Inferno Read Free Page B

course.’
    â€˜An’ begs you’ll sup wi’ us tonight.’
    It was a long drive up a rutted road not much better than a sheep run, through glens and around the bare crests of hills to the edge of a wood. The stone cottage was snug and well-kept; a vegetable garden laid out in orderly rows among a bright profusion of foxgloves. A whitewashed kitchen was hung with hams and spotless copper utensils. The neat and colourfully ornamented rooms spoke of tranquillity and contentment.
    They sat down at a scrubbed-pine table as an awed maid bustled at the dishes. Kydd was given the place of honour opposite the host, Stirk at his right hand.
    Conscious of the quality of Stirk’s gentleman friend they were stiff with reserve, but soon melted at Kydd’s earnest praise of the game pie. Mr McGillie was a dignified, upright Scot, with curiously neat manners. When he spoke, all listened respectfully to his slow-voiced and precise opinions. His two boys sat in awed quiet, fixing Kydd with wide eyes, and Old Widow McGillie pursed her lips in vague disapproval.
    The rosy-cheeked Connie McGillie was transparently proud of her brother and insisted that he tell of his adventures on the seven seas, tales that she was sure her guest would notcredit in a thousand years. At Stirk’s red-faced hesitation, an amused Kydd was assured that her brother was not one for many words but after the whisky came out there might be more.

Chapter 5

    T he evening had been a sovereign remedy for his hurry of spirits – and the next morning Kydd borrowed a gnarled stick and set off for the cliff-tops to take his fill of the fine views.
    It was a steep climb out of the village but he soon found his stride.
    Four or five miles ahead in the glittering sea a pair of islands stretched across his vision. They were effectively the guardians of Dunlochry, a rampart against the open Atlantic beyond, that would throw a lee to all but a south-westerly.
    Kydd breathed deeply. The Outer Isles – no more distant and lonely place could be conceived.
    In winter, with howling gales and lashed by storms, it would be a very different place but now it reached out to him. There was not a thing of man in sight – and he was utterly on his own with his thoughts, which returned to what he had so recently gone through aboard
Tyger
.
    He stopped walking. A lump grew in his throat and he sat on a flat rock to look out on the limitless sea through fastmisting eyes as emotion took hold. His head dropped and he surrendered to the feeling invading his soul, a long, racking and consuming passion born of that experience of carnage and heroism, peril and desperation – what might so easily have been and what triumphantly was. It swept over him like a torrent, cleansing and scouring, leaving him shuddering and weak with the unstoppable force of it all.
    Then as if in a dream of long ago he heard a voice. Infinitely kind and gentle, one that his reason had clung to in the gulf of years that separated the famous frigate captain of now from a young seaman in his first skirmish against the enemy, a voice that had then seen him through to the other side. ‘How’s this, Tom, m’ old shipmate? Somethin’ has ye by the tail, then?’
    Low and concerned, just as it had been so long ago.
    But the hand on his shoulder was real enough. He rubbed his eyes, looked up and saw Stirk’s seamed face drawn in care. It brought on another bout of uncontrollable feeling and he reached for control.
    â€˜I – I’m s-sorry, Toby, j-just came over me.’
    It sounded foolish but he couldn’t help it.
    â€˜Don’t be sorry, cuffin. Things in life, well, they’s natural an’ we has t’ see ’em through ourselves and be buggered to any who says else.’
    The same patient, practical good sense.
    â€˜Why … why did you come here?’
    â€˜Someone said as how you’re heading up these ’ere cliffs an’ I