“Yes, I do. Our parents didna love each other, Niall. You never saw them together, but I remember well enough. Without love, I’d rather never marry.”
“I’ll talk to Father.”
“You willna!” she said sharply. “If I stay here, he’ll only find another man for me. I’m going, Niall, and you’re no’ to try and prevent it. And you’re never to confess what you did, you understand? You promise me?”
He nodded, but reluctantly. This was not the way it was supposed to come out. But he no longer had any control over events. Everything had been decided. He had acted on impulse, because of his love for his sister. But the outcome was not his to determine after all.
“I’ll come and visit you soon,” he said.
“If Father lets you, I’ll be glad of it.” She smiled.
Suddenly Niall threw his arms around her, tears coursing down his face. “Och, Sheena, I’m so sorry!”
“Hush now, m’dear. This is no’ your fault. And you’re no’ to fret for me. I’ll be fine in Aberdeen. I’ve never been so far north ’afore. I’m actually looking forward to going, ’Tis better Father and I part, at least for a while. I couldna live here with him now.”
Chapter 9
In the weeks that followed, Sheena was often to remember that last intimate talk with Niall. Aberdeen, nearly fifty miles from home, was like a foreign land. It was crowded and filthy, and you couldn’t walk through the town without fear of having someone’s chamber pot or garbage dumped on your head. But it was a thriving market center, and exciting, with a crowded harbor and every kind of craftsman working in the town.
Sheena spent her first days exploring, but soon gave that up. Oh, the sights were grand—the abbeys, the university, all the shops—but there were too many Highlanders. They were easy enough to spot, their legs bare between plaid and boots. Lowlanders wore tights or combinations of hose and puffed breeches. Lowlander peasants wore trousers.
If the intimidating Highlanders were not enough to make her shun the town, there was a continualstream of beggars accosting her on every corner. Aberdeen was overrun with poor people, poor seeking work or professional beggars.
Every morning Sheena left her aunt’s austere rooms at the nunnery and walked to the poorhouse, a stone building in a terrible state of ruin. Given over as a house of charity, it was a few blocks from the nunnery. The house had been intended as a resting place for weary travelers, where they could get a hot meal and a clean bed for a night or two while looking for work. But it had deteriorated into a slum for beggars and vagrants. A small house, it contained only ten beds. The rule of one or two nights’ stay only still applied, and there were always new faces at the door.
Sheena’s aunt was not obliged to go there every day, but she never failed. A priest lived there, seeing to the distribution of meals, but he was too old for all the work the place required. Those who slept there were asked to wash their bedding and clean their eating utensils for the next guest, but the rule was never obeyed, and only the nuns’ daily care kept the place from becoming a pesthole.
When Sheena saw how tired her Aunt Erminia was, she insisted on helping. Her aunt’s day usually consisted of spending the morning at the poorhouse washing and cleaning, then working at the hospital for several hours, then returning to the poorhouse before going home.
Sheena was appalled. All that work, and Aunt Erminia was nearing fifty! There was no reason shecouldn’t help at the poorhouse and make her aunt’s day that much shorter.
It worked out well. Sheena was young and energetic and could do the work in half the time it took Aunt Erminia. The poorhouse was empty by the time she got there every day, so no one bothered her. She and her aunt were able to spend afternoons in the quiet of the nunnery, talking or sewing together. If Sheena missed her home and the activities she was accustomed to, she didn’t show it yet. She did achingly miss her brother, however. There was no one young and lively at the nunnery, and she felt so alone.
After a month, Sheena had not heard from home, from Niall or her father. She had repaired the jerkins and plaids of the poor, learned countless new stitches from her aunt, and refurbished and mended her own wardrobe…and was deathly sick of sewing. She wanted to ride, hunt, and swim before the first snows. She needed adventure, or at least some mischief, and, oh, how she missed Niall!
For the first time, Niall would be raiding. Autumn was the traditional time for lifting, as the stealing of livestock was termed. Whatever the Fergussons lifted that year would be kept, not sold, for they had lost too much to the MacKinnions to be able to sell any.
The morning in late September when Sheena pulled her cart of bedding along to the river was dismally gloomy. Not just the usual Scottish gloom, either, but a full mass of dark clouds that signaled astorm. She worried about her wash. She was in the habit of hanging the bedding by the river to dry in the brisk breeze, rather than at the parish yard, where surrounding buildings blocked the wind. If it rained, the wash would have to be hung inside the poorhouse, and it would take all day to dry.
That had happened before, so Sheena had been there in the late afternoon when the poorhouse started to fill. She didn’t want to be there again, to see the thin, sunken faces, the ragged, filthy clothes. She hoped it wouldn’t rain.
She hurried, rubbing her hands raw before she was finished. Her poor hands. How white and smooth they’d once been. Now they were red and sore and cracked.
“Need some help, lassie?”
Sheena gasped and turned around quickly. She had not heard the young man on his horse approach, for the wind was whipping hard. It flapped his plaid around him and played havoc with her green skirt.
He was a Highlander, his plaid very close to her own colors. He was young, too, about her age. There was something about his face that put her at ease. True, it was a very handsome face, but that wasn’t the reason. There was just something about him.
“’Tis kind of you to offer.” Sheena grinned, amused. “But I canna imagine a Highland warrior doing the poorhouse wash.”
“You’re a beggar?” He was shocked, and the surprise in his voice made her laugh outright. “Ofcourse I am. Do you think I’d be washing this bedding unless I had to?”
“But…you dinna look like a beggar.”
“Well, I’m new at this. I mean, I have only recently fallen on hard times.”
“You’ve no family?”
