The News from Moidart

‘The news fae Moidart come yestreen

Will soon gar mony ferly,

For ships o’war have just come in

And landed Royal Charlie.’

     The sun lit up the country around Glenfinnan in August with gold that vanishes, like an ill-fated wedding. A waiting party stood at the harbour, full of all the expectation of a new marriage, one to join a country with her ruler, one who, they thought, should never have been away. As the Young Pretender disembarked, a great banner was raised, one that flew a rose-like symbol, the white cockade.

     He had had pain for some time. Coughing last Christmas, hanging up a picture of the west coast, the spare nails sticking out from his mouth. The sensation came and went like needles in his chest. He gritted his teeth and made more jokes. His duties involved seeing people, talking with them of their problems. They noticed his pallor in the New Year.

     Footsteps from the past. Jostling, marching on the road south, walking with purpose. Some pressed into service, threatened with burning from their homes. Down to the borders for their first clash, taking the largely unmanned garrisons by surprise.

     He should have been in the record books. Surviving a transplant at a time when transplants were in their infancy, suffering many nights of pain, much of the fighting done in his mind. The will to hang on flowed out from his mind to his faltering body. He had had worse before than these present troubles.

     They advanced through the autumn, the government’s garrisons short of men, focussed on an attack south of their shores. They had no thought of danger from the north, thinking those wild lands tamed with roads and new bureaucracy from the last rebellion. Even the King became afraid, following his soldiers across the Channel.

     The coughing continued, the irritation behind it spreading in silence. Early summer came to his world, the trees in Caithness branching out. He visited a glass factory, saw the calm of the beach outside. The everlasting tide ground the rocks into sand, the sand to become glass. Distorted as it was blown, changed into its next life. Through a glass, darkly. There was an hourglass on his work desk at home. He thought of his past travels. The Egyptian sword, the complete Encyclopaedia Americana, the painting of the placid Native American in a canoe on equally still waters. How many books he had. He cut short a walk he had planned, feeling the pain. Living alone. However lively his manner with others, there was always the return to the stillness, the dark at night.

     Then came Black Friday in December, the one vote that won the outcome for retreat. At Derby, within 200 miles of their object of London, amid much squabbling they abandoned their goal and began to return north.

     At last he had to admit something was wrong. He had seen quite a few doctors in his time, had lived longer than some predicting his death. He passed the time of day with the local people in the waiting room. Samples taken, results awaited. Work continued, it had long been a solace to him. He studied and wrote and prepared to speak. The ship of his body had been in storms before. The phlegm in his throat turned bloody.

     Such a dispirited army. What was the point in rising, only to disperse in such a manner? Already defeated by their own side. What had been done could not be undone: battles could not be unfought, the dead raised.

     The test results came back as soundings from the depths. Reason could not fathom it, too dark, beyond knowing. He went back to his glass. A third-generation mineral. He looked out at the bay through the rain drizzling at the window. He would pack to go to hospital in Inverness. He had sampled hospitals from London to Winnipeg. He felt grim but resolute, looking around the best room in his modest house. The end of his work loomed, and much of his identity with it. A large picture of colourful, swaying trees was the most striking feature in the room. Another country, in his youth.

     The army marched over the border, short on provisions, growing steadily more tired and less disciplined. The nature of their retreat dimmed already low expectations. The recalled army of the establishment pursued them from the south.

     He made arrangements about his house, went down to the old Highland capital by train. He had relatives there. He felt oppressed, as though the world were sinking. The hospital was warm. All around him, suffering people with their own stories. He was still keenly interested in others. He attended his niece’s wedding, returned exhausted. A strange kind of banqueting hall, but his it was.

     The rebels retreated, sometimes through roads built since the last rebellion. The romance of a golden August was long past. The final battle loomed, and even there they would not hold the high ground.

     His friends and relations came and went. One by one, torches guttering and fading. As autumn became winter, he moved into the hospice. Life grew colder and slower.

     Often in a dark tunnel now, he thought of the past. His people awoke on a raw April morning, on a field near Inverness. On the march from Nairn the night before, they had had nothing to eat. The sleet came down as the government army stood waiting, better fed, better armed. He rose with his family and faced the fate before them. At the other end of the field lurked fear itself, black cockades as coals, red coats as firebrands. Like surgery, the clash was coming, and their knives were hungry.