Alasdair Gray - A History Maker

The Northumbrian to whom he released the standard was the first man Wat Dryhope had deliberately killed. In previous fights his blows had been dealt in the thick of things, as much for defence as aggression, but his lunge at the Northumbrian had not been parried. His sword pierced a heart below a bewildered face because his victim had thought the battle over. Weary and disgusted Wat fell to the ground, saw the standard topple past him, heard renewed screams and yelling. Wanting no more he rolled over the cliff edge after the standard and lost consciousness.

Later he saw seagulls far beneath pecking at something in the waves. For a while he thought he was looking down on his drowned body. Aches in every muscle soon dismissed that idea. He was dangling on the cliff-face over a partly solid and partly yielding projection. When his hands gripped it sharp spines jagged the palms and fingers. He groaned but held tight, trying to turn sideways.

“Is this the last of the Ettricks?” asked a face in a globe three inches from his nose.

“Fuck off,” he muttered, then yelled it with the full force of his lungs.

“Wat Dryhope, eldest son of the slaughtered general,” said the face, “And clearly a reader who likes the robust language of twentieth-century fiction.”

“Hello, can I give you a hand?” asked another voice. Wat wrenched himself round and saw grey rock split by horizontal cracks. His torso lay on a clump of whins rooted in a crack above a narrow ledge. Twisting his face upward he saw the cliff top a few feet above with a figure kneeling on the edge. It was General Shafto, stretching an arm down and saying, “Come on — let’s have you.”

Wat raised a bloodstained right hand whose fingers, he knew, could now hold nothing, but Shafto gripped the wrist and dragged Wat up and over the edge as he fainted again.

He wakened a minute later with the neck of a flask between his teeth and a mouthful of burning fluid which set him spluttering.

“My aunts say this stuff does more harm than good,” said Shafto taking a swig, “I don’t believe them.”

“Thanks,” said Wat and propped himself up on an elbow. Judging by the sun less than an hour had passed since Ettrick had lowered the standard and charged downhill, yet the only signs of battle on the moorland slopes were some gangrels collecting scattered swords, helmets, shields of the dead and badly maimed. Three or four groups of Northumbrians stood or sprawled in small groups awaiting transport. Departing trucks in the distance showed where the rest had gone. The hospital ship still hung between clouds overhead; all dead and wounded bodies except his own had been lifted into it. A Red Cross aircraft was settling on the ground a hundred yards away; he saw nurses with a stretcher preparing to come for him.

“You were lucky it was me and not old Dodds who found you,” said Shafto affably, “He’d have pushed you into the sea. He says you got that draw by a trick — a filthy trick.”

“He’s right. Attacking after pretending to surrender is warfare for weans. When Dad gave his orders we were too feart and excited to think.”

“You’ll feel better when the medics have put more blood back into you,” said Shafto, “Your dad was a genius. He saw a loophole in the rules and made it work for him. People are tired of the old strategies — that battle will be disked by millions. In a month or three you and me should put our heads together and see if we can work out other new strategies — within the Geneva Conventions of course, always within the Conventions. I want you for an ally one day.”

As Wat was carried to the aircraft he said harshly, “Am I the last? Are all the rest of Ettrick dead?”

“No no no!” said a nurse soothingly, “Fourteen are living and most of them can be mended. Your brother Joe will mend.”

“Good,” said Wat and wept, covering his face with his hands. The public eye floated above it saying, “Goodbye Wat Dryhope, a hero of our time — a brave, nervous, tricky hero obviously shaken to the core by what may be eventually voted The Battle of The Century, a surprising last-minute draw between Ettrick and the five clans of Northumbria United.”

THE RED CROSS put the dead soldiers into pure white vaults below their homes where useless things were made good again. Women who had most loved them washed the bodies, laying them neatly between their belongings and the weapons and armour returned by the gangrels. Later the whole family came down for a last visit. Sisters, nieces, aunts wept and clasped each other. Children mooned around looking woeful or puzzled until grannies helped them choose an instrument, ornament or video to remind them of a favourite brother or uncle. The living left and the vault was sealed. Clear liquid welled from the floor until it covered everything inside. The liquid turned black and frothy like Irish stout, sank back through the floor into the roots of the powerplant and left the vault perfectly empty and clean.

On the day after the funeral a morning service was held in the stalk room of Dryhope house. Smooth, milk-white and six feet wide the stalk grew like a tree from the floor and out through the ceiling. All who remained of the family were gathered round it except three members of the Boys’ Brigade: these were at the Warrior house watching replays of the recent war with other junior cadets. In a few days they would return with solemn faces and expectations of being more thoroughly served by women, but now their sisters, aunts and grannies sprawled, reclined or squatted about the floor on rugs and large cushions. The four greatest great-grandmothers were enthroned in chairs. The only two adult males also had raised seats. Joe, smoking a good cigar, lay in a wheelchair with attachments supporting the stumps of an arm and leg. Wat, lightly bandaged, sprawled on a chaise longue.

A stately woman of fifty was mother that day and stood at a crystalline table, the top patterned with coloured points of light which flowed from her finger-tips and continually changed as she played a Sanctus which had preceded the miracle of transubstantiation for centuries before. The Sanctus ended and two sturdy girls of twelve stood facing her, one on each side of the stalk. Silencing the organ she attended to the orders of the day. Nurses asked for flasks of cell serum and protein to help the growth of Joe’s new arm and leg, an ointment to ease Granny Tibs’s rheumatic knee, and Elastoplast for the medical chest. The mother struck the organ. With a low humming the objects appeared as diagrams on the stalk, each inside a circle. There were clicks, twangs and gurgles as the outlines received colour and tone. With sharp detonations the images became solid things in round cavities. The acolytes lifted them out and gave them to the nurses. With heavy thuds the cavities became grey blotches which faded from the stalk leaving it an unblemished, delicate shade of palest pink. The mother had made the sound sequence easier on the ear by blending it with chords from the Agnus Dei by Carver, Palestrina, Bach and Berlioz, covering the last thuds with a loud Amen which faded with the blotches fading from the stalk.

Then the teachers ordered disks, paper, pencils, paint; the cooks milk, cheese, flour, sugar, coffee beans; the henwife ordered a sack of meal, a sack of corn, a first edition of Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus ; the joiner ordered parts for a new orthopaedic bed she was making for Joe; weavers and embroiderers asked for many different colours of yarn and silk. When all were delivered the stalk was flushed rose red, a throbbing was heard from the underground roots and the room was colder, sure signs of plant exhaustion.