Published: 26 Oct 2017

xxxiii

Face scrubbed and hands all but clean – Tom took to the shade of the billet; and without consideration, beyond the Minister’s words, sat himself beside Rabbit on the boy’s bunk. Rabbit tight eyed and half flinching – the two of them alone in the quiet.

“You want to play cards with us tonight?” Tom edging closer.

“With you and Bill and Robbie?” Eyes tighter.

“Yeah!”

Rabbit waiting for a punchline.

“No ruse or nothing! Just Rummy or Eight’s or some-such… Scabby Queen if you don’t mind Bill always winning and skelping your knuckles proper raw!”

Rabbit – still waiting.

“Or don’t!” Tom stood – quickly tired of trying. “Yesterday and today ended up being sorta fun and I thought maybe…”

Rabbit’s hand grabbed Tom’s wrist as he turned: “If you think Bill and Robert won’t mind.”

Tom and that golden smile: “Nah! They won’t mind.”

Rabbit’s smile all teeth and pink lips.

xxxiv

On a second day of soot coloured cloud: where sun would birl to shadow, meadow wax to wren haunted moor and rain loiter with a smirr – one boy: Robert, sought refuge under the blanket of leaves of the Barra Tye Wood. Bare feet in the leaf trash he stepped between trunks and ducked branches; shining rain-drop sprinkled filaments of spiderweb, spun between crooked boughs, decorated trees like ornaments.

For Robert the space between the trunks was as soothing as bark and leaf. The calming, restorative presence of the wood, the cool air and the smell of pine: no attention paid to time nor hunger until, unnoticed, the rain disappeared and sky cleared, until clouds returned to brats of a shepherd’s flock, until the day’s light was spent and the sunset came to amber.

Turning face up to see the darkening sky he first noticed in the limbs of the trees above; twisted twigs tied with string and vine – ever decreasing circles and crosses wrapped in mangy animal fur: atavistic whigmaleerie that seemed spun from the trees themselves. As his hand reached toward one:

“You!” Behind him on a slope, between the worn trunks of two pines.

Robert turned.

“I seen you in here before with two others. Pagan children! Daoine sith!” He stood clad in black tatters, a straw hat with broad rim that concealed all but the barbs of his eyes – a rough red silver beard that covered his lips. A half-filled hessian sack dragging at his side.

Heart thumping in chest Robert stood metres from the man in tatters. “I wasn’t…”

“You wasn’t what? You wasn’t pulling at the charms? You wasn’t trespassing on land you’ve no right to be on? You wasn’t sneaking in here with ragglish boys?”

Robert stepped backwards until his shoulders found knot in tree.

“I told you I seen you. Bare-assed youths running through wood and meadow with stented peckers playing at hochmangandie like Leannan sith.”

“Are… Are you the Bodach?”

“Bodach? Bodach?” Laughter. “If I were a Bodach I wouldn’t tell you would I?”

Robert looked to the man’s feet for clown shoes and sloshing puddle water.

“Where are those other little pagan devils you tarrow with? The taupie bare-assed boys whose thoughts extend to the length of their peckers and no more?”

Robert stood silent. Mindful of Connall’s words.

“You don’t see fit to answer a question as it’s put to you?” Narrow points of his eyes gleaming beneath the wide brim of his straw hat – lentic liquid mercury. “Aye… Aye, I’m the Bodach alright. So you stay tight lipped. You hear me? Tell anyone you’ve seen a Bodach in these woods and I’ll come for you… little Daoine sith.”

Robert ran.

xxxv

Entering the lurry of the billet: Boys bouncing from bunk to bunk wielding pillows as weapons and their voices as shields. Robert saw them – three boys sitting on Bill’s bunk, Bill, Rabbit and Tom. Cards in hands and a pile between them.

“Deal me in?” sitting on the corner of the bed next to Bill.

Bill: “After this hand.”

The Minister’s Wireless

“…where King Leopold III surrendered personally to German forces yesterday.

“On National radio; French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud described the King’s surrender of Belgium to Nazi occupation, contrary to advice from his own government, as ‘an event without precedent in History’.

“It is believed that the Belgian government have already gone into hiding with plans of continuing their resistance from France.”

xxxvii

While early evening gave over to wolf-light – three boys, Bill, Robert and Tom, lay in the altogether on the carse beneath the fat green leaves of the Weeping Willow. Roberts eyes trained on a Grey Heron in its siege of surrounding river reeds – hunched shoulders and streekit neck – black orange eyes needling on the water. He thought it prehistoric as it stood statue still – perfect predator. Bill chewing on a reed plucked from the water earlier lifted his head to follow Robert’s gaze.

“But did he say he was a Bodach?” Tom pulling at his tight little scrotum – feeling for hairs.

“He said he was but he was just an old man.”

“He would say that to have you think that he wasn’t though wouldn’t he?” Tom letting his balls drop from his hand. “He would say that he was, knowing that you wouldn’t believe him so that he can continue to do Bodach things in the woods.”

“What sort of Bodach things are you imagining?” Bill, with a squint, turning his head in the grass to face Tom.

“You know… Bodach things… tricksy things…”

“That would follow through.” Robert sitting up and crossing his legs under him. “Trickster and all that.”

“Take us to him tomorrow Robbie!” Tom sitting up and edging closer to the fifteen-year-old. “We can see if he really is a Bodach. Maybe we can trick him and get him to grant us a wish or something.”

“I don’t think honest that that’s how it works…”

“I’d wish to be old enough to join the army. Or at least look old enough to join the army. My friend Scott’s brother Danny was only fifteen when he joined up but he looks older and no one asked questions so he’s probably out in France right now! What would you wish for Robbie? If you could wish for anything?”

Roberts eyes scaling the naked length of Bill’s outstretched body in the grass. “I don’t know Tom…”

Bill turned his eyes from Robert back to the heron in its siege.

“If I could I’d wish to speak less. To not speak aloud over thought contemplations that risk friendships.”

Bill arched back to Robert. Finding in his face some semblance of a wish to right what Bill knew to be his own imagined wrong. Not unnoticed by Tom. But for love left to pass – unremarked.

“Maybe to be here with you two forever. Just us three and an endless river… wild flowered meadows of foxglove, knapweed and oxeye daisy stretching like oceans… an undying sun in the sky.”

Bill sat up to face his two friends. “Sounds nice Robbie.”

Robert’s cheeks glowed a rosy tint.

“What about you Bill?”

“Some of Robbie’s wish, some of yours Tom. To be home with my family when the mood takes me. To be a lighthouse keeper on some weathered Orkney rock.”

“That’s four wishes. You only get one wish!”

“Pick one for me.” Bill stood and slipped on his britches – leaving the buttons unfastened while he sat back down to pull on his socks.

Robert knew what he would pick for Bill.

Samuel 18:1-4

Outside of the billet Bill and Robert sat together on the wooden bench, a rustic vertically half cut beech trunk, Tom cross legged on the grass between them at their feet. All three with eyes on the clear black sky and the bright borough of silver pin pricks to the North.

None of the three had heard the crunch of chalk beneath the wheels of the Ministers bicycle as he pushed it from Miss Black’s front door along the path to where they sat.

“Hello boys.” The Minister – warm open smile and soft voice. “I trust you’ve had an eventful day?”

“Yes Sir!” Bill with a start.

“Mostly just walking and enjoying the weather.”

“Very good. There’s much to be said for connecting with the natural world like you boy’s do.” That welcome husky smile never leaving his face.

The boys stayed silent unsure of what to say while the Minister stood over them – hands clasped to the handlebars of his bicycle. He sighed contentedly: “I rarely see you boys apart.” Nothing hidden there. “You remind me of Jonathan and David. If Jonathan and David were three.”

“Who are Jonathan and David?” Tom looking up from his seat at the boy’s feet.

“Don’t you go to school?” Robert tapping Tom’s knee with the side of his foot.

“Figures from the Bible.” The Minister offered. “And very dear friends. Perhaps, I think, like you three might be to one another.”

Tom squinted at the Minister while Robert, wondering if the Minister’s inference held malice, confirmed: “Like Achilles and Patroclus.”

“There is a school of thought (that carries some weight behind it) that the story of David and Jonathan is based somewhat on the Achilles myth.” The Minister resting his bicycle against his hip as he wiped the lenses of his spectacles on a crisp pale blue handkerchief from his pocket. “That is if you take the view that the Bible tales are allegorical in nature for the purpose of moral direction rather than historical fact.”

“How do you take them Minister?” Robert with simon-pure interest.

The Minister cleared his throat, replaced his spectacles and pocketed the handkerchief: “If I told you how I took them then I fear that that would be telling you how you should take them…” He smiled at the faces of the boys that carried a certain questioning anticipation. “…and I’m not in the business of correcting people’s faith. Just shepherding them toward moral true north.”

Robert and a sincere smile: “You’re a good man Minister.”

While dark; there was enough light that Robert could see the man blush. “There are better men than I but I’ll humbly accept your compliment Robert. Thank you.” As the Minister bid the boys a ‘good-night’ he climbed onto the saddle of his bicycle and pushed forward – the crunch of the chalk path and his whistle following him.

“You think that we should invite Rabbit to come and see the Bodach tomorrow?” Tom turning to the two boys on the bench.

“We’ll stick with cards just now.” Bill still a little unsure. “Maybe the river or to Kinharrald.”

xxxix

High and deep in the Barra Tye wood: a towering waterfall cascaded crystal clear from ragged blue rock-face to black bottomless linnl – where, at it’s edge, stitched in thick toad rush and oval sedge, grew thistle, bogbean and pipewort.

After that linn, the river would bicker on through the pines and elms and oaks that bulk out the Barra Tye; it would knit passed fields of corn and rapeseed, slice wild meadows in two and swiftly furrow to the mouth of Loch Harrald.

Bill and Robert at the base of a pine; eyes upward to Tom, bare-scud, straddling two branches; a naval lookout’s concentration on his young face: “I can only see trees!” he called down shaking needles into unbarbered hair.

“What did he expect to see?” Bill to Robert – hazel eyes smiling.

“He thinks himself Artemis… It doesn’t matter to him that she was a woman.” Robert’s whispered easy smile.

“You tell him these stories and he gets all excited!”

“And you never have?”

“Well… Daphnis and Pan was… entertaining.” Bill idly fingering the front of his britches.

“And you’ve the nerve to call Tom: Goat-Boy!” Robert bleated to a half smiling Bill under his breath.

A rattle of branches and a rustle of pine needles as Tom made his way artless down the evergreen to the raffle and orts of the Barra Tye’s floor: “Nothing but green and water! This is the Diel’s Cauldron where Connall said that he lived near right?”

“The only one in the woods!” Robert admiring Tom’s tawny skin speckled with pine bark.

Tom reached for his clothes and pulled on his underwear under the gaze of the two older boys. When he raised a sock to his nose he gagged and held it to Bill’s face.

“Jesus Tom! Your socks stink something feral!” Scrunched displeased face and arms outstretched trying to push the boy away from him.

Tom chuckled impish and heeled to Robert who leaned forward and sniffed the soft crook of his neck: “Smells like pine and boy to me.”

“That’s only because you’re smelling his good parts.” Bill wiping stink from his nose.

“If you were a Bodach where would you hide?” Tom remaining in his briefs and balling the rest of his clothes into his oxter stink.

“If I were a Bodach I wouldn’t need to hide.” Robert stepping to the edge of the linn and watching the light dance gledsome on ripples.

“If you were a Bodach you’d already have your hands on our peckers!” Tom chuckled as Robert turned with a smile.

The Minister’s Wireless

“Despite warnings that “wars are not won through evacuations,” The Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, has described the “miracle of deliverance” from Dunkirk in a moving and heartfelt speech to Parliament that came on the day that the last allied soldier arrived home from France following a 10-day operation to bring back hundreds of thousands of retreating allied troops trapped by the Hun.

“Many heroic French troops who remained behind to hold the perimeter and allow the escape of their allies were captured.

“This afternoon Mr Churchill admitted to the House that when Operation Dynamo was launched on the twenty-sixth of May, to rescue allied forces cornered by the advancing German Army, he expected little more than twenty or thirty thousand would be saved.

“But thanks to the valour of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force and what was described as countless ships of Merchant Seaman and the fortitude of the British seafaring public, no less than three hundred and thirty-eight thousand British, French and allied Free Troops were rescued and brought back across the Channel to fight another day.

“Mr Churchill concluded his speech with reference to the growing threat of German invasion:

“‘I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone…

“At any rate, that is what we are going to try to do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government – every man of them. That is the will of Parliament and the nation. The British Empire and the French Republic, linked together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their strength. Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills… we shall never surrender… we shall never give up… and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old’⁵.”

Charon’s Embrace

The sky had coloured itself a dark grey; in mourning – the iron light of the loch’s surface sat still and the main street filled with well wishers and tearful maidens. A bus for eighteen held thirty-five – the near-last of Kinharrald’s young men in a mish-mash of pullovers, tweed jackets and dungarees. An hours ride along the river to the train stop in Comrie – then a ride through the night to Perth and a short walk from station to the Barracks of the Black Watch. Six weeks training, then… they couldn’t be sure.

On the stone wall at the loch’s northern mouth Bill and Robert sat and watched with keen eager eyes, while Tom stood tip-toe to see the bus and soon-to-be soldiers over the sea of heads bobbing – the boys hair combed through with their fingers – if combed at all. The others from the billet were in the crowd somewhere, each with eyes to the young men who carried the goodwill and prayers of the town on their shoulders, and Miss Black herding the youngest, and the Minister at the vehicle’s open door – taking the time to speak with each young man as he boarded.

A piper – the village butcher on better days – and a fiddle player – the cobbler’s son – played ‘Blue Bonnets Over the Border’ and Robert could not think of a better farewell.

“You think they’ll be back soon?” Tom bouncing on his toes, watching a sobbing girl only a few years older than he hold on to the waist of her fiance.

“We can hope.” Bill twiddled his fingers in his lap. “I overheard two women saying that the Yank’s will have to join soon and then the war will be over by Christmas.”

“The Minister left a newspaper yesterday: The American’s won’t join until they’re dragged into it kicking and screaming. Roosevelt wants to but can’t get support from congress.”

“I hope that the war is still going when I’m old enough to join!” Tom said next to Bill. “We three could go together!”

“I don’t think that war is as fun as you think it is.” Robert jumped from the wall. “You wouldn’t be joining the Sacred Band of Thebes. No getting to fight the Germans until lunch and then a break for a fumble in the long grass with Bill and I.”

“Why won’t the American’s fight?” Bill looking to Robert.

“It’s not their war. After the last one they’ve become isolationist. America first. Rest of the world a few rungs further down the ladder. They either didn’t notice or didn’t care about the rise of fascism in Europe and…”

“There he is!” Tom pointing to Connall boarding the bus, small bag with not much more than underwear slung over his shoulder – his teary-eyed fiancee Mary blowing kisses. “Why’s his Mary so sad?”

“Connall’s going to fight, Tom. She’s worried that he might come back.”

Tom watched as she reached to the bus window – her solemn looking mother by her side. “But it’s Connall. Of course he’ll come back. He’ll go to France and he’ll fight the Germans and he’ll come back with everyone else when we’ve won.”

Bill and Robert looking to the other. Tom’s dawning realization that the war and wider world might carry more permanence than he’d believed.

“He will though… won’t he?”

From the crowd, with a chief and devilish grin, Rabbit sprung between two well-fed old men and beckoned to Tom: “Come on, Mister an’ Missus Aitken are giving bags of sweets to the soldiers! We can scaff a few!”

Tom looked to Bill and Robert who nodded at him until the worry on his forrid passed and he jumped from the wall letting Rabbit take his hand and lead him back through the tightly packed crowd.

xlii

Tom in his bunk. Soft snores all around him. Eyes open in the dim and on the roof above him. The tearful farewells of strangers in his ears.

xliii

High beyond the Diel’s Cauldron – Bill, Robert and Tom trod a well worn trail through the Barra Tye; walls of tree’s and a roof of rich green leaves speckled with glimpses of sunlight – the river running fleet unseen through the wood to the West.

Robert kept eyes between the elms and the oaks and the pines while Bill marched forward,Tom dawdling at their backs.

“I wonder sometimes,” Tom stopping – his seat finding a felled trunk – right foot on left knee to pick at the leaf trash from between his toes, “if we stayed in the wood or the meadows or by the river somewhere that we might somehow not be missed.”

“From the billet?” Bill stopping and turning to watch Tom brush at the soles of his feet.

“We could build a hut in the glade and hunt deer and rabbit and pheasant. And fish in the river for salmon and trout and live lives like Robbie’s wish where it’s just perfect us in a perfect wild living perfect… away from everything else. Rabbit too if you didn’t mind too much.”

“I thought you wanted to go to war?”

“I did… I do…” Tom slapped his foot down on the floor and planted his hands in the moss at his sides. “But watching all those men leave yesterday and all the sad faced people in the town… I just… I wonder if it might be better sometimes.”

“Better to live like horny goat-boys in the wild?”

Tom’s smile: “Yeah!”

Robert; eyes on the wild worn wood and the duff, eyes on the leaves and the sindrins of blue in the canopy above their heads, eyes on Tom, eyes on Bill. Here, he decided, could be the omphalos of the earth; and baring out the rest of his days with his friends in this place would befit a time destitute of anything akin to hardship.

Basking in that benignant languor of the Barra Tye – only the undersong of rustling leaves in a high breeze, the river’s clear croon and the whispering hum of bumbles – Tom thought and looked to Robert: “What happened to The Sacred Band?”

“Tom?”

“Really Robbie… Did they go on fighting forever?”

Robert sighed. “I don’t think…”

“Please Robbie?”

A moment while he thought, while he looked into Tom’s eyes and considered each fleck of light in hem: “After the victory against Sparta, Athens had aligned itself with Thebes as friends. City states with the shared ideals of independence and democracy. But many of Greece’s other City states had been at war with each other. Fighting over Sacred Land and love and as foolish a thing as grudge borne revenge.”

Robert sat himself beside a worried looking Tom. “The Macedonian King, Philip II; tired of war for war’s sake; tired of the Persian Empire ruling much of the known world through fear and gold; and keen to leave his son, Alexander, a world worth inheriting; had determined to bring peace to the Greek people once and for all… But to do so… he had to launch a ‘final war’.

“For years he and his army fought; his young son, Alexander, always at his side. Eventually, having conquered most of the warring Greek states, only Athens, Thebes, Sparta and few smaller others still stood independent.”

“The two friends? The Generals from before? Were they there?” Tom, not really wanting to hear the answer he suspected.

“Pelopidas had fought alongside Epaminondas long after their victory at Leuctra. At Cynoscephalae, Pelopidas and his Theban army fought with a wicked tyrant king, another Alexander: Alexander of Pherae. Although the Thebans won and drove away the murderous kings army, Pelopidas was slain by one of Alexander’s personal guard as he lunged for the mad king himself.”

In the inosculation above their heads; in the golden light between swaying branches and leaves; Tom could see his version of Pelopidas; one of the great heroes that Robert had given him, cast in bronze, cut down with a slash of sword while the cackle of a wicked King rang out from behind a wall of men.

“Distraught by the loss of his companion and dearest friend, it was Epaminondas who avenged Pelopidas, a few months later, when his forces deposed Alexander.”

And Tom allowed himself a sad smile.

“Epaminondas was killed in battle a few years after that. Another war against Sparta. It was a spear from a Spartan warrior that ripped at his chest. When the iron broke off, the Thebans and the Sacred Band fought ferocious to stop the Spartan’s from taking him and parading his body around as warning. They beat the Spartan horde back and won the battle before they carried Epaminondas back to their camp… where he died unconquered.”

“They were both gone?”

“War does that Tom.”

Tom’s foot found Robert’s in the skiddle and rested on top.

“And the Sacred Band?” Bill looking to Robert as he sat cross-legged before his friends.

“Once again war had come to Boeotia. Refusing to give up their rights and freedoms, just as they had against the Spartans; Athens and Thebes and a handful of smaller states stood together – Thebes and The Sacred Band took rightful pride of place on the right wing, Athens on their left and their allies the centre. They numbered nearly thirty thousand fighting men between them… Combined, Athens and Thebes held the largest armies left in Greece. If they couldn’t stop Philip, then no one could…

“But when morning came and the horns of the Macedonian war party sounded, they saw that Philip came with thirty thousand of his own.”

“So many men…” In the shadowtackle on the detritus strewn floor Tom witnessed the shadows of sixty thousand men, dressed for battle, cast along the foothills of Mount Thourion – hearing the sound of horse hooves beat on chalk road and the rackle of iron spear and sword.

“Philip rode on the right wing while his son Alexander led from the left.”

“Wait…” Bill raising a hand as if he were in class. “Alexander? As in Alexander the Great? As in Alexander and Hephaestion?”

“The same Alexander; who philosophers, with Cassandra’s tongue, had said had never seen defeat: except by Hephaestion’s thighs.”

Tom’s chest felt heavy under a deadweight. Suddenly certain of where Robert’s story was leading.

“Philip and his cavalry were the first to push forward… they stormed toward the Athenian line and shattered their defence in minutes. As the Athenian infantry fell to horse and spear; many behind them watched in horror as their countrymen were slain. They weren’t well enough prepared to face Philip’s army of conquerors… The Athenians and their allies in the centre fled in terror…”

“They ran? They ran and left the Sacred Band?” Tom’s hands shaking with anger.

“While Athen’s retreated, Philip had his flank wheel back: allowing his son Alexander to lead a Macedonian phalanx charging into the Thebans… It’s said that they fought for hours… that the waves of Macedonians crashing onto the Theban troops and the Sacred Band were so evenly matched that, even with Athens and their allies in retreat, that even outweighed now by the numbers of men against them, the battle still could have turned either way. But it’s also said that most of Thebes broke and ran from the battlefield. That in the end the last men standing – still fighting were Alexander’s companions and The Sacred Band – not a man of which ran from the fight.”

In his mind’s eye Tom witnessed his three hundred heroes of The Sacred Band standing together, encircled by an endless ocean of Macedonian troops. “They never ran?”

“They never ran… But maybe they should have. They were now out-numbered one hundred to one. While the three hundred men of the Sacred Band fought hard for their companions, their friends, their lovers… while they were the most celebrated group of soldiers and the most feared in all of Greece, they could not hold off against the weight of Philip’s army and the tenacity and tactical genius of Alexander. All three hundred men, to the last, fell in battle that day – beneath Mount Thourion. Alexander and Philip stood victorious.”

Robert looking to Tom had thought that he’d never seen the boy seeming like he was about to shed tears before.

“The Macedonians, at Alexander’s request, gathered the fallen bodies of the Sacred Band and entombed them in a monument to their honour and bravery. What came from The Macedonian victory was a golden age of peace for Greece. Philip united the City States as no one had before and left a world that he could proudly call one he had made for his son.”

“You romanticize it for the sake of the boy?” A voice behind them. “Philip was a war-monger interested only in increasing his influence. He gave no more a shit for peace in Greece than I do for sucking on a Bumble.”

Three boys, Bill Robert and Tom, heads swivelled and eyes looked wide-like at the the man in tatters; who stood, as if born from the wood’s bark itself, before them.

“And he’d have only caused more death, fighting the Persians, had he not been assassinated. If you glorify the wars of tyrants and belligerent prigs you’ll have the boy signing up to the blackshirts in no time.”

The three boys stood stock silent as the tattered man stepped closer.

“You tell stories of heroes on the battlefield and brother’s in arms like it’s some great game. You think it fun? All boys together on the front in foreign fields? The last war: I saw boys your age… nay! Younger; marching through streets to fife and drum, trussed up in ill fitting uniforms and proud as punch… boys who never returned to their mothers. And for what? Some hollow squabble of royal cousins.”

“Are… Are you a Bodach?” Tom standing with squinting eyes. “If we catch you do you grant wishes?”

Bill shook his head.

“Nonsense and whimsy!” The tattered man’s turn to squint. “What are you blethering about? Bodachs?”

“We were told that a Bodach lives in these woods but aside from the odd sneaking fox and a couple of fighting hare you’re the only other person we’ve seen in here.” Tom stepping forward into Robert’s outstretched arm.

“Are you touched sonny?” fingers into the red whiskers on his chin.

Tom looked to Robert and Bill.

“Bodach’s don’t grant wishes. They scheme and they lie and build ships in the sky of all the first borns they’ve tricked away from their mothers.” The man looked at Robert. “Is this more of your nonsense?”

“You called us something when I saw you last.” Robert’s turn to talk. “Daoine Sith… What’s that?”

“You should learn more of your own country’s legends before looking to Greeks. Imp’s. Pagan elves with their brains in their genitals.”

Tom laughed and the old man’s eyes fixed him with a smile.

“I’m not a Bodach. Now leave me be and stay out of my woods.” He turned from the boys shaking his head and muttering under his breath while shuffling away. “And stop filling the boy’s head with bletheration.”

“Do you live out here alone?” Robert to the Bodach.

“The way I like it! Away from bastardin’ boys!”

“How do you know about Philip II? About the Greeks?” Robert stepping forward – raising his voice after the tattered man.

The Bodach stopped and snorted. “You’re a queesitive nudnik aren’t you?” He shook his head. “I said I’m not a Bodach.” Turned head – smiling through red silver whiskers over his shoulder. “I didn’t say I wasn’t old.”

xliv

Bill on his bunk and Robert on his: Robert with his book lying outstretched, Bill criss-cross applesauce and hunched over a letter from home. Tom and Rabbit skinny biceps tensed – arm wrestling and grinning wild on the linoleum floor. Others in the billet playing cards and marbles, needling each other with fantastic stories and telling jokes: the rattle and hum of boy’s chatter and laughter.

“Everything OK?” Robert to Bill – book on his stomach.

“Yeah. Everything’s fine.” Bill folded the letter and slipped it back in the envelope; traditionally sleepy eyes unquiet.

A howl of victory from the floor as Tom sprung up onto the balls of his feet and bounced with arms outstretched. Rabbit rolling onto his back with laughter.

xlv

On the shingle beach at the head of Loch Harrald, beneath dimpled tin clouds, four boys sat: Bill, Robert, Rabbit and Tom; eyes on the handful of small boats that trawled the waters gently lapping surface.

“You think that they catch much?” Rabbit scratching his chin along his shoulder.

“Not as much as the boats my dad was on before he signed up but enough to supply local towns along the river.” Bill focused on the blue and white hull of a small fishing boat bobbing on the water.

“Your dad’s a fisherman?”

“He was. A trawler in the North Sea. Signed up as soon as war broke out though. He’s in the 1st Gordons. Part of the BEF fighting in France.”

“Oh Wow!” Rabbit bright-eyed. “My Dad signed up too but he’s a clerk in London. He probably won’t get to see any fighting. Too old.”

“All our dad’s signed up when they declared war.” Robert watching two stick figures on the blue and white boat heave a net from the water. “That’s why we’re all here. Every boy in the billet.”

“Did your Dad come back Bill?” Rabbit asking. “When they evacuated from Dunkirk?”

“No.” Bill’s eyes still trained on the boat. “Last letter from my Mum said that he’s still in France.”

Robert’s hand reached for Bill’s shoulder.

“Where’s your dad Robbie?”

“RAF Boscombe Down last I heard. He writes my aunt and she tells me what’s happening. My mum only writes about school. Everything else makes her sad.”

“Your dad’s in the RAF?” Rabbit hopping up on his knees.

“Not really. He’s a clerk too.”

“Mine’s in France. Was in France. He was evacuated at Dunkirk. He writes my mum and she sends them on to me. My brothers too.”

Robert and Bill turned to Tom: who’s chin found his knees. Eyes still on the water.

The Bodach

Bill in the billet, re-reading letters on his bunk. Tom and Rabbit native – seeking shade at the willow.

Robert alone; Ankle deep in the twig and leaf of the Barra Tye’s O horizon.

Robert had climbed the Diel’s Cauldron and walked further and higher through the duff than at any time prior. He followed the Bodach’s dabbitie that hung from the branches, stopping when losing the trail and throwing his eyes back to the inosculation until he found another: more crosses and whigmaleerie made from bent and twisted twig, some stripped of bark, some covered with furs, some held together with twine and string and some frilled and furbelowed with feathers or moss.

Time passed exotic in the depths of the Barra Tye. From clear skied morning; when Robert had climbed the fence and bounced from felled trunk to shorne stump in the coppice – to the moment that the trees broke: where the wood met the mountains – he had missed the evening arrive beneath purple and blue bruises between branch and bole, softening the retreating sun above.

It wasn’t until finding his toes touch grass at a still lonely tarn, cupped by the corrie of blue tinted mountains at the northern skirt of the Barra Tye, that he had found that it was later than he’d believed.

The smell of roasted hazelnuts and scorched venison; Robert spotted a light surrounded by hermitic hut of pine – a pale orange glow in the dirty windows.

One foot in front of the other with strained cautious steps, Robert edged to the hut through long grass and draff.

“For the love of God why can’t you can’t leave me alone?” Exasperated, the Bodach; turning from the back of his hut, fresh cut logs in hand – quartered and stripped. “You’re worse than midgies! Everywhere I go! Everywhere I go… ragglish boys! I’d think you breed had I not the eyes to recognise you.”

Robert stood silent.

“Come on then!” The Bodach motioning to the door of his hut. “You’ll no leave me be until you’ve pestered the heavens out of me.”

More comfortable on the inside than its rustic appearance on the out, the Bodach’s hut braced an agreeable air. A bed in the corner by a hand carved desk; under and around which piles of books stacked like growing wildflowers. Along the walls and hanging from the ceiling were the Bodach’s decorations – same as those that hung from the trees going deep into the Barra Tye. Separate but near in a hand carved wooden frame: a single white feather above his bed. In another corner at the back by the open window with smoke pipes running to the outside stood a stone stacked wood fired cooker: the roasted hazelnut and scorched venison.

Hearing the boy’s stomach growl the Bodach sighed: “You’ll be wanting fed I take it!”

Removing his straw hat, Robert caught his first glimpse of the man hiding under the shadow and whiskers of his face. Old: certainly. Those silver lupine eyes sparkling in the gas lamps glow – wrinkles in their corners filled with the dust and ruddle of the woods.

Opening the oven door The Bodach pulled out a tin tray in which a hind leg sat cooking in it’s own juices. He threw down a couple of tin plates and carved meat from the thigh with clean easy slices of the knife before dropping them to the plates. With bare fingers he added the wild Spring Onion, mushrooms and hazelnuts that roasted in the meat’s broth.

“I’ve only the one fork!” He handed it to Robert while he sat on the bed and began picking at his plate with with fingers.

While Robert sat at the desk on half a varnished tree-trunk, he dove into the food on his plate; believing that plate to hold the sweetest meat he had ever had and little realising how hungry he had been.

“So…” The Bodach chewing while he spoke. “You’ve found me. What are you wanting?”

Robert thought so hard the Bodach could hear sparks and gears echoing from the boy’s ears. “I’m… I’m not really sure.”

“HA!” meat juice running into his red silver whiskers, “You’re a dog with a hare!”

“I mean… I wanted to see if you were real. If you were a Bodach. If you were a man.”

“And?”

“If you were a Bodach I think you’d act kinder than you do.”

The Bodach laughed as he lay the empty tin plate on his desk.

“But if you were a man you’d not be living out and away from everybody like this. And you’d probably act the meaner for it.”

“Is that so?” genuine question and raised bushy red brows.

“Why do you live out here?”

“Why are you so interested?”

“I… I don’t know.”

The Bodach smiled from the corner of his mouth beneath his whiskers – eyes glinting with some mercurial whim that Robert thought he recognised: “Tell me. Why are you up here alone? Where are the other two?”

“Tom’s with Rabbit I think. Bill wanted to re-read some letters from home.”

“I’ve seen you boys a hundred times or more in these woods. You run and you play bare-scud as sons of Adam with no knowledge of Eve. You’re the only one I’ve seen on his todd.”

“I like to be alone sometimes.”

Squinting disbelieving eyes: “Is that true?”

Robert thought. Wondered why he felt so compelled to talk honest. “No. Not really.”

“The tall one! The big handsome lad with hair like maize silk. Looks like he’s ready to wrestle the world the way the backs of his legs echo a fight. You’re rarely parted from his side.”

“That’s Bill.” A sad smile that was reflex.

Again the Bodach smiled. “You take fancy to him?”

“He’s a boy. I don’t…”

“Away with your nonsense. I told you. I’ve seen you. The games you boys play. I don’t care who you’ve a fancy for or your reasons for it. There was an age that I couldn’t tell arse from quim either. Your body moves to its wants regardless of laws… Maybe one day they’ll write laws an honest man can obey… Until then you do as you do.”

Robert lay his empty plate on the desk atop the Bodach’s. Placed the fork at its centre. “You never said why you lived here alone.”

The Bodach grumbled something under his breath, the words catching in the whiskers of moustache and beard before they could reach Robert’s ears. Then a little louder: “I’ve no notion to live among hypocrites and menseless folk. Everything I need is here. When I’m left alone, that is.”

“You said in the woods that you were old. Like you knew about the Greeks and Philip and Alexander because you were there. How old are you? Really?”

“You carry more questions than a woman! What does it matter to you?”

“It doesn’t.”

Eyes on eyes and a whiffle from somewhere in the back of his mouth; The Bodach eventually asking: “What would you rather? To hear that I’m old enough to remember when Titan’s created lochs and lakes with their footsteps and that riverbeds come from giants dragging their long fat peckers across the ground? Or that I’m just an old man your grandfather’s age who’s read a book or two in his lifetime.”

Robert thought about the lines between fantasy and reality – how they could run parallel or intertwine or turn perpendicular like the midday sun. What was it he preferred? What was it that he fed to Tom when the boy asked for a story?

“I’m old and I read. We’ll leave it at that. Anything else you feel the need to pester me with before I can get you out of my house?”

Robert thought of the questions he’d had bubbling: “Before… You said that war was hollow. Like it has no meaning… You think that of this one?”

The Bodach sighed deep; gravel rolling in his throat: “You ask all over the shop. No connecting thread. Makes me wonder if despite your knowledge you’re not as simple as that young one you donder with.” Looking at Robert and seeing the boy had no intention of changing his question: “The war? This one’s different. This one means something. You don’t know it yet. Hell, most of the soldiers fighting it don’t know it. But they will, everyone will. Once the dust has cleared from the last fallen bomb.

“That last one and a thousand before it were about Empires. Wicked things made by men who can’t mind their own business. But at least something can be built from Empires, they can bring progress. The Greeks brought culture and democracy and rational thought. The Romans; roads and wine and Christianity. Hell even the British brought industrialization and a common tongue. The Nazi’s will only leave behind graveyards of the likes you couldn’t begin to imagine. You’ll see…”

A brief knock at the door before it opened and the Minister stepped through with a smile, a brown paper package of books in his hand: “Hello George! I’ve this week’s delivery…” His eyes on Robert who shot to his feet. “Robert?”

“Is there a sign on my door that invites every fool through its threshold? A line of breadcrumbs in the woods perhaps?” The Bodach exasperated.

“Robert… I think maybe we should get you back to the billet.”

Robert looked from the Minister back to The Bodach.

“Aye. Leave the books and take the boy! A fairer trade I can’t offer you! And wait for an answer before you come barging through my door next time!”

The Minister blushed: “Sorry about that George.”

“Can I… Can I come and see you again? Maybe bring my friends too?”

The Bodach stood and started unwrapping the package of books: “If I said no you wouldn’t pay hide nor hare.”

Robert smiled broad.

Wondering about this Story? Tell Ellio about it! Ellio Lee

5. Excerpt from a speech given in the House of Commons by Prime Minister Winston Churchill June 4th 1940