Chapter Eleven
The waterfall had been the whole valley’s defence for thirty years, and Ian Campbell had taken four days to make it useless.
He stood at the head of the new road and looked back down it with real satisfaction.
His men had gone at that tunnel with hammers and iron bars until a horse and rider could pass through it without ducking.
Then they had widened the ledge as well.
There was now a way into the Lost Valley that a column could ride up two abreast. Old Liam had spent his life believing that one narrow path made him safe.
It had made him easy to find, which is a different thing entirely.
Below the falls, in the green bowl of the valley, Ian’s army was camped on the grass where the rebels used to drill.
He walked down through them without hurrying. Men got out of his way and he thanked the ones who did it well, because courtesy costs nothing and is remembered far longer than shouting.
The war council hall was still standing, more or less. The roof had come down at the eastern end where the fire had got into it, and the long room smelled of wet ash and worse, and the benches had been dragged out into the yard to make room.
Liam was on his knees in the middle of the floor with his hands bound behind him.
They had put him there four hours ago and he had not once asked to be moved.
He was filthy and grey to the lips, and there was blood dried into his white beard, and his back was as straight as a man half his years could have managed.
Ian admired that. He admired it the way a man admires a good horse in another man’s field.
“Bring the last one,” Ian said.
There had been eleven of them when this started.
Liam had known every one since they were boys.
He had taught most of them to ride. He had buried their fathers.
They brought the last of the rebel scouts up from the pen behind the hall.
He was young. His arm was broken and he had been crying, and his whole face was wet and swollen with it, and Ian did not blame him for that in the least.
“Look at me,” Liam said to the boy. His voice came out of him like a saw, and his heart was breaking, and he kept all of that off his face because the lad needed him steady. “Look at me, son. Look at me and nae at him.”
The boy looked at him. Something went out of the lad’s shoulders when he did it, and his shaking eased, and he kept his eyes on the old man’s face and nowhere else.
Ian let that happen. He was in no hurry at all, and there was something in it he wanted the old man to keep.
The boy did not take his eyes off Liam’s face. He was frightened past speaking. He held on to that old ruined face the way a man holds a rope. Liam held him there with his eyes and did not let him go, and that was the last kindness either of them was shown.
Afterwards he had the body carried out with the others.
He watched Liam’s face the whole way past. There were tears going down into the old man’s beard and he did not appear to know it, but his jaw was shut and it stayed shut.
That was the last of them, and Liam had not given him one single word since the night the valley fell.
Ian crouched down in front of him so that their eyes were level. “Are ye cold?”
Liam did not answer him.
“Ye are. Would ye like a fire?”
“I’d like ye tae get on with it.”
It was difficult to frighten a kneeling man from above; he had learnt that from his father, who had never learnt it at all.
“Ye’ve been verra brave,” Ian said. “I want ye tae ken that I’ve noticed it.”
“Go on with it, then. What are ye waitin’ on?”
“In a while.” Ian settled his weight comfortably.
“Do ye ken, I could have finished all of this weeks since? I could have come up this valley in the spring and burnt it and gone home again. I chose nae tae. I’m patient in a way that nae one of me family has ever been, and it’s the only thing they left me that I’ve any use for. ”
“Ye’re doin’ yer uncle’s work, are ye nae?”
“I am.” Ian smiled at him. “Me uncle was weak. He wasnae wrong, mind. He kent that the Murrays hold this country because every soul in it has agreed tae let them, and that an agreement is a thing ye can take apart, one village at a time, if ye’ve the patience for it and ye dinnae mind bein’ hated while ye work. ”
“And where did it get him? He died with his face in the mud.”
“He did. Because he wanted it quick.” Ian let his hands hang between his knees.
“I’ll take back what belongs tae me family, and I’ll do it so slow that the folk up here will hand it tae me themselves.
They’ll tire of it. They’re tirin’ already.
Seamus Murray cannae feed the people at his own gate, and every farm I burn sends him more mouths, and in a year or two the crofters will be sayin’ tae one another that things were quieter under the Campbells.
They turned on me uncle. They’ll turn again.
Folk always turn; it’s the one thing about them a man can build on. ”
Liam spat blood onto the flagstones between them. His breathing had a wet sound in it now that had not been there in the morning. His shoulders had begun to shake and he could not stop them. He was not certain any more whether it was the cold, or the grief, or the way his ribs had been used.
“I pity ye,” he said.
“That’s a new one on me.”
“I mean it, boy.” Liam lifted his head. His eyes were wet and absolutely steady.
“I’ve thought about it these last days, since I’ve had the time.
Yer sister got out. Yer brother got out.
Someone put a hand out and took them away from Alistair Campbell before he finished the work on them, and they’ve had a life, and they’ve got people who’d die for them this minute.
” His mouth moved. “Nae one ever did that for ye. Ye’re the one they left in that house.
” Liam’s eyes were wet and he let them be.
“And I’m sorry for it, boy. God help me, I am. ”
The hall was very quiet. Ian’s heart had not changed its pace, and he took some comfort from that.
Ian was aware of his own face and made no adjustment to it. That was a discipline he had practised for a long time. It had never once failed him.
“For years,” he said, “I wondered why she went and left me standin’ in that yard.
Me mother. I was a lad and I couldnae make it come right in me head, and I asked meself about it every night for a long while, the way lads do.
” He turned his hands over. “Then one mornin’ I understood that she’d given me the only useful thing any of me family ever gave me.
She taught me, before I was old enough tae argue with it, that there’s nae one.
Nae a mother, nae a brother, nae a wife.
Every man is by himself in a room, and the ones that forget it die on their knees. ”
“That isnae a lesson. That’s a wound ye’ve decided tae be proud of.”
“Perhaps.” Ian tipped his head. “But look what it’s done for me, and look what trust has done for ye.
The Murrays trust ye. The McKenzies trust ye.
Isla and Murdoch—nae, Elsie and Christopher,” he sneered the names then went on, “they trust ye, and the Kincaids trust ye, and every one of them is sittin’ this minute waitin’ on a paper in yer hand. ”
He watched the old man understand it.
That was the part Ian had been waiting four hours for, and it did not disappoint him. He saw it arrive in Liam’s face, and he saw the old man try to keep it off, and fail, for the first time in all the days he had been down here.
“Aye.” Ian might have been correcting a child at its lessons.
“Yer hand isnae difficult. I’ve had two men practisin’ it since before the snow went, and the second of them is verra good.
Yer trackers’ reports will keep arrivin’ at Murray Keep, and they’ll say what I’d like them tae say, and Seamus Murray will move his men wherever I put yer name.
” He stood up and brushed off his knees.
“Ye’ve been the most useful man in Scotland tae me, and ye havenae said a word.
I did tell ye patience was worth somethin’. ”
Liam’s chest went once, hard, and then again. The sound that came out of him was very close to grief. It was not for himself. It was for Seamus Murray, who would read a forged page at his own table and move good men because of it.
“Tavish,” he said, and his throat closed on the name of the lad he had raised.
“Yer ward? He isnae here.” Ian sounded, and was, mildly annoyed.
“Ye sent the lad out with somethin’ the evenin’ before we came in, which was either verra good fortune or the one piece of sense any soul in this valley showed all season.
He’s away somewhere with his message. I daresay I’ll meet him in time… ”
“Good.” The relief went through Liam so hard that he nearly wept in front of the man. He turned his face away rather than let that happen. “Good. That’s one.”
“Ye’re pleased about that.”
“I am.” The old man’s ruined face came up again.
“Ye’ll notice I’ve given ye nothin’, boy.
Nae a name, nae a number, nae a road. Ye’ve had yer days and ye’ve had me men off me, one by one, and ye’ve had nothin’, and ye’ll be tellin’ yerself that’s patience.
” He was breathing badly now. “It isnae. Ye’re a man who cannae make a soul give him anythin’, so ye take it, and then ye stand there and call it a plan. ”
Ian said nothing.
“I saw yer uncle die,” Liam said. “I was in the field. He had that same look on him at the end, the one ye’ve got now, when the thing didnae come out the way he’d arranged it. Ye’ll fall too. Ye’ll fall the same way and ye’ll be just as surprised.”
The smile went off Ian Campbell’s face.
In a swift motion, with absolute precision Ian drew the dagger from his belt and he put it into the old man’s side under the ribs, slowly, all the way, while he held Liam’s eyes with his own; and then he took his hand away and left it standing there.
Liam laughed. It was a wet, wrecked sound with no strength left behind it and it cost him to make it. His shoulders came forward and his eyes watered with the pain of it, and still he laughed, and Ian found that he was angrier about that than about anything the man had said to him.
“The one thing I’m sorry for,” Liam said, when he could, “is that I’ll nae be livin’ tae see it. I’d have liked tae see it.”
“Take him below,” Ian said.
“Aye, me Laird. Which cell?”
“The other one.” Ian wiped his palm on his cloak. “And Angus. The two of ye carry him and nae one else. If I hear one word of it in this camp I’ll ken fine which of ye said it.”
His men were good and they did not ask. They lifted the old man under the arms and took him out through the burnt end of the hall and up the valley to the steps that went down into the rock, and Ian stood in his ruined council chamber and listened to the sound of it going away.
He was, on the whole, content.
The alliance was coming apart in front of him and had no idea.
Finn McKenzie was somewhere north of here with his army, in a courtyard Ian had built for the purpose, learning what it costs to be a grieving man in a hurry.
The Murrays were sitting behind their own walls waiting for a report that would arrive on Thursday in a dead man’s handwriting.
And in the dark at the head of this valley there was a thing nobody outside it knew about.
Ian had thought a great deal about when to spend it.
Not yet. Not while they were still angry with each other, because grief was doing far better work for Ian at present than anything else would.
He would wait until the alliance had nearly mended itself.
Until they were close enough to reach across and touch.
That was the moment to open his hand, and there was no sense at all in doing it sooner.
None of his own men outside this room knew. That was deliberate too.
The cell they put Liam into was cut out of the rock under the old monastery at the head of the valley and it was wet, and it smelled of the burn that ran somewhere behind the wall.
They laid him down on the straw with more care than their orders required, because even Campbell men have their limits, and one of them said he was sorry and meant it.
Then the door went shut. The bar came down, and the light went out of the world.
Liam lay on his back with the dagger still in him and waited to find out whether he would keep breathing.
He was afraid. He had not expected to be, at his age, after everything, but he was, and down here in the dark where no one could see him he let himself be afraid and thought none the worse of himself for it.
He was aware, after a while, that he was not alone.
Something moved against the far wall. He heard straw shift, and then a slow scraping, as of a person dragging themselves across a floor a little at a time; and then a hand came out of the black and found his shoulder and stayed there.
Liam could not turn his head to see. He did not have the strength for it.
But the hand was warm, and it did not go away, and after everything, that was more than he had expected of this day.