Bruar's Rest

supping instead of the liquid poison bubbling forth daily from O’Connor’s still. ‘Have you been well, Mackenzie? We thought Father Time had taken you.’
    ‘Och no, no. There were six babies born over the winter, and we lost four old bodies to a blasted flu. I’ve been kept busy.’
    ‘We only had the frost and the belly to see to. We never got any flu thing.’
    ‘I never did see your kind take bugs, I wonder why that is?’
    ‘Doctor, you know I’m not a true-blood tinker, and my boys are only half, but I think Mother Nature has a way of dealing with those flu things, it’s her who kills the infections. You never see a fox or a rabbit with a cough or running nose.’
    ‘That’s a fact, right enough, big Rory. Now how are the girls?’
    ‘Oh, just dandy. My boys are men now and that’s for certain.’
    As a warm day passed the two shared tales, laughed and gently whiled a few hours away. Before the old doctor left, he gave Rachel the once-over, saying, ‘If all my mothers-to-be were as healthy as you, I’d have more time for my roses!’

     
    Life was sweet and rich to the tinkers that summer, but autumn was approaching, and with the growing of Rachel’s unborn infant, something else was awaiting birth!
    Little did they realise that across the English Channel a race of ordinary, peaceable people was being transformed by a minority of war-mad leaders into a war-mad nation. A nation about to unleash upon the western world a horror of immeasurable magnitude; one that would reach into and tear apart the little band of tinkers hidden in the Angus Glens and nestling at the feet of the great Grampians.

F IVE

     
    ‘Y ou go into Kirriemor without me today, Megan, to dae a bit hawking. I’m feeling stirrings in my lower back, and think baby is making up its path soon for the wide world. Do you mind, sister?’
    Megan picked up Rachel’s basket and added its contents to hers. ‘No, but I’ll make it half a day, in case you need me.’
    Rachel stretched her back, and when she felt only a small pain run down her legs she brushed off her sister’s concern, ‘First babies take ages—I’ll be heaving this wee bisom out this time tomorrow.’
    ‘Och, listen to you, like you’re the expert with a heap of bairns. Mammy always said first babies could come as fast as tenth ones, so I’ll be back to help you this afternoon.’
    The McAllister family had left the campsite in early spring, and with the men away for a long day’s harvest, Rachel would get little or no help from O’Connor snoring away the drink doldrums. She was relieved that Megan would be home early, and although she would not admit her anxiety, she watched until the skipping figure had gone before slipping in to her tent and taking up a position on the straw birth bed to get ready for the imminent arrival.
    Kirriemor was quieter than usual. Megan wondered if she’d mistaken her days—it seemed more like a Sunday than a Monday. But when a brown and white mongrel dashed from the butcher’s with a chunky bone in its mouth she knew she’d made no mistake. Still, it certainly was a very quiet morning.
    ‘I think I’ll go see Doctor Mackenzie, tell him Rachel’s baby’s coming,’ she thought. After that she’d hawk her pot-scourers.
    ‘Hello Megan, what brings you to visit me this fine morning? I hope your sister’s well. Don’t tell me O’Connor’s got the gut ache, or is it yourself? Are you pregnant, lass?’
    ‘Not yet, and the Irishman doesn’t own a gut, he’s got insides like that ticker thing there in your hallway.’ She grimaced, and covered her ears as a loud gonging sound came from its depths. ‘How can you be doing with such a thing?’ she added. ‘You wouldn’t see us heaving that beast around on our backs. The sun wakes the blackbird and the moon the owl. We don’t watch our life being forced around a numbered face without eyes. But I came to tell you Rachel nears her time. She’s in pain, my sister, I thought you should know.’
    He ignored the remark about clocks. ‘Aye, seeing as it’s her first time you did the right thing. Now before you take off like a linty round the doors with those pot-scourers of yours, give me the paper and the mail lying on the floor behind my own door. I’d get it myself but you’re a lot more agile than me.’
    Megan stooped down, picked up both items, and thought, ‘Look at all these wavy lines, how can folks make head or tail of them? Bruar and I can hardly read a