The Night Before Morning

by Alistair Moffat

  ‘You see, Sandy,’ said Sergeant Bell, ‘it doesn’t make any sense. You said you were going off to feed some out-bye ewes for a friend. But you won’t say who, or where. And you can’t explain why your collies weren’t in the vehicle and why the constable found no bags of feed in the back. Your neighbour saw you get in the car without them. And that’s what we found. Nothing to back up your story.’

  Sitting on the bench along one wall, Sandy Ormiston just shook his head and said to the sergeant, ‘What are things coming to, Bill? What are you doing, helping these people?’

  Sighing, the policeman went on to explain that he had been forced to put in a call to Berwick. ‘If I hadn’t, your neighbour would have made a formal complaint and I’d have been for the high jump. They’ll be here shortly.’

  The old shepherd blew out his cheeks, shook his head and leaned back against the wall of the cell. At seventy, he was too old for these sorts of capers. And what would Mrs Ormiston say? It was well past suppertime.

  An hour later, the shepherd heard loud voices followed by the clatter of boots down the stairs. The door of the cell opened and two black-uniformed Germans came in. ‘Stand up!’ one of them shouted at the old man.

  And when he did, the other punched him hard in the stomach.

  *

  What troubled Katie more than her concussion was that she would not be at home for Christmas. And that instead of celebrating, enjoying some much-needed cheer in this, the darkest winter any of them had known, her parents would be worried, not knowing where she was.

  ‘We’ll get a message to them somehow,’ I said, having no idea how.

  Before darkness fell, we had foraged outside for some firewood, and then cleared the debris off the floor of the single-room shieling, stuffing some straw into the gaps around the rotting window frames.

  Katie had turned away the four ponies, saying, ‘They’ll not stray far, and Highlands can find food in a desert.’

  Their saddles would make decent seats or even pillows, and far from any habitation, in the deep midwinter dark, we risked a fire in the blackened grate. John Campbell had snapped small branches over his knee and stacked them to one side. A fallen limb from one of the Scots pines, its rich, red bark still on it, had been too thick to break and so he fed one end into the flames, sliding it a few inches further in as it was consumed, making bright orange flames. The sharp scent of the resin in the sparking bark filled the room and made it seem fresher, less musty and much warmer.

  We shared some food and the last of Campbell’s stolen whisky. Sitting in a semi-circle around the fire, leaning on the pony saddles, we were quiet after a long day, staring, enjoying the hypnotic flicker of the flames, perhaps unconsciously absorbing the extraordinary events of the last few days. At the time, we heard nothing, not a whisper, but outside there was movement. One of the ponies looked up but made no sound as the little man stole silently out of the cover of the trees behind the shieling. Making a low, nickering sound and crouching to make himself even smaller, no threat, the man scratched the withers of the old Highland and opened his fist to feed it a handful of beech-mast. Soundless, his tread gossamer-soft and fleeting, the man approached the lit window of the shieling and, with his back pressed against the wall to one side, he listened.

  ‘If we try to resist, or begin to organise some resistance, our people will be made to suffer in reprisal.’ I was thinking aloud, as much as inviting discussion. ‘The Germans know they are too few to control the countryside with anything much of a military presence. There will be no patrols or roadblocks. Instead, they’ll do it with terror.’

  ‘We heard stories,’ said Angus Wilson. ‘Whole villages in France destroyed; women and children machine-gunned; men herded into churches, shot in the legs so that they could not try to escape, and then burned alive. And it was the SS, the same lot as these bastards in Berwick . . . Sorry, miss. They won’t hang back.’ Campbell and I nodded. ‘And they have the atom bomb.’

  Quiet until then, still staring at the fire, Katie said, ‘They’ll only use that in very exceptional circumstances. Like mass resistance. Insurrection. Something really big. They’ve already turned London and much of the south-east of England into a worthless desert. What’s the point of conquest, of dominating Europe, if you destroy it? I think they’ll react to any local resistance with violence, like in the French villages.’ She shook her head. ‘And what’s the point of resisting? We’ll just get our people, and probably ourselves, killed. I don’t know what we should try to do – except survive, at least for now.’

  Christmas Day, 1944

  The morning dawned clear after a sharp overnight frost. The slanting sun lit the high valley and the sheltering pines cast graphic shadows around the shieling. When she went out to look for the shaggy Highlands, Katie shivered, her footprints leaving a green trail in the frosted grass. The ponies would have found somewhere out of the icy east wind, what Katie imagined had blown all the way from Siberia. In the wide moorland between the shieling and the Roman road, there were swales and hollows; Katie found the ponies at the bottom of one, scuffing at the cold ground, snuffling after a bite or two of bitter winter forage.

  Before she could catch up her old pony in a halter, all four flicked up their heads at a thin, piercing whistle. Like no bird call she had ever heard, the sound seemed more like a signal, and Katie turned in the direction of the pine wood, where it seemed to come from. When it changed pitch, the whistle prompted the ponies to trot towards it, like four huge dogs summoned by a handler. It was then that Katie saw him, the little man, squatting on his hunkers, not far from the shieling.

  ‘Where did you learn that?’ she asked him.

  The man smiled and brought a fistful of wild oats and mast out of his pouch, feeding each of the ponies in turn. And then, looking directly at Katie, fixing her with extraordinary deep brown, almost black eyes, he patted his chest with the palm of his hand and motioned for her to follow him into the wood.

  After only a few moments, they had left behind the copse of tall pines and the shieling, and were enveloped by the tangle of the moss. Immediately, it felt different. There seemed to be no wind and it was warmer. Were she not following the little man, Katie would have become quickly lost, as a canopy of thick wands of willow scrub closed over her head. Pools of brown, brackish water, some with leafless bushes growing directly out of them, lay on each side of a path that was little more than a series of raised tussocks, like green and wobbly stepping stones.

  When they heard the plaintive piou-piou of a buzzard, the man stopped, stretched out his arm no higher than his shoulder, and then, to Katie’s astonishment, a huge bird glided towards them. Canting its wings to slow its flight, it alighted on the little man’s forearm. Startled by the buzzard’s stern gaze, Katie stepped back, lost her footing and almost toppled into a pool before the little man clasped her wrist. He steadied her, smiled, clicked his tongue and the great bird lifted effortlessly into the air.

  Like an island made entirely from woven willow withies, bracken, a lattice of branches and bark, and reached by a narrow causeway, the shelter was invisible until the little man had led Katie very close. Inside, it was snug, almost circular, and on a central hearth laid with interlocking stones the embers of a fire glowed. The shelter smelled smoky and fishy, and the deer pelts and what looked like fox fur suggested that this man was a skilled hunter. Feeling no sense of threat, Katie understood that she had entered a different, singular place, an oasis, a relic of an ancient world, that of the hunter-gatherers who had rustled the leaves of this landscape more than four thousand years before.

  The little man beckoned for Katie to sit on a low bench covered with pelts while from under another, he pulled out a leather pouch the size of a saddlebag.

  ‘My name’s Katie.’

  He put the pouch on his lap and smiled. ‘Know your name,’ he nodded. ‘Watched you ride here. You looked after the big man. You are kind.’ His voice was little more than a whisper, but nevertheless an effor
t that seemed to require great concentration. ‘Ponies like you.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Katie asked.

  The little man shook his head. ‘Don’t know.’ He looked away and sighed.

  Katie waited, saying nothing more.

  ‘Animals know me.’

  There was no awkwardness, no sense of an interrogation or indeed any reticence. They sat under the willow bower and the silence of the wood settled around them. Katie noticed that the little man’s clothes were made from animal pelts sewn with thongs of rawhide. He wore a buckskin tunic and leggings, and a short jerkin, more pale green than brown and trimmed with fox fur.

  After a time, Katie smiled again and asked the little man how long he had lived in the wood.

  ‘Not sure. Here for many winters.’

  It struck her that he spoke deliberately, weighing his words, perhaps because it was a long time since he had spoken – to anyone.

  Having undone the rawhide ties of his pouch, he tipped its contents on the floor. There were scores of gold and silver coins, some of them bearing the heads of emperors, a gold ring, silver clasps of some sort and, most spectacular, a small golden torc.

  ‘All mine. Found them here. My wood, my home.’ He picked up the torc. ‘For you. Know what day it is today.’ He smiled. ‘No one comes here. Except you. And you are beautiful and kind. Heard what you said last night. Know you are in trouble. I help you.’

  *

  ‘You make our Christmas Day difficult. Yours too.’ The German grabbed Sandy Ormiston by the hair and pulled up his bloody head. ‘Give us the name. Tell us who sent you out yesterday.’

  The old shepherd was barely conscious and his breathing was halting, rasping. After a severe beating the night before, and refusing to say anything, not even giving his own name, Ormiston was almost beyond pain. They had punched out his front teeth, leaving little more than bleeding shards, blinded him in one eye and pounded and squeezed his testicles until he passed out. But still, he would say nothing.

  At that point, the evening was late and abandoning the ruin they had made of the old man, the Germans locked the cell door, left the police station to find some supper and perhaps something to drink. After all, it was Christmas.

  *

  Her extraordinary gift in a saddlebag, Kate was making good time, perhaps good enough to get home in time for Christmas dinner. The old pony seemed not to be injured after the previous day’s fall, when the little man, the woodsman, had appeared from nowhere and caused it to rear. It was only by the time that they splashed across the Teviot that Katie felt the pony sag a little. When she saw the cupola of the Waterloo Monument glint in the winter sunshine, they were almost there.

  ‘My God. Where have you been? And how did you get that shiner?’ Katie’s father hugged her as she shut the stable door, having stuffed a rack full of hay and hung up the old pony’s tack.

  In the farmhouse kitchen, Eileen Grant was busy at the Aga with Christmas dinner, enjoying a glass of sherry, trying to create some seasonal cheer. ‘Darling, you worried us,’ she said. ‘Even though we knew you were with David. But you’re here now. Maybe something stronger than sherry? Looks like someone took a disliking to you.’

  Playing on the gramophone in the drawing room, at full volume, was a surprising festive favourite of her mother’s, a recording of a Welsh male voice choir, forty blazered men belting out Bread of Heaven, Rock of Ages and Land of my Fathers. Katie smiled when she heard it, enjoying her mum’s eccentric tastes, casting her mind back to Christmases past, times when the world was kinder.

  ‘I don’t know what happened to Sandy,’ said Alan Grant. ‘He’s normally so reliable. Perhaps he had a flat tyre, or took ill. Maybe too many drams! But you found the shieling anyway.’

  When Katie brought out the golden torc, it surprised her as much as her parents. It felt like an unlikely, tangible relic of a dream. When she talked of the little man, they both shook their heads.

  ‘I suppose Bleaklaw is a wild place, and a wilderness has its secrets,’ said Alan. ‘I knew of a couple, years ago, who lived in the woods around Kelso. They used to gather kindling, stooking it like corn so that it dried. And the local children left the stooks alone, dared not touch them. They were terrified of these two. Dressed in rags, their faces unwashed, black as crows, they would appear suddenly, out of nowhere. One moment the path was clear, and the next, they were walking silently behind you. Their dogs were savage but instantly obedient, no collar, no lead needed. And when they sold their kindling round the doors for pennies, off the back of a rickety handcart, the dogs barked to let the street know they were there. They seemed better able to communicate with animals than people. They could tame wild birds with whistles and lures. They lived out all year round, and John Agnew up at Galloway Law used to let them sleep in his hay barn through the worst of the winter; in return, the dogs cleared his steading of rats. For the rest of the year, they bivouacked under the trees, their sleeping places invisible under sloping layers of branches. The rumour was that they were not man and wife but brother and sister, the children of another brother and sister. And no one ever knew their names.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘They were wild, feral people and knew the land and its creatures better than anyone.’

  After Eileen and Katie cleared away the plates and cutlery, they all sat by the drawing room fire and the male voices from the ‘valleys of song’ were given a break.

  ‘It’s difficult to cut through the propaganda we hear on the Scottish Home Service,’ Alan said. ‘It isn’t news anymore, just a series of announcements and, before and after, a hell of a lot of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner. Wasn’t Beethoven Dutch?’

  Katie smiled as the words tumbled out. Her dad had always spoken quickly, often breathlessly, moving his hands, giving emphasis, underlining his points.

  ‘Anyway, the Germans have been talking about something they’re calling “resettlement”. Reading between the lines, I think that means many people from the cities, and perhaps from the south, coming to live here. I expect someone who knows nothing about Scotland has looked at population statistics and concluded there’s plenty of room.’ Alan Grant grunted as he leaned forward to poker up some flame in the log fire. ‘The other thing they have started banging on about is Scottish independence and the right of self-determination. They apparently include us in what they call the “Nordic races”. My guess is that Mosley’s government, such as it is, will try to create support for the new regime by appealing to nationalists on the one hand, and to returning soldiers by chopping up all the big estates and farms. Parcels of land will be dished out as smallholdings. Those who get them won’t have a clue what to do, thinking that managing ten acres is like gardening. Apparently, the “king”, as we must learn to call him, is going to say something about this later on in his Christmas message on the wireless.’

  Alan Grant’s face was flushed with rage. ‘“Our German friends and allies”, by God! What does that little upstart think he’s saying? Hundreds of thousands have died at the hands of our “friends” and “bloody allies”. They incinerated London, killed his brother and his family. King Edward VIII, indeed! Send him back to the bloody Bahamas with that frozen-faced wife of his. Little German puppet.’

  Katie had rarely seen her father so angry, and after his outburst, he sat back, sighed loudly and stared at the fire.

  Boxing Day, 1944

  In the early morning, four workmen bumped their lorry across the grass of St Boswells Green. In the back were several stout lengths of timber. Having dug two holes through the frosted ground and erected two uprights, making sure they were plumb and properly aligned, they chocked each one with stakes and hammered in supporting struts to keep them steady. From ladders, they pulled up and fitted a crossbeam, hammering long nails through it and into the uprights to give the whole structure rigidity.

  Last of all, they slung two nooses over the beam, leaving them to dangle in the cold wind.

  ‘Out! Now! All of you!’ In the middle
of the village, by the post office and the butcher’s shop, a German soldier was barking through a loudhailer. ‘Everyone. Out now!’

  An armoured car had been driving around the lanes, honking its horn as people emerged from their houses, buttoning their coats, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Go to the Green immediately. Go now! All of you!’

  Couples with children, small groups and then dozens walked down the long, straight road towards the hotel. When they saw the gallows set up at the corner, close to the busy main road, many gasped and exchanged fearful glances. By late morning, around three hundred people had gathered, their breath pluming into the air, not many of them talking.

  After a time, the armoured car appeared and behind it was the local police patrol car. Sergeant Bell pulled up by the side of the armoured car and opened one of the rear doors. With her hands handcuffed behind her back and her face disfigured by ugly red bruises, Agnes Ormiston was pulled out.

  ‘Oh, my God, no!’ Agnes blurted when she saw the gallows looming over the Green and a hushed crowd gathered.

  Around her, eight German soldiers formed up, all of them carrying submachine guns. And then out of the back doors of the armoured car, his Gestapo interrogators dragged the lifeless body of her husband.

  The crowd grew agitated, but in a moment were quietened when the little commandant of the SS garrison at Berwick began to shout, reading from a paper that fluttered in his hand.

  ‘I am Kommandant Schneider from the headquarters of the allied security forces at Berwick. We are here to defend you good people from our common enemies. You may think of these two people as your friends, but they are guilty of treason, of collaborating with the enemies of Scotland.’ He motioned to the interrogators, who then dragged the old shepherd’s body across the grass, his heels leaving a trail through the frost.