Bruar's Rest

wild nights were forgotten. She had tamed the tiger.
    Under the roof of an ancient chapel, along with her only relative, an old uncle, and his sister Helen as witnesses, Rory married his lassie.
    His wild ways seemed behind him, and he would only ever raise his kilt on rare occasions like New Year and birthdays. Helen saw little of him, since he took on his wife’s occupation of wandering Scottish by-ways. His wife showed him how to cut bracken, snare rabbits and make brooms. Money made wasn’t thrown away on a night’s boozing, but went instead into a small wooden box; winter sustenance would come from that container. Once, for a brief time, the couple appeared at Helen’s door to say a baby was due.
    Rory’s lassie loved the north, where his roots were. She wanted to rear a family and stop travelling, and after Bruar, their first child, was born life could not have been better. The uncle, who had been forced to care for her after her parents were killed in a flood that washed away their campsite, left her in the capable care of Rory and headed west.
    A second child was nearing its time when Rory gained possession of a derelict cottage. It was in dire need of major rebuilding, but he was determined to complete the task. It would take a lot of hard work, but she was worth it. They pitched a tent next to the ruin and both worked hard.
    From their clifftop vantage point, gulls, guillemots and puffins watched as the young couple, each filled with dreams, built, with loving devotion, their new home. She thought it a lovely spot overlooking the sea, ideal for chasing sea breezes and telling her many forthcoming children stories of her people of the mist.
    They had lain under the stars, making love and promising each other they would fill the village nearby with a whole clan of wee Stewarts. Girls would be like their mother; boys like him. All that life could offer lay at their feet. They even joked with Helen when she came to help with toddler Bruar, freeing them for longer hours of eager toil, that she should turn her home into a nunnery to teach her nieces and nephews the ways of her God.
    Helen was fond of her brother’s wife, even though she’d not much time for mist-wanderers or the summer walkers, names that Highland people gave the tinkers. Oh, some gossip had gone around, but it soon dispersed when folks saw how much the young lassie had changed the wild Rory. Her brother now had purpose in life, he was happy, what more could she ask.

O NE

     
    H er labour began with tiny twinges. At first she sang through the pains, playing gently with wee Bruar and a wooden train his father had made for him from odd pieces of wood.
    ‘Do you need anything, my pet?’ Rory asked, handing her a stone jar of milky tea, and seeing to his young son. His gaze went through the cramped tent, already showing a few holes at its base, where on a torn mattress stuffed with crushed bracken his lassie would give him another child. He’d voiced concern at how uncomfortable she might be, but in her usual way she assured him that a tent was where her mother brought her into the world, and her grandmother had given birth there also.
    He knelt, kissed her and ran a cool hand over her warm brow.
    ‘I’m doing away nae bother, my love,’ she said. ‘Now, you get on with rebuilding that house of ours, little Bruar will keep me company.’
    She worked through her pain without obvious complications, yet deep inside the situation was far from normal. As each hour passed, she grew more stressed than the last. As an added anxiety, the baby was showing no signs of response, and now each pain riveted through her back with dire severity. As her womb grew stiff she began to claw at the stretched skin.
    ‘Oh my God, the baby has breeched!’
    Terror rose, gripped itself onto her thumping heart as she felt the concealed infant lodge itself tightly in the birth canal. It needed help—it had to be assisted, if not it would die.
    Rory, thinking all was in hand, popped his head in the tent door.
    ‘Go get your sister, fetch Helen!’ Her hot, clammy hand found his arm, fingernails sank deep into flesh.
    Like a hissing poker, fear burnt through him. His wife’s exposed breast heaved in deep waves. ‘For the love of God, what’s wrong?’
    With arched spine she raised herself onto two reddened elbows and gasped, ‘It’s closed, the way out; my bairn panics. Oh God, Rory, run like the deer, fetch help—Helen—run, man!’
    ‘I won’t leave