A Dark and Distant Shore (15 page)

Luke should have been in bed, but he found it difficult to sleep during the light nights and eleven o’clock found him leaning on the sill of his tower window, gazing south for a sight of his grandfather’s carriage returning. True visibility was only about fifty yards, but it was possible to see much further when there was something moving against the background of the water. All, however, was silent and empty. Restlessly, he strayed to the opposite window, wondering whether anyone was still awake in the village. Not a gleam of light showed from the little cluster of cottages a mile away up the beach.

It was a few moments before he became aware that there was something going on much nearer at hand. Highland nights were full of rustlings and creakings and shufflings, especially in June, when even the wildlife seldom slept and the chaffinches did their best to ensure that no one else did either. Luke could have throttled the voluble little male whose territorial round included his bedroom window-sill, for he began his song at three each morning and didn’t give up until just before midnight. Unless he was seriously disturbed. Luke became aware that he hadn’t heard him for a while.

Firmly suppressing thoughts of ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggity beasties and things that went bump in the night, he hitched himself up on the sill and turned over on his stomach to wriggle forward into a position from which he could see what was going on at the base of the tower. It wasn’t easy to look out of the window when the wall was twelve feet thick. Peering downward, he was dimly able to make out a scene of intense, and extremely stealthy, activity. There seemed to be a great many people engaged on something productive of faint squeaks, subdued thumps, and occasional muffled exclamations in Gaelic.

Luke, though inquisitive, was also extremely lazy. He backed into the room again and tugged the bell. One of the servants, he thought, would know what was going on. No one came. He tugged again, and waited. In the end, curiosity won. Tucking his shirt into his pantaloons and lighting a candle, he set off on the long eerie journey down the windowless staircase to the courtyard. As he reached it, his candle died in a puff of wind and he stopped, his heart in his mouth.

It was a few moments before his eyes adjusted themselves. Then he tiptoed quietly up the stairs to the sea wall and sidled round the corner of the ramparts until he could see what was going on. There were almost thirty men on the beach, and there was also something floating in the little bay that he hadn’t seen from above because it was so close in to the castle wall. A boat. An ordinary fishing smack by the look of it. He had been out in one, once. It had a single cabin aft, and most of the space below deck consisted of a hold ballasted with stones when it wasn’t full of fish. There was much coming and going between the boat and the beach, although the faint sough of the wind helped to smother the sound of feet splashing through the water.

All at once, Luke heard a pleasant English voice murmur quizzically, ‘Fine, Ewen. But what next? That’s the question.’ The voice came from a tall, lithe figure in shirt, waistcoat and breeches, and it sounded vaguely familiar. But Luke was temporarily diverted by realizing just what all the activity meant.

Smuggling in the Highlands wasn’t an illegal occupation for the few, but a casual labour for the many. No one was remotely interested in the laws against it. People who would run a mile after a stranger to restore a shilling he had dropped would break the smuggling laws without a thought. Everyone, lawyers and ministers of the kirk included, either made, bought, sold, or drank illicit liquor. Even excise men, however dedicated in the early days of their careers, usually gave up after a while, so that it was sometimes necessary for the smugglers to bury a cask where it couldn’t help but be found. Rumour had it that this often meant putting it in the excise man’s own peatstack. The newspapers were then able to puff off a ‘seizure of illicit spirits’, thus restoring the gauger to the favour of his superiors and saving the local people from having to put up with an enthusiastic new broom. The sad truth was that illicit whisky was vastly superior to the legal product, and considerably cheaper besides. But it was inevitable that people who ignored the rules about whisky were apt to ignore them in the case of other kinds of liquor, too – French brandy, for example. All this Luke knew; he had heard his law-abiding grandfather complaining about it scores of times.

He was still gazing open-mouthed at the ankers of spirits – dozens of them! – that the men had already carried from the boat to the beach, when he heard Ewen Campbell hiss, ‘He iss risking it! He iss coming in!’

It was only then that Luke saw the other boat, nosing its way carefully in through the narrows of Loch an Vele. It was still two or three miles away, he supposed, and it had no more than a shred of sail hoisted, but it was a sleek ship with fast lines. With a shiver of excitement, he realized that it must be a revenue cutter.

‘Damn!’ said the shirt-sleeved voice cheerfully. ‘Have we time to reach the caves?’

‘Neffer. They are too far, and he iss sure to be seeing the movement on the hill.’

‘How long before he hoists out the boat, do you think?’

Ewen breathed out gustily. ‘Half a mile, a mile maybe. He iss sure to send a dozen men at least, and it iss a long way to be rowing.’

An aged retainer hobbled up to the two men, who were standing slightly apart from the centre of activity. It was George Macleod, the Kinveil orraman or jack-of-all-trades, who was joiner, butcher, weaver, lint-dresser, wool-comber, dyer, and a good many other things besides. Including, it now appeared, smuggling foreman. He mumbled something in Gaelic and Ewen said, ‘Thank the Lord! Tell Peter Fraser to get hiss men back on board and take the
Bride
down to Inverbeg. He will find shelter there. Tell him chust to leave the cargo to us.’

Within minutes, the entire crew was in a rowing boat towing the fishing smack quietly and smoothly through the water. The skipper was at the wheel, no sail was showing, and they kept close inshore where the mountains cast a dark shadow on the choppy water. In no time at all, they had merged into the scenery.

‘Right then, Ewen!’ said the Englishman gaily. ‘Let’s go. If we keep to the top of the beach we should be invisible against the rocks. We must stay clear of the sand and the roadway.’

‘Aye,’ Ewen agreed a touch sourly. ‘But where are we going to? They will be searching effery corner, so they will, and a dozen excise men will be going through the clachan and the byres like a dose of salts.’

Perhaps because Luke knew less of the countryside than the men on the beach, the answer seemed glaringly obvious. There was only one place nearby where the casks could be hidden. He tried an ‘Oi!’ but they didn’t hear, so he attempted instead one of those low, penetrating, sibilant whistles produced by curving the upper lip and teeth over the lower, and blowing. Even to him, the resultant ‘wheep’ sounded like a gust of wind finding its way through a door that didn’t fit very well. He hissed again, with no better result. Then, with one eye on the cutter and the other on the beach, he risked a subdued ‘Hey!’

‘What the deffle!’ Ewen’s head jerked round.

‘Up here,’ the boy squeaked excitedly.

Both faces looked up, white masks in the shadows.

‘Ye gods!’ said the Honourable Peregrine Randall in mock despair. ‘We are undone. Flee, Ewen! All is discovered!’

Luke had met his Aunt Charlotte’s new husband only twice, once just after Christmas and once the previous summer during his parents’ stay. Mungo Telfer had developed a reluctant liking for the young man, but Magnus had refused to budge from his opinion that the fellow was a gazetted fortune-hunter, a scoundrel, and probably a libertine as well. It would have taken a saint to convince him otherwise, and whatever Perry Randall was, he was not a saint. Their first meeting had been very stiff indeed, and both men had gone out of their way to avoid a second. Luke, on the other hand, had been desperately impressed. Perry Randall was the very model of what he would have liked to be – tall, elegant, stylish, with darkly waving hair, amused grey eyes, and a long, smiling mouth. He badly wanted Perry to take notice of him.

Unable to think of a witty riposte, he ignored his uncle’s frivolity and said breathlessly, ‘What about the kilns where they burn the kelp?’

There was a moment’s silence, and then Perry Randall slapped Ewen triumphantly on the back. ‘That’s it! Of course. The boy’s got it in one. Can we get the stuff there?’

‘Maybe. Yess. But we need the slypes and the peat barrows.’

Luke, perched on top of the parapet, was gratified. Then it occurred to him that, although he wasn’t strong enough to carry an anker of spirits, there was something he
could
do. It didn’t strike him as noteworthy that he should want to do anything at all, nor did he realize that, if Perry Randall hadn’t been there, he probably wouldn’t even have raised his voice in the first place. ‘Shall I go up to the village and get someone to bring them? I could ride up on the sheltie.’

‘The hoofs,’ Ewen objected. ‘They would hear them across the water.’ He threw a glance towards the cutter, still creeping along slowly but perceptibly nearer than it had been ten minutes before. The night was by now almost as dark as it was going to be.

‘Don’t be such a killjoy,’ Perry said. There was a smile in his voice. ‘Do you have your dirk?’

Ewen removed the little dagger from the top of his stocking and handed it over.

Perry was stripping off his waistcoat. ‘And we’ll need strings, laces, or something of the sort.’ He began tearing the garment apart at the seams. Wordlessly, Ewen picked up some strands of rope from the beach. ‘Fine,’ Perry said. ‘Come on, boy! Down to the stables as fast as you can!’

On winged feet Luke ran back through the courtyard, through the Great Hall, then outdoors again and over the causeway. When he reached the stables, his uncle was already there, swaddling the pony’s hoofs in sections of his waistcoat and tying them in place with pieces of rope.

With a laugh, he hoisted the boy up on to the willing little beast, saying, ‘Bareback along the top of the beach. Can you do it?’

The boy felt he could do anything. He laughed back. ‘Of course! Try me!’

‘Send the sledges to meet us, then. We’ll be on the way!’ He gave the pony a slap on the rump and they were off.

The sheltie made nothing of the difficulties. It was as if he, too, were infected by Luke’s exhilaration. The boy sank his fingers in the pony’s mane and the pair of them went hell-for-leather along the beach in the direction of the village. Not until they were level with the fourth house did Luke manage to convey to him that this was as far as they went. Reluctantly but amiably, the pony pattered to a halt and Luke slid off and made for the nearest front door.

He tapped as quietly as he could. Too quietly. There was utter silence. He tried again and this time heard the faintest shuffle of movement inside. The door opened a crack on darkness, but he was able to distinguish a rheumy eye, with part of a woollen nightcap above and a shawl beneath.

‘Michty!’ quavered this apparition. ‘What for are you chapping on my door at this hour of the night?’

‘We need the slypes and the peat barrows in a hurry, mistress,’ Luke gasped. ‘The revenue cutter is coming in.’

‘Michty!’ said the apparition again, a good deal more decisively. The door opened fully, a muscular arm reached out, and Luke, without a moment’s warning, was seized by the scruff of the neck and yanked inside. He had never been more surprised in his life.

It seemed that he had established his credentials. He found himself confronting a sturdy, elderly woman, fully clothed despite the nightcap, and as brisk and businesslike as if it were full day. Her face was vaguely familiar.

‘Wass you knowing Meg Macleod’s house? No? Well, I will be going there while you tell Mairi Campbell next door that her man wants the slypes. Go on with you, laddie!’

‘What about the sheltie?’

‘I will be seeing to him. He can be going in the byre.’

Within a few minutes, every woman in the place was out and the first of the slypes was gliding smoothly round the top of the beach towards the castle. Luke found himself sharing the ropes with a remarkably pretty girl of about eighteen. Her name was Kirsty. Puffing, he said, ‘Why wasn’t everything ready and waiting? We’re never going to do it in time, are we?’

‘We wass not expecting anything,’ she said. She had a soft, seductive voice. ‘Peter Fraser wass supposed to be going over to Portree, do you see, but the revenue cutter must haff seen him and chased him in here. The men chust went down to see what it was aal about, and it must haff seemed that the most urchent thing wass to unload the smack and send it clear.’

Over the loch they could hear the sound of the cutter’s lead being cast, and the voice of the leadsman telling off the depth of water under the bow. The skipper, unlike Peter Fraser – not
another
Fraser! Luke thought – was unfamiliar with Loch an Vele and taking no chances. Even so, by the time the two smuggling parties met, the cutter was only a mile away.

As the men who had been humping the casks eased their burdens on to the sledges and barrows, they heard a sharp rattle of orders and looked up, momentarily frozen. Against the open water, lighter than inshore, they could see the longboat being hoisted out and the dark figures swarming down into it. Scores of them, to Luke’s inexperienced eyes.

Ewen Campbell’s low voice said, ‘Hurry!’

‘Move, young Luke!’ murmured another voice at Luke’s side, breathless but vivid. There was a mischievous grin on his uncle’s face as he turned to the girl. ‘And Kirsty Macintyre, by all that’s wonderful! What a pity I can’t stay and pass the time of – er – day with you, but I have things to attend to.’ With a carefree wave of his hand he was off, pursued by an almost inaudible chuckle from Kirsty. Luke stared at her. There was a smile at the corners of her lips. He stored it away for future reference.

By the time the sledges had been loaded, turned, and dragged back towards the kilns, Ewen and Perry and half a dozen of the other men had almost finished what they were doing. Usually, at the end of the day, the kelp was removed from the kilns and the fires ‘smoored’, or half-smothered, by drawing the ashes over the embers to keep them alive for next morning. The men had been shovelling out the ashes and dousing the embers with water, a regrettable but necessary precaution, since a few ankers of overheated spirits would have produced a blaze to put the Northern Lights to shame.