The Hill of the Red Fox (7 page)

I started to breathe once more, like a swimmer who has been under water for a long time. The wind still shook the branches of the trees, but there was no longer a lurking menace in the rustling of the leaves. The rapid beating of my heart gradually stilled. It was as if all the nerves of my body had been stretched taut and were slowly relaxing again.

I went over in my mind the fragments of conversation I had heard. Perhaps it was because I was tired and afraid, I don’t know, but it was a long time before I recalled the name of the place where the man with the scar had leapt off the train.

With a sudden stab of fear, I realized it was Lochailort.

At the sound of that one word, Lochailort, I knew that my suspicion of Murdo Beaton had been justified. Lochailort, to me, meant the man with the scar leaping desperately off the train and his pursuer racing down the corridor to the swinging door. It was the start of the trail to the Hill of the Red Fox.

The voice I had heard was not the voice of Murdo Beaton; it was the voice of a stranger. Someone had stood outside the house with him and spoken the word Lochailort. Someone who was so anxious to avoid being seen that he had waited until two in the morning before making his furtive approach. But who could it have been? Who? Who? Who? The question hammered insistently at my brain.

Of one thing I was certain: it could not have been the man with the brilliant blue eyes. He was unaware of my destination and ignorant of the fact that I carried a message from the man with the scar.

I recalled again the fragments of conversation I had heard.
Lochailort. Silenced. Midnight Saturday
.

The sudden impact of the frightening truth stunned me. I felt my heartbeats quicken and the palms of my hands grew moist with sweat. I heard a sudden noise and started up fearfully in bed, straining my eyes to penetrate the darkness of the room. But it was only a sudden gust of wind rustling the leaves of the rowan trees, and I sank back on the pillow breathing hard.

I wondered how I could have been so stupid as to have overlooked the obvious truth for so long. The message I carried in my wallet must have been intended for Murdo Beaton! There could be no other explanation of the stranger’s secret visit to the cottage.

I saw in my mind’s eye the address label on my case, penned in Aunt Evelyn’s bold capitals.
Master Alasdair Cameron, c/o Mr Murdo Beaton, Achmore, Skye.
The man with the scar was the only person
on the train to have seen that label. He had seen Murdo Beaton’s name, as well as my own, and that was why he had given me the message, thinking I would pass it on to him. MI5 was doubtless the code number he used; he would not be likely to put his own name on an open message.

My thoughts raced wildly. If the man with the scar had come to Achmore himself, he must have succeeded in shaking off his pursuer, and Murdo Beaton would know that I had failed to deliver the message.

Lochailort. Silenced. Midnight Saturday
. The words buzzed in my head like a swarm of angry bees.
Silenced
. Who was to be silenced? My blood chilled. They must know that I still had the message; that the secret of the Hill of the Red Fox was shared with me. If anybody had to be silenced, it was me. I could imagine the man with the scar saying softly, “The boy must be silenced. Midnight Saturday will do.” And Murdo Beaton nodding his long head.

I had read many adventure stories, and I used to play a game, imagining myself to be the hero facing dreadful perils with cool courage. But this was no game, and now that I knew my life to be in danger I was afraid. None of the heroes in my stories was ever afraid. Sword in hand, they fought off half a score of attackers with a smile on their lips. But this was different. A whispered word, spoken in the darkness of the night, could be far more frightening than a dozen sword blades.

I lay awake for a long time listening wide-eyed to all the sounds of the night. I heard a cock crow, and the first red rays of the rising sun were lighting the sky before I slept.

My fears receded in the bright light of day, amid the sight and sounds of the everyday life of the croft. There was nothing sinister about Murdo Beaton in his blue denim jacket and tattered khaki trousers. I watched him closely, but he seemed the same as before; surly and morose, no doubt, but there was nothing threatening about him.

I scoffed at myself for having been so foolish. It was like the night terrors I had known as a small child; they vanished with the coming
of day.

We worked all afternoon at the peats, and by tea-time the last load had been carted from the bog.

After tea, I watched Murdo Beaton and the
cailleach
building the stack. They built up the sides first, setting the peats at an angle so that they interlocked. Each layer of peats was placed further in, to give an inward slope to the wall, so that the finished stack would be weatherproof. Mairi and I helped them by selecting peats of a uniform size for the outer walls, and the stack slowly began to take shape.

I heard a man’s voice calling me, and I knew it would be Roderick MacPherson ready for the fishing.

“Do you mind if I go fishing?” I asked Murdo Beaton.

“Away you go, boy,” he said, never looking up from his work. Perhaps it was my imagination, but he seemed glad to be rid of me.

When I topped the rise, I saw Roderick MacPherson, and I ran across the crofts to join him. He was carrying a long cane rod over his shoulder and attached to the rod was a neatly wound line.

He smiled at my eager face, and said, “It is a good night for the fishing,
a bhalaich
. See the clouds gathering. You should take home a good fry tonight.”

“But where are the others?” I asked, as we set off down the croft.

“Lachlan and Iain Ban went to the shop,” he replied. “They will meet us at the shore.”

We crossed the fence at the bottom of the crofts and made our way over the bog to the plank bridge across the burn. The air was full of the scent of heather and bog myrtle and the ground was coloured by patches of blue veronica. We startled a brown hare, and it went leaping off across the moor in a zigzagging run.

When we crossed the main road I thought of the night I had stood there, miserable and alone, my case in my hand. It did not seem possible that it could be the same road, or the same me.

What I had thought, looking down from Achmore, to be the cliff edge was not the cliff at all but a high escarpment. We followed a track down the escarpment and tramped across a narrow glen.
Roderick pointed out the lonely ruins of a cottar’s house, and we followed a swift flowing burn past a dipping fank. We stopped for a while at the fank, and I was shown the sheep pens and the narrow walled path to the dipper.

From the fank, a narrow path wound round an overhanging rock and dipped sharply to the shore. Lachlan MacLeod and Iain Ban were sitting on a rock, smoking their pipes, and they greeted me cheerily.

The boat was lying under the shelter of the cliff face, firmly anchored by the strong ropes which were lashed to massive boulders. It was at least thirty yards, across rough shingle, to the water’s edge, and I wondered how we would ever get the boat launched.

Iain Ban saw the dismay on my face.

“Wait you,
a bhalaich
,” he smiled. “You’ll see.”

The men untied the ropes and Roderick collected an armful of small round logs from a nearby stack. He placed one under the bows of the boat, and spread out the rest at intervals of a few yards, leading down to the sea. Roderick and Iain Ban took up position on one side, and I joined Lachlan MacLeod on the other side of the boat.

They shouted together, “One … two …
hup!
” and at the last cry strained forward dragging the boat over the line of rollers.

“Why do you leave her so far from the water?” I asked, when we were resting before starting the next heave.

“This is a bad shore,” Roderick explained patiently. “There is a terrible surf wi’ a gale o’ north wind. If she wasn’t well clear she would be battered to pieces.”

Iain Ban clambered into the bow, and Lachlan MacLeod took the oars. I sat in the stern, and Roderick pulled up the rolled tops of his thigh boots and waded out, pushing us clear of the shore. Then he climbed into the stern alongside me, and Lachlan pulled out to sea.

I looked up at the towering cliffs descending sheer into the water. The sea washed into the dark openings of several caves, and I watched the gulls swooping down to their nesting places in the clefts of rock. Lachlan MacLeod pointed out an eiderduck, and I
watched her wing her way to her nest low on the cliff face.

A solitary house was perched on the cliff top where it jutted out to sea, and the croft lay below on an incredibly steep slope. A man was working on the croft, hoeing potatoes, and he seemed to be clinging to the hillside like a fly to a wall.

Roderick unfastened his line, and I saw that he had eight hooks, set one below the other. They all carried a different coloured fly. He cast the line into the water, and sat holding the rod loosely between his knees.

Iain Ban passed me a rod with the line uncoupled.

“But it’s only got one hook,” I said.

“Just as well,” laughed Iain Ban, “or it is yourself would be after getting mixed up in the hooks and not the fish.”

Roderick showed me how to grip the rod, and he told me to swing it in as soon as I felt a tug on the line. At that moment he swung in his own line and landed five gleaming fish in the stern. I almost dropped my rod in the excitement of seeing them threshing wildly about my feet. There were four sparkling mackerel and a smaller fish I had not seen before.

Roderick unhooked them deftly and tossed them back into the well of the boat. When he picked up the small fish, I asked him its name.

“That’s a saithe,” he said, “the nickname for the men of Raasay.” He grinned. “Mind you, Alasdair, you would need to be as big as Duncan Mòr before you dared call them that.”

I felt a tug on my line and almost overbalanced as I swept the rod up into the air. I saw the gleam of silver on the end of the line, but the long rod was difficult to handle, and the fish wriggled off the hook before I could guide it into the boat.

“Hard luck,” said Iain Ban, busily unhooking six big mackerel.

But almost at once there was another tug on my line, and Roderick safely guided a saithe into the boat at my feet. I tried to unhook it, but it slithered through my fingers.

“Take my rod,” said Roderick.

We exchanged rods, and he bent down to unhook the saithe.

I felt a tremendous tug on his line, and heaved it clear of the water. In a fever of excitement, I swung the rod round and landed a heap of threshing fish in the stern. There were six mackerel and a much larger fish, rather like a saithe.

“Good for you, Alasdair!” cried Lachlan MacLeod, and I was pleased indeed to be praised by that dark, silent man.

“You have got a lythe,” said Roderick, unhooking the big fish and looking appreciatively at its bronze-flecked back. “One day we will go to Holm Island and Bearreraig. That’s a rare place for lythe — the real big fellows. We need rubber eels to bait those boys.”

We fished steadily, catching mainly mackerel and saithe. Sometimes the fish rose constantly to our flies; at other times our lines trailed in the water with never a tug. Then Lachlan MacLeod would swing the boat round with a few powerful strokes, and head back for the patch of water where we had struck the last shoal.

Once he rowed far out from shore, and I saw a break in the cliff face, and a sheltered bay by the gorge below Achmore Lodge. Iain Ban pointed out the Kilt Rock to the north. It rose from the sea like a giant kilt spread out over a flat surface, and a waterfall dashed over its top to the sea far below.

It was growing dusk, the long dusk of a Hebridean high summer, and Rona rose like a black shadow from the still waters of the Sound. When we spoke our voices seemed to carry loudly over the water, but we were all silent when Lachlan MacLeod finally pulled for the shore.

I leaned over the side, trailing one hand in the water, listening to the rhythmic splash of the oars. Roderick filled his pipe and I heard the spurt of a match and saw the spent matchstick go bobbing away on the tide. Then there was silence again, except for the cry of a gull and the steady creak of the rowlocks as Lachlan bent to the oars. I had often wondered why my father had gone to sea, but it was at that moment, I think, that I realized why.

Iain Ban started to whistle a catchy reel, and I said suddenly, speaking as soon as the thought flashed into my mind, “Were any ships wrecked off the coast during the war?”

Roderick shook his head. “No, it was quiet enough here,” he said. “They hardly knew there was a war on.”

“What about the plane crash?” said Iain Ban.

Roderick laughed. “We were all away at sea,” he explained, “but there was some excitement right enough. A plane crashed on Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh Ruaidh.”

“The Hill of the Red Fox,” I murmured, half to myself.

“Aye, that’s it,” he said.

“It is a wonder the Red Fellow didn’t tell you about it,” said Iain Ban. “He was the first to get to the crash.”

“What was it carrying?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice.

“Och, I don’t rightly know,” said Roderick carelessly. “Just the crew, I suppose. At any rate, they were all killed.”

The boat grounded on the shingle, and Iain Ban leapt out and hauled the bows clear of the water. We hauled her up on the wooden rollers until she was under the shelter of the overhanging cliffs, but all the time I was thinking of the aircraft that had crashed on Sgurr a’ Mhadaidh Ruaidh. Murdo Beaton had been the first man to get to the scene of the disaster. What had he found there? Perhaps the answer to that was the key to the riddle of the Hill of the Red Fox.

Iain Ban was tossing the fish out of the boat into four heaps. He looked across at me and said, “Tired, Alasdair?”

“No, I was just thinking,” I said.

Roderick walked in front of the fish, and turned his back on them. Iain Ban pointed to one of the heaps, and said, “Who?”

“Lachlan,” said Roderick.

He pointed again.

“Alasdair,” said Roderick.

Once more Iain Ban pointed.

“Myself,” said Roderick, and when he turned, smiling, they were busy stringing the fish.

There was nobody in the kitchen when I got back to the cottage. I dumped the fish down on the table, wishing that Mairi could have seen me come in with my catch. The room looked cosy in the dim
light cast by the paraffin lamp, and I sat down on the bench. I was tired after the stiff climb from the shore, and I stretched out full length with my feet resting on the arm of the bench. Murdo Beaton’s blue denim jacket was hanging over the arm of the bench and, in moving, I knocked it to the floor. I bent down to pick it up, and as I did so a folded newspaper dropped out of the side pocket.