Jane Louise Curry, Children's Books Author
  A JUNIOR LIBRARY GUILD SELECTION  …but first a bit of Chapter Five to set the scene: December came, and Winter in earnest. Christmas came, and with it news from the far side of the sea that was worse than no news. The 77th Regiment of Highlanders, to which the three Mackenzie brothers belonged, had been sent to fight the French and Indians in the far west of the Pennsylvania Colony. In October they had captured Fort Duquesne, but only after an earlier defeat that cost the 77th many lives. The names of Jamie's brothers were not listed, but the vague mention of "other losses" haunted the farmhouse at Amgaldale. The new year came in at Amgaldale with the music and dancing of a ceilidh, but not the usual high spirits. Once in January, despite the bitter weather, the red coats of an army patrol were spied on a hill above Kernsary. Even so, almost every hour she was not at work in the parlor-schoolroom, Jamie spent out-of-doors and away from her aunts' watchful concern and kindnesses. On a rainy Monday in January she rode out with Dougal through Gairloch and Strath toward the Sand River, near where the loch met the sea. His mother's old grandmother lived there still, at ninety-two. They took with them Big Rorie's birthday gifts to her of a salmon from the smokehouse and a bottle of brandy. The clachan where Dougal's great-grandmother lived with a grandson and his wife and children was a huddle of low houses, partly stone and mostly sod, on the hillside. From the clachan, the view south and west was of the loch, the small, nearby island of Longa, and the sea and the great Isle of Skye beyond. The children there, a girl of nine and a boy of six, ran out to hold the horses. Jamie's mare stepped on the girl Fiona's bare foot, but after one brief shriek, Fiona refused to let go the reins and happily stood in the drizzle and stroked the shaggy neck while Dougal and Jamie went indoors. The old woman's watery eyes lit up at the sight of the bottle, and Dougal laughed. "D'you like that French tipple, then, Great-grandmother?" "Oh, no!" The old woman shook her head and patted the brown bottle as she set it carefully on the table, "I've never put tongue to it. 'Tis nasty stuff, I'm sure, for the ministers say so. But to them that do drink spirits, it's worth three hens and two loads of peat for me." At the end of the visit, she pressed a fresh-baked loaf of oat and barley bread on the "dear lads." "'Twill do for a midday meal on your way home, and Ellen will slice a bit of the salmon to go with it. 'Tis a monstrous great fish for only we six." When they left the cottage the rain had stopped, and Jamie decided over Dougal's objections that they would eat their lunch down on the shore. She was in no hurry to be back at Amgaldale. "The French call it a pique-nique," she said airily, and turned the roan away from the track and down toward the loch. There they rode along the sand to a tiny cove sheltered by a weathered spine of rock that thrust out into the water. The tide was at low ebb, and the sand littered with seashells. They perched on low, smooth rocks near the water's edge and, in friendly silence, ate the salmon with torn-off chunks of the bread, which was too fresh to cut with Dougal's dirk. The sea and wind sang together in their ears, so that they heard too late the warning cry from the hillside above, and saw too late Dougal's cousin Fiona come bounding down the hill, half limping, her arms waving, pointing… As Jamie and Dougal stared upward and strained to hear, at their backs a longboat angled into shore, behind the rocks. Three men scrambled out and, climbing upon the rocks, leaped down and seized them. A voice shouted from the boat. "Take the boys! Forget the girl. She's lame." Then Dougal's dirk was out, and he slashed at the man who held him, bringing blood. "Jamie!" he shouted. “Run!" He lunged at the man who held her, but the third man sprang at him and struck hard at his arm with a short, thick cudgel, so that the dirk spun away, into the sand. Dougal gasped, and staggered, but kept on. Stumbling, he reached out with his good hand to grasp by the hair the man who struggled to hold Jamie, and jerked his head back so sharply that the man dropped where he stood. The third man raised his cudgel again and swung it sideways at Dougal's head. Dougal dropped to the sand and lay as still as the stones beside him. On the hill above, Fiona screamed for help that was too far off to hear. Jamie, in her fear and fury, snatched up Dougal's dirk. Scarcely knowing what she did, she stood over him, blade ready, and watched the cudgel's threatening motions. She had forgotten both the man Dougal wounded and the voice that had called, "Forget the girl.” An arm wrapped around her. A large hand that smelled of salt water and pitch clapped over her mouth and eyes. A third hand gripped her wrist like iron, and the dirk dropped from her fingers. She heard one-the fourth man?--say roughly, "You've kilt him, you fool. Leave'm lie.” And then she dropped into darkness.  The shore on Gairloch Bay from which Jamie was kidnapped. At Sea, 1758 THE SOBS WERE QUIET, THE COUGHS MUFFLED, YET THEY filled the empty spaces in the darkness between the groan of wood against wood and the lap-lap-lap of water. Jamie stirred in her sleep. The feather bed was strangely hard, and her hip ached. She reached out a hand to grope for the thick, soft blanket, but her fingers met only a thin, scratchy wool. Dark air, bitterly cold, pressed in on her, and it stank. Half awake, uneasy, she reached out from under the strange blanket to feel for the sheet and feather bed. Instead, her fingers touched rough wood--a wooden floor? That floor rose beneath her. The lap-lap-lap of water… In the darkness that swung and creaked and sighed around her, Jamie sat bolt upright, like a frightened hare sitting up tall to scan the fox-haunted heather. Breathless, eyes wide, seeing nothing, she rose and fell and shuddered with the floor as it juddered beneath her. The sobs beside her were thin as a whisper. A child's, she thought. She heard smothered coughs, too, some sharp as a dog's bark, others deep-wracked and breathless. It was all too real, the smell too foul, for a dream, yet… A hand brushed her arm. It was a child's, bony, and rough, and cold. Mistrustfully, Jamie reached out, too, and found a wrist and arm that trembled with a bone-deep shiver. The sobs stopped. There was a sniffling like a small, miserable animal's, and two bony hands captured one of Jamie's. A small, bony body inched closer until a head nestled into her side and an arm crept across her middle. Jamie held her breath and lay still under the child's arm. Strange that it should feel so solid, so real. A strange dream. Nothing happened in it. Only darkness and sleepers sleeping, nothing more. Dreams moved. They raced or ambled. They slipped from now into time past, or from a "here" into a "there" as swiftly as stepping through a door. Perhaps… Jamie awoke hours later to a darkness mingled with gray shadow. Dim light came from somewhere above, not far off. Overhead she heard a thumping. A dim voice called out words that made no sense. "Bowse upon the tack, there! Bowse away!" Her eyelids were heavy, too heavy to hold open. She closed them quickly, unsure whether the tightness in her middle was nausea or hunger. A high squeak suddenly shrilled in her ear. "Ye're no lad--you're a lass!" Jamie opened her eyes to squint into the darkness. A small figure, a boy of seven or eight, knelt beside her, eyes wide in wonder. He was small for his size, and bony as a starveling goat. His once-white shirt, green waist-coat, and brown breeches were so darkened by grime and stained with food and grease that when he did not move, his grayness blurred into the shadows. Only the streaks of old tear tracks on his cheeks showed that gray was not their natural color. Suddenly something smaller and gray streaked across her blanket. A rat! Jamie bit back a shriek of fright, and sat up with a shudder. The rocks and sand at Big Sand. She and Dougal eating. Fiona's cry, and the men… In a rush, she remembered. Dougal… She was on a ship. They had carried her on board a ship. "'Tis a lass!" Another voice groaned out of the darkness, "Shut your gabble, Skrankie!" "What does he mean, 'a lass'?" came a sleepy grumble nearby. Jamie peered around her in alarm. The dim light that fell through a heavy wooden grating some twenty feet away showed her that she was in a wide, low space, and surrounded by blanket-covered bodies. Many were astir, sitting up or stretching out arms. Some nearer at hand heard the whispers and rose to their hands and knees. "What's afoot?" they murmured to their neighbors. "What's all the cushle-mushle?" "Skrankie says the new lad's a girl." Soft snorts of laughter rippled away as the word spread, so that the blankets heaved like a rough, gray sea. A sea of boys that lapped up against the walls at either side of the deck. Forty or more lay before and behind her. "She is," the boy Skrankie insisted, more quietly this time. "She smells like bread. And soap, and lavendy flowers, like my auntie," he said, and began to weep again. "Ah, shut the shergar up," someone grumbled. Most of the blankets lay still again, but one boy threw his off and raised up on his knees to stare at Jamie. "'Tis all clitter-clatter. He's no' sae fodgel as a lass." Jamie frowned. "Clitter-clatter" seemed clear enough. It must mean something like "silly chatter"-- but, "fodgel"? "Shergar"? They were Lowland Scots, and their heavily accented English, thick with unfamiliar words, made them hard for her to understand. "De' is ciall ' dha, 'fodgel?" she asked. "Can ye no' speak the English? We dinna comprehend such Highland clytach," one said as a handful more sat up. "Aye," she snapped. "I speak English. I asked what 'fodgel’ means." "Only that ye're a wee bit--stringy for a lass," one piped up. With an effort, Jamie held her tongue. To be taken for a boy by a stranger--she felt a stirring of interest. But, surely, they would find her out. Surely. .. A thin, gangly boy of about fifteen with lank, dark hair rose, wrapped his blanket around his shoulders, and threaded his way toward Jamie for a closer look. From the way the others watched him--curious, expectant--he appeared to be, if not their leader, at least someone they judged worth listening to. "Where am I?" Jamie asked quickly. "What ship is this, and why am I here?" "'Tis the Sparrowhawk, bound for Glasgow." He ignored her last question. "I am Archie Gordon, of Aberdeen. They call me Attercap. But who are you? What waters did they fish you from?" "From Loch Gairloch. I am Jamie Mackenzie, of Amgaldale," she answered boldly as she rose. She hoped they could not hear in her voice that she was still shaking from the strangeness of it all. "Men attacked us on the sands at Big Sand. We saw no ship. It must have stood off behind Longa Island. My--my foster brother, Dougal. They killed Dougal." Her stomach heaved at the memory of Dougal lying on the sand, and she had to force herself to swallow. 'Who are they? Why did they attack us? Why are you all here?" Attercap gave her a small quirk of a smile, and then grew grim. "Captain Lumsden and his men are 'spiriters.' They spirited you away. Stole you as they stole us." His voice was flat. "Four of us are dead. We sailed north around Scotland through great storms, and three fell ill and died of the cold. The fourth was a wee, homesick lad who wouldna eat. The seamen stitched them up in sailcloth and tipped them into the sea. Likely they saw you and decided to make up a part o' the loss." "Stolen?" Jamie's cry came out as a whisper. Stolen? Not taken by her father's enemies? "Aye. Snared like rabbits," said a bitter-faced boy with ears like jug handles, and a still-red scar upon his dirty cheek. "But"--Jamie shook her head as if to clear it--" And they sail to Glasgow? It makes no sense. The Glasgow magistrates and their bailiffs will hear of it and stop them. It makes no sense." Attercap shook his head. "Ye've taken hold of the cow horned end hindermost. 'Tis rich Glasgow merchants--likely magistrates themselves--have bought the Sparrowhawk from the old owners in Aberdeen. From Glasgow it sails to the Virginia Colony." "Virginia? In America?" "Aye, America. The far side of the sea." Attercap shivered under his blanket cloak. Jamie's knees grew weak under her, and she sat down heavily on the deck. She rested her head upon her knees. America. Kenneth and Davie and Donald had gone to Canada and America, and were dead. Dead before her father, even, and dear Rorie. America. A slow, thick voice spoke loudly into the silence. "Crookie says they mean to sell us for slaves, t' dig in the earth and live in holes, like beasties." "Shut thy mouth, ye great lubbard," a voice shrilled. Jamie heard the sound of a scuffle and blow somewhere among the boys who crowded around her. The loud blubbing that followed the blow sounded eerily like the heartbroken tears of wee Niall, her aunt Mali's next-to-youngest, after an unexpected smack. The blubberer was a big, moonfaced boy whose dirty fair hair hung over his eyes and ears. His attacker turned out to be Skrankie. Frail and pale the child might be, but he had the blank, baleful, stubborn stare of a goat. "Hush, shush, ye great gowkie," Attercap told the big, round-faced boy impatiently. "Thy hubble-bubble will bring Mr. Marr doon on us. And ye, Skrankie, for why'd ye ding the poor fool? We all heard Crookie say the same.” "But 'tis a lie," the one called Skrankie quavered. "After Glasgow, we'll be on the way home to our mithers and aunties. Ye'll see!" After a moment he whined, "Any road, I hit him only a wee chap to the middle." "Crookie is the cook's boy," Attercap explained to Jamie. "Have a care what ye say to him. He's like a squirrel who stores up nuts. He stores up all he hears and can cast it up word for word to the captain to make trouble. He--" Attercap stopped abruptly as the heavy wooden grate covering the overhead hatch was raised, and a dark head and shoulders loomed above them against a gray sky. Jamie could make out only a dark, bearded face under a three-comered hat. "You, down there! Any more roarie argle-bargaining, and Cap'n Lumsdensays he'll send Jemmy Dunn below wi'a belaying pin to ding some heads. You hear that?" "Yes sir, Mr. Marr," Attercap answered quickly. He pushed his way through the knot of boys around Jamie, to stand next to the ladder in the patch of light beneath the hatch. "'Twas only a wee curfuffle. We'll no' put Mr. Dunn to the bother o' cracking our heads." "So ye say," the first mate growled. "Back off the ladder, then. Here's Crookie and Cook and thy parritch." He straightened and vanished from view. A redheaded, freckled boy in a canvas apron, and a red-nosed, red-cheeked man with a grin full of blackened, rotten teeth appeared in the hatch's frame. Between them, they hoisted a large kettle onto its rim and lowered it by rope onto the cover of the hatch that led to the ship's cargo hold below the boys' deck. Two boys moved forward at Attercap's nod, but stepped back quickly as Mr. Marr reappeared. "Is the new lad up and alive yet? Shove him over here, then, and be sharp about it." He moved away. Jamie found herself lifted up and bundled through the press of boys ringing the hatch's patch of daylight. "'Tis likely the captain coming," one whispered as she passed. "Doff thy bonnet," another warned with a jab to her ribs. She found herself, bonnet in hand, standing beside the kettle of oatmeal and squinting up at a black shadow against the dull sky's brightness. The silhouette seemed huge. “What's your name, lad?” it growled. “Jamie Mackenzie of Amgaldale,” she answered, still squinting. Suddenly unbearably angry, she stood as tall as she could and added coldly, " And what may yours be, sir?" The silence above and below was frightening. Beneath her breastbone, her stomach began to quiver from hunger and the nearness of the steaming oatmeal, but her squint held steady. She was thankful that, with the light at his back, she could not see the captain's eyes. Her knees might have quivered, too. The shadow's heavy voice was low, but cold and hard. "'Tis Lumsden. Captain Lumsden. And isn't it the fine-spoken wee gentleman we've snared this time!" "Sir, I demand--" "'Sir, you demand'?" The captain raised his deep voice only a notch, but it cut through Jamie's like a steel blade through a willow wand. "Go softly, laddie. I advise ye to swallow the word 'demand' and not to cough it up again. Ye'll have no use for it these next eight or nine years. Raise thy voice to me again, and I'll have Mr. Marr haul ye up and beat a tattoo on thy backside ye'll not soon forget. Now, away with ye." He vanished from the hatchway, but could be heard ordering the cook and his boy back to their galley, and shouting to a seaman to lock down the hatch grate. Jamie stood frozen. She had never in her life been spoken to as if--as if she were muck beneath a stranger's boot. But fear thrust down the anger that rose in her throat. Fear had a new and bitter taste, a taste of iron, and her pride did not like it. She had faced anger before, had exchanged angry words, but they were always words taken back or softened when the anger cooled. The captain's cold contempt was not anger, but the sound of power. It said, “You are nothing." Desperately, Jamie repeated to herself the last words her father spoke to her. "You are Mackenzie of Grudidh while we are away, lass, and as good as any who walk the hills on two feet. Never you forget that. Or me." "Never, " she whispered fiercely now.  Curry successfully combines little-known facts about US history with a page-turning tale of hardships overcome. The jacket painting instantly evokes Jamesina’s world; in text and in art, she’s an appealing heroine, full of old-fashioned spunk. –KIRKUS REVIEWS The strength of the book, which includes many authentic places and personalities, lies in the depiction of the various lifestyles and interests that existed during the time of the French and Indian Wars…. perfect for classes using novels to explore the history of the period. –BOOKLIST This densely layered, fast-paced historical novel encompasses an impressive range of settings, opening in l758 in Highland Scotland and moving to a Virginia manor and then to a Cherokee village…. Curry (DARK SHADE) paints the corrupt injustice of indentured servitude and slavery, and she textures the varied settings with detail and colorful language. The cast is exotic (e.g., a regal African servant Royal who turns out to be a prince; a Cherokee warrior woman)…. but the likable, brave heroine and the energetic storytelling are well worth the suspension of disbelief. –PUBLISHERS WEEKLY The elements of Jamie's story, melodramatic though they may be, are fleshed out with involving period detail of travails at sea and of life in colonial servants' quarters. Curry's portrayal of Leslie's African slaves--well-born, proud, and scornful of their lower-class masters--is sharp-edged and poignant. Readers willing to stretch their credulity will relish watching Jamie dodge all the treacheries two continents and an ocean can offer. –BULLETIN OF THE CENTER FOR CHILDREN’S BOOKS This is a solid piece of exciting prerevolutionary historical fiction with a courageous heroine. --SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL An outstanding picture of a little-known piece of American history. --Toledo, Ohio BLADE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A STOLEN LIFE text, copyright 1999 by Jane Louise Curry, and cover art copyright 1999 by Mark Elliott, used by permission of Margaret K. McElderry Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. Page text and illustrations copyright 2003 by Jane Louise Curry. |
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