39

Reaching Bealach na Clachan, I allowed the horse to drink its fill as I sat on the wall of one of the ruined cells and gazed down upon Breakish. Far out to sea and little more than a speck at the apex of its spreading wake, the paddle steamer was making its way towards the Outer Hebrides. It was a fine day, the shadow of the clouds moving over the sea, the faraway islands seeming nearer than they really were. Saint Maelrubha’s disciples would have recognised the panorama and, I thought, would probably have understood the world as well, and marvelled at how slightly their preaching or teachings had affected it. Little would have seemed to have changed since the days of the pagan King Niall of the Nine Hostages, who kidnapped one royal nobleman from every kingdom he conquered, to ensure the people remained subjugated. Only the technology of warfare would have puzzled or intrigued the saint’s followers.

When the horse was done, I topped up my canteen and set off once more, allowing the animal to set its own pace. I lacked confidence as a rider and did not wish to risk an accident during my descent down the steep track that ran along the bleak mountainside. Consequently, it was dusk by the time I arrived in the village, just as it had been on my first coming to the place. Ogilvy met me at the door of the inn.

‘Alec, it’s so very good to see you safe and sound.’

I smiled, dismounted and undid the strap that held my small bag to the saddle.

‘I received the letter,’ he went on, tethering the horse. ‘Your doctor explained how things are with you.’

He took the bag and I followed him in. The parlour looked exactly as it had when last I left it in the company of my arresting party.

‘Here,’ Ogilvy offered, ‘will you not sit down? Take the weight off your legs. I’ll bet you feel shaped to the back of that nag out there.’

He pulled a chair out from the table and set it down by the hearth. Peat blocks were stacked to one side of the grate. The fire burned strongly, the air heavy with its warmth.

‘It’ll have been a tiring day. You’ll have a wee nip of barley-bree? Your doctor advised that I shouldn’t give you whisky, but’—he grinned and put his hand on my shoulder—‘how can you sit by a fire of peat with an old friend in the Highlands and not have a dram of malt in your fist?’

He poured out two glasses, handing me one. I noticed his measure was larger than mine.

‘Slàinte!’

I drank. It was smooth and mellow.

‘That’s a real whisky,’ Ogilvy declared, looking approvingly at his glass, now half-empty. ‘Twenty years in the cask, sweet as the song of little birds. When I knew you were coming, I ordered a bottle in from Kyle. And to hell with the medical men. Whisky’s been healing souls longer than doctors. And now, food!’

He stood up and went into the pantry. I followed him.

‘You’ll want to know what’s been happening hereabouts,’ he began as he removed a joint of lamb from a meat safe. ‘Mr. McGillivray’s gone. He left in the spring of 1915, to serve with the Cameron Highlanders. They made him a Major. He was killed in the September, during the battle for Hill Seventy near Loos. In all, thirteen men from Breakish went off to the war. Three returned.’

He stopped talking for a minute as he sharpened a carving knife, the two remaining fingers of his right hand gripping the whetstone.

‘Breakish is now a place of old men, sad women and a few young lads grown to age before their time,’ he continued as he sliced the cold lamb. ‘You’ll remember Jamie? He’s a strapping young man, a fisherman like his father before him. Handsome, too. His mother’s moved away. I’ve heard she’s living with her sister in Invergarry and gone into service. The sister’s a maid in a grand house there. Since she left, I’ve run the inn on my own. It’s not so much of a problem. Since the war, there’ve been few folk coming to stay.’

Putting the sliced meat on a plate and placing beside it several cold boiled potatoes and a pickled onion, he carried my meal into the parlour and set me a place at the table.

‘I finished my life story,’ he said, ‘and sent it off to a publisher in Edinburgh. To my utter surprise, they’ve taken it on and sent me an advance for a hundred pounds. It’s to appear in the bookshops next year. Who knows?’ He laughed at the thought. ‘I might become a famous author. I could do with it. The advance is what’s keeping me going now that the inn isn’t so busy. Not,’ he added, with a grin, ‘that it ever was!’

I smiled again and turned my attention to the meal. Ogilvy poured himself another whisky and added a drop to my own glass.

‘I’ve prepared the same room for you as you had before. Your doctor said it would be good if matters here were as similar now as to how they were then. He was of the opinion this might help you. Mind you, Alec, I’d’ve put you in there anyway.’

For as long as it took me to eat, he leaned back in a chair by the fire and did not speak. Only when I put the knife and fork down did he move, taking the empty plate away.

‘Will you take a walk with me?’ he asked.

I nodded and we set off in the early evening light along the quay before the houses. The tide was out, just one boat lying on the mud and shingle, her mast tilted over. There was no one about, but candlelight glimmered in a few of the windows.

‘Breakish is to be sold,’ he said. ‘Mr. McGillivray had a son, but he’s not interested in being the new laird. Some of the houses are empty already. Folk are moving away, especially the youngsters. Going to Australia, Canada. There’s no future for them here. Another five years and Breakish will be occupied only by ghosts.’

We walked on, saying nothing, looking out to the sea and listening to the hush of the waves outside the little harbour.

‘Your doctor seems a kindly soul,’ Ogilvy remarked at length. ‘He’s told me all about Gallipoli, let me know because he said I wasn’t to mention it.’ He put his hand on my arm. ‘By all accounts, you were a brave man, Alec. He told me you got a medal.’

I looked at him but made no reply and we continued on our way, passing the little church and graveyard of simple headstones until we reached the end of the harbour inlet. From there, out to sea, we could just discern the outline of Eilean Tosdach.

‘There was a mighty storm,’ he began. ‘Three months ago. A real typhoon, the likes of which I never saw in my days at sea. The waves broke over the houses in Breakish. It smashed six of the boats to smithereens on the quay. Only three, run aground behind the headland for caulking, were left undamaged. A steamer making for Skye ran onto the rocks six miles to the north. No one survived. We had bodies floating into the bay for a week, as the tides brought them round.’ He turned to face me. ‘The croft, you remember, faced out to sea and was right there on that tiny beach. The storm struck at night. They’d not have stood a chance.’

Even had I so wanted, there was nothing for me to say, yet Ogilvy knew what was in my mind.

‘No sooner had the wind abated and the sea gone down a bit, I went along to the broch. If they had endured, I was sure the girl would come ashore as she had in the past. I waited all that day, and the next. She never came and I saw no sign of life on the island.’

He and I set off back to Breakish. He did not speak again until we arrived at the inn.

‘You must rest tonight, Alec. Have a good night’s sleep. I’ve spoken to Jamie for you. He’ll take you out there in the morrow.’

Despite Ogilvy’s exhortation, I did not sleep and, at dawn, rose to sit on the bench by the inn door. The air was chilly, an onshore breeze giving it an edge. At seven o’clock, Jamie came up to me. He was, as Ogilvy had told me, now a strongly built young man in his late teens. Regarding him standing before me, I was glad he had escaped conscription.

After Ogilvy had given us each a plate of hot porridge and a mug of tea, we set off in Jamie’s fishing boat, the one I had seen in the harbour the evening before. It was not the same craft as I had previously sailed in to Eilean Tosdach but bigger and obviously newer. He must, I thought, have been making good money from the sea.

We did not talk and I presumed he had been informed I was now mute, and why.

In less than twenty minutes, we reached the tip of the island where the causewayed broch stood. At this point, I had expected Jamie to make down the strait, but instead he steered along the seawards shore, lowering the sail and letting the craft drift in to a place where there was a low projecting shelf of rock about three feet above sea level.

‘I’ll wait for you here, sir,’ he said, tossing a rope with a grappling hook into the scrub and securing it to the bow. ‘The homestead is just along a way. Don’t be more than an hour.’

The combe was less than a hundred yards off. I approached it quite openly and entered it on a pathway running through the rocks by where the chicken coop had been. The wicker hurdles were still there but askew; nearby, the vegetable beds were covered with newly emerging weeds. The croft itself was semi-derelict, a section of the roof caved in. The hide curtain still hanging in the doorway, I pushed aside and entered. The simplest of domestic utensils lay strewn about—some wooden bowls, spoons and ladles, an iron pot, several wooden plates and a heavy pottery jar made not on a wheel but by coiling. From a nail driven into a beam hung a string bag. Tipped on its side between the hearthstones were the charred remains of a three-legged stool, whilst where there would have been a bed there was now a pile of the turves that had formed the roof.

As I stepped out of the ruin, I heard a dog bark. It was up towards the ridge. I waited, to be sure I was not just imagining it. It barked again.

Setting off as quickly as I could, I headed up the slope. Just below the top of the ridge, an oblong of ground had been cleared of bracken and heather. In the centre of the clearing were two low, untidy cairns, little more than clumsily erected piles of stones. By the nearest, a number of crows were scattered about the ground, being harassed by the dog, which was running at them, then, finding the birds emboldened, retreating from their sharp beaks when they came at it. On my approach, however, they rose and veered off on the wind, cawing peevishly and settling on the scrub a short distance away, from where they observed me.

No sooner had the crows flown off than the dog darted forward, picked something white up off the ground and ran with it to the far edge of the clearing.

A number of the cairn stones had fallen, or been loosened by the dog, to lay bare the head, right shoulder and arm of the old woman; I could tell it was her from the tangle of long grey hair still tied in a now disintegrating bun. Her corpse had rotted badly, the flesh in tatters where the birds had been feeding upon it. The hand was missing, the arm ending in a blackened stump from which hung fibrous strips of tendon.

Beyond the cairn, the dog sat on the ground, its paw holding down the missing hand as it gnawed at one of the fingers, breaking it off and chewing upon it.

It was then I knew there was nothing left for me to experience. I had seen whatever wickedness there was to see. Never again would I be shocked, be aghast at what lay before me, be perplexed or confounded, or afraid.

Facing the mountains and the crumbling tower of the broch of Dùn an Làmh Thoisgeal across the strait, I raised my head and screamed. It was not so much a piercing screech as a caterwauling howl that echoed in my head, born neither of pain nor sorrow, nor anger nor surrender, but of catharsis. The wind took my soul away, scattering it over the heather as it might thistledown. And when I had no more breath, I just stood, silent and empty, my hands by my side and my eyes closed, only the wind holding me up.

How long I remained immobile by the cairns I do not know, but it must have been a good few minutes, for the dog, in the meantime, had finished off the hand and, plucking up its courage, had crept back to gnaw on the old woman’s arm.

Gaining my senses, I gave the dog as hard a kick as I could in its midriff. Intent on feeding, it did not see the blow coming and yelped as my boot struck it, lifting it clear of the ground. It limped away as fast as it could into the scrub.

The second cairn was undisturbed, but I knew I would have to dismantle a part of it. I had to discover who lay beneath its stones. And so, one by one, I lifted them aside until, through a crevice, I saw a naked foot. It was badly decomposed, but I knew instantly it was that of the old man.

I rebuilt the cairns, adding more stones I found in the undergrowth and fitting them firmly together in the style of the broch builders so that the dog would be unable to dislodge them. Finally, I arranged several flat slabs against the base to act as a deterrent to scrabbling, digging paws and inquisitive, stabbing beaks.

As I was placing the last stone, I saw Jamie approaching me up the ridge. He was striding through the bracken, young and confident, unafraid of briosags, trolls or any other casters of spells.

‘We’ve to go, Mr. Marquand,’ he said. ‘We’ve to take the tide when we can.’

I followed him down towards the combe. As we arrived at the croft, I hung back. Jamie walked on a few paces, stopped and turned.

‘Just a wee moment, Mr. Marquand,’ he said and he carried on.

When he was gone, I pulled the medal out of my pocket. It was cast in silver, the king’s head on one side, the other embossed with the words ‘For Distinguished Conduct in the Field.’ The ribbon attached to it was dark red with a single royal blue stripe down the centre. Carefully, I slid it into a crack in the wall of the hovel, working it well in so that no one might see it.

As we sailed back to Breakish, I wondered what might have become of her. That she had survived the storm was obvious: who else but her would have buried the dead? Yet it was just as evident from the derelict croft that she no longer lived on Eilean Tosdach. Like me, she was lost.

In the afternoon, I walked along the shore to the broch. It was just as I had left it, only my excavation trenches were now shallow pools surrounded by clumps of sedge. Sitting on the boulder upon which I had eaten my lunch that first day, I gazed across to the island. No longer a place of mystery and danger to me, it was now just an expanse of rock and wind-shaped scrub rising out from the sea, of no value to anyone save a fisherman caught, as Jamie’s father had been, unawares by the fickleness of the malicious sea.

‘You’ll be off on the morrow,’ Ogilvy remarked as I returned to the inn. ‘Jamie’s told me of what you found. I’m sorry.’

That evening, I ate little. Ogilvy sat at the table with his gold-nibbed fountain pen, correcting the galley proofs of his autobiography, which had arrived that day. At nine, I left him and, mounting the stairs to my room, washed myself in the basin, undressed and got into bed. It began to rain, the first spots pattering on the windowpane.

It was already daylight when I woke, but still raining. Down on the quay a dog was barking with a steady, insistent yap and I realised, as I gained my wits, that it had been this which had roused me from my sleep.

Tugging on my trousers and going to the window, I opened the pane. The dog stopped its racket. Below, standing in the rain a little way off, was a figure looking up at me.

It was her, her hair wet and clinging to her face, her clothing soaked through. Brushing her hair from her cheek, she held up her hand, opening and closing her fingers in a childish wave.

For a moment I was transfixed, then, spinning round, ran from my room and sped headlong down the stairs, tripping over the steps and almost falling in my haste. Slamming open the inn door, I rushed out onto the quay. There was no one there. Both she and the dog had vanished.

Ignoring the chilling rain, I sprinted to the first house. The door was shut. I rattled the latch. It was locked. So was that of the second house. I gave a quick glance over the quay into the harbour in the hope that I might see her coracle moored by the steps. Only Jamie’s fishing vessel lay alongside.

Doubling back, I headed up the path that left the village for the mountains and Bealach na Clachan. For the first three hundred yards the track went across open pasture. There was no one upon it.

Footsteps came hurrying up behind me. It was Ogilvy.

‘Alec! Are you all right? You’d best come back or you’ll catch your death.’

He took me by the arm and we returned to the inn.

‘I heard you tumbling like an avalanche down the stairs,’ he said. ‘It must have just been a bad dream.’

Perhaps, I thought, but if she had truly been standing there in the rain, and had been more than just a dream or the answer to a prayer, she was gone now. Yet I knew I would see her again, often, over the rest of my life, for whenever I was in need of love or comfort she would come on my command and we would sit together in the croft in the combe and listen to the gulls crying, the waves shifting the shingle and the driftwood spitting in the fire.