"Exemption?"
"Yes. You and I must watch over the Brothers and Sisters in their weakness; it is our sacred task. Our strength must not fail, even for one night." She chews the dried bacon with relish, and reaches under her bed again. Her hand comes up with a whole slice of bread, and she puts it between his lips.
Helpless, Hugh sucks it, chokes it down.
Out in the world it is the month named July, but inside Buchan Ha time has little meaning anymore. They live in suspension, in the eternal moment of waiting.
There is a terrible banging on the door, one morning, and Elizabeth Hunter's voice, shouting "Open up in the name of the law!"
This goes on for half an hour, with the Buchanites droning their hymns in an effort to drown out the banging on the door, till Friend Mother gives Hugh a weary nod. Being the only one with enough strength left for such tasks, Hugh unbars the door and lets their former Sister in.
She has three constables with her, and a warrant to take her family away. The Buchanites stare at her with their dark-rimmed eyes. Patrick Hunter is enraged by his wife's treachery. "Bitch," he spits at her as the constables haul him out into the daylight. The Hunter girl is so weak, she has to be lifted on a rail.
Friend Mother stands by the door, arms folded, watching. "You think merely of your children's bodies, Elizabeth Hunter," she remarks. "I lost some infants myself, back in Glasgow; it pleased God to take them, all but three. At first I complained, much as you do, but now I know their souls flew free."
At which point, Elizabeth goes for Friend Mother's eyes, shrieking, and has to be pulled off by half a dozen Buchanites. Hugh is deeply moved to see that his Brothers and Sisters can still summon some strength to protect their beloved leader.
She is stern, that night, preaching to the Buchanites where they lie. "Look into your hearts. If ye be not pure and holy yet," she tells them, "ye will be like imperfect clay jars that explode in the furnace."
The next day the constables come back with another warrant. This time Hugh lets them in at once, to stop the noise of the pounding. They take away two more children, Thomas Bradley and his sister Mary, who is very weak and raves of goblins as the constables carry her out.
Then Katherine Gardner arrives with an angry knot of Nithsdalers and claims to be with child by Andrew Innes, at which there is a great groaning among the Buchanites. Hugh peers into the young man's face, but cannot decide whether the claim is true or a mere trick. Katherine Gardner demands that they deliver Andrew up to her, lest he die of hunger, and her baby have no father. Friend Mother, blank-faced, inclines her head at last. So the fellow goes off with Katherine and the constables, long-faced, in somebody's jacket that is too small for him.
Hugh suspects Andrew of feeling relieved; rescued. It is a sad fact that weakness lies like a maggot in the hearts of most of the Buchanites. Only Hugh loves Friend Mother as she should be loved.
The next day, when the constables bang on the doors of Buchan Ha, it is with a warrant to seek out any corpses of man or woman or infant who might have been starved or otherwise foully put to death, but though they search in every dusty corner of the building, they find nothing. Hugh stands with his fingers pressed together like a church. "See, there is no more death," he tells them; "now will ye not believe?"
That night when they are private together in the little room, Friend Mother touches Hugh but he is unmanned, soft as a child. He lies between her legs, his head pillowed on her thigh. The hairs are coarse as mountain grass. This is where he came from, Hugh thinks, dizzy with revelation. All life, all salvation comes out of this cave. A scent drifts up like sharp cheddar, like something baking.
"Take. Eat. This is my body," she whispers. "I am the Bread of Life, and he who eats this bread shall live forever." Her hand on his head. She gives him to feed.
One evening, Friend Mother comes into the long dim hall where the Buchanites lie in a waking sleep, too weak to brush away the flies that occasionally light on their faces. She claps her hands, and the sound is like gunshot. "Are ye ready?" she cries out. "Are ye prepared to be translated from flesh to spirit, as a word is translated from a foul gibberish into a holy tongue?"
They are startled, roused from torpor. Hugh stares up at her; she has given him no warning of this.
"Are ye ready for translation?"
"Aye!" they answer in a jagged chorus.
"But the forty days are not over," says Hugh confusedly.
She throws him an impatient look. "Christ's days are not measured like ours. I say again, are ye ready?"
"Aye!" goes the general roar.
"If ye are truly ready, Christ will come."
And suddenly Hugh knows it is true. The spark lights in his chest and flames up. He leads the roar: "Come, Christ!"
"Soon ye will be eating from the Tree of Paradise," she tells them, her voice almost singing.
"How soon?"
"Very soon. Watch and wait," she says, sitting down and lighting her pipe with composure.
Hugh sits at her feet, staring up at her, tense with excitement. "See," he whispers to the others, "Friend Mothers face shines with the glory of Christ." She is so sure, she is so radiant, how can he ever have doubted?
"Come, now," Friend Mother says at midnight, clapping her hands again to wake them. "Time to shed your trinkets. Ye won't need them on the journey."
There is a clattering like rain as the Buchanites fumble at their watches, rings, and lockets, hurling them onto the floor. John Gibson stamps on the crystal face of his grandfather's watch.
"Take your shoes off," she says now; "wear your old slippers for lightness, or bare feet would be best." On an impulse, Hugh runs over to the clothing chest. Time to put on his minister's gown, bands, and gloves: his final costume.
At her nod he unbars the door for the last time. They leave it swinging wide. She leads them up Templand Hill by moonlight in their slippers. The countryside is deserted; the green corn stands stiffly in the fields. They go slowly, a caravan of emaciated scarecrows, dragging the weaker Brothers and Sisters, but there is exultation in every face.
They have dragged their stock of wooden pallets with them, on Friend Mother's orders, and now they understand. "Build me a platform," she cries out. "A high platform so I can see Christ's Coming, at sunrise."
A shriek goes up. Sunrise. She has named the hour. At last, at last, thinks Hugh. His cheeks are wet; he finds himself weeping like a boy. The long trial is over.
The Buchanites stack up their pallets crazily, making a rough platform as high as their heads. Hugh waits, then heaves his own pallet on top, for Friend Mother's sacred feet to stand on.
"Bless you," she says, "bless ye all," and takes—of all things—a scissors out of her pocket. "Drop your hats, your bonnets. All your hair must be cut off," she instructs, "except for a tuft on top for the angels to catch ye by, to draw you up."
"Draw us up into heaven?" asks Hugh's small son, sheltering in Isabel White's skirts, and for a moment Hugh remembers what it was like to love his children—love them greedily, as his own. But there's no more time for that.
"Aye, hen," Friend Mother tells the boy. "At sunrise, there will be a light brighter than any light has ever been, and we will all be wafted into the land of bliss; we alone who are worthy, of all the folk that walk the earth!"
She cuts the hair of each man, woman, and child. It falls like dandelion seeds around them where they lie on the grass, suddenly weak again, as the night closes in around them. By the last of the moonlight, Hugh watches the transformation. Friend Mother comes to him last; he welcomes the feeling of lightness as the scissors move over his scalp.
Most of them sleep, in the end, but Hugh lies awake beside Friend Mother, his hand in hers, his blood thumping in his veins like a drum. He looks at her but her eyes are closed. He measures the slow creep of the stars.
Towards dawn she wakes, and mounts her platform like a cat, unaided. Hugh thought she might have asked him to share it with her, but really there is on
ly room for one on this precipitous structure, and besides, Christ is coming for all of them; no one will be left behind. Hugh leads his Brothers and Sisters in the chant he has composed in the night. As the first tinge of gray light lifts the sky they clap their hands, they shout it out, panting with excitement.
Oh! hasten translation, and come redurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air I
Halfway down the hill, a crowd is gathering; Nithsdale men and women, gawking up at the freaks. What matter, Hugh tells himself; no one can hold back the Buchanites now.
Oh! hasten translation, and come resurrection!
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air!
Here it comes, the first yellow ray, sliding over the dark hill.
Oh! hasten translation, and come resurrection!
Their singing mounts to an ecstatic shriek.
Oh! hasten the coming of Christ in the air!
Friend Mother is on her feet, her arms out, her hair shining. She has never looked so beautiful. The crop-headed Buchanites all throw up their arms.
Oh! hasten Oh! hasten Oh! hasten translation!
Hugh feels a gust of sweet breeze from the east; surely this is the beginning. Friend Mother dances on tiptoe, as if Christ's arms are around her already; her hair dances. Hugh strains to kick off gravity; under his canonical robes he is hardening, rigid with glory. The breeze scoops the air up, circles, gathers to a blast of wind ... and the platform, with one long groan, topples down.
Friend Mother is on the ground, on her knees, clutching her left ankle. She rubs it like any ordinary woman. There are smashed pallets scattered around her. Hugh stands still in his shock.
Silence; the chants have all died away. The sun is up, but clouds have slid in from the north, and it looks like a gray day. The Bucnanites avoid each other's eyes; some weep into their hands. Below them on the slope, the people of Nithsdale are laughing like crows.
Friend Mother lurches to her feet. "Christ has been pleased to afflict us with disappointment," she says hoarsely. "And do ye know why? Because ye are not yet worthy," she shrieks, putting out her finger, pointing at each of her followers in turn. "Ye are lukewarm, unfit for translation. Ye have faltered in faith. Ye have failed me."
Hugh waits for her gaze to reach him; waits to be singled out as the one follower who has loved Friend Mother truly, who has offered his whole life in her service. He needs to know that he will be with her in heaven. But her eye skims over him as if she does not recognise his face.
She stumbles down the hill. A little later, he follows her.
Note
Elspeth "Luckie" Buchan, née Simpson (c. 1738–91), a potter's wife from Glasgow, was one of several women prophets in the late eighteenth century who founded personal cults based on the Book of Revelations. My sources for "Revelations" include Robbie Burns's letter to James Burness of 3 August 1784; Anon, The Western Delusion (1784); Els pet h Buchan and Hugh White, The Divine Dictionary (1785) and Eight Letters (1785); Joseph Train, The Buchanites, From First to Last (1846); and John Cameron, History of the Buchanite Delusion (1904).
After the Great Fast, the community was thrown out of Nithsdale by legal means, and settled in Kirkcudbrightshire, where Luckie Buchan died in 1791, promising to rise again in six days, or ten years, or fifty. Hugh White led the remnants of the group to America.
Night Vision
The other day in the woods I wandered away from the others and kept walking. The ground was soft as porridge. I held one hand out in front of my face and whenever I stubbed my fingers on a tree I felt my way around it. Whenever I stood on an acorn I picked it up for our pigs. I stood still, and there was no sound at all but the wind shuddering in the branches.
I don't think I have ever been alone in my life before, and I am nine years old.
It was Ned and John who found me; I heard them thudding along from a long way off, calling "Franny! Franny!" Did I not know that I might have caught my foot in a weasel trap, John said, or dashed out my brains against a branch? Ned said our father would have strapped them if I'd come to harm.
My brothers and sisters are mostly good to me. A blind child is a burden, no matter how you look at it.
They're all asleep around me now: John and Ned and Samuel and Dickie in the big bed under the window, Eliza and Mary and Nelly in the one behind the door, and vision Catherine and Martha and myself in this one, with Billy tucked in at the bottom and Tabby under my arm with her nose digging into my ribs. It's hottest here in the middle of all the arms and legs. The air smells of cheese.
When I can't sleep, I make a blank page in my mind, and shapes start filling it. I know about the stars; Father told me. I imagine them flaring through holes in the sky like candles in a draught; the edges must get singed. I wonder about the colour of furze, a bit like strong tea, Father says. (I think colour is when you can taste something with your eyes.) And the mountains around Stranorlar, big as giants blocking the path of the sun. I try to decide how each bird feels to the touch, according to its song. The clinking blackbird would feel like the back of a spoon, but the wood pigeon must be soft as the underbelly of a rabbit.
Our mother is behind the wall, in the kitchen; I can hear her poke the turf. She was so angry, that time I put my hand in the fire, when I was small. But I had to find out what it felt like. She cried while she was wrapping a bit of butter onto the burn. She held her breath so I wouldn't hear her, but I did.
I wish we were all locked up safe for the night. But our father is still at Meeting, and it's all my fault.
Father is Brown the Postmaster. If there's ever a letter for someone living here, it's he who brings it. Most days he sees to the horses that carry letters through Stranorlar and on to all the other villages in Donegal. He lost a toe in the snow once. It's my job to rub his feet by the fire when he comes home. But not tonight.
He walked me to school this morning, as it was my first day. And my last, I suppose. Tonight he's gone to see if the Elders will let him address the Meeting and say how ashamed he is for what his daughter did. I pray they won't cast him out.
I can hear the room filling up with sleep; the little snores, the sighs, the shiftings from side to side. My sisters and brothers hardly know how to move or talk in the dark. They depend on the light so much that once the candle is snuffed out, the greasy air seems to extinguish them too. Night makes no difference to me, except that I can hear better. Tonight I can't remember how to go about falling asleep. My mind bubbles like a spring that cannot be stopped up.
Words have always been my undoing, I can see that now. It began when I was a small child. The sermon was on eternal damnation, and the new Scottish Minister used words I couldn't understand; they echoed in the rafters. So I tried to fix them in my memory, and afterwards, while the brawn was boiling I asked our father to look them up in the dictionary. I never thought there was any harm in it.
Since then I've been collecting words, you might say. They help me to get up, say, when I can't find my fingers on cold mornings. Fingers, I say in my head, and there they are, wriggling. Tabby is always bringing me words, even if she doesn't know what they mean. This week I have three new ones: funereal, ambulatory, and slub. Sometimes for a game, Nelly and Catherine make me say all the longest ones I know; if I won't play, they pinch me. My brothers and sisters think words are to be scattered carelessly, like corn in front of hens. They don't know how much words matter.
Martha, on my left, has curled up like a snail; she has the tail of my nightshirt caught tight between her knees. How can they all sleep so sound when our father is not come home?
What matters even more than words is how they knot onto each other. Sentences are like the ropes the fishermen throw when they're mooring to land. Sometimes they fray, though. Sometimes I put the wrong words in the wrong places, and other times it's not my fault, they'll not fit.
The Schoolmaster says there are rules that govern words, and then there are times when you must break the rules. Mr. McGra
nahan knows everything, or nearly; he knows seventeen times fifty-three. After they come home from school, my brothers say their dictionary and grammar over and over to get them by heart so Mr. McGranahan will not have to take down his ashplant. I whisper the phrases while I'm washing potatoes or playing pat-a-cake to make Billy stop crying. Also I have learned Watt's "Divine Songs" and Gray's "Elegy," as well as the Scottish psalms. I made a poem of the Lord's Prayer once, and Tabby wrote it down and said it right back to me. Tabby's only seven, but she's quick at her books. If I had the money I'd feed her till she grew fat as a pig, and send her to a good school so she could come home and read me Greek and Latin.
Some days if there's time after bringing the turf in, Eliza or Mary will read aloud: Susan Gray, or The Negro Servant, or The Heart of Midlothian. I take my sisters' turns at spinning the flax, if they promise to read. I hound them to go on as long as the candle lasts. My ears have learned to swallow up every word; I know a novel by heart after three good listenings. My brothers and sisters think me very clever for this, but it's only a trick for getting by. Like Jemmy Dwyer down at the smithy, who lost his right hand to a horse but can tie knots good as ever with his left.
They are all so peaceful when they are sleeping. I pray to God every night for my brothers and sisters, as I was taught, but sometimes I wish they wouldn't wake up.
Often they all talk at once, like threads tangled in a basket, so I can't hear myself think. The other day while we were spinning, Nelly and Martha quarrelled over whether it is called orange or red when the sun goes down behind the chapel. I know what orange is because we were given one once and I had a piece all to myself; it tasted sharp as needles. Red is the colour of mouths, and of pig's blood, but when it dries it's called black pudding, which is strange. I'm sure I know what turf looks like, from the salty smell of it burning, and milk, from the way it slips down my throat, but they tell me I'm only imagining. Our father tells them, "Leave Franny be." He says wishful thinking is a powerful thing, and nearly as good as eyesight.