Panama and Scotland, 1698: these two worlds could not be further apart. And yet they did collide, as the Scots tried to set up a colony in the heart of the Spanish Empire – the infamous Darien Disaster.
But this grand project is soured by an old conflict: Eóghan is chasing soldier James Fletcher to avenge the death of his family six years earlier in Glencoe. The long journey at sea and the Darien jungle, hostile to colonial efforts, will raise the stakes far higher than expected.
Across the Isthmus, seamstress María Isabel must work her way through the tensions of colonial Panama: men and women, Spaniards and Indios, rich and poor. Smuggling is rife in this coastal city, always under the threat of pirates but also visited by foreign ships eager to trade goods.
Their paths will cross, eventually, in a tangle of blood and grief
Eóghan knew a rider was coming long before he heard the horse. That light piercing through the darkness of the glen could only be a torch. Few rode this far into the valley after sundown, especially in the winter. Something had happened. Maybe someone had died.
He wrapped himself in his plaid and started his long way down the rugged hills of Glen Coe, needing no light to find his way to the bottom. The valley stayed in the dark for most of the day in the winter: every MacIain had learnt to live in the shadows and went about their daily chores unlighted. He looked up. The biting wind wailing in the north would bring snow later that night. It followed Eóghan all the way down to the clachan, creeping under his worn-out plaid until his fingertips ached. It was too chilly to be out, but he loved the hills far too much to forsake them over a little discomfort. Sometimes he liked pretending he was a sentry, guarding the valley perched from his favourite rock. But most of the days nothing happened at all, the glen scarcely populated this far into the land and the houses stretching far and few along the river.
That eve, however, Eóghan reached the houses at the same time as the unexpected rider: Iain, the eldest son of the chieftain, frowning under the light of the torch. Everyone in the glen knew how bold and fearless he’d been during the war, two years before. Eóghan’s father and brother had fought for King James – how he’d longed to join them then, to be a warrior, to wield a sword! But his father said he was too young, and he had stayed behind with his mother and the other children. King James lost and the war ended, but Rob never returned. Eóghan became the eldest. It still stung he had not fought at his brother’s side.
Eóghan pushed the heavy door of his house with some effort. They all looked up him: his mother, by a large cauldron with the baby sister clinging to her skirts, and his father and Niall, making fir-candles for lighting like every winter night. Supper would soon be ready. The peat crackled into a thick smoke that rose up to the low, rounded roof of the house.
“Iain’s come. He is waiting outside,” Eóghan said.
If this surprised his father, his face did not show it as he stood. He was a tall man, like most men in the glen, and he rarely let his thoughts be known. He caught the door open as if it weighed nothing. Eóghan tried to think of good a reason to go back out to hear what Iain would say, but his father spared him that. He said, “Feed the cows,” and Eóghan followed him eagerly after grabbing the bucket.
Outside, the air had the crisp and frozen edge that preceded a snowfall. Eóghan hurried to the cattle shed, knowing the wind would carry over the words in his direction. He pressed against the cows to keep himself warm, but they protested when he did not feed them at once, their thick fur tickling against his arms. They were used to him; they expected their food. The frozen hills had little grass left for them to pasture, and the family had to spare their own grains to keep them fed until the spring. Eóghan pushed the bucket towards them to keep them quiet, not wanting to miss the conversation. Iain, with his torch still burning high, was standing with his father and the other men of the clachan, who had all come out to greet him.
“You’re far inland,” Iain said, “but four in the bigger houses, and two in the smaller ones ought to be enough.”
Eóghan’s father spoke up then, gruff and bold. “Armed soldiers? In our homes?”
“They are my father’s guests. MacIain’s guests, and yours. He’s promised them shelter for tonight. You would turn them away when a blizzard’s coming?”
Eóghan looked up to the first snowflakes powdering the hills, faint and slow. Deceptively so. The fields would soon be drowned in white. February storms were swift, violent – being caught out in one was to brave death. He and Rob were almost lost in one, when they were children; they had not felt the cold rising, and then it was too late to find their way.
He saw his father clench his jaw, but he argued no further with his chieftain’s son. How could he? He owed him everything. Yet the men dispersed with low murmurs of disapproval after Iain left, low enough that they would not be heard. Eóghan hurried back inside the house after his father, before the whistling wind managed to quench the fire.
“An entire regiment,” his father said, “stationed in the glen for a few nights. We are to host two of ‘em.”
He ran a hand over his long black hair, where his braid had come undone. Some of his beard was tressed, too. When Rob was alive, Eóghan used to glance between them in wonder at how alike they were. He wished he did too. But he had seen his own reflection in the river, and knew he looked more like his mother, auburn-haired and grey-eyed.
“For how long?” his mother asked.
“Didn’t say. A few nights, maybe.”
“And how are we to feed two grown men?”
She shook her head. She was serving some porridge in small quaichs. Very small quaichs. Eóghan had carved them himself over the summer. His father did not answer. He always complained that the land he tended kept them hungry rather than fed in the winter, but there was nowhere else to grow crops in the glen, not for them. They would starve long before the spring if those unwanted guests were to come.
Even the little ones grew silent around the cracking peat. Eóghan guessed he would need to sleep with them to make room for the soldiers, and have them share the bed that had been Rob’s when he lived. Rob’s and Eóghan’s, for as long as he could remember. He wished the soldiers would not come. Maybe the blizzard had caught them already.
“Come here,” his father called after the younger children were put to bed.
He was bent over the large kist where he kept his weapons. The lid alone was enormously heavy – Eóghan had tried many a time to lift it in secret – and it groaned when his father laid it open. Aside from a flintlock pistol and its powder pouch, an axe and three dirks were laid at the bottom, dusty and expectant. Eóghan’s glance, however, was drawn to the two swords. The two-handed one, his father’s, had been in the clan for many years, its cross-ended hilt worn-out but the blade still sharp. The other sword had been Rob’s, lighter and newer, and its guard curled into elaborate swirls to protect the hand. It is mine now, Eóghan thought, dizzy as he reached to touch it.
“We will host those soldiers but we’ll be no fools,” his father said. “You’ll know how to use these?”
Eóghan still remembered all of the basic moves his father had taught him the previous summer, when he turned twelve. He nodded.
“And your dirk. You still have it?”
Eóghan unsheathed the dagger he had given him that same summer. Its long, triangular blade met a wooden hilt where Eóghan carved circular patterns sometimes. A fine weapon, but its only true purpose so far had been to hack roots and grass when he roved the hills on his own.
“Good,” his father said. “Keep it close when you sleep.” He placed the swords against the wall, between two ploughing shafts – a subtle warning – and then checked that the flintlock was in working condition. “Don’t be afraid. They most likely won’t harm us. The clan’s made his peace with King William when MacIain swore fealty last month.”
“And these are King William’s soldiers coming?”
“Aye, the Orange King’s soldiers. Campbell and Lowlander scum. Best keep an eye on them.”
Eóghan had paid little mind to the clan’s political troubles. He did know that after the war ended, the old chieftain had travelled in a blizzard around the new year’s eve, to pledge himself to King William. But that made no sense to him; they had fought for King James during the war. He did not understand why they had become loyal to their former enemy. It was supposed to be a pardon – some clever word for an apology. But why would they apologise for Rob having died? He wanted to ask more about the war and why his father called the King orange, but the brief commotion outside startled them both. Horses and voices in the dark, and a firm knock on the door.
The soldiers had arrived.