Free A Dark and Distant Shore by Reay Tannahill

castle now ruled peaceably over an estate comprising almost a thousand square miles of mountain, loch, and river, it had been built in the thirteenth century as a watch-tower against Norse sea raiders. Whoever had chosen the site had known what he was about. The castle commanded all points of the compass. Set on the Hebridean coast of the Scottish mainland, on the angle of a long sea inlet that curled in from the west and then sharply to the south, it was protected on three sides by open stretches of water, and on the fourth – the east, to which it was linked by the causeway – by a steep rampart of mountains. Everywhere there were hills flanking the water, standing back a little along the western arm of the inlet, Loch an Vele, but rising starkly in the south to three thousand feet, their bare, salmon-red peaks riddled with white quartzite that glittered like salt crystals in the morning sun.
    The slopes changed minute by minute as the sun moved round, rearranging the million-year-old scene with a fine, capricious sense of drama. It was a matter of planes and angles, Henry said unpoetically, as they watched Ben Dearg melt from something stark as an early woodcut into a soft, featureless wash of amethyst. Then, as the sun swam imperceptibly higher in the sky, everything was transformed again. The amethyst faded into emerald and jade, and they could see – etched with a miniaturist’s precision – every fold of ground and every tree, every patch of heather and every frond of new bracken. Even Henry became silent after a while.
    Luke almost had to be held down to eat his breakfast, the porridge that was still scalding hot, as was the way of porridge, despite its long journey from the kitchen to the top of the tower. Luke had forgotten how much he liked it, eaten not as it should be with salt and goat’s milk, but with honey and warm, thin cream from the house cow, a pampered lady of indeterminate breed but unbounded generosity. Even so, he swallowed it hurriedly and then bolted downstairs to the Day Block to say good morning to his grandfather. He had his own reasons for haste, and for failing to hear his grandfather call him back as he scuttled across the causeway and took to the heather. He knew he wasn’t going to be able to avoid Cousin Edward, but on this first day at least he was going to have a rattling good try.
    Vilia had been awake long, long before. She had forgotten how early dawn came in June, and lay for a while smiling dreamily at the thought of all the school books that said the sun rose in the east and set in the west. Here at Kinveil, it scarcely rose or set at all in the summer, but simply dipped below the northern horizon for an hour or two. Daylight in June lasted for twenty hours; in December for less than eight. She had always thought how confusing it must be for the birds, and how exhausting in summer – especially for the dunnocks and robins, first up and last to bed.
    By five o’clock she could bear it no longer, but rose and dressed and made her way a little nervously down to the kitchen, not knowing who or what she would find. But the brawny red hands wielding the spurtle and stirring a steady rain of oatmeal into the cast iron pot belonged to Jessie Graham, and the wide, innocent smile was the same as it had been when the Camerons had ridden away from Kinveil nine long years ago. There was a trace of uncertainty in it at first, as if she weren’t sure what changes the years might have wrought in the child, but at Vilia’s cry of, ‘Jessie! Oh, Jessie!’ the doubt vanished.
    She drew the pot to the side of the fire. ‘Haff you come to sup your parritch? Och, you are too soon. It will be twenty minutes yet before they iss ready!’
    It was the characteristically Highland reference to porridge as ‘they’ that sent happiness surging through Vilia’s whole being. This was the real homecoming, and she was hard put to it not to weep. While the porridge cooked, she plied Jessie with one