Entry Island

Finally the organs and intestines of the beast lay steaming in the grass and I rested for a while on my knees, leaning forward with my elbows planted in the peat, my forehead buried in the grass. I wanted to weep. But there was no time for self-pity. And just as I had seen my father do before me, I used mosses to wipe out the cavity, and rolled the creature over on to its back. I removed the coil of rope from my shoulder and tied it around the antlers, and along the top of the nose to loop around the jaws, hoping this would keep the head straight and stop the antlers catching on every rock and heather root as I dragged it.

But I had not anticipated just how weak I was. Even with all its insides removed, the beast was unimaginably heavy. I looped the rope around my chest beneath my armpits so that I could lean my whole body weight forward to pull it over the uneven ground, but I managed no more than two hundred yards before falling to my knees, physically and mentally spent. There was no way I could get the beast home.

Tears flowed then, and I gave full vent to my frustration and despair, knowing that both God and my father would be witness to my failure. My anguish echoed around the glen in the rain.

Ten minutes or more must have passed before I started to think what would my father have done. He would never have accepted defeat. Whatever the problem, he used to say, there was always an answer. And when the answer came to me it was simple. If I couldn’t take the whole animal, then I would take a part of it.

The best meat is at the rear. The haunches. And I realised that somehow I needed to separate them from the front end of the animal. So I steeled myself to do battle with the beast once more.

But even after I had cut through the flesh and skin and hair along the bottom edge of each of the last ribs, the two halves of the animal were still attached by the spinal ligaments. To expose them to my knife I was forced to twist the rear half in one direction and the front half in the other. Exhausting work, and it took me several minutes to recover before seeking out the ligaments with the tip of my knife to sever them. Then one final push, twisting the haunches through a full 360 degrees to completely disarticulate the spine. And at last, with sweat almost blinding me, I had separated them from the rest of the carcass. They were, of course, still connected at the pelvis, but I hoped that would allow me to use my back and shoulders to carry them, with one leg crooked over each shoulder.

And so it proved. I sheathed my knife and heaved the remains of the creature on to my shoulders, straining my thighs to take the weight as I straightened my legs. I was up and mobile, and from somewhere found renewed determination.

I could not afford to stop, or to think, or to listen to muscles that were screaming at me to give up. I kept my head down, so as not to see the distance still to be travelled. One step at a time.

I thought of Ciorstaidh as I walked, and how I had carried her all that way to the castle in the knowledge that giving up was not an option. And I felt the same thing now. I owed it to my family, to my father, and to the animal whose life I was determined would not be wasted.

I have no idea how long I walked in that almost trancelike state. I had left the glen behind me and was up and over the rise, heading for the Sgagarstaigh hill. I had lost the feeling in almost every part of my body and was amazed that there was still any grip left in my hands.

By mid-afternoon there was a slight break in the clouds, sunlight appearing in transient daubs across the moor. I saw a rainbow, vivid against the blackened sky behind it. And away to my left, a first glimpse of the sea. I was tantalisingly close to home. Which was not a thought that I dared allow enter my mind.

My biggest danger here was in crossing the road to reach the path that led over the hill to Baile Mhanais. For I would be in full view of any passer-by. And there was often traffic on that road going to and from the castle at Ard Mor.

It was only now, as that thought crossed my mind, that I realised, with a sudden stab of panic, that I had somehow mislaid my father’s crossbow. That thought alone robbed me of any physical control. My knees gave way, and I dropped to the ground, twisting as I fell to unload the weight of the haunches, and I lay there on the sodden moor with the remains of the stag tipped over at my side.

I tried to recall what I had done with the crossbow. I remembered laying it down with the quiver before leaping on to the neck of the stag. Which was where I must have left it. Lying among the grasses next to the front end of the deer, among all its guts and entrails. How could I have been so careless? It was my father’s prized possession, and I knew that I could not go home without it.