Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail, for the world’s wrong!
Below me the mermaids bobbed about in the frothy wavelets. “There’s nothing more beautiful than living at the bottom of the North Sea,” they sang in an undulating flow. “You shan’t suffer if you come with us. Hurry now—your husband awaits you.” But I refused to be lured by an easy death. I refused to be fooled into believing Kitt was really, definitely, tragically dead. Because of that, the contrary wind tossed me from the clouds, and I fell to earth, tumbling hard onto the gritty sands. My first great love could not be my first great loss.
“Mrs. Munro, are you there? Where did you go?” The colonel waved his hand in front of my face.
I was still lost in amazement. “I think … I’m here. Am I all here?”
“You became dreamy, mumbling of the ‘world’s wrong.’”
“Oh … I don’t know what happened … so strange.”
He gave me a worried frown.
Shaking myself awake, I asked, “Colonel … what does the other letter say?”
Slowly he read out loud the express from London. It came from Brodie Munro, who lamented that Kitt had broken the family rule by speaking directly to their father. If only Kitt had convinced their mother and eldest brother Dillon to take his side and to speak on his behalf, then he would have fared better with “the governor.”
Brodie revealed that he had once been sent to Staffa, the rugged isle being a kind of natural prison, where he was forced to atone for his own youthful misdeeds and wicked propensities. He had no doubt of what his hard-hearted father’s intent had been, namely, to quell a rebellious youngest son and half-starve him into submission on a diet of salt horse and sea biscuits. His father would not be crossed by his sons.
The colonel said, “One wonders whether Fingal’s Cave had not been a foolish freak, after all.”
“Kitt’s father held him prisoner?”
“Perhaps yes and perhaps no.”
The thought of Kitt being made to suffer such cruel hardship because of our marriage bewildered me. His punishment, if it were so, had been positively medieval-like. Had Kitt tried to escape from his captors? And was that why he dove into the sea?
“I will go straight away to the Hebrides to search for him,” I announced, my mind made up. “If I had gone missing in the waters, he would surely have looked for me, no matter what anyone else said about my being dead.”
“You’ve got pluck.”
“Will you be so kind, colonel, as to give me a loan?”
The colonel nodded, his features worn with sadness. “Let us leave on the morrow as planned. It will be weeks of hard travels, particularly for a young lady like you, as well as for our servants.”
“Believe me, a difficult journey doesn’t daunt me. And my Baillie is a hardy young woman. But I’m concerned about you.”
“I’m equal to the task.” He then added, “My man Neville will see to it.”
When we told Aggie about our plans, her ever-patient self gave us her blessing, just as we knew she would.
“Aggie, will you not come with us?”
She declined. Her back was troubling her. She would only slow us down.
“You and Neville take good care of the colonel, and bring back my real husband,” were her secret instructions to me. While I repacked my portmanteau with clothes more appropriate for riding horses and seafaring, she helped a servant pack one for Kitt, for he would need something warm to wear. “You will find him,” said she in a decided tone.
After a sleepless night, I set off with the colonel on a long journey north-westward, accompanied by Neville and Baillie. The colonel and I sat within the mail coach, not speaking much. I knew he already missed Aggie.
Hours later, at the Royal Oak inn, we sat down to a plain dinner of mutton, pudding and ale. My mind preoccupied, I had scarce eaten anything, when the porter called out, “Passengers for the Edinburgh? Who’s going by the Manchester? Gentlemen for the York?” The various mail coaches were ready to leave. We passengers hurried outside the inn. That was when I noticed a familiar stranger standing in the yard.
He wore a greyish-blue coat, light trousers and a dark-brown waistcoat from what I could tell by lanthorn light. This young man, his face gaunt and ghostly white, his eyes sunken in dark shadows, touched his hat to me. When he tried to speak, he couldn’t for some reason.
Upon my soul, he was Kitt’s double! This doppel-ganger got into one of the mail coaches but not before he cast another long look in my direction, and with such sorrow. A bad feeling came over me. “All right,” proclaimed the guard, who had shut the door. After the blare of the guard’s horn, the driver shouted ya-up, and the mail coach rumbled away into the night.
I searched my mind as to the meaning of this apparition. A memory of Madrid rushed forth, when I had thought Kitt had given me up. He bid me to be patient instead of fearing that our fates were not intertwined. His prophetic words rang loud within my ears: “By and by, we shall meet again, you can be sure of it.”
14. Kitt’s Tears
Into the Highlands we went, this mother-land of myths and legends, kelpies and fairies, where, at each footfall, the ground vibrated beneath us. The passing blur of autumnal russets and golds subdued me. And when we arrived at Loch Fyne, a sea inlet, the haunting reflection of Kitt on the dark moody waters brought me to tears. The mist-shrouded shores near Inveraray must’ve dispirited the colonel as well, because he suffered from a fit of mania.
The piper on our boat played melancholy ballads, and those long shrill wails of his bagpipe must’ve reminded the colonel of the war. Perhaps he had fought alongside a regiment of brave Highlanders? If not for the boatman, who helped us to capture him before he jumped overboard, I’m certain the colonel would have gone the way of fishes.
By fishes, I mean the herring, which are revered here. As the lochside folk say, Loch Fyne is two parts herrings and only one part water. The innkeeper served up salt herring, and plenty of it, along with fresh buttermilk and oat-cakes hot off the girdle, which is what they call a griddle here. The colonel, having become bad again, abused the Scots and their oily fishes.
“I cannot manage these cursed herrings,” he growled out.
“Neither can I.” The sadness in my food had taken away my appetite.
The colonel’s terrible mood continued in the morning. Nothing would placate him. At the Cairndow Inn, where we requested a carriage, they told us none was available. Nor were there any decent horses, unless you had brought your own. This simply would not do for the colonel. It put him into a fret.
“These horses for hire are terribly old and weak. What cruelty!”
“Shush”—I nudged him—“everyone can hear you.”
Left with no choice, we gave the skin-and-bone horses a generous allowance of hay, hoping it would somehow give them the strength to get to Oban, a coastal-town. Most of the time we walked, as did our servants Neville and Baillie, to save the horses, who often stopped from exhaustion.
“My horse nearly dropped,” I told the colonel.
“The mare is not long for this world.”
“If she drops, will the guide leave the poor girl here, to die alone?”
“I think, yes,” came his grim reply.
Our paughty guide cared not about the horse’s fate. Nor did he care much for us English. He had assured us, upon being hired, that he spoke “in the English.” Yet, whenever we asked him a question, he spoke Scottish Gaelic in a grudging way, leaving it to us to decipher his meaning.
“This is a sorry business,” grumbled the colonel. “I suppose that if I asked him a question in the Gaelic, he would respond in the English.”
“Phoo, phoo.” To prove him wrong, I asked the guide the one question I knew in Gaelic, having heard it said at the inn repeatedly.
“Aye, I take compliments,” he grunted out in English.
&n
bsp; The colonel shot me a questioning look. In a low voice I explained that tips are called compliments here.
“A tip? He’ll be lucky if I don’t bash him and his hostile attitude to pieces.”
Our guide had clearly heard the colonel, because he turned gloomy and threatening. He called the colonel a bodach, which, according to my Gaelic pocket dictionary, meant “old man.” To be sure, I said nothing about that insult.
“Ceud mìle fàilte! A hundred thousand welcomes!” cried Conn MacPhee, a short robust man and a proud Hebridean who “had the English.” He would serve as our new guide in Oban and beyond.
Our welcome was short-lived, however. Rainy and blowy days followed in Oban, and thus, no boats ventured out. The ceaseless tonn-tunn, tonn-tunn of the waves dashing against the shore nearly drove me mad. We are cursed, thought I.
When, finally, the weather had calmed, we engaged a large flat-bottomed boat used for transporting people, cattle and sheep. We had gone about twelve miles through the scenic Sound of Mull when the wind strangely abated. The rowers pulled hard, chanting slowly in Gaelic to the beat of it—“Tha tigh’nn fodham, fodham, fodham.” They delivered us to Aros this way, where the colonel gave them Oban whisky.
“Just one dram of whisky,” begged the colonel, who wished to drink with the rowers.
“No, no, no. One dram will turn into two and then three,” and I led him away, determined to get us to Ulva by carriage.
We reached Ulva as planned. One bright morning on this isle, after days of heavy wind, we had the first appearance of settled weather. Thus, at some risk, we and our servants embarked for the Isle of Staffa, nine miles distant, to see Fingal’s Cave—the last place Kitt had been seen alive. Determined to explore it, I believed that Kitt had left behind some kind of clue in that watery cave. My mind raced with thoughts of what it could be.
It was no wonder that Kitt had longed to see Fingal’s Cave, if indeed he had. It reminded me of a cathedral, with its black basalt columns that towered like the pipes of a monstrous organ. The mouth of the cave loomed above us, sixty or so feet high—legend has it that the giant Fingal once dwelled here. The tide being low, we walked directly into the cave, atop the broken stumps of pillars, where I imagined myself a giantess sparring with old Fingal himself. The constant swell of the ocean, as it burst into the cave, showered us with briny spray.
“Kitt Munro!” I sang out over the hiss of the waves. His name never did sound more lovely, more melodic than in that enchanted cave encrusted with gold and green lichen.
The colonel held on to his hat. “My dear girl, we must quit this place before the wind becomes too violent.”
I knew he was right. We must get rowed to the Isle of Mull before it became too dangerous to do so. Dejectedly I led the way, stump by slimy stump, back towards the entrance. That was when, for several seconds, I observed Kitt’s doppel-ganger considering an isle in the distance, it being framed by the great arch at the mouth of the cave. And then he simply dissolved into air. I pressed my hand to my throat, to feel the smooth beads there, to assure myself that they and I were real.
“Which isle is that?” I asked.
“Iona,” Conn MacPhee replied. He told us about St. Columba, who, in the sixth century, settled on Iona after being banished from Ireland, and how he converted the Picts and Scots to Christianity.
“Iona is the cradle of Christianity,” observed the colonel.
Conn MacPhee nodded. “The name Columba signifies a dove—a symbol of peace, purity and the Holy Spirit. Even the shape of the isle resembles one.”
The cave trembled beneath me. It suddenly became my great wish to see Iona.
The Sound of Iona that separates the Isles of Iona and Mull is only a mile wide, but the currents can be treacherous at times, and many a small boat, pitching into a freak wave, has capsized. At a small ferry-port on Mull the following morning, I espied again Kitt’s doppel-ganger, this time roaming along the shore. He pointed to Iona across the sound. “Wait!” I told him, but he walked straight into the waters, and vanished. I could hardly breathe, thinking that he might have drowned.
“I say, Conn MacPhee. If I shouted towards Iona, could people hear me there?”
He replied, “On a calm day, when St. Columba preached in Iona, they said his words carried over the waters to Mull, where the people gathered to listen. And when someone wanted a ferry in those days, they simply shouted across the waters to Iona.”
Standing on the wet tidal sands, I cried out, “Kitt Munro! Kitt Munro!” and, oh, how my heart ached when he didn’t respond. Would I never hear his sweet voice again?
Conn MacPhee lit a fire to signal the ferryman on Iona. Eventually a skiff arrived. The ferryman and his rowers, after much effort, got us across to a shallow bay at Iona. Greens and blues of the clear waters lapped onto the white sands. Immediately I thanked the sea gods of the Hebrides for our safe crossing to this holy isle. One was Seonaidh, who demanded offerings of ale, and the other Manaun, who favored porridge.
“What did you throw into the waves?” the colonel asked me as we scrambled from rock to rock to avoid pools of water. No quay or even a safe landing-place existed there in Iona.
“A piece of oat-cake, which will have to do for porridge. Do you have any ale?”
This didn’t please the colonel to give up the ale in his flask. Our guide assured him that the Ionians brewed much home-made ale, and that he knew where to get it.
“Ì Chaluim Chille pebbles!” came a child’s cry, and then a dozen more.
Some children, their hair dirty and matted, ran out to waylay us on the sands. They clamored for our attention, to sell us green serpentine pebbles, which, according to lore, would protect us from drowning at sea. The colonel called these children the little Yahoos, and after he bought a fairy-dog tooth from them, which was actually a seal’s tooth, he told them to go away.
I frowned at him. “I was once a little beggar girl in Portugal.” Did he remember it?
He replied, “I fattened you up with English roast beef and macaroni.”
“Oh yes, I became fat as butter.”
He paused to search his mind. “You were five when you ran away, with your wee drum.”
My heart became hopeful. “Did you find me?”
“I might have done,” was his confused reply, and he rubbed his forehead, that old habit of his I knew so well.
Afraid to rattle his brain too much, I let him alone, so that he wouldn’t suffer one of his episodes and become disagreeable. Still, there continued to be progress because I, Sofia-Elisabete, at different stages in my life, had become clearer in his memory, which meant he possibly remembered Aggie as his wife.
Conn MacPhee, meanwhile, led us to a row of weather-beaten huts known as the village. Everyone there spoke Gaelic. Only two or three people on the isle had the English. No one could read or write. The schoolmaster could, of course, but he was gone to see his kin on Mull. And their minister? He visited Iona four times a year.
Our guide greeted his kith—some ancient isle-folk, each of them wearing dark woolen clothes. Suspicious of the colonel, they asked if he spied on them for the Customs Officials, now that home-brewed whisky was illegal. Conn MacPhee assured them otherwise. We were searching for a young Glaswegian who had gone missing in the waters near Staffa. Just then, an old widow by the name of Rose MacPhee joined us. She sat upon a stool, working at her spindle.
“Rose, my kinswoman, do ye know of any young strangers here?” He said he would translate for her.
She pointed to someone on the sandy path below—an unshaven young man wearing a short coat, wide trousers and a low cap, all made of the same coarse wool, reddish-brown, like the color of lichen. He was gaunt from what must be long misery. Smudges of black soot covered his nose and upper cheeks.
Bent forward, with his eyes shut tight against the brisk wind, he strained to push a primitive wheel-barrow loaded with jugs made of clay and most likely filled with well water. Beside him trudged a bulky moon-fac
ed girl carrying a creel on her back that was stuffed with wrack. She wore a dark-blue woolen petticoat and short wrapper, along with a worn apron. Theirs was a harsh and simple life, yet they had each other.
“That lad yonder going towards the machair—the pastureland—is a penniless half-wit, a MacQuarrie, from Ulva,” explained Rose MacPhee. “The lad come here to woo Sorcha, she that is the daughter of MacLeish. Their croft lies on the west side o’ the isle. When the lad discovered how lovely the milkmaid was, he dropped to his knees, awestruck. He went mute an’ dumb in her presence, so says MacLeish.”
The isle-folk laughed at the crofter’s claim. Rose MacPhee held up her hand to silence them.
“Sorcha, however, would have ye believe that her sweetheart arose out o’ the sea, half-dolphin, half-man, wi’ a foam-grey face, an’ a head of hair tangled wi’ purple seaweed. The merman wept at being cast out by Seonaidh, the sea god, an’ his slow-falling tears hardened into pebbles shaped like tear drops. He scooped up these clear green pebbles into the palm o’ his hand.”
“Merman’s tears,” said I, preferring the milkmaid’s imaginative tale.
Rose MacPhee nodded. “The merman changed shape into a handsome lad. Oh, such splendid clothes he wore, adorned wi’ sea-shells an’ pearls! But his human legs didn’t work. Desperate to avoid the incoming tide, he began to crawl on his belly, up the pebbly shore.”
“Nae doubt it was Columba’s Bay,” said our guide, “where the pebbles shine like jewels in the waters.”
The isle-folk murmured their agreement. Rose MacPhee continued on.
“Sorcha waded into the waters to capture this fantastic sea-creature. She clutched him by the arms before he could escape. Soon enough, she found he had no speech. He was a balbhan—a mute—because when she dragged him over the pebbles, not caring about his tender parts, she never heard him scream or whimper, nor did he utter a protest, though his face contorted wi’ agony.”
Rose MacPhee laughed low at the islesmen’s collective groans and winces.
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