God's Highlander (8 page)

‘They know the time.' Wyatt battled with a foolish urge to brazen things out, to accept nomination from the handful of retainers brought to the church by John Garrett for the occasion. ‘The people of Eskaig have made their thinking clear. I'll not oppose them. You can inform the presbytery I'll leave the manse and return on the next boat to call at Eskaig….'

John Garrett could contain his impatience no longer. Unable to hear what was passing between the two preachers he rose from his seat and approached the pulpit beneath which Wyatt was standing, while the bent and twisted preacher made his painful way to where the other presbytery members sat quietly talking among themselves.

‘What's happening? Why hasn't the induction begun?'

‘There'll be no induction. The Eskaig people have made their wishes clear.'

‘Damn the people of Eskaig!' The factor's outburst echoed from the walls of the church and caused the heads of presbytery members to turn in his direction, shock registered upon their faces.

If John Garrett noticed, he ignored their outrage. ‘What the people of Eskaig want doesn't matter. The courts of this country have made that quite clear. They're tenants, every one of them. They'll do whatever Lord Kilmalie tells them – and he's sent you here as his minister.'

‘The Church of Scotland acknowledges only one Lord – and He's not a peer of any
earthly
realm.'

Hot blood suffused the angry factor's face, but before he could say more Coll Kennedy suddenly cried: ‘Hush, everybody! Can you hear what I hear?'

For a moment Wyatt could hear nothing. Then a sound was carried to the church on the wind. It was a sound that had always been capable of stirring his blood, no matter where he heard it. But never before had it carried such meaning as it did now.

What he could hear was the sound of that most ancient of Scots musical instruments, the bagpipes. But this was not the instrument played by lowlanders, or at weddings or clan festivities. The sound he heard came from the great war-pipes, the instrument used to lead Highland regiments into battle, and the piper was playing a ‘gathering' tune: a summons for all men within hearing to assemble in readiness for war! It was a sound that had last echoed across the waters of Loch Eil almost a hundred years before, when Prince
Charles Stuart returned to Scotland to claim the throne that was rightfully his.

Wyatt was the first out of the church. John Garrett was a close second, with the presbytery a straggling third.

Uncharacteristically speechless, John Garrett's mouth dropped open at sight of the motley throng advancing along the road through Eskaig, heading towards the church.

‘What the devil….' John Garrett found his tongue, but could think of no more words to say.

‘It has nothing to do with the devil.' Wyatt was fighting hard to maintain some composure as the piper turned off the road to the church and the crowd followed. ‘I believe you're looking at a God-sent army. His answer to a humble man's prayer.'

Beyond the advancing ‘army', Wyatt could see residents at every door along the single narrow street of Eskaig.

At the church entrance the stirring notes of the ‘gathering' died a discordant death as the piper removed the pipe from between his lips and the crowd came to a halt. Among them and well to the fore were Eneas Ross, his wife and eight sons, as well as Mairi and Tibbie. Lachlan Munro was here, too, with his whole family. Lachlan, holding himself proudly erect, was being imitated by his son.

There were many other men, women and children, too, most of them strangers to Wyatt. When the pipes fell silent there was a brief moment of uncertainty before Lachlan Munro stepped forward and approached Wyatt.

‘We've come to see you inducted, Captain, and to sign the call for you if need be.'

Angus Cameron and half a dozen men of similar age had hurried to the church in pursuit of the piper and his followers. They arrived in time to hear Lachlan Munro's words. The church elder elbowed his way through the Highland cottars until he confronted the ministers of the presbytery who stood together in a bemused huddle.

‘You can't listen to the cottars. Not one of them has seen the inside of a kirk for years. Their children haven't been baptised – and half are wedded only by declaration, not by the Church.'

‘Then, it would seem Eskaig has sore need of an active minister,' commented Coll Kennedy drily. ‘Unless the cottars have been excluded, they've as much right as anyone else in Eskaig to sign the call.'

‘Minister Gunn would have had to know of our existence before he could exclude us,' said a heavily pregnant Highland woman. ‘He never came up to the hills to find us – and we all knew there was no welcome for us down here.'

‘Do you live within the parish? All of you?'

The presbytery minister's question was answered by Eneas Ross in a voice that defied all argument.

‘There have been Rosses in the mountains about Loch Eil for longer than there's been a village of Eskaig. We prayed to God before ever Lord Kilmalie raised a kirk here.'

‘The Rosses have never been anything but outlaws and sheep-stealers. You may live here, Ross, but you're not one of us and you never will be – not while you share your house with a papist woman.'

Eneas Ross stretched out both his arms to hold back his angry sons before advancing upon Angus Cameron. He stopped when no more than a forearm's length separated him from the other man.

‘We're both old men, Angus. Neither of our lives is worth a hanging. If it wasn't so, I'd slit you from belly to throat just to prove there's no more in you than I'd expect to find in a chicken. Magdalene has a name you'll find in your bible and when I married her she wasn't old enough to know the difference between a papist and a Methodist. Her lack of knowledge never prevented her from saving my life and the lives of many good Christian Highlanders on the battlefields of Spain. Some of the men she saved are here today to testify to the truth of what I'm saying. Since then she's given me eight live sons and a daughter.
All
would have been baptised inside the Church of Scotland if it hadn't been for you and Preacher Gunn. Magdalene is as good a Christian as any Scots man or woman here – and better than many. Minister Jamieson is the first preacher from Eskaig – or anywhere else for that matter – to step over the threshold of my cot and already he's done more for Kilmalie tenants than Preacher Gunn did in all his years at Eskaig. We're here to sign the call for him. He's the man
we
want.'

The presbyters looked uncertainly at the elder who had been host to three of their number the previous night, but Coll Kennedy was the first to speak.

‘It's a good shepherd who can return such long-lost sheep to the fold, brethren. We came to Eskaig to induct a new minister. Shall we go inside and perform our duty?'

Avoiding looking at the Eskaig elders, the ministers of the presbytery filed inside the small church, followed by a congregation large enough to occupy a full half of the pews. Soon only Wyatt and the elders remained outside the church, Angus Cameron standing apart from the others, an ageing and disconsolate figure.

Acting on a sudden impulse, Wyatt crossed to the senior Eskaig elder. ‘I don't expect you to sign the call for me, Mr Cameron, but won't you at least come inside for the service? You're an elder. It's
your
church….'

‘Yes, I'm still an elder and I've supported the Church in Eskaig all my life….' There was deep bitterness in Angus Cameron's voice. ‘I never thought I'd live to see the day when papists and unbelievers would be welcomed into the kirk where I was baptised and married, and where I expected to have a prayer said for me when I died. I'll not set foot inside this kirk again until Eskaig has a minister who's been called by the elders – his call witnessed by decent God-fearing folk.'

Angus Cameron had suffered an unexpected and humiliating defeat, but when he turned his back on the small grey-stone church and walked away he maintained a fragile dignity.

All except two of the elders followed Angus Cameron, and those who stayed seemed uncertain of what to do. Then, with glances directed at the ground beneath their feet, they walked past Wyatt and into the church. With one last regretful glance after Angus Cameron and his companions, Wyatt followed, to accept his call as minister of Eskaig.

O
VER THE NEXT few weeks Wyatt steadily consolidated his position as Eskaig's pastor. Cottars still came down from the surrounding hills to attend Sunday services in the lochside church, but their numbers were not as great as they had been for Wyatt's induction day. He knew, too, that when winter weather closed in on the Highlands they would remain in their cottages, cut off from the outside world. But now the villagers from Eskaig were beginning to return to their church. On Sundays when Wyatt stood in his pulpit and looked down at the upturned faces of his congregation he was able to count all but two of the Eskaig elders in the congregation.

Wyatt had won his unsought battle with Angus Cameron, but the absence from church of the most senior of the Eskaig elders gave him no pleasure. However, Wyatt had little time to fret about the stubborn Angus Cameron. There were many other matters to claim his attention. The boundaries of Wyatt's parish were no more than lines drawn with a pen on a far from accurate map in the offices of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland. In secret glens among the mountains, far from roads and tracks, were men and women who had never been visited by a minister and children who had never seen the inside of a church. It was a situation Wyatt was determined to rectify. His was a Highland parish, peopled by a hardy and independent people. Wyatt was determined that God would be as proud of them as he was.

There was also work of a more mundane nature to be undertaken. Preacher Gunn had been a weary and dispirited old man for the last few years of his life, and the garden of the manse had been sadly neglected. Wyatt set out to restore it to some form of order.

One warm evening he was clearing brambles from what he intended
would one day be a vegetable patch. It was hot work, and Wyatt was working stripped to shirt and trousers.

Suddenly, Wyatt heard a shout. Looking up from his work, he wiped perspiration from his eyes and saw young Ewan Munro running towards him along the loch-side track. The speed with which the boy moved was proof that his leg had healed well. By the time Ewan reached the manse he was hotter than Wyatt, perspiration vying with dirt on his face, and so excited and breathless that his speech was unintelligible.

Wyatt suggested that Ewan recover his breath before attempting to explain his excitement, but after a breath-holding half-minute the boy would have burst had he not spoken.

‘Minister … there's a man … down by the loch … caught … in one of the factor's man-traps. He's … lost a foot.'

Wyatt looked at Ewan in appalled disbelief. ‘A
man-trap
! Are you sure?'

Ewan Munro nodded his head vigorously. ‘Factor Garrett sets them … along the edge of the loch. Everyone knows where they are … but this man's a stranger. He … he swears well.'

‘Show me where you saw him.'

Wyatt propelled Ewan Munro from the garden with a hand on his shoulder, then set off after him at a trot. He was horrified to learn that Lord Kilmalie's factor was setting man-traps. No amount of poaching justified such methods of prevention.

It was hardly surprising that Ewan Munro had been out of breath by the time he reached the manse. The boy led Wyatt alongside the loch for more than a mile. Skirting Eskaig village, he plunged into the undergrowth that grew to the edge of the loch.

There were many gorse-bushes, but by now Wyatt could hear a man's voice raised in what sounded like extreme pain. Ignoring the needle-like leaves of the yellow-flowering gorse that drew blood from his bare arms, Wyatt forced his way towards the victim of John Garrett's anti-poaching methods.

The gorse parted in front of Wyatt, and he stumbled into a large clearing at the water's edge. Here he found the man-trap ‘victim'.

Squatting upon the ground, one of the man's trouser-legs hung in tatters. He had certainly lost the lower part of one leg. Yet he seemed more concerned with removing pine-needles from his hand and was cursing in the manner of a man more angry than hurt.

Wyatt looked again at the empty trouser-leg and observed there was not a speck of blood to be seen.

The unknown stranger looked up and scowled as Wyatt approached. He was a hairy man, and it was difficult to see where the man's red beard ended and his hair began. Even the man's eyebrows seemed to entangle themselves in the hair about them. But the blue eyes beneath the hairy brow were bright blue, alert – and angry.

‘Was it you who set that abominable machine?' He pointed to where a huge rusting trap lay upon the ground, its ugly teeth of tempered steel clamped tightly together.

Wyatt shook his head, still puzzled. ‘Ewan came to me with a story that there was a stranger here who'd lost a foot in a man-trap.'

‘And so I have! Why else do you think I'd be crawling around like a baby, getting gorse-needles in my hands and knees?'

As the man spoke he moved to a more comfortable sitting position, and a splintered wooden stump emerged from the torn trouser-leg.

‘It's a
wooden
leg!' Wyatt's frown cleared, and a slow grin filled with relief took its place.

The stranger's fleeting grin matched Wyatt's own as he looked across the clearing to where Ewan Munro stood in wide-eyed puzzlement. ‘Did you believe it was my
real
leg I'd lost? No, laddie. I lost my leg under a Glasgow cart many years ago – and made enough fuss when it happened to be heard up here. Even so, without my peg-leg I'm as helpless as a landed tadpole.'

‘Let me give you a hand to stand. Put an arm about my shoulders, and I'll help you back to the manse. Thank God it wasn't the leg He gave you that was caught in that contraption. I'll have words with the factor about this.'

‘You're a
minister
?' Now it was the turn of the one-legged man to be surprised.

‘That's right.' Aware of the manner in which he was dressed, Wyatt added: ‘I was doing a spot of gardening.'

When the other man was standing balanced on his good leg and leaning heavily against him, Wyatt said: ‘I don't think I've seen you hereabouts. Who are you, and what are you doing here?'

‘If you were anyone else but a minister of the Church, I'd tell you to mind your own business. As you're who you are, and as likely as not
will let me fall to the ground if I offend you, I'll answer your questions. The name's Alasdair Burns. I'm a migratory creature, like the birds of the air. Once I, too, was a factor, though I set no man-traps. More recently I've been a man of letters. In winter you'll find me teaching school in Glasgow, but in summer I'm a free man. Free to roam the Highlands and enjoy God's handiwork.'

‘Not to mention the proprietor's salmon.' Wyatt nodded to where a neatly wound fishing-line lay in the grass.

‘I've never seen it before, Minister. But as it would appear to have been abandoned it would be a sin to leave it to rot away. Boy … you'll find a bag beneath the bushes. Put the line inside and bring the bag to me – and close your mouth, or someone is likely to mistake you for a fish and feed
you
a hook.'

Ewan Munro had never seen a man with a peg-leg before and he had been gaping in wonderment at Alasdair Burns. Now he hurried to obey the stranger's orders.

Shrugging the bag to his shoulder, the Glasgow schoolteacher leaned heavily on Wyatt and said: ‘Lead me where you will, Minister. Without my leg I'm no more than a human wheelbarrow, going in whichever direction you've a mind to push me. But if you've a good piece of cherrywood at your manse, or oak even, I'll carve myself a new pinion. Then I'll give the best young runner ten paces' start and catch him over a hundred yards.'

As they forced their way clear of the undergrowth, Alasdair Burns asked: ‘What manner of man is this proprietor of yours that he'd set man-traps around the edge of a loch? It might as easily have been a wee child trod on that thing. A bairn's leg is worth more than all the salmon in Scotland.'

‘This is the factor's doing. He has more power than is good for any man in his position. Ewan, do you know of any other man-traps?'

‘Every one of them. I followed Garrett's men when they set them.'

‘Go and spring them with a stout stick. But be careful. We want no more accidents.'

Ewan Munro looked scared, and Wyatt added: ‘If anyone sees you doing it, tell them you're acting on my instructions.
I'll
take it up with John Garrett. He knows they're illegal as well as do I.'

As Ewan Munro hurried away, relishing the thought of carrying out Wyatt's instructions, the one-legged man came to a halt.

‘I need to rest for a moment or two. Sit me down on that rock over there.'

Seated on a boulder at the edge of the path, Alasdair Burns took out a coloured kerchief and mopped his brow. Looking curiously at Wyatt, he said: ‘There are few ministers in Scotland who would take such a bold stand against their patron's factor – especially when the law is on the other side. Those traps were on the proprietor's land, and set to catch poachers.'

‘As you said yourself, what are a few salmon when compared with a child's leg? Such traps are fiendish.'

‘Not when used against Highlanders, surely? Most landlords have yet to be convinced Highlanders are human.'

‘
I'm
a Highlander.'

‘Then, I've no need to tell
you
what such folk think, Minister. You'll know it well enough for yourself. All right, I'm ready to go on now.'

Alasdair Burns needed to rest on a number of occasions before being helped inside the manse. Wyatt realised that the Glaswegian schoolteacher was neither as strong nor as fit as he pretended to be. Easing the bag containing his belongings to the floor, the one-legged man lowered himself to the dubious comfort of a wooden armchair and laid his head back gratefully.

‘I'll find some whisky for you. That should make you feel better.'

‘Give me a fine cup of tea instead and I'll be dancing a reel for you within the hour.'

Collapsed in the chair with head thrown back and eyes closed, Alasdair Burns's appearance belied his brave words.

The kettle was steaming gently at the edge of the fire, and Wyatt made a cup of strong sweet tea and handed the cup to the weary one-legged man.

‘Get this down you. While you're drinking I'll look for some wood in the barn. I think I saw some unused roof-timbers there. I don't know what wood it is, but it's well seasoned.'

‘Ah! You're a true man of God, Minister. May He shower blessings upon you.'

Alasdair Burns knocked back half the scalding-hot tea in one long swallow and made appreciative noises. He was downing the second half when Wyatt left the house and made his way to the barn.

As Wyatt searched for a piece of wood that would be suitable for a
wooden leg, he thought about his strange visitor. Alasdair Burns's speech and vocabulary confirmed his story that he was an educated man, but his clothes and general health were not those of a man who had been in a well-paid and prestigious post until recently.

When Wyatt returned to the manse with a piece of good seasoned wood Alasdair Burns had drunk his tea. He agreed with no show of reluctance to a second cup and declared the piece of timber would provide him with an artificial limb far superior to the one he had lost in the jaws of Factor Garrett's man-trap.

That evening Wyatt tackled Alasdair Burns as the one-legged man was sitting on the doorstep of the manse fashioning his new artificial leg. Wyatt put the questions that had been bothering him since receiving the brief explanation of his visitor's history prior to his arrival at Eskaig.

‘Where was it you said you were teaching school this past winter?'

Alasdair Burns's knife ceased whittling at the wood momentarily, then it resumed working with increased vigour.

‘You're an inquisitive man, Minister. I didn't say.'

Wyatt waited for the one-legged man to amplify his terse matter-of-fact statement. When it became evident that nothing more was forthcoming, he asked: ‘Where
were
you teaching?'

‘Glasgow Green.'

Wyatt frowned. ‘I can recall no school at Glasgow Green – although I visited the gaol there on more than one occasion.'

‘I see you're familiar with Glasgow, Minister.'

‘I'm also familiar with Glasgow politics, Mr “Burns”. I recall a certain Chartist meeting being broken up by the Army because the speaker was preaching sedition. If my memory is not at fault, there were at least three deaths and as many injuries. The speaker was himself seriously hurt, falling under a wagon and losing a foot when pursued by cavalrymen. I understand it was this alone that saved him from transportation – or the gallows. He was sentenced to imprisonment instead. His name was Alasdair, too, but not Burns. It was … Anderson, I believe.'

‘There's nothing wrong with your memory, Minister. The name was indeed Anderson. Alasdair Burns Anderson. For the time being I find it more expedient to use the name my mother brought with her into matrimony, rather than the proud name my father believes I have irrevocably besmirched.'

‘How true is the remainder of your story?'

‘True enough. Since I stopped serving landowners I've been teaching school in winter and spending my summers here in the Highlands. At least, that's what I did before I went to prison. Now there's not a school in the country would employ me.'

‘How do you manage to live?'

Alasdair Burns shrugged. ‘By poaching fish from the lochs or snaring deer or rabbits when I'm in the hills. I get by during the summer months and worry about winter when it happens. For the moment I'm simply enjoying my freedom. A prison cell is hard on a man used to breathing the free air of the Highlands.'

When Wyatt made no further reply, Alasdair Burns began whittling the piece of roof-timber once more. Frowning in apparent concentration, he asked: ‘What happens now you know my secret? Shall you be telling the authorities about me? Or will you leave me to go on my way in peace as soon as I've fashioned a new leg?'