Chapter Text
Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.
—The Jew of Malta, Christopher Marlowe
When John Thornton first came to Mallaig, it was the end of a drowned and unprofitable autumn.
He climbed off the carrier’s cart which had trundled a wearisome journey through rambling hills and rutted track to this little seaside village and nodded his thanks to the driver. It was a bleak place to live out your days, he thought. There were gulls wheeling high over the harbour, and gaunt sailors scraping a hull with sullen, languid determination.
It took him several attempts to get the directions he needed—no one in this village seemed like to confess a knowledge of English, and he ended the matter finally by presenting the letter that had been kept precious in his pocket until a laconic fisherman had grunted and pointed up a small hill. The manse here was small but well built, dressed stone painted white, a few dying flowers winding up near the door. Perhaps it had not been so bad… He was bracing himself to knock and finally reify the idea that had carried him thence when the door opened of its own accord and he was faced with the sudden gloom of a death’s head glaring out at him. He startled back—
“A guid day to ye, sir.” It was no skull, but a priest, gaunt and severe in solid black garments, inspecting the rough and bearded fellow before him.
“Hello. Sir. I am Mr Thornton.” He proffered his letter.
“Ah.” The death’s head closed his eyes a moment. “O’ course. I’m the Reverend MacDiarmid. Come in, lad, come yesel’ in.”
“I apologise for my tardiness,” John said, looking around in the dim light. “When you sent your letter I was in Canada. It had to pass through a few hands to reach me.”
The priest nodded and gestured into a sitting room. “I’ve another letter for ye, lad. It’s been kept safe and sound.”
John held the white envelope in both hands, frowning at the graceful, vivid address. He sat quietly at the writing desk while Reverend MacDiarmid fussed about bringing coffee, spiking it well with whisky. He was sitting there still, the coffee long cold, the envelope held precisely between long finger tips, when MacDiarmid came again to see how he fared, the letter still sealed. “May I see her?”
The priest nodded and took him out into the soggy day. He walked down the hill briskly. “Our Maggie had a sense somewhat was wrong a few days afore the rest of us. Talked all in th’village to send the wee bairns up intae th’hills wi’ some attendants. Turned yon church into a hospital. Ye wouldnae think it to see us, but we got through the low fever lighter than our neighbours.”
“I see,” John said. It was not merely natural thinness that gave MacDiarmid such a gaunt affect—his clothes hung too loose on him, he had a peely-wally look, as most of the villagers he’d seen had.
“Th’typhus had just aboot burned oot when Maggie took ill. Th’doctor from Fort Williams did his best to save her, o’course.” The priest sighed gustily. “Weil. The Lord takes those he loves best early.”
“I beg you, Mr MacDiarmid, to never use such words with me again.” John’s mouth was in a rictus that a charitable soul could call a smile.
They went through a gate into a little graveyard with too many new and fresh graves. John Thornton pulled up short at a familiar name, which struck him with another blow of the stunned dismay that had carried him through the past few days. Adele Dixon had died two years ago; the maid had found her mistress.
Margaret’s grave was by. John knelt down in the mud—there had been a little time for grass to grow in the late summer, not much against the rain. He panted, hard, some part of him had spent his journey north convinced that this had been some elaborate practical joke, unworthy of any of the Hales. In the phantasms of Margaret that dwelt in his head, coquettish Duessa had long since departed; only Una had stayed behind: serious, kind, with gentle grey eyes so determined to do what was right. He scooped out a handful of dirt and tipped the frail contents of his pocketbook into the hole. The flowers he had carried with him to the farthest reaches of the earth were frail and fragile, they crumbled at the slightest breath. It was right that they find a place at rest with her.
“It’s all right, Margaret,” he said. “Margaret Thornton. I’ll—take care of things. You needn’t worry. I’m sorry I was so late.” He coughed. “I had such words to say to you. I meant to apologise, I promise. But you mustn’t worry.”
***
MacDiarmid had been resting at the gate of the little graveyard. He nodded when John approached him. “Noo we’re to the Widow Gair. She’s a goodly lady.”
In Mrs Gair’s yard there was a tussle of large grey dog and a pile of infants rolling about in a tangle of limbs. The children of this little village, at least, were fat and thriving. MacDiarmid called: “Lily, my jo—thy father is here to see thee.”
One larger form emerged from the pile and clambered to her feet, walked a few steps up to him and looked up. John Thornton’s breath stopped: he hadn’t seen these eyes in five years, nor the beautiful curve of neck and lift of chin, the silky fine black hair. “Will you pack up her things?” he asked gruffly. “I’d like to take her South tomorrow.” He made himself soften his face and, kneeling, offered his hand. “Hello, little one. Elizabeth. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
“I’m Lily, sir.”
“Lily.” He forced a smile. “Shall we go for a walk?”
She must have been a loved child, there must have been no fear and few sorrows in her life: she took the hand of this hairy stranger without hesitation. He watched her tripping along happily enough along a path to the beach where black craggy rocks jutted out of white sands. She climbed the rocks in a practiced pattern and he smiled, not forced this time.
“Mr Thornton?”
“Yes, Lily.”
“Why do ye no’ live wi’ mamma like th’other da’s do?”
“I… quarrelled with your mamma, a long time ago. My fault. Margaret—your mother—thought it was best to live apart. Your da can be somewhat of a grouchy bear, I’m sorry to say. I’ll have to take care to keep myself soft and tender for you, little one.”
She cocked her head, considering.
“What did your mamma say about me?”
“Tha’ ye’re an able man, an’ a sailor. Full o’ th’fykes. Restless. Tha’ I must always speak the truth and be just in my dealings, so ye may be proud o’ me.”
“She said that about me?” the corner of his mouth twitched. Despite himself, he was charmed beyond measure that Margaret had taken some kind of interest in his fate.
“Ay,” she nodded. They walked on, John treading the white sands, his daughter leaping from rock to rock. The clouds broke and he turned into the glare of the westering sun, orange light searing into his eyes, the cries of gulls striking his ears; he turned to face the Western Ocean, and the islands just beyond sight that had once been the farthest edge of the world. “My purpose holds / To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars, until I die,” he said quietly, glumly. He felt a weight pulling at his arm: Lily had quietly taken his hand and was swinging it back and forth. “I think I’d best get you home for your tea, young Lily,” he said. “We have a long journey tomorrow.”
***
“Have you been so far from home before?” John asked.
Lily was sitting bolt upright between him and the carrier driving the wagon, wrapped in an impressive winding of blue plaid mantle, her head turning from side to side in attentive interest, exactly as she had been when they left Mallaig two hours earlier. Her eyes were very round, as large as the Round Tower of Copenhagen, he thought wryly.
“Only the once,” she said very seriously. “When we took my aunt Kezia to the railway station. She lives in Edinburgh now,” she said in a bragging tone of voice.
“As far away as that?”
“Oh yes. Well, I say my aunt. She’s Reverend MacDiarmid’s niece, ye ken? She was used to keep house for th’Reverend, but then she wanted to be married, so th’Reverend asked mamma and Dixon to keep house instead.”
“So that’s how they met,” John said gravely. “Much becomes clear now. Do you remember Dixon?”
“Erm. I think I do. But maybe it’s mamma remembers her for me.” She lapsed into a happy chatter of the various personalities of her home village, broken only occasionally by grunts of the carrier, who had his own opinions. “And o’course, we’ll be going on the train to care for aunt Kezia at Christmastide, when she has her wee bairn.”
“Well,” said John carefully. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to travel all the way to Edinburgh just then. But I’ll make sure the Reverend knows our address so he can write and tell you how she fares.” Lily’s head turned sharply, but the cart had turned a corner and they could see the silver-pale glimmer of the loch, and a few secretive buildings. “Look—there, Lily—there’s the railway line. I can just see the train coming along now.”
After the bustle and bother of loading belongings on the train, of wolfing down a small meal of bread and preserves provided by the priest (a jeelie piece, as Lily called it), of purchasing tickets and settling the two of them in a compartment—they had the space to themselves, the gift of being first on the train—they had not had much to say to each other until the whistle sounded and the train started with a huff, a grumble, and a jerk.
“Will we see mamma soon?” Lily asked, bouncing on her seat.
Once, in John’s early days of working the great ships, the boom of a small boat had crashed into his abdomen and knocked him flat onto the deck. He had wondered then if he would ever breathe again. “Lily. Lily? What did Reverend MacDiarmid say about your mother?”
“That she’s awa’ to Heaven. Is yon where the train goes? Will we see her soon?”
“I—” He blinked. “Lily. My jo—” he borrowed the endearment used by the priest. “Heaven isn’t a place you can choose to go to. It’s—when your body is old or injured or very sick, the perfect part of you, your spirit, goes to live with God in Heaven, and the body part of you is left behind. We can’t just go. It’s a sin to want to go too early. We have to live out our lives here, and learn as best we may.”
The little girl was sitting very straight, her hands clasped on her lap, chin high, face white, her eyes staring out the window. Oh God, he knew this face, had caused it too many times. He bowed his head over his hands as the train chugged along, taking her away from aught she had ever known.
“Lily?” He knelt carefully before her, bracing himself against the movement of the train. “Lily, I’m worried about your doll.” He nodded at the rag doll tucked into her elbow, that had been tenderly carried this whole journey. “I’m worried that she’ll be feeling homesick with us taking her so far away. Can you think of anything we can do to help her?”
She turned her head, her eyes speaking and bright, and studied his face. “She’s Bessy. Ye ha’ to hold her and tuck her in, like so. An’ then ye’ ha to sing, like mamma does.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said softly, helping her wrap the doll up in the blue plaid. He sat on the bench beside and helped her cradle her doll, and did his best to sing—old songs, cradle songs, sea shanties he had learned in his travels—rambling on in his gravelly voice until he felt a weight of head against his arm, until the dampness in his sleeve could be unobserved but still witnessed.
***
It was full dark when the train reached Glasgow. Lily was so exhausted that she had to be carried, John tucked her heavy lolling head beneath his chin as he manoeuvred off the train and whistled up a boy to manage their baggage for them.
She stirred a little in the cold air as he loped with limping quick stride through the dock district to the little house where he lodged. “Is this home, now?”
“We’ll bide here but a few days,” he said. “Home is South. In Milton.”