Island of Wings

by Karin Altenberg

  4

  1835–1838 – ECLIPSE

  The Manse, Hirta, 24th April, 1835

  To John MacPherson MacLeod of Glendale and St Kilda. Mysore, India

  Sir,

  By this letter I convey to you a foreign criminal who landed on the shores of St Kilda on New Year’s Day 1835. Although the man has lived amongst us for four months I do not know his name but believe him to be a pirate of Portuguese or Spanish origin.

  On my orders Captain Dankshof of ‘Die Griffe’, a Prussian ship which foundered off our shores a couple of months ago, will take full responsibility for bringing the criminal to the Long Isle and meeting up with the taxman who will prosecute the said prisoner in your absence.

  I have done what I thought was right in healing this wounded criminal and handing over his mended body to your justice. I cannot, however, vouch for his soul, which to my best judgement seems to be lost. As I was not able to communicate with the prisoner in his own language I cannot say whether he wants salvation or whether his mouth, which speaks so coarsely in a foreign tongue, is still greedy for wrong. As far as I can tell, his character will take no goodness. I therefore recommend that, should this man be locked up for the remainder of his life, he be given access to the Scripture in his own tongue so that he can start from the beginning with the Word so that life might return to his soul. Remember that purification from sin is a fearful struggle and this sinner should be given all the support he can get in order to reach enlightenment and obliterate sin from his heart.

  We do not know what crimes lie in his past, but I am quite sure your worldly court will discover them. However, I do know this: the sin that is ripest in his heart is the hardest to redeem; he abandoned his friends to the waves as their ship wrecked on Rockall, and I dare say that his own survival will rest heavily on his mind. It reflects the original sin of brother betraying brother and thus perpetuating the wickedness of man. It is therefore of utmost importance that this man be given the opportunity to repent and find God’s mercy through His Word: ‘Purge me with hysope, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to heare joy and gladnesse: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoyce.’

  Let me continue now, sir, on a more cheerful note. I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that the plans for the new village are progressing. I expect to see the first construction of the new houses this summer and the common arable land is gradually being divided into strips.

  Your subjects have generally been faring well this past year. It is true that many of the children continue to die within eight days of birth, but the adults have all been mainly healthy and we have had no casualties at sea or on the rocks. All of the children of schooling age and most of the able-minded adults can repeat the catechism by heart, and I have even begun to teach some of the brighter young people to read and write. I try to teach in English but it seems hard for the Gaelic mind in these parts to make sense of a language which does not concern the birds and the sea. There was a brief lapse into superstition during the winter but I am pleased to assure you that I stemmed this weakness and returned my congregation to sanity and purity.

  Dare I suggest, sir, lord and patron of this island, that you and your lady pay us a visit on your return from India?

  I remain your humble servant,

  The Rev. Neil MacKenzie

  The Manse, Hirta, 24th April, 1835

  To Mr MacDonald of Tanera, rightful taxman of the island of Hirta

  My dear Mr MacDonald,

  Captain Dankshof who delivers this letter to you brings with him a criminal who should be interrogated and tried by the court at Dunvegan. I trust you to act according to your convictions and use your best conscience in the matter.

  Moreover, I would hereby like to order a dozen scarlet headscarves, preferably with a ‘paisley’ pattern. The costs for these can be deducted from my allowance, if you wish.

  Sincerely yours,

  MacKenzie

  *

  That day when he left . . . Lizzie could still feel the wound deepening inside herself when she thought about it. She had been away up the glen on the slopes of Oiseval with Betty and the children to look at the new lambs, which were struggling against their vertical world in woolly bewilderment. Eliza had been dreadfully upset to see a stillborn lamb hanging halfway out of its bleating mother. The ewe was scuffling back and forth on the slope, half-demented and with panic in her dreary eyes, as she tried to get rid of the terrible offspring – that slimy blue chimera of tendons and bones that would not leave her alone. Turning back down the slope with the crying child in her arms, Lizzie looked ahead over the sweeping valley and the sea beneath only to see a group of men assembled by the landing rock and the village boat being pushed out. She stopped in her tracks and put Eliza, who was getting too heavy now to carry any distance, back on the ground. The skies were racing over the island, busily tidying up for spring. A cloud sailed over the sun and blackened the water in the bay, and at the same time a strange foreshadowing settled like dusk in Lizzie’s eyes.

  ‘What does this mean, Betty?’ she asked her friend, who had followed close behind, James Bannatyne on her steady hip.

  ‘I couldn’t say,’ Betty answered slowly, ‘but it looks as if them Sassenachs are leaving at last.’ It was clear from her tone that she for one would not miss them. She frowned at the thought of the rowdy, near-sunken sailors who used up precious food and spoke like coils of anchor chain, short and sharp.

  Lizzie at once recognised the crew of eleven sailors who had been saved from the Prussian vessel. That was almost three months ago now and the burden on the vulnerable community was apparent – supplies were already running so low that children and old people were beginning to weaken. There was just no way they would be able to support the extra mouths until the taxman’s ship turned up with relief once the weather had settled for the summer.

  Lizzie searched the crowd on the rocks until at last she saw him standing there, tightly guarded by two of the foreign mariners. Although he was physically locked in their grip he looked quite separate; his head was bent as if he was trying to read something on the ground, a secret message in the dumb rock. Just then the men started pushing him towards the boat, and as he shook off their hands she saw that his own were tied behind his back. Expertly and without the aid of the others he jumped into the wrestling dinghy and sat down by the stern. This is my element, he seemed to say as he looked back on his guards with a steady gaze.

  ‘Stay with Betty, sweetheart,’ Lizzie called to Eliza as she started scampering down the steep hill.

  ‘Mrs MacKenzie, don’t!’ Betty cried behind her. But Lizzie took no heed – the blood in her veins was like a storm in her ears, and the brown bells of last year’s heather rang out as her skirts brushed past. In spite of her efforts the boat had already pushed out into the bay when she reached her husband on the rocks.

  ‘Where are they taking him?’ she demanded between breaths.

  ‘To Dunvegan.’ Her husband, all cool and calm, continued to look out to sea.

  ‘To Dunvegan? Have you gone clear daft?’ She tried to steady her voice; her fists hung like lead balls at the end of her rigid arms. ‘But they will lock him up!’

  ‘Precisely.’ He still would not look at her. Surely we cannot have grown this far apart, cried his heart.

  ‘What is Dunvegan to him? He is of the sea – do you not hear me, of the sea. We know of no crime he has committed!’ She looked desperately towards the dinghy, which was riding tall against the swell in the shallows. Just then she saw the prisoner looking back at her and her eyes smarted as their gaze locked and burned. He was no longer the monster she had found in the feather store that night; gone was the gargoyle – half-man, half-beast – and in his place was this human being whom she had grown to know so intimately through the heat of her hands, through her fingers melting f
rost.

  ‘You know this is wrong. God must have spared him for a purpose,’ she tried.

  The minister made a sharp intake of breath but said nothing.

  ‘Perhaps God favours some people quite randomly and decides they must survive for no particular reason at all. Or perhaps God is sometimes just absent, and nature rules, so that the strong survive and the weak die irrespective of the purity of their spirit . . .’ She didn’t think that she had anything to lose. How could she have known what was at stake? What possessed her? All she could think about was how she had nursed the stranger back to life and how gradually she had seen humanity return into his eyes. He had been closer to death than life, but it was not right for him to die – he was too young and too strong. Human beings want to live. Why is it, she thought, that we are prepared to do almost anything to keep our loved ones alive and close – and yet we fail them?

  Her husband turned to look at her in a way that made her feel sick – she could not read his eyes, but he seemed to be advancing through a range of emotions the way a soldier pushes through a battle towards the front line.

  ‘Only through sacrificing yourself and your cause to God can you redeem yourself for surviving such circumstances – for letting your fellow beings die by your side.’ There was such contempt in his voice.

  Her heart was beating too hard and the sweat was cold on her forehead. She felt suddenly nauseous and looked towards the open sea, but its hapless mass offered no cause for hope. She tried to steady herself but recognised a familiar darkness just before she fainted.

  She had been carried back into the manse by Ferguson and MacKinnon, just as the man who was now a prisoner had once been carried into her care. Presently she was at the table drinking a strengthening cup of tea. The children, who had returned with Betty, had been sent off again, this time with Anna to the clachan. Mr MacKenzie was looking at her mutely, impassively, leaning casually with his back against the door. She turned to him defiantly and started to say something but fell quiet when she saw the blackening of his mind through his eyes. He began to stride back and forth in the dull room.

  ‘Look at this place!’ He threw out his hands. ‘Just look at it.’ He swept his fingers through the dust on the mantelpiece, his lips set in a disgusted snarl. A few treasures which the children had brought in from the beach were littering the table in front of her – a handful of shells and a dried starfish, one purple arm broken at the heart. MacKenzie slammed down his fist on top of the trophies and swept them on to the floor. ‘You have neglected your duties.’ He kicked at the broken shells but missed and hit the leg of the table. This seemed to enrage him further and suddenly, before she had time to react, he caught her by the arm and pulled her out of the chair. The gleam in his eyes frightened her.

  ‘You are hurting me, Neil,’ she whimpered, but he only tightened his grip.

  ‘You wanted it from him, didn’t you?’ He had got hold of her other arm too and was shaking her. ‘Well, didn’t you?’ There was something close to panic in his voice.

  ‘I have nothing to hide.’ It was a strange thing for her to insist, and it made it all too obvious that she had.

  Her husband gave a short laugh. ‘Be quiet – you will take it from your husband now!’ He started pulling her into the bedroom and she tried to resist. ‘This is your duty!’ She did not recognise him – she was quite certain that the man who took her was not known to her.

  Afterwards he rolled off her and faced the wall. She was still too rigid to move. Her head was not related to her limbs. She hoped he would not speak but he did. ‘I am sorry, Lizzie. I don’t know what came over me. You know I never wanted to hurt you. I am not a bad man, am I?’

  Was he weeping? Somehow she managed to raise herself out of the bed. She pulled at her skirts. She wasn’t too sore but she could feel the stickiness between her thighs and it disgusted her. On stiff legs she took a couple of steps towards the door. A slither of warm indignity was trickling down the inside of her left leg.

  His shame forced him to curl up towards the wall. He realised that he had no right to look at her, that in the end he was the one who had forfeited the trust. ‘Don’t leave me, Lizzie, oh, sweet, darling Lizzie, please don’t leave me,’ his heart was crying out, but did he say it?

  Lizzie thought she heard him whisper something and strained to catch the words. ‘Leave me’ – it was all he managed, in a sigh.

  Released, she closed the door behind her.

  ‘Save me! Please bring me back.’ This time mortification amplified his words, but the door was already closed.

  Once outside the manse Lizzie started running. The shadows were settling and she hoped the dark would hide her. Low clouds had got entangled in the hills and it had started to rain. It surprised her that she didn’t feel hatred for her husband. All she could feel was a great sadness; it came upon her as silently as the mist from the sea. When she reached a small stream she squatted over the gulley and washed herself – she splashed and rubbed until she was quite clean of the humiliation. It was dark now, but she knew she could not face going back. Her boots and skirts were soaked and she was beginning to shiver with cold. Determined not to cry, she bit her lip and set off for Betty’s house.

  Betty received her former mistress without questions. With a few words of Gaelic she sent Calum off and helped Lizzie out of her wet clothes and into a stiff blanket which smelt of animal. If she noticed the raw skin where Lizzie had scoured her thighs in the icy water, she did not let on. For a long while they sat quietly by the fire, looking into the weak flames. Every now and again Betty would feed it a piece of dried turf – it didn’t give off much heat, but there was no other fuel at this time of the year. Lizzie pulled the blanket closer around her shoulders.

  ‘Betty,’ she said, very quietly. The young Highland woman looked up. ‘Do you ever think of home?’

  ‘Home?’ Betty thought it a strange question ‘Why, my home is here, isn’t it?’ After a pause she added, ‘They sent me away, didn’t they? My pa said they had no choice. So no, I don’t think of home. How could I, now that I know that it was for the best I left. I was sad to leave the little ones, but I know they are better off without me and one more mouth to feed.’

  The two women continued to look into the glowing embers as if they expected them to reveal some deeper sense.

  ‘The world back there was getting wider, filling with worries and sadness. Almost every month somebody would get up and leave for Canada. Here everything is contained and people keep close.’ As she talked, the faces of Betty’s parents and siblings returned to her blue gaze and the mainland felt suddenly close. It made her feel peculiar, minding them in that way, and she was grateful to the fire for offering distraction.

  ‘What is wrong with me, Betty?’ Lizzie’s voice was suddenly lucid. The light from the tired fire was tracing the side of her face like an old lover.

  ‘There is nothing wrong with you,’ Betty replied fervently, ‘but you expect too much of life – you seem to think it will explain itself to you, but that will never happen.’

  Lizzie nodded slowly. ‘There are times when I feel so ­insignifi­cant, as if I’m about to disintegrate. Like pollen on the air.’

  Betty stirred the embers, which gave off their heat like a truth. ‘Is that why you were drawn to the stranger?’

  Lizzie looked up in surprise and blushed. How could Betty know? Had she heard those whispers in her heart? She hesitated but decided to reply honestly: ‘He saw me, he gave me purpose and he let me touch him – that was all.’ The fire was alive again; she was feeling hot and her cheeks were aglow. The blanket had loosened to reveal a naked shoulder. ‘It was a short period of folly, a few weeks of madness. And yet I felt more alive in that brief passion than I have done before or after. What is my life now?’

  Betty was not used to speaking in such terms and it was not a question she could a
nswer. She made an effort to bring the conversation back into their confined world. ‘But your husband – he is a fine man and all?’

  ‘Since the children died my husband has removed himself from me. He writes in his study and preaches in his kirk; he eats his dinner and takes his pleasure. That is all. I am of no consequence to him.’ She broke off and smiled sadly. ‘But you know, his betrayal hurts my head more than my heart – it sits like an iron band across my temples. I pray only to be rid of this pain that comes from being so irrelevant to the only person I am bound to love.’

  Betty still did not quite comprehend, but she had enough imagination to feel a rush of pity. She moved closer and held her friend’s hand. It was surprisingly thin, almost childlike.

  ‘Oh, Betty, the worst thing is that I have let myself become so insignificant, so badly used!’

  ‘The minister, Mr MacKenzie, perhaps he is lonely too,’ Betty suggested. ‘He doesn’t have any other loved ones, does he? It can do strange things to a man, losing his kin and bosom friends – it can turn a good one into a bad one, it can. Men, you see, they haven’t got no words for all that grief – and nowhere to put it, like.’ Betty’s fair curls frizzed around her head like a halo. ‘Can you not see that it is not you he has wronged, it is himself. You must talk to him!’