Euan’s cheeks reddened in the wanton heat of all those candles. His admiration for Cane caught light within his breast and burned to ashes. The so-called “Minister” had not left Midway Bothy so as to be closer to God! He had gone for peace and quiet, and to eat more than his fair share, and sleep on feathers, and keep the best tools to himself and share his body warmth with an altar boy who was not Euan – even though Euan had tried to be the best of altar boys and even though he was the one who had had the vision in the first place.
Euan picked up the knife and stood over the pompous dictator who had made the End of the World seem like his own idea, and then pretended to be a saintly, selfless man.
Well, Euan knew his Bible better than the sexton ever had. He remembered the Bible story of another cave where the marvellous saintly boy David had tracked down his mortal enemy King Saul and found him asleep, sword by his side. Boy David could have killed the villainous Saul right then and there, as he slept, but, being a saint, chose to leave him a message to the effect: I was here. I could have killed you. I spared your life. Picking up the king’s sword, he cut the fringe off Saul’s cloak.
Using Col Cane’s own knife, Euan somehow managed, in his fit of righteous indignation, to saw the legs off the “Minister’s” stained, shapeless trousers dangling in the candlelight. Their sewn-in stuffing of warm feathers cascaded to the floor like a macerated angel.
“You cut up his trews?” said Farriss.
“He isna fasting or keeping vigil or denying himself or any such thing!” wailed Euan and described a little of what he had seen. “And he was sleeping on this big feather bed! With John there beside him.”
Murdo gave a roar like a wounded lion, and sank his head in his hands.
“So I did like Saint David did in the Bible!” said Euan.
“And you didna take the tinderbox?” said Domhnall Don, incredulous. “You cut the legs off his trews but you didna think to take the man’s tinderbox?”
Euan did not understand: “That would’ve been stealing, Maister!”
The younger boys (ignorant of their Bible stories) thought it was hilarious that Euan had cut up Col Cane’s trousers. But the men were merely appalled at the missed opportunity. Euan’s mouth snapped shut in glum silence.
But for his broken arm, Domhnall Don would have climbed to Upper Bothy himself, and laid hands then and there on the fire-lighter. He glared at Mr Farriss when he said it, because he wanted Farriss to go instead. If he could, he would have shaken Farriss like a rug – shaken the Kilda Gloom out of him, the colour back in. But Farriss was limp and sick, his skin pale and waxy, and his thoughts too hard to excrete into words. He had settled, like a burned-out bonfire, his embers dying.
Suddenly, Murdo bawled that he would gladly go up there and cut Cane’s throat for him. Nobody took him up on the offer. No one but Quill understood why Murdo should be in quite such a passion; why, in the silence that followed, they could hear his teeth grinding with rage.
“Obà, man. Be still,” said Quill. “We’ll both of us go tomorrow.”
John had climbed to Upper Bothy with the “Minister”, fearing the unthinkable, wondering who had whispered her secret to Cane. She had been pleasantly surprised by Cane’s notion of the hermit life. She liked her food, and her greatest fear – well, her second greatest fear – had been that Cane would deny himself (and her) the comfort of a daily meal, and only drink bird-broth on Sundays, until they both died of holiness. But John’s duties, as his altar boy, proved to consist of fetching birds and feathers from every cleit within twenty chains of the cave, and cooking meals. Cane was a glutton and an idler.
As for her greatest fear, that too abated when Cane continued to call her “lad” and “boy”, continued to talk politics and to piss in plain sight of her. In her experience these were not things any man on Hirta would ever do in front of a female. She still wondered why she had been chosen instead of pious little Euan, but soon enough found out. Cane, for all his sermonizing, was a man who liked to do as little work as possible. Strong, agile and fleshy, John’s appeal had been that John could fetch and carry, cook and sew, and might not sicken as fast as the skinnier boys.
On the third day, when no clouds snagged on the towering pinnacle of the Stac, John caught a glimpse of far distant Skye. It was a rare and stirring sight, but she did not mention it to Col Cane, who had ordered her only to speak when spoken to. It made for a peaceful, if lonely, existence.
Now, though, the “Minister” was raging.
Waking to find his trousers hacked off at the thighs, Col Cane blamed John. Who else could have done it, after all? Laying about his altar boy with slaps and punches, he ripped the down-stuffed clothes off the wretch’s back, so as to deliver the beating so richly deserved. But then, through the red mist of anger, and the snowstorm of flying feathers, he made his second discovery of the day. What three weeks of sleeping back-to-back at night had not told him about John, one violent fit of temper had.
John was not a boy. The person standing before him now, shuddering with cold and fright, was distinctly not a boy.
“Unnatural creature! What are you?”
Scurrying after the shreds of her clothes, sobbing bitterly, John looked abjectly guilty – felt it, too. She had felt guilty since birth, after all, for not being a boy.
“Are you a temptress? Sent to tempt me out of the paths of righteousness?”
John made a humming noise that might have been a yes or a no. If she was a temptress, perhaps Cane would banish her from his sight and let her go back down the Stac. There again he might throw her to her death off it like a condemned witch.
“I’m just John Gillies, Maister. I canna help…”
Back on Hirta, Cane had a wife; a ribby little woman whose clothes were all fastened with fish-hooks – not simply her shawl but her skirt and blouse and going-to-kirk cape. Husband and wife rarely embraced. No children had come of the marriage. Cane was hard put now to remember more about her than the fish-hooks and a lingering smell of lye soap. Anyway, she was, in all probability, gone now, taken up to Heaven or down to the other place, for all he cared… And lo! God had presented him with a replacement! His shock abated. His cold fear turned to something much hotter. He watched the girl snatch up the shreds of her clothing, denying the trouser-slashing over and over again, and a new idea clanged in Col Cane’s head, louder than the Hirta church bell.
He would marry John, and live like Adam and Eve in the Rock Garden of Eden, away from the men who showed him no respect and the noisy and noisome boys down below who plainly had no souls at all.
Meanwhile, Murdo was setting out on a quest of his own: to rescue John from the clutches of Col Cane or die in the attempt.
Sensing how much love had brightened Quilliam’s life, Murdo had wanted very much to follow his example, and would have, if it hadn’t been for the entire stock of girls and women getting taken up to Heaven while he was away across the water. Then John’s secret had come his way, and with it a wonderful possibility. He could still fall in love with John!
Being both shy and patient, he had not mentioned it to her. But the repulsive news of Cane and John sleeping on the same bed had overturned Murdo’s shyness utterly. He was atwitch with battle frenzy. He was a stag bellowing for his stolen hind. He would mount watch on Upper Bothy, he told Quill, and when the chance presented itself, rescue his damsel from her high tower, “For all she’s been ruined,” he added generously.
“Maybe not ‘ruined’,” suggested Quill, but offered to come along anyway. Taking a furtive glance at the clouds, he was glad to see the sky clearing, the wind going about. It was turning into a lovely day.
But halfway to Upper Bothy, they sighted two figures descending the scree slope. John was wearing a blanket holed at the neck and cinched in at the waist by a plaited straw belt. It could have been termed a dress. There again, all of them were keeping warm the best way they could contrive. So, had John kept her maidenly secret or not?
She was
dragging a bulging sack behind her which bounced so lightly down the rock face that it could only be filled with feathers. Cane was wearing a string of gugas threaded onto horsehair and slung around his neck. This mildly ludicrous figure turned, looked, then bumbled on, gugas bump-bumping, short trousers flapping, John following on behind. Why did she not break away? Why did she not run?
“He’s after taking the raft!” said Quill, with sudden insight. “Get back to the Bothy, man! Fetch the rest along!”
Murdo did not so much as slow down. “You fetch ’em,” was all he said. Nothing was going to deflect him from his rescue mission.
So Quill turned back and took a laborious diagonal route towards Midway Bothy, carrying the news in clenched teeth: “Col Cane is taking the raft! John’s with him!”
The company rose as one and followed Quill – a clambering swarm of outrage. Only Domhnall Don was incapable of making the climb down. Nursing his broken arm, he stood in the cave entrance watching them go, and cursing fulsomely.
“John?” called Murdo.
If she heard, she gave no sign of it.
The day was beautiful now: still and crisp with a low sun turning the Stac’s wet skirts to silver. The raft was tethered to the large slabs of rock which storms and earthquakes sent slithering down the Stac’s flank to pile up at the base. This cove had commended itself to Don for building his raft, since it was almost the closest point to Boreray. The island looked close enough for them to reach out and touch: a wedge of grey rock and emerald green grass. A peppering of gulls floated over it, riding the updraught.
“John, what are you doing?” called Murdo. “Dunna go with him!”
She did not so much as look round.
Cane answered for her. “God has told us to cross over.”
“Cross over? Where to? Ay, well, be off. But let John alone. Did you hit her? Have you been hitting her?”
“Always a mouthy boy. You may tell the others that I am risking my life for their sake. For their good. For the greater good. We shall dwell in the Hermit’s house on Boreray, and pray for deliverance, as the saintly men did in times gone by.”
“John, are you willing?” asked Murdo.
At last John shot him a quick, furtive glance out of bruised eye sockets. The bruises made her eyes unreadable. She looked beyond him, too, and must have seen others climbing down towards the bay. It seemed to spur her to hurry.
“I am,” she said. Murdo made a grab for her arm, but she snatched it free and scurried back to help Cane drag the raft to the terrace edge. It havered for a moment, rocking on the brink, then grated noisily into the water, swamping the deck and bobbing up again. A piece or two of carpentry fell off and floated away.
“You’ll drown yoursel’!” yelled Murdo. “Let me go in your place!”
John gave a snort. “Fine wife ye’d make for the Minister.”
Murdo was dumbstruck. Cane shot him a glance, checking to see if he already knew. “John confessed her womanliness to me and offered to be my helpmeet.”
“Ye didna!” Murdo looked for her to deny it, and John put on the expression of a haughty beauty who has won the title “Queen of Kilda” and means to queen it over the losers.
“We’re to be married on Boreray, Col and me. At the stone pillar. There are sheep there,” said the bride, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.
“Sheep? What for? To sing the hymns?” Murdo could not see the importance of sheep to a wedding.
“Sheep. If there’s bairns to be born, they must have milk.”
“And who shall marry you to each other, can you tell?”
“The Minister, o’course, numpty,” and she jumped aboard, shifting the raft out from the shore. She took with her a handful of Cane’s jacket, so that he teetered and toppled for a moment before having to step aboard himself. His face was white with fright.
“But you’ll not lie with the bastard? Dunna lie wi’ him! Sure, y’willna!”
“What, jealous, are ye?” she sneered.
“But you’ll signal Hirta, will you?” It was Mr Farriss, first to arrive from Midway.
Cane’s lips were firmly clamped between his teeth as he stood in the centre of the raft amid his baggage, and gripped on tightly to the mast. There was something admirable about a man so afraid setting sail regardless.
Boys, arriving breathless after their downward climb, began to shout:
“Wait! Wait!”
“Take us, won’t you?”
“I’ll pluck sheep for you!”
The thought of sheep, shelter and a clear view of Hirta drew them to the water’s edge. But Col Cane took up the makeshift oar – a rotten plank – and clumsily swung it at them. “Keep off! ’S too small! ’Twill carry two and no more!” he yelped. “I’ve had ma bellyful o’ scurvy boys! Get away!”
A wave slopped over the terrace and scattered the boys. Seen close-to, the foaming water was enough to change their minds about making the crossing.
“Sit down, won’t you, a chiall mo chridhe?” John begged him in tones of purest affection, and took over the oar, fending off would-be passengers from the very back of the raft.
“But you’ll signal for help!” called Farriss again. “Swear to it, man! Swear you’ll signal home!”
“Yes, yes, yes,” groaned Cane, eyeing every nail in the woodwork, every knothole, every spurting jet of upwelling sea.
“You’re a hoor and a Jezebel, John Gillies!” bawled Murdo, scarlet faced, and threw a futile clod of seaweed after the bobbing raft. “A hoor and a Jezebel!” The curse seemed to stick in his throat because he began to cough and gag. For John had got to her feet, setting the raft rolling on the swell. She took what looked like an angry pace in Murdo’s direction… Then she simply stepped off the edge of the raft, still holding the oar, and disappeared underwater.
She resurfaced a moment later, the paddle thrust out in front of her, arms at full stretch and her feet kicking in a clumsy frenzy. A receding wave carried her farther off. The next brought her closer.
Cane, meanwhile, drifted farther and farther from the shore, eyes wide, hugging the mast as the raft revolved gently on the current and the makeshift sail slapped him in the face. It took him a moment to realize what had happened – a slip? an accident? – but as the boys ashore began to cheer John on, Cane actually let go the mast and crawled towards the edge of the raft. It rolled alarmingly under him. He began to paddle back the way he had come – big splashy slaps of his hands into the water, that left him soaked. The raft did not respond, except that, because of Cane’s weight, the lighter end lifted out of the water. Under the raised edge swept a large wave, which pitched the raft back towards the shore. It overshot John and she disappeared under its clutter of sea debris, the paddle sticking out of the water like the fin of a shark. Cane threw himself on his face and began reaching into the water, groping for her, while seawater splashed into his mouth and curses slopped out of it.
The boys on shore began to look about them for stones and pebbles, to claw them up and fling them at Cane, for all the world like boys on the barley rigs, stoning seagulls.
“Have a care for John!” warned Quill, who had felt the smart of pebbles and flints.
Too afraid to get to his feet, the Minister cursed them and all their kin, as he crawled back to the lopsided mast and embraced it tighter than any wife. When John broke surface and began again to swim, frog-legged behind the paddle, he pointed an accusing finger at her and bawled, “May you be strangled wi’ your own hair and none pay for your burial, minx!”
Without the paddle he could neither head back for shore nor steer a course. But the current was in favour of Boreray having him. Smaller and smaller he grew with distance, a smaller and smaller shape against the rugged green backdrop, revolving and revolving and revolving…
They rubbed the cold out of her with an assortment of woollen caps. There were a great many volunteers, once the wet plaid was off her and there was proof incontrovertible that John really was a girl. But s
he did not make it easy for them, wriggling and howling, hysterical with relief, remembering the fear, the thought of drowning, the possibility that Cane would pull her out of the water again and back aboard the raft.
“My idea! I fixed him! I fixed him, the bastard!” she squealed defiantly, when she had recovered the power of speech. “Said I’d only marry him after we crossed over to Boreray. Was the only way to be rid of him, once he knew!”
So siren temptress John had seduced the Minister into making the crossing – a thing he would probably never have dared do on his own – with the promise of becoming his willing wife. Then she had jumped ship at the last moment, leaving him all the solitude he could wish for. The ocean’s icy embrace held no fear to equal the terror of Col Cane for a husband. By the time she had finished her explanation, she had won the admiration of every lad who heard it. Her achievement was more than equal to being King Gannet, and surely gave her a status among the boys that she had never dared hope for. What she did not realize was that their admiration had little to do with her heroic daring, her clever ruse. It had more to do with a glimpse of forbidden places, the touch of an icy breast as they rubbed her dry with their hats. John looked down at her nakedness and it occurred to her that never again would she have to hide her guilty secret.
“Did you at least have away his tinderbox?” was the only question Mr Farriss thrust at John. Whether the child was male or female was of no consequence; without fire they would all freeze in the depths of winter.
“He kept it always about him,” she confessed. “I couldna.” A universal groan went up.
Back at Midway Bothy, Domhnall Don was a man bereft. All along, he had pictured his raft carrying – if not himself – Farriss and two of the boys over to Boreray; had pictured them putting ashore watched by the sheep whose wool they would pluck to warm them, bedding down in the shepherd’s shelter – the underground one when the winter storms came… They would be able to see the smoke rise from the cottages on Hirta…and to signal their own good news in return: that the fowling party on the Stac was living still and waiting patiently for rescue.
Where the World Ends Page 10
