Heather Song

by Michael Phillips

  “Do you have a tide book onboard?” asked Iain.

  “Don’t need one, mate,” the man replied. “I can tell you—today’s the lowest tide in six years…two hours from now.”

  The words lit Iain’s brain on fire.

  “Then get me all the ropes and flashlights you can put your hands on, and a pick-ax and a shovel and a helmet.”

  “What for, mate?”

  “I’m going inside Findlater.”

  “Are you daft? The place is too dangerous.”

  “I am going in,” replied Iain. “It can’t be any more dangerous than an ordinary cave, except getting trapped by the water and drowned. You said yourself the tide is low. This may be our only chance. Now get me to the top of the cliff, with enough rope and light to lower me inside, or else I’ll do it on my own. It’s the one place we haven’t tried. Hurry—we have no time to lose. We have to move before the tide turns.”

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Visions

  Angel voices, ever singing, round Thy throne of light.

  Angel harps, for ever ringing, rest not day nor night;

  Thousands only live to bless Thee, and confess Thee, Lord of might.

  —Francis Pott, “Angel Voices”

  Again I slept…dreaming…thinking myself dead…half waking…crying…sleeping and dreaming again.

  Then came a vision of Gwendolyn…a dream…a vision…I didn’t know…I didn’t care. It was wonderful.

  I was out on Alicia’s hillside of heather…her musicians making heavenly music of harmonies complex and beautiful…the red-haired conductress…It was Gwendolyn…I knew it now.

  She greeted me, welcoming me to her orchestra!

  She led me to a great harp standing at the head of a vast congregation of lesser harps—the most magnificent harp imaginable.

  “There has been no one to play it,” said Gwendolyn. “It has been silent all this time, just waiting for you, Marie. I have been waiting for you ever so long. See how much older I am already? But time goes by fast here, and every moment is full of happiness and joy and music, Marie! Such music. I cannot wait to share it all with you. Now that you are here, I have ever so much to tell you and show you! You can meet my mummy, and of course Daddy is waiting for you, too. I am grown up to be the same age as them, but I still call them Mummy and Daddy. And your daddy is here, too. He is a nice man and asked me if I would be his daughter for a while—until you came. Do you remember—it is just like when I asked if I could call you Mummy for a while. But first, I want you to play for my orchestra. You will not need music. You know the song already, for you taught it to me and I taught it to my orchestra. It is called ‘Heather Song,’ but in my heart I call it ‘Marie’s Song.’ And there is Winny, too, Marie. I have taught her to play the harp. She is sitting next to your harp waiting for you, Marie.”

  Gwendolyn took my hand and led me to the great golden harp. A girl was sitting next to it. I recognized the harp in front of her as my own Journey, though larger now, as though it had grown into its perfection in the same way that Gwendolyn and Winny had theirs. What a happy smile the girl wore, her hair golden, a locket around her neck. She was the same age as Gwendolyn, which was the perfect age, but no age.

  “Hello, Winny,” I said. “I am Marie.”

  “I know who you are,” said the beautiful girl. “Everyone knows you. Gwendolyn has told us all about you. We have all been excitedly waiting for you. You know my father.”

  “Yes, I do. He is one of my dear friends.”

  “Gwendolyn lets me play your harp, I hope you do not mind. She said you were so kind you would be happy for me. She said this is the same harp you played with my father.”

  “Yes, it is. I recognized it immediately. And your father played with me on his grandfather’s harp.”

  “Oh, yes—my great-grandfather. He told me. He sometimes plays here, too, on his harp. But he and my mother are playing with the angels. They were sent somewhere else to play I think.”

  “How long have you and Gwendolyn played together?”

  “Ever since she came here. I have been playing in Gwendolyn’s orchestra all this time, but we have all been waiting for you to arrive because the big harp is for you alone. Gwendolyn says only you can play the big harp, because it is your music we are playing. But do you mind…could I make just a few notes on it, just to see what your big harp sounds like?”

  “Of course not, Winny…I would be happy for you to.”

  She reached out from where she sat, reached a long arm toward the strings, then her fingers bent to touch them, and again I heard my voice saying her name. “Winny…Winny…Winny…”

  But the sound that came as she touched the strings was scratchy and dissonant, like picking at rusty wires rather than harp strings.

  My eyes opened and I heard myself croaking Winny’s name in my sleep. I was lying on the floor staring at the Queen, with Winny Bain’s bony fingers still attached to its strings.

  I whimpered and began to cry. If only I could go back to the dream!

  All I wanted was to go be with Gwendolyn and Winny and play the “Heather Song.”

  If I was going to die, I thought, and play with Gwendolyn’s heavenly orchestra, why not die at my harp, doing what I loved best? What a wonderful way to die. Why not die to the sound of my own music? Maybe my music could linger in the air long enough to go with me as I drifted away from life here to be greeted by everyone there.

  More voices filled my consciousness. I grew warm and happy again. The voices were far away, not like Gwendolyn’s and Winny’s…but the voices of my father and mother, aunts and uncles, my first husband…and Alasdair. They were coming, I could hear them now. They were all together, waiting for me…waiting to greet me. I was about to see them all again.

  A great joy of anticipation filled me. I was so happy.

  I pulled myself to my feet and walked slowly toward Winny and the Queen.

  I was no longer afraid. I had met the real Winny Bain, and I did not think it was a dream. This skeleton wasn’t really her, she had only used it awhile. But she wouldn’t mind my touching it. She was playing real harps now with Gwendolyn.

  I approached, stumbling once and nearly sprawling onto the stone floor. I knew I was weakening.

  I stooped down. Gingerly I took Winny’s hand, hardly even squeamish at the touch. Very slowly I began to extricate Winny’s fingers from the strings. She was so fragile, the poor thing.

  “I will be careful, Winny,” I said. “I know you are in heaven now. Still I do not think you would find it pleasant for me to break your bones. Maybe you don’t care about this old body, but I will be careful anyway. I know you would be gentle with me.”

  Slowly and easily I gently laid what had once been Winny Bain on the floor with the same care I would use handling a baby rather than a gruesome skeleton.

  “There, Winny. You can rest now. I will play you some music. I will practice for Gwendolyn’s orchestra. Then we will play side by side, together on our harps.”

  I pulled my harp across the floor next to a coffin of stone. The light was so dim I could not see all the dings and scuffs and scratches from Olivia’s rough treatment, or where she had dropped it once and put a great ugly gash across the soundboard.

  Then slowly I began to play. I didn’t even care whether it was in perfect tune. I played softly at first. I was weak. My senses became sluggish, as if my brain had gone into slow motion. For all I knew I wasn’t even making music but was just plucking randomly at the strings as Olivia had done. Maybe I was making no more music on it than had Winny. But to my feverish mind, it sounded like the songs I knew and loved.

  I played mostly Scottish songs, sometimes only phrases of a song.

  I was forgetting how they went. Then my fingers, sore and raw as they were, would remember something and play it for a while, then drift into something else. My fingers and ears weren’t connected. I played and I listened, but they were two different parts of me.

  Then I
heard hymns playing.

  I recognized the hymn. Someone had taught it to me…told me a story about it. Now I remembered, it was about harps!

  Angel voices, ever singing

  Round Thy throne of light.

  Angel harps, for ever ringing,

  Rest not day nor night…

  Maybe it was time for church. Could it be Sunday? It was the church organ! And voices raised in song. I could hear them…they were singing in the church!

  They must be able to hear me, too! If I could only cry out, surely they would hear me.

  I tried to call. But no sound came from my mouth. I was too weak to utter a peep.

  In dismay I realized the music was coming from me—it was my harp playing, not hymns from the church organ.

  I had already forgotten the hymn.

  I glanced at my fingers as they played. Would I die here…right here…lying against my harp…my fingers turned to bones on its strings just like Winny’s…silent forever? No one would find me like I had found Winny. I would be here with my harp forever.

  My eyes grew heavy.

  “No…not yet, Marie,” I said weakly to myself, urging myself to keep awake. “Not yet. Play, Marie. You must practice. You don’t want to disappoint Gwendolyn.”

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  In the Footsteps of the Picts

  This dearest of Isles is so fertile and fair,

  That no other island may with it compare;

  Here Gaelic was spoken in ages gone by,

  And here will it live till the ocean runs dry.

  —M. MacLeod, “The Isle of Heather”

  By means of the boat’s radio, a helicopter was dispatched to Findlater with all necessary rescue equipment. From the shore Iain and two volunteers were lifted by pulleys up the cliff and set down at the vertical entrance to the interior of Findlater.

  With exceeding care, wearing a cave helmet with attached light, and outfitted with ropes and picks and water bottle and a powerful transmitter and flashlight and extra gloves all slung about his shoulders, Iain was lowered into the black vault. The two men eased down the rope inch by inch while Iain shouted instructions up to them.

  Six or eight minutes later, he stood, as far as he knew, where no man or woman had stood in at least two centuries, possibly longer, and began a search of Findlater’s lowest portions made possible only by the retreating tide.

  As the volunteers waited above for the result of his preliminary search, Iain made his way toward the interior of the castle. Debris and fallen stone cluttered his way as he moved deeper into the hillside upon which the castle had been built. As he probed possible passageways with the strong beam from his light, silence began to envelop him, though still with faint rhythmic reminders of the sloshing tide behind him.

  After ten or fifteen minutes of exploration, Iain paused. He had come a good way inland. A retreating wave in the distance left a deeper silence than he would have thought possible this near the sea.

  He was stooped low, the passage no more than four feet high, yet clearly passable. The walls around him, even the ceiling of the tunnel, were wet throughout, dripping from the recent high tide a few hours before. At any normal time, this tunnel, even at low tide, would be completely filled with water and unreachable. Only now, today, it communicated again with the interior precincts of Findlater and bored its way straight inland.

  As he stooped, then at last was forced to his knees on the wet, sandy, gravelly tunnel floor, he had no doubt that he had at last discovered what had eluded him and Alasdair so many years before, the legendary escape route of the coastal Picts from the Viking attack.

  With the light attached to his helmet bobbing about, he continued ever deeper into the interior of the coastline. After twenty more minutes he realized his two-hundred-meter lifeline connecting him to the men behind him on the headland had come to an end.

  Disconnecting it from the buckle at his waist, he crawled on.

  He advanced by slow degrees farther from the shore. The silence deepened as he inched incrementally upward in elevation.

  All about him was a silence as of death.

  Suddenly Iain stopped all movement. A sharp intake of breath jolted him as one struck dumb.

  Could it be?! He listened again. A faint rustle of water far behind him momentarily muffled the sound he thought he had heard. He waited for the wave to retreat and again listened with superhuman effort.

  Yes…there could be no mistake! It was the faint melody of his favorite hymn! He had never told another soul about his love for that song! Only one person! An Angel!

  Angel voices, ever singing…Angel harps, for ever ringing…

  It was not mere music itself. He heard the music of a harp!

  Chapter Seventy

  Voices

  I wish I were now in that Isle of the sea,

  The Isle of the Heather, and happy I’d be;

  With deer in its mountains, and fish in its rills,

  Where heroes have lived ’mong its heath-covered hills.

  —M. MacLeod, “The Isle of Heather”

  As I played, I was hardly aware what sounds were coming from my harp or my voice. I was talking to myself, and also to Gwendolyn and Winny, in the way people do the closer they get to insanity. The vision of them was so real, so warm, so pleasant. I wanted to live in the vision, not in a cold dark dungeon whose only purpose was to hide bones of the dead.

  Winny was alive beside me. We were making beautiful music. We were not lying dead in an underground crypt. We were playing the “Heather Song” on a beautiful hillside where everything was light and bright and fragrant and warm.

  “Listen, Winny,” I said, “let me teach you this song—unless Gwendolyn has already taught it to you— It is a hymn I learned…I learned it from someone…I think it was someone’s favorite hymn, but I’ve forgotten. Do you forget things, Winny? I am getting forgetful, but it will be all right, won’t it? I will remember when I am with you in heaven. Someone taught it to me, I cannot remember who, but I remember that it was someone I loved. You will like it, Winny; it is about God and angels and harps…We will play it together—you on Journey and me on the Queen. You have such thin delicate fingers, Winny—that is why you can play the harp so well.”

  “But, Marie, I do not think I will ever be as good as you and Gwendolyn.”

  “Oh, but you will, Winny. Your fingers are perfect for the harp…There is plenty of time. We have all the time in the world to play together.”

  “But it is too dark, Marie—I can’t see your fingers to help me…I need to see to play— Please, Marie…Marie…I can’t feel the strings…Someone grabbed my fingers and took the harp away. Help me, Marie…help…”

  “Marie!”

  “Marie…Marie…it is too dark…Marie…Marie…”

  The light from my last candle was flickering to its death. But I was scarcely aware of it. Slowly it faded, then in a final tiny death-burst was gone. I was left in utter blackness. I hardly knew it. The music from my harp somehow drew all my senses into it. I could no longer distinguish between seeing and hearing. Neither had I been able to hear the sea for some time. But I didn’t notice that either. I continued to babble and play.

  “It is all right, Winny. We can play in the darkness.”

  “But I am afraid, Marie. Please, Marie…help me…help me…”

  “Marie!”

  “It is all right, Winny. Just lie where you are—you are safe there. I will take care of you.”

  “But, Marie…Marie…Marie…”

  “Sleep, Winny…just sleep…You are safe now.”

  “I don’t feel safe. I am cold and it is dark…I am afraid, Marie. I don’t think anyone will ever find me. I have been lying here ever so long and it is not a nice place, Marie…Marie…Marie…”

  I was growing weary of playing. I wanted to sleep. But Winny kept calling my name.

  “Marie…Marie!”

  “Not now, Winny. Go back to sleep…We will play later. Let me slee
p.”

  “Marie!”

  But it wasn’t Winny’s voice. It was a strange voice…a deep voice…a frightening voice. I kept hearing my name…How long had the voice been calling my name?

  “Marie…Marie…is it you in there? Marie, wake up!”

  Panic seized me. What was going on? Someone was after me! I was lying on the floor. How did I get here! I was playing my harp. How had I fallen on the floor! Strange flashes of light blinded my eyes. Terror consumed me.

  “Winny…Winny…where are you, Winny?!”

  I began to lose consciousness. The time had finally come when I would not wake up. I imagined voices…I grew warm and happy again. The voices faded into the distance…They were all waiting for me.

  The voices grew louder again. I was getting closer and closer…but it was only one voice. Where had everybody gone?

  “Who are you?” I tried to call back. “Where are you…Where am I?”

  “Marie…Marie!” called the voice. “Marie, are you there?…It’s Iain! Marie, it’s Iain.”

  A stab of blinding remembrance shot through my brain. From a time long ago! Somebody…a name…red hair…a kind smile…

  “Marie!”

  “Iain!” I tried to scream. Only a tiny croak escaped my lips. Was I dreaming? What kind of terrible nightmare to pretend someone was there.

  “Iain—” I tried again. My mouth was too dry!

  “Marie!”

  “It’s too dark…I can’t see…Iain! What is— Are you with Alasdair and Gwendolyn?…Tell them not to worry, Winny’s here with us…It’s dark. All the candles went out. But we are here. Tell them we are coming to them. Tell Gwendolyn I have been practicing.”

  “Marie, it’s Iain! You’re not dreaming. I am here.”

  “Iain!” I shrieked. Reality began to penetrate my brain.

  I squinted as a sharp beam stung my eyes.