The flight of the heron

by D. K. Broster

“It may be,” answered the old man. “It may well be, for when I speak to him he never answers. Yet one night he stood here in the flesh, and swore the holy oath on his dirk to be avenged on the man who betrayed you to the saighdearan dearg. My own two eyes beheld him, my two ears heard him, and I prayed the Blessed One to give strength to his arm—for it was then that you were gone from us, darling of my heart, and fast in prison.”

“But you surely do not mean, Angus,” said his foster-son, puzzled, “that Lachlan came back here after I was captured? You mean that you saw his taibhs. For in the flesh he has never returned to Slochd nan Eun.”

“Yes, for one night he returned,” persisted the old man, “for one night in the darkness. None saw him but I, who opened to him; and he would not go near the house of Ardroy, nor let any see him but his father, because he was sick with grief and shame that he had left you on Beinn Laoigh to the will of your enemy. Ah, Mac ’ic Ailein, did I not feel that many things would come upon you because of the man to whom the heron led you! But that I never saw—that he would betray you to the saighdearan dearg! May Lachlan soon keep his oath, and the raven pick out the traitor’s eyes! May his bones never rest! May his ghost——”

Ewen had sprung up, horrified. “Angus, stop! What are you saying! That man, the English officer, did not betray me: he saved me, at great risk to himself. But for him the redcoats would have shot me like a dog—but for him I should not have escaped from their hands on the way to Inverlochy. Take back that curse . . . and for Heaven’s sake tell me that you are mistaken, that Lachlan did not swear vengeance on him, but on the man who took me prisoner, a Lowland Scot named Guthrie. That is what you mean, Angus, is it not?”

But Angus shook his grey head. “My son swore vengeance on the man who was your guest, the English officer who found you in the bothy on Beinn Laoigh, and delivered you up, and told the soldiers who you were. Lachlan found this out from the talk as he skulked round the Lowlander’s camp in the dark. Vengeance on the Lowlander he meant to have if he could, but he swore it for certain against the other, the English officer, because he had broken your bread. So he took oath on the iron to rest neither day nor night till that evil deed was repaid to him—he swore it here on the biodag on which you both saw blood that day by the lochan, and which you bade him not throw away. I think he meant to hasten back and lie in wait for the English officer as he returned over the pass of Corryarrick, and to shoot him with the musket which he had stolen from one of the redcoats. But whether he ever did it I do not know.”

Bewildered, and with a creeping sense of chill, Ewen had listened mutely in order that he might, perhaps, contrive to disentangle the true from the false in this fruit of the old man’s clouded brain. But with these last words came a gleam of comfort. No, Lachlan had not succeeded in any such attempt, thank God. And since then—for it was in May that Windham had returned over the Corryarrick—his complete disappearance pointed to but one conclusion, that he was gone where he could never keep his dreadful and deluded vow. Ewen drew a long breath of relief; yet it was rather terrible to hope that his foster-brother was dead.

Still, he would take what precaution he could.

“If, when I am gone, Angus,” he said, “Lachlan should return here, charge him most straightly from me that he abandon this idea of vengeance; tell him that but for the English officer I should be lying to-day where poor Neil is lying.—I wonder if anyone gave Neil burial,” he added under his breath.

But Angus heard. He raised himself. “Lachlan buried him when he came there after yourself, Eoghain, and found you gone, and was near driving the dirk into his own heart, as he told me. Yes, he stayed to bury his brother; and so when he came to the camp of the redcoats they had taken you to Kilcumein. But all night long he prowled round the tents, and heard the redcoats talk—he having the English very well, as you know—and tried to get into the tent of their commander to kill him while he slept, and could not. So he hastened to Achnacarry, and found Mac Dhomhnuill Duibh, and besought him to go with the clan and besiege the fort of Kilcumein and take you out of it; but the Chief had not enough men. So Lachlan came here secretly, to tell me that he had not been able to stay the redcoats from taking you, and that Neil had been happier than he, for he had died outside the door before they entered to you; and all that was left for him was to slay the Englishman—and so he vowed. But now, it seems, the Englishman is not to be slain?”

“A thousand times, no!” cried Ewen, who had listened very attentively to this recital, which certainly sounded as if it had come originally from Lachlan’s own lips, and some of which, as he knew from Archie, was true. “Remember that, if Lachlan should come here.—But I cannot understand,” he went on, frowning, “how, if Lachlan overheard so much of the soldiers’ talk, he did not overhear the truth, and learn how Major Windham ran in and saved me from being shot. Surely that is the matter which must most have engaged their tongues, and in that there was no question of delivering me up.”