The Secret of the Glen Read online

They had been walking down towards the loch as they talked and now she turned round to look at The Castle behind her.

  She gave a little cry of delight.

  “But it’s so lovely!” she exclaimed. “It’s like a Fairy Castle. I had no idea it could be so beautiful!”

  It was in fact very romantic. Built of grey stone, the walls rose high to be surmounted near the top with corbelled turrets.

  Like the dancers she had seen last night, Leona thought, it had a lightness about it that one would not have expected in such a large building.

  “I can understand why it means so much to you,” she said to Lord Strathcairn.

  “As I said last night,” he replied, “it is my home and this is where I must live if I am to look after my people and protect my Clan.”

  Leona was just about to say how glad she was that he felt like that when he changed the subject.

  “I think, Miss Grenville,” he said, “that, as His Grace will be expecting you and the carriage is at the door, you should start your journey.”

  “Yes – of course,” Leona agreed.

  Again she felt flustered because she thought that she herself should have suggested leaving and not have waited for her host to point out to her her duty.

  At the same time she had a reluctance to go from the sunshine of the garden.

  Deliberately she turned to look again at the loch.

  “I hope now that I am in Scotland, I shall have a chance to see someone catch a salmon,” she said. “My father, who loved fishing, often told me how exciting it is!”

  “One is often disappointed,” Lord Strathcairn replied “just as in life one is disappointed in many things.”

  He seemed to Leona to be already moving towards The Castle and, because she could think of no more ways in which to delay her departure, she followed him somewhat forlornly.

  She looked up at the distant moor.

  “How do you know when you reach your boundary?” she asked. “Is there anything to indicate it?”

  “I think my gillies know every inch of the ground so well that they can tell me which piece of heather is in Ardness and which is mine,” Lord Strathcairn remarked. “But on top of the moor is a large cairn which must have been there for centuries – and that is how I know when I have reached my boundary.”

  They were nearing The Castle and now, as they came up the path from the gardens, Leona could see the horses waiting outside the front door.

  “It was – so kind of you to – have me here last night,” she said. “I hope we shall – meet again soon.”

  “I think that unlikely.”

  Leona stopped walking to look at Lord Strathcairn, her eyes very wide in surprise.

  “B-but – why?” she asked.

  “His Grace and I do not agree on certain subjects,” Lord Strathcairn replied.

  “I was trying to – remember if I had heard of any – feud between your Clan and the Duke’s,” Leona said hesitatingly.

  “We fought in the past,” Lord Strathcairn answered, “but my father and the late Duke declared a truce.”

  “Which has now been broken?”

  “Which has now indeed been broken!”

  Lord Strathcairn did not say more, but he took a step forward as if he would convey her quickly to the carriage.

  “Then – I shall not – see you again?” she asked in a low voice.

  “I cannot come to Ardness Castle,” he replied. “But let me make this quite clear, you are always welcome here and, as I told you last night, I am at your service.”

  The warmth was back in his voice and she felt almost as if she was enveloped in sunshine.

  “Then – if I can – call on you?” she stammered.

  “I shall be hoping you will do so.”

  Lord Strathcairn glanced at the moor behind him.

  “It is only a short ride to the Cairn,” he said, “and then you will be on my property.”

  “I shall – remember that,” Leona said a little breathlessly.

  His eyes looked down into hers and she thought that he was about to say something important. Then even as his lips parted there was an interruption.

  A servant came towards them.

  “I beg ye pardon, my Lord, but His Grace’s coachmen say that the horses are restless.”

  “Thank you, Duncan,” Lord Strathcairn said. “Miss Grenville is leaving at once.”

  They walked into the hall of The Castle, to where Leona’s travelling cloak was waiting for her. She put it on and realised that everything else she possessed had been already placed in the carriage.

  She held out her hand.

  “I thank your Lordship most sincerely for your hospitality.”

  He took her hand in his, but he did not kiss it, as she had hoped he might. Instead he bowed and Leona curtseyed and stepped into the carriage.

  As if he was impatient at having been kept waiting, the coachman whipped up the horses and they were off almost before she had time to sit down on the seat.

  She bent forward, but only had a quick glimpse of Lord Strathcairn standing on the steps watching her go before they were proceeding at a sharp pace down the long drive and out onto the moorland road.

  When they reached the road on which the coach had been blown over the night before, Leona looked back at The Castle standing on the edge of the loch.

  She put down the window of the carriage so that she could have a good view, and, now in the brilliant sunshine, she thought again that it was the most beautiful place she had ever seen.

  The purple moors, the lights on the water, the little crofts nestling under the protection of the hills, all seemed even more beautiful than they had before.

  And The Castle itself was the perfect embodiment of all the mystery and romance of the Highlands.

  ‘It’s so wonderful!’ Leona whispered to herself with a little sigh and then she could see it no more.

  As they drove on, she found herself wondering why Lord Strathcairn was in disagreement with the Duke and how it could be so explosive that they could not even meet.

  She had not forgotten the expression on his face when she had told him that she was to make her home at Ardness Castle.

  Why did it seem to him so strange?

  Then she told herself that the Scots had a fiery temperament and never forgave an insult.

  She had only to remember the way her mother had spoken of the Campbells to know how deeply they could feel.

  ‘Perhaps I can make them friends again,’ she thought to herself.

  She knew that she wanted to heal the breach so that she could see Lord Strathcairn again as soon as possible.

  The road over which they were journeying was narrow and stony. But the horses were moving at a fair pace and Leona reckoned that they must have covered four or five miles when there was a sudden check and the sound of loud voices.

  She looked out of the window and saw to her astonishment that a number of people seemed to be congregated around a croft.

  There was a lot of shouting and she saw to her amazement that two men were dragging bedding, tables, a spinning wheel and clothing out of the croft while two women and a number of children screamed at them.

  People from other crofts were running up the road so that it was impossible for the horses to proceed and now Leona saw that the men who had dragged out the furniture were setting fire to the roof!

  It was difficult to take everything in. Then one of the women holding a baby in her arms screamed out in Gaelic,

  “Tha mo clann air a bhi air am murt!” It was followed by a great shout of anger.

  “My children are being murdered!”

  Leona translated and realised that, besides the two men setting fire to the croft, there were three policemen.

  She stepped out of the carriage.

  The noise and the shouting was terrifying, but she could see that the women were trying to save some hens that were shut up in a coop and in danger of being burned alive.

  Just as the cr
oft took fire, a man hurried forward to dive through the flames and emerge carrying a half-naked and screaming child.

  “What is happening? What is going on here?” Leona asked.

  It was impossible for her voice to be heard amongst the general confusion, but a man better dressed and obviously with more authority than the rest came forward to say abruptly,

  “Ye had best proceed ma’am. I’ll clear the road for the horses.”

  “But what is happening?” Leona asked him.

  “These people are being evicted, ma’am.”

  “Evicted?” Leona exclaimed, then added,

  “Do you mean that clearances are taking place here?” “His Grace requires the land, ma’am.”

  “For sheep?” Leona asked.

  “Aye, that’s correct. And now, ma’am, if ye’ll get into the carriage, ye’ll be able to proceed.”

  The man to whom she had been speaking turned away from her as he spoke and Leona realised that the footman was holding open the carriage door and was waiting for her to enter it.

  “Help – please help!” a woman screamed at her.

  She hesitated, wishing to reply, but a policeman struck the woman with a truncheon and she fell to the ground.

  Leona wanted to go to her, but, as she would have moved towards the woman, the man who had spoken to her was again at her side.

  “Will ye please leave, ma’am?” he said sharply. “There is naught ye can do and His Grace would not wish ye to linger.”

  Leona wanted to protest about the manner in which the women and children were being treated, but somehow she found herself back in the carriage, the door was shut and the horses were moving swiftly over the cleared road.

  She looked out of the window at the burning croft.

  Then she realised that the other people who had been watching the first eviction, anticipating what was going to happen, were already taking the furniture from their own houses.

  Leona leant back against the carriage seat and felt almost faint at the horror of what she had seen.

  She had heard talk of the evictions and the ‘Highland Clearances’ ever since she could remember and the manner in which they were carried out.

  They had made her mother, usually so soft and gentle, rage with anger when she spoke about them and sometimes weep despairingly.

  But this had happened long ago in the past, and Leona had not realised until this moment that such cruelty was still being perpetrated.

  Her mother had often told her of how in 1762, Sir John Lockhart Ross had introduced sheep farming in the North and inadvertently destroyed the soul and spirit of the Highlands.

  Five hundred of his Cheviot ewes had survived when everyone expected them to die of the harsh climate.

  Instead of which they had thrived and, as wool was a valuable commodity, it had struck the Landlords of the Highlands that here was a new way of making money.

  Many Highland Landlords were almost bankrupt and a sudden vision came to them of their hitherto unproductive moors and Glens providing a perfect ‘sheep walk’.

  But, of course, the first necessity was to clear the ground of its inhabitants.

  For centuries the Highlanders had endured the hard winters, tended their small crofts and bred their cattle.

  They did not believe it when they were told that they must leave the only homes they had ever known and move away from the land they thought was their own.

  They looked to their Chieftains for guidance and received none.

  Many of them did not understand that they were required to move down to the seashore and scratch a living there or emigrate to a strange world across the seas.

  So their crofts were burned over their heads and they were treated as if they were criminals.

  Ever since she was a child, Leona had heard of the sufferings that had been inflicted first in Sutherland and then in Ross.

  To her mother it was a betrayal of everything she believed in, everything that was part of her heritage.

  But Mrs. Grenville was a long way from home and it was hard to have a true picture of what had occurred or to understand how there could be no champion of the Highlanders to sponsor their cause.

  It had all started long before Leona was born, but it was only five years ago in 1845 that the whole controversy and recriminations concerning the Highland Clearances were first aroused by The Times newspaper.

  The editor, John Delane, had learnt that ninety Ross-shire cottagers had been removed from Glencalvie and forced to camp in the churchyard, as they had no roof over their heads.

  The Times had hitherto not given much attention to the Highland Clearances, but now John Delane himself had gone to Scotland and arrived in time to witness the departure of the Glencalvie people.

  Mrs. Grenville had read aloud his findings as the tears ran down her cheeks.

  Mr. Delane had found that all the cottages in the Glen were empty except for one, where an old pensioner was dying.

  The rest of the people were seated on a green brae, the women neatly dressed, wearing scarlet or plain shawls, the men having their shepherd’s plaids wrapped about them.

  The weather was wet and cold and the people had been marched out of the Glen, with two or three carts filled with their children, to the churchyard.

  John Delane wrote that what was happening in the Highlands was the result of a “cold calculated heartlessness that was almost as incredible as it was disgusting.”

  “Why could no one stop it, Mama?” Leona had asked her mother.

  “These people told the editor of The Times that they never saw their Landlord and it was the Factors acting on his behalf who behaved with such brutality.”

  It had all been very difficult for Leona to understand, but now, hearing the cries of the children and seeing the despair on the faces of those watching their homes being burnt, she felt physically sick with disgust and anger.

  And she knew who was responsible.

  It was no use blinding herself to the fact that they were travelling over the Duke’s land and it was the Duke’s tenants who were being thrown out of their crofts.

  They would, she knew have to huddle down by the seashore, as others who had been evicted were made to do.

  The only alternative was to take a ship across the seas to the North American colonies, but travellers often died of the cold or lack of food on board or were killed by epidemics of smallpox or typhoid.

  ‘It cannot be true! It cannot still be happening!’ Leona thought.

  She remembered how her mother had cried out against the sheep that had ousted the Highlanders from the Glens and the moors and left behind only the ghosts of those whose courage and endurance had once been the pride of Scotland.

  ‘How can the Duke do this to his own people?’ Leona asked herself.

  Now she could understand all too well why Lord Strathcairn had quarrelled with the Duke.

  She had seen on Lord Strathcairn’s land crofts with their cattle by the side of the loch.

  There had been no flocks of sheep on the ground that he owned and her heart warmed towards him, as she understood now why his people needed him and why, if he would fight their cause, he must stay amongst them.

  Then, nervously, she wondered what she should say to the Duke or even how she could bite back the words of condemnation that she was afraid would burst from her lips as soon as she met him.

  ‘Perhaps he does not know! Perhaps he does not understand what these people are suffering!’ she told herself.

  Yet the evictions were taking place only a few miles from Ardness Castle.

  Could he be so blind?

  And if he was in residence, unlike so many Landlords of the North who lived in England while their factors committed such crimes in their name, surely he could not remain in ignorance?

  As the horses proceeded over the moorlands, Leona wished she could jump out of the carriage and run back to Cairn Castle.

  She wished she was brave enough and yet it seemed to her that the
carriage carried her inexorably on and there was nothing she could do about it.

  She felt positively frightened and for the first time she wished that she had not come to Scotland, but had refused the Duke’s offer.

  ‘How can I – explain to him what I – feel?’ she asked herself.

  She remembered the horror in her mother’s voice as she read aloud the reports in The Times and related to her how the different Clans had been broken up and sent to various parts of the world.

  She had often quoted Ailean Dall – the blind Bard of Glengarry, who had written,

  “A crois has been placed upon us in Scotland,

  Poor men are naked beneath it,

  Without food, without money, without pasture

  The North is utterly destroyed.”

  “Ailean Dall chose very significant words,” her mother explained. “The word crois in Gaelic means more than cross. It is something terrible, close to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah.”

  She gave a deep sigh.

  “And the Gaelic word for pasture means not only meadowland but the idea of peace, happiness and tranquillity something the Highlanders will never know again.”

  Even the MacDonalds, Leona learnt, were not without blame.

  Of all the Highland Chiefs, her father had said once, none disposed of their people more freely than the MacDonalds of Glengarry or the Chisholms of Glenglass.

  Her mother had not argued, she had merely wept and sometimes Leona thought that the Clearances hurt her even more than the thought of the massacre of Glencoe.

  Now she had seen it for herself and she could understand the horror that had shaken her mother and made her weep. ‘It is wrong! It is wicked!’ Leona stormed in her thoughts.

  Every mile she drew nearer to Ardness Castle, she felt her anger rising and yet at the same time she became more apprehensive.

  It seemed to her that she had passed through a lifetime of emotion before finally the carriage began to descend from the high road they had travelled on ever since they had left Cairn Castle.

  It moved down into a deep Glen, the road winding through dark fir trees beyond which there were heather-covered moors.

  There was not a croft in sight, but Leona had glimpses of stonewalls without roofs and she was sure it was not many years since they had been inhabited.