Island of Wings

by Karin Altenberg

  He must have fallen asleep, for when he came to it was already dusk. He was stiff and shivered violently as the cold had seeped from the ground into his bones. He could hardly walk and stamped his feet a few times to get his blood flowing again. Something, a sound or a change of light, made him turn around, and as he did he was sure he saw a furry creature with the face of a man crouching on a rocky outcrop some three hundred yards inland. He called out, but the creature slipped away, huge and mute, and merged into the twilight. The minister hobbled and limped as quickly as he could on his frozen legs to the place where he had seen the creature, but there was nothing there. He searched the ground closely, but there was no sign except for a slight impression in the short grass. He shook his head and realised that his mind was overwrought. He needed to sleep. More than anything else he needed to sleep.

  *

  There had been sightings. One man claimed to have seen a man with three legs step out of a sealskin and slip into the sea at Glen Bay. Another cleit had been raided for food, and Anna told Lizzie in excited whispers that Rachel’s cousin had told Rachel, who had told her – because they were friends again and Rachel had even given Anna a pin made out of an old coin – that one night when she went to fetch her dog, which had run off and was barking on the hill behind the clachan, somebody had grabbed her from behind and held her around the waist before the dog jumped on the man, for it was a man, with very large hands like flippers, and Rachel’s cousin had managed to escape. And it was true, for Rachel had told Anna that her cousin had a bruise as black as night on her upper left arm, and Rachel had given Anna the pin and told her to swear not to tell anyone. And this was because her cousin had asked her not to tell anyone in the first place, but surely Anna did the right thing to tell Mrs MacKenzie, ma’am?

  And then one night when her husband and the children were asleep Lizzie thought she heard a noise outside. She walked to the window and looked out. There was no moon and the night was pitch dark except, she saw, for a point of light somewhere in the direction of the feather store. This was the stone building on the path just below the manse. It had been built by the laird to house the feathers due to him as tax, but it was locked up and only used for storage. The keys were kept in the scullery between the manse and the kirk. Lizzie put her husband’s coat over her nightgown and stepped into her winter boots. She lit a lamp and fetched the keys from the galley. The smell of hoarfrost struck her as she opened the door and stepped on to the porch. She stood for a while and listened into the dark. There was no sound except for the familiar sighs and snores from the sleeping sea. When her eyes had got used to the dark she started walking towards the feather store. The light was still there. When she reached the door she fished out the large key and searched for the keyhole. The lock was broken. At once she was very frightened, but this did not stop her from pushing the door open and stepping into the room. A coarse candle burned low on an upturned barrel on the floor. But she could see no person. She hesitated briefly and looked around before taking another step into the store. Too late she sensed somebody step out of the shadows behind her. Her cry was muffled by a large hand that closed over her mouth. She could tell by his smell that the man was not a St Kildan. Of course she knew, she had known all along, that there was a foreigner on the island. It was the only rational explanation, but yet so unlikely that she had almost begun to believe the islanders’ superstitions. He held her close with his arm across her chest and his hand over her mouth while his free hand searched her body. For what? For a weapon? She shivered as she felt his heavy breath against her cheek. She did not struggle, but his grip was surprisingly weak, and when it slackened a bit she seized the moment and broke free and turned to look at him.

  A memory from her childhood came into her head – her father taking her to see Paisley Gaol, which he had built. Warm sunshine on the dusty street, blown roses and a tree heavy with plums in a garden. Whose garden? Was it the prison warden’s? She gripped her father’s hand. She had heard about prisoners, and the walls of the gaol cast a cool shadow which seemed to creep towards her as she stood under the plum tree. Plums and rose petals, red and pink. The light from the candle on the barrel fell over him. Red and pink, blood and flesh, wounds: pain. She looked up at him in helpless horror. Darkness was all around them but the candlelight lit up part of his broken body. He was awful, terrifying to look at, unearthly and beastly. His face was darkened by dirt and grime and his hair was matted and wild. He wore a jerkin made of sealskin; the animal must have been recently butchered for the stench that came off the skin was unbearable and it seemed to be caked in blood. He was leaning heavily on a rough stick. She gasped as she looked down at his legs. One of them seemed to have been broken at a brutish angle, and she could see the shape of a crushed bone through the bandage rags which smelt sharply of decay. He stood quite still and did not make a move towards her. At last she dared to look into his face. His eyes were incensed with pain, she saw, and there was something else, something altogether more alien, which seemed to her to be a fear born out of hell.

  It was as the darkest part of that long, dense night started to show its shadows that the men came to help carry him into the kitchen, where she made a rudimentary bed close to the hearth. The children were asleep, but Anna had been woken by the commotion and had been sent on sleepy legs for soapy water and towels. The stranger was moaning weakly as the men dumped him into the bed and stood staring in bewilderment. Lizzie, still wearing her husband’s coat, blew on the embers to get the fire going. In the smoky glow the man on the bed looked barely alive; his monstrous body remained in the strange position it had taken when pushed into the bed, and there was no sign of breathing. One of the men walked closer and, with his face averted, put his hand towards the stranger’s chest. At that moment the crippled torso heaved again and let out a few loud, erratic breaths.

  ‘Thank you, MacKinnon, Ferguson. You may go back to your beds now,’ she said, and nodded to her husband to accompany the men to the door.

  MacKenzie too was confused, but his wife’s new-found authority left him no choice.

  ‘Yes, yes. Thank you, gentlemen. You would better go and catch some sleep. We will discuss this matter at the mòd in the morning.’

  The two islanders made for the door, Ferguson wiping his hands on his already grimy trousers and MacKinnon gathering up the bloodied sealskins they had stripped off the stranger. ‘Phoo!’ he exhaled as he carried them outside on stretched-out arms.

  ‘Don’t forget to sink them well with a stone,’ the minister called after them. ‘We don’t want any of the children to find them, do we?’

  When they were alone with the broken man MacKenzie said to his wife, ‘And what do you think you will be doing with him?’ He nodded towards the bed. ‘You do realise that he is probably dangerous and he could hurt the children.’

  ‘Dangerous!’ She almost laughed. ‘He cannot even walk on his own – he is barely alive!’ The note of determined sarcasm in her voice was a surprise even to herself.

  ‘You don’t know anything about him! He could be one of those expelled pirates from the Barbary coast for all we know!’ He had raised his voice and she shushed him, indicating with her head to the chamber where the children were sleeping.

  MacKenzie shook his head in exasperation. His eyes gleamed black in the shadows.

  ‘Yes, well, there is not much we can do about that now. He is an ill man and he needs care. It is our duty as Christians,’ she added, and knew the stranger would stay.

  At that moment Anna returned with water from the spring and the MacKenzies went silent.

  As the women set about their work, MacKenzie was left to his own devices and was too obviously superfluous. Carefully and with studied precision he straightened his shirt and tucked it into the breeches. He felt threatened by the beast on the bed and shuddered. He did not understand why God had sent this man at such a volatile time. What was the purpose of these t
ribulations? It was as if some other level of the natural world had infringed upon this domain where he, MacKenzie, fought for civilisation and order. A lock of hair had fallen into his eyes – furiously he tugged it under control before striding noisily into his study.

  In the kitchen the light from the fire had grown stronger and shaped the length of the stranger’s damaged body. He seemed to have fallen asleep, but he was sweating heavily and his breathing was still irregular. He was very tall and must at one time have been quite impressively built. Lizzie sighed as she tried to remember any facts she might have known about nursing.

  ‘Ma’am?’ Anna was thin inside her nightgown and wide-eyed from having been woken up to this nightmare. One of her thin braids had come undone and hung in waffled creases.

  ‘Yes, Anna, I’m sorry, I was just thinking . . .’ She glanced towards the stranger again. ‘We should remove those rags and burn them – but leave the loincloth.’ There was purpose in her voice as she rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown.

  Anna approached the bed and as she started pulling at the few rags of linen fabric which still covered the body – the remains of garments that might have been worn for a lighter climate – the heat in the room increased the stench. The girl recoiled and looked pleadingly at Mrs MacKenzie.

  ‘Go on, girl, decay is part of life,’ Lizzie said in a matronly tone, although this was the first time this had occurred to her.

  By now the water had heated on the hearth and the women carefully started to wipe the man’s face and upper body. ‘Wait.’ Mrs MacKenzie held out a hand. ‘I think we should shave him first.’

  The face that emerged out of the shorn black beard was shrunken and of a strange beige colour which led Lizzie to believe that the man did not usually wear a beard but had recently been tanned all over. It was hard to determine his age, as the hollows under his eyes and cheeks had made the skin sag a bit. Long dark lashes fluttered in a restless dream. The women worked quietly and methodically, changing the soapy water as often as needed. Lizzie cut the man’s hair, which was also black but with streaks of grey. Once she had got rid of the worst of it she lifted his head with one hand and rubbed the remaining tufts with soap, then rinsed it gently by squeezing water from the cloth. She could not help but run her fingers over his scalp. It seemed unbearably intimate to touch somebody’s head like this. There were a few white marks on his skull – tiny scars as if his hair had been forcibly shorn at some stage. Anna, in the meantime, was cleaning the man’s left leg, while anxiously staring at the right, with its terrible fracture poking out of the grimy ban­dages.

  Lizzie looked up and felt a pang of regret when she saw the horror in the girl’s eyes. She had forgotten that Anna was still merely a child. Leaning over, she stroked a damp strand of hair out of the maid’s steamy face. ‘You can go to bed now, Anna. You have been most helpful, but I can handle the rest myself.’ Anna did not object. She put down her enamel container and the damp cloth and walked stiffly and without a word towards the children’s bedchamber. Lizzie watched her leave the room and noticed with tenderness that her thin shoulder blades stuck out under the linen gown like the budding wings of an angel.

  Left alone with the stranger, Lizzie felt incredibly calm. She could not determine the nature of her feelings at that moment; she was repulsed by the stench of the body but at the same time it evoked feelings of compassion and benevolence in her. She felt vaguely possessive of him. She was the one who had found him, and she invested her discovery with some significance; it was as if she had finally found a calling of her own. But, most importantly, there was a vague sense of kinship; this outsider was somebody more foreign than herself.

  The body that emerged was still muscular, although it was clear that it had starved for some time – the ribs were starting to show, and the collarbones were too prominent. Illuminated by the flickering fire, the skin was surprisingly smooth, but dry and chapped in places. Lizzie stroked her cloth along his torso and arms. She had never been so close to a man’s body before, not in this way. MacKenzie would never have allowed her to scrutinise his physique; nor would he explore hers beyond the necessary. She thought of his heavy body on top of her, pushing inside, probing, searching but never reaching quite far enough, never finding the secret, her secret, within. She blushed in sudden embarrassment; she must be truly disturbed to have such thoughts – and in the presence of another man.

  There were no marks or scars on the body apart from a faint groove around each wrist. This puzzled her. She lifted a limp hand to get a closer look, but recoiled at the animal smell from a whiskery armpit. This distracted her and she had to soak the underarms several times in fresh water before she was content with the result. She could feel a great sense of satisfaction rising inside her as layer after layer of grime and dirt dissolved, revealing her patient’s skin. It was the colour of dry leaves, a deep colour, different from the weathered rust of the St Kildans or the bronze of her husband’s arms in the summer.

  She stood back for a minute; the firelight briefly made her face look bruised, before the shadows settled in contrast to her flushed cheeks. Holding her breath she leaned over the man and removed the rag that had been left over his loins. She gasped and quickly put her hands to her mouth at the sight of another man’s private parts. They looked different from her husband’s, she noted, not without curiosity. Surprisingly hairless, the plum-coloured scrotum was sagging against one leg, and the other thing, shrunken and grey, was resting on top of it as if on a plush pillow. Lizzie touched it lightly with her cloth and immediately drew back. She was perspiring now and wiped her hairline with the back of her hand. She thought she heard a sound and looked up, but it was only the wind borne by the dawn and the sighs of the awakening sea. With an air of determination she wiped the area around, taking care not to touch anything. She looked into the stranger’s face but he was still asleep, or unconscious, and then, averting her eyes, she moved the cloth to the soft parts, feeling them, light as hatchlings, through the fabric.

  When she was satisfied that it was all clean she rested her hand lightly on his hip where a distinct line, like a geological stratum, revealed that the man had often worked without a shirt. Her trembling fingertips traced the length of the line from hip to hip and around towards the back. It made the strange body look more vulnerable, she thought. There was something so innocent – almost childlike – about the blue-veined white skin of the hips set off against the tanned abdomen. Gently she covered his body with a clean sheet and stoked the fire.

  She woke suddenly from the chair by the bedside where she must have fallen asleep. The stranger was moaning again, and the twisted sheet was soaked with sweat. ‘O dear God, he is going to die.’ She might have said it aloud. In two steps she reached the study door and flung it open. Her husband was asleep at his desk, his head on his arms framed in the hesitant light of the new day which was making a reluctant entry through the window.

  ‘Neil, please, you have got to help me!’ There was desperation and perhaps even tears in her voice.

  MacKenzie leapt up at her call. ‘Lizzie, darling, what’s going on? Are you hurt?’ There was fear in his drowsiness.

  ‘No, no – it’s him, you must save him,’ she sobbed.

  The minister, remembering of whom she was talking, answered wryly, ‘I dare say he is beyond saving – he will be halfway to hell by now.’ But as he spoke he rose and followed her into the kitchen.

  The man on the bed was racked in a delirium of sweating shivers. ‘Oh!’ he moaned, his bloodless face drained further by pain.

  MacKenzie looked at the stranger with disgust, only vaguely recognising the change in his appearance. ‘His leg needs setting straight – tell Anna to keep the children in the bedroom and fetch the bottle of whisky the Atkinsons left,’ he said, rolling up his shirtsleeves.

  When Lizzie returned with the half-full bottle, MacKenzie was examining the broken tibia. ‘I saw
my father mend a horse’s leg once. It needs to get back into position to stop the fracture from becoming further inflamed.’ He bent over the stinking wound. ‘Aw! It is too messy – I can’t make out where the bone should be,’ he said, agitated.

  ‘Shall I give him some whisky?’ Lizzie asked hoarsely.

  ‘No, no. He is too far gone for that to be of any use. I want you to wash out the wound with it,’ he said, and took hold of the stranger’s shoulders, pinning them to the bed.

  Lizzie swallowed hard and, holding on to the lower part of the leg with a cloth, poured some of the liquor over the wound.