High on a Mountain (23 page)

A man dressed in Lowland clothing,
accompanied by two redcoats, strode through the open door. He
pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve, put it to his nose and took
a step backward. He said something in the unintelligible
Sasunnach
tongue to the soldiers, handed one of them a
folded paper and hurried away, his footsteps echoing down the
corridor.

The soldier read what was written on the
paper and said something the Gaelic-speaking men in the cell could
not understand. Most of them stared at him with blank expressions.
He stepped farther into the cell, and, since Ailean sat closest to
the door and was nearest his foot, kicked Ailean’s leg with the
hard toe of his boot.

“He said to stand up,” said Ruairidh, who
could understand English.

The prisoners began to stand, but they were
not moving fast enough to please the soldier, and he administered
another kick, this time to Ailean’s hip.

“‘Get up’ is not all he said,” muttered
another of the inmates of the cell. “I don’t understand much of
their jabber, but I know part of what he said. He called us ‘filthy
dogs.’”

When the men had struggled to their feet, the
soldier read aloud from the paper.

“He says we have drawn lots and five of us
have been selected,” Ruairidh told the men.

“Drawn lots? When did we draw lots?” one man
asked.

“That’s what they’ve written on the paper,
probably to fulfill some law. Who knows how they picked the five,”
Ruairidh said.

The soldier stopped reading and spoke harshly
to the men.

“He said to be silent,” Ruairidh said under
his breath.

When the murmuring ceased, the soldier
continued reading.

“He says those five men will be taken to
Carlisle to be tried for treason and punished for all of us.
They’ll be hung. The rest of us will be transported to the
plantations,” Ruairidh told his cell mates. “He says we will never
see Scotland again.”

“Plantations? Where is that?” asked another
prisoner.

“Somewhere in the colonies, I think. I don’t
know. I’m just telling you what he said,” Ruairidh answered. “And
he says to step forward when he reads your name.”

“Thomas Cameron,” the soldier read.

The Camshron clansman moved forward and stood
in front of the soldier.

“Rory McLachlan.”

Ruairidh took his place behind Tòmas
Camshron.

“Alan McLachlan.”

Ailean shuffled forward to stand behind
Ruairidh.

“James McLean.”

Seumas Mac’Ill’Eathainn moved into place
next.

When the soldier finished reading the list,
the men whose names had been read were led down the corridor and
out of the building. Other soldiers waited outside to escort them
to the shore of Loch Fyne.

“Look over there.” Ruairidh inclined his
head, gesturing toward a small crowd of gawkers.

Ailean looked in the direction Ruairidh had
indicated and saw Latharn Cambeul standing at a short distance,
watching, arms crossed and feet planted wide. Ailean stopped and
glared at Latharn, his hands clenching and unclenching.

He raised an arm, pointed a finger at Latharn
and screamed “Murderer!”

Before the soldiers could stop him, Ailean
started to run toward Latharn, his arms outstretched, his fingers
curved like talons. But the shackles on his ankles tripped him, and
he fell to his knees. He crawled toward Latharn emitting a
guttural, animal-like growl of outrage.

A soldier clubbed Ailean’s back with the butt
of his musket, and Ailean fell on his face, gasping in pain. Two
soldiers seized his arms and lifted him, shouting at him in the
Sasunnach
tongue. They dragged him back to the line of
prisoners and set him on his feet.

Ailean struggled to keep his footing,
wheezing and straining to get his breath, one soldier on each side
of him, propelling him forward.

Small boats awaited them at the shore. The
prisoners were conveyed, eight in each boat, to a ship anchored in
the loch. Ailean and Ruairidh were assigned to the same boat.

As it moved across the water, Ruairidh took
one long last look across the loch at Clan MacLachlainn lands. When
he got a glimpse of the ruins of Castle Lachlainn, he sucked in an
audible gasp and averted his eyes, stared at the shackles on his
ankles. He set his jaw, raised his head and turned it away from the
last view of his home.

Ailean scanned the glens and hills and
mountains where he had lived and worked and played all his life.
Niall’s words drifted from his memory.

“
I have a feeling of dread that this is
all going to pass away, and it makes me want to run. To run far
away where nothing bad can touch me. Can touch us.”

His gaze came to rest on the heights where
he’d sat and planned his future, where he’d daydreamed of an
exciting life of adventure as a warrior, had fantasized about a
peaceful life with a woman who loved him, surrounded by family and
friends.

Niall had been right. Everything had passed
away, everything Ailean held dear was gone. And he wished he had
died beside Niall that day on the moor, wished that he’d not
survived to see this day.

The
Sasunnach
sailors mocked the
Highlanders as they rowed them to the ship. Ruairidh didn’t
translate the insults. He sat in silence, his back rigid and his
eyes straight ahead on the ship.

Almost a year of imprisonment, insufficient
food and no exercise had left the prisoners debilitated. Heavy
chains on their arms and legs made climbing the rope ladder to the
ship’s deck difficult. The sailors jeered at the prisoners’
inability to climb the ladder. Although the Gaelic-speaking
Highlanders didn’t understand the curses and ridicule heaped upon
them by the sailors, they understood the intent.

Ailean found the sunlight and the cool breeze
off the loch a pleasant change after the stink and stale air of the
cell. But it was short lived. The prisoners were herded down a
ladder into the dank space at the bottom of the ship. Ailean stood
still, blinking, trying to see in the darkened hold after the
sunlit brightness of the morning, and he looked for a place to sit.
One of the sailors swore at him and shoved him forward. He stumbled
and fell sprawling across the dirt and stones of the ship’s
ballast.

He crawled forward until he encountered a
curved, wooden wall and sat with his back against it. He pulled his
knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them to make room
for the other prisoners being pushed into the hold behind him.

Ailean rested his forehead on his knees, and
a sudden realization gripped his attention: he was being taken from
his beloved homeland, from the place where he belonged. He had
thought he was beyond feeling, but now, a dejected hopelessness
engulfed his soul. Why hadn’t he died along with all of his loved
ones? Why was he alone left to endure the unendurable?

For the first time since Mùirne’s death,
Ailean prayed.
Please, Heavenly Father, deliver me from this
living death. Let me die, take me home to be with my family. I
can’t bear this.

____________

Latharn stood on the shore and watched as the
ship moved down Loch Fyne toward the open sea. The relief he had
expected to feel at MacLachlainn’s removal eluded him. Instead. a
hollowness made his chest an empty keg, barren, bereft of its
customary contents, vacant, echoing. And his ever-present awareness
of bereavement and loss joined his new-found guilt, roiled, mingled
together and seeped in to fill the void.

He had sought, during the long months since
Mùirne died, to relieve himself of his responsibility for her
death. But no matter how hard Latharn tried to elude it, awareness
of the fact that she’d died because of a ball fired from his gun
stayed foremost in his mind. At times, the knowledge of his guilt
smothered him, flooded him with feelings he couldn’t endure. His
occasional bouts of drunkenness came more often as he sought to
escape his remorse and regret through the forgetfulness the bottle
brought.

During his lucid moments, he fed on his
hatred for MacLachlainn, tried to shift the blame onto him. In
Latharn’s tangled thoughts, it became MacLachlainn’s fault that
Mùirne died. The man had caused all the pain Latharn suffered since
the day he found MacLachlainn sitting with Mùirne in the glen by
Loch Lomond.

When he learned MacLachlainn’s name had been
drawn as one of the men to be hanged, Latharn interceded privately
to have it exchanged with that of another prisoner. Hanging would
be too fast, too easy. MacLachlainn’s troubles would be over, while
Latharn would be left with his torturing memories. But if
MacLachlainn was transported to the colonies and sold into slavery,
he would suffer. He would pay.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Ailean thought he had borne all a man could
stand. Life could not hold any further heartbreak or suffering than
he had already endured. But the days and nights on the rolling ship
brought new distress. Prisoners in the ship’s hold began to sicken
from the unhealthy conditions of their confinement. Constant sounds
of moaning, retching and prayers of supplication for relief muted
the creak of the ship’s timbers and the whine of wind past the
ship’s hull.

“I think that man over there is dead,”
Ruairidh said one evening.

“Aye, he’s dead,” said a man to Ailean’s
left. “He died this morning.”

No one spoke.

“Tell the
Sasunnach
. Ask them to take
his body,” Ailean said to Ruairidh when the crewmen brought their
small ration of bread and water.

Ruairidh spoke to the sailors. One of them
pushed at the body with his foot. He said something to Ruairidh,
climbed the ladder and left the hold.

“He said they’ll carry him out tomorrow.”

They remained silent then, each man occupied
with his own thoughts. The next morning, crewmen removed the dead
man.

____________

The days and nights and weeks became a long
nightmare of stench, suffering and death from which Ailean could
not awaken and from which he was not rescued by death. By ones and
by twos, the numbers of Highland men held below decks dwindled as
they succumbed to disease and starvation, until at last about
one-third of the original number of men remained alive in the
hold.

Each day, Ailean prayed death would end his
suffering, but it eluded him. He felt as if he were suspended in a
limbo of torture from which there would be no release, no escape,
not even by dying, not ever. He beseeched heaven to be merciful to
him, to let him drift from this life to the next, as he saw others
find blessed relief in the comforting arms of death. But still he
lived on, if his existence could be called living.

Ailean began to wonder why God had forsaken
him, why his prayers went unheard.

____________

Ailean had no idea how long he’d been
confined below decks, but his life before entering the hold was now
a distant memory. He could barely remember Mùirne and was thankful
for that small blessing. He didn’t want to be reminded of how much
he had lost when Latharn fired the pistol. Thinking of the loss of
his home and family only added to his misery, and Ailean was
grateful for increasing periods of forgetfulness.

“Get up! Get up!”

Ailean raised his head. A sailor had
descended a few rungs down the ladder.

“I said, get up!” the sailor shouted
again.

One by one, the ten men nearest the ladder
were made to climb it, and they disappeared from sight. The hatch
was closed again, and Ailean shut his eyes.

Why did the
Sasunnach
take them? There
could be only one reason: to kill them. If that was true, why
didn’t they take Ailean, too? He was ready to die,
wanted
to
die, wanted this misery to end.

But that must be our lot. Those who want to
live must die, and those who want to die must live.

Soon the hatch opened again and ten more men
were forced to climb the ladder. Ailean was one of the ten. He said
a quick prayer of thankfulness that his prayers had been heard at
last.

When he emerged from the darkness of the hold
and crawled onto the sunlit deck, the glare of the sun made it
impossible for him to focus or see anything at first. The boards of
the deck were hot to his hands and knees, and the humid air, unlike
anything he had ever experienced, pressed down on him like a heavy
burden.

“Stand up. Hold your arms up,” the sailor
told him.

After weeks of hearing Ruairidh translate the
crewmen’s comments and instructions, Ailean had begun to understand
some of the
Sasunnach
tongue. He obediently staggered to his
feet and raised his arms as they instructed him.

A rope dropped from an overhead pulley, a
crewman looped it around his body under his arms and tied it behind
him. Two sailors pulled on the other end of the rope and lifted him
from his feet. They swung him out over the water and lowered him
into it.

“Clean yourself, you stinking piece of
filth,” one of them yelled.

Salt water burned the open sores on his
wrists and ankles where the rough iron bands had rubbed the skin
away. The weight of his chains pulled him under the cold water, and
he thought at first they meant to drown him, that his misery was at
an end at last.

But they pulled him up, gasping and
sputtering, and raised his head above the water. They held the rope
taut and his body stayed submerged, dragging him through the water
behind the ship.

Ailean squinted against the dazzling sunlight
reflecting off the water. As his vision became clearer, he tilted
his head back and watched sea gulls wheeling overhead, free and
easy, gliding where the air currents carried them, or pushing
themselves against the wind, their cries raucous and sharp. If only
he could leave his body and fly away like the gulls…