The Stolen Voice

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‘And you are telling me,’ said Gil Cunningham, ‘that this David Drummond vanished away forty year since, and is now returned seemingly not a day older?’

‘That’s about the sum of it,’ agreed Sir William Stewart. He cut a substantial portion off the haunch of venison on the platter before him, looked round the supper table, and conveyed the slice to his own pewter trencher. Satisfied that all four present were served, he addressed himself to his supper.

‘Not quite,’ qualified his lady. She accepted the sauce dish from Gil’s wife Alys and went on, ‘It was thirty year, for one thing, not forty, and for another I’d aye heard he was eleven or twelve when he vanished, and he’s at least sixteen now by the look of him.’

‘It still seems very strange,’ said Alys, ‘but this is a country where strange things happen, I think.’

She turned to the window, and Sir William’s steward, bare-legged and bearded and swathed in a vast checked plaid, looked enquiringly at her from where he stood by the sideboard. She shook her head and smiled, looking beyond him at the distant view of loch and mountains, woods and farmland, and the long narrow glen of Balquhidder.

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