The Commission cantonment of Polloch reached into silent forest, like a narrow salient.
In the one storied bothies (two storied if you counted after the American fashion), most men had completed their evening meal and were variously napping, reading, listening to music.
A single lane of asphalt swerved past the cantonment, travelling in one direction along the lengthy shore of Loch Shiel northeast to Glenfinnan, in the other winding south past a shallow loch and over a high shoulder of hill before descending to Strontian, a large village straggling along deep cut banks of a river debouching into Loch Sunart.
Between Jacobite rebellions, lead mines had been established a little way outside the village when galena was discovered there, by Sir Alexander Murray, so one is told. This gentleman was the Member of Parliament for Peebles in the south of Scotland at the early age of 23 and gets the credit. This was in the time when the ‘mother of parliaments’ was a model for nepotic corruption and young Murray’s connections to this system were impeccable. He leased the mineral extraction rights (a percentage of mined ore to be his at zero cost) and ten years later was in greater financial difficulties than before, his purse having been squeezed flat by unsound business practice and his neighbour the Duke of Argyll. A family biographer has him dying ‘a ruined man’ – no surprises there.
Strontium, hidden in the ores extracted from Murray’s mine, was isolated by Humphrey Davy eighty or so years later during the Napoleonic Wars. Recently, the mine had been re-opened and barite extracted, now prized as the non-magnetic mineral used as a weighting agent when pressure injecting mud at oil drillings.
The area is mineral rich. Pebbles glitter with mica and the streams glint with iron pyrites. Ben Resipol, rising behind Strontian to peak at 850m, is a focus for collectors of garnets.
Four kilometres from the mines, just outside Strontian, Silas pushed the bicycle into old bracken patching a little rise in ground beside the road and laid the somewhat rusty frame down carefully, concealed by fern. He quickly unwound a towel on the pannier, wincing as his hand was jabbed by sharp points of metal protruding from the disintegrating brown paper bag which the towel had covered, and lay beside the bicycle, supported by his elbows, binoculars aimed at a distant bend of the road. The spot had been chosen with care. Justice, blindfolded, would pass its sentence. He saw the scales and sword held outstretched, an image of crucifixion with breasts undefended. He dabbed the towel at blood on his hand.
There had been months of posting scrupulous notes taken while slaving under the petty tyranny of a little man, serene in his position of absolute authority. Silas felt a thrill of excitement, his upper body engorged with power. He saw himself as an intelligent, complicated man. No-one had guessed at his infiltration of the Commission and his regular reporting of its methods. But while he hugged to himself knowledge of his mission, his vanity craved for legacy. Now was time for his personal contribution, a strike at the complacent arrogance of power. The victim had selected himself. With binoculars trained on a far bend, Silas stretched unseen in tangled russet of last year’s fern.