The Chieftain (22 page)

‘I am sorry,’ she panted as she came up to them, ‘for the unkindness of my husband, but he is afraid, you see, for myself and the children as well as for himself.’

‘He was out with the Prince then?’ Hector asked, but the woman shook her head.

‘He is no rebel. But the soldiers do not ask before they shoot. Two men of our clan were killed just three days ago, and the women attacked. And we are told that any who give aid to rebels are to be named as rebels themselves. So you see we have cause to be afraid. But,’ she went on, ‘here is a little meal, so that you will not go hungry.’

Hector took the package, breaking into warm thanks, but she stopped him.

‘Take it and go,’ she said quickly, and ran back down the track to the house.

Hector watched as the door shut firmly behind her and silence descended again on the glen, but for the rain and wind. Then he turned without a word and led them on up the hillside.

They found a hollow where the full force of the wind did not quite reach and crouched there while Hector placed a little of the oatmeal on a wide flat stone and mixed it to a paste with some water cupped in his hand from a burn, and gave it to them to eat. It was surprisingly satisfying, Isobel found, at least when one had not eaten for so long beforehand.

Afterwards Hector spoke to them with new decision.

‘I had meant to take you, Isobel, to the house of my uncle Ranald MacDonald. If it had not been for the soldiers we should have been there by now. He is a very old man and in poor health, so he was not out with the Prince, and it had seemed to me that he might be able to arrange for you to be escorted safely back to your parents, without danger to himself. He would have been happy enough to assist in any scheme that might thwart John Campbell—’
 

‘What has he to do with John Campbell?’ Isobel asked, bewildered.

‘He is my mother’s older brother,’ was Hector’s cryptic reply, and he almost smiled at her sigh of exasperation. ‘That is not very clear, I know. You see, what lies between John Campbell and myself goes back a long way—’

‘Then it is not just... because of...’ She hesitated, not wanting to remind him too readily of his score against her. But it had never been far from his thoughts of course, and there was no alarming change in his expression.

‘Because of Hugh, and of you? No, they are only the latest wrongs, Isobel. It is an old story. You have heard perhaps how when King James - grandfather to Prince Charles - was driven from his throne by William of Orange, the clans were slow to swear an oath of allegiance to the usurper? And how, because the MacDonalds of Glencoe delayed, the false Campbells came to their homes and, having broken their bread and sheltered beneath their roofs, slaughtered them, against all the laws of God and man? My mother and her brother Ranald were children then, my mother little more than an infant, and they escaped somehow, but they saw how the guest who had broken bread in their house killed their father and their mother and their older brother while they slept, without mercy. Later they took shelter in my father’s house, for he was some kind of kin of theirs, a young man just entered into the chieftainship at Ardshee. When they grew older, my mother and my father were married, and for his wedding gift to her my father swore a solemn oath to kill the man who had slaughtered her parents. So it was that he and my uncle Ranald MacDonald went together to the house of Archibald Campbell and saw justice done.’

Isobel considered the grim story in silence for a moment, conscious of Hector’s eyes on her face, watching her enigmatically. She remembered John Campbell’s claim that Alan MacLean had killed his father ‘during a cattle raid’. She had enough knowledge of Highland morality to suspect that Hector’s father might well have helped himself to some of his enemy’s livestock when he took his revenge. Did that mean, then—? She raised her eyes to Hector’s face.

‘So it was John Campbell’s father whom your father and uncle killed that day.’
 

‘That is so,’ agreed Hector.

‘But surely,’ Isobel continued earnestly, ‘it should have ended there. Justice was done, as your parents saw it. Perhaps you could not be expected to like John Campbell, but it was not your quarrel or his.’

For a moment, very briefly, a faint smile lifted the corners of Hector’s mouth, as if in acknowledgement of her Lowland naïvety.

‘It is never as simple as that,’ he pointed out. ‘And it did not end there. Because of his father’s death, ruin came to John Campbell’s family. They lost their lands, his mother died, he was sent to be brought up far from his home, knowing he must make his own way in the world. He grew up hating my father for bringing this upon him—’

‘It was your uncle’s doing, too,’ she reminded him. ‘And surely you had nothing to do with it yourself?’

‘I was not born then,’ he conceded. ‘And my uncle even as a youth was sickly and often ailing. It fell on my father to lay the plan to kill Archibald Campbell, and it was his hand that struck him down. So you see, John Campbell had been taught to hate my name, and when we met whilst I was at the University—’

‘The University!’ she exclaimed, her interest in the story briefly swallowed up by this new revelation.

‘At Edinburgh—I was a student there for some months before my father’s death.’

She gazed at him in astonishment, seeing him with new eyes. That, then, explained the books, and perhaps the wine-coloured coat in the chest. But it was strange to think of this wild young man with his primitive notions of justice and revenge working quietly at his studies in the civilised city of Edinburgh. Especially as he was now, a black beard growing thickly about his darkly-tanned face, his hair tangled, his clothes ragged, his brown feet bare.

‘Mairi never spoke of it,’ she said wonderingly.

‘It was not important.’ He looked faintly amused, as if he understood her surprise at finding that her savage husband also had claims to be a man of the world. Then the sparkle in his eyes died away, and he resumed his story.

‘It was while I was there that I met John Campbell, and from the first it was clear that he hated me. At that stage, though, it was on his side only—until I came to know him better, that is. There were one or two things—a game of cards, when he cheated, and the stakes were high—and there was a girl—’ He broke off, lost in thought for a little while.
 

Isobel was astonished at the force of the jealousy that twisted in her heart.
‘
A girl?’ she asked, as casually as she could. But the careful tone drew a sharp glance from Hector, and she blushed.
 

He observed her for a moment or two longer, his expression unreadable but discomforting, and then went on:

‘She was very young, as I was then, but an heiress. I suppose I had no hope in her parents’ eyes, though in hers I think it was different—but that’s not to the point. John Campbell was already making a name for himself, among those who knew less of him than I had cause to do, and he was older, and wiser in the ways of the world—’ He paused again, his expression brooding, remembering. Finally he said: ‘I think now it was a good thing for her that she died before she could become his wife.’

It explained so much, thought Isobel. When he learned that it was John who had taken her away from Ardshee it must have seemed almost as if history was repeating itself. Except that with her it had been different, for he had never wanted anything from her but her money, and she sensed from his manner that he had loved that girl in Edinburgh, long ago. With a new insight she guessed that it was the presence of John Campbell at her side in the orchard that had driven him to abduct her, more than any anger at her rejection of him, more even than his desire for her fortune. In marrying her he had taken some kind of revenge for the loss of the girl he had loved all those years before. It was not a reflection that she found consoling.

‘The rest you know, of course,’ he added in conclusion.

Yes,
she thought,
only too well
.

‘Do you think,’ she asked slowly, after a pause, ‘that he has given up the pursuit, and will leave us alone now?’

‘What do you think?’ he returned. There was no need for her to reply. ‘I think only that he has lost us for the moment, God willing. He will never give up as long as he knows we are alive. But he is not the only man we have to fear, and that is why I shall not after all take you to Glencoe. You have seen how even the innocent are not
safe—and my uncle is a known Jacobite, for all his infirmity. No, I think taking all together we should not put him at risk. Instead, we shall find a secure hiding place, depending on help from no one, and remain there until the worst is over and I can find a way to see you safe home myself. It is not what I wanted—the sooner you are off my hands the better—and this will only prolong it. But I cannot put my friends at risk for my convenience. So we shall each have to endure the other’s company for somewhat longer.’ He sprang to his feet. ‘As for you, Duncan, I see no reason why you should not at once make your way back towards Ardshee, and hide near there until you judge it safe to go home. I doubt if the soldiers will return, and they would not go all that way to seek you. And alone you will be safer by far than in our company.’

‘Who then will protect you, if I am gone?’ demanded Duncan fiercely.
 

Hector smiled and laid a hand on his arm.
‘I know of a place where we can lie hidden so safely that we shall not need your protection. You have done all you can. Be content with that, and go home in peace.’

Duncan seized his hand.

‘And what of you? What will you do when she’—he nodded towards Isobel—‘is safe and you have killed that evil man? Will you come home also?’

Hector shook his head, and the desolate sadness of his eyes pierced Isobel’s heart.

‘I think I may never come again to Ardshee,’ he said slowly, his voice rough with emotion. ‘If I do, it will not be for many years. I can be of no help to you all any more, though it grieves me deeply to think it. Perhaps,’ he ended in an undertone, ‘it is just as well, for I have brought you nothing but grief.’

Duncan cried out in protest, but Hector silenced him.

‘It doesn’t matter, Duncan. Go home now. Tell them all, when you see them again, that I have them always in my heart. And take care.’

Duncan held Hector’s hands in an anguished clasp.
‘Blessings go with you.’

‘And with you.’
 

The older man turned and walked briskly away, his head high, though Isobel thought he was weeping.

Hector’s mood was one of black despair as they set out again. He said nothing at all to Isobel, but walked a few paces ahead of her, lost in thought and more unapproachable than she had ever known him to be, even during the last bleak days. She could scarcely believe he had ever unbent enough to talk so easily and so naturally of his past.

She realised as the days went by that it was unlikely he would ever speak to her so confidingly again. The grim taciturnity became part of him, something she came to accept and endure, like the midges that plagued them incessantly, except when the wind blew at its strongest. If Hector spoke to her at all it was to issue an instruction or to give her some advice, as briefly and as curtly as he could. He had told her she was an unwanted encumbrance, and he made it plain that this was exactly what he felt. More than once she was tempted to tell him to leave her to fend for herself, until she remembered why she had decided to stay with him. That left her no course but uncomplaining acceptance of everything he asked of her.

The safe hiding place of which Hector had spoken to Duncan lay along a small
river that wound its way between grassy banks in a ravine cut deep in the side of a mountain. Hector led Isobel at the river’s edge, over soft emerald turf scattered with a glowing profusion of wild flowers, towards a point where the river bent into a thickly growing wood and disappeared.

Here trees ran from the skyline, brilliantly blue today, down the steep sides of the ravine to the river bank. The water flowed more swiftly nearer its source, and the ravine narrowed, giving little space for them to find a way beside the sparkling water. The afternoon sun that had lain still and hot on the grass was far above them and the shadows were deep and cool under the trees. There was no visible path, but Hector simply followed the line of the river as it twisted and turned through the woods.

Then at last they rounded another curve of the water, and Hector stopped. Here, suddenly, the ravine widened again, and the trees ended, and a great curved rock face spread from side to side. And over it, roaring and tumultuous and sparkling in the sunlight, the river tumbled in a wide fall to a bubbling pool beneath.

Isobel gasped with delight at the unexpectedness of it. Hector merely walked on, round the edge of the pool where the rock formed a narrow shelf beneath the overhanging face above, until he came to the very edge of the fall. And then, as she watched, he disappeared beneath it.

Isobel followed, and saw that the narrow shelf continued behind the fall, gleaming and slippery with water. Clinging to the rock face she edged her way along it. And found herself all at once in a cave, completely concealed behind the plunging water.

The cave was wide and high enough for a tall man to stand upright inside, and lit with a gentle greenish light because of the trees and the water and the ferns that grew in the damp places at its mouth. It was also surprisingly dry. Isobel looked at Hector and caught a fleeting gleam of triumph in his eyes, before he was immediately practical again.

‘We should be safe here,’ he said. And then: ‘I suggest you rest. I shall not be long.’