The Second Queen of Hirta

Chapter 5: The stranger's cough

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The minister was distinguishable from everyone else in several ways, one of them being that he was the only man who did not go hunting. This was accepted for reasons that were beyond my comprehension at the time, though I simply accepted it myself without troubling to understand, but in any case he was so stout that if, for some reason, he had taken it upon himself to join the others in a hunting expedition, he would certainly have fallen to his doom at the first attempt. Although nobody ever joked about death, it was amusing to imagine him trying to climb a cliff, but it would have been out of the question to tease him about it. The minister was never teased about anything, for another of his identifying features was that he was the fiercest man we knew.

For this reason I would need time to develop the courage to ask him about Saint Kilda, but even the start of this process had to be delayed because, the day after the second conversation with Robert, I began to feel unwell.

"Mammy," I said during our evening meal, "my jaw hurts."

"I know, beloved," said she. "Lie down by the fire and try to keep warm. It will get worse before it gets better."