In the Far Pashmina Mountains Read online

  John flushed, gazing up at his chief in awe.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your mother going,’ said the laird. ‘She was a fine girl and pretty too – I see you have the same deep complexion. But no doubt Morag crotach looks after you well, eh?’

  John nodded.

  ‘That’s good. And the old Spaniard Carlos – is he still living?’

  John shook his head.

  ‘Hardly surprising,’ Hercules grunted. ‘He was ancient when I was a boy but he seemed destined to live on forever. A great old man. But perhaps you never met him. You don’t have much to say for yourself, do you? The Spanish MacAskills usually say twenty words when two would do.’

  John wanted to tell him how he did remember old Carlos – had listened to his stories about soldiering as a boy for the exiled Stuart kings. His great-great-grandfather had been growing a third set of teeth and had started to speak again in Spanish – a language that hadn’t passed his lips for nearly a century – before he died.

  ‘John can’t speak,’ Donald piped up, ‘but he understands a lot.’

  Hercules raised an eyebrow. He turned his attention to Donald and began to ask after his family, chuckling at the boy’s lively replies. John felt frustration well up inside him but his throat was tight as a cork in a bottle. Azlan joined them, squatting down to eat the simple fare. He passed comment in a language John had never heard before. The words sounded like the chuckling of a fast stream. Hercules laughed and made some riposte.

  Morag came ambling over to check on John, glancing warily at the fierce-looking foreigner in rapid-fire conversation with their chief. She curtseyed in greeting to Hercules and he raised his bonnet in return.

  ‘I hope the food’s to your liking, sir?’ she asked. ‘You must have missed our good oatmeal and sheep’s cheese this long while.’

  ‘Indeed I have.’ He smiled. ‘Though my friend is finding the oatcake a little indigestible.’

  Morag bristled. ‘And why is that?’

  Hercules chuckled. ‘He says it is the food of mules in his country.’

  John saw the flush of indignation on his aunt’s face and hoped she wouldn’t say anything rash.

  Hands on hips, Morag retorted, ‘Tell him that this food has been eaten by Scottish kings and clan chiefs for centuries; if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for our chief’s servant.’

  As an amused Hercules relayed her words, John saw the frown deepen on the Afghan’s brow. They had a rapid exchange. People all around were stopping their conversations to stare. John moved nearer his aunt in case the man should lash out at her.

  Azlan spoke to Hercules, his voice angry. The laird turned to Morag.

  ‘He says we should lock you up in the castle dungeon for your insolence to a man.’

  Morag retorted, ‘He’ll have to get used to women’s plain speaking or the dungeon will be full by nightfall.’

  John tugged at his aunt to stop but by the gleam in her eye he feared she was enjoying baiting the stranger. Hercules translated her reply. Azlan got to his feet, his face stormy. Suddenly the Afghan threw back his head and bellowed in laughter. Then he put his hand on his heart and gave a slight nod in Morag’s direction without making eye contact.

  With a snort of amusement, Morag bobbed an awkward curtsy in return.

  Later, John’s grandfather took her to task for her forwardness.

  ‘I’ll not have a daughter of mine make a fool of herself with that heathen foreigner.’

  ‘Not so heathen,’ Morag quipped. ‘He says more prayers in one day than folk round here say in a year.’

  ‘To some foreign god,’ Norman snapped.

  ‘His prayers go up to Heaven the same as ours,’ said Morag, ‘and if our chief has no objection to them, then neither should you.’

  John, fearing his grandfather would explode with rage at his aunt, grabbed the birch stick that had replaced the last one and ran out of the hut, flinging it into the heather. Norman came striding after him, cursing and shaking his fists.

  ‘When I find it, I’ll thrash your hide!’

  John ran off and didn’t come home till after nightfall by which time his grandfather was half-comatose with whisky and had forgotten to be angry with the boy.

  John’s fascination with Azlan grew daily. He crept close to watch him pray and listen to his language, which spilled like music into the clear air. When Hercules and Azlan rode out, John would pull Donald away from his chores to clamber the hillside and spy on the hunting party. One day Azlan caught a hawk but did not kill it; he trained it to fly high and return to sit on his wrist.

  One evening he came to the village and greeted the blacksmith with one of his strange bows and began to speak in his musical tongue, pointing at the forge dog. James, Donald’s father, was baffled. Others quickly came crowding around, curious about the visitor who had come without his master, their chief, and was making wild gestures and gabbling unintelligibly. The words were just as strange to John, yet somehow he understood the gist of them. John stepped forward, picked up one of the puppies nestling half-hidden beneath the dog – a lean wolf-like male with white flecks on its grey muzzle – and held it out to Azlan.

  Azlan beamed and nodded. Then swiftly he drew out a small knife with a brass handle and grabbed at the puppy.

  ‘No, don’t,’ Donald’s father shouted in alarm, lunging at the Afghan. ‘Keep your hands off it!’

  Startled, Azlan waved the knife at his attacker. James grabbed a hammer. Norman and two other men muscled forward, ready to fight.

  John, still gripping the puppy, flung himself forward to protect Azlan.

  ‘Out of the way, boy!’ his grandfather barked. ‘Our dogs are not for eating.’

  John shook his head. Turning, he took the knife from Azlan and handed him the puppy. Then he handed the knife to Donald’s father. James hesitated.

  Donald piped up. ‘It’s a gift, Father, for the puppy. Isn’t that right, John?’

  John nodded. Azlan was stroking and nuzzling the puppy, grinning with delight. James took the knife, admiring its elaborate brass handle studded with green stones. He was soon showing it off to the other men. Norman continued to scowl, still suspecting some trickery, when Morag came over with a bowl of cream.

  ‘That’s a fine way to greet a guest, with fists and hammers,’ she chided.

  At once, James gestured for Azlan to sit with them outside the forge. Morag handed the Afghan the bowl first. ‘Not for that greedy pup though,’ she warned.

  He gave a puzzled frown. In explanation, John reached and took the puppy while nodding for him to take the bowl. Azlan did so, slurping at the cream. He licked his lips and grinned, giving Morag a shy glance as he passed the bowl to James. It made her smile that dimpled smile that reminded John of his mother.

  In the weeks and months that followed, John saw a lot more of his chief’s bodyguard, as Azlan often came by the forge to have his hunting knives sharpened, lingering at John’s door to show him new tricks that he had taught the puppy, now called Wolf. Man and hound were never apart and Morag complained about the exuberant dog rushing in and knocking over her pots, but she always had a cup of water or bowl of milk ready to offer Wolf’s master.

  Sometimes Hercules and Azlan would stop by the burning kelp pits where John and Donald were unloading the creels of seaweed and beckon the boys to go with them to the hunting grounds in the mountains. They would run along and flush out the birds for the men to shoot. If they brought down a deer, the boys would carry it back, strung from a pole, and take home a share of it to their families. Often Hercules would chatter to his friend in his own language; the chief told the boys it was Pashto. Donald understood not a word but John found himself picking up meaning, drinking up the words thirstily and mouthing them soundlessly.

  One day when Azlan asked Hercules what was the meaning of the Gaelic word crotach, John croaked in Pashto ‘hump on back’.

  The men stared at him as if he had grown wings. Donald gaped.<
br />
  ‘My mother’s sister; Morag hump on back.’ The words came out weak and husky.

  ‘Are you speaking Afghan?’ Donald asked in amazement.

  Hercules slapped his thigh. ‘Well, I’ll be damned! Spanish John has a tongue after all, Azlan. You were right all along.’

  Azlan gave John a penetrating look with his dark eyes. ‘You understand all that we say?’

  John shrugged.

  ‘Tell me in words, my brother,’ Azlan ordered.

  John swallowed hard and cleared his throat. ‘A bit. A big bit.’

  Azlan clapped a hand on his shoulder and looked in triumph at Hercules. ‘Didn’t I say this one was a young Afridi? He has the heart of a lion and speaks the language of kings.’

  Hercules chuckled. ‘You were right, my friend.’

  Donald pulled on John’s arm. ‘What are you all saying? Tell me in Gaelic.’

  John began to shake. He wanted to explain but felt too overcome. Something momentous was happening yet he wasn’t sure what. Azlan threw an arm around his shoulder and hugged him.

  ‘Are you crying, John?’ Donald asked. ‘Why are you crying?’

  ‘Donald, Og,’ Hercules said gently, ‘I think your friend has found a way back to us.’

  After that, John was inseparable from Azlan, becoming his most devoted gillie on hunting trips, learning to ride and manage the horses as well as look after the dogs in the kennels, Wolf being his favourite. He became fluent in Pashto, which amused his aunt but infuriated his grandfather. Sometimes, when drunk, old Norman would take the stick to his grandson.

  ‘Speak Gaelic, you little heathen!’

  But John could easily dodge his wild blows and defied him with an oath in Pashto. The villagers thought him even more eccentric for speaking in a foreign tongue than when he was mute but Donald stood up for his friend and accepted this new development like the change in the seasons.

  The following summer, a sailing ship moored off the peninsula and visitors were ferried ashore to the castle. Word went round that they were eminent men from the Lowlands. To his grandfather’s consternation, Hercules summoned John to the castle.

  ‘What have you done, boy?’ Norman fretted.

  John hid his nerves as he went. He had only ever been into the kitchens and outhouses around the old keep and never into its living quarters. He was ushered up stone steps into a cavernous sitting room with casement windows set in walls six feet thick, musty-smelling hangings and a faded multicoloured carpet under his bare feet. Guests, sitting on chairs of sprouting horsehair, were bent over a table covered in charts and drawings. Someone was bashing the keys of an out-of-tune piano and Hercules was standing in front of a large fireplace smoking a pipe.

  To John’s relief he caught sight of Azlan, who beckoned him forward with a wink of encouragement.

  ‘These are friends from the south,’ Hercules explained to John in Gaelic. ‘They are from the Northern Lighthouse Board and are doing an inspection of the Western Isles.’ Then he switched to English as he introduced them. John found his hand being vigorously shaken by a Mr Stevenson from Edinburgh.

  ‘One of Scotland’s best engineers,’ Hercules praised him to the man’s obvious delight.

  There were three other men, the last being a tall man with a beaky nose and wild, curly hair.

  ‘I’m George Gillveray, a friend of your chief’s from our India days. Do you understand Hindustani too?’

  John had never heard of Hindustani.

  Hercules declared. ‘Not yet, but give me a year with the boy and he will.’

  ‘But you understand English?’ George asked.

  John nodded.

  ‘His father spoke it,’ Hercules explained.

  ‘Ah, yes, such a sad business. And to lose your mother too, poor boy.’

  John flushed; they had been talking about him.

  The men gathered around and quizzed him as if he were some strange creature from a faraway land. John, at Hercules’s bidding, answered in Pashto, which his chief then translated for his guests. They wanted to know why he would not speak Gaelic.

  ‘Do you choose not to?’ asked Stevenson.

  John shook his head. He could not explain it. He threw Azlan a pleading look. To John’s surprise, Azlan answered in halting English.

  ‘The words – they will not come. English, it died with the father; Gaelic, with mother.’

  ‘That’s a most surprising suggestion,’ said Stevenson.

  ‘But an interesting one – and plausible,’ George said. ‘The boy had two terrible shocks one after the other; first his father’s death and then his mother’s. It’s no wonder he stopped speaking.’

  John went cold. What were they saying? He turned to Azlan, appalled.

  ‘M-my m-mother? She’s dead?’

  Hercules frowned. ‘Surely you knew that?’

  John shook his head.

  ‘Oh, my poor boy! She died of the cold in the mountains,’ his chief explained. ‘She lies in the burial ground on the hill. Your grandfather must have told you?’

  John’s heart began to hammer. No one had told him! His chest tightened so that he could hardly breathe. He saw the looks of shocked amazement on the faces of the visitors, but it was the pity in his chief’s eyes that he could not bear.

  John turned and tore from the room, knocking over a side table that held a tray of delicate glasses. As he fled, he heard glass smash. He knew that he should go back and apologise but all he wanted to do was get out of the castle and as far away as possible.

  Escaping outside, John sped past the kelp fires, the settlement of turf houses and the field rigs. People called out to him but he did not answer and did not stop until he reached the tumbled-down stone church and its sloping burial ground, his lungs bursting with the effort. The church had long fallen into disuse for lack of a minister and because a long-absent chief cared little for religion. John and his friends never played here as it was said to be haunted and under the spell of ‘the little people’ – malevolent fairies who could cause sickness in cattle and death to those who cursed them. But if his mother was here, he must find her. Chest heaving for breath, John searched the mossy graveyard overgrown with thistles and ferns.

  There were a few ancient gravestones of MacAskill chiefs lying prone among the lush grass, their images of medieval knights and galley ships worn down by centuries of weather. A handful of upright stones bore the names and dates of tacksmen, the tenant farmers who held land from the chief. But most of the graves were unmarked or bore simple undressed stones, the curved grassy mounds the only testament to family ancestors. Even if his mother were buried here, he would never find her.

  Then he remembered where his great-great-grandfather Carlos had been laid to rest three years ago, in a far corner of the burial ground under a rowan tree. To his surprise, he found the thistles had been cut back and yellow primroses studded the grass. Someone came here to tend it; Aunt Morag perhaps? John crouched down and put his hand on the stone marker. Was his mother here too, sleeping with the ancestors? The leaves of the rowan fluttered above, sighing in the wind. Grief choked him. All this time he had blamed himself for her disappearance, thinking she had hated him so much for the death of his father that she could not bear to be with him. Yet for years he had lived in hope – a childish hope – that she would return. How stupid he had been! She had been dead all along, perished in the snow. John bowed his head and let out a sob.

  Why had no one told him? They should have. He had a right to know! Suddenly John was filled with hot rage. It coursed through his blood like a poison. They had lied to him – his grandfather, his aunt, his neighbours and friends. All of them had kept the truth from him and let him believe that one day she might return.

  Seething with anger and misery, John strode down the hill. He barged into his grandfather’s house. Norman and Morag looked up in surprise – he smoking a pipe, she stirring the pot.

  ‘Back so soon?’ Morag smiled.

  John was shaking unc
ontrollably.

  ‘What is it?’ Morag reached to put her arms about him but he shook her off. He felt the words rising up inside him from the core of his being; Gaelic words that hadn’t passed his lips for half his life.

  ‘Why didn’t you say my mother was dead?’

  They both gaped at him, astonished.

  ‘Are you speaking the Gaelic?’ Norman demanded.

  ‘My mother,’ John cried. ‘Tell me about my mother.’

  His aunt looked confused. ‘John, I don’t understand . . .’

  He glared at his grandfather; now that he had found his tongue he couldn’t stop. ‘You told me she was lost – gone – but never dead ! I had to hear it from a stranger at the castle. Everyone else knew apart from me!’

  Norman laid down his pipe. ‘What foolishness you talk. Of course she’s dead. Why else would you be living here?’

  ‘I thought she had left me because it was my fault my father died – if I hadn’t made him stay to pick apples that tree would never have killed him. She was so sad she couldn’t bear to have me near her—’

  ‘No, you’re wrong,’ Morag interrupted. ‘She loved you more than her own life. Tell him, Father,’ she urged Norman. ‘Tell him what happened.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more lies,’ John shouted.

  ‘Don’t raise your voice to your grandfather,’ Morag chided. ‘Sit you beside him and listen.’ She pushed him gently onto a stool.

  ‘Nobody’s lied to you.’ Norman looked stricken. John saw tears in his grandfather’s eyes as he struggled to speak.

  ‘Your mother saved your life that day on the mountain when the snow came so quickly. She wrapped you in her plaid and pushed you into a crevice in the rock. She knew it would mean certain death for her – unless help came quickly – but we didn’t know she had set out that day. If only we had searched for her sooner. I will go to my grave with that guilt in my heart . . .’

  ‘I remember her telling me to hide in the rock,’ John whispered, ‘but I thought she had left me there.’

  ‘No,’ Norman said, his voice shaking with emotion. ‘She stayed right beside you until the cold took her life. No mother could have done more for her son.’