“Aye, I think so but I don’t understand why the sail’s still up. They’re going too fast.” He sounded puzzled rather than alarmed, but it was in that minute that I knew. After time dawdling for an eternity it began to gallop. We stared out to sea, heedless of the stinging rain. The boat turned her muzzle toward the bay, but she was a runaway horse. The mast was plunging through the swell as the boat was pounded by the waves. We could see the sail straining in the wind, tearing itself to tatters.
“Why haven’t they got the sail down?” I asked.
“The tackle must have jammed. Look, you can see them trying to release it.” There were two figures struggling to stand on the wallowing deck. The boat was almost on the rocks.”
“Can you get a line across to them?” I cried, but I knew the answer. There was no chance at all. The boat was a hooked fish being dragged toward the rocks. I couldn’t bear to watch but I couldn’t look away. In my dreams, I hear them screaming but at the time the wind was shrieking too loudly to hear anything else. Then the rocks were upon them, splitting open the hull. Splinters of wood tossed into the air, but there was no sign of them. They were swallowed up as if they had never been,” her voice faded. “My only consolation was that you and Catherine weren’t there to see it.”
Janet raised her eyes to look at Murdo, tears drenching her cheeks, “All four of them drowned, including Anna who was supposed to be staying in Portree. In my bitterness I thought how your father and Anna had been punished for their sins. But why would God have allowed the other two innocent souls to die with them? I can see now that none of them deserved that cruel death.”
“So, Mama, the story has been told and the past laid to rest.”
“That can never be done. But I don’t need to keep the light shining for them any longer. I’m ready now to make a new life in Canada, but I have a few tasks to do first.”
Chapter 12
Scorrybreac, Portree, Isle of Skye 1858
Janet clambered out of the boat that had brought her over from Rona, She stumbled as she picked her way along the stony path curving beside the inlet of the sea, past the bundled nets and tumbled lobster pots. How she wished that vanity had not stopped her from bringing a walking stick. Well, her punishment was the throbbing of those wretched veins in her leg, bulging as if they would break through the skin. She stopped to catch her breath and looked about her. The slanting winter sunshine made her shade her eyes with a hand. The tide was sliding out, exposing tawny sprawls of seaweed.
There was the cottage, right at the end. Almost toppling into the sea, its thatch more threadbare than the other houses in the row. She hobbled on again. Rounding the bend she saw a stocky, middle-aged woman, slumped down on a stool in front of the house.
“Is that you, Kirsty?”
The other woman looked up and frowned.
“It’s Mistress MacKenzie from Rona.” She stretched her arm out and waggled it at waist height. “You were only a wee lassie when I last saw you.”
Kirsty struggled to her feet, pressing a hand into the small of her back. Her face was flushed. “That was many years ago. My mother’s long been in her grave. But your last visit isn’t one I would forget.”
“I need to speak with you. Shall we stay outside?”
“No, you’d better come away in.”
Janet MacKenzie nodded. She knew that Kirsty would be concerned about her neighbors stretching their ears to hear her business. She held her breath as she dipped her head through the doorway. She could never get used to that stench of unwashed bodies and the eye-searing smoke that oozed from these houses. Inside it was much as she remembered it before. A cramped dark hovel, barely furnished. There was a rough bench and a dresser made of driftwood standing on the beaten earth. A blackened pot hung from a chain over the fireplace. In the corner she saw a sleeping baby lying on what looked like a washed-up tea crate resting on top of a pile of fusty bedclothes.
“That’s my daughter’s wee one.” Kirsty had brought in her stool. She stood rubbing it against her apron before offering it to her guest.
Janet remembered there being a baby when she came before. And several young children peeping wide-eyed from behind their mother’s skirts. They would have been Anna and Kirsty’s younger brothers and sisters. Kirsty, as the oldest one still at home, had taken charge and shooed them away while Janet spoke to her mother. After Janet had told her the news, Kirsty had held her mother’s swaying body and guided her to a seat. She sucked in great ragged breaths as if she were drowning. What words had she used to tell the poor woman? Janet struggled to remember. Her face on its own would have told the terrible tale before she even opened her mouth. All she could remember was the poor woman calling out her daughter’s name endlessly, “Anna, Anna, my firstborn babe.” Eventually, her wailing had turned into breathless coughing and the poor woman had allowed Janet and Kirsty to help her lie down. Then she turned her face to the wall. It was young Kirsty, now suddenly the eldest in the family who held out her hand for the purse Janet offered.
Aware of Kirsty staring at her, she said, “So you stayed put?”
“Aye, after Mama died of the consumption I brought them all up until they left home. Then I met Duncan and he took up the fishing. So we stayed put.”
“And is your husband home now?”
“No, he’s still away on the east coast boats.”
Janet thought about what she had heard of Duncan. Probably an older man had seemed a safe harbor to Kirsty. But word was they never had a red penny to their name. He was a drinker. Kirsty’s mottled skin and bloodshot eyes suggested that she joined him.
“You’ll be wondering why I’m here.” Janet smoothed down her brown dress over her lap and waited until she had Kirsty’s attention. “I’ve come to offer you the chance of a new start.”
“Oh, aye.” Kirsty’s expression was grim, insolent even.
“I’ll pay for you and all your family,” she nodded toward the snuffling baby, “to go to Canada.”
“You would pay our passages there?”
Janet nodded.
“Could we not have the money instead of the tickets?”
“What would you do with the money?” Where was the woman’s gratitude?
“Plenty. A new boat, somewhere decent to live. A chance for this wee one to learn a trade when he grows up.” Kirsty raised her voice. The baby jolted in his sleep and mewed.
“But it would be better to give you the tickets. Then we would know that the money would not be lost.” Janet spoke carefully, looking her in the eye.
Kirsty wiped her sweating face with her greasy apron. “I’ve no wish to go to the ends of the earth. It’s always the poor who are expected to leave their homes.”
“I’m going …”
“Aye, you’d better. I’ve no need of your charity.” Her words were boulders, hurled down a hillside.
The baby woke up and started to wail. Kirsty hurried to pick him up. She squeezed him and her tears splattered over his startled face. Janet opened the door and walked outside, screwing her eyes against the light.
As she walked back along the path she murmured to herself, “If only you had listened, Kirsty. But you can’t help someone who won’t be helped.” She tapped her pocket where the tickets rustled. Well, no doubt another family would welcome them. But there was something else there as well as the tickets. What was it? She lifted out the blue scarf. She had intended to give it to Kirsty. It was all that remained of her dead sister, but there had been no chance for her to hand it over.
That night Janet dreamed about the boat, as she had so many times before but this time the dream was different. She wasn’t standing on the beach at Big Harbour on Rona. She was at Staffin Bay, near her childhood home on Skye. Kenneth’s boat was coming in past Staffin Island. The sail was down and he was rowing while Hamish sat trailing his fingers over the side. He saw his mother watching and waved. Janet waded into the sea to meet them but no matter how hard Kenneth pulled on the oars he could make no progr
ess. In the end, he put them down and stood up to unfurl the sail. They both smiled at her while the boat turned her face back to the open sea. She leapt like a dolphin toward a glowing light on the horizon. “They’re going back to Rona,” she cried out as she woke.
She knew what she must do. She opened the drawer in the press. Held the small, cracked boot in her hand. Hamish’s Sunday shoes. Usually he hated wearing them, complaining that they rubbed his feet raw. But he put them on that day to sail with his papa. This boot was the only part of him that came back to the shore. She had found it spat out by the sea.
The scarf had returned weeks later, a gaudy foreigner strewn among the seaweed. Kenneth must have brought it back for Anna after his last trip away. In the old days, he used to bring Janet a present. Always tried to find something blue because she loved the color. She had nearly thrown the scarf away but it was such a forlorn scrap. Leached and frayed, flung away like Anna’s young life. Now she carried both relics, cupped in her hands like fledglings, down to the beach when the tide was going out. She had a length of heather rope and a few twigs ready in her pocket. With these she turned the boot into a vessel, with the scarf as its sail. She launched the frail boat and watched it drift away.
Chapter 13
Portree, Isle of Skye, February 1861
Richard Williams was glad to be ashore. He was lucky not to suffer from seasickness, but he felt trapped if he spent too long on the ship. Not that he wasn’t grateful for being part of Captain Otter’s crew. A survey vessel was a better berth than an ordinary naval ship where the crew squeezed together like rats in a barrel. Still he was pleased to get away. He hated the bragging of the younger hands about what they would do with any women they met. He was even getting annoyed with poor old Willie. His chest as wheezy as his squeezebox, missing notes like dropping stitches. Willie had grown old but not wise. He would get steaming drunk with the rest of them. Richard shuddered as he remembered doing the same himself. But he wouldn’t seek escape in the bottle now. It was that sort of drunkenness that led to heedless couplings. Like the one that had sparked his own life into being. Jagged words splintered his thoughts.
“You’re bound for Hell, you bastard.” The slash of his father’s voice, the man who had taken him in.
“Overboard you go. I’ll not listen to you anymore,” Richard muttered to himself. He turned to look back down the hill where he could see the masts of HMS Porcupine, at anchor in the bay. Plenty sneered at her, saying that she looked as odd as her namesake. Doubled up with masts and funnels. Her vast engine might make the whole vessel rattle, but she could tiptoe close to the shore. A sound survey boat. Not like a skittish sailing ship. He admired both vessel and master. The captain had noticed him when he was first serving on The Comet. Richard had been suspicious when the captain paid him attention. No one talked to you unless they were planning to trick or hurt you.
“You can read and write? I think we can make better use of you,” Captain Otter had said.
So he made Richard a coxswain, put him in charge of one of the boats that took the soundings. He encouraged him to spend time in the airy survey room in the stern. Of course, it was the captain himself or Lieutenant Masters who recorded the figures on the charts while Richard read out the measurements for them. He knew that his fellows thought him an odd fish, but as he was under the captain’s wing they let him be.
It was his first time ashore in Portree. After spending so much time surveying the wide bay from the sea, he felt that he knew the village already. But it was always strange being on land, looking into a mirror and seeing the landscape back to front. There was the apothecary tower on its rounded knoll, the plain fronted courthouse and jail below it. Farther along the shore were the turrets of Viewfield House where the captain had been entertained. Richard was heading for the inlet of the sea beneath the knoll where the fishermen’s houses crouched together. Sligneach the place was called, “Bayfield” in English.
Plaintive wisps of fiddle music made him quicken his step. The sound must be coming from the ceilidh house, bigger than the surrounding black houses. Richard might not approve of strong drink, but he did enjoy music and dancing. He picked his way past the rowing boats drawn up on the shore and ducked through the open door.
Although it was still afternoon it was gloomy inside. Light from the flickering peat fire was hidden by the heave of bodies. He hesitated, about to turn back.
“Williams, it’s you. What are you doing here?”
The voice made him jump. “Lieutenant Masters. Er … I wanted to hear the music. Maybe dance.”
“I could join you.”
Richard frowned. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.” He pointed at the artist’s bag slung over Tom’s shoulder. “It looks as if you were planning to do some drawing.”
A group spilled out of the door, laughing and flowing toward the flat grassy area where the nets were dried. Richard turned his back on Tom’s disappointed face and allowed himself to be jostled as flotsam along with them. Three fiddlers were already waiting together, the women flocked to one end of the space while the men hustled together opposite them. As the musicians struck up a reel, the men lunged forward to pick a partner.
Richard faltered, but then out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed her, hovering on the edge of the group of women. His heart somersaulted as he took in the straight, slender body. The brown hair undershot with auburn waving down past her shoulders. As he moved closer, he could see a faint crosshatching of lines around her clear blue eyes but the smile on her wide mouth entranced him. He stood, unable to move. It reminded him of when he was the steersman on his first ship, a sailing vessel. During a gale he had been lashed to the wheel to stop the waves from sweeping him overboard. There was nothing holding him now, but he felt as if he was tied down by invisible ropes. Then she looked straight at him and he was suddenly released and found himself uncoiling toward her. Her eyes looked directly into his and a smile tilted the corners of her lips. “Màiri,” she said, pointing at herself. “Richard,” he replied. Her eyes scanned him again, widened in surprise and joy followed by some darker emotion, almost as if she was frightened, terrified even. She blinked and took his hand, their fingertips skimming as the dancers formed into sets for an eightsome reel. His eyes hooked onto her face as they moved through the dance. He had to clench his fists as she spun and swung with other men. He was bereft until she turned back toward him. A complete stranger, yet he felt he had always known her. Each time they met again in the dance, he tried to speak but now her eyes were downcast. It was as if she was ashamed to meet his gaze.
“I’ll talk to her when the dance is over,” he promised himself. The fiddlers quickened their pace and the dancers responded, whirling and weaving their steps in a frenzy.
Abruptly the music stopped. He gripped her hand and gestured back toward the ceilidh house. She nodded but as his grip slackened, she snatched her hand away and was tearing through the crowd, knocking into dancers as she hurtled past. He blundered after her, but by now they were forming new sets and unwilling to make way for him as he cannoned into them. The men snarled, their partners backed away as he kept shouting, “Where’s Màiri?” Most of them looked away although a few stared hard at him first, almost as if they recognized him.
Lost and confused, he wandered back toward the group of black houses and slumped down at the corner of one of them, the rough stones jabbing his back. Had he imagined the whole thing? No, she had been flesh and blood. He had held her hand. But the way she disappeared? Like one of those seal people the captain spoke about. If they felt frightened, they would run away to find their hidden sealskins and hide for ever in the ocean. But that was nonsense. He groaned out loud.
He saw an old woman, dressed in rusty black with a faded plaid over her shoulders. She was watching him from her doorway. He sprang toward her.
“Do you know where Màiri is?”
She didn’t reply but came up to him. She lifted back his sailor’s cap to gaze into h
is eyes. As if she were blind, she brushed her fingers over his face. Standing back, she shook her head. Her eyes were dark puddles in her furrowed face. Then she slipped back inside, the door thudding behind her.
He made his way back to the ship in a daze. At least it was quiet on board with the rest of the crew ashore. He clambered into his hammock and fell into a fitful sleep. He dreamed he was in a rowing boat on the open sea, chasing a creature whose body gleamed like fish scales. He strained on the oars to reach it, and as he got closer, he could see that what had appeared to be a fin was instead a spreading tail, gold spliced with red. The creature turned its long, sleek head toward him and made a snickering sound that changed into a snarl. Its eyes rolled, splashing fire. He started awake on a scream, causing the other sailors to curse him. He knew that the only way to release himself from the nightmare was to track down the mysterious Màiri.
First, he took pains with his appearance. He threw cold water from a barrel over his shivering body. He tied back his russet hair with a piece of ribbon so that it rested neatly in the nape of his neck. With his precious razor, sharpened on a leather strop, he shaved his face until his skin tingled. Finally, he shook out his cap and arranged it on his head. He returned to the old woman’s house and knocked at the door with his whole fist. She startled him by opening it at once, as if she had been standing sentry behind it. Scrutinizing him wordlessly, she stepped outside and indicated that he should follow her. They walked along the shoreline to the end of the houses and climbed up a rough track. He realized that they were going up toward the Meall or The Lump, to give it its odd English name. The surveying part of his mind noted how much less prominent the apothecary tower appeared from this side. From the sea it rose up like a lighthouse.
She strode along at a brisk rate for an old woman, passing a small church until she stopped in front of a whitewashed house that he realized must be the manse. After pointing out the front door, she hurried away back down the hill. Richard knocked. The door was opened by a squat middle-aged maid whose sloping shoulders slid down into a bell-shaped body. Her eyes flickered over Richard and then slithered away as she ushered him into the parlour. The minister was seated at his desk. He was as spare and somber as his room. Again that stare. He was sick of being treated like a freak in a funfair.
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