Island of Wings

by Karin Altenberg

  In spite of this welcome visit, spirits were unusually low as yet another winter approached. The new village structure seemed to have upset the ancient social patterns of the community. People had been uprooted from the houses the ancestors built and in which kin lived so closely together as to become of one mind. The new houses were also heated by the beasts that shared the accommodation, but property was more marked and with property comes individuality. In this new village, as food and fuel grew scarcer by the day, superstitions, mistrust and jealousy festered amongst the St Kildans.

  On Mullach Geal stood a group of ancient stones – a game of hurling hastily abandoned by jaded giants. One of these megaliths was cleft in two – children would often play around it, crawling through the secret passage.

  One winter’s day Anna came running into the manse rosy and breathless, ‘Ma’am, you must come quickly. Oh please hurry! She is in trouble.’

  ‘What is it that you are saying, girl? Who’s in trouble?’

  ‘Betty, ma’am. Do come! She is stuck in a stone!’

  ‘Stuck in a . . . ?’ Lizzie, who realised that she would not get any sense out of the girl, picked up her shawl and hastened from the house.

  There was a bitter chill. Slight sheets of ice had broken up in the bay and were washed against the frozen sand on the beach. It made a surprisingly beautiful sound of thin crystal notes. Lizzie was tempted to stop for a moment to listen, but Anna was obviously very distressed.

  She followed the girl, who was already clambering up the steep slope behind the clachan. The wind-stripped broom and heather were sapped of life, mud-coloured, miserable. Lizzie soon got warm; she was breathing hard now but continued upwards, using her feet and sometimes her hands. Every now and again she would stop briefly to wipe her nose on her woolly sleeve.

  ‘Not so fast, Anna! How far now?’

  ‘Not far, ma’am, hurry, please!’

  They were high over the bay now and for a while she lost sight of the girl, who had disappeared amongst some large boulders.

  ‘Over here!’

  Lizzie rushed on but stopped abruptly in her tracks when she saw the strange form in front of her.

  ‘What in God’s name is this?’ She moved closer, hesitantly. There was something large and white wedged in one of the rocks. ‘Betty?’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake! Don’t just stand there – help me. I have been stuck here for over an hour!’ Lizzie had never heard the former maid talk in such a way.

  It was quite clear that Betty had somehow got jammed in the cleft stone. She had tried to crawl through, and when she got stuck she had tried to reverse, which had only resulted in her skirts being pushed up around her waist. Her naked thighs were pinking in the winter air. Lizzie, who was greatly embarrassed by the sight, walked around the megalith in order to face the unfortunate Betty. The younger woman was hanging over the stone, face down, like a child waiting to be spanked. She looked up at Lizzie from her wretched position, her face purple against her fair hair. ‘Don’t you dare tell anyone about this!’ she hissed.

  Lizzie didn’t answer but grabbed hold of Betty’s arms and started pulling. ‘No, no, that won’t work!’

  ‘What then?’ Lizzie felt a wave of irritation. This whole situation really was quite ridiculous.

  ‘You’ve got to try and get my skirts back through the cleft and pull me backwards.’

  Lizzie felt her heart sink but obeyed and walked around to the other side of the rock. By and by, with Anna’s help, she managed to pull the coarse fabric of Betty’s winter skirts through the cleft, tearing off a large piece of ragged tweed in the process. Once Betty was decent again Lizzie took hold of one leg and Anna the other. On the count of three they both pulled as hard as they could. Betty moaned but did not dislodge.

  ‘Betty,’ Lizzie said sternly, ‘you have got to try to make yourself thinner.’

  ‘Aw,’ cried Betty gracelessly – she had long since lost her dignity.

  ‘Suck your breath in!’

  Betty did as she was told and this time Anna and Lizzie managed to pull her free from the trap. The three women lay on the ground puffing and gasping.

  ‘What were you doing getting stuck in that rock?’ Lizzie asked between breaths.

  ‘I didn’t get stuck on purpose, did I?’ Betty snapped. She was rubbing some heat back into her stiff limbs.

  Lizzie smiled at that, but bit her lip when she saw Betty’s angry face.

  ‘Ah, you might just as well know all of it,’ Betty said quickly, her eyes to the ground. ‘My grandmother used to tell me that pulling a woman through a cleft rock would make babies stick to the womb and grow good and healthy.’

  ‘Did you really believe that?’ Lizzie asked incredulously.

  Betty looked up defiantly. ‘Well, there is no harm in trying, is there?’

  Lizzie shook her head slowly but said nothing.

  ‘Maybe it is the bairns I should have pulled through the rock – not myself. All the babies I have carried for the full nine months – and none have survived but a few days. It can’t be right!’

  They were all quiet for a while. It was getting dark and the cold was seeping up through the ground. Clouds were gathering below them, hiding the bay from view.

  Betty spoke first. ‘Please don’t tell Mr MacKenzie. He doesn’t look kindly on such things.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know . . .’ Lizzie said gravely. ‘I thought you looked rather becoming – I am sure a number of people would have enjoyed the view,’ and suddenly she could not hold it inside her any more. An ugly, snorting laugh that had been kept in for far too long burst out of her like an undammed stream.

  Betty stopped rubbing her thighs and looked up in fury. But presently her face changed and all of a sudden she was laughing too. She tore off a tuft of dry heather and threw it at Lizzie, who ducked away expertly. ‘Ooh, petrifying!’ she cooed.

  Anna, who was standing by, nervously chewing the end of her braid, could not quite see what was so funny, but she laughed all the same, relieved that the two grown-up women were no longer quarrelling.

  ‘This will teach you not to be lured by superstition and devilry,’ Lizzie giggled, mimicking her husband’s ministerial voice.

  The dreary afternoon was suddenly alight with their laughter, which echoed between the strange stones and rang across the valley. If anyone had been about in the clachan at that moment they would have wondered at the strange witchy sound that seemed to fall out of the frost-fed sky.

  To the minister, however, the superstitions that brewed all through that bitter winter seemed altogether more sinister.

  One old woman stopped coming to the kirk on the Sabbath, and when the minister asked her why she replied forthright that she must stay at home to protect her newly thatched roof from the ravens which had been picking at it, keeping her awake with nightmares and disturbing her work by day. The minister asked her why she didn’t ask God for assistance, as He would surely look after her roof if she prayed sincerely. When the old woman insisted that this was not so the minister grew irritated and asked how she could be so sure. The reply came without fear or hesitation: ‘I asked Him before and He did nothing about it then.’

  A couple of months later, three men who had been fowling on Stac an Armin caught a great auk and tied her up inside a cleit. Then an unexpected storm blew up, preventing the men from leaving the stack. The storm raged for three nights and three days and on the third morning the men agreed that the storm had been caused by the great auk, which must therefore be a witch. They pelted her with stones until all that was left of the rare bird was a bloody mess. Once they threw the carcass to the sea the storm subsided and the men could return to Hirta. Uneasy and starved minds invested such events with feverish significance, and the minister began to feel powerless and exposed.

  But a more serious inciden
t occurred the following spring while the harsh winter struggled to decide whether it ought to withdraw from the land that it had harried for so long. One evening, in early March, when the people of Village Bay had started to starve and were forced to boil seaweed for tea, old Finlay found a keg of whisky in a disused cleit. The golden liquid poured down his throat and heated his empty stomach until the ancestors spoke to him. In the cold, cold night he set out towards the manse to tell the dark minister to leave the ancestors alone. Oh yes, he would tell him a thing or two! He would show him not to move old Finlay from the house of his kin! Swinging the half-empty bottle in one hand like a wrecker’s lamp, he staggered through the sleeping village, but he skidded and slipped on the ice that had formed in the puddles between the houses and in doing so became disorientated. The frozen ground poured him down the slope towards the beach, which was still covered in snow. The shallow water by the beach was hard, but further out the ice thinned to a skin. Confused and enraged, Finlay walked on to the ice in the starless night. He heard a loud crack but plodded on, oblivious to any danger. When his feet went through the ice he could still stand as the water was not deep. But it was hard to walk on, and after a while he sat down next to the hole in the ice up to his knees in water. He was tired and worn out. The sudden cold had drained some of his anger; a wave of shame washed over him and he whimpered miserably. But soon his senses were benumbed and a great tiredness seeped into him. He rested his face in his hand against his knee and smiled as a strange warmth overcame him as the temperature dropped.

  This is how he was found the following morning – covered in a glistening layer of frost. The rising sun fired its beams at the perfect human sculpture in the ice. The St Kildans walked out the twenty feet and gathered around old Finlay. They watched in awe as a clear drop of thawing frost fell from one of his ears and trailed along the frozen cheek towards the blue shadows around the mouth and the core of the mystery. ‘It is a miracle!’ whispered MacKinnon’s wife, and crossed herself. A film of saliva, as thin as a hymen, had frozen across the dead man’s mouth. MacKinnon leaned over and looked closer at it. ‘I wonder . . .’ he said, and prodded at the thin sheet of ice with his finger. ‘I wonder if he managed to let his soul out in time.’ They all stood quietly and pondered this for a while. ‘Should we leave him here?’ somebody asked reverently. MacKinnon shook his head authoritatively. ‘No, no, we will cut him out and bring him home, and once he has thawed we will stretch him out for his grave.’ Some of the younger men went back to the village to fetch a couple of axes and a saw blade from the saw pit by the manse. No one could think of anything to say as they considered the end of the old man’s life. The young men returned with the tools and started cutting a perfect circle around the man in the ice. ‘He looks so handsome,’ remarked Mrs MacKinnon. ‘He was never handsome when he lived. God must have had a meaning with this act of mercy.’ The people gathered around her nodded in agreement. Once the ice had been cut through, the men took hold of Finlay and hoisted the whole sculpture out of the water. The cylinder of ice that had grown around his calves was about six inches thick. The white idol of the sitting man was carried respectfully on the shoulders of four men towards Finlay’s house. No one acknowledged the empty bottle that was left behind, embedded in the ice.

  Once inside the house, they put him down by the hearth. At first he would not stay put but eventually they managed to attach him to a stool with the help of one of the climbing ropes. Somebody lit a fire in the grate while somebody else placed an open bible in the hands which lay stiffly in his lap. This is beautiful, they agreed. This is a good way to go.

  At that moment the minister’s shadow filled the small room as he stooped across the tallan. ‘What on God’s earth is going on here?’ His voice was hoarse and his face was enraged. No one moved except for Mrs MacKinnon, who put a comforting hand on the dead man’s shoulder.

  MacKinnon cleared his throat. ‘Finlay’s a stiffy, sir – we have brought him home to his hearth.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, you don’t have to tell me what’s happened, man – I saw you from the manse.’ MacKenzie looked in fury at the strange effigy by the fire. ‘Now, all of you fools and heretics, get out before I do something I may regret!’ He started to usher them towards the tallan with his arms, but Mrs MacKinnon stayed put.

  ‘With respect, sir, you shall not call my kin such names, and nor shall you tell me to leave my uncle alone. No one can persuade me to let my own blood reach purgatory in a sitting position.’

  ‘MacKinnon, tell your woman to obey my orders,’ the minister shouted.

  ‘If she doesn’t obey you, sir, she sure as hell won’t obey me. Now, I think for all our sakes that you should go back home to the manse and we will call you when old Finlay here has stretched out properly and is ready for his grave.’

  The minister suddenly felt very tired. ‘You must not fight against me – the Lord sees you even when you are hiding in your hovels.’ He was overcome by an urge to cry. His eyes watered and his voice was unsteady as he pushed passed them to get out.

  7

  MARCH 1841 – EXPOSURE

  Early morning, with a damp fire in the hearth, all alone, in the mists of dawn. Loneliness was without hope, and the dread of it increased in the spring when desire returned. It was possible to hide the malaise in company, to look around and smile at well-known faces that offered no comfort. But at other times the empty skies closed around Lizzie and nothing entered her still life; the colours had faded. What sustains me? she wondered as she watched the sea through the mist, or perhaps it was a whisper of rain.

  Lizzie was pregnant again. For the last three years, since the twins Mary Anne and Margaret were born, she had been spared. But now, in the spring of 1841, it was time again. She thought about her children. She had six children alive. Eliza was already eight years old and James Bannatyne seven. And then there was Jane, Nigel and the twins. She did not want to think of the other three. The ones she let slip away. The two lost girls had been replaced, reincarnated in the new Jane and the new Margaret. But the boy Nathaniel, the gift of God that she had never seen, could not be replaced. He had lived silently by her side, reminding her of herself as she was before she got to the island. She remembered seeing the reflections of the stars in the sea one summer night and thinking that it was her lost children showing her the way in this new world. Since then she had been lost many times. I have ­forgotten the stars, she thought.

  She was not in control of her life, she did not master it, but she had come to terms with this. Her body had brought forth six healthy children, who had moored her to the island. She swayed gently around their anchors like a ship in a calm sea.

  Suddenly, as her thoughts ebbed and flowed, a distant memory surfaced in her mind. She felt the warmth of her husband as he put his arm around her while pointing towards the cradle with the mark of the MacLeods, the embossed twig of juniper. And then a voice: ‘We shall be happy here,’ – hearing the doubt in her own voice from so many years past.

  That was such a long time ago. In all her terror she had wanted to trust him. How she had adored him! Not with passion perhaps – for what had she known of passion then? – but with all the expectations of a young bride standing at the threshold of adulthood eager to meet life as a real woman. But since the loss of Nathaniel the feeling between Lizzie and Neil had changed subtly. He would withdraw from her and rarely look her in the eyes. Somehow she knew he resented her for losing his firstborn son: the son that should have been born to herald the beginning of his mission on the island. He had rarely touched her outside the bed. She had tried to bring him back, to keep him in the world of human touch, but he had been so occupied with his mission. And for years now she had not known him enough to love him. He had changed – his authority had altered and she could no longer make herself look up to him. She pitied him, and that was the saddest thing. Lately he had weakened terribly and she had come to fear for his mind.
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  Her thoughts would often stray to the stranger and that brief touch . . . but that too was long ago now and she refused to be drawn back to that mystery. What was the use?

  An extension had been added to the manse to house the growing family. Lizzie looked through the open door at her children asleep in bed. She could see Anna, a tall and lanky girl ready for marriage, in bed with the younger ones. Eliza and James were getting too old to share a bed; she would have to ask for another one. She sighed again and returned to the window in the kitchen. Eliza was a serious girl. She kept to herself and wrote secret poems and framed her words with garlands of purple and blue flowers. James on the other hand would still play with the local boys. His hair and skin stank of fulmar oil and worse.

  Suddenly she saw a figure amongst the boulders by the landing rock. The morning mist was still clinging to the ground and the figure seemed cloaked in smoke. Whoever it was seemed to be hiding from the view of the village. Lizzie looked again and recognised her first maid, Betty Scott. Betty was moving once more, and it was soon clear that she was making her way towards the feather store. The feather store was kept locked, but a recent storm had torn a hole in the wall that faced the bay, and this was where Betty was heading.

  In this place where men and women were quite separate Lizzie had learned to converse with the women. She still did not speak Gaelic, and they spoke little or no English. They communicated through small services and acts of kindness. But if she was honest she knew she was not close to anyone on the island. She was completely apart. The only person she had ever spoken to at any length was Betty. But even Betty belonged to another world, and their meetings would always be conducted on neutral ground. She smiled as she thought of the golden girl with the bouncy curls who had come to help her in the manse all those years ago.