Читать книгу The Greatest Historical Novels & Stories of D. K. Broster - D. K. Broster - Страница 79

Table of Contents

The ancient stronghold of the Maclans of Ardnamurchan, where James IV. had held his court, which had repulsed Lachlan Maclean with his Spanish auxiliaries from the wrecked Armada galleon, and had surrendered to Colkitto’s threat of burning in Montrose’s wars; which had known Argyll’s seven weeks’ siege and Clanranald’s relief, stood on the very verge of the shore gazing over at Mull. At high tide the sea lapped its walls—or at least the rocks on which those walls were built—save on the side where a portion of the fortress had its footing on the mainland. It looked very grim and grey this winter morning, and the runner, drawing breath at last, felt exceedingly little inclination to approach it.

And yet air, flag, garrison, were all unstirring; Mingary seemed a fortress of the dead, staring across dull water at a misty shore. No one was visible save the sentry on the bridge crossing the fosse which guarded the keep on the landward, its most vulnerable side. As Ewen approached, the man brought his musket to the ready and challenged him in the accents of the Lowlands.

Ardroy made his announcement from a distance of some yards. “I am come to tell you that your missing colonel is found. He is lying in sore straits on the slopes of Loch Mudle, and if you want him alive you must send without a moment’s delay to fetch him.”

The sentry shook his head. “I canna tak messages. Ye maun come ben and see an officer.”

“I cannot wait to do that,” replied Ewen impatiently. “I am in great haste. I tell you your colonel is very badly hurt; his fowling-piece must have burst, and injured him.”

“Man, ye suld ken that I couldna leave ma post if King Geordie himsel’ was deein’,” said the sentry reproachfully, and suddenly uplifting his voice, bellowed to someone within, “Sairgeant, sairgeant!” and motioned vehemently to Ewen to pass him.

Most unwillingly Ardroy crossed the bridge, and at the end of the long narrow entry into the fortress found himself confronted by a stout sergeant who listened, with no great show of emotion, to his tale. “I’ll fetch the captain—he’ll wish tae see ye, sir.”

The wish was by no means reciprocal; and Ewen cursed inwardly at the recognition of his social status, from which he had hoped that his shabby clothes, worn for so long in bad weather, would have protected him.

“I am in great haste,” he asserted once more. “Surely you could give the captain my message?”

But even as the last word left his lips two officers, talking together, suddenly appeared from he knew not where under the archway. Yet once again Ewen made his announcement, and this time it had an immediate effect. A few questions were asked him, he described the spot in detail, hasty orders were given for a party to set forth instantly with a litter and restoratives, and then the captain asked Ewen if he would be good enough to guide them to the place, which after a second or two of hesitation he agreed to do. Indeed, provided he were not asked questions of too searching a nature on the way, the arrangement would suit him well.

But he was not destined to profit by it. He had noticed the other officer, a young lieutenant whose face seemed vaguely familiar, looking at him closely; now, when this latter could gain the attention of his superior, he drew him aside and whispered to him.

The captain swung round to Ewen again, looking at him with a gaze which the Highlander did not at all appreciate. “By the way, you have not told us your name, sir?” he remarked. “We are so much in your debt that we should be glad to learn it.”

Ewen helped himself to that of the good tenant of Cuiluaine. He was, he announced, a MacColl, originally of Appin.

“Well, Mr. MacColl,” said the captain, “obliged as we are to you for your information, I don’t think we will trouble you to accompany us to Loch Mudle.”

“Then I’ll bid you good day,” responded Ewen, making as if to go. But he had known instantly that the subaltern’s whisper meant he would not be allowed to walk out of Mingary Castle.

The officer took a step forward. “Not so fast, if you please. I’ll ask you to await our return here, Mr. MacColl.”

“In God’s name, why?” demanded Ewen, playing astonishment. But he was not really astonished; this was what came of running into a hornet’s nest!

“That I shall be able to tell you when I return,” said the officer. “For one thing, I think you have made a mistake in your name. Sergeant, a guard!”

“My name! What is wrong with my name? You are not proposing to keep me here illegally when I have just saved your colonel’s life for you!”

“Believe me, I regret it, Mr. . . . Mr. MacColl,” returned the captain suavely. “I doubt if there is much illegality about it; but, since there is such great need of haste at the moment, we cannot possibly discuss the matter now. Sergeant, have this gentleman safely bestowed.”

“And how do you suppose that you are going to find your injured officer without me?” asked Ewen sarcastically, as a guard came trooping under the archway.

“Easily, if the details you have furnished are correct. And I shall be the first to apologise to you, Mr. MacColl, for this detention . . . if there is cause for apology. Come, Burton.” He swung on his heel and hurried off.

Resistance were foolish. Grinding his teeth, Ewen went whither he was taken, and three minutes later found himself in a dusky place with oozing stone walls and a floor of solid rock. There was a barred window just out of his reach, a worm-eaten table, a rough bench and a broken pitcher—nothing else. As Mingary Castle was of thirteenth-century construction, this spot might well have been even more disagreeable, but Ewen in his present temper would have found a boudoir intolerable if he could not leave it at will. He was furiously angry—angry even with Mr. Oliphant. One might have known that this would happen! Here he was, caged up again, and all for rendering, as much against his will as a good action had ever been done in the history of the world, a service to a man whom he hated and had sworn to kill! He sat down upon the bench and cursed aloud.

When he ceased it was to become conscious of fresh details of his prison, notably the rustiness of the iron bars across the window, and to hear, faint but distinct, the sound of waves not very far away. He might be here for weeks in this seagirt hole! . . . Or Guthrie, if he recovered sufficiently, might recognise what he had done for him, and let him go out of gratitude.

That would be the most intolerable consequence of all—that Guthrie should know he had played the Good Samaritan! Ewen jumped up. Out of this place he would be before Guthrie was brought into it! He felt capable of tearing down the stones with his nails, of wrenching the iron bars of the window out of their sockets with his bare hands.

But . . . that was not necessary! In his pocket, surely, was still the file which had won his and Hector’s freedom from Fort William. What great good fortune that no orders had been given to search him! Without a moment’s delay he pushed the crazy table under the window, and, mounted rather precariously upon it, began to file feverishly at the middle bar.

* * * * *

Ardroy had worked away for perhaps an hour, his hands red with rust, hoping that no one would hear the noise of scraping, when it came to him where he had seen the face of the subaltern who had whispered about him to the captain. It was the lieutenant who had brought up Hector the day that youth had surrendered himself at Fort William. He had without doubt recognised the other ex-captive. There was more need of haste than ever; his case was worse than he had supposed, and even if Guthrie, distasteful as the notion was, should be smitten with gratitude, he would hardly dare to let an already escaped prisoner go free.

By three o’clock the first bar was through. It was half-worn away, or it would not have yielded to the file in the time. The second was eaten too, and when in about three-quarters of an hour that also parted, and could be wrenched aside, by cautiously thrusting his head out Ewen was able to ascertain where he was—only a matter of ten feet or so above the basaltic rock on which the castle was built. At the base of this rock leapt the waves, not an encouraging sight; but if, as he judged, it was now high tide or thereabouts, he guessed that by half-tide the rock, and indeed a good part of the little bay to the west of the castle, would be clear of these invaders. He thought this probable because to his left he could see that a stone causeway, now slapped by the waves, had been constructed for use when the tide was low.

Ardroy drew his head in again and resumed his filing, debating, while he worked, where he should aim for when he got out. He certainly must not immediately go back in the direction whence he had come. Then should he make across the peninsula to its northern shore, or should he strike out for its extreme end?

Suddenly he thought of the two Coll fishermen in Kilchoan bay. If they had not yet sailed for their island, he might induce them to take him in their boat back up Loch Sunart, and, even if they were gone, he could perhaps find someone else at Kilchoan willing to do this for him. It would be a good plan to get clear off the peninsula before he had the whole garrison of Mingary searching for him. It might no doubt be better, for the purpose of getting away unseen from the castle, to wait until nightfall, but by then, who knew, the sawn bars might be discovered, and he removed to another dungeon. Moreover, the detestable Guthrie, living or dead, would have been brought in, and be under the same roof with him. He must be gone before either of these things could happen.

And at length the last bar, a very thin one, gave. The daylight was now beginning to fade a trifle, and the waves were no longer washing against the rock below; as Ewen had anticipated, a considerable segment of the little bay was free of water altogether. Once down on the shore he had only to cross this and climb the low, grassy cliff at some convenient spot, and he would be well away from Mingary, even, perhaps, out of sight of it. It seemed, indeed, a good deal to hope that before he got as far as that he should not have been seen and shot at, but he reflected that only a very few of the garrison could possibly have observed his entrance or know of his being made prisoner, that a number, including two officers at least, had gone off to Loch Mudle, and that the rest would surely not fire without reason at an unknown individual making his way, not too fast, along the shingle below them.

It required, in the end, more muscular effort to pull himself from the shaky table entirely up to the level of the little window and to get himself through this, than to lower himself the other side. At last, with a good deal of strain and wriggling, he was through, dropped on to the shelf of rock at the bottom of the masonry, and crouched there a moment or two, holding his breath, for men’s voices and laughter had all at once drifted ominously to his ears. But he could not make out whence they came, and in any case must go on.

There was a place on the side of the shelf nearest to the sea which was much wider, and which seemed to overhang the shore; but this end of it Ewen naturally avoided, creeping along in the opposite direction pressed as close as possible to the grey stones of the keep. But soon he could do this no longer, for the shelf had narrowed until it ceased altogether; on which, finding foothold with some difficulty, he clambered down the rock itself to the beach.

But when the fugitive was there he instantly stood motionless, for he saw, only too clearly, what the overhanging shelf had hidden from him. Above him towered Mingary, with who knew what observers on its battlements, but between him and the sea, at no great distance, was worse—a party of about a dozen soldiers uproariously washing their feet in a pool left by the tide. It was their voices which he had heard on the ledge.

One moment of sharp dismay and Ardroy turned, quick as a fox, and began to tiptoe away over the shingle. If he could only reach the low cliff over there unobserved, he would soon be up that. He did not think that he had been seen; his impression was that the men mostly had their backs turned in his direction, or were absorbed in their chilly ablutions. And their talk and guffaws might cover the scrunch of the shingle under his feet.

But to get away from so many eyes without being seen by any was too much to ask for. A minute later cries of “Halt, you there—halt and tell your business!” reached him, and he knew that measures were on foot to enforce the command. Ewen did not look back; he took to his heels, a pretty certain means, he knew, of ensuring a bullet’s being sent after him. But he was too desperately set upon escape to weigh that risk. Instant pursuit, of course, there would be; he heard the cries with which it started, and the sound of men scrambling to their feet over stones—yet not a single shot.

Two facts, indeed, were in the Highlander’s favour, though he knew it not; no redcoat had committed so unheard-of a folly as to burden himself with his musket when off duty, and not a single man of the party at the pool happened to be fully shod when he took the alarm. Those with one boot paused to pull on the other, those with none, less cautious or more zealous, began the chase as they were—and, over shingle and edges of bare rock, did not get very far. Meanwhile, therefore, Ewen had quite a respectable start, and made the very best of it. In a few minutes he had reached the slope, part grass, part rock, part bare earth, and had hurled himself up it. For one instant he thought that a patch of earth over which he had to pull himself was going to give way and slide with his weight, but his muscles carried him to a securer spot before this could happen. And, once on the top, he found a stretch of rough but not precipitous going between him and the hamlet of Kilchoan, which now seemed his best goal. To turn the other way was to pass the fortress again.

A glance showed him that no one had yet topped the cliff. He ran like a deer through heather stems and bog-myrtle, up slopes and down them, and when his track was crossed by a tangled hollow with a burn at the bottom he plunged gratefully down, for it meant cover, and he could work along it unseen for a little. When he was obliged to come up again on the other side he saw with thankfulness the forms of only three pursuers running stumblingly towards the ravine which they had yet to cross, and he took fresh breath and sped still faster over the moorland.

Soon, as he went, Kilchoan bay with its string of white cottages round the shore was fully visible, under the remains of a smouldering sunset. He could see only one sailing-boat at anchor; was that the Macleans’, the Coll men’s? In another three minutes he was near enough to see figures moving about in her. Perhaps she was about to sail with the ebb. He came, still running very fast, though the pace was distressing him, through a little cluster of fishermen’s huts at the edge of the strand. “Is that boat out yonder from Coll?” he shouted to an old man at his door, and understood the ancient to pipe after him as he passed that it was, and just upon sailing.

Ewen pulled up, breathless. “I want a boat . . . take me to her!” But he could see without being told that there was no boat within easy reach. He threw a look behind him; two scarlet-clad forms were doggedly pounding along towards the cottages, and would be on the shore in another couple of minutes. He must do without a boat. Shouting and waving to the Coll men, who seemed to have been attracted by what was going on, he ran out along a wet spit of rock and, pausing only to remove his shoes, plunged into the water.

The sea was as calm as a summer’s and colder than anything he had ever imagined. The yellow-bladdered fingers of the low-tide seaweed slid gropingly round him, but in a moment he was clear of them, and, gasping for breath, was striking out furiously for the fishing-boat. . . . Then he was underneath her counter, and the Macleans, with exclamations which showed that they recognised him, were helping him over the side. And as by now the two persistent soldiers could be heard shouting, with gesticulations, for a boat, there was no need for the dripping fugitive to explain from whom he was escaping.

“Will you take me with you?” he got out, panting. It was folly now even to suggest their putting about and passing Mingary to go up Loch Sunart, as he had once thought of doing.

“Ay, will we,” said the elder Maclean. “Ye’ll please give my brother a hand with the sails, then.” He ran forward to the anchor.

The pursuers had not even got hold of a boat before the little fishing-vessel was moving up the top of the Sound of Mull towards the open sea and the flat mass of the isle of Coll, vaguely discernible about eight miles away; while Ewen, after making fast the last halyard, had sunk drenched and exhausted on a thwart.

* * * * *

An hour and a half later he was sitting on a heap of nets in the bows of the Ròn, the Seal, clad in an odd assortment of garments. His own were hanging up to dry. For a February night in these latitudes the air was remarkably warm, as he had already noticed, thinking, not of himself, but of the old man to whom he had lent his arm for so many miles. But surely Mr. Oliphant had gained some kind of shelter for the night . . . only Ewen prayed that shelter were not Mingary Castle.

Though darkness would soon shroud the little boat from Mingary, the Macleans were not willing to put about because, other considerations apart, they were carrying meal to their families in Coll, where it was needed immediately; and Ewen had to acquiesce in this reluctance, feeling, as he did, that they had already rendered him a much greater service than he could have expected of them, in thus taking him off under the very eyes of the redcoats.

The Ròn rolled before the following wind, and the sail flapped; the younger Maclean was singing under his breath some air of the Outer Isles full of cadences at once monotonous and unexpected. A hidden moon was tingeing the heavy clouds over Mull, and at last Ewen had time to think. But thought was tumbled and broken, like those clouds. He had met his enemy, after all these years, and . . . well, what had he done with him? Saved him, or tried to, at another’s bidding, and with a reluctance which amounted to abhorrence. Small credit could he take to himself for that deed!

The wind freshened, and seemed to be changing too; it ran cool over Ewen’s damp hair. The Ròn was feeling the Atlantic swell; blessed little boat, which had cheated his pursuers! And where was now his heat of baffled revenge—a mere cinder in his breast. Certainly it burnt with flame no longer; quenched, perhaps, as the half-fantastic thought whispered, by the cold waves of Kilchoan bay. And was he glad of it, or did he miss the purpose which had lain buried in his heart so long, the purpose which he had avowed to Archibald Cameron that evening at Ardroy, but which he could never again take out and finger over, like a treasure? Ewen did not know. Half to console himself for its loss, he reminded himself that he too had had a score, and a heavy one, against that wretched man moaning his life away above the wintry loch, and that he could never have been quite certain that his vengeance was entirely on his dead friend’s account. He could not have paid Keith Windham’s score without paying his own as well.

Time passed; Ardroy still lay without moving, half-propped against the gunwale, his head on his arm, seeing more clearly, with every wave that heaved, dimly frothing, past the boat’s nose, from what Mr. Oliphant had saved him; beginning indeed to have shuddering glimpses of a deep and very dark place in himself full of horrible things. Well did the Gaelic name the Enemy ‘the One from the Abyss’! . . . But that very deliverance had parted him from the old man, it might be for ever, and he could not say to him now what he longed to say. Perhaps he would never be able to.

“Will you sleep, sir?” came a voice in his ear. One of the Macleans was bending over him. “We’ll not make Coll till morning now; the wind’s gone round, and we must take a long tack to the northward. I have brought a sail to cover you.”

Ewen looked up. The moon was gone, the clouds too; the sky was velvet dark, and sown with myriad points of light. “Thank you, Maclean; yes, I’ll sleep awhile.”

And to himself he said, as he stretched himself on the brine-scented nets, “Thank God—and a saint of His—that I can!”