The Devil's Recruit (32 page)

The upper ferry, at Clayhills, was too far away and not so able for the open sea, but the lower boat, the Torry ferry, was already being taken from its shelter at the top of the slipway to prepare for launch should the ship come to grief. I glanced behind me and saw people beginning to gather on the Castle Hill and St Katharine’s Hill, readying themselves to witness what must come.

Four of MacKay’s men were already at the boat by the time I got there. Amongst them was Ossian, Lord Reay’s own physician. ‘You cannot risk yourself,’ I said.

‘Risk nothing,’ shouted the man taking an oar to his left. ‘He is the best oarsman in Sutherland, worth four oars to another man’s two, and can hook a man from the sea easier than you would lift a herring in a net.’

I nodded my thanks to the physician and grabbing the oar that was thrust my way, set my shoulder to the boat as it was launched down the slipway. William was beside me, Louis Rolland and another three men from the town in front of him. The ferryman, pole at the ready, shouted his instructions into the wind, and it was only as we hauled ourselves over the second huge wave to assault us that I saw Sarah, almost obscured by Ossian’s bulk, drenched and clinging to a bench at the back of the boat.

‘Get back!’ I roared at her, but it was already too late.
We were out from the slipway now and could not turn around had we wanted to.

She shouted back, over the sound of the storm. ‘I can swim as well as you can, Alexander, and I am not going ashore again without him.’

We rowed, uselessly at times it seemed, against the waves that were driving the recruitment ship ever faster towards the bulwark of the quayside wall. Every so often, I had to lift a hand from the oar to scoop water out of the boat with the buckets habitually kept there, but I did not see how we could keep afloat ourselves, never mind pull anyone safely from the water and back ashore.

For all we struggled against the tempest, I knew there could be no hope that Ormiston’s ship would not come to grief on the bulwark, and it soon became clear that those aboard the vessel knew it too. All struggle and ingenuity with sail would avail the captain nothing: he must know his ship lost. We could see, when the spray did not blind us, men up on deck give up their efforts to bring the vessel under their control and lash themselves instead to masts, to wood, to railing – anything that might save them from being swept overboard into the implacable rage of the sea. More figures began to appear on deck then, not the sailors now but, I realised, the recruits, boys and men, desperate and with no idea how they might save themselves. I scanned their number hopelessly for some sign of Zander, or of Archie or even of Ormiston, but I found none. I managed to look round for a moment at Sarah, but her face was
frozen in disbelief as she watched the living horror that was unfolding before us.

After what seemed like hours but can only have been a few minutes, I saw the mariners begin the work of untying the lifeboats from the side of the ship. There was no possibility that the three small boats that hung there could accommodate even a third of the desperate men aboard. And then, at last, I saw them, getting into the smallest of the boats as it was lowered, swinging dreadfully in the wind and clattering into the side of the ship. Sarah saw it too, and tried to stand up, almost toppling herself into the raging water as she did so.

‘Get down,’ I shouted to her, ‘Tie yourself to that loop under the gunwale …’

Given some hope now, she did as I bid her. We had got as close to the ship as it was safe for us to be, and the ferryman barked out instructions in an effort to keep us from getting any nearer. I could hardly hear him, for all my attention was taken up in struggling with my oar as I watched the small lifeboat crash at last from the side of the ship into the sea. The ferryman had seen it now too, and had us work our craft around and in pursuit of the lifeboat. In it were four men – Archie and Ormiston, I was certain of it, and another two officers that I had often seen about the lieutenant. Unlike the other men, Archie rowed with one arm only – the other was clasped tightly around the figure of a small and frightened boy. Sarah was screaming his name, but Zander could not hear her over the sound
of the storm and the men everywhere, shouting instructions at each other or crying out to God for their lives. For my part, it was Archie’s name I called, called it until I was hoarse. And at last, just once, he seemed to hear me, looked around, looked right in my face. There was no dissembling there, no lie. It was the face of my friend and in it was his final sorry, his final goodbye.

I could not believe that they would make for the open sea, rather than for the other side of the river mouth. It was not impossible that they might win to Torry, and from there flee south. And that was what I prayed for, for they would not take Zander with them then. Their small boat made less progress against the wind and currents than our own, and time and again was pushed back towards the ship, but at last they seemed to master it, and drive it forward. I could not believe what I saw then, for the shouting between Archie and the lieutenant took on a different tone. I could not see Archie’s face, but in Ormiston’s there was a flash of anger, a refusal of something, and then from beneath the cloak which he had wrapped round Zander, Archie drew a pistol which he aimed at Ormiston’s head. The lieutenant, after the briefest, stunned, hesitation, gave up his argument and bent again to the oars. And now it was that I saw where Archie was taking them, neither out to sea nor to the distant southern shore.

‘The inch!’ I shouted. ‘They’re making for the inch.’

The ferryman had taken in in a moment what was happening, and so drove us forward to the island of land
that was covered by sea in the spring tides, but exposed at this time of year. I could not see how they could land on it and ever expect to get away again. Archie was giving himself up, giving all of them up, for the sake of my son. Such was our progress, with the extra men at the oars, that we looked set to gain the inch before them. Shouts of alarm from the quayside and the Castle Hill were rising over the sounds of the storm, but all my strength now was set on getting to the inch and returning Zander safe to his mother’s arms. My life from now on would take its beginnings from that point. But then even I heard it, what all had dreaded: the tremendous crash as the recruiting ship was thrust at last against the harbour bulwark. Screams of men could be heard above the smashing and splintering of wood and then the supernatural creak as the ship seemed to hesitate a moment before slowly keeling over on to its side and disappearing beneath the foam.

There had been so little time. Those who had not jumped from the ship went down with it, those who had could not be seen in the boiling mash of wave, wood and debris. Then, miraculously, one or two figures began to emerge from the waves to grab on to a passing barrel, a broken plank. Frantic activity on the quayside saw ropes, rafts, buoys thrown out to the water, the urgent need to save even one human life overtaking all who watched.

One human life. The life of the child on the boat fighting its way towards the inch. We should have been there before it, ready to haul them in, take Zander, leave the rest to the
Devil they had given themselves to if need be, but the sudden submerging of the ship sent a huge wave slapping against, then careering back from, the quayside wall. By the time we realised what was happening, it was on us. The wall of water hit us full to port, tossing us in the air with the contempt of an angry bull. I tried desperately to hold on, but found myself flung into the freezing waters as the vessel came back down, its hull upwards, and was carried away from me on the choppy sea. I looked round frantically for Sarah but there was no sign of her. I tried to call out her name, but another wave overwhelmed me and I found myself desperately struggling to keep from being forced under by it.

The same thing happened three times before I could get my head up far enough to open my eyes and see what was happening around me. All was chaos – lost oars being borne away in the wake of the overturned ferryboat, the heads of men I knew emerging, then disappearing again beneath the stinging spray. The shock of the cold had almost deprived me of the power to breathe, but I had mastered it again now and tried to summon the strength to keep myself afloat. Another wave was survived and another, and between them I called out my wife’s name, but of her I could see nothing. A few feet to the left of me, I briefly saw the head of William Cargill. I shouted to him and somehow managed to force my way towards him. Another wave threatened to pull us both down, but then a voice called my name and I saw through the crashing sea that the
recruiting ship’s lifeboat was still afloat. The voice calling to me was Archie’s, and at the risk of capsizing his own craft he had reached an oar out towards where William and I were trying to keep each other from being swept away.

‘Take it!’ he shouted.

‘Zander!’

‘The oar, damn you, Alexander! Take the oar.’

And so I did, and with William Cargill clinging fast to my waist, Archie, Ormiston and their two officers towed us to the safety of the inch. The moment we felt sand beneath our feet, William let go the oar and began to drag himself up on to the shore, but I held fast.

‘Give me Zander,’ I shouted.

The boat had come as close as possible to the inch without running aground and Ormiston was already pulling away.

‘Give me my son,’ I yelled, plunging back into the water after them.

It was only the briefest hesitation that I saw in Archie. He turned to Zander and I heard him shout, ‘Can you swim, boy?’

I saw Zander nod and then heard Archie say, ‘Then swim, swim for your life,’ before heaving him up and throwing him as far towards me into the water as he could.

My world disappeared for a moment as I saw him go under, but then his head came up three feet from me and I had him under the arms before he could go down again. William was back in the water too, and between us we dragged him, terrified and choking, to the shore.

I held Zander briefly to me, then yelled at William to take him higher up, to a place of greater safety.

‘But what about you?’ William shouted.

‘I must find Sarah.’

‘No, Alexander, you cannot.’

I was already back in the water, desperately scanning the tossing black sea, and still William was shouting. He was behind me. He had left Zander alone and he was holding me, pulling me back.

I summoned what strength I had left to try to throw him off.

‘Let me go, William!’

But he held fast and he would not.

‘You cannot go back, Alexander. You cannot.’

His grip gave way and he was weeping, and at last I saw what he had already seen.

‘No!’ I yelled. A howl greater than that of the wind, more destructive than the storm. He let me go at last and I stumbled into the water, to take from the arms of Ossian, Lord Reay’s physician, the limp and lifeless body of my wife.

All around me was darkness, and the voices that spoke were in whispers. I could not lift my head because of the stone on my chest. There was a presence in the room that comforted me somehow. I reached my hand towards it and felt the firm, familiar grasp.

‘Jaffray.’ Who else?

‘Aye, my boy, it is me.’

‘You cannot mend me this time.’

His voice was heavy and something broken. ‘I know it.’

Two nights and a day had passed, while I lay insensible and body after body was washed up on the shore of Aberdeen. Young boys who had hoped for adventure, older men seeking a purpose, running from failure, from mistakes. They would never see the German wars – the wrath of Scotland’s jealous God had kept them all. No sign had been found of Archie or the lieutenant, and in spite of all, I hoped that they might have got away safe, and somehow be a means towards ending the war that had so ruined them.

The children had been taken to George Jamesone’s house,
and William and Elizabeth had sat day and night with me. They had brought Zander to see me, for he would not believe that I was not dead too. In my dreams of Hell I had called out for him, again and again, and they had had to take him away again.

Before darkness set in on the second night, Jaffray had arrived. Sixty years old, he had ridden from Banff without stopping save to change his horse. The man who had delivered me, who had tended my every childhood illness, who had saved me from the very edge of oblivion and talked me out of folly more than once, had come to try to heal what the ministrations of Dr Dun, Ossian, and all the other learned physicians in the town could not put right.

‘She is gone, James,’ I said, when I finally managed to open my eyes.

‘She is lying in St Mary’s Chapel. We will take you to her later.’

I tried to get up, but couldn’t. ‘There is a stone on me, Doctor. A great weight on my chest.’

He held his fist to his own chest. ‘It will get lighter. As time goes on, it will get a little lighter.’

At some point they opened the shutters to let the light in, a low, bright, winter light. Fresh, and clean, and empty. They brought me decoctions to swallow, covered my head with poultices, rubbed ointments on my chest. The stone did not go away; as the light grew, it became all the heavier.

In the early afternoon they took me downstairs and tried to feed me some broth. I could not swallow it.

‘You must take it, Alexander,’ Elizabeth said.

‘I cannot.’

‘You must. For the children. You are all they have now.’

So I swallowed it and the day went on. There were visitors, so many at the door, taking time for Sarah’s sake in a town already leaden with mourning. Some were allowed in, for a few minutes. Dr Forbes, my mentor from the King’s College, who understood grief and suffering and prayed with me; John Innes, my dear kind friend from King’s; Peter Williamson, who had come from the Marischal College to comfort me, and who sat before me and wept. And George Jamesone came, with flowers from his garden, a posy of yellow flowers.

‘They are like Sarah,’ I said. ‘They were her favourites, and I cannot even remember their name.’