I knelt over my father and cut away his shirt. There was a gaping hole where the bullet had torn through his chest just below the ribcage, shattering bone and flesh. The bullet had not come out the other side, so I could only think it had lodged in his spine. I could tell from the feeble beating of his heart, and the fact that the wound had stopped bleeding, that he had lost too much blood to recover. He was in shock and fading fast.
He opened eyes clouded as if by cataracts, and I am not sure that he even saw me. His hand clutched my forearm. A grip like steel, before slowly relaxing. And a long, hollow sigh slipped from between his lips as the last breath of his life escaped his body.
I had never felt such desolation. His eyes were still open, staring up at me, and I gently placed my hand over them to draw the lids shut. Then I leaned over to kiss him on the lips, and my tears fell hot on skin that was already cold.
The coffin was a crudely made oblong box stained black from the roots of water lilies. It sat on the backs of two chairs set on the path outside our blackhouse. More than a hundred folk were gathered there in a silence broken only by the plaintive cries of gulls driven inshore by bad weather at sea, and the ocean itself sweeping in on a high tide to beat its endless rhythm on the shingle beach.
The men wore caps, and the women covered their heads with scarves. Those of us who could wore black. But we were a ragged collection of dispirited humanity, dressed in little more than tatters and rags, with faces starved of colour and hollowed out by famine.
The wind had swung around to the north-west, banishing the last vestiges of summer. A mourning sky laden with low cloud prepared to weep its sorrow on the land. Old blind Calum, still dressed in his threadbare blue jacket with its faded yellow buttons, stood by the coffin. His face was like putty, and he placed his skeletal old hand on the wood. In the years since he had lost his sight he had committed much of the Gaelic bible to heart. And he recited from it now.
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’
And how I wished with all my heart that it would be true.
The coffin was fastened to oars on either side of it, and six of us lifted them, three to each, so that the coffin hung between us as we took my father on his final journey. Up over the hill and down the far side to the sweep of silver sand that curved around to the cemetery.
Only the men accompanied him. Thirty or forty of us. When finally we arrived at the little overgrown patch of machair where stones grew among the grass, myself and two others set about digging a hole in the sandy soil. It took nearly half an hour to make it deep enough for the coffin. There was no ceremony, no words were spoken, no minister present as it was lowered into the ground and covered over. Turf carried from the croft was bedded down on top of the loose soil and small stones placed at the head and foot.
And it was over. My father gone. Placed in the ground with his ancestors, existing now only in the memories of those who had known him.
The men turned away and walked back along the beach, silently retracing their footprints in the sand, leaving me there battered by the wind just below the standing stones where I had made my first tryst with Kirsty. Death comes, but the struggle to live goes on. Beyond the headland I could see women and children on the far shore. Pathetic figures stooped among the rocks and the retreating tide, scavenging for shellfish. And I felt the first spots of rain, like the tears that I could not cry myself.
I turned and was startled to see Kirsty standing there. She wore a long black gown, a cape with its hood pulled up over her head. Her face was as white as bleached bones. We stood staring at each other for what seemed like an eternity, and I could see her shock at my appearance. She said in a very small voice, ‘I wept for you when I heard the news.’
I frowned. ‘How did you know?’
‘Some of the servants told me a man had been shot during a raid on the deer forest. Men from the Baile Mhanais township, they said.’ She paused, struggling to control her voice. ‘For an awful moment I thought it might have been you. And then I heard that it was your father.’ She sucked in her lower lip and reached out to hold my face in both her hands. Soft, cool hands on my burning skin. ‘I am so sorry, Simon.’
And her sympathy, and that moment of tenderness, broke my resolve to be brave, and my tears came at last.
She said, ‘The Sheriff-Depute has been to take statements, but it seems no one knows who fired the fatal shot. They say it was an accident.’
Anger flared in me briefly, but quickly subsided. Nothing could change what had happened. Nothing could bring my father back. All I could do now was be who he wanted me to be. I wiped away my tears. ‘My family and my village are starving. He was just trying to feed us.’
Concern etched itself deeply in her frown. ‘I heard that the potato crop has failed again. But my father is giving you grain, isn’t he?’
‘Look at me, Ciorstaidh! The grain we get barely keeps us alive. I haven’t eaten properly in months. Children and old people are dying.’ Now my anger returned. My father’s anger burning in me. ‘Ask your father why people are starving to death while there are deer on the hill and fish in the rivers. Ask him!’
I turned away and she caught my arm. ‘Simon!’
I wheeled around to face her, tormented by the feelings I had for her, but distanced by everything that separated us. I pulled my arm free. ‘My family is my responsibility now. And I’m not going to let them die of hunger.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to bring home a deer to feed them. Or die trying. Just like my father did.’ I hurried off down the slope without a backward glance, and strode out in the rain across the flat wet arc of sand left by the outgoing tide.
When the rain came in off the sea it swept across the hillside like a mist, robbing the land of its summer colours and stealing away its warmth. It was more than an hour since I had left the village, a stout rope coiled across my shoulder, my father’s crossbow strapped to my back, a homemade quiver stitched together from an old trouser leg to hold the bolts he had laboured so long to make true.
I was soaked to the skin and shivering. No body fat to protect me from the elements. But I was unaware of my discomfort, wholly focused on the parcel of deer grazing in the valley below me. Five of them, backs to the weather, heads bowed. It had taken me nearly twenty minutes crawling on my belly to get close enough.
The rocks that provided my cover were halfway up the hillside, and I was spreadeagled on a flat slab of gneiss that lay slightly inclined on the slope of the hill. It kept me almost perfectly hidden, but provided the perfect angle for a shot.
I slid back on the rock so as not the break the skyline and armed the crossbow, nocking a bolt into place before sliding forward again to bring the deer into my sights. I wanted a nice clean shot.
Then a movement caught the corner of my eye, breaking my concentration, and I saw a party of five or six men crouched low and moving forward through the glen, downwind of the animals and hidden from their view by a cluster of rocks. They were almost obscured from me by the rain. A hunting party from the castle. I recognised a stalker from the estate, and some way back a gillie holding the pony that would carry the carcass of whatever they shot.
And then with something like shock I realised that among the hunters was Ciorstaidh’s brother, George, betrayed by his distinctive red hair.