The Monster's Wife(35)

Oona was buttering bread to go with the stew when she saw May pulling on her boots. Oona cleared her throat and May stopped and looked up like a child caught mid-mischief. Her anger seemed to have faded. Oona’s had too, but the memories that had seeped back made her more troubled about May than ever. Was that awful day with the kittens something to do with all this? She wanted to ask but didn’t know where to begin.

After she’d taken Victor his food, they sat on the step, watching the cow crop grass in the pasture opposite. May gnawed the skin around her thumb, biting off hangnails, a nervous habit she had. All the while, Oona tried to think of the words that would pry open the tight-closed clam of May’s fears.

“May—”

May tapped her hand and held up the hem of her skirt. A hard circle showed through the fabric.

Oona took it between her finger and thumb and felt the coin’s markings. “Is this payment for Cormick?”

May bit her lip. “It’s Stuart’s. He’s torn the croft to bits trying to find it, but he’s had no luck. My wages were already spent on food and drink for the wedding...”

“Why did you not give it to Cormick then?”

May smiled wryly. “I don’t always fancy doing as folk tell me just because they tell me to. I’m difficult that way. It’s probably why you love me.”

“Must be the reason.” Oona opened her arms, keen to hide the tears that pricked her eyes. They hugged for a long time.





30


Oona woke to a tangle of voices outside the window, hushed voices weaving together with the rustle of leaves in the wind, with the lisp of the burn and the call of loons. Confiding voices, low and intimate.

“’Tis shocking conduct in a young lass. Did you thrash her?”

“Aye, well, not a beating, mind. I couldn’t bring myself to that with her ailing and such, but I’ve kept her to the croft these three days. I worry for her more than anything.” Granny’s words were weary, but her tone said she was enjoying the chance to jaw.

Today the theme of their talk was Oona, who had returned after three nights’ absence to find Granny beside herself. There’d been shouting and, worse than that, late night prayer. Granny decreed that Oona must keep to the croft and not venture out to walk, to work or even wash clothes. Oona must understand the error of her ways, though Granny grieved indeed to mete out such punishment.

“With all these attacks, Ruby, I can’t say I blame you. These are dark times.” It sounded like Margaret gathering grains of precious gossip to distribute around the island with even-handed charity.

“Indeed. First my hens - and it was Oona found them, poor lass.”

“All your hens, God save you Ruby.”

“I know,” Granny spoke as if she knew she was being listened to. “And now the same thing happening to Jenny’s pigs. Throats ripped open, blood everywhere. First we thought it was a fox or stray dog—”

“But a dog would have gnawed at your hens, Ruby—“

“Aye well and the way the cuts looked - clean, like a knife had done the job.”

“Nothing’s been right since that doctor came to the island, Ruby. Frogs washed up, fish rotting the nets and now this. It’s the work of a monster, not a man of medicine.”

Damn them for blaming Victor! She was certain he was not at fault, for she knew more on the subject than they. She had seen, with her own eyes, Orpheus, strutting the big house – a symbol of the doctor’s goodness. She had scraped through her feverish illness under his care. For all they knew, the guilt lay with Cormick or the blue-eyed demon she’d spied at the window, or wild beasts. She prayed they would not plot their revenge based on loose talk and dark omens.

“Aye well, today will take everyone’s minds off it for a wee while at least. Nothing like a bridecog to cheer people’s hearts, and it’ll be quite a céilidh this evening by the sound of it. May’s been like lightening arranging it all - I’ve barely clapped eyes on her.”

Neither had Oona, and after all that had happened at Cormick’s shack, after the sad talk they’d had afterwards, it was torture to stay put and not know how May was. One evening, when Granny was at Hamish Yule’s, Oona crept over to Norquoy, only to be greeted by May’s small brother Ned with his tousle of black curls telling her his sister was at the big house. She remembered thinking it was late for May to still be working, seeing, from the corner of her eye, the curtain twitch and a dark head slip out of view behind it. Was May hiding from her too?

“Humph, well... If you ask me it should be more a matter of speaking vows before God than an opportunity for merriment, but young folk rarely have much sense.”

“Oh well, aye, I cannae disagree with you there, Peg. Now then, Toby, time for such as you and I to drag a brush through our fur and don our Sunday best.”

“See you at kirk, Ruby.”

“Aye, Peg, aye.”

Margaret’s’s clogs slapped through the muck of the yard. The sound faded under the noise of loons and the door of the cottage creaked open.

Oona shrank under her warm blanket and curled on her side. She could hear Granny chopping something on a wooden board. Toby barked excitedly. There was the soft thud and creak of a basket being dropped, the hiss of water hitting the sadiron and the purr of metal smoothing fabric.