Graeme Burnet - His Bloody Project

She chided me for taking pleasure in an event which would make a widow of his wife and orphans of his children. I retorted that I would rather be an orphan than be raised the offspring of Lachlan Broad.

‘Such sentiments ill become you,’ said Jetta. ‘Nothing that happens to Lachlan Broad can undo my condition. Nor can it revoke the factor’s letter.’

I stood up, refusing to believe her, and paced around the barn in a state of agitation. I demanded more details about her vision and the imminence of Lachlan Broad’s demise, but she refused to elaborate. The constable’s fate was of no relevance to our situation.

Jetta suddenly looked terribly weary. She closed her eyes and let her head drop forward. I knelt down in front of her and clasped the back of her head in my hand. I did not have access to the contents of her mind, but I had a strong presentiment of what she meant to do and could see no alternative for her. She squeezed my hand in hers. Then she opened her eyes and told me to leave her. Tears ran down my cheeks. I bid her goodnight and left her there on the milking stool. I pulled the door fast behind me, tethering the rope on the rotting jamb. And in this way I took my leave of her.

Having no desire to return to the house, I made my way down through the croft towards the shore. The evening was calm and the sky above the islands had taken on the rosy hue of late evening. At this time of year in our part of the world the hours of darkness are short, so much so that I have heard that visitors are often disturbed in their sleep. I watched a heron for some minutes stand stock-still on the shore, before silently taking to the air with the lack of grace peculiar to that species. It flew low across the bay and settled on the point at Aird-Dubh. I set to thinking about what Jetta had told me. She was not in the habit of sharing her visions with me, but I had often seen a shadow cross her face and knew that in these moments she was experiencing some silent commune with the Other World. To some degree, Jetta had never fully dwelt in Culduie, but flitted between the two worlds. If she was now to depart, it would be a smaller death than for those of us who inhabit only the physical world.

It was as I sat by the shore watching the slow movement of the tide, that I first thought to kill Lachlan Broad. I dismissed the notion, or attempted to do so, but it was dogged and the more I tried to set my mind to other things the more it took hold of me. The knowledge that Lachlan Broad was soon to die loosened the ordinary provisos. If providence had decreed that he was not long for this world, of what importance was the method of his leaving? That he might die by my hand seemed so just as to be irresistible. The idea excited me. I would become the redeemer that Reverend Galbraith had spoken of at my mother’s funeral. And this in the knowledge that while I might be the instrument of Lachlan Broad’s demise, I would only be hastening what was, in any case, due.

Jetta’s vision of the winding sheet spoke nothing about the manner of Lachlan Broad’s death, or if it had she had not told me of it. One would struggle to think of an individual in our parish who was in such rude health and less likely to be stricken by some sudden ailment. Nor was it easy to imagine how he might meet with some fatal misfortune. Was it, thus, possible that Lachlan Broad was not merely destined to meet his end, but that this end lay in my hands? The thought weighed heavily on me and by the time I roused myself the sun had sunk below the horizon and what passed for darkness at that time of year embraced me.

When I returned to the house, Father had taken himself to bed. The twins were sleeping soundly on their bunk and I envied their tranquillity. I slept only fitfully that night, waking frequently, and each time I did so the thoughts kindled by Jetta’s vision burned in my mind. I longed to douse them with sleep, but the gathering light of the morning prevented me from doing so.

* * *

I left the house before my father emerged from his chamber. On account of the events of the previous evening, I feared that he would not be in good humour, and after his treatment of my sister I had no wish to converse with him. I took two bannocks to the foot of the croft and ate them slowly. The rig was overgrown with weeds and, compared to those of our neighbours, was a shameful sight. The air was exceptionally still and wisps of cloud hung low over the water like strands of wool. I could see no other living soul and the only sounds were the calls of the birds and the distant noises of the livestock from the grazings.

I had hoped that just as one emerges from a dream, the notion to murder Lachlan Broad might have melted away, but if anything it had thickened inside me. Nonetheless, at this point, it remained no more than an idle speculation upon which I had no intention of acting. If I contemplated killing Lachlan Broad, it was in the spirit of a mathematician approaching a problem in algebra. My schoolmaster, Mr Gillies, had once explained how in order to solve a problem a scientist must proceed, first, by advancing a hypothesis and, then, by testing it through observation or experiment. It was in this manner that I moved forward.

Certainly, the killing of a large, powerful man like Lachlan Broad would be no simple matter. When I enumerated the various means by which one might do a man to death, each presented its own difficulties. One might, for example, kill a man with an axe blow to the head, but this would necessitate lying in wait in some concealed place in the hope that he might happen to pass by. One might stab a man with a blade, but I could not be confident of getting close enough to Lachlan Broad, or having sufficient strength to administer a wound severe enough to do more than merely injure him. A man could be killed by means of a firearm. This had the advantage that it could be carried out at distance, but even if I were able to acquire such a weapon — from the Big House, for example — I had no knowledge of how to load or discharge a gun. It might be possible to poison my victim, but this would entail consulting one of the old crones of the parish who had knowledge of such things, and then finding some way of administering the toxin. In contemplating these latter methods, I realised that they failed a test of which I had, until that point, been unaware. My objective was not merely to remove Lachlan Broad from this world, something which was, in any case, to occur without any intervention on my part. Rather, at the moment of his death, it was necessary that he was cognisant of the fact that it was I, Roderick Macrae, who was ending his life, and that I was doing so in just payment for the tribulations he had caused my family.

My father emerged from the house. I do not know how long I had been lost in my thoughts. I found a croman at my feet and began to turn over the weeds growing in the furrows. My father made his way down the rig to where I was working and asked what I was doing. His face was haggard and grey, and I fancied his gait more bent than usual. I replied that we still had a crop to lift, and if we did not properly tend the croft, there would not be enough food to see even the twins through the winter. Father muttered something to the effect that if God wished to provide for us, He would do so, but he said it without conviction and left me to my labour without further comment. I am quite certain we were both aware that there would not be any lifting of crops that year.

Our neighbours were by this time emerging from their homes and setting about the daily round. The morning must have appeared entirely commonplace and, were it not for what was soon to occur, they would likely have had difficulty recalling it or distinguishing it from any other morning. Indeed in every aspect, aside from the dark thoughts that had taken up residence in my mind, the day was entirely unremarkable. But it struck me, as I gazed around our scattering of houses, that the removal of Lachlan Broad would lift a burden which had long weighed heavily on our township.