The Falconer’s Tale. Gordon Kent

about where to go to fish—he’d virtually memorized the green tourist brochure in his room. He sat in the car, watching the rain over the sea, and tried to remember how fishing worked in Scotland. You had to buy tickets—there was virtually no public fishing. At least, that’s what he’d read in the brochure. A glance at his watch told him that it was two p.m. He shut off the car and went back into the hotel.

      The windows of the bookstore were full of children’s books and travel guides to catch the tourist’s eyes, but as soon as he was through the door and out of the rain he saw the case of flies and the corner dedicated to fishing. The floor was old wood, the ceiling low—it was an eighteenth-century shop front, or perhaps two joined together.

      A pretty young woman stood behind the counter, perhaps sixteen years old—a little young for Piat, but a pleasure to see. “I wonder if you could tell me about the fishing,” Piat asked. “I have the afternoon.”

      “Would you be wanting the trout, then?” she asked.

      “Salmon?” Piat asked, a little wistfully. “Or is there sea trout fishing here?”

      “Some, aye. My da would know better.” She spoke quite seriously—fishing was a serious subject here. “He’s in the back. Shall I get him, then?”

      She made Piat feel quite old. “Yes, please,” he said, like a boy on his best behavior.

      She vanished into an office in the back. Piat began to browse. The front of the store was full of books for tourists, with maps and walking guides and a whole series of books on the genealogy and history of the island. All locally printed. He flipped through one, a walking guide with historical notes. The antiquarian in him automatically counted the hill forts, the duns, the standing stones—the island boasted a strong archaeological record.

      “Are you looking for sea trout?”

      Piat turned from the book rack and saw a tall man, gaunt, with a huge smile and a shock of black hair. He did not have the expected accent.

      “Yes. Sea trout,” said Piat.

      “Not what they used to be, I’m afraid. Had some Americans catching them in the Aros last year—they come every year. Aros estuary. I can give you that for this evening, but there’s no point in going there now. The tide’s down.”

      Piat nodded. “How much?”

      “Five pounds for the estuary. It’s best fished two hours either side of high tide. I wouldn’t even start on it until six. I’m Donald, by the way.”

      “Jack,” said Piat, shaking hands. He’d been Jack for two days. The lie came automatically, and Piat thought Why’d I do that? “I’d like to fish this afternoon, too.”

      “You have a car?” Donald asked. Donald spoke the way Clyde Partlow wanted to speak, with no trace of an island accent—like someone who had gone to all the best schools. Eton. Oxford. Maybe Cambridge. “I don’t guarantee you’ll get any fish, but Loch Làidir is available.” He seemed wistful. “It’s quite a climb from the road.”

      The man was already filling out a bright orange card. “Leave this on the dashboard of your car.”

      Piat watched him for a few seconds. “Where am I going?” he asked.

      “Oh, yes. Right.” Donald flashed his gigantic smile again. “Do you know the island at all?”

      “I can get from here to Salen,” Piat replied with a shrug. “I’ve driven over near Dervaig.”

      “Right. You’ll want a map.” He pointed to the rack of Ordnance Surveys. He rattled off driving directions. “It should take you less than half an hour to get there. Then the climb—you see this stream?—strenuous but worth it.” His forefinger covered the mark on the map. “Just follow it up to the loch. Nothing in it but wee trout. The sea trout come up the other side, from the sea, of course. Once you reach the loch, it’s still difficult going—rock all the way round. But there’s a gravel beach on this shore. I’d fish there, by the crannog.”

      Piat saw a tiny island on the Ordnance map, with the word “crannog” in minute italics. “What’s a crannog?” he asked.

      Donald laughed. “A local oddity. An artificial island. Built long ago. You have waders?”

      Piat shook his head.

      Donald considered him. Piat knew that Donald had just written him off as a novice.

      “I forgot them,” he muttered.

      “You really will need them.” Then, cheerfully, “I suppose that you could just skip about on the shore. The loch is very deep in places.”

      With a sigh for the money, Piat chose a pair of heavy rubber thigh waders from the fishing equipment. He wondered if the bulky things would go in his pack. He noted that the shop had light waders—very pricey. But they’d fit in his pack, and in effect, Partlow was paying. What the hell.

      Piat paid.

      The climb to the loch was spectacular. The terrain was very like Iceland, with shocks of coarse grass over gravel and volcanic rock. There was a path at first, but it soon divided into hundreds of sheep tracks, all going in the same general direction up the stream. It took him almost an hour to climb over the last crest and look down into what had to be the caldera of an extinct volcano. The shingle of gravel was clearly visible across the loch, and so was the crannog, seen at this distance as a humped island with a single tree growing from it, the tree visible for a mile in any direction because it was the only one. Again, Piat was reminded of the immense vistas of Africa.

      Beyond the far lip of the caldera was only sky. High above, an eagle circled. Piat drank a cup of tea from his thermos and started down. The sense of openness—freedom, even—Piat couldn’t think of the origin of the tag, but the words above him, only sky ran around and around his head. The Bible? The Beatles?

      It was three-thirty before he arrived on the gravel and set up his rod. He fished the shallow water between the gravel and the crannog for fifteen minutes, hooking and releasing a half-dozen minute brown trout. Then he put on the light, stocking-foot waders, a wet task in the rain, and pulled his boots on over them. No choice there. His boots were in for a pounding.

      He worked the seaward end of the gravel, moving slowly into the deeper water. The loch itself was quite deep and very clear, so that when the watery sun made momentary appearances, he could see the complex rock formations in the depths. Right at his feet was a hollow cone of rock thirty feet across and so deep in the middle that light couldn’t penetrate it, some sort of ancient volcanic vent. He cast to the edge of the vent and immediately caught a strong brown trout, perhaps a pound, which he watched rise from the depths to seize the sea-trout fly. As far as he could see, the loch was short on food for fish and long on fish, but watching the predatory glide of the brown to his fly was pure joy.

      A younger and braver fisherman could walk out along the vent’s top ridge to fish the deeper water. Piat actually considered it for a moment while he landed the brown trout before deciding that the creeping cowardice of age was going to win this one. He released the brown. He’d eat in a restaurant for his last meal on the island, and they wouldn’t want to cook his fish.

      The crannog rose like a temptation, only fifteen or twenty meters off shore, the perfect platform from which to fish the vent, and whatever further wonders might lurk in the loch beyond. Piat climbed out of the water on the shingle and eyed the crannog. The water was too deep to walk out directly—he’d be over the top of his belt at the midpoint, soaked to the skin and cold. But there were stones under the surface of the water, two sets of stepping stones. The stones themselves were well down, but he thought he could move from one stone to the next without going over his waders.

      Piat knew he was going to attempt it. He laughed at himself while he drank some tea, because his failure to accept the lure of the vent ridge meant that he was going to try and prove himself on something just as ridiculous. Partlow had thought he was crazy for fishing in the rain. Piat raised his cup of tea