Free Waterfall Glen by Davie Henderson Page B

all.”
    “What exactly did she do?”
    “First of all she talked her husband Malcolm into clearing that side of the glen—” he pointed to the opposite hillside “— to make way for sheep. In his heart he must have known it was wrong, but what he felt for Carolyn was stronger than what he felt for his ‘children’. Still, at least he arranged for them to have plots on the coast—a faraway part of the estate that his wastrel son Alisdair would later sell to pay off gambling debts.”
    “If the Highland clansmen were such fierce warriors why didn’t they put up any sort of a fight?” Kate asked, looking across the lochan at the forlorn remains of an abandoned little community.
    “They did as their chief told them, Lady Kate, the way children should always do what their father tells them.”
    The sight of an old church up ahead, at the end of the lochan, prompted Finlay to add, “And they did what their ministers told them, too—not realizing that the ministers weren’t giving voice to the word of God, but were acting as mouthpieces for the lairds and ladies.”
    “Why would men of God do that?”
    “Because it wasn’t God who gave them money for manses and for churches like that one up ahead.” He pointed to the old stone church. “It wasn’t God who put them in a pulpit or had the power to remove them from it. So the ministers told their flock that the exodus was the act of a vengeful Almighty angered at their sins, and that they should be grateful for the chance of redemption.
    “In the last little township to be cleared on the otherside of the lochan, though, an old woman called Jessie McDowell refused to leave her cottage. She said she’d lived there all her days, and that was where she’d die.
    “When Lady Carolyn heard that, she told the sheriff’s officers who were charged with enforcing the eviction orders, ‘The old witch has lived long enough as it is. Burn the cottage and grant her wish to die in it.’
    “The sheriff’s officers went back to Jessie’s cottage with torch in hand. Some neighbours dragged Jessie from her home just before it was burned to the ground. They put her on a cart and took her to the coast. She died as soon as she got there, and her last words were a curse on Lady Carolyn and her issue.”
    Kate shivered again, despite the summer sun.
    “As for the other clansmen who’d been moved to the coast, they could barely feed themselves, let alone pay rent. When the winter came they had to beg Malcolm for help. Full of guilt, he gave it to them.
    “Lady Carolyn was furious when she found out; she saw them as a liability rather than a responsibility. She told Malcolm the clansmen had to learn to stand on their own two feet… or fall.
    “Not long after that, Malcolm found out that Lady Carolyn was having an affair with the factor who’d been hired to oversee the leasing of the land. No doubt brokenhearted by his wife’s betrayal, and guilt-ridden by what he’d done to his clansmen, Malcolm took his own life.”
    “The first victim of the curse?”
    “So it was said.”
    “Given a free reign, now, Lady Carolyn set about clearing the rest of the glen with a vengeance. The Highlanders didn’t feel the same sort of loyalty to her that they’d felt to Malcolm, however, and she guessed they might resist. She waited until they were in the church up ahead one Sunday and had some sheep farmers who’d been made special constables—a law unto themselves, in other words—put their houses to the torch.
    “When the clansmen came out of the church it was to find their homes were in flames. They didn’t even have a chance to salvage their belongings, which was just as Lady Carolyn intended because she didn’t want them going to the coast and becoming a burden on the estate like the families Malcolm had evicted.”
    “What happened to them?” Kate asked, shocked.
    “She got the minister to gather them here.” They’d reached the church. “Right here in the churchyard