Peter May - Entry Island

She pulls back and stares at me with tear-stained eyes. ‘Yes I can. He wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for me.’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘George saw us together. That day up on the hill, when I gave you that first hamper.’ She paused, almost as if she were afraid to go on. ‘The bastard told our father.’

I am shocked to hear her use such a word.

‘He was furious, Simon. He flew into such a rage I really thought he was going to kill me. He told me he would rather see me dead than be with a common crofter’s boy. That’s when he ordered the evictions. Baile Mhanais was only spared before because you saved my life. Now he wants to be certain there is no way I can ever see you again. That you’ll be on a boat to Canada and lost to me for ever.’ There are fresh tears and her voice quivers on the brink of breaking. ‘You’ve got to come with me. You and your mother and your sisters.’

I stare at her in disbelief. ‘With you?’ I shake my head again. ‘How? Where?’

Her breath trembles in her throat. ‘I have been locked up in my room for days, Simon. No better than a prisoner in my own house. Until this morning.’ She brushes away her tears with the backs of her hands, focused on the telling of her story. ‘I persuaded one of the maids to let me out, and while my father was downstairs with the Sheriff-Depute and the factor I went into his study. I’ve always known he kept cash in there, and I knew I needed money to get away.’

In my mind I picture her feverishly searching her father’s study, shaking with fear, and all the time listening for a footfall on the stair.

‘I found his money box in the bottom drawer of his desk. But it was locked, and I had to force it open with a ceremonial dirk that he uses as a letter opener.’ She closes her eyes momentarily, reliving the moment. ‘As soon as I did it I knew there was no going back.’ Her eyes flicker open to hold me again in their frightened gaze. ‘There was two hundred pounds in it, Simon!’

Two hundred pounds! I can barely imagine so much money, never mind holding it in my hands.

‘We can get a long way away from here with money like that. All of us. You, me, and your family.’ She implores me with her eyes, and I find it almost impossible to resist. She takes my hand in hers, and I feel how cold it is. ‘There is no way I can go home again. I have defied my father. I have stolen his money.’ She squeezes my hand until it very nearly hurts. ‘I can get a horse and trap from the stables at the castle once everyone has left. I’ll meet you at the foot of the waterfall near the old Sgargarstaigh crossroads. We can head south and get a crossing to the mainland.’

It is suffocating in the blackhouse. Fresh peat on the fire sends smoke billowing up into the roof of the fire room, stinging the eyes and burning the lungs. But it is my mother’s voice that fills the room. A voice full of sound and fury and close to hysteria while Annag and Murdag stand behind her, pale faces blanched by fear.

‘You’ve brought this on us, Sime! You and that foolish girl. God knows, her father is right. There is no place in this world for the two of you together. You belong in different parts of it. Her in hers, and you in yours. How could you have thought for one minute that you would ever be accepted into hers? Or that she would stoop to be a part of ours.’

I have never been close to my mother. Always my father’s boy. And since his death she has been strident and whining and always finding fault with me, almost as if she blames me for what happened to him. But I am patient, forever mindful of the responsibility that my father bequeathed me.

‘You were happy enough to take the food she’s been bringing us these last two weeks.’

But that only sends her spinning off into another tantrum ‘If I’d known it had come from the hands of that girl I’d never have taken it!’

And I get angry for the first time. ‘Where did you think it came from? God? What did you think it was, manna from Heaven?’ I glare at her. ‘You’re as bad as the laird. He thinks that he and his kind are better than us. And you think that we are better than them. But you know what, we’re none of us better than anyone else. We’re all God’s children, equal under Heaven, and no accident of birth can change that.’

‘Don’t you bring the name of the Lord our God into this! I’ll not have you blaspheming in this house.’

‘It’s not blasphemy. Read your Bible, you stupid woman!’ It’s out before I can stop myself, and she hits me across the side of my face with the flat of her hand, nearly knocking me from my feet.

But I stand my ground, glaring at her. My face stinging. ‘We’re leaving,’ I say. And I turn to my sisters. ‘Get your things, there’s not much time.’

My mother’s voice cuts through the smoke. ‘Don’t you move!’ Though she has never taken her eyes off me the girls know that it is them she addresses, and they freeze. ‘No son of mine is going to tell me what to do. I was born in this house, as were every one of you. And we’re not leaving it.’

Annag speaks up for the first time. But her voice is brittle and uncertain. ‘Maybe he’s right, mamaidh . If there’s forty or more of them coming to put us out we’ll not stand a chance. Maybe we should go with the laird’s girl.’

My mother swings her head around slowly, and the look she gives Annag could have turned her to stone. ‘We’re staying,’ she says, with such finality that not one of us is left in any doubt that there will be no arguing with her. ‘Now go and start collecting stones, girls. Good, fist-sized stones that’ll crack a constable’s skull.’ She turns back to me. ‘You’re a Mackenzie, boy. And Mackenzies don’t give up without a fight.’

I wonder what my father would have done.

The wind has dropped, so has the temperature, and the rain has come at last. A fine, wetting rain that drifts like mist over the mountains. When the constables arrive, they seem like wraiths lined up along the top of the hill, grey figures against a grey sky.

The villagers, and all the crofters and their families from the township, are gathered among the houses and along the shore. Nearly two hundred of us. We are a pathetic bunch, diminished by the famine and ill-equipped to stand up to a gang of sturdy, well-fed constables and estate workers. But we are fired up with righteous indignation. These are our homes, and this is our land. Our ancestors have lived here since before anyone can remember, and long before any laird thought that his wealth could buy and sell our souls.

I am resigned to the fight. My heart breaks for Ciorstaidh, but I won’t leave my family. Even though I know this is hopeless. I know, too, that before the day is out I will either be dead or on a ship bound for the New World. But I am not afraid anymore. Just determined.

I feel fear moving like a stranger among the others as our enemies gather on the hill, formidable in their dark anonymity, threatening in their silence. And it is the strangest quiet that has fallen over Baile Mhanais. Without the wind the sea is hushed as if it holds its breath. Not even the plaintive cry of the gulls breaches the still of the late morning.

Two figures detach themselves from the group on the hill and walk down the path towards us. It is not until they are close that I recognise one of them as the factor. The laird’s lackey. His estate manager, Dougal Macaulay. A man universally despised. Because he was once one of us and now does the laird’s bidding. No doubt he thinks that rubbing shoulders with the gentry makes him better than his peers. And you can hear it in his tone as the two men stop no more than a few feet away from the crowd. Me, my mother and my sisters are up there at the front.