Lament for a Maker

6

The chill of that water is still in my bones. And more, I should think, in Noel Gylby’s. He was seconds behind me; he worked for an hour after he had hauled me out. But what haunts my memory with a dragging irony is the small scale of it all. Daylight showed how narrow is that last arm of the loch. It is not even very deep. And we were struggling with floating fragments of ice that a boy could pick up and pitch against a stone. Yet I do not think we failed to make every effort we could. In that sudden flaw of mountain wind the numbing water and the driving ice made a little Arctic hell. And from up the loch a powerful undercurrent was pulling, threatening again and again to draw us under an unbreakable barrier. It was days before the body of Neil Lindsay was recovered.

My head was injured; and because of that joined to exhaustion I must have lain unconscious for some time. When I recovered I found Wedderburn with a brandy flask and Ewan Bell the cobbler bending over me. I struggled up and asked a question.

Wedderburn shook his head. ‘I am afraid there is no hope. He is drowned.’

‘Miss Mathers?’

‘Miss Guthrie and Jervie have taken her back to the house.’ I turned round and saw lying near me the body of the rescued man. It stirred as I glanced. My mind through its unconsciousness had still, I think, been working in terms of mere accident and danger. It was now flooded by the knowledge of tragedy. And my face must have shown this. For Wedderburn said: ‘At least, now she need not be told until some proper time.’

I staggered to my feet impatiently. ‘Ranald Guthrie,’ I said; ‘you reckon without him still.’

Bell strode over to the prostrate figure and held up a lantern. He moved an arm, a hand into the light – a hand from which a couple of fingers had been amputated long ago. ‘Ian Guthrie,’ he said. ‘Ranald is dead.’

‘Dead! You are sure?’ My head still swimming, I stared at him stupidly.

The old man straightened up. ‘Certain. I killed him.’