The funeral begins and ends with bagpipes.
There’s a chapel next to the castle where for centuries members of the Stewart family have been christened, married and interred. The air’s silent, no sound pierces it apart from the sober tones of the bagpipes as Lennox’s casket is carried into the chapel by the pallbearers.
It’s a small funeral. There are no guests from neighbouring countries. The few people in attendance are family or close friends and his fiancée. Politicians haven’t been included, the flowers they’ve sent delivered to a nearby care home.
Blair speaks, reading a poem, her soft lilt filling the chapel.
When this body comes to die,
Set me on the headland high,
Where sun and rain go marching by,
Raven lord of wave and sky.
I remember Lennox. The horses, the parties in the castle grounds, the boy who loved his sister. I remember his ambition and lust for power, the idea he could do better than the men who’d served before him.
I’d seen it before.
When I free my final breath,
Lay me down on gentle earth,
Where the dove shades holy garth,
And rivers run to meet the firth.
Elise sobs, probably mourning a life she thought she’d captured. Blair ignores her or is too focused on getting through her reading to notice. I wonder what Lennox would think now, seeing his sister standing at the lectern, reading words to commemorate his death. He’d never thought it would end this way. For Lennox, he thought he was invincible.
When my spirit passes over,
Float me on air’s mountain floor,
Where the feathered ramparts soar,
And the eagles golden hover,
Eilean Mor Sgiathach
The poem refers to an island near Skye, uninhabited and wild, a place where Lennox camped as a boy, so I remember Blair telling me. It was a weekend to do that, just as no young child should see their mother die.
The pipes play again as we leave the chapel, notes flying up like birds set free. We walk behind the pallbearers as they carry the coffin to the graveyard next to the loch where generations of Lennox’s family have been already buried there.
He’ll face the loch forever, watching the eagles tumble on pockets of air and hear the sound of hooves pass by as they head for the pastures and fields.
I stand next to Blair as they lower the coffin, her head lowered. Without thinking, I put my hand on her lower back and I feel her exhale.
“My brother’s dead.” She looks up at me. “My brother’s dead and I don’t know what to do.”
Her cousins lurk at the other side of the grave, their faces painted with sadness.
“You do what you choose and no one will disagree”
“But maybe I will. Maybe if I don’t step forward now, I’ll disagree.” She tilts her chin and I see the strength that’s there, the steel in her eyes. “But I’m not going to be told what to do.”
“I know.”
She turns to me and nods and I know she’s made her decision.
