Chapter 7
Pale light slowly crept across the cold, stone floor, the quiet broken only by the faint sound of a sob that slipped through the shadows as the child rose from the cot among the row cots that lined the wall, small bodies curled beneath thin blankets.
She was pitifully thin as she swung her legs over the edge of what passed for a bed, the floor cold as ice beneath her bare feet.
She stopped and listened, as she had before, but the only sound came from those who filled those other cots—nameless as she was, with no family to claim them, a mother’s gentle touch only a vague memory, if at all.
Only those stone walls, the endless chores under the frowning glares of those who watched over them. And too often, the small lifeless bodies quickly whisked away...
She reached under the pallet, her fingers brushing the wood slats—then the one where that small pendant was hidden since she first arrived, along with the small, wrapped bundle that held a piece of bread. She’d hidden it there with half an apple from the one meal they were given.
An image briefly returned. A memory of the one who had brought her there—the woman’s face heavily lined.
‘’Tis best,’ she told her, even though she hardly understood, and then disappeared in a cloud of mist as a sound moved along those stone walls.
She waited and listened. When no other sound came, she carefully arranged the blanket on the cot as if she was still there, curled into a ball against the cold like the others.
When it was done, she listened again, then quietly slipped down the aisle between the two rows of cots toward the opening of the ward.
It was dark there, no windows except those just beyond where freedom waited. Three steps, quiet as a mouse, then a half dozen more...
Her footsteps quickened. It didn’t matter that she had no shoes and the stones on the floor were cold.
It didn’t matter that a sudden warning whispered to her in the bitter cold air. It didn’t matter even when that hand reached out and clamped over her shoulder.
“Wot are ye about, child?” the words hissed through the air. The fingers of that hand dug into her thin shoulder.
“More trouble than the others all together!” the woman, shrouded in black, hissed as that warning voice fled.
“Not the first time, but the last I promise ye. Ungrateful for the bed that’s provided and the food ye eat.”
“I promise ye...!”
I fought to breathe as I came up out of the nightmare as if a weight lay on my chest, the words still there. Along with the pain that had followed as grey stone walls slowly slipped back into the shadows and the room on Albany Street gradually emerged.
I’d not had the dream in a very long time, part of the past that I chose to leave there, as I splashed cold water from the basin onto my face, then dressed, as those painful sounds slowly slipped back into the shadows as well.
I left the room and stepped out into the small parlour of the flat, the smell of fresh coffee pulling me toward the kitchen.
Elizabeth Cheney poured a second cup of coffee and handed it to me.
“Ye were restless during the night. I heard ye cry out,” she said with a gentle smile. “Bruadar?”
I was not familiar with the word, in the old Gaelic.
“Sit,” Elizabeth replied. “Ye canna begin the day and do wot must be done without food, and at least one more cup of coffee.”
“It’s not necessary,” I replied, and received a long look.
“But eat ye will.”
I managed a smile at her kindness and sat at the small table, even though I wasn’t hungry.
There is an odd thing that suddenly happens when a plate of tattie scones and sausage is placed before ye.
“Bruadar. It means a dream in the Scots,” Eliabeth explained as she sat across the table from me.
“The old ones believed bruadar was a vision for those with the second sight.”
A memory returned.
We were warned about such things by the nuns at the Foundling Hospital, that it was blasphemous and a sin against God to believe in such things.
“Me grandmother had the sight,” Elizabeth continued. “There were three of us bairns, including William. She always made the most delicious scones. I dinna seem to be able to make them as good as her own,” she added with a smile.
I assured her that they were delicious.
“It is an experiment with each batch of the demmed things,” she replied. “I keep trying. Or perhaps it is simply my memory of them as a child. She made two batches every mornin’. One for our father and uncle, and then a special batch for us children before we set off for our chores.”
I accepted a second cup of coffee and another scone, her voice as gentle as the sunshine that spilled across the table.
“It was then, after our father had gone off to the fields, that the visions sometimes came to her. There were all sorts of things she saw. She could sense a change in the weather before there was a cloud in the sky.
“She sensed that a girl William fancied early on was strange in the head,” she winked at me.
“And then there was the prediction about our father’s prize cow.
She predicted that the next calf would be afflicted by a deformity, as she called it.
The poor thing was born with only three legs, but she wouldna let him get rid of it. She told him that it was a gift.”
“What happened to the calf?”
“It was a bonny wee thing, got along with three legs as good as four, produced twin calves each time it was bred which brought a good sum to the family. He never doubted her again.”
I laughed, not all certain the story was true with the twinkle in Elizabeth’s warm gaze.
“And then there was the time Gran got all tangled up in the garden our mother kept and fell down among the cabbages. She claimed a man appeared and helped her to her feet. Afterward, our father called her a cabbage-head, though never to her face.
“I often thought he wasna at all certain that she wouldna cast a spell on him for it.”
It was impossible to know how much of it was true, but it her stories were something I’d never experienced as a small child.
“Do you possess the second sight?” I asked when I was able to draw a deep breath again and wiped a tear from my cheek.
She shook her head. “Not the same as me Gran. Though sometimes I feel somethin’ or hear a whisper when there’s no one about. William calls me numpty.”
“Foolish?”
“Aye, ’tis easier to my way of thinkin’ than believin’ that I may have the sight. Although I have passed along a warning or two for him in his work that can be dangerous. After all, he’s the only brother I have.
“Only once he admitted that I was right. But I know.” There was that smile again.
“Wot of the things ye see and feel that others do not?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I do not...”
“Aye, ye do,” she gently replied. “I’ve seen it, just in the time ye’ve been here.”
I stood suddenly and carried my cup to the basin and washed it, unsettled by the way the conversation had turned.
“You are mistaken.”
“I saw yesterday morn when the vase of flowers tipped and would have fallen. Ye set it right without touchin’ it. I saw it. A small thing but I’ll wager it’s not the first time somethin’ like that has happened.”
I shook my head as I dried the cup and set it on the sideboard.
“And the night ye arrived with William. I usually let the fire in the stove burn low. Coal is expensive. But the fire was suddenly there, not dyin’ out as before.”
“A bit of air that stirred it, no more,” I replied.
“Have ye ever known a thing before it happened?” she asked.
Unexpected, she had called it.
“Not many have the gift.”
“It’s not what ye think.”
It wasn’t! The nuns made certain of it. A sin, they told me over and over at the things I saw, until I learned not to speak of it.
“I must be going. I hope to meet with Inspector Landry...”
Munro was to return and take me there, though there was some matter that he wanted to speak to a man about. I chose not to wait for him.
I returned to my room and gathered my bag with my notes.
I thanked Elizabeth again for the breakfast. As I prepared to leave, she laid a hand on my arm.
“Ye have a gift, my dear. Ye canna deny it, no more than ye can deny the air ye breathe. Dinna be afraid of it.”
There was more, a reminder that Munro had told me to wait for his return this morning. However, I was not inclined to wait.
The weather was agreeable for now, and I was able to catch the tram at the High Street that connected Albany Street to Parliament Square. It saved coin, as I had not yet been to the bank for additional funds.
The tram arrived on time, passengers departing, others like myself waiting to board.
I felt something as I stood in the queue of other passengers, vague, gone, then there again, that burned across my skin. I rubbed my arm as one might a bruise to ease the pain. Yet it was still there stronger now.
It was far too cold for insects, buzzing pests found in summer. Instead of merely bothersome, this was very much like a warning.
I looked about at a woman behind me with a shopping basket over her arm who was waiting as well. She was adjusting the purchases she’d already made and paid me no mind.
I then glanced down the sidewalk, past to the street, then at the tram with those already aboard.
I saw nothing unusual nor threatening as that warning prickle gradually faded.
“Miss?” The woman with the basket brought me back from that thought. Those before me had already climbed onto the tram. I did as well.
Yet, I instinctively searched the faces of those on the street as everyone was seated and the driver eased the lumbering tram into traffic.
What had I seen? Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, I had felt...something that I instinctively sensed was a warning. But a warning of what? Or whom?
The air was sharp at the top level of the tram, much needed to clear the confusion from my thoughts, and the remnants of the nightmare dream from the night before.
Yet it lingered there along with Elizabeth Cheney’s parting words—dinna be afraid. A gift she had called it, something I could not deny. What did it mean and why had it returned after all these years?