Bruar's Rest

there.’
    Megan scanned the tent floor until her eyes fell upon two tiny blue fingers protruding from a dirty rag at the base of the canvas. Trembling she bit onto her fist at the small size and helpless posture of the dead baby and cried out, ‘How did you lose it?’
    ‘Oh shut up. Now throw it over by the burn and the dogs can eat it when Robin comes back.’
    ‘Eat a human being, a little innocent baby, how can you even think on it? I’m no Christian but I thought you folks were believers in God?’
    ‘Think on it, is it? God is it? Listen, you. My womb carries these useless things. They move inside o’ me for nine month, and when I put them into the world, they die. And don’t mention God to me, its all his fault.’ Kathleen fell silent as exhaustion engulfed her. She fell upon her mattress and turned her back on the dead child.
    Megan felt as useless as she’d ever done in her life, yet the female instincts of her heart weighed heavy. Trying not to disturb the wretched mother, she gathered the still frame of the baby and took a long strip of flannel from a pile of rags. Sitting the mite on her knees, she began rolling its body carefully into a proper shroud as delicately as she could. When the little arms and legs were straightened and tightly wound in the cloth, she spoke gently to the mother. ‘Kathleen, will you allow me to bury your baby? You see, like you we live in tents and also our women folk lose as many babies as are saved. Let me send this tiny girl into the earth so that Mother Nature can accept her flesh. Such sacred bones should be left in her tender care.’ She waited patiently for a response.
    Kathleen in time opened her eyes and whispered, ‘You’re as bad as that Mrs Sullivan. Do you know she walked for miles with the last one and buried it? So if you want you can do the same, I don’t give a damn.’
    The finishing touches were taking place just as Robin came back, two small terriers at his heel eagerly sniffing at the trickle of blood that had congealed around the noses of three big buck rabbits tied expertly to a piece of wood; thick snares or thin, he certainly brought home the dinner.
    Seeing Megan kneeling beside a small mound of earth in a peaceful spot at the dyke’s edge, it didn’t take much for him to realise his wife had once more produced what she’d predicted. The sadness that spread across his face was the opposite of that of his wife. He knelt down, cap screwed in his bloodied hands and said, ‘Strange, is it not? We hardly know you, yet here you are burying our poor wee mite of a child. It was a girl, then?’
    She nodded and said, ‘I’m a Macdonald from Glen Coe, and this is our chant of death. Kathleen has given me permission. If you can allow me the same, I’ll give your baby up to the earth.’
    ‘On you go,’ he said, wiping a tear with his crumpled bonnet.
    Tre banni, tre banni: (Three prayers, three prayers)
    Chavi tori mara, (Child to earth)
    Chavi tori glimmer, (Child to fire)
    Chavi tori pani. (Child to water)
     
    Three times she whispered the earth prayer, and as she did so, not a sound was heard either from the vast bog or the mighty forest, apart from a tiny Jenny wren whistling happily from a small hole in an oak tree. When finished she went back inside the tent. Kathleen was sound asleep. Leaving her in peace, she and Robin went back to Ballyshan, he to collect his boys, she to reflect on the day’s events. The tiny purple flower she’d noticed earlier while going to the campsite had been joined by several others, and the dark brown earth now sported a small carpet of purple, pink and white.
    ‘Poor Kathleen, not again.’ Mrs Sullivan, who was visibly saddened by the grave news, slipped small woolly cardigans she’d knitted during winter months onto the three boys before giving Robin another food parcel. ‘This will keep the wolf from the door, and let you see to the children while Kathleen regains her strength.’
    Sitting the youngest on his broad shoulders he set off with little said. The other two ran on ahead. Megan watched from the kitchen window until all that was left of them was the curly top of the child on Robin’s shoulders.
    ‘Look at them,’ she told herself, ‘just another day in the life of a tinker family. Who but this elderly lady and myself know what agony and pain they’ve suffered this day?’ To an outsider walking up by Runny Brook, all he’d see was a small encampment with three dirty-faced little