The Last Wolf by Michael Morpurgo
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Miya’s New-Fangled Machine
The Last Wishes of Robbie Mcleod
Resting in Peace
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Michael Morpurgo
Copyright
About the Book
When Robbie McLeod finds an orphaned wolf cub and vows to take care of him, it is the beginning of an adventure that sweeps boy and beast from the Highlands to the high seas and beyond.
Award-winning author Michael Morpurgo creates a spellbinding story of bravery and loyalty, brought vividly to life by Michael Foreman’s stunning illustrations.
For Neil and Gill – MM
Miya’s New-fangled Machine
‘YOU’RE AN OSTRICH, Grandpa,’ Miya told me, sitting herself down on my bed and peeling an orange for me.
‘And why’s that then?’ I asked her.
‘Because whenever you see something you don’t like, you just bury your head in the sand and pretend it’s not there.’
It was an old argument between us, not that you’d call it an argument as such, more of a tease. But whatever it was, I knew that sooner rather than later she was going to wear me down. Miya was determined to drag me into the twenty-first century whether I liked it or not. And now she’d found the perfect opportunity.
‘You’ve got nothing else to do, Grandpa,’ she went on. ‘You’re bored out of your mind. Why not try it, at least? I’ll come in and teach you, if you like, every evening. Won’t take long. It’s easy-peasy – nothing to be frightened of.’
‘I’m not frightened,’ I replied. ‘I just don’t see the point of all these new-fangled machines, that’s all.’
‘Like I said, you’re an ostrich. Here.’ She gave me my orange. ‘Eat. It’s good for you,’ she said. ‘Listen, Grandpa, it’s brilliant, honest it is. There’s millions of different things you can do on it – e-mail, word processing, games, shopping . . .’
‘I hate shopping,’ I told her.
‘You’re a grumpy old ostrich too,’ she said, bending over to kiss me on the cheek. ‘We’ll get started tomorrow. I’ll bring over my laptop, all right? Byeee!’
And she was out of the door and gone, ignoring all my protests. She had won.
All this came about because I’d been ill – just flu at first, but then it became pneumonia. The doctor, who’s a good friend of mine as well as my doctor, wagged his finger at me, and said, ‘Now you listen to me, Michael McLeod, this is serious. You’re no spring chicken any more. You’ve got to stay in bed, and in the warm. No more gardening, no more golf, no more fishing. You’ve got to look after yourself.’ So, cooped up in my flat for weeks on end, I had become, as Miya had so rightly diagnosed, bored out of my mind.
Miya was fourteen, my eldest granddaughter and the apple of my eye. She was always popping in to cheer me up, bless her – she lives just round the corner. And she did cheer me up too, even if she did go on and on about the joys of her wretched computer. The truth was that so long as she came to see me, I didn’t mind what we did, or what she talked about. It would pass the time, and talking about computers made a welcome change from losing to her at chess – again.
The computer lessons did not start well. I just could not get my head around it all. Then, bit by bit, day by day, with Miya’s help, I began to make some sense of it; and once I’d made sense of it, I began to enjoy it – much to my surprise. A couple of weeks later Miya went off on her summer holidays, leaving me strict instructions as to how to plug in and keep in touch with her by e-mail. She told me I must promise to practise every day on the computer. I promised, and I like to keep my promises.
So, except for occasional check-up visits from my doctor friend, and from my neighbour who very kindly did all my shopping for me, I was left alone in the house with Miya’s computer. One morning, as I sat there in front of it, about to switch on, I began asking myself why I was doing this. I mean, what was this machine really for? What could it do for me? How, now I’d begun to master it, could I use it to help me through the long days of convalescence that still lay ahead of me? I needed a project, I thought. Something to occupy my mind, something I could really get my teeth into, and something this computer could help me to achieve.
I had a sudden idea. It was an old idea, one I’d had in the back of my mind for many years, but had never bothered to do anything much about. This was my opportunity. I had the time, and now I had the means – literally at my fingertips. I would set out on a quest, a quest I could achieve without ever leaving the flat. I could do it all, the whole thing, on the Internet, by e-mail. I would search out my roots, piece together my family tree, discover where I came from, who I came from. I would trace my family line back as far as I could go.
On my mother’s side, the Meredith side, this proved simple enough because they had lived in this country, in Suffolk mostly, for many generations, and I could track them down through parish records, through registers of births and marriages and deaths. I managed to trace that side of the family all the way back to a Hannah Meredith, who I discovered had been baptized in Southwold on 2 May 1730.
It was like detective work, genealogical detective work, and I was soon completely engrossed in it. I was e-mailing dozens of times a day. I had all the information I had gathered on a database. Miya and I exchanged e-mails often, particularly when I got stuck and needed her help. As Miya had said, her computer was ‘brilliant’, utterly ‘brilliant’.
But my father’s family, the McLeod side, the Scottish side, proved much more difficult to trace even with the help of the computer, because they had moved about the world, one of the family to Argentina, one to Australia and another to the United States of America. Only a few generations back the trails kept going cold, and I was beginning to feel very frustrated. I simply had no more clues to follow up, not a single one.
Then, thank goodness, Miya came back home from her holiday and to my rescue. She told me I should upload my whole family tree onto a genealogical website, and appeal for help that way. So that’s what I did. For several days I had no response at all. Then one evening Miya logged on for me and found an e-mail from Marianne McLeod of Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States.
She had, she wrote, studied my father’s side of my family tree with great interest and felt sure we must be distant cousins. She, like me, had been researching her family background – she called it her ‘lifelong obsession’ – and had traced her family to Scotland, as far back as the 1700s, to her ancestor, and mine, she hoped – one Robbie McLeod of Inverness-shire. Quite by chance she had recently discovered hidden away amongst her family papers, Robbie McLeod’s last will and testament. It’s the most wonderful story I have ever read. I’ve scanned it into my computer. Would you like to see it? Would I! I e-mailed back to her at once. Greetings, distant cousin, I can’t wait. Miya was as excited as I was now. There was no reply until nearly twenty-four hours later. Miya was there beside me when I first read it. One glance told me that it had been worth waiting for. As I read, my heart in my mouth with excitement, I knew that my quest had been achieved, that with the help of Miya’s new-fangled machine, Miya and I had discovered something quite wonderful, as wonderful as any holy grail. I was reading the last words, in his own handwriting, of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. He was speaking to us from across the ages.
THE LAST WISHES OF ROBBIE McLEOD
WRIT BY MY own hand this third day of december in the year seventeen hundred and ninety-five, being near the end of my life, but of sound mind.
I leave all that I have in this world, all of Burnside Farm, all my sheep and horses, all my possessions, C
Furthermore, in the belief that the lives we lead must surely serve as the most valuable legacy we can leave to those who come after us, I shall endeavour to set down the extraordinary events that have shaped my life and brought me to this place.
I did not come here alone, nor did I come by chance. Without the last wolf I should never be here at all. Without the last wolf I should have been another man entirely. I owe all I am, all I have in this life to the last wolf. This therefore is his story as much as it is mine, and so I have entitled it:
THE LAST WOLF
I never knew my mother nor my father. It was always told to me by my Uncle Archibald, who was my guardian – and my tormentor too – that my mother, his sister, was a wilful wicked woman, and my father a ne’er-do-well sailor who had been lost at sea when I was still a bairn. Within a year of his death, my poor mother had died also, leaving me an orphan. Thus I came to pass my wretched childhood at my Uncle Archibald’s house in Inverness-shire, far from all other human habitation, a forbidding grey fortress of a place that never saw sunlight nor ever heard the sound of laughter.
Try as I did to please him, scarce a day passed when he did not reproach me. ‘Out of the kindness of my heart, and because I am a good and Christian soul, I took pity on you. And thus you repay me.’ This was ever his constant refrain as he beat me for my dire sins, and dreadful misdemeanours. Indeed, he used me more as a slave than a nephew, compelling me to wait on him in the house, to work for him on the farm, keeping me in such a state of abject misery and hunger and terror that at last I could endure it no longer and ran away. So it was that I found myself at scarcely twelve years of age wandering the world alone and quite destitute.
For many months, close to starvation, I roamed the hills and glens of the Highlands, hunting and scavenging for my food like some wild beast. Finding no other means to sustain myself, I was obliged to steal whatever I could find to keep body and soul together. I fared little better when I left the countryside and ventured into the dark and crowded streets of Edinburgh. Here too I was reduced to thieving and beggary, and several times barely avoided capture.
Cold and hunger drove me to ever more desperate and hazardous escapades. Caught one morning in the very act of thieving a loaf of bread from a baker’s shop, I was pursued through the streets by an angry, howling mob past the Palace of Holyrood and out into the hills beyond where at last, to my great relief, they gave up the chase. After this I dared not return for fear I might be recognized. Some days later, weak with a fever and near to death I stumbled into a stable and lay down, never, I thought, to rise again. But fortune at last smiled upon me. I had happened by chance upon two of the kindest, most generous souls that ever lived, who finding me barely alive in their stable, took me in and cared for me.
Sean Dunbar and his good wife Mary had no child of their own and from the very beginning thought of me as their true son. Being devout believers they could not doubt but that I had been sent to them as a gift from God. ‘Did we not pray for just such a miracle? Did we not find you in a stable, Robbie?’ Mary said, and indeed repeated it often, marvelling at it each time. ‘And were you not curled up in the straw like Jesus himself in Bethlehem?’
They set good food before me and put warm clothes on my back, and so restored me in time to strength and health. They breathed happiness into me, such happiness as I had never known existed, the greatest happiness there can be on this earth – that is, to be loved and cherished. I worked alongside Sean in his smithy, holding the horses for him, stoking the fire, and was soon a skilled apprentice. I can mind he always sung as he worked, in time with the strike of the hammer. Thus it was that I learned all manner of songs I had never heard before, stirring songs of rebellion, songs I have never forgot since, even to this day.
And Mary, poor dear Mary, whom I came to love like a mother, taught me to read and write and to say my prayers at night-time. ‘Speak always to the Lord, Robbie, and softly, before you close your eyes in sleep, for one day His will surely be the face you see when you wake. Pray to Him. He will always listen, and He will always understand. And besides which, He likes it. He likes it when we speak to Him. Remember that.’ So I prayed each night. But though I never told her so, I much preferred to talk to her than to the Lord. She it was who gave me all the love and understanding I needed, and taught me right from wrong too. No mother could have done more for a son.
As for Sean, he was as much a friend to me as a father, the first true friend I ever had. I saw in my two beloved benefactors all that is good and fine in human nature. I had found a safe and happy haven with them, a home where I knew I belonged. But my new-found happiness was not to last. Cruel circumstance snatched it from me and set me on a course towards new and ever more terrible dangers.
I had been with them no more than three short years when Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army came marching by, marching south against the English, with their drums beating bravely and their flags fluttering so fair and so proud. When they made camp nearby I myself was called upon to shoe Bonnie Prince Charlie’s horse. A fine horse he was too, but his master was finer still, clad like a highland prince and tall as a god. Around the campfires that night we sang their songs and danced their dances. By morning both Sean and I, and many others from the village too, were quite resolved upon our decision. We would join him. We would be marching into England with Bonnie Prince Charlie’s army.
Poor Mary did all in her power to prevent us. She wept on Sean’s shoulder, and begged him not to go. ‘Have we found a son at last only to lose him?’ she cried. ‘And what for? For the skirl of the pipes, is it? To kill a few English lads, sons like Robbie who have mothers like me, fathers like you, sons and fathers they will mourn all their days. Stay by me, Sean. Do not leave me.’
But Sean was as determined upon this venture as I was. He said that he was compelled by his conscience to go and fight for the liberty of his country, to set Bonnie Prince Charlie on his throne where he rightly belonged, but that I was man enough now to make up my own mind. And I, being young and foolish, lusting after excitement and adventure, and persuaded of the justice of our great cause, would have my way.
I could not look her in the eyes as I spoke. ‘Where my father goes, I must go,’ I told her. With these words I think I broke her heart.
So when the army left, Sean Dunbar and I went with them, and left Mary weeping at her door. We were soldiers now in the service of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Pipes skirling, we marched into England, a spring in our step and a song in our hearts. But an army needs more than hope, more than drums and pipes and flags. A motley band, filled with fierce pride and burning zeal, but poorly fed, poorly armed and equipped, we were no match for the serried ranks of Redcoats. I only saw one battle. One, I swear, is enough for any man.
At Culloden Moor we fought the Redcoats steel against steel, the claymore against the bayonet, fought and died, fought and ran, scattered like leaves in the teeth of a cruel gale. Sean fell to his knees at my side, his breast pierced by a musket ball. He clutched at my collar, clinging to me as if I were life itself.
‘Mary was right,’ he breathed, ‘We shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have brought you to this dreadful place. Run, Robbie, run while you can. There’s no more you can do for me. Save yourself.’
And on saying this he fell back dead in my arms.
To my everlasting shame I left him lying there and ran from the field. But unlike so many of my poor comrades, who were hunted down and slaughtered by the Redcoats, I made good my escape. I was mercifully unwounded, fleet of foot and artful. I made for home, hiding up by day, and moving only at night under cover of darkness, but I arrived home only to discover that the accursed Redcoats had been there before me.
Those that were left told me the terrible story, how the Redcoats had come and razed the village to the ground, how they had cut down everyo
‘What of Mary?’ I cried. ‘What of my mother?’
They would not reply, but brought me instead to the church-yard and showed me her grave newly dug and her name carved upon a wooden cross. I could scarcely believe what my eyes were seeing.
‘You’d best be gone, Robbie,’ they told me, ‘for the Redcoats will be back. They’re hanging all the rebels they find. Be gone, Robbie, be gone while you can.’
Orphaned once more, bereaved and bereft, I fled north to the Highlands. Here, maddened with grief, I lived wild again, not daring to venture into any human company for fear of betrayal and discovery, for fear of the dreaded Redcoats who, like an army of invading ants, had occupied and infested every corner of our land. Once caught they would spare me no mercy – of that I was quite certain.
I lay low in the mountains for many long and dreary weeks, and would have stayed there longer, for I knew the danger had not yet passed. But there in those bare and inhospitable mountains I could find little to eat but berries and roots, scarce enough to keep body and soul alive. Hunger it was that drove me at last down into the glens. At night, I went from farm to farm, from village to village, stealing what little food I could find. By the coming of every dawn I would find some barn or byre where I thought I might safely sleep away the daylight hours. But it was in just such a barn that I was at last discovered. The farm dog must have found me out, for he set up such a hullabaloo of howling and barking that the farmer came running from the house with his blunderbuss.
Again I ran for the hills and thought at first I had escaped clean away. But looking back over my shoulder I saw to my horror a troop of Redcoats riding out after me in hot pursuit. I knew now that I must surely be caught and killed, for the open hillside afforded little place to hide myself. But when death threatens, a man will do all he must to survive. I found strength where there had been none, and ran on and on until at last my legs would carry me no further, and I fell on my knees in the heather. A fusillade of shots echoed through the glen. I closed my eyes and waited for death, praying only that it would be quick.