BALVENIE. To Hamilton, we’re marrying her to Hamilton.

WILLIAM. Yes. She left last month.

BALVENIE. And the dowry?

WILLIAM. Sent.

BALVENIE. I think I was too generous there. Far too generous… still… Hamilton is good land to seed with grandchildren. And how is Moray?

WILLIAM. Archie’s fine.

BALVENIE. Strathaven? Craigie?

WILLIAM. I don’t… Craigie?

BALVENIE. The dear little lady of Strathaven and Craigie?

WILLIAM. Oh Bella! She died. In March. Didn’t they tell you?

BALVENIE. Hmmmm.

He thinks a moment

Then we have to marry your younger sister to Craigie at once unless… unless I can betrothe her to Errol… yes… that’s a better catch.

You don’t look as if you’re following this at all, Aberdour. Christ. That’s her look, that same glaikit look.

WILLIAM. She never failed you. Never.

BALVENIE. What are you talking about? She fails me every time I climb on top of her. Her guts are falling out her arse. Nothing but my duty and her bleating. If my first wife had lived I might have known happiness, cunt like a tight wee nut. Christ I wish you’d her blood.

WILLIAM. I’m strong as you are.

BALVENIE. Come back and tell me that when you’ve had two lives. Two. One full of fear and longing and stretching for love out of my reach, that’s you, Avoch and Aberdour, that’s youth, but I’m past all that. Past all that and still strong. Who’d’ve believed it. No one would have believed it when I was your age, you know. I wouldn’t have. Another life.

Twenty? You’ve milk on your chin and your balls are still buried in your pelvis…

The girl I married to Duffy, dead? Where does that leave us though? Where does that leave us on the map.

He’s looking at a map, checking places in relation to each other.

Banff, Avoch, Aberdour, Moray, Strathaven, Stonehouse…

So if you’ve not found your own wealth what have you been up to?

WILLIAM. I won a fight…

Well, it was a… I led a raid, into Northumbria.

BALVENIE. Did you though.

(Absorbed in his map.) Dunkeld… Eskdale, Lauderdale… bethrothed to Errol and Biggar… have I missed a daughter? God, I can’t count for the wine…

WILLIAM. Only a dozen of us… we broke into the field, drove out the cattle but… we couldn’t get them moving ahead of us… Need to bring drove boys with you on ponies, don’t you? I’ll know next time… but, Father, I stole the best horse… black as December and breathing like a rick fire…

BALVENIE. Shoosh a minute, will you? What have I forgotten?

WILLIAM. I brought the horse to you. It’s a present. It was a great raid… And we all got home, all twelve of us, galloping back over the border, well, we thought we were over the border… man, that’s some thrill, eh? Galloping blind on a rocky sea road in the dark… but the thing was… the thing is…

BALVENIE (finding it on map). Galloway! How could I forget we were getting Galloway?