Page 26 of A Fire in Their Hearts

Nobody replies and as he climbs the ladder the four other condemned men begin to sing.

We five join in. The executioner looks bored as he waits on his own ladder and without any hesitation he places the noose around the Covenanter’s neck as soon as he is level with it.

Unlike the drunken display by Cornelius, the stocky hangman knows his business and he reaches over to take a firm hold of the condemned man’s ladder, then he casts it over with one fierce heave, dislodging the Covenanter, who drops a few feet to endure that terrible dance of death that no person should ever have to learn.

And so the living become the dead and the last figure to walk up the steps to the platform is my own father. He looks fondly upon the four bodies that have been thrown to the ground below.

‘I shall be with you in a moment, my dear friends, and together we will watch from Heaven upon these misguided people.’

He’s stopped singing to speak and my four companions are too overcome by grief to continue. My own throat closes up and everything falls so silent it seems as if the air itself is stilled.

‘Take care, my son. I love you.’

I can’t watch and keep my eyes closed until finally .

.?. finally .?.?. a voice announces that he is dead.

This war has taken so much from us, our home, our innocence, the lives of friends and neighbours, Violet’s father .

.?. now it takes my father too. Will there ever be enough deaths to bring it to an end?

The other witnesses and I weep openly, expecting to be taken back to the enclosure, but at that moment an official walks up to the scaffold’s platform. He doesn’t even wait for my father’s body to be taken down. It swings gently behind him as he speaks.

‘As is right by the laws of God and man, these traitors have met their death. Now their bodies will be used to demonstrate to others what will happen to those who show disloyalty to the king. Their heads will be removed and sent to the places from whence they came, where they will be displayed publicly for all to see. What’s left of their bodies will be hung in gibbets to rot.

Let no one doubt the outcome of traitors. Long live the king!’

That Father’s head should be removed .?.

. something breaks within me, and even with my hands bound I push, kick and headbutt the unsuspecting guards until several lie on the ground around me.

My rage is finally brought to a sudden end when the stock of a musket slams into my head and everything goes black.

*?*?*

Violet 24 August 1679, Greyfriars Kirkyard, Edinburgh

‘I need to speak to you about something.’

I’m bound to Hamish in a way that’s impossible for anyone to understand who is not a twin.

We shared a world even before entering this one and since the moment we were born, we’ve slept, eaten, played, laughed, fought side by side and cried as if we were not two people but one.

I’m instantly worried about what he wants to say when we’ve never had a secret from the others, and I try not to show I’m concerned. Of course, he knows I am.

‘Let’s walk,’ I say.

We slot in between small groups of people moving slowly around the enclosure. The number held here has grown following the mass departure of those agreeing to the Black Bond, with Covenanters captured after Bothwell plus others taken prisoner for different reasons being brought to Greyfriars.

‘I’m not brave like you, Samuel and Calum. I can’t go on, Violet, not like this.’

I don’t understand what he’s implying. The reality is that we have no choice, unless he’s planning an escape, but such an act would be out of character.

‘Hamish, we’ve all felt like that over the weeks .?.?. over the years even, when we’ve been hunted and attacked, homeless and despairing. You’re not alone and the feeling will pass.’

‘No, it won’t.’

‘We have no option but to go on.’

‘There is an option. The government is still offering the King’s Peace.’

I stare at him and for the first time in my entire life I don’t recognise the man in front of me.

‘Hamish, you can’t betray the cause now!’

‘I’m not. I just can’t go on living like this.’

‘I don’t believe you’ll sign, that you would go home to Mother and leave us here.’

‘Then come with me, Violet.’

‘After everything we’ve been through! I held Father in my arms at Bothwell while he bled out his life upon my breast. Samuel watched his own father hanged less than two weeks ago.

How many others have died over the decades that people in Scotland might one day worship freely, and you would walk away from all that?

People have fought for this even before we were born. ’

He’s crying now, huge sobs bursting out of his emaciated body in a way that would have broken my heart until a few moments ago. I can’t hold him or offer comfort, and that is so utterly unnatural to me that tears flow down my cheeks.

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Have you lost your faith in the cause?’

‘No, I’ve lost the strength to fight for it .?.?. in my body, in my mind, in my soul .?.?. I no longer have the will to go on.’

We stand facing each other only a few feet apart, yet it represents a chasm that is so deep and wide we cannot reach across it.

‘Many people have signed the bond,’ he says.

‘Does that make it right?’

‘No. There’s what’s right and there’s what’s real, and this is the reality.’

‘Then here is my reality. You are no brother of mine!’

Never have I felt or meant words more strongly than the ones I’ve just spoken .?.?. and never have I regretted or hated words more than the ones I’ve just spoken. Those eleven words have cleaved me in half more surely than the sharpest Claymore ever could.

His voice is barely a whisper. ‘Please don’t say that.’

‘This is all there is to say. There is nothing more, Hamish. Nothing. We are no longer blood and kin.’

‘Violet?’

‘My loyalty is to Samuel and Calum and our beliefs, for that is what’s left for me.’

With those cruel words, I turn and walk away.

*?*?*

Samuel and Calum refuse to speak to Hamish, so we’ve had no contact with him since he confessed his intentions.

Now, on the last day of August, he’s one of a handful of men standing by the gates waiting to be taken to Greyfriars Kirk, where he’ll sign away his soul.

Everyone in the entire enclosure has gathered in silence, watching.

Hamish keeps his eyes firmly on the ground by his feet.

The guards make them wait a long time and I suspect they’re doing this deliberately.

Eventually, someone unlocks the gates and the five figures shuffle forward, appearing more like condemned men than those who so nobly walked out to be hanged in the Grassmarket.

Hamish is the last. As he’s about to step through the archway, he stops to look back at me.

I meet his gaze without friendship or love, a woman of granite and a sister of mist. He has betrayed us.

Those that leave this morning will never be forgiven by those left behind.

With tears falling down his cheeks he walks slowly through the gates and out of our lives.