The Water of Life

6. Scotland, April 19th, 1746

6. Scotland, April 19th, 1746“Gleann Dubh!”

The two words had crossed his lips without his having to form them. His eyes had contemplated the rolling hillsides, coloured by vibrant purple heather. Did his expression resemble his ancestor’s, which had gazed upon these hills for the first time almost two hundred years ago? A flood of emotions, more restless than the rush of the river Spey visible in the distance, stirred his senses and made him want to run. He wasn’t sure in which direction. Should he plunge into the valley or leave it for good?

Niall Fearmòr felt a great sense of pride to be returning home to the land that had reared and nourished him with its water and its barley. Three days ago, on the battlefield of Culloden, he had heard the pastor John Maitland consecrate crumbs of oatcake for Communion with uisge beatha, for lack of wine. And then, Niall had been thrown into the battle that had destroyed everything, especially hope.

The weight of such a great shame, the shame of the defeat that the clans had just suffered at Culloden, lay heavily on Niall’s shoulders, weighing down his steps. He had fought for Scotland, had rallied to the young prince Charles Edward Stuart, whom he had followed into exile in France. Disembarking beside the Pretender in 1745, he had believed that Scotland would finally be freed from the English yoke. Despite the first victories and the taking of Edinburgh, Prince Charles had unfortunately decided to meet the English army, commanded by the ruthless Duke of Cumberland, on the field of Culloden. To make things worse, not all of the country had rallied behind its prince. The English troops had included just as many Scottish soldiers as the Pretender’s army—which, badly routed, had left behind one thousand dead. Charles Edward Stuart had fled Scotland, as Niall Fearmòr should have done.

And yet the pull of the Gleann Dubh, of the Dark Valley of his birth, prevented Niall from walking away.

He had taken three days to cross a distance normally covered in one. He had lost blood from a shoulder injury, and he had been forced to travel carefully in order to evade the English patrols still searching for all those who had escaped their bullets and bayonets. Cumberland’s army, driven by a singular brutality, had massacred just as many fugitives as fighters.

His stomach empty, a weakened Niall entered the valley, his senses taking in each bit of birdsong, each breeze and each smell like the words of a familiar, welcoming hymn. At the edge of the Sruth fuar, one of the three streams that meandered down the slopes of the Gleann Dubh, he found the path that would take him back home.

Since his departure for France, he had had no news of his family. During his walk, he climbed up the opposite side of the valley he had just crossed, fearing that the news he was about to receive would be even sadder than the news he was bringing.

When he reached the place to cross the Sruth fuar, he hesitated for a long time. He could continue straight to his parents’ house, or go slightly back upstream to see whether, by any chance … He knelt, like a believer at a religious service. His fingers broke through the water’s surface and formed a container of flesh, like a quaich, the type of small chalice the locals used here for drinking whisky. The icy cold pierced his battered body. He sprinkled the wound in his right shoulder with water and slowly leaned, prostrated himself, over the stream. His lips touched the surface of the water like a lover kissing his beloved upon returning from a long separation.

Niall got up in one quick movement. His head was spinning. The midges, those tiny, barely visible little black flies, formed a thick, constantly moving cloud. But Niall ignored them. Water trickled from his thick beard. He headed upstream; he’d go to the house afterwards. He hurried, suddenly feeling a sense of urgency, a fear that he had returned too late. Maybe his father was no longer around to make the whisky.

He finally arrived, crossing the edge of a forest that only a Fearmòr, or a close friend of the clan, could navigate.

Even before the hut clinging to the bank of the stream came into view, he was reassured by the smell. Thick smoke reeking of peat floated away through a hole in the roof. He moved forward and opened the hut door.

He saw before him the image engraved in his memory: a man standing next to a peat fire beside his still. If the man hadn’t been more bent, whiter-haired and more wrinkled than his memories, he could have believed that ten years had not passed, that he had never left the Gleann Dubh.

Niall hugged his father. This reunion left them both equally amazed. Though they had barely exchanged a few words, the father was already handing a small jug to his son.

“Let’s drink to your return.”

“Slàinte!” toasted Niall, bringing the jug to his lips.

He let the whisky rest in his mouth for a moment. Niall smiled and held out the jug to his father. Now he was truly back in his own land, for it was not only all around him, but inside him as well.

“Och! There’ll never be another whisky like my father’s.”

His father agreed. Niall asked for news of the family: of his mother, of his sisters Isobel and Maggie, of his brother Seamus.

“Your mother’s well, she’ll be happy to see you. But the others …”

Niall’s fears were confirmed.

“They’ve gone away,” his father said simply. “There’s no way to live off the land here anymore.”

So his brother and his sisters had all left the Highlands for the south, driven away by the unaffordable rents demanded by the landowners more and more resigned to the English occupation.

“If your mother and I are still clinging to our little plot, it’s only because our lands are too craggy to serve as pasture, and because I still manage to sell my peat-reek. Damn the English!”

Niall drank some more whisky. The warmth comforted him like a balm on his wounded heart.

“You’ve come from Culloden?” his father asked, pointing to Niall’s shoulder.

At least he had been spared the pain of announcing their defeat.

“We heard of it yesterday,” his father continued. “I was sure you’d be there. But I thank God that you didn’t fall to their bullets.”

Niall drank again. He heard the wort boiling in the still, the sign that alcohol was about to separate from water.

“It’s almost time,” he said.

His father, attaching the coil to the still, nodded.

“You’ll hide here, Niall. However hard they look for you, they won’t find you.”

The first drop condensed in the coil. Niall felt his blood boil as he watched life leave the water, to be reincarnated as uisge beatha. In the warmth of the bothy, he was rediscovering his taste for life. His father handed him an oatcake and a bit of cheese.

No, the English won’t find me, thought Niall. In any case, I’ll never be the same again. He took a bite of the oatcake. Now it’s me that has to find myself.