When the Dawn Breaks Read online

  COPYRIGHT

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9781405522922

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 Emma Fraser

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

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  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Serbia, winter 1915

  Part One: Skye 1903–8

  Chapter 1: Skye, summer 1903

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5: Skye, summer 1904

  Chapter 6: Skye, summer 1906

  Chapter 7: Skye, August 1908

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14: Skye, winter 1908

  Part Two: Edinburgh 1909–14

  Chapter 15: Edinburgh, February 1909

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17: Edinburgh, October 1912

  Chapter 18: Edinburgh, October 1913

  Chapter 19: Edinburgh, spring 1914

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22: Edinburgh, August 1914

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part Three: France and Serbia, 1914–19

  Chapter 27: France, December 1914

  Chapter 28: France, January 1915

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32: Serbia, January 1915

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34: France, February 1915

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37: Serbia, February 1915

  Chapter 38: France, March 1915

  Chapter 39: Serbia, March 1915

  Chapter 40: Serbia, May 1915

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44: Serbia, early October 1915

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52: Edinburgh, 1919

  Author’s Note

  Selected Further Reading

  Dedicated to the memory of my parents,

  Anne and George, and my brother, Peter.

  Gus am bris an là, agus an teich na sgàilean.

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost thanks to my sisters Flora and Mairi for their support, encouragement and insight. Without you the book wouldn’t be what it is.

  Thanks also to my daughter Rachel who read the book so many times she can practically recite it by heart and my other daughter Katie for being so proud of me.

  To Stewart, for his help with the medical detail and for listening to a wife who must have seemed quite mad at times.

  Thanks to my agent, Judith Murdoch, and my editor, Manpreet Grewal, for believing in me and my book. Thank you to Hazel Orme for the copy-edit.

  Finally thanks to Karen, Hugh, Sandra, Theona and Isabel. A writer’s life can be lonely but, as you can see, mine is not.

  Serbia, winter 1915

  Jessie and Isabel stood over the shallow grave with their heads bowed.

  Jessie blinked the snow from her eyes and looked around. Bodies littered the ground as far as she could see yet they had left thousands more behind them – dead not from bullet wounds, shrapnel or even disease – but cold and starvation.

  A few feet away, a woman lay curled around the body of her child. Her shawl, still wrapped around her head, fluttered in the breeze, revealing a face that might have been beautiful had her mouth not been frozen in a frightful grimace of death.

  Not far from them, propped against a tree, the stiff corpse of a soldier still held his tin mug as if he were about to sip some beef tea.

  An infantryman left the column and crunched across the field, his footsteps leaving pockmarks on the snow. He bent over the woman and child and for a moment Jessie thought he was going to bury them, but instead he removed the shawl and wrapped it around his neck. Too exhausted to protest, she watched as he continued towards the dead soldier and dispassionately relieved him of his coat and boots.

  On his return he passed close by them and hesitated. He tugged the scarf from his throat and held it out to Jessie. ‘For you, Sister.’

  She took it from him, her numb fingers seeking the warmth of his skin that still clung to the material. The soldier touched his hat to them and rejoined the dead-eyed men trudging along the path.

  The sound of Bulgarian cannon to the east was louder now, and to the north were the advancing Austrian and German armies – perhaps just hours away.

  Their only hope lay to the south and the narrow track through the black Montenegrin mountains; hundreds of miles of mud, snow and almost certain death.

  Jessie’s feet were frozen. Last night she had tried to thaw her boots over a fire made of straw, but within an hour of pulling them back on they were solid again. Isabel’s, she knew, would be the same.

  ‘We must go on,’ Isabel urged. ‘One day we will return and mark the grave properly, but there is no more we can do here now, and the longer we wait the greater the chance that the Germans will be upon us. We have to make the most of the daylight.’

  Jessie sucked in a breath. Isabel was right. If they were to survive, they had to keep moving.

  Isabel passed the haversack with what remained of their supplies to Jessie, then picked up her medical bag.

  Once three and now two women, Jessie thought, depending on each other for their lives and bound by a secret, that, even if they survived, could yet destroy them both.

  She pulled the haversack onto her shoulders and raised her head to the snow-darkened sky. ‘Lord have mercy on us all,’ she whispered.

  PART ONE

  SKYE 1903–8

  Chapter 1

  Skye, summer 1903

  Jessie MacCorquodale looked up as Miss Stuart entered the room and banged on her desk with a ruler. The children shuffled their feet and giggled nervously as they took their seats. Quiet fell. Miss Stuart was young but she was strict, and many of them, Jessie included, had suffered the leather tawse on their hands to prove it.

  Their teacher wasn’t alone. Standing next to her was a tall girl with plaited golden hair and eyes that were much the same colour as the chocolate velvet collar of her smart cream frock. Clutched in her hands was a narrow-brimmed hat with a cherry-red band. Although she couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than Jessie, she wore stockings instead of knee-length socks. Her buttoned, calf-length boots were polished and, as far as Jessie could tell, without holes. Jessie placed one of her feet over the other to hide the toe that was poking out of the front of her left tackety boot. Her own mud-coloured dress was a hand-me-down from an older cousin and had been darned so many times by Mammy that it was more thread than cloth. She ran a hand over her own wayward
curls, which refused to lie flat. For the first time she was embarrassed by the way she looked.

  ‘Isabel is coming to join us for the last couple of weeks of term,’ Miss Stuart said. ‘I hope you will all make her welcome. Her father is Dr MacKenzie.’

  So this was the doctor’s daughter. Mammy had been talking about a Dr MacKenzie coming to Skye to replace Dr Munro, who had gone to Glasgow to start a new practice. In Mammy’s opinion, Dr Munro was dangerous.

  ‘Dr MacKenzie is not long back from the Boer War,’ Miss Stuart was saying. ‘Who can tell me where the Boer War took place?’

  Jessie’s hand shot up as her admiration for the new girl grew. Isabel’s father had been in a war – just like her own daddy! Except his war had been against the Earl of Glendale’s father and Daddy had gone to prison, along with the other martyrs from Glendale. Mammy had said that usually people would be ashamed of having a father in prison – like the McPhees, whose daddy had been taken to Portree and locked up for a couple of nights for being drunk and disorderly – but Jessie had to be proud of hers because he’d been locked up for a Good and Righteous Cause.

  Miss Stuart picked on Archie, who didn’t even have his hand up, to answer the question and who, of course, answered correctly. It was so unfair. Her brother was three years older than her and bound to know more. Archie should be in a separate class but there was only one teacher, two if you counted the head, Mr MacIntyre, for almost seventy children, so they were all taught together.

  Miss Stuart turned back to Isabel. ‘Find a seat, my dear. I’m sure you’ll get to know everyone’s names in time.’ She frowned at the class. ‘Isabel doesn’t have the Gaelic, so when you speak to her, mind your manners and talk in English, please.’

  Jessie smiled at Isabel, hoping that the new girl would choose the empty seat next to her. Fiona wasn’t at school today. Indeed, half the class was missing. It was a good day and most of them would be out with their mams and dads helping to turn the hay. It was only on a bad day, when the rain and wind lashed the land, that there was full attendance at school. Not that her daddy ever let Jessie miss school: he wasn’t having his children scrape a living from a land that bled the life from a man. He said education was the only way out, and Jessie planned to work hard enough to win a scholarship to the secondary school in Portree. Clever-clogs Archie had already won one and was going to Inverness after the summer to study for his senior school-leaving certificate.

  Jessie closed her eyes and sent a quick prayer heavenwards: Please, please, let the new girl sit next to me.

  She heard a rustle and opened her eyes to find that Isabel had taken the seat right at the front. God hadn’t listened. Probably because she shouldn’t have been asking for things for herself. It served her right. Daddy said she should only pray for other people.

  Even from two rows behind the new girl, Jessie caught the scent of oranges. Isabel was like one of the heroines out of the penny novels she borrowed from Fiona’s mam, although she was bound to be more interesting. And she already had breasts! Jessie was always studying her own flat chest, wondering when they’d start to grow and be big like her mammy’s. Mind you, some of the women Mammy helped birth had breasts that hung almost to their belly buttons. Too many children, Mammy said.

  Miss Stuart had laid aside the cue she’d used to point to South Africa on the map and was ready to start the lesson.

  There was more rustling as everyone cleaned their slates. Flora McPhee, who was sitting to the left of the new girl and right in front of Miss Stuart, so the teacher could keep an eye on her, spat on her cloth to clean her slate. Jessie hoped Isabel hadn’t noticed. She didn’t want her to think they were all like the McPhees. The MacCorquodales might not have much money, her mammy said, but that was no reason not to be clean and mind your manners.

  She was glad when Mr MacIntyre clanged the bell for playtime. Hunger had been gnawing at her for a while – the porridge and boiled egg she’d had after she’d milked Daisy had been hours ago.

  As the class spilled outside, Jessie scurried to the outdoor toilet, hoping to make it before the big boys. They spent ages in there and left it smelling worse than ever. By the time she’d come out and washed her hands under the tap in the courtyard, everyone was in the playground. As usual Archie was organising a game of football. It irked her no end that he always ignored her when he was with his friends. He wasn’t like that at home.

  Searching the crowd of laughing, squealing children for Isabel, she spotted her sitting on a rock, her back straight, knees and feet neatly together as she unwrapped her lunch from a piece of brown paper. Flora McPhee, who wasn’t in her usual spot behind the wall, well out of Miss Stuart’s and Mr MacIntyre’s sight, said something in Gaelic to her friends and they laughed and pointed at Isabel.

  ‘Who does she think she is, with her fancy ways?’ Flora said loudly, in English this time. ‘That just because she’s the doctor’s daughter she’s better than the rest of us?’

  Jessie’s heart started to pound. Flora McPhee was a bully, but if you stood up to her she’d back down soon enough. Isabel was ignoring Flora, seemingly intent on the package that lay open on her lap.

  Flora and her gang moved closer until they were standing in front of the new girl. Isabel looked up at them with steady brown eyes.

  ‘What fancy food do you have there?’ Flora asked, curling her lip in a way that made her look ridiculous.

  Isabel smiled politely and held out the package. ‘It’s a scone with cheese. The maid gave me too much. You’re welcome to some, if you like.’

  Jessie cringed. Isabel shouldn’t have mentioned a maid. Now there’d be no stopping Flora’s spite. Flora’s older sister, Agnes, had applied for a job at Dunvegan Castle and been turned down. The only people this had surprised had been the McPhees, who had boasted to anyone who would listen that their Agnes would get a job there and be set up for life. The McPhees had a terrible reputation and should have known that no one in the big house would employ anyone without checking with the minister; he was hardly likely to recommend any of the McPhees since they were the only villagers who didn’t attend either one of the two Sunday services – a shame even worse than Mr McPhee being in gaol, her daddy said. Mr McPhee had hated Daddy ever since Daddy had warned him not to hit Flora’s mam.

  Jessie dithered, not knowing what to do for the best. Should she go over or would her presence make it worse for Isabel? If Flora had an audience apart from her friends she might be less likely to back down. Jessie spun around, hoping to see Miss Stuart or Mr MacIntyre. No luck. Her eyes shifted to her brother. Archie, expertly dribbling the ball between his feet, glanced in her direction before his gaze slid past her. He trapped the ball under his foot and narrowed his eyes.

  Flora was too intent on her prey to notice Archie watching. She grabbed the scone out of Isabel’s hands and tore it in two. She offered some to her friends, who shook their heads. Flora popped a piece into her mouth, made a show of turning up her nose and spat it onto the ground. She flung the rest after it and a seagull swooped, snapped it up and flew off with it in its beak.

  It might still have been all right, if Isabel hadn’t stood up. Now she towered over Flora, who, although stocky and strong from lifting peats, was forced to look up at the doctor’s daughter.

  ‘I don’t mind if you want to share my lunch,’ Isabel said, ‘but I do mind if you waste it.’

  The wind had dropped and her voice carried across the playground. The children nearby stopped what they were doing and turned to stare.

  ‘You can mind what you like,’ Flora said. She moved closer to Isabel, but the new girl was either too stupid or too brave to retreat. Instead she held her ground, looking at Flora as if she were a cowpat on the sole of one of her highly polished boots. Now there was bound to be trouble. Flora was a dirty fighter.

  ‘Leave her alone.’ Archie’s voice was quiet.

  Jessie’s attention had been fixed on Isabel and Flora so she hadn’t heard him approach. She let her b
reath out. Archie was there. Everything would be fine now.

  Although he was a year older than Flora, Archie wasn’t much taller and a lot scrawnier. But Flora knew better than to take on Archie. A year ago he had lifted her bodily and dropped her in the burn after she had hit Jessie. And it wasn’t just that. Jessie had seen the way Flora looked at him – in the silly way that the girls who had breasts seemed to look at all the boys, and at Archie in particular. Mam had said it was because he would be a fine catch for any woman when it was time for him to take a wife – he’d inherited his father’s good looks and grit and would, no doubt, with a good education behind him, make something of himself one day. Jessie didn’t consider her brother good-looking. He had the same wide mouth and wild dark hair as herself, and was far too skinny. His hands and feet looked too big for his body, but Mam said it was only a matter of time before he grew into himself. Admittedly he had a nice smile and his eyes were a deeper, much nicer shade of blue than her own – cobalt, according to the label on a discarded box of almost finished watercolours she’d once found on the moors.

  ‘I said, leave her alone, Flora,’ Archie repeated softly, in Gaelic.

  Flora looked at him and flushed a deep red. She was pretty under the grime, with her jet-black hair and light blue eyes, and Archie might have walked out with her if she wasn’t so dirty – or so nasty.

  Flora tossed her head. ‘I was only having some fun, Archie.’

  ‘Well, away you go and have fun somewhere else,’ he replied.

  Flora muttered something under her breath to Isabel before she moved away, her friends following in her wake.

  Archie grinned at Isabel and said something to her that Jessie couldn’t hear. Whatever it was, it made Isabel smile, and the transformation in her face, from shy and almost plain to quite beautiful, made Jessie ache inside. Why couldn’t she look more like Isabel? Why had she inherited her mother’s curly brown hair that wouldn’t do as it was told, blowing this way and that when it was windy, which was pretty much all the time? Why couldn’t she have unusual brown eyes instead of the boring blue shared by most of the village? But, most of all, why couldn’t she have a smile that made people look at her in the way that Archie was looking at Isabel?