Entry Island

She said, ‘The Sheriff-Depute has been to take statements, but it seems no one knows who fired the fatal shot. They say it was an accident.’

Anger flared in me briefly, but quickly subsided. Nothing could change what had happened. Nothing could bring my father back. All I could do now was be who he wanted me to be. I wiped away my tears. ‘My family and my village are starving. He was just trying to feed us.’

Concern etched itself deeply in her frown. ‘I heard that the potato crop has failed again. But my father is giving you grain, isn’t he?’

‘Look at me, Ciorstaidh! The grain we get barely keeps us alive. I haven’t eaten properly in months. Children and old people are dying.’ Now my anger returned. My father’s anger burning in me. ‘Ask your father why people are starving to death while there are deer on the hill and fish in the rivers. Ask him!’

I turned away and she caught my arm. ‘Simon!’

I wheeled around to face her, tormented by the feelings I had for her, but distanced by everything that separated us. I pulled my arm free. ‘My family is my responsibility now. And I’m not going to let them die of hunger.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to bring home a deer to feed them. Or die trying. Just like my father did.’ I hurried off down the slope without a backward glance, and strode out in the rain across the flat wet arc of sand left by the outgoing tide.

When the rain came in off the sea it swept across the hillside like a mist, robbing the land of its summer colours and stealing away its warmth. It was more than an hour since I had left the village, a stout rope coiled across my shoulder, my father’s crossbow strapped to my back, a homemade quiver stitched together from an old trouser leg to hold the bolts he had laboured so long to make true.

I was soaked to the skin and shivering. No body fat to protect me from the elements. But I was unaware of my discomfort, wholly focused on the parcel of deer grazing in the valley below me. Five of them, backs to the weather, heads bowed. It had taken me nearly twenty minutes crawling on my belly to get close enough.

The rocks that provided my cover were halfway up the hillside, and I was spreadeagled on a flat slab of gneiss that lay slightly inclined on the slope of the hill. It kept me almost perfectly hidden, but provided the perfect angle for a shot.

I slid back on the rock so as not the break the skyline and armed the crossbow, nocking a bolt into place before sliding forward again to bring the deer into my sights. I wanted a nice clean shot.

Then a movement caught the corner of my eye, breaking my concentration, and I saw a party of five or six men crouched low and moving forward through the glen, downwind of the animals and hidden from their view by a cluster of rocks. They were almost obscured from me by the rain. A hunting party from the castle. I recognised a stalker from the estate, and some way back a gillie holding the pony that would carry the carcass of whatever they shot.

And then with something like shock I realised that among the hunters was Ciorstaidh’s brother, George, betrayed by his distinctive red hair.

Their focus was on the deer, and I knew that they had not seen me in my elevated position. I altered the angle of my line of fire, and lowered my head to bring George fully into my sights. I held him there for several long moments, remembering how he had humiliated me in front of Ciorstaidh, my finger dangerously close to lifting the trigger and releasing the bolt that would take his life, just as my father’s had been taken by someone in his father’s employ. But every fibre of my being fought against it, and in the end I removed the bolt and released the tension from the crossbow.

I rolled out of sight to lie on my back, staring up at the pewter sky, and cursed my luck. Another few seconds and I’d have loosed my shot and the beast would be lying dead in the valley. But then the hunting party would almost certainly have stumbled upon me as I went down to perform the gralloch. So perhaps Lady Luck had favoured me after all.

A single shot rang out in the cold and wet of the late morning and I rolled over and crawled back to my vantage point. One of the hunters had shot the single stag in the group, and in that moment I realised that they were not shooting for food. They were after the trophy. A set of antlers.

But whoever had fired was a poor shot. The beast had been hit high up and towards his back end. He had fallen as the other deer scattered, but was thrashing now and struggling to get back to his feet. Head and front legs first, like a horse. A second shot missed altogether, and the animal was off and running, weaving and distressed, hunched over and clearly in pain. Up the slope and away through the heather. A third shot was fired, and in the time it took the first shooter to reload his flintlock the stag was out of sight.