Waterfall Glen (26 page)

A cry of “Dunmaghlas!” from close behind announced another charge, and moments later more kilted warriors were rushing past him. Unable to make himself get up off the heather to join them after witnessing the full horror of what had happened to the first wave, he just watched as the charging men stumbled over the bodies of fallen friends and kinsmen before being stopped in their tracks by another rolling volley. At least half of the Highlanders went down, and those who remained on their feet just stood there for a moment that for many was a lifetime, too proud to go back but unable to force themselves forward into such a ferocious weight of shot. Some shook their swords in desperate frustration or reached down to pick up stones to throw in helpless rage. Others raised their plaids over their heads and tried to shelter behind the tartan.

One held high the gold and scarlet colors of the clan, but the next volley turned him this way and that before driving him from his feet and dumping him halfway between Cameron and the Redcoat ranks. Cameron thought
the clansman was dead, but then the standard shivered as the man tried to lift it. His body heaved and fell back with a shudder. Seeing Cameron out of glassy eyes, the standard-bearer said, “Jamie, the colors … Save the colors.”

Cameron just lay there, looking at him.

“The day’s lost,” the fallen Highlander croaked, “but at least save the col—”

The voice was drowned out by another volley.

Cameron jumped in the chair. He came half awake before falling back into the dream.

He was up and running now, but away from the gunfire, screams, and moaning rather than towards them. His right shoulder throbbed as if he’d been struck with a red-hot sledgehammer. Pain spread out from it in pounding waves that almost sickened him, each one blacking his vision with a pulsing darkness that he struggled to blink away.

The dream kaleidoscoped into a nightmare of pursuit and concealment:

Running through trees with the branches whipping his face; tripping over roots; hiding behind trunks.

Splashing through fast-flowing icy water, teeth chattering, shivering uncontrollably.

Struggling to get over waist-high dykes and then sheltering behind the drystane walls with heart in mouth as he listened to the hoofbeats of mounted men, the creaking wheels of gun carriage and baggage wagon, the regimented footfalls of marching men … Holding his breath or burying his head in his plaid and biting the folds of wet wool
to stifle cries of pain until the only sounds were the light patter of raindrops, the heavy pounding of his heart and a moaning that he thought was the wind until he tried to move and the moan turned into a howl of agony that issued forth from his own wind-chapped lips.

Then there was blackness and silence, finally broken by a gentle but insistent sound:
Tap
…

Tap-tap
…

Tap-tap-tap
—

Cameron woke up and for a few moments could almost feel his eyes smarting and taste acrid smoke in his throat, feel his chest heaving and a strange numbness in his shoulder. There was a ringing in his ears, and another sound, too …

Tap
…

Tap-tap
…

Tap-tap-tap.

It came from the window. He turned to face it with dread, unsure of what he was about to see.

An owl was perched on the outside sill, pecking at the glass with its beak. As Cameron watched, the bird turned and spread its wings and was gone, leaving him to wonder if it had ever really been there at all.

By the time he got back to Greystane his eyes were no longer stinging and his throat was clear. The echoes had gone from his head, and the feeling had come back to his arm.

But the whole thing was still so vivid that it seemed much more like a memory than a dream.

K
ATE WAS ONLY GONE FOR ONE DAY, BUT
C
AMERON MISSED
her more than he would have believed possible.

When she appeared in the doorway of the cottage the next afternoon he felt the same thing as the very first time he saw her, but even more strongly. Earlier that day he’d picked her some flowers and put them in a vase of lochan water, and after the hug he broke away to hand them to her.

She kissed him and said, “They’re lovely, Cameron.”

“They’re from the stranger you wanted to get to know.”

“Are you ready to tell me something about him?”

“I can tell you that he loves you very much.”

“I need to know more than that, Cameron. He’s tall, dark and handsome—but there are times when I feel like that’s all I know about him, and that’s just enough for a crush, not for lasting love.”

Cameron took a deep breath, hesitated, and said, “Have you ever heard of Srebrenica?”

The name was vaguely familiar to Kate from TV news programs. However they were the kind of reports she tended
to quickly switch over because they were so grim. “I’ve heard of it,” she said, “but I’ve no idea what happened there.”

“Something terrible,” he told her. “Not unlike what happened here in Glen Cranoch all those years ago, I suppose—except that there were people in Srebrenica who could have tried to stop the terrible thing happening, who should have tried to help the people who couldn’t help themselves.”

“And they didn’t?”

“No. They didn’t fight the battle that needed to be fought because they were outnumbered and thought it was a battle they couldn’t win.”

“Was the stranger one of them?”

Cameron shook his head.

“Then I don’t understand.”

“The stranger had his own private Srebrenica, Kate.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

“I’m afraid I’ll lose you for good if I try to explain.”

“The one thing that’s certain is that you’ll lose me for good if you don’t at least try.”

Still he hesitated, and Kate felt her heart breaking at the depth of his anguish and at the knowledge that she might be losing him forever.

Then he seemed to come to a decision. “Take a seat, Kate,” he told her.

“Because it’s a long story or because it’s one that’s going to shock me?”

“Both.”

Filled with dread, Kate sat in the old rocking chair
beside the fireside.

Unable to look her in the eye, Cameron stared into the blackened hearth, hands resting on the slate mantelpiece. When he finally started speaking, Kate thought it was as though he was thinking aloud rather than talking to her. “I’d always been afraid of finding myself in a situation where I’d have to act like a soldier as well as just dress like one,” he said. “The uniform might have fitted me perfectly, but I wasn’t at all sure
I
measured up to
it.
My own little Srebrenica was the day I found out that I didn’t.”

He was quiet for such a long time that Kate finally said, “What happened?”

“I’d been sent out in a Land Rover with a squaddie driver to a village called Vorce to take some photos.”

He fell silent, as if lost somewhere closer to there than here and then than now. Again Kate had to prompt him. “Photos of what?” she asked.

Her voice brought him back to the present. “There were rumours that a whole lot of people had disappeared from the village, so I was looking for evidence of an ‘ethnic cleansing’. It’s amazing how two words can describe an infinity of cruelty and suffering, isn’t it?” he said.

“Anyway, the Land Rover broke down about a mile short of the village: close enough to see the cluster of whitewashed walls and red tile roofs, but not quite close enough to make out individual houses. It appeared to be a tranquil scene until I studied it through a pair of binoculars while the squaddie looked at the engine of the Land Rover. Most
houses were undamaged, but others had blackened patches on the walls and ragged shell-holes in the tile roofs. A few were almost gutted.

“The pristine homes would be the ones Serb families had been living in, I guessed.

“The damaged dwellings would be the homes of ethnic Albanians who’d been driven out.

“The gutted ruins would have belonged to Albanians who’d refused to leave; old people who were too frail or weary or proud to flee the fury that had been unleashed in the valley. These were the houses I’d been sent to photograph, because the word was that the people who’d once lived in them had died in them. The chances were that the people who actually pulled the triggers would never be brought to justice, but my photographs would provide evidence for an indictment against the Serb commander who’d either ordered the killings or done nothing to stop them.”

Cameron was still looking at the hearth, but Kate got the feeling he was seeing the blackened stones of Vorce.

“The late afternoon sun streaming over my shoulder had a modelling effect, casting dramatic shadows, making straights lines stand out with razor sharpness and throwing even small things into stark relief,” Cameron said, obviously remembering the scene in every detail. “It was perfect light to capture the horror of what had happened there: the gutted shells would have a depth that made it clear people once lived in them; the last remaining traces of their everyday lives would be recorded—the little things
that showed these ruined houses had once been homes.

“I knew there was only about an hour of that light left. When I asked the squaddie how long the Land Rover would take to fix, he said ‘about an hour.’

“I looked at the road leading to the village, trying to work out how long it would take to walk along it. Twenty minutes at the most, I thought. I could get there and take my shots before the light faded.”

“Wasn’t it a bit risky going into a place like that alone?”

“It was against standing orders to go
anywhere
alone, but the alternative was to wait for the Land Rover to be fixed, and by then the light would be gone. I’d have wasted the afternoon and would have to spend the next morning making the same journey again. It would be about noon when I got there, and the sun would be high in the sky or obscured by clouds. Either way the light wouldn’t have been as good as it was that afternoon. It seemed crazy to be so close and just turn back, so I told the squaddie I’d walk to the village and grab the shots I needed while he fixed the Land Rover.”

“That took guts, Cameron.”

“No, it didn’t. I knew there weren’t any Serb paramilitaries or regulars within 20 miles of the village. According to all the intelligence it had been ‘freed’ by the Kosovo Liberation Army. Any men with guns would be ethnic Albanians, and I thought they’d be glad to see someone taking pictures that showed what had happened to their friends and families, photos that would help bring those
responsible to justice.”

“Seems like sound logic, so what went wrong?”

“The fact that logic had long since ceased to apply in Vorce and a thousand other places like it… The fact that even after all the things I’d seen I was still so naïve it never occurred to me that the survivors would be hell-bent on taking matters into their own hands, evening up the score without counting the cost or distinguishing between right and wrong, good and evil.”

He fell silent, then turned from Kate back to the hearth and said, “I’d counted five burnt-out houses when I first looked through the binoculars. Photographing the first four was perfectly straightforward. The light was as dramatic as I’d hoped, and I hardly even had to think about how to make the most of it.

“I was looking around the ruins of the fifth house when I heard a vehicle approaching. Thinking it was the Land Rover, I walked over to the door, ready to flag the squaddie down. But, as I approached the doorway, I realized the sound was coming from the wrong direction. I began to get a bad feeling, and crouched down in the shadows to one side of a broken window.

“The engine-beat grew steadily louder, then changed pitch, and I could tell that the vehicle was coming to a halt just outside the house I was hiding in.

“Moments later came the squeal of badly-worn brakes. It’s a sound I still hear in my sleep. If I’m lucky I wake up in a cold sweat at that point.”

“And if you’re not lucky?”

“The nightmare continues, and I relive the rest of what happened in Vorce,” he said.

Kate thought his voice sounded almost like that of a stranger, an automaton. She had to wait so long to hear it again that she thought she was going to have to ask him what did happen next, but he started to answer her question just before it was asked. “An old truck passed by the window,” he said. “It was moving so slowly I had time to make out a mud-streaked, maroon-colored cab. There were two men in it, both wearing the black berets and tiger-striped battledress of the KLA.”

Now Kate sensed that although he was looking into the hearth of Jamie’s cottage, he was seeing out of the broken window of a ruined house.

“Moments later the back of the truck came into view.” He swallowed several times, as if fighting back a wave of nausea.

Kate’s dread mounted. This time she didn’t prompt him to continue.

But eventually he did. “There was a wooden-slatted cargo section of the sort that might have held cattle or sheep on their way to the abattoir in the days before the madness began,” he said.