Island of Wings

by Karin Altenberg

  MacKenzie left them to it. He had had as much of the St Kilda parliament as he could take for one day and he had a project of his own to get on with.

  A little way above the landing rocks and close to the manse was a rough piece of land which could not be used for grazing or cutting hay. MacKenzie had decided that he should put it to good use and build a saw pit where all driftwood could be cut up and stored away from the weather. He had ordered the two-man saw blade the previous summer and it had arrived with the taxman a few weeks earlier. Unfortunately it was rare to find good pieces of driftwood on Hirta as the constant surf around the rocky shores would grind most wood to kindling before any of the islanders could save it. However, there were times after a winter storm when a proud and solid ship would perish at Rockall. If fortune was on their side the crew might save themselves in a dinghy and be carried on the current to Glen Bay on the north-western side of Hirta. But more often than not the St Kildans would encounter no survivors and their only notion of the wreck would be the broken timber floating in the bay in the wake of the storm. These remains of vessels which were once sturdy and home to men were great bounty, and were collected without much concern or sentimentality for those unknown sailors who had lost their lives to the roaring sea.

  While the St Kildan men and women went to the rocks for the fulmar, MacKenzie started to clear the ground for the saw pit, which was to be the first of many improvements. He had realised that it was hard to work the land in the glebe, as it was strewn with boulders and small rocks eroded from the face of Oiseval during many winter storms. Nearby was a low, grassy mound and he reckoned that if he dug the foundations of the saw pit into the mound he could build a structure shaped like the prow of a boat and with walls about two meters high, so that one man could stand on the ground and another at the same level as the timber log they were cutting. It was a very simple design, which he had seen in use in Glen Sannox as a boy.

  He started by stripping the mound of its turf, as that could be dried and used for fuel in the winter. To his surprise the soil under the turf was rather soft, and unlike the area around the mound there were no boulders or large stones. The earth was dark and rich, and field mice had burrowed deep into it, thus disturbing the topsoil and making it quite porous. This puzzled the minister and it suddenly occurred to him that the mound might be man-made rather than natural. He stood up to straighten his back. A light rain had begun to fall and his hand left a muddy streak across his brow as he wiped a lock of wet hair out of his eyes. He could feel his heart quickening as a notion dawned on him. He looked into the dark soil and realised that he might be looking into the past. His legs trembled slightly as if he stood on the threshold of another world, knowing that if he entered it the world that he had left would never be quite the same again. If he had believed in the concept of fate, this would perhaps have been where he tempted it. But fate was an abstraction, a superstition to a Presbyterian Christian. Yet it was not fear, nor anticipation of the unknown, that occupied him as he started digging again, kneeling now and feeling the earth carefully with the spade and his bare hands. On the contrary he felt as powerful as when he explored the souls of his congregation; when the fear of God made them lay themselves bare, exposing their inner selves as raw as flesh newly stripped of its skin. Slowly and methodically he continued to dig, to unveil this great unknown, this secret, layer by layer, to the core of its mystery. Then, as he knew it would, his spade struck metal, and he was at last rewarded with a glimpse of eternity. He was looking into the grave of a warrior who was as ancient as the hills that guarded him. These hills that had once erupted from the sea were the only witnesses to this breach of a tomb which had been sealed since antiquity. Neil MacKenzie used his hands to carefully unearth an iron spearhead and then a sword – heavy and terrible – followed by a number of irregularly shaped iron objects, the use of which he could not determine. He turned them over in his hands, gently brushing the sods of soil from the rusted metal. His heart raced as he thought about the hand that had forged these tools of war. A long and narrow whetstone accompanied the metal objects. He could see no bones in the grave, but the artefacts were laid out in such a way as to outline the shadow of a man who had once been tall and strong.

  Neil MacKenzie had been so engaged in his excavation that he had not noticed a couple of men had joined him and were looking into the pit. They were both too old to take part in the fulmar harvest and had come to the manse for a chat with the minister. He looked up at them now from the edge of the grave, caked with dark mud, his hair pasted to his skull by the drizzling rain, and the two men looked back at their minister in astonishment. They could not decide whether or not this was all proper, and the excited, crazed look in his eyes frightened them.

  ‘What you see here are the remains of a Norseman,’ the minister almost whispered, so as not to dampen the importance of the moment.

  ‘A Norseman?’ The two men looked still more perplexed.

  ‘One of your ancestors from the Golden Age when the Norse ruled our shores.’ The minister suddenly wanted them to understand the significance of his finding. More than anything, he wanted them to live up to their own past.

  ‘Was he a big man – big enough to build our stone houses?’ one of them asked. The reconstruction of the clachan was still on their minds.

  ‘He was a large man all right, but not so unlike yourselves, I should imagine.’ He was disappointed by their lack of enthusiasm.

  ‘There was a fisherman from the Long Isle who said he found a pot of silver coins on the beach once – said they had Norse inscriptions, he did,’ said one of the old men and spat into the mud. ‘Perhaps this man here was a rich man.’

  ‘Perhaps it is the son of the King of Norway, the one they say floated ashore once and was killed by our ancestors, who took him for a selkie,’ suggested his friend.

  ‘Aye, he must have been a rich man with such a big sword.’ The old man sounded impressed.

  ‘Perhaps we can sell this here sword to the taxman and buy some more tobacco,’ the first man added hopefully.

  ‘Aye, and a dram or two to clear the smoke from the throat.’ The other smacked his lips and broke into a toothless grin.

  ‘For pity’s sake!’ the minister cried in exasperation. ‘Does this not make you wonder about yourselves? Does not this dead warrior make you think about your own lives and achievements? He may have laid the foundations to one of the houses that you live in. He may have raised his family here much like you have done. For all I know he may have been the first man to oppose this howling wilderness and rock and sea!’

  The look of pleasure died on the two men’s faces and they seemed suddenly overcome by age. They were no longer allowed the luxury of dreams. Perhaps they felt that they were closer to the shadow of the ancestor in the grave than they were to the bright lives of their sons and daughters out catching the fulmar. The knowledge that their day was done weighed heavily on them, bending their backs and rounding their shoulders. Their whole lives these men had struggled to reclaim a piece of land from nature, to carve their existence out of the rock and till the shallow, salt-encrusted soil. What would they leave behind for eternity? Their efforts would last for the age of man, no longer. And at the end of their day they would be buried by this young minister who stood dark and dirty in front of them, this stern man who did not approve of folly and who claimed that he had just disinterred one of their revered ancestors. Their shadows would stain the earth in the graveyard where the rough stones that marked their graves would fall and sink into the broom.

  One day the community would fail to remember their ancestry and be forced to leave as all the knowledge and the old ways were forgotten.

  MacKenzie at once regretted his insensitivity. He realised that death was already walking beside these men and that his duty was to provide them with an idea of the potentials of the afterlife, not to make them reflect on the end of their life on earth
. At that moment there was nothing he could say to soothe their souls. As they turned to leave, embarrassed and uncomfortable, he could see that they had aged, and he hated himself for failing in his vocation. Ridden by self-contempt he wrapped the metal objects in a sack, and as the rain kept falling he continued digging furiously into the ground where his saw pit would stand and where timber would be cut to make the coffins for his congregation.

  The mound of the Viking warrior was forgotten and the dust of his bones indistinguishable in the mud. The great swordsman had bled into the earth and now the rain carried him away and trickled into a nearby stream which was lined by a lush growth of irises. As the stream reached the sea the last of the Norseman was dissolved and freed by water – an end, and a beginning.

  *

  The St Kildans eventually agreed to build the new village. They wanted to divide the land into individual plots. Their minister was only too pleased with this suggestion, as evolution to his mind was dependent on individual ownership and responsibility. He took it upon himself to contact the laird and introduce him to the plans. The proprietor at once consented to the changes and sent his kinsman Donald MacDonald of Tanera to draw up the plan for the divisions of the crofts, but the plan that was presented to the islanders was not to their liking and created some bad blood amongst them. They were headstrong and close-knit and were not as biddable as the laird’s subjects on the mainland. For days they grumbled and shuffled, until the minister persuaded them to try and work out a structure of their own and then cast lots for the individual plots. This idea was accepted, though it would take many months before the final layout was agreed. But that did not bother MacKenzie. He felt pleased to have reached the moment when the St Kildans, who had thought themselves complete and self-sufficient, had been made to realise that they were not and, moreover, that he was the one who had led their minds to this conclusion. He secretly congratulated himself on winning a small victory for civilisation and decided to write to the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge before the boats returned the following summer.

  In the meantime he charged the islanders with the task of building a head dyke, to separate the new arable land from the pasture, and a wall by the sea to keep the salt from spraying into the fields.

  As soon as the fowling season was over the project started. The summer had been a wet one and the ground was heavy and smelled of decay, but the St Kildans seemed excited about their new work. MacKenzie presided over them and guided them in their labour. His authority was complete, but he soon discovered that the men needed much incentive to keep at their work for extended periods of time. Frustrated by the slow progress, he started working alongside them as they drained the arable land and canalised the streams. He worked in his shirtsleeves, the fine dark hair on his strong arms turning a coppery gold in the late-autumn sun. He felt able and energised, more so than he had in a very long time. He took pleasure in working alongside the other men and he enjoyed the influence he had gained over them. At last his vocation seemed close to realisation.

  Every day at lunchtime Betty Scott and little Eliza would bring a basket of food and drink for the minister. Neil MacKenzie loved his daughter with an intense passion. The feelings terrified him, and he felt utterly helpless at the thought that he might lose her. He prayed secretly and in silence every day, grateful that she had been allowed to live. As the little girl came towards him across the glebe the minister would stop his work and watch as she struggled through the tall grass. Her dark curls showed under her bonnet and his heart brimmed with tenderness as her arms and legs wobbled uncontrollably up the slope, her little face straining with concentration and pride at the importance of her task. Once she got closer and recognised her father amongst the men a smile would light up her face for she loved him equally and would do anything to please him. She would skip faster through the dock leaves and scurvy grass. She resembled a brittle butterfly as she stretched out her arms to keep her balance. He turned and closed his eyes hard against the light as he recognised in her living face the gruesome death masks of Margaret and Jane. And he remembered them as he had first seen them, lying in ephemeral beauty in their mother’s arms as a cruel ray of sunlight found its way through the window and marked them for death. Would his daughter’s innocent face always remind him of his own sins?

  Betty would plod patiently behind, lifting Eliza to her feet as she fell and brushing dirt and grass off her dress of green tweed. Betty was all smiles and white teeth in those days, but her greeting and ruddy beauty were for one man alone, and as the child and the maid reached the work party young Calum MacDonald would blush and turn to his friends and laugh coarsely, his ears burning and his heart quickening as he felt the gaze of the forward Betty upon him. He would kick the turf with his bare feet and spit as far as he could. He would not leave the safety of his group of friends, nor would he talk to her, but once or twice he could not help but look at her from under his dirty blond hair. He knew by the thickness in his throat and by the way her presence burned white like magnesium inside him that he wanted to marry her.

  Once the girl and the maid were gone the work could resume. The minister was soon aware that the men would only work as long as he worked himself. As soon as he left them to go and see to his ministerial duties they would quickly lose interest in the task at hand and throw themselves on the grass and smoke their pipes and laugh and chat. One by one they would drift off and no more work would be carried out that day. So during that autumn the minister’s theology turned pastoral. He found that his influence over his congregation would weaken if he did not plan and design the work himself so that he had always the upper hand in the execution of the labour. Once he wanted them to lift a large stone into the wall of the head dyke and the men said that it was impossible – only a giant or one of their powerful ancestors could move such a megalith. They laughed at their minister and accused him of being unreasonable. The minister laughed along with his men but was secretly annoyed that they should doubt his abilities.

  The following morning MacKenzie rose early, before dawn. In the ashy twilight he levered the great granite slab, little by little, into position with the help of his spit iron and a bank of earth. It took him three hours and he bruised his thumb badly in the process, but as he cleared away his tools and stood back to look at the standing stone he felt strong and powerful, and he smiled with satisfaction as he thought of the reaction the stone would bring.

  As he returned to the manse Lizzie received him into their bed and held him with warm arms. He touched her face lightly and drew his fingers through her curls. She liked him the way he was at that time, strong and exhausted and smelling of musk and earth. She laughed at his story of how he had tricked the men and kissed first his bruised thumb and then his chest and his face until she could feel him taut and proud through her nightgown. When they were spent and satisfied she thought of telling him that she was again with child, but decided against it as the knowledge of new life budding inside her was her own luxury; her own well of light from which she drew comfort and delight – and which would sometimes darken with fear. She liked it on mornings like this, rare as they were, when her husband was in a good mood and they were united, when she was allowed to be one with him. She wondered if he too was thinking about how close they were and was just about to ask something to this effect when he said, ‘Lizzie, I feel so happy.’ ‘Yes?’ She kissed his shoulder. ‘The natives, my parishioners –’ he pronounced the last bit in a mock-aristocratic drawl – ‘I believe they are beginning to listen to me!’ He gave a loud laugh. ‘Just you wait, Lizzie, I will be their master yet!’ Lizzie looked at a red spot on his cheek where the stubble had started to grow inward and could think of nothing to say. After a moment she withdrew from his arms and got out of bed to get dressed.

  A couple of hours later the MacKenzies stood watching from behind the gable of the kirk as the men gathered around the standing stone. Soon Lizzie and Neil were giggling l
ike children at the reaction of the St Kildans, who were scratching their beards and talking excitedly between themselves – a couple of the older men crossed themselves and removed their caps in awe. Lizzie urged her husband to go forward; she wanted to see their reaction when it dawned on them who had raised the stone – she wanted to see the men admiring her husband as much as she did. She wanted him to feel good about himself.

  He strolled slowly, hands in his pockets, towards the men. Their faces were long and dark as they realised what their minister had achieved single-handed. ‘But how?’ they asked, and stood chewing their gums. ‘Och, it is simple enough if you know how to,’ he answered indifferently, and hid his bandaged thumb behind his back. At that moment he won them over completely. If they had ever doubted the authority of this thin man with his fine talk of improvement and redemption, that was now forever in the past. How they loved him then. From now on they would all follow his word. He was indeed a great man with God on his side; he held their fate in his strong hands. His was the hand whose grip would never fail! He commanded the winds, and the waves of the sea.

  The digging and the construction of the dykes carried on well into November, when the birds left the rocky shores of the island and went to the ocean. The rocks without their inhabitants seemed black and dead. The St Kildans retreated with the livestock into their hovels and hibernation began. Nothing living seemed to move in the landscape. In late November MacKinnon the maor came to the manse with the finished plan for the new village. The community had decided on the plan, and each man supporting a family had drawn a lot for his toft and croft. It seemed that everyone was pleased with the map of their new village.