A Falcon for a Queen

by Catherine Gaskin

  As he raced to help Neil Smith open up the doors of the loose boxes, I caught at his arm. He checked impatiently. ‘Ailis first,’ I said. ‘Ailis.’

  ‘Very well ‒ Ailis!’

  And then my grandfather came to life. He rushed to join the two men, and for a moment I stood and watched, wondering if it could be done. And what had I asked Callum? ‒ his own pony was probably tethered in one of the empty stalls. But we were fortunate in Cluain’s stables. Built of stone, like the distillery and warehouses, with slate roof, and all the loose boxes opening into the yard, instead of two rows of stalls into a central passage, as it would have been in a bigger stable. It was the hay that was the danger; the hay was alight in the lofts above, stray wisps were blowing in the wind, and pieces falling among the bedding straw of the fear-maddened horses. Most of the animals were untethered, but it needed skill to get them to back away out of the boxes when a rain of fired hay seemed to fall between them and the freedom of the yard. But one or two, those of uncertain temper, were tethered, and someone would have to go past those lunging heels and take the halter and turn and lead them out. In the last instant before I started running I saw Callum pull off his coat. Ailis, sensible creature that she was, was already free, and retreating into the kindly darkness beyond the roaring threat. Then I saw Callum plunge past the heels of the worst of the huge Clydesdales, the one called Trumpeter, and fling his coat over the crazed animal’s eyes. The fight was on. I didn’t look any more. A single blow from one of those enormously powerful legs, and Callum would not live.

  I saw something else, though, as I ran. Morag stood alone in the middle of the stableyard, just where the tidal edge of the light from the blaze fell upon her. She stood quite still, calm in the midst of the clatter of the hooves of the freed horses and the calls of the men, wrapped in her plaid against the wind watching as if it were some interesting spectacle, but none of her business. Perhaps it wasn’t ‒ now. She glanced at me as I ran past her, but she made no attempt to move; no attempt either to leave or to take some action to help. I knew it was useless to urge her.

  Before I reached John Farquharson’s cottage the door had opened, and he was out, still buttoning his trousers over his nightshirt. ‘I’ve already sent the two lads up the road, mistress,’ he called to me. ‘I’ve told them that everyone is to come. We’ll get the horses out all right, but the building will be hard to save. The pump is ready in the cooperage ‒ but we’ll have to get the line down to the river …’ His words trailed off as he ran past me. From the doorway his wife called, ‘I’m dressing, mistress. The lads will bring whatever women can leave their bairns. It must not touch the distillery, mistress.’

  It was all of them, it was the whole world of Cluain, their jobs, their families, their loyalties. And as I turned to follow John back, I glanced upwards, and the first lights were beginning to come on at Ballochtorra. There would be more men on the way. As I came back within the shelter of the walls of the furthest warehouse I could already hear, distinguishable among all the clamour, Big Billy’s honk of alarm and indignation; but he was well away from it, separated by the width of the road, and Neil Smith would never forget him and his flock. And there, in the darkness which was already beginning to be lightened by the glow of the fire, I felt a nudge on the shoulder, a muzzle rub along my cheek. ‘Ailis … is this as close as you’ll come? Well, stay then, good girl. And don’t wander too far off.’ I did not attempt to tether her to any of the posts or gates; she would feel more easy that way and I did not have to worry that she would stray far from Cluain. ‘There’ll be horses to look for all over the strath to-morrow …’

  And there would be. I counted the open doors of the loose boxes, saw the horror of the inferno in the hay, above in the lofts and on the floor. There was a series of ominous explosive sounds, like the retorts of a gun, as individual slates cracked in the heat. But I could see no sign of a horse still left within those fiery shells. I thought they were all clear, and most of them had disappeared into the friendly darkness. Some would have jumped fences they had never thought to try before, some would stay by the roadside, a safe distance from the fire, some we would have to search the hills for, and some, too panic stricken, would injure themselves, and have to be put down. There, in the midst of the small crowd of men that had now reached the yard from the cottages, and the growing number of women joining them, I knew the first real moment of fear. There had not been time until now to take in the full implication of what yet could happen. And I cursed the wind that blew, and brought the heat of the flames to my face.

  By the time the pump and hose line to the river was hooked up, the men had arrived from Ballochtorra. The stable hands, coachmen and gardeners went to work as if they knew what they were doing; the indoor servants were almost more hindrance than help, and I could hear my grandfather cursing one or two of them. It was a big, wheeled handpump, kept for such emergencies, and like everything else at Cluain, old, but in good repair. The river was in full spate after the rains, so we did not, after the pump was ready, lack water. What was needed was the pressure and the energy to raise it the height to the buildings themselves, high enough to wet down the roofs of the house and the distillery. I suddenly knew then the good reasoning behind the placing of the warehouses on the other side of the road. Distance now was everything. It worked for and against us. The distance to the river, which protected the house and distillery when the river was in flood, seemed now impossibly far to pump the water, the distance for the jet of water to reach the tower room of the house was too great. But distance from the other buildings protected the warehouses. All the men took turns at the pump, while the others rested; the hay in the loft of the stables was now consumed, but the timbers were on fire. One of the faces I saw rushing by me in the now smoky haze that overhung us, intent on making his way down to the river, was Gavin Campbell. He didn’t see me, and I didn’t try to detain him. I stood for a moment with Samuel Lachlan, who leaned, trembling, against the garden wall. I tried to comfort him; he just kept shaking his head. ‘Such a loss! ‒ such a loss! All the horses saved though … Sinclair had to fight with those two brutes … Angus is doing too much. He’s too old … too old. I’m too old. There should be another pump … Angus should have had another pump.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be men to work it,’ I said.

  ‘Another pump,’ he insisted. ‘Oh, I’m too old.’ And he was. His frail body still shook from the exertion of that first effort to open up the stables and free the horses, shook from excitement and fear. At last I managed to persuade him to give up his post at the garden wall, and come around into the road outside the house. There, incongruously, he was ensconced in a chair from the drawing-room. The small group of women who had come from the distillery cottages, and some of the young maids from Ballochtorra, come to watch the spectacle, had been organised by Mairi Sinclair, who was now wearing a black coat over her nightgown. Methodically, she was overseeing the removal of the most valuable pieces of the furniture from the ground floor of the house. It was no small task. The great hall table had to be left ‒ it would have needed eight men to lift it. And so also the sideboard from the dining-room. I myself brought out the Bible, and set it down on a settle placed opposite Samuel Lachlan. ‘Watch it now, Mr Lachlan ‒ and should I go and start bringing the ledgers and filers from the distillery office? ‒ no, I can’t. My grandfather has the keys.’

  ‘The distillery! The distillery will not take fire ‒ not the distillery! ’ He was imploring.

  ‘A precaution, only …’

  ‘A precaution, oh, yes.’

  ‘Since you are here, Mr Lachlan,’ Mairi Sinclair broke in, ‘would it trouble you to place your eye on these things. That light-minded lot down from Ballochtorra might take a fancy to one or two.’ She had loaded the settle with silver trays, and teapots and jugs and tongs. There, under the settle, were the fire-dogs with the Cawdor crest. My grandfather’s chess set was laid beside them.

  ‘Yes, mistress ‒ yes,’ Samu
el Lachlan replied. I had never heard such meekness from him. The stable was smoking now, smoke that even the wind did not immediately clear; smoke full of menace, because no one could see the swift lick of flame that might still curve about a timber. While I stood there, and Samuel Lachlan huddled in his chair, a stream of water from the hose, meant to be directed towards the roof of the house, fell short of it, and reached over the garden wall, and on to me. I staggered for a moment; it did not touch the old man. Suddenly, now that the flames were gone, and the heat no longer there, I was drenched and cold. Then, leaving Samuel Lachlan, I walked around the corner of the garden wall. The smouldering building was hard to see ‒ the wind drove the smoke into my eyes, and they watered. I shivered in my wet dress.

  ‘They all were got out, Kirsty,’ Callum’s voice beside me. I looked up. ‘Ailis was first. But I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Ailis is all right. She is taking care of herself. She always does.’

  One side of his face was horribly swollen; even though it was darkened by soot, I could see the distortion. And there was blood, already caked and dried, at the hairline above his left eye.

  ‘You’ve been hurt!’

  ‘No. I was slammed into a post getting one of the Clydesdales out. But no horse perished, Kirsty. That’s what matters. Your grandfather will have to build new stables, but his heart will not be broken. If we stand by till the wind has dropped, and keep the pressure on the hose up, the distillery and the house are safe. We can just hope ‒ or pray, as Mr Lachlan seems to be doing ‒ that no spark takes hold on the distillery. Every piece of wood there is saturated by forty years of alcohol.’

  ‘How did the fire begin?’

  ‘Time enough to ask that when we know we have it beaten. Everything will wait on that.’

  ‘Callum …?’

  He had already turned away from me, answering some call from the midst of the men. There was some trouble with the hose; my grandfather was ordering it to be extended, but to make the coupling, the pressure would have to be reduced.

  ‘Callum …’ He was gone. His figure melted into the group about the hose. I didn’t even know what I had meant to say to him. It was part of the chaos of that whole scene ‒ I saw and knew only parts of it, fragments, my impressions scattered like the burning hay in the wind, like the distraught horses dispersed over the countryside. Then I pulled myself up. I was standing and staring, but doing nothing, less useful than Samuel Lachlan, who at least guarded part of Cluain’s treasures. So then I went into the house and placed myself under Mairi Sinclair’s direction. She nodded to me, as if she knew my helplessness. ‘Go to your grandmother’s room, and bring whatever you can that seems valuable ‒ take one of the trays to carry on. I have cleared the silver from the pantry. If you see anyone upstairs in the house who is not the wife or child of one of the Cluain workers, order them out, or we shall have small items missing when we come to count.’

  ‘It won’t spread to the house,’ I said, even as I went off to obey her. ‘They just have to watch the stable now, and keep wetting it down.’

  She answered me with my own word. ‘Precautions …’

  So I went to my grandmother’s room, and began passing out to the waiting arms and aprons and trays of the Cluain women and children the precious things that Mairi Sinclair had stored away there, all the softening touches that the rest of the house lacked, the mirrors, the pictures, the little ornaments, the rolled-up rugs. These last were carried down between two of the strongest women who offered themselves. The little girls were given the ornaments to carry, one at a time, carefully, down the stairs. I grew weary of it, because, looking from the window, it all seemed unnecessary. The fire was not out completely, but it was controlled and there was nothing very combustible left to feed it. They would have to keep watch on it all night, and when daylight came, to start cutting away at the smoking timbers.

  ‘Shall we start to take down the books, Mistress Kirsty?’ one of the women asked me. I looked at the two bookcases there, crowded with volumes, and decided against it. There was a sudden sound of china shattering on the staircase, and the instant, nervous giggling. Well, it was inevitable that some things would be broken, and everyone was not familiar with those strange stairs, curving, and without a rail. It occurred to me then, when I thought about the books, to go down and ask Mairi Sinclair if she had removed her own herb and medicine books from the herb room. How one missed Morag in all this; her quickness and intelligence would have been worth the strength of six of these women.

  I went and spoke to Mairi Sinclair about clearing the herb room. She shook her head. ‘Not unless it is necessary. After what has been said to-night, do you think I want to unlock that door?’

  ‘But your books ‒ your own records! They are more valuable than anything that’s upstairs.’

  ‘Perhaps it would have been better for us all if they had never been. But go, mistress, and stay with Mr Lachlan. I will try to bring a hot drink soon. He does not seem well. One of the women will come with me to the kitchen and make tea to pass out. The men need something now. I will tell the others to go ‒ they are getting careless. A vase has been broken, and the leg of a chair damaged. The frame of a mirror chipped …’ She grieved over a mirror, she who never looked into one. I did as she said, and went to stay with Samuel Lachlan. Before I went I brought from the passage the Inverness cape for him. He accepted it about his shoulders without comment. He sat, bemused, amidst the great jumble of what had been taken from the house ‒ china, chairs, bedding, silver, like a strange old spider in the middle of a fantastic web of collections. Who would have thought that the bare starkness of Cluain had contained so many riches?

  I stood with him for a while, talking about anything that came to mind, but he hardly seemed to hear me. He was muttering under his breath, his own litany of incantations about carelessness and waste, of bad stewardship. ‘But it’s only the stables, Mr Lachlan,’ I said impatiently. ‘We have been lucky it was no more.’

  ‘Waste!’ was the only reply I got. I went to the corner of the wall. Here the wind blew straight at me, and the smoke was carried with it. Ironically, now that the hay no longer blazed, it had been necessary to bring lanterns so that the men could see to move about. Clouds were scudding before the wind, blotting out the light that might have helped them, but too swiftly, I thought, to bring rain. Rain would have helped us, and yet made the operation more difficult. Down at the river they would be standing in mud. I wondered where Gavin Campbell was. I wondered if I should go and ask my grandfather about taking the books from the distillery office. I didn’t know where he was ‒ or Callum. I started for the thickest group of men standing before the ruin of the stable.

  Half-way across the yard I heard Neil Smith’s voice ‒ his tone carrying all the agony of a man who sees his life’s trust betrayed before his eyes.

  ‘God Almighty! ‒ Look, Macdonald! ‒ look! The back end of the warehouses!’

  I was amongst those who crowded to the road to look along it, and there, in the warehouse furthest from the yard and the distillery, was the terrible glow. The iron bars across the high, small windows were outlined against it.

  I was one of the ones near to Neil Smith as we gathered closer to the warehouses. The main doors were flung open wide ‒ I think it was he and I together who rushed to free Big Billy and his flock from the pen close to those doors. In the first minutes the big gander went about biting every leg he found available, unwilling to believe that he and all his family were not the personal objectives of the holocaust.

  It had become a holocaust. There is no way that water can fight spirits once they are alight. Useless to get up the extra length of hose, useless to urge the men at the river to pump. Water was only the means of diluting the stream of fire, perhaps spreading it further. It already flowed, the deadly stream released by the explosion of casks soaked for long years in sherry and whisky; it ignited the columns and beams already impregnated by contact with the saturated casks. And all the doors
‒ the doors big enough to allow for the passage of the distillery drays, had been opened right through to the end, where the fire had begun. With the wind blowing, it created a natural funnel for the flames, a lateral chimney by which fire fed on fire.

  I witnessed the anguish of Neil Smith as he came out of his cottage, after the geese had been released. I remember the grip of his hand, biting into my arm, the old broken nails still having the power to hurt. ‘God help me! I didn’t think to take the warehouse keys with me when I went running to the house first. Someone has been in and taken them from the board, Look at the doors ‒ standing wide open to the world! It’s the end of me!’ Then he looked up realising at last whose arm he clutched. ‘It’s the end of Cluain, lass!’

  My grandfather directed the added lengths of hose to be run along the road at the side of the warehouses, and the water to be played upon the roof ‒ but there was nothing he could do about what was happening inside. The small jet of water was futile against the force of energy set alight within. There was one great explosion in the end warehouse, and suddenly, through the ventilation holes at floor level, the stream of fire flowed. It followed the drainage channels, and finally reached the place where the burn flowed beside the buildings. It caught. The burn itself was afire, fed by the endless stream of alcohol from inside the warehouse. It was a sight I could not wholly believe in, even though I saw it myself. The burn ran with fire, and where it was channelled under the road, at the little bridge, there was a weird gap of blackness between the two fiercely burning streams. It ran on down to the river, finally to be diluted by that much greater torrent, to nothingness.

  For a moment, close to my ear, I heard Callum’s shout. The roar of the flames was already greater than anything the stable fire had produced. ‘It’s still in the end warehouse. The doors have to be shut. It’s the only hope we have to save anything. If I can close the doors we have a chance to soak them with enough water to stop the spread to the rest. Go and tell your grandfather to bring the hoses up through the warehouses. I’ll try to close the doors one by one.’