The Exile of Sara Stevenson

by Darci Hannah

  “Hush now! For God’s sake, lass, be quiet or you’ll wake Mrs. MacKinnon!” Indeed that was my intent, and I tried to bite the palm of his hand. “Jesus Christ!” he swore when I had managed to nip him. And then he pressed harder, covering my nose as well, attempting to take the breath from me. It was working. As I struggled against his surprisingly strong, hard body, wriggling and kicking to break free, my head began to grow light from the lack of air. He leaned close to my ear and whispered again, “I beg ye, calm yourself, lass.”

  I really had little choice in the matter, for I could not breathe, nor could I fight against such strength. And so, helpless against him, and threatening to lose consciousness, I nodded my consent.

  “All right, very good. I’m going to let go now and you’re going to be quiet. Aye?” He was breathing very heavily, pressing his body firmly against mine, and then slowly, very gingerly, he removed his hand from my mouth.

  “Please,” I uttered, gasping for breath. “Please, Mr. Campbell, do not kill me. I’ll do as you wish. I swear it. But I beg you, let me—”

  “What in God’s name are ye talking about?” He cast me a dark, confused glance. “May I remind ye that it was you who jumped out at me and no’ the other way around?”

  This, of course, was true. “Well … well, what were you doing outside my door?” I demanded, slightly confused and fully indignant.

  He paused. I could see this question bothered him. “I …” he began, then halted. It was his turn to come clean and I took a small pleasure in the fact that he did not like answering my direct question. “I was …” he continued, then paused again. He stared at me, his unsettling pale eyes willing me to back down and look away, but I would not. I stared right back, indignation emboldening me, and I could see he did not like that. “I was on my way to my room!” he finally said, visibly irked that he was made to answer. “I thought I should sleep before I was called out again.”

  “Your room?” I replied skeptically.

  “Aye,” he replied bitterly. “Ye’ll know it. ’Tis just down there, at the end of the hall.”

  Indeed it was, and it was the only room in the entire cottage I was forbidden to enter. “Yes, yes, I know where your room is. But you stopped outside my door, Mr. Campbell. Why did you stop?”

  He looked a little ashamed by this, because it was true. “I thought,” he mumbled, unable to look me in the eye. “I thought ye might be awake. I heard ye … I know sometimes that ye read at night.” I looked at him, not comprehending what he was saying and waited for him to elaborate on this roundabout explanation. “Well, I wanted …” He paused. “I just thought I should apologize to ye. I believe … it comes to my attention that I may have been a little hard on ye this evening during supper.” I cocked my head and stared at him in disbelief. “I never meant to belittle your efforts … What I mean is …” And then his tone hardened, his pale eyes darkened and he continued. “I expect ye to understand, Miss Stevenson, that we must ration our supplies up here. The coast is dangerous this time of year; storms flare up, making the weather too risky for the supply tender to come out. We cannot depend on it. And if we run low on food, we’ll have to go without. We cannot just run down the lane to fetch a pound of flour or a pinch of salt on a whim. There are no markets or shops to be had here.”

  It was then I realized what Mr. Campbell was doing. He had been caught red-handed lingering outside my door. He might have made a habit of it, lingering about as I slept, entertaining all manner of insalubrious thoughts, but tonight I had caught him. And now he was ashamed. To cover for his debased behavior he would have me believe he had come to apologize for his rank bad manners. Yet Mr. Campbell was often rude, habitually rank, and now he expected me to believe he had come to apologize for his unseemly tirade at dinner? It all started because I had been unable to bear any more of Kate’s unorthodox cooking and had nobly volunteered to make the evening meal myself. Having no idea what I was about, I failed spectacularly on my first attempt at a stew, burning our allotted ration of stringy mutton. To cover the mistake I added flour and water, and only succeeded in creating a stringy, grayish, gelatinous, tasteless sludge that was not fit for man or beast, and so I threw it, along with a burnt, lumpish, doughy breadlike substance, onto the dung heap and tried again—the second time with a wee bit more success. When Mr. Campbell realized that some of his precious stores had gone missing, and later learned what I had done with them, he become furious with me for throwing out the first supper, declaring that all kitchen stores were meant to be eaten, no matter what form they may take. He had lit into me then like a Dutch uncle, going on and on about my flagrant ways, my devil-may-care attitude and my flippant behavior, until finally, unable to bear his choler any longer, I got up and left the room. And he was doing it again—now—in the dead of night!

  “Are you serious?” I questioned when he had finished his pathetic apology.

  “What d’ye mean, am I serious?” he rejoined, growing a little chuff. “Am I serious about our survival? Am I serious about the running of this lighthouse? You seem to think it all a great game, carrying on about all your scented soaps and your wee soothing rosewater baths, your three-hour teas with your fancy friends and the fine shops you once frequented. Ye take a stab at the cooking and when it doesn’t meet with your high and mighty approval ye toss it away without a care or thought to anyone but yourself!”

  “On the contrary,” I corrected, my anger matching his. “It was precisely because I think of others that I threw that chamber-pot carnage away!”

  His eyes, now appearing dark in the scant light, scanned my face. And then his gaze dropped to my neck, coming to rest just below the top of my nightdress, where the tie had come undone. His gaze lingered. I was conscious that I was breathing heavily, riled by indignation, and suddenly, under his unflinching gaze, I felt very vulnerable. I fought the urge to cover myself, steeling my nerves, attempting to show no weakness. And then he spoke very softly.

  “It takes a bit more to survive up here than money. You’re not in Edinburgh any longer, Miss Stevenson.”

  I cleared my throat, hoping to draw his attention a bit higher than my exposed, heaving bosom. “For your information,” I began, summoning a well-practiced haughty air, “I have never once complained out loud about the very real lack of decent necessities up here. I’m not the selfish, spoiled young lady you seem to think I am. But what I am, Mr. Campbell, is proud, and my pride absolutely forbade me to serve that meal!”

  “There are some forms of pride I find very admirable in women, Miss Stevenson, but self-indulgent pride is no’ one of them,” he whispered very closely, so close I could smell the coffee and sweet tobacco on his breath.

  Bristling with indignation, and a strong distaste for coffee, I pushed him away. “I don’t really care what you find admirable in women, Mr. Campbell, and what I meant when I asked if you were serious was, did you seriously come here, standing at my door in the middle of the night, to berate me for my ineptitude, my unbecoming ways and my flagrant misuse of lighthouse supplies?”

  He paused, breathing heavily, his dark face suddenly looking confused and tormented. “No. That was not my intent.”

  “Good, because to be brutally honest with you, I would have rather you’d just come to kill me and be done with it. It may have not gone so well for either of us, but I assure you, I would at least have respected the effort a whole lot more than a churlish lecture!”

  “Kill you?” he breathed, looking truly wounded. “Kill you.” And then he added haltingly, “I pray, for your sake, it doesnae come to that.”

  I was still breathing heavily when he left my room. I leaned against the door, fighting to catch my breath, for I felt as if I had just run the gauntlet—uphill and against a headwind. Whether it was fear, anger or something darker that stirred me so, I knew not. All I did know, for a certainty, was that try as I might, sleep would not come.

  • • •

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry with Mr. Ca
mpbell, because I was, and I had just cause. His words, delivered in the dark of night and under the guise of an apology, were irritating and hurtful. It wasn’t that I even cared what the man thought of me; for he was indeed an odd creature, straddling an unforeseen chasm between civility and savagery, with often that look in his pale eyes warning me that he could flip at any moment. And although I should have taken the warning—as logic would dictate—I now was utterly convinced that I was bereft of all logic, and instead of being scared witless into submission by what I knew lay under the seemingly tame exterior, my self-indulgent pride (as Mr. Campbell had called it) rallied against all higher thought and reason. The man had insulted me, and no man, prince or pauper, had that right. Damn Mr. Campbell for his insolence! Damn me for my pride! And as I lay awake at night picturing him in his tower, poring over books so distastefully horrific and execrable, I listened for the bell. And then I waited. I waited for the sound of his footsteps, willing them to pass me by. Sometimes they would; other times they were hesitant, as if he toyed with the notion of assaulting me again. When this happened I would sit up in bed and hold my breath, praying that he would walk away. And when I heard him retreat to his own quarters farther down the hall, only then would I allow myself to fall asleep. But my dreams of Thomas Crichton, the man I loved, began to fade, only to be replaced by more disturbing dreams—nightmares of a light-keeper with haunting, pale bluish-green eyes.

  For all that Mr. Campbell was a mystery to me, plying me with covert looks when he thought I was not looking and unconcealed disapproval when he knew that I was, I became filled with the desire—merely for the sake of my contumelious pride—to prove him wrong about me. And while I worked hard to illustrate that I could survive on Cape Wrath, I also sought to find fault with him. I wanted to pick and chisel away at the man, exposing his weakness, yet unfortunately all I discovered, aside from his dark secret, was a dauntless, tireless worker. Begrudgingly I was forced to admit that he was a rather commendable light-keeper. Nothing was wasted under his watch, not fuel, not food nor even something as inane as soap. And although such pinchbeck staunchness annoyed me greatly, I had to admit that I rather admired his particular kind of fortitude, for it took a great amount of self-control to be so thrifty.

  In the morning, after sitting the last shift of the night, Mr. Campbell would come to the cottage, stoke up the fires with just the right amount of peat and then head back outdoors to draw the morning water. He’d return to hang a pot over the fire to boil, warm up his hands, and once he saw to it that Kate and I were beginning to stir, without so much as a “good morning” he’d turn around and go right back outside to tend to the animals in the stable. It wasn’t until Robbie awoke that Mr. Campbell would venture inside again, bearing another armload of peat. With all souls awake and about, the men would then sit down to breakfast and eat Kate’s watery oat porridge without a hint of protest. How they stomached it, day after day, was a mystery. Yet not to be outdone by this stoicism, I too learned to hold my tongue, and one blustery cold morning in January I even found myself proclaiming that the porridge was the best I had ever eaten. Of course this was a blatant lie. Yet noting how this statement shocked my companions, I affected a blissful smile and attempted another spoonful, most of which dribbled off the shallow utensil before ever reaching my mouth. Both men just stared at me with mouths agape. Kate merely crossed her arms on her chest, looking perturbed.

  “No, really, I find it just the thing to set one up. In fact, after I finish this lovely tea,” I said, looking into the chipped cup that contained a tepid liquid resembling dirty bathwater more than a hot, sustaining drink, “I’ll be ready to face another of God’s glorious January days! Can anything be finer than all this snow and ice?”

  Mr. Campbell slowly set down his cup, having already drained the dregs, and stared at me from across the table with disbelief. “Miss Stevenson, although I’m glad to see you’ve finally come to accept your new home, I must admit, I find your cheerfulness offensive.”

  “Offensive?” I questioned, and smiled brighter, attempting the exact opposite posture as the light-keeper. “I’m sorry, sir, but I do not understand. How could my happiness at being here possibly offend you?”

  “First, because it’s not real. And second, had ye bothered to look outside this morning you’d have seen that a storm has blown in, and with it—with all the snow and ice that seems to amuse ye so—comes great responsibility. The light still needs to burn. The road to the jetty needs to be cleared, and any ship that’s caught unawares today will have a fight on its hands. That, Miss Stevenson, is no reason for cheer.”

  I lowered my head, feigning shame, and peered up at him through my lashes. “Forgive me, Mr. Campbell. I never meant to offend you. But I beg to differ, sir.” His eyes were boring into mine—trying, no doubt, to detect my sincerity. I had to turn away. “No one can deny that you work very hard, and for that we are all grateful. But I do think you have a very real absence of cheer. There’s none in you. You’re totally void of it. Perhaps if you smiled more …”

  “You mock me!” he stated defensively.

  “I would never,” I countered, challenging him. “It’s just that you’re so serious all the time. I thought … perhaps if you—”

  “You’re not here to think, Miss Stevenson!” he averred, slamming down his cup. “’Tis my job, like it or not, and I’ll thank ye to remember it. I never asked ye to come here, just as ye never intended to be here, but here ye are, and we both must bear it as best as we can … and I’ll thank ye to do it without mocking me or using me for your own wee sport!”

  “Forgive me, but how can one mock something one has no understanding of? And sport? I’m not that desperate! The mere accusation is execrable!”

  “Execrable? I find your behavior to be execrable, not my accusation.”

  “Oh, that’s coming it a bit high, even from a reprobate like you.” I threw down my napkin.

  “I may, in fact, be a reprobate, but perhaps I’m not the only one here.”

  “Mr. Campbell!” It was Kate, coming to my aid for the first time since we arrived on this godforsaken coast. “We’re all a bit tired of being cooped up together in this wee cottage, and perhaps you are being a bit hard on Miss Sara. I don’t believe that angering you was her intent at all. Miss Sara is a woman of very high spirits. And you must remember, sir, she’s been through a great deal in the past few months, and she is trying. Perhaps not by your standards, but you must bear it in mind that she’s a lady born and bred, and to her credit, she’s done more here in the past two months than she was ever wont to do at home in her entire life!”

  This statement, delivered with passion and good intent, was not flattering by any means; but it was true enough. And I was trying. I may not have owned the skills required for the job I took, but at least I went about them with a willingness to learn and a decent amount of humor. And I was attempting to understand the light-keeper, who kept us all in the dark.

  “I’m well aware that Miss Stevenson’s a lady,” he replied softly, in a voice void of all emotion. “Just as I know that Cape Wrath is no place for her kind.”

  “For my kind? Whatever is that supposed to mean?”

  Ignoring the looks from our companions, Mr. Campbell stood and replied, “I believe ye know very well what that means.” And then, as if unable to bear our company any longer, he excused himself from the table, beckoning for Robbie to follow. “Come, Mr. MacKinnon, we’ve plenty of work to do.” And with one last look behind, both men headed off for their duties at the lighthouse.

  “Heavens save us, but I don’t understand it! Whatever has gotten under that man’s skin? Why …” Kate paused, her large brown eyes turning on me with naked question, “he’s usually very pleasant, kind even … until you show up.”

  I cast her a reassuring smile and sat back in my chair. “I’m afraid that what troubles Mr. Campbell is very simple, Kate; he’s a classic misogynist—the man doesn’t like women.”

  “Do
esn’t like women?” She leaned across the table, peering at me with her wide brown eyes. “Just what are ye suggesting?”

  “I’m suggesting nothing,” I replied, and shifted my attention to the window, where I could better watch the men stomp through the snow on their way to the tower. “I’m simply stating a fact. That man has it out for me, and perhaps women in general. You’re lucky.” I looked back to her. “You’re properly wed and under the protection of Mr. MacKinnon, a fine, upstanding gentleman in his own right, but I’m not and Mr. Campbell is well aware of it. Some men don’t take kindly to women like me.”

  “I think you misjudge the man. I think,” she continued, apparently going to tell me what she thought regardless of whether or not I wanted to hear it, “that you made a muckle mess of it from the get-go and now you are too bloody stubborn to apologize.”

  “Too bloody stubborn? Did I not just tell the man a few moments ago that I was sorry?”

  “You were toying with him, Sara! Toying with him like a cat toys with a mouse. Men don’t like to be toyed with.”

  “Well, if you think so, perhaps I was,” I demurred, pushing my bowl away, unable to stomach the weak porridge any longer. “But I assure you, Kate, that man is no mouse.”

  • • •

  I was rather grateful that there was so much work to do, because the men were kept plenty busy. While we cleaned up after breakfast and the men were off tending the lighthouse—measuring out the oil needed for the next lighting, placing it into buckets and then lugging it up the many steps to the great lantern—I was silently mulling over a plan. Both Robbie and Mr. Campbell would be a while yet up in the light-room, keeping the mechanism in perfect working order, for Mr. Campbell took his responsibilities very seriously. The great lens needed cleaning, the wicks would be trimmed and the reflectors would be polished to a shining brilliance, or so Robbie had told us, for neither Kate nor I dared venture up the tower uninvited. Supplies were also carefully monitored and then the logbooks were gone over, transferring the information from the night before into another book, which would be sent to the engineer at the end of the month. And when the men were done with their morning duties they often took a nap. Today, however, there would be no nap, for they would be out clearing the road to the jetty, attacking it with both plow and shovel. And while the men were toiling behind the one horse needed for the task, I had it in mind to take the other out for a long overdue ride.