lonely men leaning against the wall of a trench in the dark watches, wanting to remember home, or lying on a stretcher, trying to die bravely. The Scots had made good soldiers and they’d died hard. Not in their tens or hundreds, but in their thousands. Rutledge felt a duty to them still, and it was a burden he hadn’t healed sufficiently yet to put down. It wasn’t easily explained—but it was there, that sense of duty to the dead.
He was going to Scotland now, there was no turning back—
It’s not as if I’ll be driving as far as Edinburgh,
he argued with himself.
The Lodge is in the country, for God’s sake! Once
there, I could be anywhere—in any part of Britain. It will have
to be done sometime. I can’t hide from the past—somehow I
must do this—
It would be arrant cruelty to call again and say I’ve
changed my mind—
But in the deep recesses of his mind, he could feel Hamish refusing to accept any justification Rutledge might offer. For Rutledge this was a hurdle of the spirit. For Hamish it had been the unacceptable horror of dying in France—his permanent exile from the Highlands. He had not come home then. He would not come home now.
The strain of traveling with that stiff, solid wall of refusal began to take its toll.
APPROACHING NEWCASTLE, ON a whim Rutledge took a side turning and drove west for a time, toward Hexham. When he stopped the motorcar in the middle of nowhere, he got out and walked nearly a mile to where the Great Wall that Hadrian had built across the top of England so many centuries before snaked still across the green land. A rampart of earth and stone to keep the Scottish barbarians at bay, supported in its day by forts and garrisons, shops and sentry posts, long since crumbled and covered by time. He had come here as a boy, and the memory of it had stayed with him.
Soldiers had lived and fought and died here, but that was not the odd pull of this place. It was the rolling green land, the high bowl of sky—the vast
stillness.
There had been no peace in France. Men standing cheek by jowl in the trenches had had no privacy. The guns, even when silent, could be heard in the bones, that ache of thunder that dulled the brain and deafened the ears for hours afterward. The aeroplanes passing overhead, horses struggling through the mire, the lorries moving up, voices swearing and singing and talking day and night. Or screaming and cursing in pain after an attack, and the barking of dogs searching for the living among the dead.
There had been no stillness in himself either, with Hamish rampant in his mind. He was never truly alone.
But here it was palpable—the quiet—
He stood there, looking up at the empty blue sky, his head tilted back, his arms out from his sides, his fists unwittingly clenched. And drank in the stillness.
Even the wind had dropped off. Hamish, for a mercy, was silent. And there was no birdsong; the birds had turned south to winter in another climate. The beating of his heart seemed muffled beneath his coat.
Stillness.
It seemed to spread through him, it seemed to wrap him about, it seemed to fill him full.
For nearly a quarter of an hour he stood there alone and listening.
When he turned away to walk back to the car, there were tears in his eyes.
But he had found the strength he needed.
6
MORAG GILCHRIST GREETED RUTLEDGE AT THE HEAVY front door of The Lodge almost before he’d knocked.
She had looked after this house just south of Edinburgh for nearly three generations of the Trevor family, and nobody seemed to know just how old she was. If anyone asked, he was given short shrift. Morag’s back was straight as a sergeant-major’s, her eyes as bright as a crow’s, and her hands as soft and steady as a girl’s.
“Mr. Ian!”
He thought for an instant she was going to embrace him. There was such warmth in her face that it seemed to reach out to him. He put his arms around her instead, and she let him, then pushed him away with a “Pshaw!
He was going to Scotland now, there was no turning back—
It’s not as if I’ll be driving as far as Edinburgh,
he argued with himself.
The Lodge is in the country, for God’s sake! Once
there, I could be anywhere—in any part of Britain. It will have
to be done sometime. I can’t hide from the past—somehow I
must do this—
It would be arrant cruelty to call again and say I’ve
changed my mind—
But in the deep recesses of his mind, he could feel Hamish refusing to accept any justification Rutledge might offer. For Rutledge this was a hurdle of the spirit. For Hamish it had been the unacceptable horror of dying in France—his permanent exile from the Highlands. He had not come home then. He would not come home now.
The strain of traveling with that stiff, solid wall of refusal began to take its toll.
APPROACHING NEWCASTLE, ON a whim Rutledge took a side turning and drove west for a time, toward Hexham. When he stopped the motorcar in the middle of nowhere, he got out and walked nearly a mile to where the Great Wall that Hadrian had built across the top of England so many centuries before snaked still across the green land. A rampart of earth and stone to keep the Scottish barbarians at bay, supported in its day by forts and garrisons, shops and sentry posts, long since crumbled and covered by time. He had come here as a boy, and the memory of it had stayed with him.
Soldiers had lived and fought and died here, but that was not the odd pull of this place. It was the rolling green land, the high bowl of sky—the vast
stillness.
There had been no peace in France. Men standing cheek by jowl in the trenches had had no privacy. The guns, even when silent, could be heard in the bones, that ache of thunder that dulled the brain and deafened the ears for hours afterward. The aeroplanes passing overhead, horses struggling through the mire, the lorries moving up, voices swearing and singing and talking day and night. Or screaming and cursing in pain after an attack, and the barking of dogs searching for the living among the dead.
There had been no stillness in himself either, with Hamish rampant in his mind. He was never truly alone.
But here it was palpable—the quiet—
He stood there, looking up at the empty blue sky, his head tilted back, his arms out from his sides, his fists unwittingly clenched. And drank in the stillness.
Even the wind had dropped off. Hamish, for a mercy, was silent. And there was no birdsong; the birds had turned south to winter in another climate. The beating of his heart seemed muffled beneath his coat.
Stillness.
It seemed to spread through him, it seemed to wrap him about, it seemed to fill him full.
For nearly a quarter of an hour he stood there alone and listening.
When he turned away to walk back to the car, there were tears in his eyes.
But he had found the strength he needed.
6
MORAG GILCHRIST GREETED RUTLEDGE AT THE HEAVY front door of The Lodge almost before he’d knocked.
She had looked after this house just south of Edinburgh for nearly three generations of the Trevor family, and nobody seemed to know just how old she was. If anyone asked, he was given short shrift. Morag’s back was straight as a sergeant-major’s, her eyes as bright as a crow’s, and her hands as soft and steady as a girl’s.
“Mr. Ian!”
He thought for an instant she was going to embrace him. There was such warmth in her face that it seemed to reach out to him. He put his arms around her instead, and she let him, then pushed him away with a “Pshaw!
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