After three weeks as McBeath's assistant, this was his first patrol into Strathavon, and his apprehension was tangible. He’d now seen precisely what McBeath was capable of, and the man's casual cruelty had sickened him. The thought of his aunt wed to such a man had begun to haunt him, and he now knew he'd do almost anything to prevent it.
At Balintoul, Jamie had found the creature wallowing in a mire of his own creation, still bedded at gone ten of the morning and so drunk raw spirit seemed to ooze from his pores. He’d stunk that badly, Jamie had been able to smell him from the foot of the stairs – a rank cocktail of unwashed flesh, congealed vomit that lay in sticky streaks on the bed, and an indefinable whiff of decay the man carried with him always, originating from his breath, Jamie thought. An indication, if any was needed, that the man was rotten to the core.
At his assertion that he was a fellow Excise Officer, a nervous maid had shown him upstairs and then promptly fled. McBeath lay prone on the bed muttering incoherently. Jamie cleared his throat, introduced himself in a loud but respectful tone, and waited.
Cursing, the exciseman jerked his head and shoulders off the bed, then lurched into an upright position, his eyebrows raised but eyelids still gummed shut, then reeled back down again, this time on his back. He proceeded to snore; an objectionable sound Jamie likened to pigs being driven to market, his breath so rank with stale whisky ’twas likely he could ignite touchpaper at a hundred paces. In the end, Jamie was forced to straddle the creature, his gorge rising, while he shouted over and over that he’d been sent by the Board of Excise in the fight against smugglers.
The exciseman surfaced enough to prise one eyelid open, and focused with a look of open disbelief on the giant Highlander atop him. Breathing hard, Jamie compelled himself to adopt a deferential manner with the drunkard, a demeanour he hoped would flatter the exciseman into accepting him quicker and lull him out of any inherent suspicion. He climbed off the bed and straightened his plaid, his bonnet clutched respectfully in his hand. His eyes roamed the bare room. It was likely the room where the gauger’s wife had died and the devil had taken pleasure in describing to Rowena exactly how he'd killed her man. He swallowed hard but with masterly control pushed the thought away and kept the disgust from showing on his face.
McBeath seemed to sober surprisingly quickly and levered himself upright, squinting at Jamie and absently brushing at the congealed matter plastered to his sark. Jamie wondered fleetingly if it was perhaps the man's own guilt and torment that prostrated him so, rather than plain drink. But no, that would indicate a trace of remorse he sensed the exciseman did not possess.
Without comment, McBeath read through the accompanying letter from the Board of Excise, then lowered the sheet, his hand shaking slightly, and regarded Jamie through bloodshot eyes. His squint was disconcerting, but Jamie sensed the exciseman's vision was as keen as any, and he was searching for signs of trickery and guile in his face. He gazed back openly, forcing a blankness to his eyes, a vacuousness to his expression. If the devil felt more secure with a fawning empty-headed fool, then that's just what he'd give him.
‘James Lang.’ McBeath rolled the name around his mouth as if tasting some potentially poisoned morsel. ‘And where de ye belong, James Lang?’
‘Inverness, sir.’ Jamie held his breath. He’d given his mother's name to the Board in Elgin, knowing full well his own name would likely spark some recognition with McBeath; a memory of his father and that might then lead him on to Rowena.
‘Which part?’
‘I bid above the forge on Market Street, sir. Next Urquhart's coaches and stables.’ The truth always sat easier on the tongue, but McBeath showed no suspicion of the name, or, for that matter, his face, Jamie was relieved to see.
The exciseman grunted that he knew of the place. ‘And what brought ye here? And to the notice o’ the Board in Elgin? For you've surely caught their notice, I can see.’
‘Nothing in particular,’ Jamie replied vaguely. ‘After my folks died I wandered fer a time, wound up in Elgin. I heard say smugglers brought the morbid throat to Inverness. Thought if I could mebbe get work putting an end to the filthy business, so much the better.’
‘I see.’ McBeath belched softly. ‘And you were a clerk in Elgin? What made you want to give up such soft employment in favour o’ the real work?’
Jamie grimaced, then shrugged foolishly. ‘I dinna ken. Only ‘twas real dull work. I like it well being ootdoors doing something mair exciting.’
McBeath laughed uproariously at that, a deep belly-busting laugh that brought water to his eyes, and Jamie grinned back, waiting to see if this was the gauger's way of accepting him or whether the man was still unconvinced.
‘A half-wit they've sent me! And me thinking ye educated!’ McBeath wheezed some more and then sobered, his eyes narrowing. ‘You can plainly read, write, and add-up though. Now tell me, how did ye manage to learn that while ye wandered?’
Jamie nodded admiringly. ‘They telt me in Elgin ye were a shrewd man, but no, I was taught as a lad ye see, by a priest in Inverness.’
‘Ye’re a papist, then?’ McBeath made no attempt to hide his abhorrence.
‘Nae a practising one, no,’ Jamie added hastily. Being an outlawed faith, any connection to popery would immediately bar him from His Majesty’s employment, not to mention risk his arrest. ‘But I’d the misfortune to be brought up that way.’
‘Well see here, there'll be no foul praying to saints and the like while you're working for me, have ye got that?’
‘Aye, sir. Whatever ye say, Mister McBeath.’
‘Come back the morn then.’ McBeath slumped back on the bed. ‘And make sure you're dressed decent next time – none o' that heiland garb, d'ye hear?’
‘Till the morn then, sir.’ Jamie gave a servile bow and turned to leave.
‘Lang, ye say?’ The exciseman didn't bother to lift his head, but there was an unmistakeable sharpening of his interest. ‘That's a Strathavon name, is it no?’
Jamie didn't turn back, afraid his apprehension would show upon his face. ‘I wouldna like to say, sir. My folk a’ came from the Black Isle way.’
‘Damn good name for ye, though. Ye must be the tallest man I've seen in many a long year.’
The next day, Jamie returned wearing the hateful clothes he’d bought in Elgin. Each Riding Officer was entitled to a small allowance to cover the cost of the exciseman's garb: respectable black clothing in the Lowland or English style, along with a pistol, a sword, and an axe. He felt constrained by the close-fitting breeches and tailed black coat, but it was the black lum hat that sat most uneasily with him, its stark Calvinism somehow deeply offensive.
McBeath had cleaned himself up and was again reading through the letter Jamie had brought with him. He looked up blackly at Jamie, but it seemed without really seeing him. Jamie wondered again what exactly was in the letter, he'd thought about reading it himself before handing it over but would have been unable to re-seal it. He hoped it didn’t describe him in too glowing terms. He didn't want McBeath to feel threatened by him in any way, or resentful. In fact, he’d no wish for McBeath to think about him at all. He wished to blend with the surroundings in such a blandly benign way McBeath would barely notice him. Nae so easy when he stood six-foot-three in his bare feet, but he’d need to accomplish it somehow.
Over the next three weeks, McBeath was more active than he’d been in years, or at least he was according to his two regular henchmen: Charles Stuart, known as Ghillie for the other work he did, and Dougal Riach. These were the two hirelings Jamie knew had been present at Duncan's killing and had been well paid to say the right things at the hearing. He cultivated a relationship of sorts with these two men, they spoke the same tongue and secretly held the same faith, but their ruthlessness toward Duncan meant he kept them under constant observation.
For all he was reputedly more active, Jamie soon discovered McBeath's primary business was carried out not in the glens, but at the Balintoul Inn or at his
home. Here he’d accept bribes he called ‘passages’ in return for the smugglers' safety while they distilled and for free conduct through his district. At first, McBeath was clearly uncomfortable with Jamie's presence at these transactions, but after a few drams, he’d relax his guard and ostensibly forget Jamie was there. By the end of the first week, when Jamie had made no comment, either way, he appeared to accept his presence as harmless.
But it was in Glenlivet, a neighbouring glen, that McBeath's true character was exposed. It seemed there had been no regular patrols into Glenlivet since the day of Isobel's death, and the glen folk had let their watch slip. Early one misty morning as Jamie rode into the head of the glen with McBeath, they observed the pungent smoke from many peat fires, the tell-tale wisps curling into the air from dozens of rustic bothies lining the banks of the Livet.
‘Well, well.’ McBeath grinned at Jamie with obvious relish. ‘At last Lang, here's yer chance at some real work. Let's at them!’ With a roar, he charged his horse down toward the nearest bothy.
A small boy was filling a pail at the river and stared up at them in horror.
‘The gaugers!’ he shrieked, dropping the pail. McBeath scooped him up, threw him over the saddle, then holding the boy by the ankles dangled him over the side of his horse so that the boy's head and shoulders were rattled and bounced along the rough ground of heather with its hidden rocks. The boy's head and torso jerked and twitched in a silent jig, he was too terrified to make a sound, and then with a sickening thud went still. McBeath threw the legs down on top of the still little bundle and charged on.
As Jamie came upon the small folded form, he saw blood trickling from the boy's ear, although his lips were moving a fraction. Shocked, he drew his mount up, stamping and whinnying, but screams from the nearest bothy drove him on again. When he reached it, McBeath was savagely roping together the two women who’d been operating the still, one screaming frantically in Gaelic. She was the boy's mother, he realised.
‘He still lives,’ he told her in Gaelic, but she cursed and spat at him.
‘You're wasting yer breath,’ grunted McBeath, and then he was racing on to the next bothy. ‘Come on, man! We'll come back for this.’ He nodded at the kegs and still equipment littering the ground. ‘But the others'll be away into the hills if we dinnae move fast.’
In a little over an hour they destroyed eight bothies, smashing the rough-timbered huts, the casks and barrels with their axes and confiscated over a hundred gallons of whisky. Yet McBeath was less than pleased; most of the smugglers had vanished into the mist, taking their precious copper cooling worms with them, and in the end, they had only the two women and a half-blind old man in their charge.
A number of the little bothies remained untouched, the folk going about their illicit business unmolested, though white-faced and shaken. These had paid their passage, Jamie surmised. The child was with a group of these folk, and a man was trying to force water between the slack little lips. The lad was alive, but ’twas questionable whether he’d ever be the same again.
‘You dinnae seem to have much stomach fer the work,’ McBeath observed. ‘For someone who wanted to put an end to the filthy business.’
‘No, no, I like it fine.’ He felt sickened by what he'd had to do, soiled by the brutality of it, the unnecessary cruelty, and could have gladly shot McBeath there and then.
They confiscated as many ponies as they could find to carry the whisky away, and with them tied together in a line made a sorry trail wending its way back to Balintoul. The two women watched Jamie through grief-filled eyes. He could feel their gaze upon him but hadn’t the courage to meet it levelly, such was his utter shame. On top of their agony at leaving the battered boy, McBeath had lashed the rope around their breasts, the bindings cutting mercilessly into tender flesh, and he instinctively knew the gauger had gained some depraved pleasure from that. Their despair was palpable, he could feel it in the air and had to press his mount to the front of the line to escape the suffering in their eyes.
‘Lord,’ he muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Give me the strength to endure this.’
At Balintoul, McBeath stopped at the Inn, leaving Jamie to carry on to Elgin with the trail of ponies. But he’d barely reached the kirk before the gauger caught him up again riding a fresh mount.
‘I'll take this load on to Elgin,’ McBeath announced. It mightnae look so well for him with old Farquarson, the Collector in Elgin, if this bright-eyed young upstart brought in such a sizeable seizure. Farquharson had been scathing about his recent laxness, had shown no compassion regarding his bereavement, and had even ludicrously suggested in his letter that Lang might be the answer to the general lawlessness in the Balintoul area. The Collector was known for his taste in young men, and McBeath supposed this particular young man, with his hard young body and clean-cut features would be much to his liking. The letter was worrying enough without letting Lang take the glory for this little tally as well – the man was less than useless anyway. But the penny had now dropped, and McBeath thought he knew exactly why Farquharson had been so enthusiastic about Lang.
‘Whatever ye say.’ Jamie nodded affably. ‘D'ye want me to come wi' ye?’
McBeath thought for a moment. It might be sore work for one man, but no, witless though he was, Lang was definitely no the man to take.
‘Ye'll find Dougal and Ghillie at the Balintoul Inn,’ he muttered. ‘Tell them to catch me up, they'll be well paid.’
Jamie accepted McBeath's change of mind gratefully. He'd no heart for carting those three country folk off to the gaol; they'd done nothing that circumstances hadn’t forced upon them and nothing that he himself hadn’t done.
McBeath returned several days later and made no mention of what became of the three Glenlivet folk. Jamie supposed their fate held no interest for him. But he seemed better pleased with himself and drank the best part of four quaichs of whisky before announcing they’d raid Strathavon the next morning.
Jamie covered his sudden alarm with a swift movement toward his own quaich and downed a large mouthful of raw whisky. ‘Aye,’ he croaked. ‘Whatever ye say.’ The blood drained from his face, but McBeath appeared to notice nothing in his beatific whisky-induced state.
To Jamie’s profound relief, the next morning’s raid on Strathavon was much less eventful, word having spread of McBeath's renewed activity, and they saw nothing more suspicious than two men travelling with a covered cart near Clachfuar Croft. These turned out to be Chisholms with a load of limestone for Gordon Castle.
McBeath was intensely irritated by what he saw as the wily Highlanders' efforts at deceiving him. ‘There's barely a handful in the whole o’ Strathavon pay their passage,’ he grumbled. ‘Yet I ken fine they're all at it.’
Jamie grinned his agreement at this and then attempted to dispel McBeath's displeasure with some inane chatter.
‘Can ye no hold yer tongue, man?’ the gauger growled, and a thick silence had fallen between them.
Now they were concealed among the hawthorn and dog cherry on the ridge of Carn Daimph, still mounted and watching the glen carefully. Jamie murmured softly to his nervous mount and stroked her neck. ’Twas partly his own apprehension causing the animal's jitteriness, not just McBeath's proximity, but watching from that ridge, so close to the MacRae bothy and with nothing to do to dissipate his growing tension other than wait, he could feel his heart rate rising inexorably and his stomach churning.
He glanced sidelong at McBeath. The devil showed no sign of the vast quantity of whisky he’d drunk the night before but surveyed the southern end of the glen, hawk-like, from the back of his horse. Yet Jamie knew better. For all they had an excellent view of great stretches of the glen, ’twas the crofthouse at Tomachcraggen that lay directly in their sight, even be it some way off, and he sensed that's where McBeath's real interest was directed.
He thought of Rowena, likely inside the cot-house and going about her daily tasks. What would she be doing at this moment? Preparing healing
potions? Seeping leaves fer poultices? ’Twould likely be something of that nature, something fer the benefit of others, while they, like wolves in the woods, skulked and prowled. As always, his thoughts crept back to Morven. He couldn’t bring himself to wonder if she was at the bothy at this very moment, curled like a kitten by the firestone as she'd been that day he'd kissed her, the thought of her in such close danger was simply too much to bear.
McBeath climbed down heavily from his horse, fumbled with the fastenings of his breeches and then urinated noisily against a tree. Jamie looked away. It was only with the aid of whisky that he could hope to get inside the creature’s mind, learn of a way to ensnare the man; ’twas whisky that loosened the creature's tongue and he resolved to begin some delicate whisky-laden probing later that night.
McBeath clambered back into the saddle and then breathed in sharply up his nose. Jamie turned in time to see the exciseman's face twitch with sudden interest and followed the direction of his gaze. At what he saw his heart near skipped a beat. A small figure was climbing over the lip of the Lochy Gorge. It stopped to sling something over its shoulder and then darted off through the trees. As the figure emerged again, much closer to them now, he knew without a shadow of a doubt it was wee Donald and the boy could only have been at the bothy for one reason.
McBeath let out a little gasp of excitement. ‘Is that no one o’ the MacRae litter?’
‘The MacRae litter?’
‘Aye, the MacRaes of Delnabreck. The faither's a cunning auld fox. It's many a time I've caught him smuggling out his whisky, but I've never yet found his bothy.’
‘I wouldna ken,’ Jamie croaked.
The gauger was breathing faster now, quivering with excitement. ‘I want to take a closer look – see what the lad was doing down there. Stay here, Lang.’
‘But, should I nae be coming wi' ye?’
‘There's no need for that. ’Tis likely nothing.’
The Blood And The Barley Page 21