Waterfall Glen (9 page)

“If you weren’t ‘lucky’ enough to get a plot of barren land on the coast, but had a little money to fall back on, you could try making a new life over the water, booking passage on one of the coffin ships bound for America—”

“I know I’m going to be sorry I asked, but why were they called coffin ships?”

“Because the conditions were so bad that many passengers ended up in a different promised land from the one that was advertised at the harbor gates.

“As for the survivors, they arrived in a strange land with only the clothes on their back and homesickness in their hearts.

“Of course if you were a young man and didn’t fancy the fishing boats or the coffin ships, you could always join the army and fight for ‘your’ country. A prime minister of the day said that besides ensuring even the bloodiest of battles would be won, sending in the Highlanders had the advantage that not many of them would return home to
cause trouble; while an English general who commanded them declared that it was ‘no great mischief if they fall’.

“And as for the people who had no plot of land on the coast, no passage on a coffin ship or place in the army, all they could do was head for the cities to the south, where they were forced to swap their ‘primitive’ cottages for tenement slums and their Highland glens for rat-infested alleys, coal mines, and factories.”

Looking from the ruined cottages to the woman at his side, he said, “I’m well aware that there are two sides to every story, Lady Kate, and I don’t know enough about history to tell you what the other side of this one is. All I can speak of is the side that the people who once lived here would tell you if they had a voice you could hear.”

“I understand, Finlay,” Kate said quietly, shocked by what he’d told her and by the contrast between the idyllic setting and the terrible images his words conjured up. “And this was happening all across the Highlands?” she asked.

“Aye, all across the Highlands.”

“You said something about it being worse here than in other places, though,” Kate said as they continued towards the far end of the lochan. “That’s hard to believe, because it sounds as if it was terrible everywhere.”

“I don’t think there could be a kind way to evict people from their homes and exile them from their glens, but some ways were crueller than others. Lady Carolyn’s way was the cruellest of all.”

“What exactly did she do?”

“First of all she talked her husband Malcolm into clearing that side of the glen—” he pointed to the opposite hillside “— to make way for sheep. In his heart he must have known it was wrong, but what he felt for Carolyn was stronger than what he felt for his ‘children’. Still, at least he arranged for them to have plots on the coast—a faraway part of the estate that his wastrel son Alisdair would later sell to pay off gambling debts.”

“If the Highland clansmen were such fierce warriors why didn’t they put up any sort of a fight?” Kate asked, looking across the lochan at the forlorn remains of an abandoned little community.

“They did as their chief told them, Lady Kate, the way children should always do what their father tells them.”

The sight of an old church up ahead, at the end of the lochan, prompted Finlay to add, “And they did what their ministers told them, too—not realizing that the ministers weren’t giving voice to the word of God, but were acting as mouthpieces for the lairds and ladies.”

“Why would men of God do that?”

“Because it wasn’t God who gave them money for manses and for churches like that one up ahead.” He pointed to the old stone church. “It wasn’t God who put them in a pulpit or had the power to remove them from it. So the ministers told their flock that the exodus was the act of a vengeful Almighty angered at their sins, and that they should be grateful for the chance of redemption.

“In the last little township to be cleared on the other
side of the lochan, though, an old woman called Jessie McDowell refused to leave her cottage. She said she’d lived there all her days, and that was where she’d die.

“When Lady Carolyn heard that, she told the sheriff’s officers who were charged with enforcing the eviction orders, ‘The old witch has lived long enough as it is. Burn the cottage and grant her wish to die in it.’

“The sheriff’s officers went back to Jessie’s cottage with torch in hand. Some neighbours dragged Jessie from her home just before it was burned to the ground. They put her on a cart and took her to the coast. She died as soon as she got there, and her last words were a curse on Lady Carolyn and her issue.”

Kate shivered again, despite the summer sun.

“As for the other clansmen who’d been moved to the coast, they could barely feed themselves, let alone pay rent. When the winter came they had to beg Malcolm for help. Full of guilt, he gave it to them.

“Lady Carolyn was furious when she found out; she saw them as a liability rather than a responsibility. She told Malcolm the clansmen had to learn to stand on their own two feet… or fall.

“Not long after that, Malcolm found out that Lady Carolyn was having an affair with the factor who’d been hired to oversee the leasing of the land. No doubt brokenhearted by his wife’s betrayal, and guilt-ridden by what he’d done to his clansmen, Malcolm took his own life.”

“The first victim of the curse?”

“So it was said.”

“Given a free reign, now, Lady Carolyn set about clearing the rest of the glen with a vengeance. The Highlanders didn’t feel the same sort of loyalty to her that they’d felt to Malcolm, however, and she guessed they might resist. She waited until they were in the church up ahead one Sunday and had some sheep farmers who’d been made special constables—a law unto themselves, in other words—put their houses to the torch.

“When the clansmen came out of the church it was to find their homes were in flames. They didn’t even have a chance to salvage their belongings, which was just as Lady Carolyn intended because she didn’t want them going to the coast and becoming a burden on the estate like the families Malcolm had evicted.”

“What happened to them?” Kate asked, shocked.

“She got the minister to gather them here.” They’d reached the church. “Right here in the churchyard they gathered, and were told that passage had been booked for them on a ship bound for America. The minister assured them that a new life awaited them, that God’s will was being done, and things would work out for the best.

“When they got to the port they found there was indeed a ship waiting for them. They boarded it without realizing that Lady Carolyn hadn’t just bought their tickets, she’d also sold their labor. They’d been indentured, bound to work for five years to pay for their passage.

“After they were gone Lady Carolyn got the minister
to hold a service of thanks in here,” Finlay said, reaching for the church’s wrought-iron door handle. As he pulled on the rusty handle the door shuddered slowly towards him inch by inch, for wind and rain had warped the wood, and lack of use had stiffened the hinges. It made a grating sound that set nerves on edge, like a nail being scratched across a blackboard.

When the door swung fully open a blast of cold, stale air swept out, carrying with it the smells of mould and damp, neglect and decay. Any thoughts Kate had that she was imagining the odours were dispelled by the little dog at her feet: Hamish wrinkled his nose, let out a whimper, and shrank away.

Inside, the church was criss-crossed by slanting shafts of daylight. Again, Kate thought it might have been her imagination, but it seemed to her that the areas between those beams of light were darker than they should have been. There was no soft diffusion of the daylight, just brilliant shafts of almost solid light cutting through an even more solid darkness, like spotlights falling on an otherwise unlit stage. She was so caught up by the striking scene in front of her that she didn’t notice Hamish backing away another half dozen steps. She felt as though the interior of the church was exerting a visual gravity on her, with its pools of shadow so dark as to be devoid of all detail, and circles of light that fell on empty pews. A faint rustling from deep inside the church startled her as much as a sudden clap of thunder, and she jumped as you do in a dream
where you’re falling and you wake up just before you hit the ground. Her eyes were drawn to the source of the sound—the pulpit at the far end of the aisle. There, the brightest shaft of light fell on a large old book, which she took to be a Bible. The book was lying open on top of the lectern, and a breeze that seemed to come from within the church rather than without gently tugged at its pages without ever quite managing to turn them over.

The rustling was followed by a faint whispering from among the pews. Moments later some dried up old leaves drifted out from between the seats—a possible explanation for the sound in any other place, but not a wholly convincing once in a place such as this.

When Finlay started speaking his voice startled her because she’d forgotten he was there. “That service of ‘thanksgiving’ was the last time the church was used,” he said. “Half a dozen southern sheep farmers sat in pews that once held over a hundred Highlanders,” he told her, looking around the desolate, empty church. “Despite the holy setting it must have been the unholiest of affairs, because when they came to sing the first hymn the sheepdogs apparently got up on the seats and drowned out the words with their howling.

“That’s why it came to be called the Weeping Glen, Lady Kate.”

When Kate was finally able to speak, she said, “I thought you were trying to convince me to hang on to the estate, Finlay, not frighten me away from it.”

“Believe me, I am trying to convince you, Lady Kate—with all my heart I am. From what I hear of the vultures who’re circling the Cranoch you’re the only hope for the people who live in it and love it, and before I met you I was thinking I would just show you the good things in Glen Cranoch and not mention any notions of a curse and what had led up to it… But when I saw the sort of person you are … Well, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t give you an idea of what you might be letting yourself in for if you try to make Glen Cranoch your home.”

K
ATE’S FIRST IMPRESSION OF
A
RCHIBALD
C
UNNINGHAM
was of a shining pate surrounded by a neatly trimmed fringe of silvery-grey hair, because he was looking down at some papers on his desk when she was shown into his office.

As the lawyer looked up, Kate’s next impression was of a soft mouth that smiled easily, and calculating eyes that gave something of a lie to the ease of the smile. A man of no little wit and wisdom, she decided, though she suspected there would be a slightly sardonic turn to his wit and a calculating shrewdness about his wisdom.

He got up to shake her hand, saying, “Sorry to keep you waiting, Lady Kate. I was taking a call about The Cranoch, but I’ll get to that later. Please, have a seat.” He gestured to the two Regency elbow chairs set at neat angles in front of his desk.

“This whole thing came right out of the blue, then?” he asked as Kate sat down.

Kate nodded. “One minute I’m running a small craft shop near San Francisco; the next, a Highland estate.”

“And have you had a chance to see around The Cranoch yet?”

“Yes. Finlay gave me a guided tour and some history this morning.”

“I can imagine the highly colored version of history he would give you, but that’s by the by. It’s not the past I’m concerned with, Lady Kate, it’s the present—and the future. I thought I’d give you a different kind of tour of The Cranoch: an overview of its financial situation. Then maybe we could run through the options. Unless, that is, you’ve already made up your mind what you want to do …”

“Actually, I have,” Kate said. She was thinking about her first sight of the glen the day before, with Finlay standing at her side describing its many different moods …

About Greystane rising from Castle Crag almost like it was a part of the rock …

The breathtaking view from the bedroom window,
her
bedroom window …

The little stone bridge and the sound of the water flowing under it before plunging into the glen …

The osprey swooping towards the lochan …

And the kindness of Finlay and Miss Weir.

“I know what I want to do,” Kate said. “I just don’t know whether it’s a realistic option.”

“Well, hopefully I can be of some help in clarifying things for you.”

Knowing she couldn’t fool the man in front of her into thinking she was any kind of expert in estate affairs, but
wanting to let him know she wasn’t just some ditzy blonde he could string along, she said, “If you don’t mind me asking, do you stand to gain significantly more if I sell the estate, or if I hang on to it?”

“You mean, can you trust me?”

“I didn’t want to put it so bluntly but… yes.”

“Let’s put it like this: if you want to sell and use me as your agent I stand to gain a tidy lump sum; if you hang on to the estate, and to me as the factor, then over time I’ll also make a pretty penny. But if you’re not happy with how I handle things today, you won’t choose me as either your selling agent or your factor and I won’t make anything at all. So, quite apart from the ethics of it all, it’s in my best interests to look after your best interests.”