A Stranger Came Ashore

by Mollie Hunter

  Nobody except a Shetlander ever gets it right, of course; but even so, this book is still dedicated to all my good Shetland friends, and especially in love to Freya and Bruce Tulloch, Maureen and Stuart Donald. And last, but very far from least, to Bobby (bucketing-about-in-a-small-boat) Tulloch, and his seals.

  M.H.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. The Stranger

  2. Fiddle Music

  3. Gold …

  4. … and Dancing and Gold

  5. The Selkie Summer

  6. Old Da’s Warning

  7. Funeral Magic

  8. Finn’s Magic

  9. Deep Water

  10. Nicol

  11. Elspeth

  12. Yarl Corbie

  13. The Skin

  14. Nicol Promises

  15. Yarl Corbie Plans

  16. Guisers

  17. The Skuddler

  18. The Great Selkie

  Copyright

  1. The Stranger

  It was a while ago, in the days when they used to tell stories about creatures called the Selkie Folk.

  A stranger came ashore to an island at that time – a man who gave his name as Finn Learson – and there was a mystery about him which had to do with these selkie creatures. Or so some people say, anyway; but to be exact about all this, you must first of all know that the Selkie Folk are the seals that live in the waters around the Shetland Islands. Also, the Shetlands themselves lie in the stormy seas to the north of Britain, and it was on a night of very fierce storm that it all began.

  It so happened, then, that a ship named the Bergen was wrecked on one of the islands in this storm, and the shipwreck was near a place called Black Ness – which was not so much a place, really, as a scatter of houses on hilly ground overlooking the sea. Also, there was a certain Robbie Henderson living in Black Ness at that time – a lad of twelve years old, according to all accounts – and he was the person most concerned in the mystery of this stranger, Finn Learson.

  There were four other members of the Henderson family, however, apart from Robbie himself – his parents, Peter and Janet Henderson, his sister Elspeth, and his grandfather, Old Da Henderson. There was also the family’s sheepdog, Tam; and as the storm grew wilder and wilder that night, this dog became very uneasy.

  The whole family could hear how the storm was raging, of course, for their house stood close to the head of a long bay cutting into the rocky coast of the island – the kind of bay that Shetlanders call a “voe” – and so the thundering noise of the waves was very near. Even so, Old Da Henderson had the feeling that it was not just the storm that bothered Tam, for Old Da was pretty old and his head was simply full of the superstitions of those days. He listened, therefore: he waited, and he watched. And at last he noticed something which seemed to him the true cause of Tam’s uneasiness.

  “Look there!” said he, suddenly pointing to the fire of peats burning on the hearth.

  The fire had been a good one, but now the peats at either side of it were burning down and crumbling into a fine white ash. A moment later there was only one of them left burning – the peat that stood upright at the centre of the fire – and pointing again, Old Da went on, “There! Do you see the way that peat has been left standing all by itself? That means a stranger will come here tonight!”

  Peter Henderson cocked an ear to the noise of the wind howling over the thatch of the roof, and with a doubtful face on him he asked, “What stranger could come to Black Ness this night?”

  Old Da also turned an ear to the sound of the storm. “Well may you wonder about that,” he said meaningly; and suddenly they all understood what he was thinking.

  “A shipwreck in the voe!” Peter exclaimed, and was about to reach quickly for his jacket when there was a great thump, as if something heavy had fallen against the door of the house. The sound brought the whole family to its feet; and on that very instant the door burst wide open and a man came half-staggering, half-falling into the room.

  Rain and wind swept in with him, raising a whirling cloud of peat ash from the fire. Peter rushed to the door, and threw all his burly weight on it to close it again. Robbie’s mother and sister cried out, and clutched at one another. Robbie gripped hold of Tam, to stop him making a lunge at the stranger; and the stranger himself dropped to his knees on the floor, like a man completely exhausted.

  As well he might be, the whole family realised when the struggle with the door was won and they had a chance to look properly at him. He had come straight out of the sea, it seemed, for he was streaming with water and he wore nothing except a pair of trousers held up by the kind of broad canvas moneybelt that sailor men use. Moreover, there were strands of green seaweed plastered wetly to the skin of his bare back, and the hair that hung down from his drooping head was streaked with this same green weed.

  “Poor fellow – oh, the poor fellow!” exclaimed Janet Henderson, gazing pitifully down on this, and then rushed to get a blanket to throw over him. Elspeth ran to fetch him a cup of hot tea. Robbie held grimly on to Tam, who was still snarling away at the crouching form; and Peter said in an awed voice, “Well, you were right, Old Da. There’s your stranger!”

  “Aye, and you guessed rightly who it would be,” Old Da returned. “This fellow is off a wreck. Just look at him – he must be!”

  “No doubt of it,” Peter agreed. Then, as Old Da moved to put fresh peats on the fire, he bent to touch the stranger’s shoulder. “Who are you, lad?” he asked gently. “And where’s your ship?”

  The man began rising to his feet, looking about him in a dazed sort of way. He was young, they saw then, a tall and powerfully-built young man. Also, he was very handsome, with large and very dark-brown eyes. His hair was dark too – almost black, in fact; and, for all he was so young, it had streaks of a silvery-grey colour across it.

  “Who are you?” Peter asked again, but still taking care to make the question a gentle one; and slowly, in a deep, pleasant voice that had a foreign sort of sound to it, the young man answered, “I call myself Finn – Finn Learson.”

  Tam began to snarl more fiercely than ever at that moment, and Robbie had to drag him even further away from the stranger. Janet came with the blanket to drape over his shoulders. Elspeth pressed the cup of tea into his hand. He smiled his thanks for all this, showing white and very even teeth that made him look more handsome than ever; and Peter asked once more, “And your ship, lad? What about that? We’ll get a boat out to her if we can, depend on it, for we are mostly seafaring men ourselves here.”

  Finn Learson sipped his tea, and then nodded in the direction of the voe. “The ship lies wrecked on the rocks down there,” he said quietly. “But there is nothing you can do for her crew, for they are dead men now, all of them – swept away and drowned in the storm.”

  There was a little shocked silence at this. Then Old Da murmured, “God rest their souls.”

  “Amen,” the whole family responded; but by this time they had all noticed the foreign sound to Finn Learson’s voice, and after another silence, Peter asked, “Where was the ship from, then?”

  “Ask that later,” Janet put in firmly. “And meanwhile, it’s time you got this young fellow into dry clothes.”

  ‘That sounds like sense,” Peter admitted; and told Finn Learson, “Come with me, and I’ll let you have some of mine.”

  Off he went with this, into the room next door where all the family slept; for this was the way Shetland houses were built in those days, with only a living room called the but end, and a sleeping room called the ben end. Finn Learson followed Peter into the ben end, and Old Da decided, “And I’ll take a look towards the voe, just in case it’s possible to see the wre
ck from here.”

  “I’ll come with you,” offered Robbie, who was dying with curiosity about the wreck by this time.

  The moment the two of them were outside the door, however, Robbie wished he had kept quiet; for the storm was on them, then, like a thousand wet, wild hands slapping from all directions. Moreover, for all there was only a short slope down to the voe, the night lay so black against their eyes that they could see nothing there except great fountains of spray bursting white against the darkness.

  “It’s no use!” Old Da shouted. “Wherever she is, a sea like that means the wreck is foundered by this time anyway!”

  They turned back into the house, their breath quite torn away by the storm; and as they struggled together to close the door, Old Da gasped, “As for that Finn Learson, it’s a miracle he managed to get ashore, for it would take the Selkie Folk themselves to stay alive in such a sea!”

  “You’re mad, the pair of you, going out into that storm,” scolded Janet as they came shivering back to the fire. Then she turned to look at Finn Learson coming out of the ben room, dressed now in some of Peter’s clothes, with his dark hair neatly combed and a pair of homemade sealskin shoes on his bare feet.

  “That’s better!” said she, and began bustling about to get everyone seated around the fire again.

  Tam was still grumbling and growling, however, and so he had to be banished from the circle; but once that was done, Janet had peace to name the various members of the family to Finn Learson. Politely he nodded to each in turn, but it was still on Elspeth Henderson that his great dark eyes came finally to rest – not that this surprised anyone, of course, since Elspeth had a fresh complexion and long, sandy-gold hair that made her just about the bonniest girl in the islands.

  Elspeth was a bit shy of admiring looks, all the same, for she was only seventeen at that time. Besides which, she already had a young man of her own; and so, to spare her blushes under the stranger’s gaze, Peter began quickly, “Well, you’re seemingly none the worse of your experience, my lad; and if you’re ready to tell us, we’re ready now to hear all about it.”

  Finn Learson gave a little shrug. “There is not much to tell,” be remarked. “The ship was called the Bergen, and she was stoutly-enough built; but once she was caught in that north-west drift off the voe, there was no doubt she would drive on to the rocks there. And after that, there was no hope for her.”

  “The Bergen …” Peter echoed. “That sounds to me like a Norwegian name.”

  “There is a port in Norway called Bergen,” Finn Learson agreed; and Peter went on, “I suppose that accounts for the foreign sound to your voice, then. You’ll be Norwegian yourself, are you?”

  Finn Learson did not answer this in so many words, but he smiled in a way that seemed to mean this was indeed the case. And so, taking it for granted that he had guessed correctly, Peter remarked, “All the same, you speak good English for a foreigner. I must say that for you! “

  “Indeed he does,” Janet agreed; but Finn Learson shook his head at this, and said modestly, “I cannot take any credit for that. I have always been a great traveller, after all, and so I have had the chance to hear many languages. “

  “Well, you’ve had maybe the hardest voyage of your life this time,” Old Da remarked, “for it beats me how you managed to get ashore when all the rest of the crew were drowned.”

  “They drowned because all the lifeboats were smashed and none of them could swim,” Finn Learson explained. “But I have always been a strong swimmer – very strong. Moreover, I could see the light shining from your house, and so I knew I was not far from shore.”

  The thought of Old Da’s remark about the Selkie Folk flashed across Robbie’s mind, and he could not resist chiming in at this point, “You were lucky, all the same!”

  “Yes,” Finn Learson agreed, and smiled a little. “Very lucky.”

  Now Robbie Henderson had what you might call a very noticing sort of mind, and there was something about this smile that struck him as being rather odd. The conversation was still going on, however; and so – even although this something had made him feel a bit uncomfortable – he had no time to think why this should have been so.

  2. Fiddle Music

  It was to other shipwrecks at other times on the island that the talk had now turned, and after a while of this, Peter rose to take down a violin that was hanging on the wall.

  “We’re great folk to play the fiddle here, as maybe you’ve heard tell,” he said to Finn Learson. “Indeed, there’s hardly a house in these islands without a fiddle in it, and hardly a family without someone who can knock out a tune. But there’s one tune we never play, except to mourn the death of one of our fisher lads. And so it’s fitting now, it seems to me, that I should play it for your dead mates.”

  Tucking his fiddle under his chin then, Peter played the mourning song of the Shetland fishermen, and the rest of the family listened to it with tears not far away; for nothing can sing sweeter than a violin, and no music could have been sadder than this lament for drowned men. There was no telling what Finn Learson thought of it, however, for he sat with one hand over his face all the time Peter was playing, and everyone had too much respect for his feelings to guess what expression he might be hiding.

  Old Da was ready with the right words, nevertheless, once the music was finished and Peter was hanging the fiddle back in its place.

  “That was well done, Peter,” said he. “The souls of those poor fellows will rest easier for it; and as for their bodies, we will give them decent burial when the time comes.”

  Finn Learson looked up at these words. “How will you do that?” he asked curiously, and Old Da explained, “Well, the bodies will drift ashore sooner or later, and then we’ll bury them just above high-water mark at the place where they’re found. For it’s our custom, you know, never to take far from the sea anything the sea has claimed for its own.”

  “A wise custom,” said Finn Learson, and smiled again, in the way that Robbie found rather odd. Then, with a glance at all the various bits of farming gear in the room, he asked, “But you are farmers too, as well as fishermen, are you not?”

  “You could say that, I suppose,” Peter agreed. “Everybody here has the wee bit of land we call a ‘croft’, and between that and the fishing, we manage to make some sort of a living.”

  “Ach, Peter,” Janet protested. “It’s not such a bad living as all that!”

  “No indeed. It’s not all hard work for us here,” Old Da assured Finn Learson. And with this to start it off, the talk was soon flowing with stories of life on the islands, for the but end was now all set for this kind of talk.

  The fire was red and cheerful. The only other light in the room was the gentle glow from a little lamp filled with fish oil – a “kollie,” as it was called. Moreover, the hour was just right for storytelling, and Finn Learson was always ready with a question of the kind that would start yet another story.

  So the time ran on that night without any of the Hendersons realising how neatly all these questions were putting a stop to the ones they might have been asking him. The grandfather clock in the but end chimed midnight. Everyone suddenly realised how late it was; and with her eyes on the clock, Janet reminded them, “We have an early rise tomorrow.”

  The rest of the family knew what she meant by this, for those were hard times when the salvage off a wreck was precious, and they would all have to be down at the voe to get what they could from the Bergen. They took the hint to rise, therefore, and Janet waved Finn Learson towards the wooden settle standing against one wall of the room.

  “You can take that blanket I gave you and sleep there, on the restin’ chair,” said she, and then steered Elspeth ahead of her into the ben room.

  Old Da followed in a minute or so. Robbie and Peter stayed to bank down the fire for the night and to put out the kollie; and it was then, with his fingers reaching up to close on the wick of the kollie, that Robbie noticed Tam creeping back to his usual place by
the fire.

  “You’ll not mind old Tam, will you?” he asked. “He’s not fierce, really – just a bit upset by everything tonight.”

  Finn Learson stretched out on the restin’ chair and pulled the blanket close around himself. One eye gleamed at Robbie over the edge of this blanket – a bright, and somehow very watchful eye. A voice came, muffled by the blanket’s folds.

  “Off you go, lad,” said the voice. “I’ll know how to calm your dog if it snarls again.”

  Still Robbie hesitated, for there was something he did not like about the tone of the muffled voice. His father only laughed at it, however, and reached over Robbie’s head to snuff out the kollie.

  “Aye, surely,” he agreed as he did this. Then, with a goodnight to Finn Learson from both him and Robbie, they too went ben to their beds.

  They were proper old-fashioned Shetland beds, these, made like a large box complete with a lid on top and a sliding door in one side. There were air-holes in the sliding doors, neatly pierced in the shape of hearts and diamonds; the box-beds themselves stood on legs that raised them above draughts, and there were three of them in the room – one for Peter and Janet, one for Elspeth, and one that Robbie shared with Old Da.

  Robbie was dead tired by this time, and he lost not a moment in getting in beside Old Da. Almost instantly then, he was asleep, for the bed was comfortable and Old Da had warmed it for him. But just as suddenly, it seemed to him, he was awake again, wondering how long he had slept and what had happened to wake him.

  There was no sound or movement in the ben room, he realised. But there was a sound coming from somewhere – the sound of a fiddle very softly played and near at hand – and for several startled moments he lay wondering who on earth could be playing the fiddle at that hour of the night.

  Robbie’s surprise was soon over, however, and it was uneasiness that gripped him then; for by the end of those first few moments he had realised that the music was coming from the but end of the house where his father’s fiddle hung. And yet his father was lying asleep in the box-bed a few feet away from his own! The sliding door of this bed was open, and he could see his father there – which meant that the only person who could be playing the fiddle was the stranger, Finn Learson. And why should he be doing that at such an hour?