The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Author:Evie Wyld [Wyld, Evie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2020-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

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There had been talk about the woman in the shepherd’s hut, the girl had overheard her father and the fishermen.

“It was just a matter of time,” she heard him say, and there was a murmur of agreement, until one of the men set his eyes on her and she was sent to collect her mother from the big house because the men were hungry.

Her mother wiped her hands on her apron, and handed the girl half a loaf of bread. “Tell him I’m not yet finished here. There’s soup in the pot and there’s herring in the pantry. Tell your father he can wait till later and I’ll bring back mutton.” Her mother gave her a coin for a jug of beer from the tavern. Her mother smoothed the hair down on the girl’s head and kissed her on the crown. “There now—I need to get on or I’ll not be back till midnight.”

“Mother?”

Her mother already had the door half closed and opened it in irritation. “What is it?”

“What happened to the woman in the shepherd’s hut?”

Her mother looked at her.

“What did you hear about that?”

The girl toed the dirt. “Father and the men were talking.”

Her mother sighed, lowered her voice and stepped back out of the house, pulling the door so that no one inside would overhear.

“The woman in the hut was warned and she still didn’t leave. That’s all you need to know, and that you listen to your mother and your father—or at least your mother—and you stay away from the Law, and the hut, and you don’t mention it to anyone. If word gets to the Earl, there’ll be a tell-about and a fuss, and no one can afford the stop in work, not right now. She knew that, and she still persisted, and now she has paid the price—just don’t you go around making things worse than they already are, you hear?”

“What price did she pay?”

“Never you mind.”

“But what did she persist in doing?”

“Never. You. Mind.”

The girl went back home and delivered the bread and the beer, and some of the men had left but there were four of them to share the beer, the bread and the herring. They were not interested in the barley soup. “It churns my guts these days,” said her father. The girl left the men to it and sat on the back step. From there she could see the hut, just a small shadow on the side of the Law, and above it birds circling, beyond it the water and then the silent black rock.

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