God's Highlander

by Thompson, E. V.

  Mairi looked from one grinning face to another, thoroughly perplexed. She had returned from the shielings only an hour before and knew nothing of what had gone on in her absence. When she had seen the sheriff-substitute and his men arrive and the sheep grazing nearby she was quite certain all the Ross men were about to be arrested.

  ‘We’ve Preacher Jamieson to thank for not being caught with stolen sheep,’ explained her father. ‘You’ll remember his last visit here?’

  Mairi did remember, and the memory brought a blush to her face, but Eneas Ross was far too elated to notice. ‘He told us that steps were being taken against sheep-stealing. I sent Dugald to tell Ian not to bring the animals here.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain how we’ve got eighty sheep and a bill of sale.’

  ‘Ah! That was Ian’s own idea.’ Eneas Ross smiled proudly in the direction of his oldest son. ‘He didn’t need to go to no school to think it up, neither. He took the sheep up to your Uncle Andy Graham and made him a proposition that no right-thinking Highland sheep-farmer could refuse. He offered him two hundred prime sheep that would lose themselves in his own flocks, in return for half that number with a bill of sale.

  ‘Andy’s always been a hard man at bargaining, so Ian came away with only eighty, but you’ll not hear me complain. I’ll even send one of the boys down to Eskaig with a beast for the preacher. Had you not brought him home with you from the shielings, we’d all be facing the prospect of life in a prison hulk now. I’ve always said he’s the best preacher we’ve ever had. He understands our ways.’

  Mairi tried not to think too hard about Wyatt and his ‘understanding ways’. Instead, she said: ‘What was that talk of two hundred sheep and Sutherland men driving them north?’

  Eneas Ross’s grin widened. ‘It was true enough. What I didn’t say was that the sheep belonged to a lowlander who was having them taken north to a cleared area. I’ll let the sheriff find that out for himself. Mind you, I doubt if they’ll enjoy themselves on the way. There’s a lot of rain coming in. The best thing we can do is close the door, bring out the whisky and drink the preacher’s health. Let the sheriff and his men take care of themselves!’

  Nineteen

  WHEN WYATT AGREED that Alasdair Burns and Evangeline should share the teaching in the Eskaig school, he feared the personalities of both teachers were likely to cause problems. Both had explosive and volatile natures, and they came from widely differing backgrounds.

  Evangeline was a member of an established society, where wealth and birth represented power and an automatic assumption of authority. Her father was paid to maintain the wide gap that existed between landowner and tenant. Consequently, her whole upbringing was conditioned by a pattern of life that was comfortable and secure for all those who represented authority.

  Alasdair Burns despised those who claimed unearned privilege. He espoused Chartism, the universal suffrage of all men, and he championed every man’s right to have a voice in his own future. He was a man with passionate Radical beliefs, who had been prepared to go to prison for espousing them.

  At first it seemed Wyatt’s fears would be justified. The two teachers rarely spoke to each other, and any policy decisions were made through Wyatt. Even so, the school ran extremely well and it was not long before each teacher developed a grudging respect for the other’s capabilities.

  When Wyatt fell out with Evangeline as a result of his visit to the shielings, the mutual respect between the two teachers burgeoned into a warm and growing affinity that was as surprising as it was unexpected.

  Evangeline had not inherited her father’s unforgiving nature, and her anger with Wyatt was soon forgotten. Indeed, their relationship improved now much of the adulation she had felt for him was transferred to Alasdair Burns.

  In the evening when school ended the two teachers met to discuss their day. Often they would stay to take tea with Wyatt and keep him informed of the progress – or otherwise – of their pupils.

  A favourite with them all was Jimmy Gordon, Angus Cameron’s crippled grandson. A strong bond had grown up between Alasdair Burns and the young boy, partly owing to their respective disabilities. In recent days the teacher had become increasingly concerned about Jimmy Gordon’s condition. Mentally a match for any boy or girl in the Eskaig school, the boy’s physical condition was deteriorating at a truly alarming rate.

  It was a matter of great concern to everyone and became the subject of discussion whenever Wyatt and the two teachers met over tea in the manse. Then the day came when the crippled boy had to be sent home to rest after complaining of feeling unwell.

  Alasdair Burns was clearly upset, and Evangeline tried to reassure him. ‘He puts so much in to each lesson. That’s probably the reason he’s so tired, nothing more. He does enjoy school. These past few months have been the best of his poor young life.’

  Her colleague shook his head. ‘I’ve seen other children with palsy. Sooner or later it affects the heart and lungs as well as the limbs.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’ Wyatt put the question.

  ‘He won’t have seen anyone but the physician from Corpach,’ replied Evangeline. ‘I wouldn’t let that man treat Coll Kennedy’s donkey – and that’s the most obnoxious creature I’ve ever known. The man’s a charlatan. He couldn’t hold down a practice anywhere but here, in the Highlands. Unfortunately, there’s little alternative, because the Fort William physician is little better.’

  ‘This isn’t a matter for an ordinary doctor.’ Alasdair Burns spoke thoughtfully. ‘Jimmy needs to be seen by a surgeon. A man who’s seen dozens of similar cases. Who knows if there’s anything likely to improve his condition.’

  ‘You’ll not find someone like that outside of Edinburgh,’ said Wyatt.

  ‘You’re right.’ Alasdair Burns became suddenly brisk. ‘I know just the man. He’s at the Edinburgh teaching hospital. His son’s there, too, and he and I attended school together.’

  ‘You can’t take Jimmy Gordon to Edinburgh. He has no strength for such a long journey.’

  ‘I’ll bring the surgeon here. Oh, you needn’t look so surprised, Evangeline. I’ve yet to meet a professional man from the city who doesn’t jump at an opportunity to visit the Highlands. He’s able to dine out for months on tales of the “quaintness of the Highland folk”. As for a surgeon who comes here to treat one of them … why, he’ll be a celebrity.’

  ‘It’s quite true,’ agreed Wyatt. ‘That’s one of the things that most annoyed me in both Edinburgh and Glasgow. You’d think we were all fairground freaks to listen to them.’

  ‘I tend to forget you are a Highlander,’ said Evangeline. ‘But, then, you’re different somehow.’

  ‘I’ve seen the world outside, that’s all, but so have thousands of Highlanders who served as soldiers. Lachlan Munro and Eneas Ross are two who immediately spring to mind.’

  Evangeline stiffened at mention of the Ross family, and Wyatt thought she was thinking of Mairi, but when she spoke it was of the old crofter himself. ‘Don’t mention the name of Eneas Ross in my father’s hearing. Old soldier or not, he’ll never be forgiven for making my father look foolish in front of the sheriff’s assistant – or whatever he’s called. My father is still convinced some sheep that were in Eneas Ross’s possession had been stolen from the lowlands, but the sheriff thought differently. He had Father guide him over half of Scotland in appalling weather looking for those wretched animals. It wasn’t until the militia and the constables threatened to mutiny that the search was called off.’

  Wyatt smiled but said nothing. He knew the true story and had enjoyed the mutton sent down from the mountains by Eneas Ross. Changing the subject quickly, he asked Alasdair Burns: ‘You’ll write to the surgeon? Donald McKay will deliver it himself if you explain what it’s about.’

  ‘No, I’ll go to Edinburgh and speak to the surgeon in person. I might be able to persuade him to come earlier than he otherwise would.’

  ‘Is that wise?’ Wyatt was thinking of Alasd
air Burns’s past associations, but he caught a signal from the teacher to say no more.

  ‘It will be all right. I may only have one good leg, but I can get about as well as any other man. You’ve said it’s time the children had a holiday from school. Call it from the end of this week and I’ll take next week’s boat.’

  Evangeline gave a sudden laugh. ‘I’d love to be travelling in that boat myself. Father’s taking it to attend the annual estate meeting in Edinburgh. I doubt if either you or Father will be able to look at each other without falling out. Be careful of him, Alasdair. He’s my father and I love him, but he’s quick to take offence and he bears a grudge for a very long time.’

  The news that Alasdair Burns was making a journey to Edinburgh on behalf of young Jimmy Gordon captured the imagination of the Eskaig villagers. Although scornful of most of those who came to the Highlands from outside, the villagers regarded the cities to the south with considerable awe. Medical men who lived and worked there had to have been touched by the hand of God. As for a city surgeon….

  Almost overnight the teacher became a celebrity in the small community. The Eskaig tailor found a part-bale of cloth in his workroom that had been taken in settlement of a debt many years before by his tailor father. It had been kept to make a suit for the landowner when he paid his next visit to Eskaig, but the landowner never came. Now the cloth was unwrapped, generations of dust carefully blown from its surface, and a suit was cut for Alasdair Burns to wear to Scotland’s capital.

  A collection was also taken, begun with a generous donation from the landlady of the village inn. Eskaig was a poor community, but it was a caring one. When Alasdair Burns swung his wooden leg from the rickety jetty to the wooden deck of Donald McKay’s steam-launch he had enough money in a pouch beneath his shirt to secure accommodation in Edinburgh and pay the return fare for himself and the surgeon.

  The three-day voyage to Glasgow went almost exactly as Evangeline had predicted. It was impossible for two men to travel in such close proximity without talking to each other. Unfortunately, each conversation served only to confirm their widely diverging views on life.

  It might have been wiser had Alasdair Burns held his tongue when the factor poured scorn on the ‘foolishness of teaching the children of Highland peasants to read and write’, suggesting it gave them ideas above their station in life and served only to make them discontented. Unfortunately the one-legged schoolteacher had never been a man to avoid an argument.

  ‘Would their “station in life” be the one designated for them by the landowners, or the one these “peasant” parents envisage for their children, Factor?’ Alasdair Burns put all the reasonableness he could muster into the question.

  ‘It’s the place in life that God himself has allotted them,’ announced John Garrett pompously. ‘Some of us are born to lead, others to follow. That’s the natural order of things. To put any other ideas into people’s heads is to stir up discontent. I blame the Church – yes, and the teachers, too. You teach children all sorts of nonsense that they don’t need to know. It’s not only unnecessary, but at times downright seditious.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to see slavery brought back and extended to the Highlands, Factor? Blind obedience, or the whip – with man-traps for those with a mind to go where they will?’

  John Garrett looked at Alasdair Burns sharply, but he could read nothing from the other man’s expression. The factor had lost the argument with Wyatt over the man-traps, and it still rankled with him. He wondered how much this teacher knew.

  ‘I’m not saying the lot of the tenant should be made harder. On the contrary, a tenant who knows his place and doesn’t try to rise above it is a happy man. He doesn’t need education or any such nonsense.’

  ‘He’s also likely to end up in Canada or Australia. Evicted from his home because he trusted a landowner. If he has some learning, he’ll know that by fighting back he might remain in the place where he wants to be. If he hasn’t, he’ll no doubt watch his home torn down and the land he and his forefathers toiled trampled by the cloven hoofs of an animal that was surely designed by the devil himself. No doubt you’re happy to have sheep on your land, Factor. After all, they don’t think, don’t answer back and they don’t attract schoolteachers or ministers to question your way of doing things. You’re quite right, we do stir up discontent. We teach the people to recognise injustice and not offer blind obedience. Through learning a man’s likely to discover he’s inferior to no one. That he, too, has a God-given right to live life the way it should be – and actually enjoy it! If that’s sedition, Factor, then I’m for it, by God I am!’

  This was the last discussion between teacher and factor. Fortunately other passengers were picked up from small villages on the lochside and the coast along the way. It meant the two men from Eskaig were not obliged to travel in a smouldering silence for the remainder of the voyage.

  However, the nights were spent on shore. After navigating the Crinan Canal to Loch Fyne on the second day of the voyage, the passengers were accommodated in a harbourside tavern in the busy fishing port of Tarbert.

  That evening John Garrett was sharing a table with a noisy party of Englishmen, travelling northwards to join a shooting party in the Highlands. Impressed by his importance as Lord Kilmalie’s factor, and eager to gain the benefit of his knowledge of the Highlands, Garrett’s companions were keeping him liberally supplied with drink.

  The drinkers became increasingly boisterous, and at the height of their celebrations, John Garrett rose to his feet and lurched towards the door leading to the tavern yard, with the intention of relieving himself. On the way he passed the table where Alasdair Burns was seated alone, finishing his evening meal.

  When Garrett saw the teacher he halted, looked down at him belligerently, and made a mumbled unintelligible remark. Alasdair Burns ignored him, devoting his attention to the meal on the table in front of him.

  The teacher’s indifference infuriated John Garrett beyond all reason, and he shouted: ‘I’ll not be insulted by a crippled Scots teacher. You’ll show respect when I speak to you, d’you hear?’

  The words were at least understandable now, but the factor’s actions were not. Leaning across the table unsteadily, Garrett rested his weight upon his hands. It was impossible to tell whether his next move was deliberate or an accident, but suddenly one hand slid across the scrubbed boards of the tavern table and sent Alasdair Burns’s plate crashing to the stone-flagged floor.

  As all heads in the room turned towards the sound, Alasdair Burns struggled awkwardly from his chair and he was in no doubt that the incident was deliberate.

  ‘Damn you, Garrett! You did that on purpose. You’re a drunken oaf.’

  John Garrett pushed himself up from the table, his face contorting angrily. The brandy he had consumed might have had an effect on his speech, but his hearing was unimpaired. He took a half-pace backwards and his fist swung in a ferocious arc that missed its target by half an arm’s length.

  Alasdair Burns was sober, and his return blow was accurate. It struck Garrett high on the cheekbone, and the factor took two involuntary paces backwards before sitting heavily upon the stone floor.

  ‘I say…. That was unnecessary, surely….’ The three men who had been drinking with Lord Kilmalie’s factor came across the room. One helped the fallen man to his feet, while the other two turned their attentions upon Alasdair Burns. They advanced upon him, their intentions clear, but the one-legged teacher stooped and picked up the knife with which he had been cutting his meat. It was a wicked-looking piece of cutlery with a pointed twelve-inch blade. The knife would have been equally at home in the hand of a fighting man. It was sufficient to make the two Englishmen forget all thoughts of taking the part of their drinking acquaintance.

  When John Garrett regained his feet he shook off the man who had helped him and dabbed the back of one hand to the spot beside his eye where Alasdair Burns’s fist had landed.

  ‘You’ll regret this evening’
s work, Teacher.’ In sharp contrast to his drunken mumblings of a few minutes before, John Garrett now spoke with only a barely discernible slur in his voice. Alasdair Burns’s punch had sobered the factor astonishingly quickly. ‘You’ll regret it more than anything you’ve ever done in your unremarkable little life.’

  ‘Go to bed, Factor, before you insult someone with less restraint than I have.’

  Alasdair Burns threw the knife on the table and limped his way from the room as the landlord put in a belated appearance to call on all the parties involved to calm down and enjoy a drink ‘on the house’.

  Twenty

  JOHN GARRETT WAS absent from the Eskaig estate for two weeks. When he returned he seemed well pleased with himself. This news was brought to Eskaig by a villager who had seen the factor land from the weekly boat at Corpach.

  The villager was more concerned about the continued absence of Alasdair Burns. The teacher was not in the boat, neither was there a letter from him to explain why he had not returned with the Edinburgh surgeon.

  The disappointment of the villagers was coupled with concern by those closest to Jimmy Gordon’s family. The sick boy had been greatly heartened by the concern shown to him by Alasdair Burns and the villagers. He was convinced the teacher would bring a surgeon from Edinburgh with a cure for his illness.

  As the days became weeks and the young boy began to lose hope, his already serious condition worsened. His weakness became more pronounced, and he needed to be cajoled and bullied into taking an interest in the things going on about him.

  The day after John Garrett’s return the factor summoned Wyatt and the Eskaig church elders to a meeting at his house. He gave no reason for wanting to speak to them, and speculation was rife among the men as they walked from Eskaig in a cold drizzle which had settled over the loch and the surrounding mountains. It was felt that the factor must have brought important news for the village from Lord Kilmalie’s estate office in Edinburgh.