Bruar's Rest

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    ‘He came to help me because he thought I was here yesterday,’ she told the young doctor, who had remained silent throughout. She continued, ‘This was a good man, and only the evil hand of fate brought him along a path of heartache and destruction.’ She fell by his side, kissed his stony face and whispered, ‘You go now and join that beautiful wife and two sons of yours.’
    ‘We’ll have to bring the law into this,’ said the young man to Mackenzie.
    The older man ignored him and said to O’Connor, ‘Your wounds aren’t life-threatening. I’ll take you back to my place where I have the instruments to stitch your cheek, but you’ll be badly scarred. I’m willing to let you stay with me until healed, but promise me that then you’ll leave here and never come back.’
    ‘Aye, that’s a promise I’ll take on me late mother’s life, whoever the hell she was.’
    Mackenzie turned to the young doctor, and said in answer to his request for a police investigation, ‘Son, there’s not a policeman in this country that will lift a finger to help a tinker. In fact I’d bet my last penny that at this moment Sergeant Wilson is supping tea with the ploughmen and congratulating them on a job well done.’
    ‘Surely you’re wrong—this is a heinous crime. Barbaric, even.’
    ‘Son, the boys who did this have been away fighting for their country, they’ve killed and seen horrors you and I could never imagine in our whole lives. These men here knew what they might do and they took the risks.’
    O’Connor nodded in painful agreement. He then asked if Megan could be given her time to prepare big Rory for burial. The young doctor, still reeling from the injustice he was witnessing, was further horrified to hear that the deceased was to be buried in the forest.
    But this couldn’t be the case. The Highland Stewarts’ burial site was in the north, the far north. Megan told them that until she could afford to transport it there, her father-in-law’s body had to stay above the soil. One place waited for Bruar, but now that it was certain he’d not fill it, then his father should.
    ‘Now, lass,’ said her old friend, ‘there’s no way a body can stay above earth in the summertime. It would need to be embalmed and boxed, not in a thin makeshift shell like you would provide. No, lassie, this is something you can’t afford.’ He put an arm around the young woman and assured her he would see to things. ‘I’ll get him sorted and pay to have you and him go up north by train, Megan.’
    She raised a proud hand to say that was far too much, but he insisted, and that was final.
    Her pride however could not accept such a vast handout of charity, so she point-blank refused to agree unless she could make payment in return.
    He was losing a long-held patience with the whimsical lass, and told her so. ‘Look, why don’t you think less on your stubborn pride and more on what is fact, and that is that all you own lies in ashes at your feet? How can Rory’s body be traditionally prepared in muslin? Where is the cloth?’
    A wee bit taken aback by the words of the usually mild-tongued doctor, she didn’t know whether to smile or frown. Yet how true, what had she got left, only ashes!
    ‘Now, here’s a proposition for you and I don’t want no for an answer! You and I have known each other a long time. My heart grows cold in this chest of mine and my eyes let me down daily, and they’re getting worse, that’s a fact. Would you come back to Kirriemor, move in to my old house and look after me? Now I’m not telling you to give up the old ways. All I ask, is to stay in the cottage until someone offers you a better life. You never know, lassie, maybe a handsome tinker lad might pass through one day and he’ll sweep you away. But until then, say you’ll stay with me and be my housekeeper?’
    ‘What can I say, my dear old friend? I must be the first tinker to be offered lodgings with one as kindly as yourself. As I look round about my feet, all I see is a life unliveable. My man, along with his brother and father, all were cursed by a seer from the far north, the Omen came to foretell their fate, and they are stone dead because of it. My sister, who by now is living the life of a lady’s maid, is probably sunning her pale skin in America, aye, her and my nephew. The forest over yonder holds the bones of my mother. You’re right, I have nothing but the skin on my worthless back. Yes, I’ll bury Rory