In the Far Pashmina Mountains Read online

  Alice gazed up at the tower, a huge white finger stabbing the sky, but it was the inside that really took her breath away. An iron staircase wound its way upwards instead of rickety ladders between trap doors. The bedchambers had windows on the landward side shaped like flower petals and the kitchen had a cast-iron range with a boiler for hot water.

  Stepping into the lamp-room, she gasped. ‘But it’s beautiful.’

  A huge hexagonal iron lantern housed a myriad of mirrors and lenses spread out like a crystal fan around the lamp – a proper oil lamp with no need for hazardous candles, and it caught and refracted light even before it was lit. The outer gantry was equipped with brass handles to grip onto that were shaped into dolphins and fish. Alice ran her hands over the polished metal.

  She grinned at George. ‘Not even a palace would have such fancy door handles.’

  He laughed. ‘Fit for a princess.’

  Alice blushed. At thirteen she had a girlish crush on the handsome landowner, even though he was so much older. She often imagined him riding a stallion over the mountains of northern India, with his unruly brown hair and glowing hazel eyes, leading men into battle. For once she was tongue-tied. She pretended to find something of interest to gaze at on the horizon while listening to George and her father talk animatedly about the French-designed Fresnel lenses and the merits of an Argand lamp and parabolic reflectors. Alice was silently grateful to their kind benefactor for pulling her father out of his long depression and giving him a new purpose in life. Her heart gave a dull ache to think that, once they moved back to the island, she would not be seeing George every day as she had the past three years.

  But before the week was out, a startling proposal was made.

  ‘Alice has a sharp mind and an aptitude for learning,’ George said, having summoned Arnold to his study. ‘Let her stay on in school till she is fifteen like her brothers did. Miss Lambert thinks she has the makings of a teacher.’

  Arnold was undecided but Alice seized on the idea.

  ‘Please let me, Da!’

  Her father soon gave in to her pleading, as much out of gratitude to Gillveray for all he had done for their family as conviction that Alice had twice the brains of her brothers. He accepted the landowner’s offer despite Effie’s protests.

  ‘The lassie’s head is already stuffed full of learning – there’s no room left for common sense,’ her mother cried.

  ‘She can stay for another year or so,’ Arnold bargained, ‘then come and take her share of keeping watch, like you did before the lads grew up.’

  So Alice and her pet sheep Wellington stayed on the mainland during term time and lived with Molly’s family at the dairyman’s cottage. Alice spent her free time helping in Gillveray’s garden or borrowing books from his library. She went home in the holidays. She had never been so happy. At fifteen, she was as tall as Danny, with strong limbs and a full figure, long burnished-blonde hair tied carelessly at the nape of her neck, and a slim oval face with wide blue eyes framed in dark lashes and a generous mouth that was constantly twitching into a smile.

  She was quick-witted yet dreamy by nature, practical yet given to flights of fancy that made Molly laugh and shake her head.

  ‘You want to fly through the air like a bird! Where do you get such notions?’

  Alice dreamt of being a teacher like Miss Lambert – and might have done so despite her mother’s objections – but the florid-faced teacher was found dead in the schoolroom one winter’s morning.

  ‘Heart failed,’ George told a distraught Alice.

  Effie lost no time in summoning Alice back to the lighthouse to help the family. She went with a heavy heart, finding the island cramped and its life restricting after the years at Black Harbour House. She’d brought Wellington with her, and whispered to the sheep about her sadness and pined for George Gillveray. By the following spring, news came that the school had closed and Gillveray had gone travelling again, perhaps in search of a wife.

  This rumour caused Alice pain but spurred on Danny to propose to Thomasina. They married that summer and the post mistress’s spoilt daughter came to live with them at the lighthouse.

  ‘Sam doesn’t need a large bedchamber all to himself,’ their new sister-in-law declared within a week of arriving, ‘and I need somewhere to put all my trunks of clothes.’

  Alice retorted that a lighthouse-keeper’s wife had no need of so many outfits but Thomasina burst into tears and Effie chided her daughter for making the girl cry. Sam meekly agreed and moved into one of the empty storerooms. Thomasina didn’t try to hide her look of triumph and was soon ingratiating herself with her mother-in-law. Alice swallowed her annoyance. Effie was happy to have a woman in the house who was content to cook and sew and keep her company.

  But soon Thomasina was pregnant and gave up doing any chores, declaring herself too delicate. She ordered Alice around like a servant. Alice’s one escape was helping her father with the night watch, keeping the brilliant flame of the new lamp alight. She would stare out at the sea and wonder if her life would always be confined to this tower. Thomasina had swept in to their lives like an autumn bluster; Alice had a gnawing sense of unease that the girl was going to cause further storms – especially for her.

  CHAPTER 5

  Skye, 1813

  The day that the laird, Hercules MacAskill, returned to Ramanish was one that young John Sinclair would never forget.

  ‘Are you coming up the hill to wait for the chief?’ his friend Donald from next door ran over to ask.

  John turned to his grandfather, who was sharpening a sickle on a stone in the doorway. Please can I go! The eight-year-old gave his grandfather a pleading look.

  Norman shook his head and raised his voice as if John was stupid, not merely mute. ‘He’ll come soon enough and I need you to keep the cow from trampling the barley.’

  ‘We could take Fula the cow with us, sir,’ Donald suggested.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘Let them go, Father,’ Aunt Morag intervened. She was standing in the doorway hunched over her knitting. ‘All the other children are going. I’ll keep an eye on the cow.’

  ‘You?’ Norman was dismissive. ‘A cripple can’t run after beasts – and it’s other people’s cattle need watching too. I’ll not have my barley ruined – we need to eat this winter.’

  ‘You mean drink,’ Morag muttered. ‘Most of it goes into that whisky still out the back.’

  ‘Watch your tongue, woman!’

  Morag rolled her eyes at John but said no more. They both knew that once Norman had set his mind against something, then nothing would change it. So John had to watch Donald run off without him and join the other children of the village as scouts on the mountain path, ready to alert the people of their landlord’s arrival after thirteen years away in India.

  John spent a frustrating morning in the fields, flapping at the crows to keep them off the corn, and using his grandfather’s birch stick to prod any cattle that strayed too close to the open strips of barley, oats and potato patches. He often did menial tasks around the village – lifting peats for the homestead fire and carrying basket-loads of seaweed for the kelp workers because he was bigger and stronger than most boys his age. That’s why none of the other boys picked on him for not speaking and just accepted him as he was. But on a day like today, John wished with all his heart that he could find the words to beg his grandfather to let him be the first to see their returning chief. (He hardly remembered a time when he could talk – like a chattering herring gull his mother had once said – but since he had caused his father to die and his mother to disappear, their loss weighed on his tongue like stones.)

  So when Donald ran back, whooping through the village that a band of riders on horseback with baggage ponies were on their way, John abandoned his duty among the field rigs.

  ‘He’s got a savage with him,’ Donald said in excitement, ‘in funny clothes. Must be his slave.’

  Villagers poured out of their houses and
came up from the shore where they had been gathering seaweed to throng the path leading to Ramanish Castle. John and Donald pushed forward to the front. Long before he set eyes on his chief and his entourage, John heard Willie the Piper leading them down the mountain to a skirl of bagpipes.

  All of a sudden it started: the singing. As the riders came into view, John felt a deep primitive joy inside as the spontaneous chanting rose into the air – half war cry, half love song – welcoming home their longed-for leader. It was an ancient song and one that his mother had sung to him; his eyes stung with tears as he listened.

  Hercules, dressed in trews and a faded red army jacket under a tartan plaid, rode in front on a sturdy brown mare. His large, weather-beaten face was cracked by tiny lines and his red hair under the army bonnet was unfashionably long and tied back. To John he looked like some Jacobite hero from the last century. But it was the man who rode behind on a black horse without stirrups or saddle who made his jaw drop. He had nut-brown skin (like John’s Spanish great-great-grandfather who had died two summers ago) and a full black beard. He wore a voluminous green cloak that only half hid a sword, and his head was swathed in white cloth like a giant bandage with the end hanging down over his broad shoulder. He had the beaked nose and dark flashing eyes of a hawk.

  ‘There’s the slave,’ Donald said, nudging John.

  Looks more like a bodyguard, thought John, noticing the long slender musket strapped to the foreigner’s horse.

  Behind rode a band of clan gentry, dressed in their finest clothes and bonnets for the occasion. The village boys ran alongside, waving and cheering. A beaming Hercules called out to people he recognised, shouting greetings. As the procession neared the rocky rise that led to the castle, he pulled his horse around and, facing the crowds, took out a silver pistol and fired into the air. The foreigner whipped out a gun, cocked it and did the same.

  Women screamed and the horses behind whinnied in fright. As children and dogs scattered, Hercules and his companion roared with laughter.

  ‘Tonight,’ their chief bellowed above the noise, ‘you will all dine with me on the shore. You boys,’ he said, pointing at Donald and John still wide-eyed in alarm at the shooting, ‘what are your names?’

  ‘I’m Donald, son of James, son of Donald the blacksmith, sir,’ John’s friend answered at once. ‘And this is John, grandson of Norman, son of Iain, son of Carlos.’

  ‘One of the Spanish MacAskills?’ Hercules raised an eyebrow. John nodded. ‘Show me that you have the strength of your forefathers and gather up wood for a fire for our feast. Can you do that, my young warriors?’

  ‘Aye sir,’ Donald gasped, and John nodded vigorously, overwhelmed by the honour of being singled out in the crowd.

  They didn’t wait to see the chief and his bodyguard of men ride on to the castle but took to their heels to scavenge for driftwood along the shore, followed by a horde of children eager to help.

  That night, as the stars came out, the people of Ramanish and the surrounding villages feasted on roast mutton and goose cooked over open fires, the first meat that most of them had tasted all year. Dusty barrels of claret and casks of brandy were brought up from the castle cellar and Hercules went among them, sharing bowls of claret and brandy punch with the men. His laughter and deep voice rang out across the still loch as he regaled his people with stories of far-off lands and military campaigns.

  ‘Went with Elphinstone to visit the King of Afghanistan – he owns a diamond as big as my fist,’ Hercules said, punching the air, ‘the Koh-i-noor. But I brought back a greater treasure – my friend Azlan. He is a true Highlander and a warrior just like our people.’ He clapped a hand on the Afghan’s shoulder. ‘The only difference is he prays to the east and doesn’t speak Gaelic – yet.’ Hercules chuckled.

  John hovered close to the circle of men grouped around his chief, staring in fascination at the bearded fighter with the long dagger in his belt. The foreigner squatted on his haunches while he ate but did not touch a drop of the free-flowing liquor. The Afghan caught his eye and winked. John was so astonished his mouth fell open. The man grinned, revealing a gap in his upper teeth and carried on slicing meat from a bone with a small, sharp knife and popping the morsels in his mouth.

  Later, Donald’s father fetched his fiddle and struck up a tune and the villagers danced on the widening beach as the tide ebbed. The celebration went on all night, the men (including John’s grandfather) bringing out jugs of illicit homemade whisky to share around while age-old clan stories were told. As dawn broke, Willie the Piper played a slow haunting salute to his patron and master; it was the signal for families to drift home to snatch sleep before the new day.

  A drunken Norman roused John and pulled him out of the bed-closet that was wedged between the byre and the living space, where John had just fallen asleep.

  His grandfather was slurring and almost incoherent. ‘Disobeyed me! Fula in field. You ran off.’

  She was tethered, John wanted to cry out.

  ‘Don’t give me that look!’ He reached for the birch stick and swung it at his grandson. John dodged out of the way. ‘Stand still!’

  ‘Father’ – Morag scrambled up from her bed by the fire – ‘leave him be. Don’t spoil such a grand day.’

  ‘You’re the one who spoils him,’ Norman growled. ‘Needs teaching a lesson.’

  As he raised the stick again, Morag hurled herself between her father and nephew. ‘Stop!’ she cried, grabbing the stick as he brought it down. A glancing blow scraped her cheek but she wrested it from him and it clattered to the ground. John dashed forward, picked up the stick and ran off with it out of the house. He hurled it like a javelin over the yard wall; it disappeared into the mossy bank where his grandfather’s illegal still nestled under a rocky outcrop by the stream.

  Returning to face his grandfather’s wrath, John found him on his knees by the fire, weeping into his hands.

  ‘Help me get him to bed,’ Morag said.

  They pulled and cajoled Norman to his feet; he was not a big man but had a wiry strength.

  ‘Sorry, Morag, sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Didn’t mean to hit you.’

  ‘I know you didn’t. Come on, Father, it’s your sore head you’ll be sorry about in the morning.’

  They heaved him into the old box-bed in the corner of the kitchen, its sides and curtains blackened from years of peat smoke. Soon he was snoring but John was reluctant to return to his bed in the closet. As usual Morag understood. She put a gentle hand on his head.

  ‘You can sleep by the fire for a wee bit. It’ll soon be time to be up.’

  They bedded down together on the truckle bed that got folded away during the day. John lay staring at the fire, his aunt’s comforting arm encircling him. He found it hard to remember his old home at Foxton – a white-painted dresser for crockery, a hearth with a chimney and curtains at a window that opened – but little else. This windowless room around a central fire with his aunt’s spinning wheel and grandfather’s tools was much more familiar now. Its smells calmed him; fish strung overhead curing in the smoke, the pungent fleece of a sheep nailed to the wall to dry out and the all-pervading peat smoke that seeped into hair and clothes.

  ‘Your grandfather wasn’t always this bad-tempered,’ Morag murmured. ‘He was a great cattle drover as a young man and brought ribbons and buckles back from the markets in the south – but those days are long past. He’s had a hard time making a living since. Still, you’re not to blame for any of it, so he shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just when the drink’s in him . . .’ She gave a long sigh.

  He loved his Aunt Morag almost as much as he’d loved his mother, though he still felt hollow inside when he thought of his tall father and his gentle mother. Nightmares of falling trees still plagued his sleep and his mother would appear in his dreams but he had no memory of how she had vanished; no one had ever told him. Where had she gone and why had she left him? John had an unhappy feeling that his grandfather blamed him for not bringing
his mother safely over the mountain from Foxton and that was why the old man didn’t like him and spoke of him as simple in the head to the neighbours.

  A summons from the laird for help with harvesting the hay went round the following week. Hercules expected everyone to drop what they were doing and come to his fields while the weather was fine. When Norman grumbled that it was more important to get on with the kelp, which brought them in money, Morag reminded him, ‘The chief doesn’t ask a penny piece in rent for our land and house – the least we can do is help out at the harvest.’

  John was delighted to escape from the chore of humping huge creels of seaweed to the kelp fires on the shore; those sinister reeking piles that he had seen on first arrival at Ramanish and had thought were the work of enemies laying waste to the land.

  With Donald beside him, he set about scything the tall lush grass that grew on the lower slopes down to the sandy bay, moving to the rhythm of the men and women singing as they worked. Everyone able-bodied was there – even the factor Falkner and his giggling daughter Katrine, who spent more time chucking hay seeds in the air, and Hercules and Azlan, who rolled up their sleeves and helped alongside.

  John kept glancing at the muscular Afghan in his baggy trousers, boots and a multicoloured jerkin over his shirt, a long knife strapped to his belt. When they stopped to eat the oatcakes and cheese that the women had brought, Azlan went a little way off, removed his boots and washed in the stream. Then he unfolded a small piece of cloth and began to murmur before bending, kneeling and bowing down on the ground.

  The boys gawped. ‘Do you think he’s doing magic?’ Donald whispered.

  ‘He’s praying,’ Hercules told them. ‘No need to stare, boys.’