My father’s own voice is grim as he responds through clenched teeth. ‘They’re clearing Sgagarstaigh.’
‘Clearing Sgagarstaigh of what?’
‘Of people, son.’
I shake my head, perplexed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘They’ve been clearing folk off the land all over the Highlands ever since the government defeated the Jacobites at Culloden.’
‘Jacobites?’
My father glares at me in exasperation. ‘Jesus, son, did they teach you nothing at school?’ Then he shakes his head angrily. ‘Aye, right enough, maybe they wouldn’t. They say that history is only written by the victors.’ He raises his head, drawing phlegm into his mouth, and spitting into the flow of water that tumbles down the hill. ‘But I heard it from my father, who heard it from his. And now you’re hearing it from me.’
A cheer, carried to us on the edge of the rain, draws our eyes back to the chaos unravelling below, and we see that the roof of one of the blackhouses has fallen in, sending a shower of sparks into the air to be carried off in the wind.
My father turns back to me. ‘The Jacobites were supporters of the Stuart kings that once ruled Scotland and England, son. Just about a hundred years ago there was an uprising all across the Highlands. Jacobites who wanted to restore the Stuarts to the throne. With the Young Pretender, Prince Charlie, at their head, they marched south and came within striking distance of London. But in the end they were driven back, and finally crushed at a place called Culloden, near Inverness.’ He sucked in a long, slow breath and shook his head. ‘It was a slaughter, son. And afterwards, the government sent a battalion of criminals from English jails on a rampage through the Highlands. They killed Gaelic speakers and raped their women. And in London the government passed laws that made it illegal to wear the kilt or play the bagpipes. If you spoke the Gaelic in a court of law you were deemed not to have spoken at all, and so there was no way of getting justice.’
It is the first time I have heard any of this, and I feel a growing sense of outrage.
‘The government wanted to destroy the old clan system, so there could never be another uprising. They bribed some of the old clan chiefs, and sold off the estates of others to wealthy Lowlanders and Englishmen. And the new breed of lairds, like Guthrie, and Matheson, and Gordon of Clunie, wanted the people off their land. You see, sheep are more profitable than people, son.’
‘Sheep?’
‘Aye, they want to turn over all the land to sheep.’
‘But how can they do that?’
My father’s laugh was full of bitterness and no humour at all. ‘The landowners can do what they like, boy. They have the law on their side.’
I shake my head. ‘But … how?’
‘Because the law is made to keep the powerful in power, and the rich wealthy. As well as the poor in poverty. Tenants like us can barely survive on what we produce on our crofts. Well, you know that! But it doesn’t stop us having to pay rent, even though we have no money. So the landlords issue notices of eviction. If we can’t pay up we get thrown off. Burned out of our homes so we can’t go back to them. Forced on to boats and sent off across the sea to Canada and America. That way they’re rid of us once and for all. The bastards even pay our passage. Some of them. They must reckon it’s cheap at the price.’
I find it hard to take in everything my father is saying. I am bewildered. I had always thought that Baile Mhanais and everything I know here would be for ever. ‘But what if you don’t want to go?’
‘Pfah!’ My father’s contempt explodes from his mouth like spittle. ‘You don’t have any choice, son. Your life is not your own. Like I’ve told you before, the laird owns the land and everything on it. And that includes us.’ He removes his cap to sweep his hair back from his forehead before pulling it back on again. ‘Even under the old clan chiefs. If they wanted us to go and fight in whatever war they’d given their support to, we had to drop everything and march off to battle. Give them our lives. Even if it was for some bloody cause that meant nothing to us.’
More shouts from below draw our attention.
‘Jesus,’ my father almost whispers. ‘The poor buggers are jumping off the ship now.’
We crawl a little further around the rock to get a better view, and I see two men in the water, and a third jumping from the deck of the tall ship after them. The rowing boat is halfway between the ship and the shore, and laden with another load of villagers. So it can’t go after them.
The men who have jumped ship strike out for shore, swimming for their lives. But the water is choppy in the wind, and icy cold. I see one of the men struggling now, splashing frantically, before he vanishes beneath the surface. And he is gone, and doesn’t reappear. I find it hard to believe I am lying here on the hillside, not half an hour from my own home, watching a man drown in the loch as hundreds of people look on.
A quiet, slow-burning anger takes root inside of me. ‘Are you telling me it’s our own laird, Sir John Guthrie, who’s doing this?’ I say.
‘Aye, son, it is. He’s been clearing villages all up the west coast this last year.’ He turns to look at me. ‘I reckon if it wasn’t for you saving his daughter’s life all those years ago, Baile Mhanais would have been long gone, too.’
The two others who jumped ship reach shore below us. One of them can barely stand, and is easy prey for the group of half a dozen constables who detach themselves from the rest and run around the loch’s edge. They are on him in a moment, batons rising and falling in the rain, beating him to the ground.
The other is a bigger man, stronger, and he strikes off up the hill, setting a course almost directly for where we lie hidden by the rocks.
‘My God,’ I hear my father gasp. ‘That’s Seoras Mackay. A fine man.’ And he turns towards me, fear in his eyes. ‘For Heaven’s sake, son, hide yourself! They’re coming this way.’
I don’t see where it is my father goes, but in a moment of blind panic I roll through the icy waters of the burn and conceal myself beneath a bank of overhanging ferns. Half of me is still in the water, my nose filled with the smell of damp earth and rotting vegetation, and my teeth are chittering with the cold. I can feel the pounding of feet vibrating through the ground beneath me and then, getting closer, the harsh rasp of lungs desperately gasping for breath.
Seoras Mackay and his pursuers are almost right on top of me when they catch up with him and bring him crashing to the ground. The earth shakes with the weight of the big man, and all the air is forced from his lungs. His face is on a level with mine, no more than eighteen inches away. He looks at me through the ferns. For a moment it seems to me as if those sad brown eyes of his are appealing to me for help. But then they are clouded by resignation as he suffers several blows from the batons of the constables. One of them kneels on his back, pulling his arms behind him, and his wrists and ankles are locked in irons. I hear the dull, brutal clank of metal chains, and he is hauled to his feet to be dragged off back down the hill. Eye contact broken and lost for ever, like Seoras himself.
There is more bad weather on the way. I can see it gathering far out at sea. Behind me the sun sprays yellow light across a fractured landscape, and the wind blows strong enough to knock you off your feet if you don’t have them planted right. The tormentil and bog cotton are flattened by it, and I can hear it howling through the standing stones beyond the ridge of the hollow above my head. Even in the shelter of the hollow itself, the tough, spiky beach grasses that bind the sand bend and fibrillate, almost singing in the wind.
I am crouched on a stone, and might be carved out of the same gneiss myself. I don’t feel the cold. It would be difficult to be colder on the outside than I am within. I stare out at the whitecaps blowing in ahead of the coming storm, and feel waves of icy emotion breaking over me.