The Desperate Journey

From the North Sea a keen wind blew over the shallows of Loch Fleet, where the river mouth widened. Always a wind blew there, as though it would force itself up and over the hills which lay in a half circle at the head of the loch. David Murray bent to his task of mussel gathering. A hundred yards away along the shore his twin sister Kirsty bent her back too, and tried to fill her smaller creel.

David thought with satisfaction that, even when his father had taken what he needed for bait, there would still be enough mussels left over for his mother to make a good broth for supper. Suddenly Kirsty straightened herself and shouted to him, “Hi, come here quickly, Davie! There’s a great partan under this stone!”

A partan! A crab! That was even better than mussels!

“Where is he?”

“There! He’s trying to sink himself in the wet sand under the stone. Oh, get him out quickly, Davie, or we might lose him!”

Davie seized a piece of driftwood and poked away under the rock, loosening the sand. One claw of the crab appeared, waving frantically, then another. Davie redoubled his efforts, scraping and poking. At last he dislodged the crab and brought it out.

“Stand ready with my creel, Kirsty!”

Kirsty lowered the edge of his creel as Davie pushed the crab towards it, then lifted it with the piece of wood in among the mussels.

“My conscience! He’s a big one! He’ll make a fine supper!” he exclaimed, turning the crab on his back so he could not easily crawl out of the creel.

The two children were so occupied with the crab that they never noticed a horseman rein in his horse at the edge of the wood by the shore, tie it up to a tree trunk, and make his way over the sands towards them. His feet made no noise over the wet sandy flats. His face became crimson with anger when he saw the creels filled with mussels, and he roared at the children in a voice of thunder, “What are you young rascals up to?”

Davie started and almost dropped the creel. Kirsty gave a cry of fear, and retreated a few steps. “Oh, it’s Mr Sellar!”

Patrick Sellar was the factor who collected the rent of their farm for the Countess of Sutherland, who owned their land.

“What are you up to?” Sellar repeated. “What do you mean by stealing her ladyship’s shellfish?”

A spark of anger lit up Davie’s eye.

“We’re not stealing!” he replied indignantly. “My father has always had the right to gather mussels from the foreshore for bait for his fishing.”

“Right? He has no right at all!” Sellar shouted. “You know quite well these mussel beds are the property of the Countess.”

“Indeed, sir, we do not!” Kirsty was bold enough to say.

“How would my father fish for us if he could not dig bait?”

“James Murray’s brats, aren’t you?” Sellar said. “I might have known it! You are as impudent and full of argument as he is. I’ll have no more of it. Tip those mussels back where you found them!”

Davie picked up his creel and backed away indignantly. Kirsty tried a little wheedling. “Mr Sellar, sir, you would not be taking our supper from us, surely? Her ladyship will never be missing a few mussels from her grand table, now.”

“Did you hear what I said? Tip those mussels out at once, or I’ll do it myself!”

Kirsty turned to run away with her creel, but Patrick Sellar darted after her, snatched the creel and flung the contents into the
shingle.

“Now, empty your creel too!” he commanded Davie. Davie glowered at him and made no move to do as he was told.

“Oh, please let us keep the partan, sir,” Kirsty begged.

“No more nonsense! Do as you are told!”

There was a streak of obstinacy in David Murray which would not yield so easily. Besides, he felt he had right on his side.

“But we have gathered the crab and the mussels below high water mark. My father says her ladyship the Countess has no right to shellfish taken below high water mark, any more than she has a right to all the fish in the sea.”

Patrick Sellar grew livid. To be defied by this strip of a boy was unthinkable! He advanced threateningly, lifting the riding whip which he carried. “Throw out those mussels at once!”

“I will not!” Davie stood his ground, though he went pale.

The whip flicked once and curled round Davie’s bare calves. Stung to a pitch of anger by the pain, he snatched at the crab and flung it full in the factor’s face. “Have your old crab, then!” he cried.

“You impudent young rogue! I’ll flay the hide off you for this!” Sellar shouted, seizing the boy by the shoulder and lifting his whip again. The blow never descended, for his arm was caught by Kirsty, who swung all her light weight on to it.

“Let go my brother! Don’t you dare to touch him!” she yelled, and, quicker than lightning, she sank her teeth in the factor’s wrist.

“You young spawn of a witch!” the factor exclaimed, and he was about to turn on Kirsty too when he was stopped by a shout. A man was running towards them across the sand.

“What’s going on here? What’s to do, factor?” the man cried fiercely. “Are you lifting your whip to my bairns?”

The factor stopped dead. Kirsty rushed to her father.

“Oh, Father, Mr Sellar hit Davie with his whip. Look at the red weal on his leg!”

“Is this true, factor?” James Murray’s voice was grim.

“The lad’s an impudent whelp. He needed a sharp lesson for flinging a crab in my face.”

“That’s not true, Father! Mr Sellar struck me with the whip before ever I threw the crab. He would not let us keep the mussels we had gathered and the crab we had caught. He made Kirsty fling hers away.” Davie pointed to the empty creel.

“You and your brats know well enough the shellfish on the shore belong to the Countess–” Sellar began, shifting his ground.

“But we caught these below high water mark,” Davie interrupted. “You said everything below high water mark was free for the taking,” Davie reminded his father.

“The lad is right, you know, Mr Sellar. That is the law.”

“Who’s to know where the boy took the shellfish, above or below high water mark?” the factor muttered. “There’s only the lad’s word for it.”

“My son is not a stranger to the truth. The Murrays are not given to lying,” James Murray told Sellar with contempt. “Besides, it was well below high water mark that you came on the bairns, here where we are standing.”

“The law says all the foreshore belongs to the Countess,” the factor insisted.

“Then I will go with you to the Countess and argue the matter before her.”

“Think you I would take up her ladyship’s time with so paltry a matter?”

“It was not paltry to you when you lashed my son with a whip,” James Murray retorted. “If ever you dare to lift your hand to my children again, Patrick Sellar, you will have to reckon with me. I shall not let you off lightly.” He turned to Davie. “Pick up the partan, Davie. It is yours. I know our rights.”

Davie made haste to pick up the crab. The factor turned sullenly away.

“You are very free with talk of your rights and the law, James
Murray,” Sellar called over his shoulder. “Perhaps we shall see what the law has in store for you.”

They stood still, watching him as he strode to the woodland and unhitched his horse.

“What did the factor mean by what he said last, Father?” Davie asked as the sound of the horse’s hoofs died away along the road.

“No doubt we shall know before long. He is an ill man to cross.”

“Perhaps I should not have thrown the partan at him, even if he did strike me first.”

“Aye, Davie, better to keep a curb on your temper. This is a pretty kettle of fish in more ways than one.”

“Why? What will Mr Sellar do to us, Father?” Kirsty asked.

Instead of answering her, James Murray said, “Look! There’s your mother at the door of the house.” The children ran to her with the creel of mussels and the crab.

“Look what we’ve got! Look what we’ve got!”

“My! That’s surely the grandfather of all the partans!” their mother laughed when she saw the crab. “A grand supper we’ll have this night!”

“Let us hope it does not cost us too dear,” her husband said in a low voice.

“What do you mean, James?” she asked quickly.

“I will tell you later when the children are abed,” he said. “Not now.”

There were two rooms to the small cottage. One had a fire on a rough hearth by the wall. Along the side wall between the two rooms was a box-bed where James and his wife slept. The small room beyond was almost taken up by the children’s two wooden beds. Built on to the end of the house was a shed which housed the horse, the cows and the few hens. The Murrays felt themselves rich because they had a horse. Many crofters had only a cow which they harnessed to a plough when they wanted to turn over the soil
of the small fields where they grew their oats and barley.

The little croft was almost self-supporting, with milk and butter from the cows; eggs from the hens; smoked bacon from the pig they fattened and killed each year, and the salt mutton from the few sheep which also provided Kate Murray with wool for her spinning wheel. Kail and turnips and potatoes provided vegetables for the stewpot; the oats, oatmeal for the porridge. On a quiet evening James Murray took out his boat to catch fish. The Murrays all worked hard on the croft and in the fields, but it was a happy satisfying life. The children herded the sheep and cows on the hillside and helped their father to weed his small fields on the flat ground by the Lundie Burn, which ran past their door.

Behind their cottage at Culmailie rose the circle of the hills, Ben Bhragie steeply reaching away to the further ridge that stretched to Ben Lundie. Beyond there the hills rolled away in a gathering wave of peaks behind which the sun set. Always there was the murmuring music of the burn beside the house and the sound of the wind blowing off the sea. That was how Davie was to remember it in the troubled years to come.

When the children were fast asleep, James told his wife of the encounter with Patrick Sellar.

“So that was what caused the weal on Davie’s leg!” she remarked angrily. “I thought he had scratched himself on a briar. The factor should think shame of lifting his whip to a bairn like that!”

“Oh, Sellar did not get off scatheless. Kirsty saw to that!”

“No one will touch Davie and get away with it easily if Kirsty is around. Born on the same day they were, and always one will fight for the other. That is how it will always be,” she said with a far-away look in her eyes, as though she could see into the future.

“It’s the
sight
you have, Kate,” James remarked, with the belief of a Highlander that there are some who have the power to look beyond the present. “A good thing it was, though, that Patrick Sellar did not strike Kirsty, or I might have taken my fists to him.
As it is, he will not let today’s matter go unsettled.” James looked troubled.

“He is a hard revengeful man,” Kate said. “What will he do to us?”

“I have heard talk that what has been happening in Rogart might happen in Culmailie,” James said uneasily.

“You mean that the Countess might take our land from us, and rent it to a sheep farmer from the south?” Kate looked startled.

“Aye, wife, it could happen. It doesna pay her ladyship to be renting the land in small crofts like ours when she can get more money for it in sheep.”

“But there are the hillsides for the sheep. Why should she take our valley?”

“For a sheepfold. The sheep farmers must have the valleys to winter the sheep.”

“Do you mean she might take our fields from us, our fields where you have laboured and ploughed and planted, you and your father before you, aye, and his father before him, for many a generation?”

“Aye, just that, wife.”

“But there have always been Murrays at Culmailie.”

“Soon there may no longer be Murrays here.”

“But the house? What will they do with the house? Surely they will not take the very roof from over our heads?”

“What will be the good of a house if there are no fields to till, and no place for the cows to graze?” James asked. “You know what has been happening in other parts of her ladyship’s lands where the crofters have had to make way for the sheep.”

“They have burned the houses, so the crofters can not go back to them,” she said in a whisper. “But surely that cannot happen to us, James, not to us?”

“It might. The factor is no friend to us and he’ll take pay for Davie standing up to him today.”

“I wish Davie had never seen that partan!” she exclaimed, almost
in tears.

“The trouble would come, partan or no partan,” her husband told her. “The partan may only have hastened it. We must wait and see what is to come.”

They did not have long to wait.

About a week later Davie and Kirsty were bringing the cows down from the pasture to be milked. Kirsty sang as they followed the beasts, her voice caroling over the hillside. Suddenly her song broke off abruptly. “Look!” she called to Davie. “There’s a man standing at our door. There’s no one in the house. Mother has gone to sit with old Elspeth Ross, and Father is away to the market at Dornoch.”

Davie shaded his eyes with his hand. “The man looks like Adam Young, the factor’s man. What does he want of us? It is not the time for the rent to be paid.”

“He is nailing a paper to the door!” Kirsty exclaimed. The blows from the hammer echoed up the hillside.

“Hurry, Kirsty!” Davie broke into a run. They left the cattle to meander down the hill-path after them. “Hi!” Davie cried as they approached the house. “Hi, Mr Young! My father is not home. What do you want?”

The factor’s man vouchsafed no reply, but gave a final ding with his hammer to the nail fastening the paper to the door. He was mounting his horse when Davie ran up breathless.

“What’s that paper, Mr Young?”

Adam Young gave a scornful laugh. “Your father will see fast enough. Maybe it’ll be a lesson to him not to allow his children to be so impudent to their betters in the future.” He gave Davie a prod with the butt-end of his riding whip and cantered away along the grassy road. Davie stared after him, but Kirsty was already at the door.