When I was a child, I went to stay with my cousin on his family’s farm on the Carse of Stirling, lying in the shadow of the castle. He had been signed up for bagpipe lessons held within its walls, and one winter night we both went along. Darkness had already settled as we climbed the hill, the cold biting, the land hushed. I remember passing beneath the arched gateway, the stone looming above us, and feeling an unease I couldn’t name, but something old and heavy, as though the place itself was watching.

At the time, those feelings made no sense to me. It was only many years later, after tracing my family history, that I learned an ancestor of mine had once been held prisoner in that very castle, condemned for being a Covenanter. The knowledge cast that childhood memory in a new light, as though the past had reached out and brushed against me in the dark.