I thought he was referring to the early Scottish king, but no, he was harking back to a Laurence Bruce — 'the Great Foud of Zetland', he called him — a tyrannical land-grabber who, from his castle at Muness, had held all Unst in the thrall of Scottish law during the last days of the first Elizabeth when James was still only king of Scotland. It was a strange, haunting story, a Romeo and Juliet legend of the north, and at first I did not understand why he was telling it to me.
When I had arrived in Haroldswick I had gone to the post office, and because I had to explain my need of accommodation, I said I was an ornithologist. Birds were the main attraction for visitors and it would allow me to walk the hills around Burra Firth without exciting comment. The Bruces had just had a cancellation, so I had been sent to them. But Robert Bruce, a retired schoolmaster living with his sister, now occupied his time helping with the preservation and marking of seabirds on the western cliffs and I don't think it took that shrewd, beady-eyed little Scot long to realize I was no ornithologist. So instead of talking about birds, he told me the story of Edwin and Helga, and how, to escape the wrath of her people, whose leader had been murdered by one of Bruce's minions, she had rushed her lover to the family's little boat and sailed for Yell in a northerly gale, past the great cliffs of Vallafield, to be lost for ever in the roaring tide race off the entrance to Bluemull Sound.
It is too long a story to repeat, and I have forgotten I much of it — and in any case the beauty of it was in the telling. But what I do remember is Bruce's guile and greed, his despicable ruthlessness, and the fierce, law-abiding determination of the islanders who had sailed an open boat three hundred miles to Scotland to lay their just complaints before the King in Edinburgh. 'And do you ken why the Scots were in Zetland?' Bruce asked me, his bright eyes fixed on me like the Ancient Mariner. 'Because the islands were handed over to them as a pledge for a Danish princess's dowry. The people were subject only to the Scots king, retaining their own laws and customs, but history is strewn with conditions of treaty unfulfilled and Bruce, as gauleiter for the Crown, violated them with a vengeance.' Looking at me very closely, he added, 'In this lonely island of Unst we are very vulnerable to big northern shifts of power.'
And then, as his sister took the blackened kettle from the hob and made the tea, he began telling me an older island story, of the Pictish inhabitants a thousand years ago who, when their brochs were destroyed and all their lands taken by Vikings from the fjords of Norway, had been forced to retreat into the great caverns of the south-west from which they emerged only at night. 'They were the trolls, you know, the little people of superstition — call them dwarfs, gnomes, fairies, it's all the same — you watch for them at night, mind your children don't get stolen and put out offerings to placate them. That's what the early Norse did and only Coul, the old priest man, captured from the Celts of the south, ever saw the caves in which they had found refuge, and he died just after they had let him go.' He told me the story then of Gletna Kirk, the church Coul tried to build and which they destroyed in the night, thinking it was to be another of the invaders' strong-holds.
But by then my head was nodding. It had been a long day and I drank my tea and went to bed, to wake once, briefly, in the night and remember how the old man had harped on successive waves of Northern invaders.
In the morning, after breakfast, I went with him up the road to Burra Firth, about a mile and a half to where a track branched northward. 'You'll not be finding many birds up there, not unless you go right to The Noup and that's a good long tramp by Saxa Vord.' The blue eyes watched me curiously from under his peaked cap. 'Better you come with me up Milldale to Tonga. There's all the birds you could ever want there and I can show you Goturm's Hole.'
I thanked him and he nodded. 'Suit yerself.' He half-turned, then paused. 'Take the right fork in half a mile and it'll bring you to Buel Houll. There's a good view there of The Ness on t'other side of the Firth with Fiska Wick beyond and a fishing boat close inshore. You'll see in your map there's a track from just near Buel Houll that winds round Housl Fiel and straight back by the School.' And then he asked me, 'You've no glasses?'
'No.'
He slipped his own from off his shoulder. 'You'll need them I'm thinking to see what you want to see.' He nodded then and left me, walking with a steady, tireless stride, his body bowed a little into the west wind. I examined the glasses he had given me. They were Zeiss, small and very compact, but of extraordinary clarity and brilliant magnification. Birdwatchers' glasses, but he'd known when he handed them to me it wasn't birds I had come to watch. I went up the track, and before I had reached the fork, I could see the black hull of the fishing boat anchored off a sprawl of buildings on the far side.
I took the left fork, and where the track ended I turned north along the edge of the fifth. It was very quiet, only the sound of the seabirds and the lap of the water on the rocks. Root Stacks was right below me and I lay in the grass watching the buildings opposite, across the narrow strip of water. White puffs of cloud sailed over the hills and it was warm, the breeze-block sprawl of the Root Stacks Hotel basking in the sunshine. Through the glasses I could see the sign quite clearly, a painted board on the stone-built front of what must have been part of the old original steading, and just below it, on a wooden bench, an old man sat dozing in the sun, his face strangely twisted. He had a stick beside him and there was a dog at his feet, a black and white collie curled up on the sheep-cropped grass.
It was all very peaceful and nothing stirred for a long time. Then, shortly after eleven, the dog uncurled itself and began to bark. A Land Rover was coming down the track. The old man stirred and lifted his head, the disfiguring line of a great scar showing. The Land Rover stopped and three men got out. One of them was Sandford. The old man shook hands with the other two and they all went into the house, including the dog, and after that the stillness and the quiet descended again.
I must have fallen asleep, for I woke suddenly to the sound of the dog barking. Five men were loading packages into the Land Rover, the old man watching them, leaning on his stick. They piled into the Land Rover, Sandford driving it up the track that disappeared behind The Ness to where my map showed the narrow gut of Fiska Wick. Ten minutes later the quiet was shattered by the sound of an outboard and an inflatable with four of them in it nosed out from under The Ness and headed for the fishing boat.
I watched them as they climbed on board, but it was impossible to tell whether they were Shetlanders or not, and though the sound of their voices reached me across the water, I couldn't hear what was said. The Land Rover was back at the hotel now, not a soul in sight. The vessel's engine started up, figures on the foredeck and the clank of the chain coming in, and when the anchor was housed, she steamed down the firth, hugging the farther shore and disappearing westward through the gap between Herma Ness and Muckle Flugga. I lay back in the peat moss again, thinking of the rig and that damned fool Fuller exchanging the Duchess for one of Sandford's boats.
I lay there, scarcely moving, until late in the afternoon, when the clouds thickened and it began to drizzle, and by then I knew I was wasting my time. I had discovered nothing except that in the right weather Sandford used the firth as a base for his boats, and I got to my feet, climbing towards Housl Fiel and the track that led back to Bruce's cottage.
He came in a little after me, the tweed of his jacket glistening with moisture, his ruddy face flushed with exertion. 'I could have shown you a snowy owl,' he said, his bright eyes laughing at me. A snowy owl meant nothing to me and he knew it. 'You saw the purse-seiner leave, did you? I watched it from the top of Libbers Hill. It was steaming south-west to clear The Clapper and the islands north of Mainland.'