But Murdo, Keeper of Ropes, called Quill a fool with no respect for other people’s belongings. The idea was dismissed as a waste of vital equipment.
Custom said they should be out catching one of the family’s sheep and killing and roasting it for the funeral feast. And there were no sheep.
“Time enough for that when we get home,” said Don. But Quill, knowing how Davie worried about the family finances, blurted out that the loss of a sheep “would be a very great hardship to Davie’s mother”.
“One of mine, then,” snapped Farriss. And crawling over to the body – correctly laid out, washed and blue-white naked – he took Davie in his arms and held him and rocked him and wept, speaking not Davie’s name but the names of his two daughters. Everyone looked away.
In the afternoon, the smell of roasting sheep did drift over from Boreray, nicely in accordance with funeral custom. But all that it signified was that Col Cane had survived the storm. The younger boys promptly insisted on a funeral feast of storm petrels cooked in their own oil and, while the meal cooked, they filched items from the pile of Davie’s clothing. After all, he did not need them any more.
Euan was still yaldering on about the “sure and certain resurrection of the dead” but nothing on the Stac was sure and certain: only the bitter cold, the hunger, the graze, the bruise, the wind, the sea, and Death.
Fortunately, Calum knew a good many laments to sing after nightfall. Niall, Keeper of Memories, could remember small kindnesses Davie had done on Hirta, and how well he had looked after his mother. Quill added that Davie his own self had lit the signal fire – which caused a gasp of genuine admiration. And although Calum struggled to turn this heroic deed into a song, it gave Domhnall Don enough material for a speech. In it, he commended “a fine brave boy” into the keeping of God. There was a general mumbled agreement that God would be delighted to have Davie, and that the angels would rejoice. (Though it was true, neither God nor the angels had made much shift to help so far.)
As Parliament began to discuss what to do with the body, the realization came to Quill that he had left Upper Bothy without ever checking the cave for Bible pages.
Or the sky for sea eagles that might carry a boy home.
Three days they should have mourned, but no one had the heart or stomach for it. So next day Farriss carried the small naked body down to the landing site, and those few who could bear to followed along behind.
Great storms pulp the seaweed around the Stac into a bright orange scum, and the cove was stuffed with it. It gave the illusion of softness, but felt like slime and made it hard for men to keep their footing. So the body was set down hastily, without ceremony, where some seventh wave could lay claim to it. They called it a sailor’s burial, though none had ever seen one of those. Euan might have known all the right words, but he had not come. No one thought ill of him for it: he had memories that made him too afraid to go to a cove and watch big waves drag a child’s body out to sea.
Quill slithered and slipped his way over to the body, ostensibly to arrange the limbs in a more dignified repose, but in fact to push the bent-nail fish-hook back into the keeping of that rigid little hand. “Sevenfold blessings to our friend Davie, and the strong rope in time of need,” he said loudly, and threw a look of venomous reproach at Murdo. Davie had needed a rope for his coffin and Murdo had begrudged him one.
“Ropes are for the living, not the dead,” said Murdo and, turning his back, started for Midway.
“Come here, will ya, Kenneth?” Quill called out, and though the corpse made him squeamish, Kenneth felt obliged, by the stares of the others, to totter over the orange slime. “See here?” said Quill, pointing to Davie’s chest. “Look close.” Kenneth squatted down, his face averted from the body. It was easy for Quill to grab the hair on the back of his head and ram Kenneth’s head down on to Davie’s stomach.
“Eat, then,” he hissed. “Eat, ya piddock. Said you’d start with the little ones, remember? When the food ran out, remember? You’d start on the little ones. What? You don’t recall? Davie did. Davie remembered it well enough. Died with your words in his head. He kept them by and kept them by, thinking, wondering – when will I wake up with my throat cut and Kenneth carving me into messes? Died fearing you’d cook him and eat his body, laughing boy. You laughing now, Ken? Take a bite, why don’t you?”
Kenneth broke free, leaving a clump of hair in Quill’s hand, and skidded away wiping his face over and over with his sleeve, scrubbing at his mouth, and swearing. The remaining boys who saw it also put their sleeves to their lips, as if they could feel the blue cold of that involuntary kiss.
None but Quill stayed to watch the sea take possession of Davie. It was very cold. For a long time the waves seemed to have no appetite for the boy – only lent him a shroud of orange scum. Then the seventh – or was it the seventeenth? – rose up head-and-shoulders taller than the rest, and washed high up the cliff, sneezing icy spray. It rolled and rolled Davie over, like a looter on a battlefield and, finding nothing of value, threw him onto a clutter of off-shore rocks.
Quill sat down with his back to the cliff. It seemed to him that he had let Davie down too many times already. Since his mother was not there to sit with her boy through two days and nights, then he would do it for her, come hail, come snow, come sea monsters or pounding sea. Let every ninth wave serve him up despair: he had swallowed his fill. Let his friends whisper behind his back:
“…if it weren’t for Quill taking him up to the peak…”
Let them feast on the petrels he and Davie had harvested, and keep back nothing for tomorrow’s hunger. On Hirta they had taken care to eke out supplies, to make them last through the winter months or unforeseen hardship. But here, now, let the last birds be eaten. The last oil had been burned, the sea was too rough to fish with a hand line. So what was the point in putting off the inevitable? They were all bound for the same place as Davie soon enough. It was just that the men chose not to say so in front of the younger boys.
All night he sat there, the cold opening up the seams in his body, as water in cracks swells into ice and breaks off shards of stone. It crept into his head. It bored into his chest. It chewed on his hands. But it could not get the better of him or send him home snivelling to the Bothy. Fever came to his aid and fended off the icy wind with waves of inner heat.
He could not reach Davie’s body on the rocks and nor, it seemed, could the sea. At last Night dressed the sea in mourning-black, and hid Davie from sight.
The half-light of dawn arrived, unreal as a dream. The body was gone. Some tide or merrow, or company of blue-green men or white ship had finally stolen closer and accepted the gift. It was as if Davie had never existed. The ragged light flapped in Quill’s face, and since hunger had already scuffed holes in his vision, he thought the flicker of white, where the body had lain, was no more than a symptom. Or wishful thinking.
Look, Quilliam. Look! said Murdina out of the tail end of his dreams.
A white soul bird hovers over the body of a good man, so they say. On Hirta, the neighbours would scour the roof ridge of a dying man’s cottage, shouting words of comfort in at the window: “There’s a soul bird overhead, Agnes! Your man’s soul will rest easy!” He had seen them shout lies, out of kindness. Or see what they wished was there. Quill would not deceive himself. The birds were gone from the Stac, and Quill did not believe any more in omens.
Look, Quilliam. Look!
Murdina had had no patience with omens or signs either. She had said that people, with God’s help, made their own luck. But now she was telling him…
Look to the bird, man! It made no sense. He did not want to look: his head ached and his blood pulsed with heat.
Farriss had called her a witch. And it was true, wasn’t it? Quill had conjured her – did conjure her up in the dark and mischievous hours, didn’t he? She had filled him with longings he could never live to satisfy. She had bewitched him.
No! You are not looking! Look, Quill!
/> As the soul departs the body, the soul bird disappears – or so the old-wives’ tale goes. Quill’s eyes fastened on the flicker of wings, but only to disprove the lie. He refused to believe the bird had come to carry Davie’s soul to Heaven. It was just a bird: it would not magically disappear. Besides, it wasn’t even white. It was black and white. Simply to prove that he was not a fool, he forbade his lids to blink.
Look, Quill! See what’s there! But Quill had vowed to resist any new temptations by the sea-witch in his head.
And sure enough, the bird proved him right. It did not disappear. It staggered and keened clear over him, dangling its big feet in his face, then it flapped away and was lost to sight against the cliff above.
What? It did what?
Quill jumped up, slipped on the orange slime and, falling to his hands and knees, scurried – crawled – off the landing place and started up the rock face, already breathless with the effort. Crow Cold must have perched on his chest while he slept, and begun plucking the lights out between his ribs because, yes, breathing was an effort.
Always climbing, clinging on! How long had it been since he walked on the flat? How long since he had walked on turf or sand or dug earth, or set off to run, or straddled a pony? No, just climbing and clinging to the vertical, like a fly on a cottage wall. If ever he got home, he vowed never again to leave the horizontal.
Midway Bothy was strewn with the remains of the eaten petrels. One had been threaded and lit, the better to see by, but it had been allowed to burn out, the Keeper of the Flame falling asleep after his unaccustomed supper. Everyone was asleep. Quill shouted as loud as he knew how.
“An omen! I saw an omen – but it wasna – an omen, I mean – ’cos it wasna a soul bird…” He held his ribs, which ached too much to draw breath, and his hands could feel them sucking and blowing like a squeezebox. “…because it didna disappear, an’ it was this near to me – this near, swear to God! – and it was real!”
They bleared at him sleepily. He wanted to sit down on the soft Keeper’s Throne, but Calum was sprawled across it, face down and still asleep. “Guillies!” croaked Quill. “There’s guillies coming in!”
The marks scratched on the wall and Don’s hoard of puffin feet both said that February was weeks away yet. The last birds eaten, the last oil burned, the sea too rough…everything said that the fowlers on the Stac were on schedule to starve.
But birds keep a truer calendar. In the autumn, breed by breed, they fly out to sea. Breed by breed, they come back in the spring. And the guillemots are always first, creeping back ashore in the pre-dawn, sneaking aboard dry land like stowaways. Bent on breeding, the guillemots were coming back to the Stac!
The guillemot is a simple bird. It dresses in black and white. It thinks in black and white. Seeing white, it sees – who knows what it sees? – a colony of fellow guillies; a roost that will camouflage it? It looks for white.
The fowlers used the Keeper’s Throne, emptying out the feathers – it was only the sack they were after – and set about whitening its fabric with as much bird lime as they could find.
Kenneth wanted to be The Rock, but his feet were paining him where he had prised the uppers off the soles of his shoes and the cold had got to his toes.
Farriss said he must be The Rock…but the sack was not big enough to cover a full-grown man. The same went for Murdo now that he had grown to the height of a man. Lachlan said that, now Quill had made him King Gannet, he should be The Rock…but even he knew that he could never sit still enough.
Quill wanted the job – after all, the first guillemot had flown over his head. But there was fever under his scalp and molten lead inside his lungs and his hands were clumsy and slow; Farriss said he must not leave the cave till he was well. Quill was too feverish to understand: he thought they doubted his word – that the guillemot was nothing but a fantasy – like the ship or Murdina – and that they were not going to go at all. He protested the best he could.
But the task fell to Calum, and it was he who crouched on the Overhang, with only the moon to see by, and pulled the whitened sack over himself and sat as still as – well – as a rock.
“Why did I not think of the sack for Davie’s shroud?” thought Quilliam as he fell back into a feverish sleep.
Because it was meant for now, said Murdina inside his head.
The guillemot is a simple bird. It thinks in black and white. And if a man under a white cloth holds as still as stone, bird after bird, returning from a winter at sea, will come cruising in to land on him. Catching them is a magic trick – sleight of hand. As they settle and fold their pied wings, a hand creeps out from under the white cloth and takes one by the throat. The others do not even notice the momentary flutter or the dead bird where, a moment before, there was a live one. They just keep on coming in to land. Who would suppose so many birds could fall for the same trick? But they do.
By the end, Calum was singing at the top of his voice, the notes vibrating with cold.
The guillemots piled up to either side of him had only added to the illusion of a colony and brought more and more birds winging out of the pre-dawn gloom.
Only when the topmost rim of the wintry sun rose out of the sea, did the constant stream of guillemots stop short of the rock and turn away, fearing full daylight would betray them to their enemies. They left without noticing the fifty dead piled to either side of Calum.
So the fowling party would eat again. They could continue to cling to Life as they clung to the Stac, half-guessing they ought to let go, succumb, and escape, as the birds do who fly out to sea and never return to land. And yet the very competitive nature of boys made each of them determined to cling on to life for as long as any of the others: not to be the first to give in. Besides, it was spring, and spring engenders hope in every creature, from the tideline to the mountain peak. Feasting on the guillemots (tough as leather and salty as the sea) their spirits could not help but rise.
The guillemots, too, rejoiced in the spring, barely aware of any deaths at all, so long as it was not their own or their chick’s. Life rose up among the wicked blackbacks, too, of course, and the lamb-stealing eagles. Somewhere they too were clattering beaks with some mate who would give them what they most craved: immortality in an egg.
“Ask her,” said Quill for the fiftieth time. “Just ask her.” But Murdo did not want his advice. Besides, he was working himself up to ask John to be his sweetheart, but the time never seemed right.
Kenneth and Parliament took the matter out of his hands.
One day, John was first back to Midway, apart from Kenneth who had been loafing there all day. Kenneth seized her round the waist and made his move: “I’ll do the deed with you, if no one else wants to.” She punched him in the ear.
In fact, John found Kenneth’s wooing so unappealing that she petitioned Parliament to have him stitched into the white sack and thrown in the sea. Despite quite a large vote in favour of this, the sack could not be spared, said Parliament.
Calum remarked affably, “Still, John is fourteen or some such; she surely does need a husband.”
“I do not. What should I want one of them for?” she protested. “I’m a boy. Me mammy says so and it suits me well enough.”
“By rights girls canna speak in Parliament,” said Euan unhelpfully.
“To my mind…” Lachlan began, “we should check again if she truly is…”
“Ye do not have a mind of any sort worth a mention, boy,” said Domhnal Don. But Calum was right: at fourteen, John was of marrying age and the question could not be ignored for ever. Should she become betrothed to someone, just to settle matters before trouble broke out?
Kenneth, seeing he had blighted his own chances, set out to skewer the chances of his rivals. Niall, he said, was so small and John so big that the boy “couldna climb up high enough, leave alone put an egg in the nest!”
Euan (Kenneth said) was already married to God.
Quill (Kenneth said) had eyes only for the witc
h Murdina Galloway.
Lachlan (Kenneth said) was such a bauchle that his own ma and pa could not find it in them to love him.
Between each insult, Farriss yelled at Kenneth, or Don reached out and slapped at him, but Kenneth only jeered that they were after John themselves and should be ashamed of themselves, them being married men and all.
Niall was, in fact, terrified by the mention of marriage. He could barely even remember to address John as a girl, and still had his doubts that she really was one. Lachlan did offer himself, out of chivalry, but with a look on his face that said arsenic was a tastier idea than getting married.
Kenneth was not wrong about Euan and God; Euan felt no need of Earthly (or earthy) love.
As for Quilliam, the fever had wrapped him in a vaporous vagueness, like smoke. It made him cough, and clouded his thoughts. He tried to fix his attention on the Parliamentary debate, so that he could recount it years from now in a story, but had to abandon the task as hopeless. Let the Keeper of Memories take notes: Niall was much more sharp-eyed and accurate.
Meanwhile, John sat beneath the smudge on the cave wall which had once been her festival crown. Her rough red hands were hidden under her thighs, and she was torn between outrage and excitement at being the focus of attention. From time to time, she flicked her eyes in Quill’s direction and smiled wanly.
Murdo wrung his hat between his hands and approached John, stooping, because of the lowness of the roof – which made him look a suitably abject suitor. “I should be honoured, ma’am,” he said, which straight away had Kenneth rolling on his back in fits of forced laughter.
“You? You called me a hoor and a Jezebel!” John screeched, and threw a bird’s leg bone at Murdo. The words bounced round the cave and the echo caught him in the back of the neck: he had to put a hand to the roof to steady himself. John, recovering her serenity, settled herself back in her place and pointedly asked Quill what he was thinking.
Where the World Ends Page 15
