Free Last Writes by Catherine Aird Page A

couldn’t and it was only a conscious effort of will that stopped him spending every minute of every day keeping his eye on the track that came down towards Dingwall from the west through the ancient settlement of Strathpeffer.
    What he would do when he saw armed men approaching was a different matter and unfortunately time might well be of the essence. Mustering the forces of law and order was no easy matter in remote Fearnshire so the longer warning he had the better. Assistance against an armed band was not easily at hand at the best of times – even less so when it wasn’t easy to know on whom to count for support.
    This was because that well-known dictum ‘he who isn’t with me is against me’ didn’t hold when there were Fearnshire men unashamedly sitting on the fence, watching and waiting to see which way the tide of battle would go. The race would be to the swift, right enough, not to the loyal.
    Appeals for loyalty to a distant monarch about whom little good had been heard were not likely to be entirely successful either. It would take time, too, and in some cases persuasion not far short of bribery, to get his nearest neighbours to rally to his side.
    He mentally reviewed those on whom he could call foraid in upholding the rule of law while he once more drifted uneasily towards the point in his room where he could look to the west. One thing was certain and that was that it wouldn’t be a collection of young Lochinvars coming out of the west and descending on Drummondreach.
    On the contrary, in fact.
    It was more likely that that it would be a rabble led by Colum Mulchaich, ever a troublemaker, and it would be the sheriff’s job to stop Mulchaich and his mob wreaking havoc on the countryside. The sheriff sincerely hoped that it wasn’t also going to be his job to get Colum Mulchaich over to Crochair – more properly called ‘the place of the hanging’ – but if he had to do it, then duty demanded that he did just that.
    He was about to take yet another turn round the room when the slightest of movements in the middle distance caught his eye. It was gone in a moment and he had to wait a full minute before he saw it again. He rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t dreamt it. There was a small man clad in some tattered faded grey fustian creeping towards Drummondreach along the shelter of a faraway field wall down near the shore beyond.
    The sheriff slipped out into his own front doorway and adjured the hall boy to keep his bagpipes silent at the approach of a visitor. ‘Let the wee mannie come to the house any way he likes,’ he said as the boy laid his chanter aside. ‘He’ll no want a fuss made.’
    If he, Rhuaraidh Macmillan, was any judge of what the man wanted it was food and shelter. Even so the figure did not advance any further than the field wall nearest to Drummondreach. Instead, he just lay on the grassalongside the wall, making no more movement. It didn’t take Rhuaraidh Macmillan long to work out why. The visitor – whoever he was – was waiting for darkness to fall.
    The sheriff stopped his pacing up and down of his room and sat down to think instead. This could be good and bad. It might be that the man was a spy, an advance guard, watching and waiting to see that the sheriff was indeed in his home at Drummondreach. It might be that he felt in too much danger himself to advance any further in daylight. It might be that the stranger wanted the cover of darkness for some other fell purpose.
    It was a full hour before the sheriff knew anything more. It was deep twilight before the man made a move and then it was only to the very edge of the sheriff’s policies. He stood there for a moment and then raised his right arm and lofted something that looked heavy over a spot where the boundary wall looked at its lowest.
    And then he was gone.
    The sheriff stifled an impulse to go straight out to see what had been cast onto his land, his hand stayed by rumours of fatal explosions at faraway places in the