His Bloody Project

by Graeme Macrae Burnet

  ‘It is your wickedness that has brought us to this,’ he said quietly.

  Jetta bowed her head and clasped her hands in her lap, twisting a plait of coloured threads between her fingers.

  ‘That is not so,’ she replied.

  I did not think it wise to contradict my father when he was in such a humour, but Jetta appeared quite steadfast.

  Father then got to his feet and with surprising speed, gripped Jetta roughly by the hair at the back of her head. He pulled her face close to his own.

  ‘You think by swaddling yourself like an old woman you can conceal your condition from me? I am not blind.’

  Jetta shook her head as vigorously as his grip would allow.

  ‘You are a whore.’

  He then brought my sister’s head down towards the table and struck it repeatedly against the surface. Jetta did not cry out. I grabbed his wrist and tried to loosen his grasp, but his fingers were tightly entwined in her hair. As I struggled with him, Jetta was buffeted between us like a fishing vessel on the swell.

  ‘I want to know who is responsible,’ he hissed.

  Jetta kept her lips firmly closed. Her eyes streamed with tears. I implored him to let her go. Despite my efforts he then thrust Jetta’s head against the table with such force that his feet left the ground.

  ‘Who is responsible?’ he snarled, gobbets of spit flying from his mouth. Blood seeped into the surface of the table. Jetta indicated by a movement of her head that she would not answer. I feared for her life and blurted out, ‘It is Lachlan Broad’s doing.’

  My father stared at me wildly, his little eyes darting to and fro, and I took advantage of the moment to throw myself across the table at him. I wrenched his grip from Jetta’s head, tearing out a great clump of her hair. The three of us fell together to the floor. I wrestled myself on top of him. He struggled half-heartedly for some moments, and as I lay with my arms around him, I realised he was no more than a skinful of bones. There was no strength in him and what fight he had was soon spent. Jetta ran from the house. The twins howled like dogs. Father lay on his back while I righted the table, which had been overturned in the scuffle. I picked up various items which had been strewn on the floor and set them in their proper places. Father struggled to his feet and wearily brushed the stoor from his clothing. Then he sat down in his chair and sank his head in his hands. I went out to look for Jetta.

  I found her in the barn. She was sitting on the milking stool I had lately used to reach the rafter where I had built my fledgling’s nest. The hair on the left side of her head was matted with blood, her left eye bloodied and swollen. She was twisting a length of rope on her lap. She looked up when I entered, her engorged eye twitching.

  ‘Hello, Roddy,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. I could think of nothing else to say, so I went and stood by her. She put her hand to her scalp and touched it gently with the tips of her fingers. Then she examined the blood on her hand, as if it was not her own. I knelt on the floor beside her. She turned her head towards me, the movement causing her to wince.

  ‘Our lot in this life is not a happy one, is it, Roddy?’ she said.

  ‘It is not.’

  ‘I fear that Father will not have me back under his roof.’

  ‘We shall none of us be under this roof for long,’ I said.

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘Shall you go to Toscaig?’ I asked.

  ‘I fear that in my current condition I would not be welcome there,’ she said.

  ‘Then what?’

  She formed her lips into a sad smile and shook her head to indicate that she had no answer to this question. I saw for the first time that her nose was entirely flattened against her face. It pained me to see her so ruined.

  ‘It is all over for me,’ she said. ‘My concern is for you. You should leave this place. You must see that there is nothing here for you.’

  I said nothing of my hapless excursion to the Pass, as the thought of my flight shamed me.

  ‘What about Father?’ I said.

  ‘Our father is never more happy than when he is suffering,’ she said. ‘You must not tether yourself to his mast.’

  ‘And the twins?’

  A large tear rolled down the uninjured side of Jetta’s face. ‘They will be taken care of,’ she said.

  ‘It is Lachlan Broad that should be taken care of,’ I said.

  ‘This is not Lachlan Broad’s doing,’ said Jetta, moving her hand to her broken face.

  ‘It is all Lachlan Broad’s doing,’ I replied. ‘I should like to be revenged on him.’ These were, for the time being, empty words, spoken in bravado. I had not thought, until that moment, of retribution and had no notion of how such a thing might be accomplished.

  Jetta shook her head vigorously.

  ‘You must not say such things, Roddy. If you understood more about the world, you would see that Lachlan Broad is not responsible. It is providence that has brought us to this point. It is no more Lachlan Broad’s doing than yours or mine or Father’s.’

  ‘What if I had not killed the sheep, or if mother had not died or if the Two Iains had not sunk?’ I objected.

  ‘But all these things did occur.’

  ‘If Lachlan Broad did not exist ...’ I began, with no idea of where that thought would take me.

  ‘But he does exist, and he no more chose to be brought into this world than you or I.’

  ‘Then neither will he choose the method of his leaving,’ I said.

  Jetta let forth a long sigh. ‘Nothing you can do will alter anything, Roddy. In any case, you need not concern yourself with Lachlan Broad.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘He is not long for this world.’

  I drew my head away from her, so as to properly see her face. She gestured with her fingers for me to come closer.

  ‘I have twice seen the winding sheet about him.’

  I struggled for some moments to grasp the implications of my sister’s statement, and when I did so I was gripped by a feeling of elation, thinking that the departure of Lachlan Broad from this world would release us from our troubles. I expressed this thought to Jetta.

  She chided me for taking pleasure in an event which would make a widow of his wife and orphans of his children. I retorted that I would rather be an orphan than be raised the offspring of Lachlan Broad.

  ‘Such sentiments ill become you,’ said Jetta. ‘Nothing that happens to Lachlan Broad can undo my condition. Nor can it revoke the factor’s letter.’

  I stood up, refusing to believe her, and paced around the barn in a state of agitation. I demanded more details about her vision and the imminence of Lachlan Broad’s demise, but she refused to elaborate. The constable’s fate was of no relevance to our situation.

  Jetta suddenly looked terribly weary. She closed her eyes and let her head drop forward. I knelt down in front of her and clasped the back of her head in my hand. I did not have access to the contents of her mind, but I had a strong presentiment of what she meant to do and could see no alternative for her. She squeezed my hand in hers. Then she opened her eyes and told me to leave her. Tears ran down my cheeks. I bid her goodnight and left her there on the milking stool. I pulled the door fast behind me, tethering the rope on the rotting jamb. And in this way I took my leave of her.

  Having no desire to return to the house, I made my way down through the croft towards the shore. The evening was calm and the sky above the islands had taken on the rosy hue of late evening. At this time of year in our part of the world the hours of darkness are short, so much so that I have heard that visitors are often disturbed in their sleep. I watched a heron for some minutes stand stock-still on the shore, before silently taking to the air with the lack of grace peculiar to that species. It flew low across the bay and settled on the point at Aird-Dubh. I set to thinking about what Jetta had told me. She
was not in the habit of sharing her visions with me, but I had often seen a shadow cross her face and knew that in these moments she was experiencing some silent commune with the Other World. To some degree, Jetta had never fully dwelt in Culduie, but flitted between the two worlds. If she was now to depart, it would be a smaller death than for those of us who inhabit only the physical world.

  It was as I sat by the shore watching the slow movement of the tide, that I first thought to kill Lachlan Broad. I dismissed the notion, or attempted to do so, but it was dogged and the more I tried to set my mind to other things the more it took hold of me. The knowledge that Lachlan Broad was soon to die loosened the ordinary provisos. If providence had decreed that he was not long for this world, of what importance was the method of his leaving? That he might die by my hand seemed so just as to be irresistible. The idea excited me. I would become the redeemer that Reverend Galbraith had spoken of at my mother’s funeral. And this in the knowledge that while I might be the instrument of Lachlan Broad’s demise, I would only be hastening what was, in any case, due.

  Jetta’s vision of the winding sheet spoke nothing about the manner of Lachlan Broad’s death, or if it had she had not told me of it. One would struggle to think of an individual in our parish who was in such rude health and less likely to be stricken by some sudden ailment. Nor was it easy to imagine how he might meet with some fatal misfortune. Was it, thus, possible that Lachlan Broad was not merely destined to meet his end, but that this end lay in my hands? The thought weighed heavily on me and by the time I roused myself the sun had sunk below the horizon and what passed for darkness at that time of year embraced me.

  When I returned to the house, Father had taken himself to bed. The twins were sleeping soundly on their bunk and I envied their tranquillity. I slept only fitfully that night, waking frequently, and each time I did so the thoughts kindled by Jetta’s vision burned in my mind. I longed to douse them with sleep, but the gathering light of the morning prevented me from doing so.

  * * *

  I left the house before my father emerged from his chamber. On account of the events of the previous evening, I feared that he would not be in good humour, and after his treatment of my sister I had no wish to converse with him. I took two bannocks to the foot of the croft and ate them slowly. The rig was overgrown with weeds and, compared to those of our neighbours, was a shameful sight. The air was exceptionally still and wisps of cloud hung low over the water like strands of wool. I could see no other living soul and the only sounds were the calls of the birds and the distant noises of the livestock from the grazings.

  I had hoped that just as one emerges from a dream, the notion to murder Lachlan Broad might have melted away, but if anything it had thickened inside me. Nonetheless, at this point, it remained no more than an idle speculation upon which I had no intention of acting. If I contemplated killing Lachlan Broad, it was in the spirit of a mathematician approaching a problem in algebra. My schoolmaster, Mr Gillies, had once explained how in order to solve a problem a scientist must proceed, first, by advancing a hypothesis and, then, by testing it through observation or experiment. It was in this manner that I moved forward.

  Certainly, the killing of a large, powerful man like Lachlan Broad would be no simple matter. When I enumerated the various means by which one might do a man to death, each presented its own difficulties. One might, for example, kill a man with an axe blow to the head, but this would necessitate lying in wait in some concealed place in the hope that he might happen to pass by. One might stab a man with a blade, but I could not be confident of getting close enough to Lachlan Broad, or having sufficient strength to administer a wound severe enough to do more than merely injure him. A man could be killed by means of a firearm. This had the advantage that it could be carried out at distance, but even if I were able to acquire such a weapon – from the Big House, for example – I had no knowledge of how to load or discharge a gun. It might be possible to poison my victim, but this would entail consulting one of the old crones of the parish who had knowledge of such things, and then finding some way of administering the toxin. In contemplating these latter methods, I realised that they failed a test of which I had, until that point, been unaware. My objective was not merely to remove Lachlan Broad from this world, something which was, in any case, to occur without any intervention on my part. Rather, at the moment of his death, it was necessary that he was cognisant of the fact that it was I, Roderick Macrae, who was ending his life, and that I was doing so in just payment for the tribulations he had caused my family.

  My father emerged from the house. I do not know how long I had been lost in my thoughts. I found a croman at my feet and began to turn over the weeds growing in the furrows. My father made his way down the rig to where I was working and asked what I was doing. His face was haggard and grey, and I fancied his gait more bent than usual. I replied that we still had a crop to lift, and if we did not properly tend the croft, there would not be enough food to see even the twins through the winter. Father muttered something to the effect that if God wished to provide for us, He would do so, but he said it without conviction and left me to my labour without further comment. I am quite certain we were both aware that there would not be any lifting of crops that year.

  Our neighbours were by this time emerging from their homes and setting about the daily round. The morning must have appeared entirely commonplace and, were it not for what was soon to occur, they would likely have had difficulty recalling it or distinguishing it from any other morning. Indeed in every aspect, aside from the dark thoughts that had taken up residence in my mind, the day was entirely unremarkable. But it struck me, as I gazed around our scattering of houses, that the removal of Lachlan Broad would lift a burden which had long weighed heavily on our township.

  I got up from my knees and wandered back towards the house. My previous thoughts about the means of killing Lachlan Broad had been no more than procrastination. It mattered not what was in my mind or what I planned to do. If fate dictated that Lachlan Broad was to die by my hand, then it would be so. The success or otherwise of my enterprise was outwith my control. In this spirit, I determined that if I were to kill Lachlan Broad, I must first proceed to his house. It would, furthermore, be necessary to go armed with some weapon with which I might accomplish the task. What better than the croman which providence had just then placed in my hand? As I reached the top of the croft, I came upon a flaughter leaning against the gable and this I also took up. I then set off along the village. I told myself that I was not on my way to murder Lachlan Broad, but merely to discover what would happen if I paid a visit to his house thus armed.

  I proceeded along the track at a normal pace. Carmina Smoke emerged from her house and greeted me. As I did not wish to raise her suspicions, I paused and returned her greeting. She saw the flaughter in my hand and asked me if it was not a little late in the year to be breaking ground. I told her without thinking that I was going to clear some land behind Lachlan Broad’s house where a dyke was to be built. The ease with which this lie came to my lips led me to believe that my project was destined for success. Carmina Smoke said that she had heard nothing about a new dyke, but she did not question me further. I bid her good morning and continued along the village. I sensed that she was watching me, but I did not look round, for fear of appearing furtive. I spoke to no one else as I made my way past the remaining houses. I felt something of the old anxiety I always experienced when encroaching on Mackenzie territory. The incident with the kite flitted through my mind and my heart began to beat more rapidly. I paused outside the Broads’ house and leant on the handle of my flaughter, as though taking stock of the work ahead of me, which in a sense I was. A crow settled on the gable of the house. Little Donnie Broad was playing in the dirt some yards from the threshold. He squinted up at me and I greeted him in a normal manner. He then returned to whatever harmless game he was playing. I looked back along the township. Carmina Smoke had disappeared. A
number of villagers were bent over their crops, all oblivious to the events which were about to occur. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the Broads’ chimney. I stepped past Donnie Broad into the doorway.

  Inside, the house was dim and it took some moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The sun cast a rectangle of light on the earthen floor and my legs were silhouetted within it. Flora was at the table scrubbing potatoes and placing them in a pot of water. When I stepped inside the house she looked up from her work. She seemed startled to see me and asked what I was doing there. There was a light sweat on her brow and she raised her right hand to push away a strand of hair which had fallen over her face. I could think of no errand that would have brought me there, nor of any reason to lie, so I replied that I had come to kill her father. She put down the potato she had been scrubbing and said that that was not a very funny thing to say. I could, I suppose, have pretended it was a prank, but I did not do so, and from that moment my course was set. Instead I asked where her father was. Flora’s eyes widened and she let out several short breaths. I took a few steps into the chamber. She moved to the far end of the table that now stood between us. She told me I should leave before her father returned or I would get myself into terrible trouble. I replied that I was already in terrible trouble, all of it brought on by her father. Flora said that I was frightening her. I said I was sorry, but that even if I wished things to be otherwise, they could not be so.

  Then quite suddenly Flora darted to her left and ran towards the door. As she passed the end of the table, I swung my flaughter and caught her around the knees with it. She crumpled to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. The blow must have struck her dumb for she did not cry out or make any noise other than a soft sobbing. I laid down my tools and bent down next to her. I lifted up her skirts and saw that her knee was collapsed at a quite unnatural angle. Flora’s eyes darted wildly around, like an animal in a snare. I stroked her hair for a moment to calm her, then, as I did not wish her to suffer, I took up my flaughter and planted my feet on either side of her hips. I raised the tool above my head and, remembering the sheep at the peat bog, took careful aim. Flora made no attempt to move and I brought the back of the blade firmly down on her skull. The weight carried the tool clean through the bone as if it was no thicker than an eggshell. Flora’s limbs twitched for some moments before she came to rest and I was glad not to be obliged to administer any further blows.