“Do you not love me?” she cried.
“I love you, nighean mhúirninn” he said. But she saw his head was half-turned from her, and he listened to the murmur of the sea on the white sands below.
“You love the sea more than you do me,” she said, and he said nothing. There was nothing he could say. It was true.
So a few days later he kissed her and bade her farewell, and went down to his ship and sailed off. And the sea took the ship in its arms and carried him far away.
In a month or so he came home, full of tales of adventures and bringing chests of booty taken in battles with the Portingales on the high seas. He poured out golden rings, fine jewel-set chains, earrings, wristlets, and pieces of gold in a bright shining shower, heaping them all, hugger-mugger, into her lap and laughing to see the fine show they made. But she stood up and let them all tumble to the floor.
“I care naught for these baubles,” she said. “I had rather you were a poor ploughman and I your wife, to work and strive to make ends meet on a shilling a week—and keep you at home with me.”
But she knew he would not stay. The sea would call to him and naught she could do would hold him beside her. So he went, and came back, and went again, over and over, and two years went by. She loved him no less. But she grew to hate the sea, and all things belonging to the sea.
Then one day he kissed her and bade her farewell as he had done so often before. But this time he did not return. He had been gone overlong and she began to grow anxious, leaning her breast against the window-sill, and watching daily and hourly for sight of his ship.
Then, a messenger came riding in with word that her husband the sea captain would never come back again. The messenger was not able to say how or when her husband came to his death. The captain of another ship, coming into port at Greenoch, had sent the messenger to her with the news. He thought something had been said about a sea battle, and a great storm, but what it was all about he himself could not say. All he knew certainly was that her husband was dead.
The captain’s wife nearly went mad for grief. She shut herself in her chamber and would let no one come near her to console or advise her. The guests in the castle saw that she wished to bear her sorrow alone, and went quietly on their ways. They were uneasy at leaving her, but what use was it to stay? All their pleading would not bring her out of her room nor persuade her to open the door to let them come in. She did not want them, it was plain to see, so they could do nothing else but go.
When they were all gone she came out and for a day or two went here and there about the castle, and the servants, seeing her in her deep black velvet gown, with her face so white and her hair flaming out above it, thought she was far more like a sea fairy than a mortal woman. There was something fey about her, and it distressed and frightened them.
Then she called the servants together, and after paying them handsomely, she bade them go and seek to work elsewhere. They were unwilling to leave her alone in the castle, but she spoke brusquely and told them there’d be naught for them to do. She had a mind to shut the place up and go away herself, and she’d not be coming back in a hurry—if she ever came back at all—so they must go quickly. None of them dared gainsay her then, and within a few days the last of them had departed and she was alone in the castle. But she did not go away. By night and by day she stayed, brooding over her lost love, and the sound of the sea was in her ears all the days and all the nights of her life.
Then one day, as the sun was sinking into the far-off western sea, she looked out of the window and saw that a great ship was moored in the little harbor, riding at anchor on the gentle swell of the waves. She knew it at first glance, for if she had seen it once before she had seen it a score of times, bringing her husband home or taking him away. She could not bear the sight of it, for she knew it would never again feel the tread of his foot upon its decks. How and why the ship was there at its mooring she did not ask herself. She turned quickly from the window and did not look that way again.
Then she heard feet tramping the stony road that led up from the shore. She stood at the door and looked to see who came. Three seamen came trudging up to the castle and, as they drew near, the captain’s wife saw that two of them were well-seasoned sailors with weatherbeaten faces and grizzled hair but the third was a fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked young lad, who looked hardly old enough to have got his sea legs under him yet. Each seaman carried a sea chest upon his shoulder, and they came steadily up to the captain’s wife, where she stood at the door. They greeted her respectfully and, without replying to them, she beckoned them into the hall, standing aside to let them pass. They set the sea chests upon the great table that stood in the middle of the hall, and turned to face her, and then she spoke to them. “Why have you come here?” she asked.
“The captain said that we should bring the ship and the treasure to you, my lady, and so we have done,” the oldest of the three sailors said.
“A ship and treasure!” the captain’s wife said scornfully. “What am I to do with such things? I have no use for them at all. Why did you not bring my husband back to me?”
“That we would have done if we could,” the seaman told her. “Och, the battle was over, and we were well away, but a great storm came up, with the winds blowing wild and the waves high beyond believing. Then the sea came up over the deck and carried the captain away. We tried to keep him with us, but our strength was nothing against the sea.”
“So you let the sea take him,” she said.
“We could do naught else,” the seaman said.
She turned, then, and threw back the lids of the chests, and fingered the treasures within them, the pieces of gold and the jewels, and as she let them slip from her hands she had, in her inner heart, a feeling that these men were to blame in some way for her husband’s death. She resolved that she would have their lives in payment for his. She shut the chests.
“Well, then,” she said, “since you are here, you must have food and drink to refresh yourselves, and after a while I may have a task for you to do.”
She led them to the guard room of the castle and bade them seat themselves at the table there. Then she went back and forth, bringing bread and meat and cheese from the larder and setting it on the table, and she fetched wine for them to drink. But before she brought the wine into the room she put into it a drug that would put them fast asleep.
They ate and drank, and she sat a little apart from them, watching while they made their meal.
Soon the drugged wine began to make them drowsy. They yawned and rubbed their eyes; their hands grew clumsy and fumbled with their food. Then, almost at the same moment, slumber overtook them, so that they lay soundly sleeping, with their heads upon the table by their plates. The captain’s wife rose from her chair and looked about the room at the thick stone walls and at the iron-barred windows, and at the heavy oaken iron-bound door. Out of the room she went, and shut the door and locked it, and took the key away from the lock.
She carried the great iron key to the edge of the crag that loured above the sea, and standing there she threw it with all her might far out and into the waters below.
She turned then and went back and sat herself down beside the table where the three chests of treasure stood. The seamen would never leave the guard room, she said to herself. The walls were thick, the iron bars were strong, the door would stand firm against the battering of an army. If any of the sailors came from the ship to seek their shipmates, they could not open the door without the key.
As she sat there brooding over her revenge she caught the sound of someone moving near the open door. She turned to look, and there in a band of moonlight she saw her husband, standing on the sill. She sprang to her feet, believing for a moment that he had come back to her alive. Then she saw the cold sea water running from his clothing and his hair, and strands of bright brown seaweed clinging about his arms and neck. And when she looked into his face she saw that there was no light of life within his eyes. But it was when he sp
oke that the blood chilled in her veins, for there was the coldness of the dead in his voice.
“Oh, my poor foolish one,” the sea captain said, in pity and in scorn. “What harm have my good sailors done you, that you desire their death? They are honest men, and faithful in carrying out my orders. You should have rewarded them and sent them on their way.”
Then the madness that had been upon her, and made her plan the cruel deed, left her and she was sorry and ashamed of what she had done. “I have been wrong,” she said. “Oh, what now can I do?”
“Open the door,” he answered gently. “Open the door and let them go.”
“That I cannot!” she cried. “May God forgive me! I threw the key into the sea.”
“That is why I came,” he told her. “See, now! I have brought you back the key.”
And he held out his hand to her, and in it was the key to the guard room door.
She went and took the key in her hand, and it was cold and wet, but she rejoiced to have it back again, and her heart clear from the evil she had planned.
“I will do as you say,” she promised as she took the key. Then she saw that he was turning away from her, to leave her, and she cried quickly, “Oh, do not go away! Stay with me, my own love.”
But he only said, “Listen!” And she listened. At first she heard nothing. Then she heard the sea waves rolling upon the sands of the shore, and it seemed to her ears as if the surge of the sea was calling, “O co-o-o-ome, O co-o-o-ome.” And she knew that he would go.
“Oh, do you not love me, mo graidh?” she asked in despair.
“I love you, nighean mhúirninn,” he answered. “But I must return to the sea.”
The hot tears rushed to her eyes and blinded her, and when she was able to see again, there was naught in the doorway but a pale band of moonlight. He was gone.
When the first flush of dawn showed in the east the captain’s wife took the key and went to open the guard room door. The seamen still lay sleeping, but she went from one to another until she had them all awake.
“Come, now!” she told them. “The moon is breaking and there is need for haste.”
When they came to her in the hall, she asked them, “Do you love the sea?”
“Would I follow the sea, if I did not?” the oldest of the three replied.
And the other man agreed to what he said. “I could not live away from the sea,” he said.
“And you?” she said to the young lad. “Do you love the sea?”
“I do not,” the lad replied. “I love the land. I had liefer be a crofter or a shepherd, by far.”
“Och, the lad is daft,” the older men told her. “He’ll never make a sailor, though he follow the sea for four score of years.”
“Well, let it be,” she told them. “He shall stay here with me for a while, but you sea lovers must go back to the sea.”
Then she told them what she had in mind. These two who belonged to the sea, and loved it, as she could tell, must take the captain’s ship for their own, and sail it wherever they liked to go. One of the chests of gold they had brought was to be theirs, as well. They cried out against it. It was too much, they could not take so much, they told her. But she beat down their objections with words of her own. What good was the ship to her? Had she not houses and lands and a storeroom full of gold and treasures of all sorts? One small chest of gold would never be missed. Besides, and let them take this to heart, it was by her husband’s orders that she was doing what she did. Would they have her disobey her husband’s wishes? He himself had told her what she had to do. At last they gave in, and took back the ship’s papers which they had brought, and she made out another paper for them to prove their right to the ship.
“Come, now! Make haste!” she bade them. “Take the chest and go! The tide will soon be turning, and it is not going to stand still to wait for you!”
When the two older seamen had gone and the captain’s wife and the young sailor lad were alone, she said, “How does it happen that you are a seaman, since you do not love the sea?”
“Och, well,” said he. “My father and my grandsire and all the men of my family have been seamen, so when I was old enough my father sent me to sea.”
“Why did you not find a plow to follow, if that’s where your fancy lies?” she asked.
“Och, one needs money to be a crofter. Our folk are poor folk and money is hard to come by,” he told her. “And it was the luck of my life for me to find a place on the captain’s ship. A better master never drew breath. I’m thinking it would have been beyond bearing to have the ship out again, now that our captain’s gone.”
“If you had a bit of money of your own could you find a place on the land for yourself?” the captain’s wife said.
“I could,” the lad told her. “My oide, my godfather, has a very good croft, and not a small one either. If I brought a bit of money along with me he’d take me in with him, and be glad to do so. He has no son of his own, and he cannot bide the sea!”
“All well and good!” said the captain’s wife. “Now you must do as I say. In the paddock behind the stable there is a little black mare. You’ll find a saddle for her hanging on the stable wall. You may have her, if you will promise that she shall never draw plow or cart, but carry you to town or to church. Saddle her and bridle her and fetch her to the door. Then you shall have the other chest of gold, to start you out with your oide on his croft.”
He could no more change her mind than the two older seamen could, so in the end he went and got the mare.
When he came back, she smiled to see the joy that lit his eyes. “Take your chest now, laddie,” she said, “and go. And may good health and good luck be with you all your days.”
She went out before the castle and stood there where the road on one hand led downward to the shore and on the other hand led inland away from the sea.
She looked to the right, and there was the ship going out in the mid-morning tide to the open sea. Proud and stately, the vessel sailed, with the freshening wind in her sails and the full tide under her, and with her crew at work in her rigging and her two captains on her deck.
“May God help the poor souls,” said the captain’s wife, “for nobody else can. I doubt not the sea will get them in the end.” Then she turned to the left, and there was the young lad riding along the road that led away from the castle and the sea. He sat proudly on the wee black mare with the chest on the saddle before him, and when he came to the bend of the road that would take him out of her sight, he halted for a moment to turn and wave good-bye.
“Praise be to God! The sea will never get that one,” the captain’s wife said.
So now they were gone. The lad had turned the bend, and the road was empty. The ship had sailed around the headland and could not be seen.
“I have done as my love bade me, and rewarded his honest seamen and sent them on their way,” said the sea captain’s wife. “Now what is there for me?”
She looked again and there was the sea, dimpling and smiling in the golden sunlight, murmuring softly on the silver sands. And she knew that there was nothing at all left for her because the sea had stolen her husband away and would never give him back again.
Slowly, sadly, the sea captain’s wife went into the castle and, picking up the last chest from the table, carried it with her to her bedchamber upstairs.
And since there was nothing left for her in this world worth having, she did what the valiant women among her forbears would have done when faced with defeat, in the ancient times. With great care she attired herself and made herself fair to see. She dressed herself in the white satin gown that she wore on her wedding day. Then she opened the chest and, taking out the costly booty of her husband’s last battle at sea, she began to deck herself. She put rings on every finger, set eardrops in her ears, hung jeweled chains about her neck, and clasped jem-studded bracelets around her wrists. Gold, and diamonds and rubies, emeralds, and precious stones of every kind shone and gleamed and shimmered in t
he shaft of sunlight that came through the open window of the room. She set a golden coronet upon her red-gold hair, and stood forth, beautiful and resplendent as a queen. And with the calm dignity of a queen, she laid herself down upon the silken coverlet of her bed, and her heart broke at last and she died.
It was a distant cousin of the sea captain who inherited the estate and the castle, since the captain had no son of his own to leave them to. But no one was ever able to dwell in the old castle after the day the sea captain’s wife died. Not that they did not try, but none of those who attempted to make a home there could bear the way the restless spirit of the beautiful unhappy wife of the sea captain ranged through the castle calling her husband to come back to her from the sea.
The folk in the fishing village that once stood at the foot of the cliff beyond the white sands used to hear the calling too. The wives complained that the eerie sound of it woke the bairns of nights and gave them all a fright. The fishermen who belonged to the village said it made their blood grue to hear it, and they out on the sea in their boats at night paying out their nets. So at last the men of the village went to the laird on one of the islands—Barra, I think it would be—and got leave to come and settle there and make a new home for themselves and their families. It was a far distance from the castle, so they could live untroubled there.
The shielings they left stood empty and forlorn above the silver sands. But as years went by, sun and wind and weather had their way with the village as they did with the castle on the tall gray crag above. Then, one spring, a great high tide dashed over the shielings and washed them all away.
Now there is nothing left but an traigh bhean, the white sands, the dark crag, and the ruined castle, to mark the place.
That is the story the fishermen will tell you about an dun na cuantaiche. It was all so long ago that it happened, they’ll say, back in their great-great-grand-sires’ days. But they know more than they have told you, as you can see by the uneasy look on their faces and the shifting of their eyes. And if you press them, they’ll tell you what they have not told you before. They’ve heard the call themselves.
Twelve Great Black Cats Page 9
