his horse, seeking shelter further from the shore.
Gillan tossed the envelope on the table and went round to close the shutters and stop up the sill-holes with old rags. It was sounding like a proper setting-up out there.
Sheila glanced at the table and saw Kenneth’s hand on the thick envelope. She kept her expression guarded and continued ladling out the leek soup for supper, but she felt a hard bubble press up under her ribs. How fervently she hoped for good news for her brother’s family, yet more still she hoped for Gillan to come round to sharing his mind with her. Sheena took the baps out of the fire with tongs and placed them in a basket for everyone on the table. Alisdair fetched the butter in its ceramic crock from the floor and pushed it to the center of the table as well. His eyes caught on the envelope.
“Mama, can I open it?”
“After supper, child, wait till after supper, then we’ll all hear it.”
Appreciative murmurs went round the table as they tasted the soup.
“It’s extra sweet, what did you add, Mama?” Muirne asked.
“Yon teacher of Neil’s, his wife that lives by the roadside, on the way to Loch Coruisk, she dropped off a load of early parsnips, said they’re good for thickening, and sweet, too. Turns out she was right. I think she was thanking us for the help last winter.”
“Well, it’s very good,” pronounced Gillan. “Do we not have parsnips planted in the garden?”
“Maybe it’s a different variety. Ours aren’t ready until September,” Sheila replied. “I think she got the seeds at the market in Salen. She knows a good seed-seller up there, fair prices, even with—” but she didn’t finish her thought. The meal lapsed into silence again.
After everyone helped themselves to seconds on rolls and soup, Sheena cleared the dishes into the bucket for washing at the well, and everyone’s attention turned to the letter.
“I am surprised that there’s a reply so quick, since I thought it took four weeks at the least for a ship crossing,” Sheila said.
“Aye, but there are those new clipper ships that can make it in twelve days now, Mama,” Neil said. “The tea clippers, made for the war, you remember? I learned about them from Master Wilson at school. They might use those for the post as well.”
“Well, any road, it’s come. Alisdair, you may have the honor. Be careful now,” Sheila said.
The little fingers gingerly slid under the flap, lifted it without tearing, since the glue had been cheap. “Well done,” said his mother, and Alisdair beamed. He stood at the corner of the table between his mother and father, waiting to hear the news.
Neil read it aloud for the family, slowly and clearly.
Dear Sheila,
I am much grieved that I could not stay to say goodbye to you. You will have learned by now of my leaving with the family, and if you’ve been dismayed by the silence, I am heartily sorry of it.
We received the notice from the heritor at Duart in early May, and debated what to do. No one else had received such a demand that we knew, but it ordered that we move by the end of the month. Mary and I talked and talked, and finally decided to take up the offer of Mr. Brown, an acquaintance from Fort William, who was arranging voyages to the Americas. It was made on a Monday and we sailed on the Wednesday, so there was hardly time to take our things down to harbor, let alone visit you with the news or send a proper word.
The journey was longer than I expected, four weeks total, which I’m told is normal. All the children survived, although little Nina has been ill since just before we arrived with a sort of chest congestion. We are living in the hills above Wilmington, North Carolina, in a house about the size of our blackhouse back home, but on someone else’s land. I have worked out a deal with the owner, a man named Tom Willis, to work under him for five years and earn a bit of land beside his. It will work for now, although there are many ships of immigrants from the north of Scotland already claiming the forest all around us. I cannot think but that we may have to earn the land only to sell it back and try to buy a plot less crowded, probably further inland, or even further West into the Plains. But there, there is the danger of Indians, and so we must see if there are other possibilities.
I write to you at Dalcriadh in the hope that you have not been forced into a similar situation and will receive this letter. If you are thinking of coming to the Carolinas, I would say look elsewhere, since as I say it is crowded and competitive, and not as open as the dealer made it sound. However, we managed to find employment and some hope for a future holding, so we can’t complain.
All my love to you and the children,
Kenneth
Sheila caught Gillan’s eye. She waited. He did not speak.
She said, “There have been no more announcements or notices since the one at kirk. No officers or tacksmen down to see if we’re out since the last of June. Is that what makes ye sure that—”
“No, no, I’m not sure of anything, and that’s the trouble. Is it better to leave or to stay? To keep together or split up to find work? All we see are the people who completely vanish, so they aren’t much help. The ones still here are in the same boat as we are.”
Both Neil and Muirne looked restlessly at the floor: they had never heard their stepfather sound so frustrated and they were embarrassed for him. That he should hesitate, unable to decide, unsure what the best course was for his family—it was unmanly. They stayed silent, hoping that Sheila might have a solution.
“Well, Kenneth says no on the Carolinas, but Jenny says yes to Glasgow. There’s a chance to take. Perhaps you and Neil should go there for a visit to see if there is good work, in case we do have to leave here.”
All eyes turned to Gillan.
“Aye, perhaps. I’ll think on’t.”
Muirne sighed with relief.
––––––––
The next morning Gillan came in early from the fishing, annoyed that it had not been a good catch. He threw the half-dozen or so fish in the net on the table, and yelled at someone to take them to the smoke shed. They’d all been shivering, not wanting to get out from under blankets to stoke the fire again, but Sheena jumped out, wriggled into her long coat, and dashed outside with the line of fish, letting in a blast of pre-dawn air.
The sun was angling its rays above the mainland through a blue-grey mist, but had not yet broken the horizon. Sheila got up and patted the blankets down in the corner then went to the cooking fire to stoke it up. Neil rolled himself up from the floor where he slept by the fire and added his blankets to his mother’s. Alisdair stayed asleep, and Muirne stayed in bed with him, eyeing all the action.
Gillan sat at table, clutching his hands together, leaning forward, watching Sheila bending over the fire. “Woman!” he finally said. “Sheila, come here to me, I’ve made a decision.”
Sheila came and sat on the bench next to him, but with her back to the table so they looked into each other’s faces. “Yes, Gillan? What’ll we do?”
“I’ll take Neil with me to see the situation in Glasgow with Jenny. We may as well leave today. You must write the letter for me, and it should arrive in enough time before us. I think it’ll take us under a week, with the ferry and any luck.”
“Today? But I’ve no extra food packed for ye, and the money—”
“We’ll be fine, fine. The ferry’s only a few shillings for us both, and that counts the return. Any road, you can always make it back with all that weaving you’re doing. It’s coming along fine, Sheila.”
She opened her mouth and emitted a gasp full of anguish and shock, but covered it quickly, looking down and smoothing the folds of her dress. “So you’ll go today,” she said, glancing at the cloths near the loom, wrapped in muslin to keep them clean of the ash in the house.
“Aye.” He gave her another glance, then turned his attention to Neil. “Neil, you ready for a journey?”
“Yes, Father.” Neil finished tucking his shirt into his old trews and grabbed up his plaid. He rolled up and folded under the large square of cloth so it could fit under his elbow easily. He turned to his mother. “Anything you need before I go?”
“Coom here, son.” She clutched him in a tight embrace.
Muirne stood up in her shift and wrapper, an old muslin cloth, and her eyes sought Neil’s. He came over to embrace her as well, and she whispered, “Hurry back.”
Alisdair got his hair ruffled as he was waking, and then they pulled together the food and walking clothes they would need for the first few days at least: gaiters for their feet, Gillan’s large plaid to sleep on, the sheepskin for the cold, dewy nights, all the oatcakes stored in the drawer of the baking table, all the cheese from their one cupboard.
Just as they’d rolled it all up into a haversack, Sheena came back in. She looked at the men, dressed to leave, and burst into tears. Her hands were icy and smelt of fish and salt, and she rubbed them against her eyes, making the tearing worse. “You’re leaving us?”
Sheila’s heart broke at the sight. Sheena could barely remember her father Alec, who’d left for the Canal when she was just starting to talk, and never returned.
“Aye, young miss,” Gillan answered. “But we’ll be back, nae worry. Neil and I are going to visit your Aunt Jenny in the city, and see whether it’s all as good as one could wish there. Don’t worry, there, we’ll be back in a few weeks.”
Her sobs subsided, but her mother had to go fetch a towel to wipe away the salt from her eyes and rub her hands back to warmth. Gillan stepped in, claiming a kiss from his wife, and then the men were gone.