We run, the sympathetic crowd parting as we pass. Many have lost family in the fire and few bear any love for the English mill owner. We race towards home and stumble up the steps to our room.
In the space of a few moments we’ve become both orphans and fugitives, and whether it’s my fever or the sudden realization that my parents are dead, I reel, vainly fighting the urge to throw up.
From my knees I watch helplessly as Libby stuffs our few possessions into a small canvas sack. “Get up, Duncan. We need to leave now.” In the corner of the room is a loose floorboard under which Father concealed our meagre savings. We weren’t supposed to know about the money, but it’s impossible to keep secrets in such a small place. Libby reaches under the board, tucks the bag into her coat and walks towards the door, listening nervously for the sound of pursuers. Frozen, I remain on the floor shaking, my eyes now riveted on a picture of our cottage in the Highlands my mother had embroidered years before.
“Take it,” she says gently, lifting it from the wall and giving it to me. “’Tis all we have left of them now.” Libby cautiously opens the door. There’s nobody about and so, without a backward glance, we hurry down the staircase.
Remaining in Glasgow is now utterly impossible for me. People who steal a mere loaf of bread in Scotland are routinely jailed or transported overseas. To assault a man of Hamilton’s stature in front of hundreds of witnesses? I’ll be executed if I’m caught.
My sister pulls my coat tightly around my shoulders, places a worn cap upon my head, and we step out onto the street, alive with talk of the fire and the attack on Hamilton.
We walk swiftly and deliberately, keeping our faces down, hoping desperately we won’t be recognized. I panic when we pass a troop of soldiers questioning a familiar, soot-covered man. By the looks of the blood and bruises on Angus’s face, the troops have been rough on him.
“Oi! Come on then,” says a soldier. “We know the boy’s a mate of yours. You’d better tell us where we can find ’im.” We turn our faces and walk quickly on, leaving Angus at the mercy of the soldiers. There’s nothing we can do except pray our friend stays silent long enough to let us escape.
Numb with grief and still battling illness, I walk for hours beside Libby, hardly noticing when the bustle of Glasgow is replaced by the quiet of the Scottish countryside. The change is remarkable. Spring flowers bloom in the fields, songbirds chirp and flutter about the hedgerows, and for the first time in months, I smell the rich musty odour of freshly turned earth.
Tears spring from my eyes but Libby forces me to push the painful thoughts from my mind. “There’ll be time enough for that when we’re safe, brother. One foot in front of the other until we’re far away from Glasgow. One foot in front of the other.”
With as much speed as we can muster, we pass furtively through the rolling hills of the Scottish Lowlands, avoiding towns and people as much as possible. We sleep in barns and sheds when we can and under hedgerows or the open sky the rest of the time.
What little food we eat comes from the fields: half-rotten seed potatoes, turnips and carrots left over from the last harvest, washed down with cold water from the countless small streams that run down from the hills. It isn’t much, but it keeps us alive.
Four days after fleeing Glasgow I ask the question that has been consuming me since the fire. “Libby, do ye think Mother and Father would be alive if we’d gone to work? Could we have saved them?” My guilt at their death has been growing by the day.
“Nae. We’d have died as well, I reckon,” she replies.
“Do ye think Hamilton’s dead, too? Did I kill him?”
“A dinnae ken fer sure, Duncan, but I doubt it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I say flatly. “Dead or alive they won’t stop hunting until they find me.”
The thought chills my sister and she quickens the pace. “Then we’d best keep moving as far and as fast as we can, even if that means going all the way to London.”
On a cool rain-swept afternoon, a week after leaving Glasgow, we come across a tumbledown collection of old stones stretching far across the countryside. I’ve never seen these ruins before, but I know immediately what they are.
“In ancient days, the Romans conquered England,” my father had told me one day back at Loch Tay as we gathered in hay. “They pushed north, vanquishing all who tried to resist them, and it wasn’t until they reached Scotland that they were finally stopped. The Romans built a barricade to protect themselves from us, and to this day Hadrian’s Wall still stands as a reminder of the strength of the Scottish people.”
“Have ye ever seen the wall?” I’d asked, full of pride.
“Nae lad, though I’d love one day fer us to go together.”
I pause for a moment and put my hand reverently on one of the ancient stones, my grief overwhelming me. My father will never see this wall. He will never see anything again.
“Hadrian’s Wall is everything ye said it was, Father. I just wish ye were here with me.”
I step through the ruins, and as the tumbledown stone wall passes out of view behind me, I take a deep breath, compose myself and press into England — and the unknown.