The Bairn of Brianag

I thought of my encounter with Kevin the night before; my heart ached as I remembered his warning. But I squeezed my pain into a smaller place and expanded my stubbornness. I would make Robbie love me. I would marry him.

If only I could just speak to him, to tell him of my love!

Of course I knew better than to do such a thing. I knew the ways in which young ladies were expected to behave toward young men. My mother had been trying to teach me how to behave toward suitors since she had begun forcing me into stays. Her goal was to prepare me for marriage, and this meant teaching me how to be attractive to eligible men. I knew that she was growing impatient with me. I knew that soon she would become more insistent that I marry.

My mother did not like me; she wished I had been a boy. She had often told me so.

Dressed with time to spare, I went to look out the tall windows. The sun was rising, its rays penetrating the mist that lingered over the marsh. The cypress trees at the edge shimmered, their new yellow-green leaves glowing in the light. Nearer, the fruit trees beyond the lawn were heavy with blossoms; I knew that with the window open I would smell their fragrance. This was the scene that had met my gaze since before my memories began; though the seasons changed the trees and grasses, the landscape remained the same.

This was Gillean, named for our ancestor, Gillean of the Battle Axe, the place where I and my five brothers had been born, and where three of them were now buried; the place which, however beautiful, I would be thankful to leave when Robbie and I were married.

Brianag was where Robbie lived, with Cathy's parents the Randalls. Robbie was the son of Cathy's mother's sister, who had been killed in the back country, along with her husband James Stewart, by a marauding band of Cherokees when Robbie was an infant; he had escaped only because he had been with his nurse, who had taken him with her to visit in the slave quarters on a neighboring farm. Cathy's mother had brought Robbie home to Brianag and raised him as her own child, along with Cathy, who was three years younger than Robbie.

Brianag was not only home to Cathy and Robbie; it was home to me. It was the place where we played most, where we spent the largest portion of our time together. There, I did not need to fear that my mother was looking over my shoulder, criticizing my every move; I was free to be a child if I wished, and I could confide my every secret to Cathy and August. I could ride astride my horse, galloping wildly across the fields with the boys, my petticoats hitched up almost to my knees, and no one would reprimand me. I could take off my shoes and stockings and wade in the mud, and only Cathy would chide me; and even she did not really care. At Brianag I was allowed to be as uncivilized and unladylike as I wished while in the company of the ones most dear to me.