Best Australian Yarn: The Crossing by Cate Murphy

“The Crossing” ‘Tis duty that bid him wander the cliffs,seeing all to be seen,telling what need be known. ‘Tis love of the past,and a fear of forgetting,bids the piper to stand alone..She rang her bell three times into the heavy fog, not expecting an answer, and none came. Aye, she was alone on the river as she knew she would be at this hour: the fishing boats already out to sea, farmers busy at the business of milking, and most others likely still abed.Grateful she was, for the tide carrying her little boat upstream, with small effort on her part. Damp seeping through her clothing, she took a moment to rest oars and gather the woolen shawl about herself. It seemed every thought carried her home. Hadn’t her own ma’s crippled hands made this shawl, from sheep tae spindle tae loom. A stinging behind her eyes and a keening deep in her soul pulsed through her as the waters beneath rippled, pushing her toward the shore. It had been a full twelve hours since she last crossed the river, she knew, for the tide now with her, had then been in front of her and she had struggled with every oar stroke. Still, there’d been no choosing in it. Many months before she’d been summoned to the big house; when the lady had first felt the quickening and she had tended her all the while since.In dark halls, she had listened to the whispers of servants and troubled at hearing the tale of the lady’s own kin giving her over to the landlord. Payment, they said, for debt racked from another year of failed crops. At the heart of it, the lady was but a wee lass, fallen prey to a time of desperation and a vicious landowner. ‘Twas a powerful shame on that family, the thought of giving up your own, no matter what the story, was a deed beyond her ken. Now in this blanketing fog, the silence broken only by lapping water against the wooden hull and the occasional plop of a fish breaching, she felt the full weight of the past night bear down upon her. She yearned for the light mists of home with their soft promise of clear and peaceful days; of walks high on cliffs crowded with summer heather, dancing waves of pink, mauve and white scenting the breezes off the North Atlantic.Here on this parched and pitiless land the herbs from home failed to thrive, and she could find no local remedy to equal them, leaving her woefully unprepared for the battle she had faced last eve. She had called on all things holy to sustain them both. Had she, shepherd’s purse, or yarrow, she may have been able to staunch the bleeding, but without nature’s gifts, she grieved, her skill and prayers had not been enough. All she could do was see that the wee bairn; delivered healthy and wondrous as any miracle; had at least one suckle of that first milk, vital as it is. She’d mopped at the lady’s brow, ministered drops on her lips and tongue as a mother bird may do for its young, spoken quietly to her, and prayed silently over her. At the end, when all was lost, she made tidy the lass’s hair, cleansed her body, and prepared her for the ground and her maker. A trembling passed through her now with the memory of when the storm had blown into the room. Och! How that brute of a man had raged, calling up the devil and laying all to ruin in his path. Had it been grief, or even just a few drams too many, she could nearly understand. But she knew the truth of it; it was plain meanness; she had seen the mark of his hand hidden beneath the lady’s fine silks. Through the night, the bully of a man had cast vile threats in all directions, at the living and the dead in equal measure.Grabbing all she could, she had fled, through the lamp-lit passages and into the dark still morn. She had not slowed nor spared a thought until she reached the safety of her boat and pushed out into the river. Her home shore slowly drawing closer, shapes begin to appear as the shroud thins at the edges of the reedy bank. She hears the skirl of the bagpipes. The dirge surrounds her, a trick of the hills, the river, and the fog, trapping the sound in the basin. The piper plays his lament, the telling that one of their own has passed. She holds a fleeting worry that the piper may tell of the birth, she’s counting on him to choose his tunes wisely.Most in the town will not hear the pipes at all, only those who come from the old ways; fewer still will heed the message. She has seen many lose their way, their thread to home severed as they were scattered further apart by the vastness of this land and the company they kept.These people, this land, are not her own. To her mind, both are short in kindness. The men have no music about themselves and the women no song in their hearts. She knows it to be a sign of the misery brought about by the harshness of the land. Not at all like her home with its steady turn of seasons, each following the other just when it should. This is a fickle place! Its weather cannot be counted on to tend to the needs of body and soul. There are days upon days when the sun scorches your very thoughts, and the nights grant no mercy. When the rain comes it rolls off the crusted earth or rises so rapidly it steals all in its path down into the river.How many hopes and dreams akin to her own lay on this riverbed? lost to this land … this river...this country. Adjusting her grip on the oar her gaze falls to the betrothal band on her finger. How proud her Johnny had been, the band he had himself forged fit her slim finger perfectly. They had laughed, reckoning it a sign that bode well, a blessing on their future. On a sigh she wondered at their innocence, the plans they made and their journey to this place.“Find our fortune lass” he had convinced her. Just five years, ten at the most, and they would be home again with “their fortune”. Her Johnny had promised her they would return to her highlands with money enough to buy themselves a croft.How many hot nights had they lain awake in their little bush shack and planned the course of their lives. If children came now or later it was not to be minded, they would come when they did, and not before God thought it right. They talked of growing barley and berries, flowers, and healing herbs. They would have highland cattle! A milking goat, chickens and all else they needed. ‘Twas the vision that kept them on the path and those shared dreams she now remembers best. Had it truly only been two summers past, that her Johnny had gone to sea and been lost to her forever? She doesn’t know how it can be that the pain be as deep-felt and raw as if ‘twere yesterday, yet time has dragged as though wading through mud for ten years.She had waited at the docks as she did most mornings to help with the unloading of the catch. Others sailed in, the weather was fair, none told of a storm at sea, none had seen the “Bonnie Aileana”. He had named his boat for her, she had objected of course, for it seemed prideful to be so pleased, but he had said he felt the better for knowing she was always with him.No-one waited beside her, but they came and went bringing tea, bread, soup. None wanted to stay long for it was a fear they all held when their men went to sea. Some urged her to leave, they would bring word they said. She didn’t leave, she couldn’t, to leave meant to abandon hope. For the day and the night that followed she waited and then she waited some more. The evening of the second day she heard the piper. She broke her vigil; leaving her shattered life on the dock, her grief privately in her breast and walked with dignity through the town. She would not let them see her break; she would not share that with them.Had any of the droplets that passed over her oar now, passed over her Johnny. Had they slipped by him in the depths of that cruel ocean and carried a part of him upriver on this very tide? Her mind reaches out… Oh Johnny, neach gaoil …..my beloved, I am as lost as you! The boat scrapes the pebbly bottom and sticks fast. Hitching her skirts, she steps down into the water; cold rising to her knees, seeping through the holes in her shoes, soaking their newspaper lining.She pulls the boat the next few feet up to clear the line of tide, secures it and bends to retrieve her herb bag… gone …forgotten in her flight from the lady’s chamber.‘Tis a sign Johnny!In that moment she knew, she believed. She felt her heart bind as the threads of love and hope laced together. Reaching into the anchor locker, the last strains of the bagpipes broke; she carefully lifted the swaddled bundle. The newborn’s blue eyes looked dreamily up at her, trusting, searching. She would not allow this innocence to be ravaged by this place; she would honour the pleas of his mother. “take him, take him!” the lady had beseeched, over and over. Her last words, her final wish, cried in anguish, murmured in fever, and whispered in death.The fog had cleared to fine wisps floating above the rivers surface, and the first rays of sunlight rise and fall on the waters flow.The tide was turning, the river gives, and the river takes.She looks long upon the water; her eyes trace its meandering length to the far bend where she knows it will then straighten before emptying into the sea. She thought upon the ocean beyond and offered up a prayer, a silent farewell, a kiss to the past and a nod to the future.‘Aye, ‘tis the right of it she knew. Wetting fingers in the river, she made the sign on the forehead of the now slumbering bairn and spoke.“Johnny…the name is given, ‘tis yours now…tha sinn a ‘dol dhachaigh… we are going home”