His blisters have hardened over the Sabbath and now the brine of the sealoch continues the work, tempering the raw dead skin to callouses with each stroke of the oar.

He watched the Lutheran Dutchmen cast their nets on Saturday night and hauled a sparse catch in on Sunday morning, too blinded by greed to know that two nights rest settles the herring and entices them to rise in greater numbers on a Monday night.

The buss is moored far up An Lochan Beg, almost as far as Badralloch.  Iain observed the cooper packing and salting Saturday nights catch as he and his kin climbed up the hill on the way to the Kirk at Clachan.

“Crois Chrìosd oirnn. Amadain sanntach![1]”, his father muttered as he climbed.

Now, as they row Badralloch’s boat out into the Spring twilight, they can hear those the kegs of salted and brined herring clump onto the deck of the windjaeker, stowed and secured for its fast run back to some Hanseatic port.  The windjaeker is fine and full rigged beside the fat bulge of the buss.  When the last barrel of herring is loaded, it will slip its lines and tack up the sealoch, powered by the brisk Southerly that piles up wavelets on the beam of the Badralloch boat.

The herring have come in vast shoals this year.  Some years they are like that.  On others, it seems they shun the coast of Ros, find other grounds to mass and feed.  Were it not for the Dutch, Iain and his uncles would be done with the fishery by now, more herring landed in two nights than any of them can eat, but the Dutchmen buy whatever they can catch, paying sometimes in silver, sometimes in meal or cheese or the gin the windjaekers bring to resupply their mothership. The seamen on the buss – fishers, mariners and coopers – remain at sea for the whole season, clearing nets, gutting and pickling the fish in that secret way they have devised The strange grey salt they use cannot be bought.  Windjaekers deliver more, in sacks, with every roundtrip. 

Five windkaekers service the buss.  When the herring move on, to Orkney and Shetland then farther East, the Dutchmen will follow.  A whole summer never setting foot on land, never turning a sod or sowing seed.  Iain’s uncles keep his female cousins inby, away from prying eyes, but still they gaze ashore.  He sees them, in idle moments, standing by the rail, smoking their pipes and watching.

The master of the buss, Pieter, is bluff, self-confident.  The price he offers for each cran the Badralloch MacLeoids and the MacCoinneachs catch varies from week to week, sometimes from day to day.  Iain cannot see the logic whereby a herring yesterday is worth more or less than a herring today or tomorrow but Pieter insists.  They bargain by signs, fingers and nods, dismissal and beckoning.  Pieter does not have the gaelic and they have neither Duitseach nor Beurla.  He will not let Iain’s father come aboard so they must look up to him, high above, as his crew peer down, spit into the loch, grateful for the distraction of their bartering.

There seem to be more Dutch busses in the lochs along the shores of Ros these days.  His Uncle says MacCoinneach of Kintail is keen to encourage them.  The King in London has declared himself King of the Seas, his father says, and driven the Dutchmen from the Southern waters with his warships.  How can even a King rule the open sea?  They say he levies Ship Money on every town in England and the warships take a tithe of every cran they catch the Dutch with wherever they find them. 

King Charles thinks he owns both the ocean and the fish in it.  Does he own the seals and the seaware, the whales and the whelks? It makes no sense to Iain.

The MacCoinneach lairds at Dundonnel demand rents for similarly inexplicable reasons and kick back tithes to the minister at Clachan from the tenants at Badralloch who presumably kicks back a share to God himself.  But the land is not the sea.  The land can be marked and parcelled up.  This lot and another, into bailles and rigs, inby and commons.  The sea cannot be plotted, titled.

It seems the Dutch agree with Iain in this but English taxation drives the busses farther North, filling their barrels in Scottosh sealochs far from home then racing them back directly to Rotterdam, Danzig, Riga and Lubeck.

The steady oarstrokes of the Badralloch men haul their boat past the loading windjaeker and farther into the loch. 

A bit more silver, his father says, and they can buy another boat, more oars and nets, catch twice the fish. 

“A bheil sin dà uiread an airgid ma-thà, athair?[2]”

“Seadh. Dà uiread an airgid seo. Seadh. Carson nach biodh?[3]”

But what would they do with all of that silver?

“Seo,” his father says. “Do chuibhreann.”[4]

Iain’s share is such a tiny thing. Hardly a spec.  A quarter circle snipped from one of the Dutch coins. He held it in his calloused palm and wondered at its smallness.

Silver seems a good thing in principle, of course.  What is not to want?  The lairds value it.

His Uncle at the tiller nods the signal and the men ship their oars and let the keel slow , tuning its head into the chop the Southerly hectors across the loch.  The boat wobbles, settles.  The windjaeker is spreading sail,  cloth and rigging straining to be away.  Peat smoke rises into the sunset from the lochside settlements and the whale oil lamps are glowing faintly on the buss. They cast their hemp nets and pray for the fish to rise upto the surface to sneeze.  His uncles bustle to set their nets, light pipes with tobacco bartered from the Dutchmen and they begin to drift.

[1] The Cross of Christ be upon us.  Greedy fools!

[2] Is that twice the silver then, father?

[3] Yes.  Twice this silver.  Yes.  Why not?

[4] Here.  Your share.