The Road From Ardcranna

By Daniel Boyle

'The Road From Ardcranna' is an epic story set in nineteenth century Edinburgh, and the American prairies. It follows the surviving members of two families who are brutally evicted from their homes in the Scottish Highlands. Mary McQueen, fourteen, stays behind to avenge her mother who is murdered during the eviction by the new landowner, Thomas Coulll. Despite becoming a wife, mother, and successful business woman, Mary never loses her desire for vengeance.

The people of Ardcranna are put aboard a 'coffin ship' and transported to the Americas. Mary's father and grandfather perish during the Atlantic crossing, as do the parents of Samuel McQueen, fifteen, and his sister Katherine, thirteen. Mary's brother John, fifteen, survives and he and the McAllan children are taken under the wing of gold prospector, Daniel Flynn.

It would seem that no gold is ever found, but John and Katherine find love, are married, and John fulfils his ambition to become a preacher. Samuel too, gets married. His bride is Rose, a member of the Nez Perce Indian tribe. In 1877 the Nez Perce are declared 'hostile' and are pursued by the US army, as they try to reach the Canadian border. By dint of circumstances, John , Mary, Samuel, and Flynn find themselves with the Nez Perce on part of that historic journey.

John and Katherine settle in Duluth, Minnesota, while Flynn and Mary Return to Scotland. Tragedy eventually befalls Mary , but good fortune smiles on Flynn and he returns to the Americas to be reunited with John and Katherine.

'The Road From Ardcranna' began life as a three part drama for BBC Scotland Television, but a change of personnel there meant it never got produced, and so the author presents it here in book form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Boyle
• Release date: Dec 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463771549

Daniel Boyle

Left school at fifteen and for the next eleven years worked as a seaman. Left the sea and became a postman for four years before going to university as a mature student. After university my main occupation was as a college lecturer I gave this up to become a full-time writer in 1990. Since then I have written extensively for television, having four original films produced, and contributing to major series such as 'Inspector Morse', 'Rebus', 'Hamish MacBeth', 'Taggart' and 'Lewis'. I am currently under commission by Rooster Film and Television Ltd. to adapt Mary Dogood for the screen. I am married and have three children and four grandchildren.

Book preview

THE ROAD FROM ARDCRANNA

Written by

Daniel Boyle

Acknowledgements

While writing this book I visited many websites dealing with North American history. But the two books that inspired the story, and which I drew upon for factual material, were James Hunter’s meticulously researched A Dance Called America and his Glencoe And The Indians (Mainstream Publishing Company Edinburgh Ltd 1994 & 1996 respectively )

Copyright Daniel Boyle 2019

Behold A Pale Horse (1855-56)

The sea lay eight or so miles to the west, and a chill wind from there harried a weak autumn sun as it tried to warm Ardcranna. And as the first frosts had yet to fall on the highlands of Scotland, the ubiquitous heather retained its late bloom, and its purple joined with the browns and greens of bracken, moss, and coarse grass to give the land a patchwork of colour that was made splendid by the sunlight, and ever-changing by the shadows cast down by driven clouds.

But that lively palette would soon be gone. It would be washed away in the icy rains of winter, when no sun would show through the thick, lowering clouds that would almost daily fill the sky and make this, by any measure, a hard land. A land that had once been covered by a forest of Pine, Aspen, Birch, Juniper and Oak, that man and nature had between them banished so that now scarcely a bush could be found on a riven terrain of jagged peaks, steep hillsides and deep glens, all formed in a time beyond memory by geological cataclysms and melting, shifting glaciers.

And yet, as the Bedouin love their scorched and arid desert, and the Inuit their frozen wastes, so did the people of Ardcranna love their hard land. Those that lived there on that fateful day in eighteen hundred and fifty-five, could look at a path and know that in centuries past it had borne their ancestors. Most could know, too, that one or more of their line had died defending the land from the predations of Norse marauders or the agents of southern Kings. It was this knowledge, these blood-ties, that nourished a profound affection for the land, and would make the leaving of it akin to the tearing of gristle from bone.

The Reverend Henry Tulloch had no such regard for the land. He had been born and raised in a lowland town, but at the age of twenty three had been sent by his Church to minister to the people of Ardcranna. And despite the passage of thirty years his recollection of arriving there remained perfect.

The Clan system that gave armies to Charles Edward Stuart in his failed fight for the British throne had been destroyed. And with the passing of the Clans went the bonds of kinship that existed between Chieftain and people and the mutual obligations they entailed. Now, the cash nexus replaced those ancient ties, as the Chieftain turned landlord and rented the people land on which to live and farm.

They grew potatoes, oats, and barley, and raised some cattle. But the hard land was miserly in yield and the struggle to subsist and pay rent was bitter and constant. For a time, the families of Ardcranna found Kelping could increase their income and fill their landlord’s pockets. The Kelp was gathered and burned in kilns and the seaweed’s alkaline ash sent south to be used in the making of soap and glass and other goods. But cheaper foreign imports and scientific advance destroyed the Kelp trade and the people of Ardcranna were again made reliant on the hard land and the bare subsistence it provided. And that was how The Reverend Henry Tulloch had found them, illfed, ill-clothed, and living in low, stone houses that were warmed by peat fires whose smoke blackened the walls before seeping through a roof made of turf and heather and whatever timber could be found on the shore or otherwise scavenged. Houses built to hold livestock also, as these were possessions far too precious to leave exposed to the elements.

Henry Tulloch had been appalled by the condition of his charges and the manner in which they lived. He despaired utterly at the prospect of a life among them, and in those first few days in Ardcranna he thought many times of slipping away in the night. He knew that to do so would mean the end of his calling, but at least he would be free of those ragged, malnourished wretches who thought nothing of sharing a roof with their beasts. To his young townsman"s eyes they seemed scarcely human, let alone souls in need of his ministry. But Henry Tulloch did not abscond. He did what he always did in times of trouble and turned to his God. And with prayer came clarity of thought and the incipient notion that Ardcranna might not be his Golgotha after all. Was there not a church for him to preach in? And by all accounts the people of the area found time to see to its upkeep. Hardly the behaviour of uncivilised devils. He would wait. He would see how many came to worship and how fervently they prayed.

Henry Tulloch’s church stood atop a small hill on the bend of a glen running south to north then curving sharply west toward the coast. From that vantage point Henry was able to watch his congregation approach from two directions before they merged and climbed the narrow path to the church. And on that first Sunday he was pleased to see that the people came in numbers, and that the faces of the children had been washed clean for the occasion. But the Reverend Tulloch’s greatest pleasure was yet to come.

The church was modest in size, but having no furnishings save for a pulpit there was ample room for a standing congregation. And Henry guessed from the intricate way in which people threaded paths around their neighbours to reach a particular spot in the church that they would occupy that very same place each week. And when they had settled in their places Henry Tulloch introduced himself in the Gaelic language taught him by his maternal grandmother. He then said opening prayers in that tongue before reading from the Reverend James Stewart’s 1776 Gaelic translation of The New Testament. And the young Reverend Henry Tulloch was pleased to note that he was listened to in respectful silence by congregants who in turn spoke to their God with bowed heads and all due solemnity. And when the time came for psalms the Precentor stepped forward to give the line. His name was Duncan McQueen, who was then in his thirty fifth year. And he gave the line to Psalm 22.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me. Why are you so far from saving me.

He sang without accompaniment and in a voice that was nasal and slightly high in pitch. Yet the rendition was at once stark and hauntingly beautiful for being delivered in the rhythms and intonations of that ancient tongue. And when the other congregants took up the line and echoed the plangent prayer, Henry Tulloch was gripped by a deep sense of shame. That he had judged these people by their mere condition; had doubted that a spiritual life could endure in such a wretched state, and yet, there it was before him, a spirit that had defied the ravages of extreme want, and become audible in voices filled with love for their God.

Three decades had passed since his first Sabbath in Ardcranna. And during that time Henry Tulloch could have moved to prosperous lowland parishes on two occasions. But his decisions to decline these opportunities had required no thought whatsoever. For while Henry could remain indifferent to the land, his heart belonged to its people. Daily he would marvel at them. At how their familial bonds could transcend privation and see parents who laboured long and hard somehow find the time and the strength to love their children tenderly. At how men and women who were themselves struggling to survive could yet instinctively lend assistance to an ailing or needy neighbour. Those very same people who once had alarmed Henry Tulloch now inspired him and enriched his life by their example and their friendship. For thirty years now he had considered it an honour to baptise them, to marry them, and to pray for the repose of their souls at their lives end. And in that time too it had been an honour and a pleasure to teach those of their young who showed willing how to read, write, and converse in the English language. The latest and best of these scholars was John Mc Queen, the grandson of Duncan. He was fifteen years old and his aptitude for learning gave him a knowledge and grasp of scripture that was almost the equal of Henry’s own. And as the pair sat with their backs to the south-facing wall of the church on that day in 1855, with their eyes half closed and faces raised towards the feeble sun, the sound of horses came to them during a lull in the wind. And when they looked they could see three horsemen moving north at a leisurely pace.

The man and the boy could identify two of the riders and their mounts. They sat squat and hunched on their beasts and anyone could see from their mien and other features common to them both that these two men were brothers. They were Alexander and Fergus Bain, first and second sons of Sir Gregor Bain, the Master of Ardcranna. The third horseman was not yet known to Henry and John. Nor was the magnificent white stallion on which he sat familiar to them. But Thomas Coull and his pale horse would soon be known to all the people of Ardcranna, and his name would be reviled for as long as any of their number was able to draw a breath. But on his first day in Ardcranna, Henry and John could only note that Coull was tall and kept a straight back in the saddle. That he was in his middle-to-late twenties, and that his garb was expensive and finely cut in the style of the town or city. That his hair was Macassar-oiled and combed tightly back from a long, narrow face that bore thin lips and a slim aquiline nose. And had they been closer to him, Henry and John would also have noted the eyes that were Thomas Coull’s most striking feature. These appeared to be an impossible pitch black in colour and would cause many in Ardcranna to suspect Thomas Coull of infernal origins.

Wait! Coull said. And his companions brought their animals to a halt and followed his gaze to where Henry and John sat by the church wall.

That’s the Reverend Tulloch, our minister. Alexander Bain informed Coull.

The lad is John McQueen, his family belong to Ardcranna, The younger Bain added.

Coull watched the man and the boy in silence for a moment, then asked, They are God-fearing? The people hereabout?

They are, Said Fergus Bain.

All of them? Coull then wanted to know.

To a man, the older Bain confirmed.

And they’re to be found in that church on the Sabbath Day? Queried Coull, turning to look at Fergus Bain.

Aye, Coull was told in an uncertain voice.

Coull turned again to watch the man and the boy for a long moment before moving off without another word. And when he did so his curiosity concerning the people’s devotions brought only shrugs and puzzled looks from the brothers before they too walked their horses on. And from their vantage point by the church wall, the tall stranger’s obvious interest in them aroused nothing more than mild curiosity in Henry Tulloch and John McQueen, though his costly attire did set Henry to thinking when they had both resumed their previous positions.

Consider Mark, chapter ten, verse twenty-five, John. Henry began in a thoughtful tone, but never got to finish.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. John interrupted, in a voice made sleepy by the mild heat of the sun on his face. And Henry Tulloch turned to look at his young companion and sighed at the ease with which he quoted Mark’s words.

Aye. But what does it mean do you think? Henry asked.

John McQueen pondered the question then opened his eyes and sat forward with his arms clasped around his knees, It depends on who you ask, Reverend Tulloch. John opined, then got to his feet and paced to and fro as an aid to thought.

Take my grandfather now, he said. Ask him and he’ll tell you it’s as plain as the nose on your face. All rich bastards are doomed to spend eternity writhing in the slime of the Abyss. And that is a verbatim quote, Reverend Tulloch.

Aye, Henry smiled. I can hear the old reprobate saying those exact words. But it’s you Im asking John, not your grandfather."

Well of course that old rascal’s entirely wrong, John began, before stopping to gaze outward at some spot in the middle distance. I mean, I’d like to be rich myself, or at least rich enough to own the house I live in and the land on which it stands, and I see nothing sinful in that desire. No, what I think the Lord is offering here is a caution about riches, rather than a judgment upon them.

Go on, Henry quietly urged him.

What is the single thing the Good Book teaches us?

It teaches us many things, John.

Wrong, Reverend Tulloch. It teaches but one thing. To serve God by doing that which we know in our heart to be right.

Well, I suppose, put that way? Henry commented, but with more than a trace of dubiety in his voice.

Theres no supposing about it, John retorted emphatically. Is there one word in the Good Book that teaches us to serve God by doing the wrong thing?"

No, Henry Tulloch was compelled to answer.

Then that’s settled, then, John said. Now, about riches, the Good Samaritan was rich, was he not,? But he used his riches to do the right thing and serve God, did he not?

Aye, Henry was again obliged to agree.

So, much to the disappointment of my grandfather, there’s at least one rich bastard who’s avoided the horrors of the Abyss, wouldn’t you agree?

And for a third time, Henry Tulloch could do little but answer affirmatively, before John continued on, You see, Reverend Tulloch, the Good Samaritan never lost sight of who his true master was. The danger lies in letting riches become the master. John then quoted additional scripture in support of his thesis, For no servant can have two masters at once, either he will hate one and love the other, or he will devote himself to one and despise the other. You must serve God or money, you cannot serve both. And with that John paused before giving a sideways glance at his mentor and adding mischievously, That’s Luke, Reverend Tulloch, chapter sixteen, verse thirteen.

I know that, John McQueen! Henry said, in mock indignation. Then, changing tone to quiet sincerity, he added, Just as I know you’ll make a fine preacher one day.

If I get the opportunity, Reverend Tulloch, John replied, with some doubt in his voice.

I can see no obstacle in your path. Henry Tulloch said with finality, as he leaned back against the wall of his church again and closed his eyes and raised his face to the sun.

And John McQueen smiled to himself as he looked down on that well-loved face that was lined by years of concern for his people; that had gotten florid and fleshy in places too from never refusing a sip of whisky when one was offered. For Henry Tulloch was no fire and brimstone preacher, though John had heard from his elders how people feared as much when the young minister first arrived in Ardcranna. Heard how he had stood off his parishioners and exchanged barely a word with them. Of how some even thought that the slight Lowlander with his shock of black hair and features more feminine than masculine might find life in Ardcranna impossible to bear. But of how others still had counselled patience. People like John’s grandfather who had scolded the doubters for being fools who were too quick to judge the young man. And it was a matter of some pride to John McQueen that his grandfather had been right. For not only did the Reverend Tulloch prove to be no self-righteous buffoon, he also had the wit to see that in a place like Ardcranna a sip of whisky to relieve the harsh grind of daily life did not sit ill with the worship of God. Nor was his contact with the people limited to spiritual matters. Often he would lend a hand when a roof needed fixing, or a crop was to be sown or harvested. And always he would wage war against despair with well-chosen words of encouragement and hope, and an exhortation to have faith in the Lord. And given his tendency to be sanguine it did not surprise John that the minister could see no barrier to himself entering the Church one day. But John McQueen was not so certain. Could his family afford to do without his labour on the land? And even if they were prepared to make that considerable sacrifice, would his conscience allow him to leave in the knowledge that his absence would increase their hardship? These were the impediments that John saw in his path to a calling. But in the end it would not be family ties that would stand in his way. For as John McQueen looked down on the Reverend Tulloch a decision was being made that would tear his family asunder and empty the lands of Ardcranna of all its people.

And His Name That Sat On Him Was Death

Ardcranna Castle had stood for four centuries and been occupied by the Bain family for most of that time. They were among the lesser Highland nobility and this was reflected in the relative modesty of their ancestral home. The castle had been built piecemeal and by that day in 1855 its six foot thick stone walls contained a tower house that rose to four storeys, a capacious hall, some smaller bed chambers, a library, some store rooms, pantries, and a vaulted basement. Access was gained through an archway that stood to the right of the tower house and lead onto a cobbled courtyard. As Thomas Coull entered the courtyard with the Bain brothers and dismounted from his pale horse, he smiled inwardly at the general shabbiness of the place. His researches into the fiscal health of the Bains were proving to be correct. Standing close to the sea would be a test for any structure and the ravages of nature on Ardcranna Castle were all too evident. There were many places where the Atlantic gales and lashing rains of winter had dislodged masonry as effectively as anything shot from a cannon. And in those damp hollows the weeds of many seasons now grew in profusion and their spreading roots threatened to dislodge yet more of the surrounding structure. And while a prudent custodian would certainly have made good these breeches for fear that one day his home might come crashing about his ears Thomas Coull knew well why Sir Gregor Bain had not affected those urgent repairs. For generations now the Bains had been practically penniless. The size of the family’s purse had always reflected their lower social standing among the gentry and Sir Gregor’s great grandfather had sought to remedy this by investing heavily in the Darien Expedition. This infamous attempt by Scotland to establish a colony on the Isthmus Of Panama in the 1690s was disastrous for the nation in general and for the Bains and their fellow investors in particular. And in the intervening century and a half the family had struggled to regain even that solvency they had enjoyed before their historic gamble. But the passing of the clan structure and a hereditary failing to properly husband their land ensured that even that had escaped them. What money that did come their way from the Kelp trade had been squandered on lavish living and yet more ill-starred attempts to quickly redouble the family’s wealth. All that was left to them now was the rent from their tenants. And despite the Bains’ best efforts to extract that payment there was only so much to be had from their hard-driven people. All of these things Thomas Coull knew as he took in the scene of dilapidation. Even the courtyard was unswept and weed choked, and in the absence of any groom it was the younger Bain who shamefacedly was obliged to take charge of the horses.

When he arrived in the great hall, Coull was pleased to see that it was of a piece with the castle’s exterior. Little thought had been given to the use of natural light when the castle was built and the few candles that