Clanlands

by Sam Heughan

  Whilst in Scotland, Archibald Cameron was betrayed by the infamous ‘Pickle’ Alasdair Ruadh Mac Dhomhnuil, 13th chief of Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, who became a Jacobite double agent for the British. Thanks to ‘Pickle’ (what a bastard) Archibald was arrested for being a Jacobite traitor and sentenced in 1753 to be hanged, drawn and quartered (hanged until almost dead, emasculated, disembowelled, his entrails and heart thrown into an open fire, beheaded and cut up into four pieces. Who thought this shit up?). It was the same way they killed William Wallace and others guilty of ‘high treason’. I mean even a cat doesn’t mess about with a wee mouse like that. It is said Archie approached his demise with bravery and resolution. ‘The gold is supposed to be buried along Loch Arkaig,’ says Lochiel. ‘There are lots of people with metal detectors but no one’s ever found it.’ Yet. I can see wily old Graham already mentally ordering his metal detector. He’ll be back, I guarantee it.

  Achnacarry also played a significant role in WWII when the government commandeered the castle and estate, establishing a training headquarters and putting 25,000 Army and Royal Marine Commandos through their paces here between 1942 and 1945. On the banks of the Loch and River Arkaig, with Ben Nevis just eighteen miles away, Achnacarry was the perfect terrain to train an elite fighting force to defeat the German foe. Here they learnt physical fitness, survival, orienteering, close-quarter combat, silent killing, signalling, amphibious and cliff assault, vehicle operation and various weapon and demolition skills. And in those days they didn’t mess around in training. Oh no, they recreated night operations on the loch with boats and men under machine-gun fire from real live rounds. Several were injured or killed in training here and Lochiel says they are still finding unexploded ordnance.

  Around a mile from Spean bridge is the Commando Memorial, overlooking the training areas of the Commando Training depot. There’s a terrifying photo of men practising stabbing each other in the neck with a large knife, much like the dirks our Highlanders would carry. The Commando Memorial at Spean Bridge is a constant reminder of their endeavours and with a few veterans still with us now in their nineties they, like the Highlanders, were a breed apart.

  He wears the kilt of the Cameron Clan,

  Fierce and proud in Lochaber lands,

  Ancestral home of the great Lochiel,

  And above on a hill a memorial stands –

  It honours the memory of those who have gone.

  For freedom and justice so many have died

  For king and country they gave their lives,

  And the piper plays with sorrow and pride.

  From ‘Spean Bridge’ by Barbara McPhail

  I’ve often wondered what kind of soldier I’d make. But then I realised you can’t take your make-up artist with you in a real battle. Joke! But it isn’t that much of a stretch because I’ve always loved the outdoors, working out and getting stuck in – mountain biking, hiking, climbing – everything you can do as a Marine or soldier. During the shooting of Season Two of Outlander, four members of the crew and I entered the ‘Tough Mudder’ race. Ten miles of running, slipping and falling into thick mud, plus twenty-five obscenely muddy obstacles. It was a fun weekend challenge and we felt pretty confident, attacking it with great enthusiasm, a welcome change to shooting in the glorious but extremely warm ‘French Apartment in Versailles’ (reimagined by our genius set designer Jon Gary Steele).

  The promise of free beer at the end spurred us on. Fifteen-foot jumps, running through fire, scaling large walls, swimming in freezing water and all whilst covered in thick, clay-like mud – it’s quite a test. The first obstacle was an ice-filled pool that you had to submerge in, chilling your bones and soaking your clothes, and it was the sign of the things to come. Each hurdle covered us in yet more mud or submerged us in freezing water – and the driving rain didn’t help either. Yet surfacing from the murky freight container filled with an assortment of fluids, someone called out: ‘Go on Sam!’ A small, hardy group of Outlander fans had arrived to cheer us on and it gave us the boost we needed. Our Outlander crew are tough, the best, possibly the hardest in the business, having to face the outdoor elements most days, for almost ten months straight, for fourteen-plus-hour days. However, we lost two of them around a mile in, claiming they ‘needed a breather’ – or a cigarette break. Those of us remaining cracked on like a military unit – running and slipping in unison was the only way to keep warm. The only time we wavered was at the electric shock trap. With a rumoured 10,000 volts of electricity, it reportedly packed quite a punch. Like being tasered, still damp and wet from the course, it at least keeps your insides warm whilst frying them. There was no way around it but to run through. I closed my eyes and ran. Bang. Like being kicked in the head. I made it to the finish and, amazingly, back to work the next day, relatively unscathed. Jamie Fraser’s hair may have stood a little more on end. Having completed this, I’ve always wanted to try an army assault course or compete in one of those Special Forces shows on TV.

  As we walk up the line of interwoven trees, known as The Dark Mile, or ‘Mile Dorcha’, passing the remains of the original burnt-out castle, it’s time to say farewell to our host Lochiel and take a look around the Cameron Museum.

  Inside is the last kilt worn in battle, at Dunkirk in 1940. Given the significance of WWII in Outlander (the story starts in 1945), Achnacarry actually connects those two significant periods of history in an extraordinary location. Graham beckons me over to look at Prince Charlie’s waistcoat, which is very small. ‘Not a big man,’ says Graham disappointedly. ‘A bit on the diminutive side for my liking, if I’m honest. Like following Tom Cruise into battle, without the CGI.’ It would never fit Graham’s ‘muscular’ figure. It would hardly fit a young boy, slender and slight; he must have been a small yet striking figure. A cherub standing in the Highlands surrounded by these hardened, brutal men. My character had many meetings with the Young Pretender, beautifully played by the actor Andrew Gower. Jamie Fraser feared this young man didn’t have the experience or bravery needed to lead an army and would be overpowered by his confidants and advisors. And Jamie wasn’t wrong about that, was he? I say he should have listened to the wise and Gentle Lochiel and waited for the French (which is what I was trying to sort out with Claire in most of Season Two!).

  Hanging in the museum is a print of a famous painting of Bonnie Prince Charlie by the artist John Pettie, painted in the 1800s (it now hangs in Holyrood Palace). In the picture, to his right is Cameron of Lochiel and Alexander Forbes, 4th Lord of Pitsligo. It was actually this painting that we used as a reference on Outlander, looking at how kilts were worn and depicted. Many an argument was had in the early days, our creative team insisting that Highlanders would always wear the jackets indoors. To me this made no sense. Obviously for warmth and comfort, but most paintings were staged and there was little formality in the Highlands, if living from hand to mouth. Even this painting was embellished by the artist many years later than the event. However, one character I’d studied, standing loyal in the shadows behind the Bonnie Prince, was an ancestor of the man I’d just been talking to, his sword still hanging in the hallway: Cameron of Lochiel.

  GRAHAM

  There was one scene where I was making a speech inside a cottage with a roasting fire. Trying to gather money for the Jacobite cause. I suggested to the director I do it in my shirtsleeves, very ‘Obama Town Hall meeting’ style, a man of the people!

  We started shooting the scene this way. After we’d shot half the scene we were told that I ‘had to have the jacket on’. Word had come through. So as a result if you look at Episode Five of Season One, I keep jumping between jacket on and jacket off, in the same scene!

  SAM

  We have run out of time and like the set of Jacobite glasses with the Latin inscription ‘Redeat’ (to comeback or reappear) we will, like their king, return. Outside, we are ambushed. Not by government forces but by a cloud of hungry midges. I wondered where they’d been. This trip has been too sunny, too painless but
here they are, the sun setting and gone 6pm, prime midge-munching time. They gobble at our faces and necks and Graham’s main course of a bald heid. Small and annoying, their bite is no more than an itch, but they like to hunt in clouds of thousands. On set, they find their way under your wig, anywhere warm and slightly moist, they feast on your scalp and it’s so hard not to itch or scream during your close-up . . . darling. Sometimes as soon as a take is called ‘Cut’, you’ll find me or a co-star jumping up and down, wailing and tearing at our heads. Then the poor make-up team has to come and fix the damage. For some, like Graham, the damage is irreparable. They took all of his hair!

  We scramble into the camper, bang the doors shut and that’s when it dawns on me: I have to tell Graham he’s sleeping in the tent tonight, under the stars and swarms of midges. He’s looking ‘wabbit’ (tired) so I’ll take him out for dinner first; I’m not a cold-hearted bastard . . .

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sleep No More!

  GRAHAM as Macbeth:

  Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!

  McHeughan does murder sleep’ – the innocent sleep,

  Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,

  The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

  Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

  Macbeth: Act Two, Scene Two

  SAM

  Less Bear Grylls, more Teddy McTavish, Graham crawls slowly out of his tent into the morning light of Glen Etive. Damp with dew, he is broken and alone.

  Until I turn up. Honking the un-macho horn on the wagon of despair.

  ‘Morning Graham!’ I yell, parking the beast next to the rest of the gathering crew. It’s time to pack up and get going because we have a long, action-packed day ahead.

  Graham: You absolute bastard.

  Sam: I’ve brought you breakfast . . .

  Graham: I hate you.

  Sam: Here’s a sack of goodies from the breakfast bar. And, your latte.

  He sips it, eyeballing me, not even a flicker of an involuntary smile. The crew takes down the tent and packs up Graham’s pet rock. Everyone thinks I’m a bastard because I didn’t sleep out here too; however, I did suggest we both sleep in the camper van, but Graham insisted he wouldn’t fit. I mean he’s tall, but he’s not Gandalf. I had every intention of sleeping under the stars but stayed up talking nonsense to Lacroix (yes, he stayed yet another night) and, well, it’s a bit hazy after that.

  McTavish opens the breakfast bag hungrily like he’s been in the wilderness for forty days, not seven hours. ‘It was bloody awful in that tent. Never again.’ He tucks into croissants and preserves. ‘What else have you got up your sleeve? I’m serious; tell me.’ He wipes away some flakes from his well-kept whiskers.

  Sam: Nothing.

  Graham: Tell me.

  Sam: A spot of kayaking.

  Graham: No.

  Sam: It’s totally safe.

  Graham: I’ve already told you – a two-man canoe with you in it, forget it. Next . . .

  Sam: Motorbike and sidecar.

  Graham: Who’s driving?

  Sam: Me.

  Graham: Over my dead body. (Beat.) Anything else?

  Sam: No.

  Graham: Sam? What about today?

  Sam: There’s a bike ride.

  Graham: Okay, a bike ride but on what kind of bike?

  Sam: A normal one? (Beat.) It’s on the back of the camper – go see.

  Graham: And, no surprises?

  Sam: Absolutely none.

  He is hilarious when he’s grumpy. He stares at me with all the menace he can muster, like a bearded Lady Macbeth . . . which is appropriate because that’s who we are off to meet this morning. Well, almost . . . we have an appointment with Angelika, the Dowager Countess Cawdor, who is Thaness of Cawdor, too. I kid you not.

  FIRST WITCH

  All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

  SECOND WITCH

  All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

  THIRD WITCH

  All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!

  ‘I think it wise not to stay for dinner,’ I say, climbing into the driver’s seat of the camper.

  Graham nods. ‘Especially if she tells us we can stay in the Duncan Suite.’

  GRAHAM

  We are back in our usual seats in the Fiat Turd, or whatever it’s called, and are on our way to Cawdor Castle, which I would be excited about if I could actually see through my eyes and didn’t feel like a giant bat had shat in my head.

  Given Sam’s mistreatment of me last night, I shall start the day with a little revenge of my own revealing Sam’s middle name. Drum roll . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . his middle name is . . . Roland. Yes, like the rat. Mine is James, like the ‘true king’. You see, I was destined to play a Jacobite. Not sure what Roland is going to lead to . . . although, I have an image of Sam behind an 80s ‘Roland’ keyboard. The Biopic of Duran Duran maybe? Or George Michael. I see great things in his future. Roland is not the worst name – Agrippa, Gawain and Barry are far uglier, but it does sound so much better in Italian – Orlando. I mean everything sounds better in Italian, doesn’t it? [Sam here! Roland is French, Graham. I’m apparently 27% French. Roland was a legendary military hero who served under Charlemagne c.778 AD. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it, History Man.] [Graham: I fart in your general direction.]

  In spite of my sleep deprivation there is much jolly banter and laughter with my captor. I think I am beginning to develop Stockholm Syndrome. You know the one, where hostages start to actually enjoy being in the company of terrorists. And, as we drive along yet another narrow road I even begin to forget that Sam’s clear intention is to make me as nervous as possible. Amid the grinding of gears, boat-like steering, and the GPS conspiracy to lose us as often as possible, I am actually smiling. Beaming like a lobotomised psychiatric patient.

  We talk about the significance of the ‘Scottish Play’ in our acting lives. When I was sixteen I wrote two comic adaptations, one of Macbeth and the other of Antony and Cleopatra, which I directed, and acted out at school. I was obsessed with Monty Python at the time and somehow I got a copy of the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Incidentally, Doune Castle, where the Holy Grail was filmed, became Castle Leoch, seat of the MacKenzie clan in Outlander. Little did I realise back then that I would be war chief of the very castle in which the Python team enacted legendary sketches such as the Black Knight (‘Tis but a scratch’) and the Insulting Frenchman:

  I fart in your general direction.

  Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

  It was Python’s writing that inspired me and I started writing sketches with my best friend, Neil Graham, a kid from my school who had no television (unheard of!), and a passion for photography. We would sit and write stuff and then perform it for the school, but only because we didn’t trust anyone else to perform it. These performances led the school drama teacher, Des Margetson, to continually ask me to be in the school play – something I consistently refused to do.

  Then, when I was seventeen, he came to me explaining that one of the actors in his production of Sheridan’s The Rivals had suddenly become ill and would I take over? Bear in mind there were three days before the performance. To this day I have no idea why I said yes. I suspect there was a girl I felt I could impress, or one in the cast that I fancied. But I learnt the lines and went on stage at France Hill Comprehensive School in Surrey as Bob Acres, the simple country bumpkin. People laughed.And then, at the end . . . they applauded. I remember thinking, ‘Mmm, this is good,’ and the funny part was, I found it easy. I had no nerves (well, hardly any), and I could retain all the lines. It was like I’d stepped into something that fitted me. I was quite shy at school, very studious. What would be called a ‘nerd’ nowadays, and suddenly I was ‘cool’, and funny, and the centre of attention. [Sam: What happened, ma
te?]

  SAM

  Macbeth was the first play I was ever in. I was a soldier in the Tom McGovern production at the Lyceum in Edinburgh 1999. One night I remember being a bit hung-over, running across the stage in the pitch dark with a group of chain mail-clad warriors, over stepping stones, between two vast rotating walls (operated by a stage manager secreted inside the fake stone). I bumped into one of the walls and ricocheted off Eric Barlow (the actor playing MacDuff, but in this scene doubling as a Scottish warrior escaping the battlefield.) The lights came up and I was on stage – a lost soldier in the wrong scene.

  Eventually I got promoted to ‘Spear Carrier Number 2’ in the main stage version, which at the time was like winning the theatrical lottery because I was in awe of Tom McGovern and had followed his career. He was athletic and his command of the language muscular, his delivery distinct.

  Months earlier, during the Edinburgh Festival, I had wangled myself a job as a stage-hand at the Traverse where Tom was in Shining Souls. [Graham: Stalker?] I was helping to lay deck to the temporary stage (they had three spaces that were all used and rotated almost hourly for numerous productions during the festival). Distracted by the cast and trying to eavesdrop on their conversation, I let go of some decking, which dropped heavily on the stage manager’s hand, causing a large flesh wound needing several stitches. He and I both realised in that painful moment that stage management wasn’t for me and, as I quickly exited stage left, I found myself outside Tom’s dressing room (a dressing room that would soon become familiar about three years later as it would become mine for Outlying Islands by David Greig, which won an Edinburgh Fringe First award and earned me a Laurence Olivier Award nomination). Tom was lounging in a chair, his feet up on the dressing table, reading a script (or maybe picking his nose). Addressing him in the mirror (like a ghostly reflection foreshadowing what was to come) I told him I was a big fan and hoped to be an actor one day. He was gracious and kind, encouraging me to get as much experience as possible, which drove me to join the Lyceum Youth theatre months later and to find myself on stage with him as Spear Carrier Number 2.