The door scraped open and Tom swung round, fists up. There in front of him stood Beathag, Peigi and the others, staring. Red-faced he lowered his arms. Beathag shook her head and held out the Bible she had clutched in her hand.
Now that his heart had stopped banging in his ears, he saw that they were all dressed in clean, sombre black. Several of them had Bibles cradled in their raw fingers. He could barely recognize them out of their rank work clothes. Before they were anonymous but now they had become shapely young women. Only their ravaged hands betrayed them. He felt contrite at doubting them. He had condemned them as being coarse and loud mouthed, felt a secret relief when they didn’t recognize the portrait. He had loathed the idea that his Celtic princess might be reduced to becoming a fish gutter. Yet, despite doing foul, tedious work, they took such pains to spruce themselves up to attend church.
He stammered an apology. They smiled and nodded, but they were subdued for the rest of the day. He didn’t know whether it was because he had offended them or if this was their usual Sunday demeanour. At the break of day the next morning, Beathag stuffed his pack with provisions. She just smiled when he turned out his pockets to show their emptiness. She led him along narrow tracks to a quiet inlet away from the town. Two men waited by a skiff very like the one that had eluded the cutter. He owed these poor women so much. He felt in his pack and took out his telescope, the one that he used to keep in his uniform jacket. His father had given it to him when he left to become a midshipman. His last link with home. Damp had dulled the brass and streaked it green but it was still valuable. He pressed it into her reluctant hand and ran to help launch the boat.
The fishermen sailed first to Tiree. “Before they run dry,” one of them said.
There was a cheering crowd to greet them and a forest of arms to pull the boat up onto the smooth golden sands. Tom was feted like a hero. All the men wanted to pump his hand or slap him on the back. The children pulled at his jacket or tweaked his fingers. The women were more circumspect, giving him sidelong glances from lowered eyes. In the evening, a fiddler appeared and everyone danced on the springy machair. Now the young women became bolder and held onto his hand as they spun with him in the reels.
Disentangling himself he sought refuge with the men drinking the smuggled whisky.
“Seo an duine bàn, Here’s the fair man,” called out Alasdair, the old man who had been sitting on the lobster pots. The whisky was raw and Tom had lost the habit of taking strong drink. His legs crumpled under him and he remembered nothing more until he woke up on a sweet-smelling, heather-filled mattress. He groaned as daylight dazzled his eyes. Alasdair came to see him, accompanied by a man wearing a starched collar and tie. Tom leapt to his feet but Alasdair’s smile reassured him.
The stranger was a neatly made man with smoothed down hair. He explained that he was the schoolmaster, Alan MacMillan. He had come to translate for Alasdair. “He says you were somewhat, er … intoxicated last night.”
Tom laughed. “I wasn’t alone in that.”
“No indeed, but Alasdair was worried about what you said when you were with drink. You spoke about deserting your ship, a serious matter.”
Tom groaned and rubbed his eyes.
“He says that no one here would dream of betraying you, but you must guard your tongue. Whatever you’ve done the people here think highly of you and want to be of service. Alasdair has a son who works at Tainuilt, not far from Oban. There’s a big ironworks near there at Bonawe. It employs hundreds of men. He believes you would be safe enough there.”
“I know Tainuilt, ‘the house by the stream.’ I remember the Cap … no matter. I suppose it’s all men working there? I’m still looking for that lassie.” Alasdair gleaned enough of his words to break into a wheezy laugh while MacLean cleared his throat.
“You’re fortunate to have a chance to redeem yourself. I would advise you to stay sober and work hard.”
Tom blushed with a mixture of annoyance and embarrassment. Alasdair patted him on the shoulder and winked.
His new friends from Tiree delivered him to the quay at Bonawe. A row of carts were being loaded with iron ore disgorged from a steamship. Tom ambled after them when they set off inland. He didn’t want to risk seeking work on a boat again but what else could he do? Sailors laughed about landlubbers who turned green in a storm but they were the ones out of their element on land. He had spent all his adult life at sea and knew nothing about iron smelting. There had to be a furnace, of course, but what else? He felt as dumbfounded as he did when he first arrived at boarding school, standing alone among jostling crowds of boys who knew their way around. He would have to look nonchalant and watch the others until he knew what to do. As the carts lumbered along, he could see a sullen fog above the trees ahead. Soon there were more carts coming up behind, piled high with charcoal. Horses whinnied, men shouted, and hammers thudded. They passed by houses, a solid stone terrace alongside makeshift wooden cabins. Then he could see the furnace itself, stretching over forty feet into the sky, a hulking landlocked lighthouse, spewing out smoke instead of light. There was the wheel turning with a gentle slap of water. Nearby was a collection of stone buildings. He supposed they would be used for storing the fuel that was shoveled into the furnace’s gaping mouth. The first man to catch Tom’s eye was a figure clad in business black with a clutch of papers in his hand. He stopped when Tom intercepted him.
“I’m looking for a position. I’ve a fair hand and I was quick at arithmetic at school.” He thickened his voice, trying to appear both humble and keen.
“Hmm. I’ve enough clerks already.”
“I can turn my hands to most things. I used to work with horses.”
The other man looked doubtful.
“John Robinson at your service,” Tom said with his most winning smile. He had decided to use his grandfather’s Christian name and his mother’s maiden name, hoping that their familiarity would make them stick more readily to his tongue.
“I’m William Brown. I look after the business side of things for Mr. Armstrong while he’s down in Furness.”
“And you’re from there yourself? It makes a pleasant change to hear an English voice, especially a North Country one.”
Brown didn’t reply at first. He seemed to be puzzled by a stranger with a gentleman’s manners who wanted a laborer’s job.
“We use local men for the fetching and carrying. Hmm, well we are losing the Campbells, father and son. They’re off on an emigrant ship. Very well. I’ll give you a week’s trial.”
Tom’s face lit up.
“Six days a week, loading the carts. Half-day on Saturdays. It’s hard labor.”
Tom brushed the warning aside but he soon found out the truth of Brown’s words. He would have said that he had endured long hours as a naval officer with the endless round of watches. But there were plenty of slack times while the ship steamed on her way and he could sit quietly at the chart table. His body had hardened with all the tramping through rough countryside, but even that hadn’t prepared him for what he faced now, loading iron ore and limestone from the quay and charcoal from the woods, carrying hay to the horses and sweeping out their stables. He set to the work willingly and Brown kept him on after the first week.
Tom moved easily among the other workers, always with a cheerful word for everyone but giving away little about himself. He was a garden robin, hopping close with head cocked but backing away from an outstretched hand. Weeks sped by in a routine of work and sleep. He didn’t risk going into Tainuilt for a drink. He spent what little free time he had sketching in the woods, wishing that he had the paints to reveal the hues and textures there. The bronze green of the beech branches, the pungent cushioned yellow of the lichens and the musty, deep brown, crumbling forest floor beneath. An oak tree wrecked in a storm lay with most of its roots writhing in the air and its moss-furred trunk flat on the ground. Its outstretched branches pleaded for life, a few limp leaves still clinging to its fingers, a felled green giant slowly dying. After discovering the fallen tree, he avoided that part of the forest.
The charcoal burners lived in the forest, wary as deer. Eventually they crept close enough to watch him. He drew portraits for them but they wouldn’t accept them.
Sometimes he went sea fishing with Ewan MacKay, a man of few words in either Gaelic or English. They would catch mackerel and string them over a fire on the shore. Tom felt some peace as they baked potatoes in the embers and sat juggling them from hand to hand while they cooled. Mostly he lived in the moment like the horses he tended. He let hard physical labor numb his mind but as spring and summer stretched into the slow decay of autumn he woke early in his bothy with a sense of clammy dread.
What would become of him? Would he have to wander through his life with a secret past and no future? Soon it would be a year since he deserted and for what? A will o’ the wisp glimpse of a girl he would never see again. Like the departing swallows she had disappeared into endless sky.
Mostly, though, he wouldn’t let himself think. Just concentrate on leading Hector he scolded himself one misty morning as his breath mingled in the sharp air with the horse’s. What was the matter with the beast today? Usually placid he had become skittish, prancing on his huge feathered feet. He seemed to be infecting the horses behind with his unease, for they too were snorting and tossing their heads.
In exasperation, Tom raised his whip. As he did so, he felt his arm tremble and his body sway. Using all his strength, he hauled on the reins to stop Hector and turn the beast’s head around. The carter behind him swore as he had to pull his own horse to a halt. By then, Tom had leapt down from the cart, knife in hand and slashed through the traces, slapping Hector on the rump to make him run back. He was cutting through the harness of the horse behind when the ground shuddered beneath them. The sky exploded in spouting flames, spitting out rocks like molten hailstones. A searing ash fell on them. Tom hunched low to avoid the barrage and leapt to seize the reins of a bucking horse farther back in the line. Then something heavy thudded into his back, thrusting him forward. He was tossed into the air before being pitched into a thundering blackness.