with effort, two heavy pails of water in his hands. Grizel was measuring meal ready for baking oatcakes. Nanny was curled up beside Aunt Blair in the opened cupboard bed, sucking her thumb and stroking her mother's arm. I felt a rush of love for them and a painful longing to be loved in turn, but they seemed far away from me and out of reach, even though the room was so small.
I stood beside the bed and looked down at my new baby cousin's crumpled face. He was already neatly dressed in a little gown with tucks along the front. His eyes were shut, but his mouth worked in and out as if he wanted to suck.
"He's beautiful," I said politely. "A lovely baby."
But I was thinking of Ebenezer, whom I'd only glimpsed a couple of times, but who had tugged at my heart and filled me with pity. This sturdy, noisy baby would never take his place.
Aunt Blair was plucking fretfully at the sheet.
"Maggie, be a good girl and bring a fresh sheet for my bed. And my new cap, dear, and knitted shawl. There'll be visitors coming and going all day." She looked over my shoulder at Grizel. "Fetch in the special cheese, and mind you sweep the floor well. Off you go now, Nanny, and let Martha tidy you up. I'll not have the good folks see us all in a mess."
She shut her eyes and let her head fall back, and I saw how pale she was and how tired.
***
Visitors did indeed come throughout the long day: other farmers from the lands nearby, my uncle's own few tenants from the cottages near the lane, and even some townsfolk from Kilmacolm. Aunt Blair's orders became shrill as she grew ever more weary.
Grizel had been right. There was too much work for one girl at Ladymuir, and with Aunt Blair slow to recover from the birth, Grizel and I were busy now from morning till night. Aunt lay in her cupboard bed, the doors thrown open, and issued her commands, while Grizel and I ran about, trying to satisfy her.
Martha had become attached to me, and she followed me like a shadow, towing Nanny in her wake. I didn't mind.
"Listen to me reading, Maggie," Martha would say. "I'm really good at it now."
"Lift not your soul up unto vanity," Uncle Blair would say reproachfully if he heard her, but his fond proud look would belie his words and Martha took no notice of him. She laid the great Bible on the table and began to read wherever the pages fell open.
"And—it—came—to—pass—in—those—days..."she would intone, underlining the words with her little finger. I would frown down at the page too, trying to make sense of the black marks that scrawled like insects across the page.
"Look, Maggie. That's a p, and that's a b."
Her blue eyes stared earnestly up at me.
She was a good teacher, that little Martha. I was soon picking out the letters myself, and then the words, and my reading wasn't far behind hers.
It was well into December before Aunt Blair was able to drag herself out of bed, and plowing was under way in the long strip fields below the house. Grizel and I worked till our fingers were red and raw, and when Sundays came, I reveled in the rest, finding it hard to stay awake during my uncle's hourlong prayers. He and Ritchie went twice more out onto the moors for secret meetings with the old minister, Mr. Alexander, but there were no more skirmishes with the king's troops.
"When will Andrew be christened, Aunt?" I said one morning, watching Aunt Blair listlessly put the baby to her breast.
I wished I hadn't spoken then, because a frown of worry creased her forehead.
"Oh, I don't know! Don't ask me, please!"
Luckily, her eye fell on my apron, soiled from carrying peat in for the fire.
"Look at you, Maggie! What if someone should come to call?"
That very afternoon, a visitor did come. He announced himself with a loud rapping on the door and opened the latch without being invited in. I'd never seen Mr. Irving, the minister of Kilmacolm before, but I knew who it was from the style of his black coat, his tall hat, and the two white bands that fell from his collar.
"Good day, mistress," he said frostily to Aunt Blair. "Rumor has spoken right, I see. There's a new child born to this house. And why have you not brought him to the kirk