“You have no idea how they grieved two years ago,” she told him as she slid another cinnamon bun on his plate. “I’m glad you’re here, Douglas.”
It was praise simply said, delivered in that no-nonsense, honest tone that he had already come to expect from Olive Grant.
He arrived in Mrs. Aintree’s cow bier in time to pour the full milk pail into a deep pan and set it in a dark corner. Mrs. Aintree had already showed Tommy how to take off the cream from last night’s milking.
“She didn’t need to show me,” Tommy said as he expertly skimmed the settled cream. “Been doing this since I was four.” His eyes lost their lively gleam. “Da had cows in Sutherland.”
“How long have you lived here?” he asked, wondering just how many people in Edgar were victims of the Great Emptying.
“Two, maybe three years,” Tommy said with a shrug. “Men came with torches, fired our house, and drove off Da’s cows. We spent three nights in a graveyard until they drove us away from that too.”
He spoke in the matter-of-fact way of children made old too soon. Douglas felt his blood run in chunks. “How … how did you get here?”
“I don’t want to say no more.” And Tommy didn’t, turning his attention to teats already wiped clean. He sniffed and wiped his sleeve across his face, but he didn’t turn around.
After a few words with Mrs. Aintree about fixing a date for her surgery, since Tommy was so capable, Douglas walked back to his house, head down and hands stuffed in his pockets—his usual pose—wishing that Mrs. Aintree had agreed to take in Tommy and his mother, but not surprised that she hadn’t.
He didn’t see the little girl sitting by the stoop until he was practically on top of her. He stepped back, startled, and then crouched down beside her. “You’re early, little miss,” he told her. “Surgery hours don’t start until nine of the clock.”
When her brown eyes filled with tears, something told his heart that he was looking at another child of the Great Emptying. It wasn’t so much the tears as the desperation, easily as great as that on the grocer’s face last night— grown-up desperation on a child’s face.
“There’s no reason why we can’t start surgery hours right now,” he told her. “Where do you hurt?”
She shook her head and lifted the shawl end from the tartan she wore. Two dark eyes looked back at him, eyes filled with pain and pleading. One meow, then two, and the kitten lowered its head and tried to burrow deeper into the girl’s lap.
“I don’t doctor kittens,” he told the child, even as he wondered just what was wrong with the little thing. “Who are you?”
“Flora MacLeod,” she said, and his heart melted just a bit around the edges with the loveliness of her Highland brogue. He was beginning to tell the difference.
“Well, Flora, I really don’t …”
She did something then that melted his heart more. Careful with the kitten in her lap, she knelt in front of him, and looked at him with eyes as pleading as the kitten’s. She said nothing, only looked.
Silently, too, he lifted her back to the bench. “What’s wrong with your bonny little kitten?” he asked.
Carefully, so carefully, she pulled the shawl end away again and he saw the kitten’s mangled front paw. “I think it was a dog,” Flora whispered. “Gran tells me just to drown it in the river.” The tears spilled from her eyes now, and she cried without making a sound.
In his long and painful career in the Royal Navy, Douglas had seen silent sobbing like that among young refugees fleeing one army or another. When his Spanish was good enough, he asked a fleeing mother about it. “To make noise is often to die,” the woman had said. “We train them to suffer in silence.”
MacLeod. MacLeod. He already knew it was a Highlands name, because he had doctored MacLeods from the island of Skye, serving in the fleet. And a name like Flora told him one of the child’s not-so-distant ancestors had been a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had fled Scotland with Flora MacDonald’s help.
“Flora MacLeod, let’s see what I can do. Come in.”
He ushered his patient’s mistress into his surgery and spread out a towel on the table. “Lift it out and onto this,” he directed. He slid over a wooden box so Flora could at least see onto the table.
She stepped up and set down her bundle, her eyes serious. Gently, he lifted the kitten from the shawl to the towel, where it tried to burrow under the fabric. Flora ran her thumb and forefinger on the spot under each ear,which told Douglas that she knew cats and what pleased them.
While she was doing that, Douglas lifted the bloody paw with his own forefinger, observing the crunched bones.I can do this, he thought.I can take the foot off at the joint above the paw. A stitch or two and done.
“I’ll fix …” He lifted the kitten’s tail “… her.”
Why in the world did little Scottish girls have such beautiful, heartbreaking eyes? He knew what she was going to say.
“I hae nowt t’pay thee,” she whispered.
He looked into her pretty eyes, dismayed to see they were sunken. He saw how tight her skin was stretched across her face, and the fact that her dark hair looked brittle. He asked himself who was his patient and broke his own heart.
“Let’s worry about that later,” he said.
