The Bairn of Brianag

The first Hamish McDonald had also had a brother, Finnean, who had come to the colony later than he, and whose daughter had married a Maclaine, one of my own ancestors.

I had always known that Robbie and I shared the same lineage; and I had known of Robbie's close attachment with the McDonalds from the back country. Now that I was here in the back country, and I began to see what the McDonald clan was.

In the lowcountry, a person might be of the planter class, or tradesman, or servant; in the back country there were the Scots, and their servants. The servants were few in number, and everyone worked with their hands. The elder Hamish himself might be seen splitting logs for the fireplace; I often saw red-haired girls going toward the kitchens carrying milk pails. Grandmothers carried infants and boys in their teens worked in the stables shoeing horses. Manual labor was seen as accomplishment to be proud of, not punishment or drudgery.

In addition to the large house, where Hamish and Eleanor and Hamish's brother Charles lived, with the two grandmothers, there were the houses of Hamish and Charles' six children. All were within a half-hour's walk of the main house. Almost every supper, and for every Sunday's dinner, the entire clan was at the house; they were over thirty in number.

The two tables in the dining room were crowded, and Eleanor was supervising the kitchen servants from breakfast time until after supper. The McDonald women also helped preparing the meals. No wonder they ate supper so early; it would take hours to clean up afterward. If they had taken their evening meal late as we did in the lowcountry, Eleanor would have been up past midnight each night.

It seemed that I, too, was expected to keep my hands busy. After dinner a few days after we arrived, as I sat on the porch with the women and girls, Eleanor placed a tin pan in my lap and before I could ask any questions dropped a large handful of unshelled cream peas into it. I looked up at her, my mouth opened. Surely she did not expect me to shell peas-that was servant's work.

But Eleanor had already turned away. I looked about me; everyone else was already busy stripping the peas out, tossing the husks into piles on the floor, chatting and laughing.

I picked up one of the long, bumpy pods and broke off the end. It oozed water. I worked at the seam with my thumbs, but the skin seemed securely attached to the seed. I felt heat suffusing my face and neck, and anger began to burn in me.