My hands drop from her shoulders. ‘We can’t just leave him,’ I say.
She shrugs. ‘He’s not from the island, Ness.’ The words fall harsh from her mouth.
‘Sophie …’ I look back at the man, lying awkward and twisted on the pale sand. Ty is standing alongside, his face worried and asking. All hints of the coming spring seem to have drained from the day, the sky suddenly dark and louring above us.
‘We’re not leaving him to die,’ I say firmly. ‘And that’s what you’ll be doing, Sophie, if you walk away now.’ I take her arm and force her feet back towards Ty. ‘He might be from another island,’ I tell her. ‘From Tay, maybe,’ I add, willing her to understand. She has some colour back in her face but her arms remain tight-wrapped around her chest.
‘It’s not true, Sophie, that everything that comes from the sea is bad,’ I add. Sophie frowns at this sacrilege. She’s been brought up by Tilda since she was little more than two years old, and Tilda’s harshness is stronger in her than it could ever be in me. But it’s not just Tilda.
A sudden rush of protectiveness towards the stranger sweeps through me. He has been given not to the island, but to us. To me. And I want him to live.
‘Help me,’ I command Ty, and he bends, obedient, as I grasp the man’s shoulders, shrinking from the feel of his arm that flops awkwardly under my hand. As soon as we have him on his side he starts to retch sea water. When he’s done I lay my cheek close to his face so that I can hear the breath that rasps light but regular in his throat.
‘We need to get him warm,’ I tell them, my eyes on the gash that runs the length of the man’s thigh. There’s no blood left in the opened flesh.
‘We could go for help,’ Ty suggests. I meet his eyes. We both know what help the islanders would give, especially to a stranger that’s half dead already.
‘We’ll make a litter,’ I announce, ‘and take him to the cave.’ To Sophie I add, ‘Would you let a piglet die, that had such a wound in its leg?’ I know my cousin well.
‘Marn would,’ Ty mutters. ‘He’d put it out of its misery.’
‘Not unless he was sure it was past saving,’ I tell them both, firm.
Ty’s scepticism shows but I know my brother, too. ‘Besides,’ I add, watching for the words to take root, ‘he might be able to tell us about your sea-wreck.’ Whenever he has the chance, my brother likes to puzzle over the purpose of the wreck he keeps hidden in the cave – which would earn him a beating from Marn if he knew.
Ty raises his shoulders in a shrug. I can see from his expression he’s only half convinced – but that’s enough for now. There are secrets aplenty on Dunnett, and this man – the strangest sea-wreck we’ve yet found – will be ours.
Chapter 4
By the time we’ve laid the stranger across a hurdle of kelp and driftwood and dragged him along the sand my back is aching and I straighten and stretch, looking back at the odd trail of grooves and dents we’ve left in our wake. I don’t trouble over it. By morning the waves will have washed the sand smooth.
The cave mouth, when we reach it, is still ankle deep in the outgoing tide. Our stranger can’t get any wetter but it makes me pause to weigh his chances.
Ty unlaces his boots and assesses our course. ‘It’s not deep,’ he says. ‘We’ll get around easily enough. The tide’s almost out.’
My thoughts stray to the high water line that circles the cave wall, but it’s rare for the waves to reach that far – and besides, we’ve no choice. If the worst happens and a storm comes, then the man’ll be taken back by the sea that brought him and nothing we can do will change it. And at least I’d know we tried.
With a deep breath I bend to take his weight, thinking the rock ledges will keep him safe from the everyday tide, though getting him up onto them won’t be easy. ‘Nearly there,’ I say, avoiding the others’ eyes.
By the time we reach the rear of the cave where the sand is dry my palms feel raw and blood trickles down one shin where I stumbled against a jut of rock. Our sea guest, too, will have scrapes extra to those he’d gained already, but that’s better, maybe, than dying out on the beach. If I had any breath to spare I’d tell him so.
‘We’ll get him up on the ledge in a minute,’ I announce. ‘We’ll need our blanket and the tinderbox. We need to get him warm.’
Both are hidden in a cleft above the highest ledge of the cave. The blanket is old and tattered, but we all bore the brunt of Tilda’s rage when she found it was missing. It was worth it though, for it means we can sit in the cave without risk of gathering tell-tale signs on our clothes. Tilda is good at spying out discrepancies, and sand would give us away quick as a slap.
So will being late – Ty’s thoughts are on it as well. ‘Tilda will be expecting us back soon,’ he says.
I nod. ‘It won’t take long to gather wood,’ I answer. ‘The sea’s left plenty. Sophie, maybe you could collect an armload of grass to make a bed. It’ll help keep him warm, if he’s got something between him and the rock.’
Without a word Sophie turns and walks away, standing silhouetted a moment in the brightness of the cave mouth before she disappears from sight. Ty looks as if he might speak but then turns and follows after, leaving me alone with our sea-guest.
Kneeling beside him I study his face. ‘You’re a lot of trouble,’ I tell him, ‘and I don’t doubt you’ll be more yet.’
Maybe Ty and Sophie are right and we should leave him to his fate. Strangers have in the past brought disease and death to our island. That’s some of the truth behind the islanders’ fear.
In the cool of the cave, a shiver runs like ants up my spine. Beside me the sea-stranger lies still and quiet. He looks harmless enough, and I remember Pa telling me that strangers brought good as well as bad. Wasn’t Pa a stranger here once? But that was before Colm became head of the Council, and before the sea became our enemy.
Studying the man, I can’t see him as a threat. His skin has the swollen, spongy look of something that’s been too long in the water. ‘We’ll soon have a fire to get you warm,’ I tell him, lifting a lank strand of hair from his face. ‘No one will see the smoke, sheltered in here. It’s not as comfortable as it might be,’ I add, ‘but we’ll do the best we can.’
Shrugging off my doubts I run out along the sand. Sophie is pulling sea-grass where it grows dense and tough on the dunes. She doesn’t respond to my wave. There’s driftwood aplenty and I stoop to my task.
When I return to the cave, Ty is kneeling by our stranger’s side, his hands around the man’s wrist. I think at first that he’s feeling for a pulse and a sharp twisting ache runs through my belly, but he’s only looking at something that’s strapped around the man’s arm.
‘I found wreck like this once,’ he says, glancing up at me, his face alight. ‘I couldn’t work out what it was, and I lost it since, in the storm two years back.’
I nod. ‘When he wakes, he’ll be able to tell you what it’s for,’ I suggest, dropping my load of wood and trying not to smile at the enthusiasm that washes over Ty’s earnest, freckled face. ‘Help me get him up on the ledge,’ I add. ‘We don’t want him washed away before we’ve had a chance to talk to him.’
Between us we haul the man like a sack of corn husks, only heavier, up onto the first ledge then across and up another level. He groans as we bump him hard over the lip; the first sign he’s given that he’s more alive than dead. I feel sorry for the extra bruises but there isn’t any other way.
Ty fetches our blanket and we stand a moment staring down at the man. ‘He’ll be thirsty,’ Ty says at last. I nod and reach for the dented saucepan we keep hidden in a crevice. Along the cliff from the cave mouth a trickle of water seeps down a green-slimed cleft. Sometimes after rain it tastes brackish and bitter but today there’s no more than a hint of iron in the taste.
The stranger mouths for the liquid as soon as the first drops touch his lips. I let him have just a little, not much more than a wetting, before I set it aside.
�
��We need to get him dry,’ I say, fumbling with the unfamiliar catches on his clothes. The man’s arm turns wrongly in my hands as I slide the cloth free and I flinch at the feel of it. Ty squats to help and together we strip away his wet clothes.
‘You’d better help Sophie,’ I suggest, once we’ve piled his belongings none too neatly alongside. I can see that Ty would rather stay and study them but it’s clear the man’s near frozen. I use a corner of the blanket to rub him dry then wrap it close around him, pleased that for a few minutes I have him to myself. By the time Sophie and Ty return with their load of sea-grass I’m tearing strips from his shirt to bind the torn leg. The cloth is so thin it’s transparent, and not from too much wear – I’ve never seen such fine weaving. He’s no farmer, I’m thinking, nor a fisherman neither.
‘The wood’s damp,’ Ty says, turning my attention from our stranger’s mysteries.
I watch as he sorts a pile of twigs and bark. Last summer Ty grew expert in setting driftwood fires in the shelter of the cave. One night we crept out late to eat potatoes we’d left to bake in the ashes.
‘It’ll smoke,’ he adds.
‘There’s no one to see,’ I tell him, eyes circling the rough walls. Little enough smoke will make it to the cave mouth, and Marn’s is the only farm that lies close to the bay.
Ty shrugs a shoulder as he turns back to his fire lighting. I glance sidelong at Sophie, busy settling the dune grass into a bed. She does it without looking at the man, naked save for the tatty blanket and a pair of under-drawers I left on him for the sake of modesty. I decide it’s best to get matters out into the open. ‘Do you think we should have left him to die on the beach?’ I ask.
She drops her head so that her hair screens her face.
‘Has he done us any harm?’ I ask.
‘They will, if they find out we helped him,’ she says.
So that’s it then. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d held, relieved that it’s a genuine fear that’s bothering her, and not that she believes the wild talk of there being evil in anything touched by the sea. Wind words, my Pa would have called the nonsense that gets spoken when folk are egging each other on with their fears and fabrications.
‘They won’t find out, Sophie. And if they do, I’ll say it was me.’ Tilda will believe it, I know that for certain.
Sophie frowns. ‘I don’t want harm to come to you either, Ness. And it wouldn’t be just Marn, not for this.’
Her worry sounds in her voice and I know she speaks true. The village would turn me over to the Council for judgement if they knew I was caring for a stranger from the sea.
I toss my head. ‘Who’s going to tell them, Soph?’ I ask, as we bump the man onto the makeshift bed and tuck the blanket tight around him.
She doesn’t answer. In the silence we listen to the crackle of the flames licking up through twigs and sea-grass. Ty feeds in bigger sticks and the salt lights up blue and gold in the flare. Sophie coughs as a twist of smoke catches her but the man’s breathing doesn’t change.
‘It’ll smoke less once the bigger logs take,’ Ty says, stretching to slide his tinderbox back into the fissure high up the wall above the ledge.
‘He’s still so cold,’ I say, resting a palm lightly against the man’s cheek.
Ty shrugs. ‘We should get back,’ he says. ‘We’ll have to find something to keep Tilda happy or she’ll guess we’ve not been looking.’
I tuck the blanket tighter round our stranger’s legs. ‘You and Sophie go,’ I say. ‘I might watch a while longer.’
Ty shakes his head. ‘You’ve done what you can, Ness. We should all go.’
He’s right. Catching trouble with Tilda will help neither him nor us, and there’s nothing more I can do – not without medicines and broth, hot water and dry clothes. Our sea-wreck stranger doesn’t stand much of a chance, not on Dunnett Island.
Chapter 5
Tilda’s face screws itself into its familiar sneer. Everything about Tilda is small and tight. She wears her grey-black hair scraped back in a clip so there’s nothing to soften the sharp angles of her face. When she’s angry – which seems more often than not – her bony hands clench into fists and her mouth works away as if she’s chewing. Chewing on bitterness Ty calls it. I sometimes wonder whether the headaches she suffers that send her often enough to her bed are no more than a reflection of all the bitterness she keeps within.
‘And you expect me to believe that?’ she says, so close I feel her spittle hit my cheek.
She has us lined up before her, our backs to the table, the near-empty bucket set on the flagged floor before us. The kitchen is the biggest room in the house, and the warmest, because of the stove that burns year-round. Shelves of crockery fill the wall at our right as far along as the pantry door, where more shelves hold rows of jars and crocks, mostly empty now until the next harvest. In the corner beside the stove stands Tilda’s spinning wheel, and the loom I remember Bella working over. Only Sophie touches that now, her efforts improving as her hands get into practice. I’ve never been good at fine work such as weaving. I think I lack the patience – leastways that’s what Tilda tells me.
‘It’s true, Aunt Tilda,’ Sophie announces. ‘It’s still too early for green-shoots but we found some rosehips, for jam.’
Sophie hardly ever stands up to Tilda and my gaping makes me too slow to back her up so that Tilda gets in first.
‘And that’s surely a task that would have taken hours, as if you’d nothing better to do in the day!’ she snaps. ‘Well, you needn’t think you’re getting out of your chores, just because you’ve made yourselves late. Get on with you, or you’ll answer to Marn for your laziness.’
Ty’s out the door before her voice dies away but I move slow so that Sophie can go ahead of me. There’s little enough we can do to blunt Tilda’s rages, but they’re easier to face when there’s more than one of you to meet them.
‘And you,’ Tilda’s thin voice curls after me, words pitched for my ears alone, ‘you’ll be sorry for that insolent face.’
‘I won’t,’ I mutter, as soon as I’ve slammed the door on her meanness.
I don’t know what it is that sets Tilda against me so. I work as hard as any, mucking out the pigs and milking Sal, leading the goats to pasture and waging an endless battle against the fences they damage and the weeds they ignore. Tilda gives me all the worst chores, and for my part I make sure she never gets to see how much I resent it. Ty helps when he can but more and more he’s away with Marn on the farm. That pleases him well enough but I miss him when he’s out with Marn – and not just for the extra work it leaves me.
Sophie is marching towards the hen run when I catch up with her, her face like cold ash, pale as an eggshell. ‘Thanks for speaking up, Sophie,’ I say, glancing sideways to judge her mood. ‘It’s lucky you saw those rosehips.’
‘You shouldn’t rile her so,’ Sophie says, mouth tight. ‘It’s like you’re wanting to make her madder all the time.’
‘What? I don’t do anything! It’s just the way she is.’
Sophie makes a scathing noise, small as a mouse that’s turning up its nose at cheese.
‘I don’t,’ I insist.
Sophie shrugs as she turns in at the barn door to collect the egg basket. ‘Leave one,’ I hiss after her. She doesn’t answer, and I don’t know whether she will. She doesn’t approve of us keeping the stranger.
Maybe she’s right. He’s trouble enough already and I don’t see how he’ll do anything but bring us more. But it doesn’t feel like I could make any decision other than I did, and who knows: maybe he’ll prove his worth somehow. The least we can do is give him the chance.
‘Hoy, Ness,’ Ty calls, snapping my attention back just quick enough to avoid the fork-load of well-manured straw he lobs past me towards the midden.
‘Careful,’ I warn, ‘or Tilda’ll say you’ve been a-wasting.’
Wasting time, wasting money, wasting effort – children are nothing but wasters according to Ti
lda.
Ty grins. He hates the way things are as much as I do, but he has better prospects. Marn is already schooling him in running the farm and one day it’ll be his – his and Sophie’s. I’m not so blind that I can’t see that’s what Marn plans, and that Tilda will go along with it, no matter how she grumbles. She’ll not want a stranger coming in and riling up against her tart tongue. What Ty thinks he doesn’t say, but he and Sophie get on well enough, even if he does think Sophie’s a little too influenced by Tilda. She’s just timid, that’s what I tell him, though sometimes I glimpse a side to Sophie that makes me wonder about the truth of that.
With a sigh I turn my thoughts aside. The shadows are already lying long across the yard and Marn will be impatient if he has to wait for his supper. Marching up the slope to where Sal is placidly eyeing the world, I glance west to where the sea lies beyond the folded lines of the hill. With a slap on Sal’s sharp-hipped rump to set her off towards the byre, I turn my back on the reddening sky. Despite my eagerness to know how our sea-stranger is faring I’ve a lot to do before I’ll have the chance to slip back to the bay. Matching Sal’s slow swinging pace I bide my time as I follow her down to the yard.
Chapter 6
Amongst all the sorrows the sea’s brought us, the poisoning was the worst. Nobody knows why the sea turned against us. One autumn the fleets came into Dun and Tarbet with catches that seemed no different to those of any other season, but within a week people began to die. It wasn’t the first sickness to sweep the island, but this time there’d been no boatload of refugees to herald it – nor their lonely graves, kept separate from ours, to blame after. There was only the observation, soon made, that it was those who ate fish who sickened, their skin sallowing even as they curled in agony around their bellies. The Council had already closed our doors to strangers. With so many dying that the graves had each to be used twice over, it slammed them as well on the sea. By Council order the fishing fleets were destroyed and the jetties torn down, with their decree extending to anything the sea touched on the grounds that the water itself was evil. Perhaps they were right – even Pa came to think so, after Mama died.
The Sea-wreck Stranger Page 2
