NOTE

This story is one of the Achanna series, of which “The Anointed Man” is in Spiritual Tales, and “The DÀn-nan-RÒn” is in the present volume—to which, indeed, “Green Branches” is properly a sequel. (See the note to “The DÀn-nan-RÒn” about the name ‘Gloom.’ I may add here that the surname Achanna is that familiar in the South as Hannay.)

GREEN BRANCHES

In the year that followed the death of MÀnus MacCodrum, James Achanna saw nothing of his brother Gloom. He might have thought himself alone in the world, of all his people, but for a letter that came to him out of the west. True, he had never accepted the common opinion that his brothers had both been drowned on that night when Anne Gillespie left Eilanmore with MÀnus. In the first place, he had nothing of that inner conviction concerning the fate of Gloom which he had concerning that of Marcus; in the next, had he not heard the sound of the feadan, which no one that he knew played, except Gloom; and, for further token, was not the tune that which he hated above all others—the Dance of the Dead—for who but Gloom would be playing that, he hating it so, and the hour being late, and no one else on Eilanmore? It was no sure thing that the dead had not come back; but the more he thought of it the more Achanna believed that his sixth brother was still alive. Of this, however, he said nothing to anyone.

It was as a man set free that, at last, after long waiting and patient trouble with the disposal of all that was left of the Achanna heritage, he left the island. It was a grey memory for him. The bleak moorland of it, the blight that had lain so long and so often upon the crops, the rains that had swept the isle for grey days and grey weeks and grey months, the sobbing of the sea by day and its dark moan by night, its dim relinquishing sigh in the calm of dreary ebbs, its hollow baffling roar when the storm-shadow swept up out of the sea, one and all oppressed him, even in memory. He had never loved the island, even when it lay green and fragrant in the green and white seas under white and blue skies, fresh and sweet as an Eden of the sea. He had ever been lonely and weary, tired of the mysterious shadow that lay upon his folk, caring little for any of his brothers except the eldest—long since mysteriously gone out of the ken of man—and almost hating Gloom, who had ever borne him a grudge because of his beauty, and because of his likeness to and reverent heed for Alison. Moreover, ever since he had come to love Katreen Macarthur, the daughter of Donald Macarthur who lived in Sleat of Skye, he had been eager to live near her; the more eager as he knew that Gloom loved the girl also, and wished for success not only for his own sake, but so as to put a slight upon his younger brother.

So, when at last he left the island, he sailed southward gladly. He was leaving Eilanmore; he was bound to a new home in Skye, and perhaps he was going to his long-delayed, long dreamed-of happiness. True, Katreen was not pledged to him; he did not even know for sure if she loved him. He thought, hoped, dreamed, almost believed that she did; but then there was her cousin Ian, who had long wooed her, and to whom old Donald Macarthur had given his blessing. Nevertheless, his heart would have been lighter than it had been for long, but for two things. First, there was the letter. Some weeks earlier he had received it, not recognising the writing, because of the few letters he had ever seen, and, moreover, as it was in a feigned hand. With difficulty he had deciphered the manuscript, plain printed though it was. It ran thus:—

This letter was ever in his mind: this, and what happened in the gloaming when he sailed away for Skye in the herring-smack of two men who lived at Armadale in Sleat. For, as the boat moved slowly out of the haven, one of the men asked him if he was sure that no one was left upon the island; for he thought he had seen a figure on the rocks, waving a black scarf. Achanna shook his head, but just then his companion cried that at that moment he had seen the same thing. So the smack was put about, and when she was moving slow through the haven again, Achanna sculled ashore in the little coggly punt. In vain he searched here and there, calling loudly again and again. Both men could hardly have been mistaken, he thought. If there were no human creature on the island, and if their eyes had not played them false, who could it be? The wraith of Marcus, mayhap; or might it be the old man himself (his father), risen to bid farewell to his youngest son, or to warn him?

It was no use to wait longer; so, looking often behind him, he made his way to the boat again, and rowed slowly out towards the smack.

Jerk—jerk—jerk across the water came, low but only too loud for him, the opening bars of the Damhsa-na-Mairbh. A horror came upon him, and he drove the boat through the water so that the sea splashed over the bows. When he came on deck he cried in a hoarse voice to the man next him to put up the helm, and let the smack swing to the wind.

“There is no one there, Callum Campbell,” he whispered.

“And who is it that will be making that strange music?”

“What music?”

“Sure, it has stopped now, but I heard it clear, and so did Anndra MacEwan. It was like the sound of a reed-pipe, and the tune was an eerie one at that.”

“It was the Dance of the Dead.”

“And who will be playing that?” asked the man, with fear in his eyes.

“No living man.”

“No living man?”

“No. I’m thinking it will be one of my brothers who was drowned here, and by the same token that it is Gloom, for he played upon the feadan; but if not, then … then …”

The two men waited in breathless silence, each trembling with superstitious fear; but at last the elder made a sign to Achanna to finish.

“Then … it will be the Kelpie.”

“Is there … is there one of the … the cave-women here?”

“It is said; and you know of old that the Kelpie sings or plays a strange tune to wile seamen to their death.”

At that moment, the fantastic jerking music came loud and clear across the bay. There was a horrible suggestion in it, as if dead bodies were moving along the ground with long jerks, and crying and laughing wild. It was enough; the men, Campbell and MacEwan, would not now have waited longer if Achanna had offered them all he had in the world. Nor were they, or he, out of their panic haste till the smack stood well out at sea, and not a sound could be heard from Eilanmore.

They stood watching, silent. Out of the dusky mass that lay in the seaward way to the north came a red gleam. It was like an eye staring after them with blood-red glances.

“What is that, Achanna?” asked one of the men at last.

“It looks as though a fire had been lit in the house up in the island. The door and the window must be open. The fire must be fed with wood, for no peats would give that flame; and there were none lit when I left. To my knowing, there was no wood for burning except the wood of the shelves and the bed.”

“And who would be doing that?”

“I know of that no more than you do, Callum Campbell.”

No more was said, and it was a relief to all when the last glimmer of the light was absorbed in the darkness.

At the end of the voyage Campbell and MacEwan were well pleased to be quit of their companion; not so much because he was moody and distraught, as because they feared that a spell was upon him—a fate in the working of which they might become involved. It needed no vow of the one to the other for them to come to the conclusion that they would never land on Eilanmore, or, if need be, only in broad daylight, and never alone.

The days went well for James Achanna, where he made his home at Ranza-beag, on Ranza Water in the Sleat of Skye. The farm was small but good, and he hoped that with help and care he would soon have the place as good a farm as there was in all Skye.

Donald Macarthur did not let him see much of Katreen, but the old man was no longer opposed to him. Sheumais must wait till Ian Macarthur came back again, which might be any day now. For sure, James Achanna of Ranza-beag was a very different person from the youngest of the Achanna-folk who held by on lonely Eilanmore; moreover, the old man could not but think with pleasure that it would be well to see Katreen able to walk over the whole land of Ranza, from the cairn at the north of his own Ranza-MÒr to the burn at the south of Ranza-beag, and know it for her own.

But Achanna was ready to wait. Even before he had the secret word of Katreen he knew from her beautiful dark eyes that she loved him. As the weeks went by they managed to meet often, and at last Katreen told him that she loved him too, and would have none but him; but that they must wait till Ian came back, because of the pledge given to him by her father. They were days of joy for him. Through many a hot noon-tide hour, through many a gloaming, he went as one in a dream. Whenever he saw a birch swaying in the wind, or a wave leaping upon Loch Liath, that was near his home, or passed a bush covered with wild roses, or saw the moonbeams lying white on the boles of the pines, he thought of Katreen: his fawn for grace, and so lithe and tall, with sun-brown face and wavy dark mass of hair and shadowy eyes and rowan-red lips. It is said that there is a god clothed in shadow who goes to and fro among the human kind, putting silence between lovers with his waving hands, and breathing a chill out of his cold breath, and leaving a gulf of deep water flowing between them because of the passing of his feet. That shadow never came their way. Their love grew as a flower fed by rains and warmed by sunlight.

When midsummer came, and there was no sign of Ian Macarthur, it was already too late. Katreen had been won.

During the summer months, it was the custom for Katreen and two of the farm girls to go up Maol-Ranza, to reside at the shealing of Cnoc-an-Fhraoch: and this because of the hill-pasture for the sheep. Cnoc-an-Fhraoch is a round, boulder-studded hill covered with heather, which has a precipitous corrie on each side, and in front slopes down to Lochan Fraoch, a lochlet surrounded by dark woods. Behind the hill, or great hillock rather, lay the shealing. At each week-end Katreen went down to Ranza-MÒr, and on every Monday morning at sunrise returned to her heather-girt eyrie. It was on one of these visits that she endured a cruel shock. Her father told her that she must marry some one else than Sheumais Achanna. He had heard words about him which made a union impossible, and, indeed, he hoped that the man would leave Ranza-beag. In the end, he admitted that what he had heard was to the effect that Achanna was under a doom of some kind; that he was involved in a blood feud; and, moreover, that he was fËy. The old man would not be explicit as to the person from whom his information came, but hinted that he was a stranger of rank, probably a laird of the isles. Besides this, there was word of Ian Macarthur. He was at Thurso, in the far north, and would be in Skye before long, and he—her father—had written to him that he might wed Katreen as soon as was practicable.

“Do you see that lintie yonder, father?” was her response to this.

“Ay, lass; and what about the birdeen?”

“Well, when she mates with a hawk, so will I be mating with Ian Macarthur, but not till then.”

With that she turned, and left the house, and went back to Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. On the way she met Achanna.

It was that night that, for the first time, he swam across Lochan Fraoch to meet Katreen.

The quickest way to reach the shealing was to row across the lochlet, and then ascend by a sheep-path that wound through the hazel copses at the base of the hill. Fully half-an-hour was thus saved, because of the steepness of the precipitous corries to right and left. A boat was kept for this purpose, but it was fastened to a shore-boulder by a padlocked iron chain, the key of which was kept by Donald Macarthur. Latterly he had refused to let this key out of his possession. For one thing, no doubt, he believed he could thus restrain Achanna from visiting his daughter. The young man could not approach the shealing from either side without being seen.

But that night, soon after the moon was whitening slow in the dark, Katreen stole down to the hazel copse and awaited the coming of her lover. The lochan was visible from almost any point on Cnoc-an-Fhraoch, as well as from the south side. To cross it in a boat unseen, if any watcher were near, would be impossible, nor could even a swimmer hope to escape notice unless in the gloom of night, or, mayhap, in the dusk. When, however, she saw, half way across the water, a spray of green branches slowly moving athwart the surface, she knew that Sheumais was keeping his tryst. If, perchance, any one else saw, he or she would never guess that those derelict rowan-branches shrouded Sheumais Achanna.

It was not till the estray had drifted close to the ledge, where, hid among the bracken and the hazel undergrowth, she awaited him, that Katreen descried the face of her lover, as with one hand he parted the green sprays and stared longingly and lovingly at the figure he could just discern in the dim fragrant obscurity.

And as it was this night, so was it on many of the nights that followed. Katreen spent the days as in a dream. Not even the news of her cousin Ian’s return disturbed her much.

One day the inevitable meeting came. She was at Ranza-MÒr, and when a shadow came into the dairy where she was standing she looked up, and saw Ian before her. She thought he appeared taller and stronger than ever, though still not so tall as Sheumais, who would appear slim beside the Herculean Skye man. But as she looked at his close curling black hair, and thick bull neck, and the sullen eyes in his dark wind-red face, she wondered that she had ever tolerated him at all.

He broke the ice at once.

“Tell me, Katreen, are you glad to see me back again?”

“I am glad that you are home once more safe and sound.”

“And will you make it my home for me by coming to live with me, as I’ve asked you again and again.”

“No, as I’ve told you again and again.”

He gloomed at her angrily for a few moments before he resumed.

“I will be asking you this one thing, Katreen, daughter of my father’s brother: do you love that man Achanna who lives at Ranza-beag?”

“You may ask the wind why it is from the east or the west, but it won’t tell you. You’re not the wind’s master.”

“If you think I will let this man take you away from me, you are thinking a foolish thing.”

“And you saying a foolisher.”

“Ay?”

“Ay, sure. What could you do, Ian-mhic-Ian? At the worst, you could do no more than kill James Achanna. What then? I too would die. You cannot separate us. I would not marry you, now, though you were the last man on the world and I the last woman.”

“You’re a fool, Katreen Macarthur. Your father has promised you to me, and I tell you this: if you love Achanna you’ll save his life only by letting him go away from here. I promise you he will not be here long.”

“Ay, you promise me; but you will not say that thing to James Achanna’s face. You are a coward.”

With a muttered oath the man turned on his heel.

“Let him beware o’ me, and you, too, Katreen-mo-nighean-donn. I swear it by my mother’s grave and by St Martin’s Cross that you will be mine by hook or by crook.”

The girl smiled scornfully. Slowly she lifted a milk-pail.

“It would be a pity to waste the good milk, Ian-gÒrach; but if you don’t go it is I that will be emptying the pail on you, and then you’ll be as white without as your heart is within.”

“So, you call me witless, do you? Ian-gÒrach! Well, we shall be seeing as to that; and as for the milk, there will be more than milk spilt because of you, Katreen-donn.”

From that day, though neither Sheumais nor Katreen knew of it, a watch was set upon Achanna.

It could not be long before their secret was discovered; and it was with a savage joy overmastering his sullen rage that Ian Macarthur knew himself the discoverer, and conceived his double vengeance. He dreamed, gloatingly, on both the black thoughts that roamed like ravenous beasts through the solitudes of his heart. But he did not dream that another man was filled with hate because of Katreen’s lover—another man who had sworn to make her his own; the man who, disguised, was known in Armadale as Donald McLean, and in the north isles would have been hailed as Gloom Achanna.

There had been steady rain for three days, with a cold raw wind. On the fourth the sun shone, and set in peace. An evening of quiet beauty followed, warm, fragrant, dusky from the absence of moon or star, though the thin veils of mist promised to disperse as the night grew.

There were two men that eve in the undergrowth on the south side of the lochlet. Sheumais had come earlier than his wont. Impatient for the dusk, he could scarce await the waning of the afterglow. Surely, he thought, he might venture. Suddenly his ears caught the sound of cautious footsteps. Could it be old Donald, perhaps, with some inkling of the way in which his daughter saw her lover, in despite of all; or, mayhap, might it be Ian Macarthur tracking him, as a hunter stalking a stag by the water-pools? He crouched, and waited. In a few minutes he saw Ian carefully picking his way. The man stooped as he descried the green branches; smiled as, with a low rustling, he raised them from the ground.

Meanwhile, yet another man watched and waited, though on the farther side of the lochan, where the hazel copses were. Gloom Achanna half hoped, half feared the approach of Katreen. It would be sweet to see her again, sweet to slay her lover before her eyes, brother to him though he was. But, there was the chance that she might descry him, and, whether recognisingly or not, warn the swimmer. So it was that he had come there before sundown, and now lay crouched among the bracken underneath a projecting mossy ledge close upon the water, where it could scarce be that she or any should see him.

As the gloaming deepened, a great stillness reigned. There was no breath of wind. A scarce audible sigh prevailed among the spires of the heather. The churring of a nightjar throbbed through the darkness. Somewhere a corncrake called its monotonous crÉk-craik—the dull harsh sound emphasising the utter stillness. The pinging of the gnats hovering over and among the sedges made an incessant rumour through the warm sultry air.

There was a splash once as of a fish; then silence. Then a lower but more continuous splash, or rather wash of water. A slow susurrus rustled through the dark.

Where he lay among the fern Gloom Achanna slowly raised his head, stared through the shadows, and listened intently. If Katreen were waiting there she was not near.

Noiselessly he slid into the water. When he rose it was under a clump of green branches. These he had cut and secured three hours before. With his left hand he swam slowly, or kept his equipoise in the water; with his right he guided the heavy rowan bough. In his mouth were two objects, one long and thin and dark, the other with an occasional glitter as of a dead fish.

His motion was scarce perceptible. None the less he was nigh the middle of the loch almost as soon the other clump of green branches. Doubtless the swimmer beneath it was confident that he was now safe from observation.

The two clumps of green branches drew nearer. The smaller seemed a mere estray—a spray blown down by the recent gale. But all at once the larger clump jerked awkwardly and stopped. Simultaneously a strange low strain of music came from the other.

The strain ceased. The two clumps of green branches remained motionless. Slowly at last the larger moved forward. It was too dark for the swimmer to see if any one lay hid behind the smaller. When he reached it he thrust aside the leaves.

It was as though a great salmon leaped. There was a splash, and a narrow dark body shot through the gloom. At the end of it something gleamed. Then suddenly there was a savage struggle. The inanimate green branches tore this way and that, and surged and swirled. Gasping cries came from the leaves. Again and again the gleaming thing leaped. At the third leap an awful scream shrilled through the silence. The echo of it wailed thrice with horrible distinctness in the corrie beyond Cnoc-an-Fhraoch. Then, after a faint splashing, there was silence once more. One clump of green branches drifted loosely up the lochlet. The other moved steadily towards the place whence, a brief while before, it had stirred.

Only one thing lived in the heart of Gloom Achanna—the joy of his exultation. He had killed his brother Sheumais. He had always hated him because of his beauty; of late he had hated him because he had stood between him, Gloom, and Katreen Macarthur, because he had become her lover. They were all dead now except himself—all the Achannas. He was “Achanna.” When the day came that he would go back to Galloway there would be a magpie on the first birk, and a screaming jay on the first rowan, and a croaking raven on the first fir. Ay, he would be their suffering, though they knew nothing of him meanwhile! He would be Achanna of Achanna again. Let those who would stand in his way beware. As for Katreen: perhaps he would take her there, perhaps not. He smiled.

These thoughts were the wandering fires in his brain while he slowly swam shoreward under the floating green branches, and as he disengaged himself from them, and crawled upward through the bracken. It was at this moment that a third man entered the water from the farther shore.

Prepared as he was to come suddenly upon Katreen, Gloom was startled when, in a place of dense shadow, a hand touched his shoulder, and her voice whispered, “Sheumais, Sheumais!”

The next moment she was in his arms. He could feel her heart beating against his side.

“What was it, Sheumais? What was that awful cry?” she whispered.

For answer he put his lips to hers, and kissed her again and again.

The girl drew back. Some vague instinct warned her.

“What is it, Sheumais? Why don’t you speak?”

He drew her close again.

“Pulse of my heart, it is I who love you—I who love you best of all. It is I, Gloom Achanna!”

With a cry, she struck him full in the face. He staggered, and in that moment she freed herself.

“You coward!”

“Katreen, I …”

“Come no nearer. If you do, it will be the death of you!”

“The death o’ me! Ah, bonnie fool that you are, and is it you that will be the death o’ me?”

“Ay, Gloom Achanna, for I have but to scream and Sheumais will be here, an’ he would kill you like a dog if he knew you did me harm.”

“Ah, but if there were no James, or any man, to come between me an’ my will!”

“Then there would be a woman! Ay, if you overbore me I would strangle you with my hair, or fix my teeth in your false throat!”

“I was not for knowing you were such a wild-cat! But I’ll tame you yet, my lass! Aha, wild-cat!” and, as he spoke, he laughed low.

“It is a true word, Gloom of the black heart. I am a wild-cat, and like a wild-cat I am not to be seized by a fox, and that you will be finding to your cost, by the holy St Bridget! But now, off with you, brother of my man!”

“Your man … ha! ha!…”

“Why do you laugh?”

“Sure, I am laughing at a warm white lass like yourself having a dead man as your lover!”

“A … dead … man?”

No answer came. The girl shook with a new fear. Slowly she drew closer till her breath fell warm against the face of the other. He spoke at last.

“Ay, a dead man.”

“It is a lie.”

“Where would you be that you were not hearing his goodbye? I’m thinking it was loud enough!”

“It is a lie … it is a lie!”

“No, it is no lie. Sheumais is cold enough now. He’s low among the weeds by now. Ay, by now; down there in the lochan.”

“What … you, you devil! Is it for killing your own brother you would be!”

“I killed no one. He died his own way. Maybe the cramp took him. Maybe … maybe a kelpie gripped him. I watched. I saw him beneath the green branches. He was dead before he died, I saw it in the white face o’ him. Then he sank. He’s dead—James is dead. Look here, girl, I’ve always loved you. I swore the oath upon you—you’re mine. Sure, you’re mine now, Katreen! It is loving you I am! It will be a south wind for you from this day, muirnean mochree! See here, I’ll show you how I …”

“Back … back … murderer!”

“Be stopping that foolishness now, Katreen Macarthur! By the Book, I am tired of it! I am loving you, and it’s having you for mine I am! And if you won’t come to me like the dove to its mate, I’ll come to you like the hawk to the dove!”

With a spring he was upon her. In vain she strove to beat him back. His arms held her as a stoat grips a rabbit.

He pulled her head back, and kissed her throat till the strangulating breath sobbed against his ear. With a last despairing effort she screamed the name of the dead man—“Sheumais! Sheumais! Sheumais!” The man who struggled with her laughed.

“Ay, call away! The herrin’ will be coming through the bracken as soon as Sheumais comes to your call! Ah, it is mine you are now, Katreen! He’s dead an’ cold, … an’ you’d best have a living man … an’ …”

She fell back, her balance lost in the sudden releasing. What did it mean? Gloom still stood there, but as one frozen. Through the darkness she saw at last that a hand gripped his shoulder—behind him a black mass vaguely obtruded.

For some moments there was absolute silence. Then a hoarse voice came out of the dark.

“You will be knowing now who it is, Gloom Achanna!”

The voice was that of Sheumais, who lay dead in the lochan. The murderer shook as in a palsy. With a great effort, slowly he turned his head. He saw a white splatch—the face of the corpse. In this white splatch flamed two burning eyes, the eyes of the soul of the brother whom he had slain.

He reeled, staggered as a blind man, and, free now of that awful clasp, swayed to and fro as one drunken.

Slowly Sheumais raised an arm, and pointed downward through the wood towards the lochan. Still pointing, he moved swiftly forward. With a cry like a beast, Gloom Achanna swung to one side, stumbled, rose, and leaped into the darkness.

For some minutes Sheumais and Katreen stood, silent, apart, listening to the crashing sound of his flight—the race of the murderer against the pursuing shadow of the Grave.