Bruar's Rest

barely concealed excitement. He was hardly able to keep his hands off Megan, his Megan, who was curled around him winding her eager arms through his. He lifted her into the air like a rag doll, tickling each rib, she squealed with laughter as his knees played with her thighs. Then a thought flashed into her mind, prompting a further squeal of delight. ‘Never mind a thaw, let’s you and I mix the fluids this Saturday!’
    Many days while trekking over the heather moor they had discussed the ceremony. She wanted the tinker’s mixing, just the way that her mother told her was how a Macdonald married. He didn’t care what way they wed, as long as for the rest of his life she’d lie at his side. He looked around the faces half-smiling back at them. They were more concerned to light a fire, fill cold bellies with porridge and milky tea. Then he said, through a beaming smile that could melt all the frost clinging with its icy fingers upon the dyke, ‘Saturday it is, then. I’ll ask the good doctor to come.’
    Saturday came and found the families in a far happier mood. Big Rory, O’Connor, Jimmy and Bruar were dressed in suits that they had laid by for weddings and funerals; a motley collection of clothes with frayed collars and crushed trousers.
    Rachel wore a fox-furred cape, given to her mother by some old minister’s wife, hoping she’d wear it and come to church, but she never did. One of its eyes had been lost in its travelling, and chunks had been ripped from the pathetic skin when two whippets had once thought it alive and fought over it. But it was all she had, so she wore it with pride.
    Bruar had waited long and lustingly to a further sharing of his body with the raven-haired girl, so it wouldn’t have mattered what she looked like. Nevertheless she had made an effort to impress. Her mother Annie’s own wedding dress had been washed and pressed by laying it under a horse-hair mattress. That old garment had been kept safe in a wooden chest, along with family birth certificates and some old trinkets. Rachel prodded her sister, reminding her of the night of the storm when she carried it on her back all the way from Glen Coe. With gratitude and unusual attentiveness, Megan hugged her older sister and kissed her pale cheek. Rachel squeezed her shoulders in return. For all their differences, with Annie gone they were closer than they’d ever been. Rachel with the companionship of Jimmy smiled more; her tendency to ill-nature seemed to be buried by his delicate and personal attention.
    Although the dress was faded and slightly torn at the hem, Megan still looked a picture: a lovely, fresh bride, in a tattered wedding frock of dull satin.
    Firewood lay in massive piles between the tents. Two loaves of bread, half a pound of freshly boiled ham and several bottles of ale sat neatly on a small makeshift table made of cut logs. Bruar took a metal bucket and put it beside one belonging to Megan.
    Only Doctor Mackenzie was missing, and they wouldn’t start without him; he was their only guest. It was tradition to allow someone not of the culture to attend a wedding. Some believed that this person could stand witness to the joining. As government and church took little part in the ceremonies of tinker folks, such a witness served as good proof to the actual marriage. Children could then take their father’s name, knowing they would inherit any meagre belongings left behind after death.
    Half an hour passed. Rachel added sticks to the fire, muttering that if a spark ignited the remains of her dowdy fox fur, the doctor wouldn’t like what she’d call him. Not long after, Megan and Bruar, who had clambered to a vantage point, said his horse and trap could be seen trotting along the old drove road. They were pleased and excited to see their only wedding guest, but to their surprise, he wasn’t alone! When Rory saw the stranger who sat next to his friend on the trap, he stepped forward, raising his hand. ‘Sorry, doctor, but we never invited another.’
    ‘Oh, stop your nonsense, man. This is no guest, he is my present to the bride and groom.’ He helped the stranger down from the trap, along with a long box and objects they’d never seen before. Then, once each contraption had been unloaded and put at the stranger’s feet, the doctor said, ‘Close your mouths or Jack Frost will be away with your tonsils.’ He put a firm hand on the shoulders of Megan and Bruar and said, ‘I went to Perth for this lad, and