Love and Music Will Endure Read Free Page B

that would drown both her and the tender life curled within.
    She turned to look for Iain but he was already striding away to check that their belongings were safe at the inn. A hand reached out to grip her arm. It was the sailor guiding her hands and feet onto the swaying ladder. She gritted her teeth as she inched upwards. He stood behind her, steadying it until she staggered aboard and stumbled over shards of timber left over from the ship’s last cargo.
    Meanwhile, as Iain climbed the brae to the inn he could feel a lightness in his step. He would soon be his own man, master of his own land with no-one telling him what to do. Still, he felt rage when he remembered what had brought them here. They had not planned to emigrate. Only last year they were newly married and settled into a decent sized croft with sweet grazing nearby. They were harvesting their first crop of oats and barley. They were half way through by the Saturday and the weather was holding up well.
    Then he woke early on the Sabbath to see the clouds moving in, dark battalions from the west. He hurried out to finish the job, ignoring Flòraidh’s protests, cutting and stacking the crop,a good thing too because ferocious wind and rain savaged the land the next day and for the whole of the following week. But of course some pious busybody, jealous of his good fortune, had tattled to the minister. There he came hopping up to their door with his beaky red nose and crow black plumage.
    ‘I hear you’ve broken the commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy’, he said.
    ‘I had no choice. Would the Good Lord think it right for me to leave us short of meal next spring?’
    ‘It’s not for you, Iain MacDonald, an unlettered man, to questions God’s commands.’
    ‘Maybe not, but didn’t the Saviour himself love and forgive sinners? He would understand that poor men like me have to work so that we don’t starve. We can’t be like the fowls of the air that neither sow nor reap.’
    Hearing her husband’s raised voice, Flòraidh had rushed out, wringing her hands. ‘Please forgive Iain, Sir. I’m sure he regrets the error of his ways.’ She grasped her husband’s arm but he shook her hand off.
    ‘I want to hear the sinner himself repent.’
    Iain stood motionless, towering over the slender figure of the minister. The silence lengthened like an afternoon shadow. Eventually the minister sniffed away a dewdrop and, gathering his dignity, turned away.
    But the damage was done. The other women of Skeabost shunned Flòraidh or whispered behind her back while the men gave Iain sidelong glances. She was much grieved by this and Iain himself now felt unsettled on the land that had given him so much satisfaction to work. He carried on, his anger still rumbling within him until the day came for him to pay his rent to the factor, James MacDonald, a hard faced man with shrewd eyes. He was called
Seumas an Sionnach
, but not to his face.
    ‘What’s this I hear about you taunting the minister,
Iain Bàn
? It won’t be forgotten. You’re a marked man now.’ He grinned wolfishly.
    Iain glared at him through fierce blue eyes, under thick sandy eyebrows.
    ‘Don’t you long to be free of people meddling in your life? Aren’t you tired of being a bull pulled along by the ring through his nose?’
    Iain grunted.
    ‘Wouldn’t you rather be free of all that canting interference?
    ‘Of course I would but I don’t see how.’
    ‘What about going to the colonies? You would be free there.’
    Iain clenched his jaw, ‘I won’t be driven from my native land.’
    ‘No, but you better yourself by going on your own terms. You’ll have heard of Lord Selkirk who arranged for lots of Skye folk to sail to Prince Edward Island? They’ve thrived there. Now a good friend of mine, a lawyer in Glasgow, is at this very moment chartering a vessel to give the same chance to other emigrants.’ He raised his hand as he saw Iain was about to protest. ‘No, hear me out. It’s not