“I thought I saw someone...”
7
Pale light slowly crept across the cold, stone floor, the quiet broken only by the faint sound of a sob that slipped through the shadows as the child rose from the cot among the row cots that lined the wall, small bodies curled beneath thin blankets.
She was pitifully thin as she swung her legs over the edge of what passed for a bed, the floor cold as ice beneath her bare feet.
She stopped and listened, as she had before, but the only sound came from those who filled those other cots—nameless as she was, with no family to claim them, a mother’s gentle touch only a vague memory, if at all.
Only those stone walls, the endless chores under the frowning glares of those who watched over them. And too often, the small lifeless bodies quickly whisked away...
She reached under the pallet, her fingers brushing the wood slats—then the one where that small pendant was hidden since she first arrived, along with the small, wrapped bundle that held a piece of bread. She’d hidden it there with half an apple from the one meal they were given.
An image briefly returned. A memory of the one who had brought her there—the woman’s face heavily lined.
‘’Tis best,’ she told her, even though she hardly understood, and then disappeared in a cloud of mist as a sound moved along those stone walls.
She waited and listened. When no other sound came, she carefully arranged the blanket on the cot as if she was still there, curled into a ball against the cold like the others.
When it was done, she listened again, then quietly slipped down the aisle between the two rows of cots toward the opening of the ward.
It was dark there, no windows except those just beyond where freedom waited. Three steps, quiet as a mouse, then a half dozen more...
Her footsteps quickened. It didn’t matter that she had no shoes and the stones on the floor were cold.
It didn’t matter that a sudden warning whispered to her in the bitter cold air. It didn’t matter even when that hand reached out and clamped over her shoulder.
“Wot are ye about, child?” the words hissed through the air. The fingers of that hand dug into her thin shoulder.
“More trouble than the others all together!” the woman, shrouded in black, hissed as that warning voice fled.
“Not the first time, but the last I promise ye. Ungrateful for the bed that’s provided and the food ye eat.”
“I promise ye...!”
I foughtto breathe as I came up out of the nightmare as if a weight lay on my chest, the words still there. Along with the pain that had followed as grey stone walls slowly slipped back into the shadows and the room on Albany Street gradually emerged.
I’d not had the dream in a very long time, part of the past that I chose to leave there, as I splashed cold water from thebasin onto my face, then dressed, as those painful sounds slowly slipped back into the shadows as well.
I left the room and stepped out into the small parlour of the flat, the smell of fresh coffee pulling me toward the kitchen.
Elizabeth Cheney poured a second cup of coffee and handed it to me.
“Ye were restless during the night. I heard ye cry out,” she said with a gentle smile. “Bruadar?”
I was not familiar with the word, in the old Gaelic.
“Sit,” Elizabeth replied. “Ye canna begin the day and do wot must be done without food, and at least one more cup of coffee.”
“It’s not necessary,” I replied, and received a long look.
“But eat ye will.”
I managed a smile at her kindness and sat at the small table, even though I wasn’t hungry.
There is an odd thing that suddenly happens when a plate of tattie scones and sausage is placed before ye.
“Bruadar. It means a dream in the Scots,” Eliabeth explained as she sat across the table from me.
