The Colonial's Timepiece

The following is based on a true story of the murder of English Army Sergeant Arthur Davies on the Braes O’ Mar, Scotland in 1749.

Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong,

farewell, farewell to thee

McPherson's life will nae be lang

on yonder gallows tree

Sae rantin'ly, sae wantonly

Sae dauntin’ly, gaed he;

He played a tune and he danced it roon’

About the gallows tree.

-MacPherson’s Farewell, Traditional Song

The hill was silent when he approached. He had seen the Sergeant months before: his eyes had lain unchanged for many months, white and unblinking against the sun. Often he sat by the spot where he was hidden on the Hill of Cristie, looking out over Glen Ey. He would count the spots in the distance that had resembled people and gazed upon the brushstrokes of white at the far end he knew to be sheep.

The first night MacPherson had come to the hill to see the Sergeant’s body; he remembered he had thought that it was coincidence that Shona, Terig’s love, had been carrying the golden rings. Sergeant Davies could be seen at all hours around the Glen. Fingers rattling the gun barrel like a drum as he scanned for deer: gallus in front of the local women, thumbs around his silver buckle, with their hands in their long grain hair.

He had known that Terig and Bain McDonald, the simple from the bottom of Dubrach, had plotted to do something. McDonald would stride to his neighbour’s house in the grey tartan with the red stripe: he was either too proud to gie it up or just trying to goad the soldiers from the barracks into fixing for him.

After it had happened, he understood. There was a sergeant missing which nobody in the entire Braes o’ Mar was happy about. Many of the elder folk would stand and shake their heads as the young passed, assuming it was anyone of their original suspicions that had committed it. The soldiers overseeing the work on the bridge at White River would gaze at anyone passing, MacPherson would pretend to look beyond the treetops beyond so not to catch their stare.

When he passed Jock’s house, near to the Punchbowl by the river, he would stop in and see him. Auld Jock felt the soldier’s anger more than anyone: he lived near to the build on the edge of the densest part of the trees. If they took their wrath of any of the locals, he would certainly be first.

Auld Jock was a broad man: he had been a cateran for many years before ’45. He’d lifted cattle and had stood at ’45 as the flag was raised and the fear was felt. And he was there at the demise and fall of the rebellion and he was now the witness to everything new in the Glen. He would stand at the fence at the edge of the road, a tall, pale statue against the greying sky behind him, simply watching the men build.

“I like to listen to the accents” he would say, “to try and work out where they’re from.”

Auld Jock didn’t say anything to him as he passed a few days after Sergeant Davies had disappeared. For some reason, Macpherson felt the need to speak to him.

“Jock.”

“A guid day to you too, ma boy. I see that cloud’s fair drawing in.”

“Have you heard of the sergeant, auld Jock?”

“That I have, young MacPherson.”

“What do you think’s happened to him?”

Auld Jock murmured something in Gaelic and then shook his head.

“Aye, that cloud’s fair drawing in.”

“Jock, I seen Shona this morning. She’s goat a new ring, d’ye think that Duncan Terig gave that to her?”

Auld Jock’s back rose up, his old shoulders craning under the strain of the bone. He drew young MacPherson into the house.

“What sort of a ring was this you saw on young Shona’s fingers?”

“Two gold ones. Bright. I thought Duncan Terig might have seen to marry his sweetheart.”

Auld Jock took his face away from MacPherson and looked into the hearth and all it’s whispering.

“That he might have, MacPherson.”

Jock looked on, scratching at his grey head, once red.

“You know anyone from over at Auchendryne anymore, MacPherson?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither do I.”

The older he got, the more he came to realise what Jock had meant. He had been tanning a rug for his mother one day, striking the sheepskin till the echo could be heard down-Glen. It was then that two soldiers passed by, on patrol away from the tedium and humdrum of the barracks. The bridge was built and now there were less of them.

One of the soldier’s gave him a spare piece of bread and asked him how old he was. Twenty, MacPherson had replied, lying. He was invited to join them at the barracks the following day-they had some work needed doing and he looked strong enough to do it.

Some time later, MacPherson went up the hill to see his grandmother who still refused to leave her home. He found her, crouched over a steel pot, winding a hand around the spoon. She stood up and he made the table.

The broth was good but she hardly spoke as she looked over to the door.

“I sometimes ask, little yin. I sometimes ask if yer faither will come through that door again.”

He didn’t know what to say, so tried to keep on as before.

“I’ve been asked for work at the barracks.”

“That was only a matter of time. They’ll ask you and they’ll be your friends. They’ll give you work and they’ll seem like everything to you. And they’ll never say to your face what they say behind it.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll be little Jock to them. Wee Jock. And they never found that Sergeant, They ken too well what this place is like fur them.”

She talked for several hours in Gaelic: he would just listen to her stories of the old times, before ’45 and before any soldiers had thought of clapping their eyes on the Braes.

The following day at the barracks was good. He would chop wood, beat rugs and after a while, he made clothes for them or mended the brass buttons on their coats when they wore out. The blue of their tunics was the same as Sergeant Davies’ although his was now a faded milk blue, the colour of the heather on a brighter day.

He would still go up and sit by Sergeant Davies. He was one of the few who had not assumed for a very long time that the good Sergeant had fallen in somewhere and had sadly been unable to find his way back. The others were several at the barracks who still held toward the locals and would make the children flinch with every sudden move.

Soon, many of the local men worked at the barracks. Those that could, would repair the bridge and road for the traffic to pass safely. They laughed and joked with the soldiers: never did either side consider entrusting the other with an invitation to an event.

One night, he was sewing by candle in the barracks: he always did this at night, lest he be branded a man doing woman’s work. MacPherson could hear words outside in a tongue like his ain-but there were words in there that he never knew.

MacPherson decided one day to go with a few of the soldier lads to Tomintoul for a drink. MacPherson had taken a dram before on a special occasion: his mother’s birthday, say. Certainly never his father’s birthday, who had simply sat and look at the fire in petulant silence.

Returning along the road in the dark, many of the lad’s began to try and teach him some of the words from their own places. They began to tell him that soon the Glen would be changing: that south of there they were beginning to move things out. The people were all leaving and sheep were coming in.

Several times they made this trip, till one night, MacPherson came over the hill and saw the vast dark, swallowing him up like a flood of ink over the valley. Within the dark, he could see flecks of brilliant light all over, darting flickers of shadow crossing over behind the church as if from some memory forgotten. There was a distant sound of shouting and a spill of pipe music that had not fallen over this glen in many years. And it was he who had forgotten: it was Samhainn.

When he went to see his grandmother, she was quiet as usual.

“They’re shipping out. I saw them-all the Darroch family, going down the hill with everything on their backs. Not a penny to their name.”

“The church will help them.”

“That they will not. No. Fur too long, that church has not been a friend of ours. But they think it is what binds us. Too wrong they are. There is nothing to bind us now.”

MacPherson couldn’t believe her words against the church she had long attended. She sipped tea from a cup and look across to where the trees used to be. After a while, MacPherson followed her gaze to where there was now no green until the horizon, as if the sky had pushed them to the edge out of shame. He couldn’t help think of Sergeant Davies.

The snow had fallen around where he once looked out over the glen, tucked into his cave. He huddled next to the twilight blue of the Sergeant’s tunic against the whip of the cold. Where Sergeant Davies looked out over, there had once been trees and now there was crofts, rising black fingers of smoke to touch the mountains.

On the day that he saw Duncan Terig again, he also saw John. Old John was looking more tired by the day. He was as big as he ever was but in a different way now: his hands were as big as shovels, creased by the dirt and earth black like the feet of the sheep.

“Old John, how are ye?”

“Tired, young MacPherson. The rain’s been fair falling this year.”

“I see the White River’s swollen tae break.”

“That was never my name fur it, young MacPherson” sighed Old John.

“D’ye ken that the Darroch’s have left?”

“Naw, I dinnae ken that. Leaving is when ye get up by yer own accord and leave. Enough folk no able to grow any tatties or nothing these days anyway. They might as well be gaun.”

Old John pushed his hair back, once a proud black, now a saddened grey.

“Are you working these days, young MacPherson?”

“I’m joining the British Army.”

John smiled for the first time in what MacPherson thought was years.

“Black Watch I suppose? Well, they brought them in, suppose you’d best go out with them. They’ll get no trouble round these parts anymore. What tartan will ye wear?”

“I didnae ken you could wear a tartan in the British Army, Old John.”

“That’s what worries me. They insist oan it.”

When he was patrolling the edge of the glen, he saw Duncan Terig walking. And he approached him.

“Duncan, how are ye?”

Terig stopped pacing up the side of the hill and stood off his front foot, as if ready to run. He looked over the blue tunic and saw a face he recognised.

“Aye. I’m fine.”

“Good. Ye asked that Shona tae marry?”

“I’ve thought of it, thanks.”

“Just gied her a few gold rings did ye?”

Terig’s eyes lit: the green burned at MacPherson as he charged him. He threw MacPherson by the tunic edges before he could react or defend himself. MacPherson had him within a whisper of being battered senseless.

“Give me his purse and I wilnae tell.”

“Whit did you say tae me?”

“I know he carried hauf guineas. In his pocket.”
“You know nothing of that MacPherson. You know nothing of where that money came from or what it is. You never will.”

MacPherson made the decision to let the authorities know of Duncan Terig or Clerk as they knew him. He decided to tell them of McDonald too. But to do so he would have to be careful. If he were not to be suspected in the plot, he would need a solid alibi to tell.

He sat one night, up near to Sergeant Davies. The sun was setting onto the hills in soft patches like a silent candle when he heard a sound. A bird was singing a shrill pitch: it was impersonating a telephone. MacPherson had never heard a telephone ring and wondered where the bird had learned such a sound in Glen Ey.

Over by the ruins of the chapel his grandmother attended, MacPherson sat on an old school desk that had been left after the closure. It was here that he came upon the plan that he told to the General the following day. He spoke of a ghostly visitation by Sergeant Davies, during the night, informing him of his resting place, begging him for decent burial. Sergeant Davies could conveniently tell that he was murdered by Duncan Clerk and Alexander Bain McDonald.

The General had drawn up in his motorcar over the bridge. Upon hearing the story, he gazed out toward the shining car, acting as a net for all the sun’s rays.

“I see” he gruffled through a pursed lip.

“And it is the Highland tradition sir, to follow the instructions of any ghost.”

“I see. You understand that the local Sergeant followed up on your story this morning and found the body of Sergeant Davies. He also tells me at the time there was a farmhand by the name of Angus Cameron-“

“-from Rannoch, sir. He’s a cateran.”

The General stared him down for such impertinence.

“My apologies, sir.”

“Now, this Cameron is a bit of a jock. Very incoherent. You will need to be the main witness, which means you are excused from duties in France you were scheduled to go to.”

“A jock, sir?”

“A little too Scotch to be coherent in a court.”

“But I’m Scottish, sir.”

The General looked over the blue tunic to MacPherson’s face.

“Of course. My apologies to you, Private.”

MacPherson had said farewell to many of his friends who were leaving to rest amongst the red and black flowers of France. When he walked through the village, he saw Terig and McDonald being arrested. McDonald cried as he left: Terig simply looked over to the barracks, where his Shona stood with empty hands.

Over the radio, MacPherson had heard of something on the radio, of the boats in Dunkirk pulling people from the water, of the heroics of retreat. He walked the hill to see his grandmother.

She sat by the radio, her reading glasses sliding down over her face in the ashen hue of the sun, speaking in The Gaelic.

“I see they’re having a big pairty for the VE, down in Inverey, by the street where you were born. I’ll no be going.”

“Everyone’s going.”

“I ken that. I ken everyone has the same tongue and the same tastes: I dinnae ken what it’s in the name o’.”

“But it was for the likes o’ me. We were going to be heroes.”

“I’ll tell you who’s a hero-that Sergeant Davies. Always that friendly tae everyone and met a sare end. What will you be telling them at the trial in Edinburgh?”

“The truth. My ghostly visitation and how it’s Highland tradition to follow the ghost’s will.”

“Then ye’ll pick the tradition that makes us aw look saft in the heid. Ye’ll no pick up the hammer till they put the Royal name on the Highland games, but ye’ll go tae a high court and tell them a ghost story. Away wi’ ye.”

The trial was nearer now; he went down to the Invercauld Arms for a drink with a few of his squaddie mates.

“What did this used to be? Before the pub?”

One of his friends was from Doncaster and was inquisitive about all local history.

“This was the site of the ’15. The 1715 uprising, where they raised the flag, just before I was born.”

“Why build a pub over it?”

“Time’s change, I suppose” replied MacPherson. “Not really a site of anything good, just a bunch of bigots running about.”

“You wouldn’t get that where I’m from” said one of his regiment’s sergeants from London.

“Well, it’s different up here. Things have changed a lot and they needed to. My grandmother still tells me stories in the Deeside Gaelic, but I can’t understand anything she’s saying. Never spoke a word of it in my life.”

They laughed and later, they smiled and joked as they waved MacPherson to the trial. He got into the car and pressed his uniform’s cuffs with the back of his hand.

The court was full. The air remained cool and the haze of dust shone through the pillar of sun from the window. The two men sat in the dock, cuffed. McDonald quietly wept and Terig sat with bitter eyes on MacPherson.

The lawyer stood, his bone-white wig drawing his face, clicking his lips as he spoke.

“Private MacPherson. I understand you are a well-respected young man within the local area?”

“I would like to think so.”

MacPherson spotted Jonathon from the White Bridge cottage in the dock. The two had been friendly for a while since Jonathon had bought the cottage as a holiday home. MacPherson had given him his tartan, as he didn’t have a clan name. He was looking older these days, but very relaxed, his blond hair edging to grey. MacPherson, while expecting to be calmed by his friend’s appearance, was suitably unsettled by his sight.

“And Mr MacPherson, these two men before you in the dock are less reputable in the Royal Deeside?”

“I would say so, yes.”

“Now, the testimony of a Mr Angus Cameron places the defendants at the scene. But I believe you have a less…conventional story.”

The courtroom nudged forward to hear the sensationalism.

“That’s correct. I had a ghostly visitation from the murdered Sergeant Arthur Davies. And in my vision, Sergeant Davies identified the two defendants as the culprits and told me his body was buried on the Hill of Cristie in Glen Ey. He asked for decent burial and in accordance with Highland tradition, we followed the ghost’s wishes. He was given full military honours and I was asked to take the British flag that was draped over his coffin.”

“I see. And you still possess this flag? Do you believe Sergeant Davies would have wanted you to have this flag?”

“I do. I believe it would have been a wish of his General and therefore of his.”

“And what language did Sergeant Davies speak to you in this vision?”

“In good Lochaber Gaelic, of that I am sure.”

The rattle of the hammer did not subdue the uproar in the court. The case was adjourned for a half hour.

MacPherson spent the time pacing the hallway: drawn, black shoes tapping the marble floor. There was a hum over the television of a war somewhere, with the distant mark of the Black Watch crossing over the camera lens before their time was over.

The lawyer appeared. The case was to be abandoned. There was not enough evidence to continue: the notion that Sergeant Davies, a British officer, spoke The Gaelic was too contentious.

Standing outside the Edinburgh high court in the rain, the cameras snapped in his face as he tried in vain to hail a taxi. It was then he spied Angus Cameron; the farmhand from Ranoch was stood over in a doorway, smoking a cigarette.

MacPherson ran over to shelter with him.

“It wasn’t my fault, Angus.”

“I’m not angry that you lied, MacPherson. I’m angry that a man died here and you let them walk away.”

“I’m sorry.”

“As am I. As am I. Listen, MacPherson, you’re no daft. You’ve seen enough to know.”

He stopped and stared at the puddle on the fading yellow ground.

“Do you remember the auld clans, MacPherson? The auld games we’d go to as kids, the champions at the games?”

“Aye, I do.”

“That’s funny because I don’t. And if I do, I don’t want to remember. But I like you MacPherson. That uniform, it wears you very well.”

MacPherson stood out into the rain.

“Thank you.”

Angus threw his cigarette into the wind of a passing taxi.

“That winds getting up, Angus. Let’s share a taxi. We’ll get a dram.”

Angus did not reply and walked off into the downpour. At the same moment, MacPherson realised that in facing into the storm, his back to the pulse of the wind, that every breath he made could whip Angus from a distance, if he allowed him to be. If he was asked, he would say he felt older than he could imagine.