A Newfound Land by Anna Belfrage

from behind the nearest stand of trees.
    “Jones? Yon fat bastard could never move as fast as this one did.” He studied the imprint. “And this is too big to be Sykes.”
    “Sykes? Oh my God, Sykes!” She turned to face him. “It was him, the man I saw.”
    “You saw him? Where?”
    “I told you. How I recognised one of the men who abducted those two girls. It was him, Sykes.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure! Men that ugly don’t exactly grow on trees, do they?”
    It made him laugh; it shouldn’t, but it did, because she was right. Sykes was a right ugly character and, as he recalled it, equipped with balls the size of peas unless Jones was nearby to back him up. He was tempted to set off at a run after the trespasser – should it be Sykes, it would bring him the greatest enjoyment to bash his head in with the axe. But it wasn’t; he knew that. He frowned, staring in the direction in which the man had disappeared.
    “A trapper, mayhap,” he said out loud. Aye, that was probably it, although why a trapper should flee instead of requesting bed and board was beyond him. He waved away this disturbing thought, took Alex’s hand and led them back home.
    *
    As expected, Fiona looked most put out next morning, muttering that never had she lived in a home where linens were changed as often as they were here. Alex ignored her grumbling, concentrating instead on keeping the lye at a safe distance from her body.
    “I saw one of the girls up at the Leslies’ the other week,” she said. “Her whole arm was badly blistered on account of having the lye spill over her.”
    Fiona shrugged; such things happened. “Are they English, the new lasses?”
    Alex had no idea. None of them had opened their mouth. “One of them is pregnant. She must’ve been with child before she boarded, and her contract’s been extended with a full year. She didn’t seem too happy about that.”
    “Nay, she wouldn’t be. Five years is quite enough.”
    “Only two left for you.” Alex found this difficult to talk about, even knowing that Fiona had chosen this as the only way she could start a new life for herself. A brave young woman, Alex thought, to cross the world all on her own. Brave or desperate, and despite having lived at close quarters with Fiona for three years, she still didn’t know which.
    She studied Fiona as she lifted the steaming linen from the cauldron into the rinsing trough: black hair pulled back in a strict braid, eyes a warm chocolate brown, and a nice figure. Fiona had no idea how old she was, but thought she might be twenty-five or thereabouts, insisting she had recollections of the uneasy times back in the War of the Three Kingdoms, fragmented images of hiding from the Commonwealth army that rode into Scotland in pursuit of Charles Stuart.
    “What will you do?”
    “Do?” Fiona gave Alex a blank look.
    “You know, once your term of indenture is up. Will you stay up here or will you go south to the towns?”
    “The towns, I think.” Fiona wrung the shirt in her hands, shook it out and hung it on the clothes line. “I’m not a country lass.” She threw a disgusted look at the woods that stood thick and dark around them. “I miss the sound of people. And I miss the sea.” She turned to Alex. “And you, mistress? Are you happy here, up in the wild?”
    Alex surveyed her home, a fragile man-made clearing in the encroaching forest. This was a safe haven, a new start far away from a country where her man was constantly persecuted on account of his faith.
    “Yes I am, even if it’s a bit far away from everything. A town half a day’s ride away wouldn’t have come amiss.”
    “You have the Chisholm place, and on account of them being so many, that’s like a wee village in itself.”
    Alex laughed. Fiona was right: their neighbours were numerous, three brothers who’d come out twenty years ago, and now with their sons and daughters a small community numbering fourteen families or so. She