Chapter 15: The Gow Lodge

The Gow lodge yard held every tenant in the glen, and I walked into it at noon with twenty-two of them at my back.

I had knocked on their doors at first light.

I had told each one the same thing, and not one had asked me to prove it.

Hamish Gow sat at a table on the mounting block with the rent ledger open in front of him and his clerk at his elbow.

He looked well.

That was the first thing that turned my stomach.

His beard was brushed and his colour was high, and he had not coughed once in the time it took me to cross the yard.

"Ailsa," he said warmly.

"You are punctual."

"Where is my flask?"

"Where is Morag?"

"Safe, and out of the weather."

Angus stood at the lodge door with his bandaged hand tucked in his belt and his good hand on a shotgun.

He would not look at the crowd behind me.

I knew which cellar door was his, because I had seen the iron ring in the wall.

"I have brought you something better than a flask," I said.

I walked to the table and put my palm flat on the open ledger.

"Take your hand off that," said Hamish.

"Read the arrears, Mr. Gow."

"I'll read them for you."

The sight came easily.

It had been waiting for me, I think, in every column of ink.

I saw his pen.

I saw it write a figure, and then the same pen go back over that figure and make it larger.

I saw the clerk look away.

"Ninety-one pounds against the old miller," I said.

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