hostel, accessible by rone pipe, so that we could get back in. Although I did not relish the climb on a night like this.
Stornoway was like a ghost town, streetlamps casting feeble pools of light in dark, empty streets. The God- fearing people of the town were locked up cosy in their homes behind drawn curtains, watching TV and supping cups of hot cocoa before heading for bed. In the inner harbour, the rattle and creak of trawlers tied up at the quayside fought to be heard above the wind. The icy black waters were choppy, slapping against the concrete stanchions of the quay and breaking white on the shores of the Castle Green on the other side of the bay. We hurried along the deserted Bayhead, turning off at the Bridge Community Centre and scampering quickly over the bridge into the trees beyond. Up the hill, then, in a fearful sleety squall, and on to the road above the golf club. As we reached the road, the sky opened up, and the most extraordinary silver moonlight spilled down across the manicured expanse of golf course, so bright you might almost have expected to see golfers pitching up the hill to the fifth hole.
Lews Castle was built in the 1870s as a mansion house for Sir James Matheson. He bought the Isle of Lewis in 1844 with the proceeds from the opium he and his partner William Jardine had imported into China, turning six million Chinese into hopeless addicts in the process. It’s strange to think that the misery of millions led to the transformation of a tiny Hebridean island thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, or that people and their land can just be bought and sold. Matheson built a new harbour, and gas and waterworks in Stornoway, as well as a brickworks at Garrabost. He created a chemical factory to extract tar from peat, and a yard to build and repair ships. He transformed the forty-five miles of dirt tracks across the island into two hundred miles of coach- bearing roads. And, of course, he razed the old Seaforth Lodge on the hill overlooking the town, to build his mock- Tudor castle.
It is an extraordinary building of pink granite, with turrets and towers and crenellated battlements. It dominates the hill above the harbour, and is probably the most unlikely thing you will see on any of the islands that make up the Hebridean archipelago.
Of course, in those days, I didn’t know the full history. Lews Castle was just there, as if it had always been there. You accepted it, the same way you accepted the cliffs that ringed the Butt, or the fabulous beaches at Scarasta and Luskentyre.
It loomed dark that night amongst the trees at the top of the hill, lights showing in just a few of its windows. Calum and I skirted the main entrance, a huge vaulted porch leading to enormous double doors, and made our way around the back to where Angel had told Calum they would meet him, next to the single-storey annexe that housed the boiler room. Right enough, as we arrived in the long, narrow courtyard between the boiler room and the laundry, a figure moved in the shadows and an arm waved us forward.
‘Come on, hurry up!’ I was taken aback to find that it was Artair. He was surprised to see me, too. ‘What are you doing here?’ he hissed in my ear.
‘Looking out for Calum,’ I whispered back.
But he just shook his head. ‘You daft bastard!’ And my sense of foreboding deepened.
Artair opened a red door into a short, gloomy corridor. It smelled of old cabbage. I soon realized why, as Artair put a finger to his lips and led us through the kitchens in the semidark and then out into what they called the Long Hall. It ran almost the full length of the front of the castle, night lights glowing faintly all along it. As we slipped past what had originally been the library, and then the ballroom, I realized that if we were going to be caught, it would most likely be here. There was nowhere to hide in the nearly two hundred feet of hallway. Any one of the doors along either side, or at either end, might open at any minute, trapping us in full view.
So it was with some relief that we reached the main staircase at the far end of the hall, and followed Artair up the wide stone steps two at a time to the first floor. A narrow spiral stairway took us up to the second floor. Artair led us through further dark halls and doorways into a corridor leading to a tall window at the north end of the castle. There, in the shadows, a group of boys stood waiting in impatient anticipation. More than half a dozen of them. Torches flashed in our faces and I caught a glimpse of theirs. Some I knew, some I didn’t. Murdo Ruadh and Angel were among them.
‘What are you doing here, orphan boy?’ Angel growled in a low whisper, an echo of Artair.
‘Just making sure Calum doesn’t come to any harm.’
‘Why would he?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Listen, smart boy.’ Angel grabbed the lapels of my jacket. ‘That wee bitch’ll be getting into her bath in less than five minutes. So you’ve not got much time.’
‘I’m not going up on the roof with him.’ I pulled myself free of his grasp.
‘Aye, you fucking are,’ Murdo breathed in my face. ‘Or it might just come to the attention of the janitor that there’s an intruder in the castle. Know what I’m saying?’
‘So call the janitor,’ I said. ‘Then whatever it is you’ve got planned will be well and truly screwed.’
Murdo glared at me, but I’d called his bluff and he had no comeback.
Angel slid the window open and stepped out on to the fire escape. ‘Come on, Calum. Get out here.’
‘Don’t, Calum,’ I said. ‘They’re setting you up.’
‘Fuck off, orphan boy!’ There was murder in Angel’s eyes as he peered back at me through the window. Then his frown relaxed into a smile and he turned it on the wavering Calum. ‘Come on, son. We’re not setting you up for anything. Except an eyeful. If you don’t hurry up you’ll miss her.’ Calum turned away from my disapproval and climbed on to the fire escape. It rattled noisily as I climbed out after him. There was still a chance of persuading him not to do it.
From the second-floor platform of the fire escape, steps ran down to a half-landing, and doubled back to the first-floor platform immediately below. From there steps led up and on to the roof of the entrance porch, and in the other direction down and around the wall to the front of the castle. An extending ladder leaned against the wall outside the window. Angel unhooked the extension and slid it up, almost to its full length, re-hooked it and leaned it against the wall again, adjusting the angle to make it easier to climb.
‘There you go.’
Calum looked up. The ladder reached just beyond a ledge nearly three feet below the crenellations around the roof. I saw the panic in his eyes. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Course you can.’ Angel’s voice was almost soothing.
Calum gave me a frightened rabbit look. ‘Come with me, Fin. I’m not good with heights.’
‘You should have fucking thought of that before you came,’ Murdo whispered through the window.
‘You really don’t have to do this, Calum,’ I said. ‘Let’s just go home.’
I wasn’t prepared for the violence with which Angel slammed me up against the wall. ‘You go up there with him, orphan boy. Make sure he doesn’t come to any harm.’ I felt his spittle in my face. ‘That’s what you came for, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not going up on the roof!’
Angel leaned in close and whispered, almost intimately, ‘Either you go up, orphan boy, or you go down. The hard way.’
‘Please, Fin,’ Calum said. ‘I’m too scared to do it on my own.’
I didn’t see that I had any choice. I pulled myself free of Angel’s grip. ‘Alright.’ I looked up towards the roof wishing I had never agreed to come. In fact it looked a fairly simple matter to climb the ladder and then swing yourself up through one of the crenellations on to the roof. It had to be flat up there, and once you were up there was no danger of falling, with the battlements creating a retaining wall.
‘We’re running out of time,’ Angel said. ‘And the longer we’re out here the more chance we have of getting caught.’
‘Go on, Calum,’ I said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’
‘You are coming with me?’
‘I’m right behind you.’ I glanced back through the window at Artair, and he just shrugged, as if to say that it wasn’t his fault that I had chosen to come with Calum.
Angel said, ‘Once you’re up, you’ll see the pitched roof of the attic. It’s a skylight window into the bathroom. You’ll know which one when the light comes on.’
And all the time I kept wondering what the trick would be. What we were really going to find up there. But there was no way of backing out now. At least the rain was off for the moment, and the moonlight made it easy to
