The Homecoming

Cold winter mercifully let fall the dark curtain of night on the stricken village. Lives had
been lost in unsustainable numbers for such a small, close community. Cattle had been
driven off. Young women, now bereft of innocence, sat on the edges of families with
greater loss to mourn than simple virginity. The church was a smouldering pile, its priest
nailed to the unhinged door in parody of Christ's passion. On the far side of the burn; in
the shadow of the trees, Lachlan pulled himself into a sitting position. He gnawed at
white lips; lips drained of blood in a face drained of life. The wound neath his left armpit
was dark and crusted. It hurt no longer; the pain, like the blood loss, blunted by the
severe cold. Uncle Hamish lay across the threshold of his house, his head tilted in that
improbable angle of death. A Tacksman of McIan of Glencoe; a MacDonald petty laird,
his cottage was the only stone building in the village. Draped over his outstretched legs
was his wife, Lachlan's Aunt Mhairi, gutted as one would a river trout; her blood made
gelatinous by the iron hard frost. The shouts and laughter of the harbingers of this
disaster had petered out. Up at the Inn these butchers were at last succumbing to the
deadening embrace of Donald's ale. They were soldiers of The King; Campbell's all..

The slaughter had started in the cold, dark hours of morning, before Lachlan's return from
the cattle fair at Killin. The depressed, flat clouds of smoke hanging over the village of
Clachaig had hastened his steps. With the acrid smell of burning wood and thatch in his
nostrils, Lachlan failed to spot the well-placed Redcoat picket The large uniformed
highlander seemed to rise out of the heather, his bayonet charged musket levelled at the
young man's chest. Lachlan glimpsed several lifeless bodies strewn along the narrow
path. A boy of six or seven years lay nearest, a dry, bloody crust obscuring his face. His
hands were cupped in front, in the attitude of prayer; unanswered prayer. Lachlan reared
in horror, the soldier responding with a deep well-aimed thrust just below the armpit.
The force of the lunge sent Lachlan backward over the crest of the hill. He bounced over
the folds in the ground and ended in the swift flowing burn far below the path. Two
musket shots caroomed off the rocks nearby then the soldiers withdrew again from sight.

As the premature winter dusk settled over the glen, Lachlan used the deeply riven bed of
the burn to get close to Clachaig. Now from the shelter of the woods, he was able to
survey the smoking ruins of home. In a moment of overwhelming despair, Lachlan
became aware that he wasn't alone. Throughout the dense thicket sat creatures of the
night. Spectral, hollow-eyed, grave-cloth creatures. Faces once known to him, once
dear to him. His fevered brain couldn't decide if they were the living or the dead.