Incitement to Battle E-Book

alastair macleod

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Set in WW1, the story of two Scottish brothers, drawn into the Gallipoli conflict, with devastating consequences for their family and succeeding generations. Most of this story is factually correct, but some creative licence has been taken.

Leseprobe

Alastair Macleod

Incitement to Battle

or Brosnachadh

To the 1000 pipers killed in WW1 BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Incitement to Battle, (or Brosnachadh)

Isle of Skye 1914

The sea was unusually calm as the boys pushed the dinghy off the gravel beach. Neil rowed steadily out into Camas Mór bay. He looked back, past Hector, his brother, to the croft house on the shore. The smoke wisped up in the still air. Beyond that the ground rose to the higher lands of North Skye.

It was good to be out here at the fishing; mackerel were running, or so his uncle Lachlan had said.

His family were all back there, crammed into the tiny dwelling. His mother, Anna Stuart MacLean, His father John Budge Macleod, his older sister Flora, his younger sister Catriona.

It was the summer of 1914, July, the Glasgow Fair, when the city skies cleared as smoke stacks of industry ceased and tradesmen took their holidays.

Neil had been coming here since he was wee boy. Once a year the family returned together to the croft in Skye. Now he was twenty two. His daily work back in the city could not be more different than this tranquil scene.

He was a child of the industrial revolution, a boilermaker at the Atlas Locomotion works near his home in Springburn. Each day there he was surrounded by the sound of metal being hammered and cut and pressed into shape to create a fire breathing machine, the locomotive.

It did not define him, that work; it was what his age was about, an age of machines and foundries, shipbuilding and furnaces, a hard masculine world.

His escape when in Glasgow was the pipes. From the age of seven he had learned the art, first through the Boys Brigade and latterly through the Territorials, the 8th Scottish Rifles. Piping was his passion. Now an accomplished piper with many medals and awards, he also taught others.

Hector his younger brother by three years was a different sort. Instead of metal, his trade was tailoring, working with soft cloth in an intricate way.

His passion outside work was wrestling. A junior champion he was now on the point of considering becoming professional. Hector looked up to his older brother. Neil had always seemed to be so steady and so sure of himself; he had got a job quickly from school, had been skilled at the chanter, had stuck with the Territorials, and now he had a girlfriend.

Hector had an unconventional streak. Like the wrestling. His father, a police sergeant, had not approved. There was shady side to boxing and wrestling; a world of betting and back street clubs. But Hector had energy that needed to go somewhere; tailoring, his son had once told him, was too tame.

“How do ye think you’ll get on in the Glasgow championship?” Said Neil. 

“Fair,” said Hector, “there’s only one fella standing between me and the cup.”

“Who’s that then?”

“MacGlashan.”

“Him; is he that good?”

“He has a move that he uses near the end of a match, an Indian throw. Seems to work for him.”

“Is it legal?” Said Neil who continued rowing them further out into the bay.

“Aye, it’s allowed,” said Hector, “but it doesn'a seem sporting.”

“For why?”

“Because for one, ah dinna know the secret and for two, he uses it to get wins all the time.”

“It’ll be a problem we can solve, like the grace notes in a difficult tune. Tell me how he seems to do it.”

Hector sighed. His brother always saw things like this, as a musical puzzle.

He began to explain the move. All the while the boat moved smoothly over the surface towards a distant flurry of gulls wheeling over a patch of the sea. The mackerel were running or rather shoaling near the surface. Now and then little flashes of silver underbelly could be seen reflecting the sun.

Hector had been readying the tackle; mackerel feathers hung from the line like a bits of a Red Indian headdress.

“Wrestling is a bit like knots,” said Hector, “but knots that you need an escape route from.”

“Get the line over,” said Neil, “and let’s see how we do.”

Almost immediately the line was in the water, the fish seemed to fling themselves at it. Hector could feel the energy travel up to his fingers.

“Haul in, haul in,” said Neil, who had stopped rowing and was shipping the oars. Together they hauled the writhing fish. Up they came, bodies glistening metallic barred blue, with white underbellies. They flopped into the bottom of the boat, jerking and flapping.

“It’s a wonder they’re so easily duped,” said Neil, “to take the feathers.”

By the time the boys appeared late that morning, laden with fish, the papers had arrived by steamer.

Their father sat reading the Glasgow Herald intently.

Neil spoke softly to his mother,

“What’s the news?”