by Neil M. Gunn
“What would you do if he came up beside your boat?” Finn asked.
“I would spit in his eye,” said Donnie, “and that would blind him.”
They laughed, feeling they could master the whale all right.
“What would you do?” asked Donnie.
“I’d shove the oar down his throat,” said Finn.
Something scurried from their feet and they leapt. It could only have been a rabbit. But Donnie, to cover the scare they got, said it might have been a hare. A rabbit would have more sense than come near them! Their hearts were beating from the silly fright. But it was not so silly—if it was a hare.
“You heard about Dave?” Donnie asked.
“What?” asked Finn.
“He was going to sea—when he saw Margad on the path in front of him. He turned back home and said he wasn’t feeling very well. The boat went to sea without him.”
“I heard that,” said Finn.
Everyone knew that Margad was a witch. And everyone knew that a witch could turn herself into a hare. They glanced around and thought they might as well have a look at what was going on in old Lachlan’s house, which they could now see.
Lachlan’s house was a famous gathering-place—the real ceilidh-house—before Finn was born. Lachlan himself was nearly eighty now and his memory as good as ever, though the old fiddle-bow had grown husky, and indeed was used very rarely and only when a drop of whisky inspired him to forget the fulminations of such as Sandy Ware, who denounced the violin as the devil’s instrument. Above all, Lachlan was the great story-teller. You could listen to him for hours, and listen to him again the next night. He had a niece, Anna, living with him. She was a quick-witted, pleasant woman of thirty, and the girls called to see her and the young men called to see Lachlan.
As they approached the house, they heard singing. Involuntarily, Finn paused, and the rhythm went all through the night, over the land, and quivered in his heart.
“Come on!” cried Donnie, quickening his steps.
Finn followed. But when they were come by the house and Anna’s clear voice rose alone in the next verse, Finn paused.
“Come on,” said Donnie.
“No, I think I’ll go home,” said Finn. “It’s getting late.”
“Come on in, man.”
“No. You go. They’re all alone at home. Good night.” He turned away.
Donnie looked after him, but he knew Finn’s domestic difficulties.
When he got round the house Finn paused again to listen. The rhythm of the song was more intimate to him than his own face. With lips apart, he held his breath. When all the voices surged together, rising, his body quivered as if sluiced in chill water.
Anna’s voice had made him think of his own mother.
Life in the dim night, under the stars, over the land, the old, old land, the curved thatch, the still birch trees, the surge of the singing, rising as smoke rises from a fire, spreading out over the immemorial land, under the dying moon.
He walked away.
By the time he came to the top of the wood, the cool quiver of the song had passed from his cheeks, and the dark things of the night were about him again. Not that he was exactly frightened of a hare or of any dark thing, but it was as well to be wary, so that the heart wouldn’t jump too quickly into the mouth. Down along the top of the wood was the place where he had killed God’s fool. Beyond, he caught a moonlit glimmer of the pool that lay to the west of the House of Peace. They said it was a monk, with a cloak and cowl, who haunted the ruins. There was a story which told that long, long ago a man with the second sight saw the monk in broad daylight standing in front of a little round house, like a large bee-skep, and saw going towards him a Viking with a battle-axe. The monk stood quietly and the Viking swung the battle-axe and split his head.
Finn was not frightened of the House of Peace in the daylight. To tell the truth, he rather liked being there then, though the stillness of the lichened stones would sometimes make one wonder. But the darkness was a different matter. What was hidden in the dark was the marrow that was hidden in the bone.
Other boys were more frightened than he was Donnie would not go down past this wood in the dark though you paid him. Many men, too—like Daun—were frightened of the dark. He had not heard all the stories that they had heard, because he had had to stay at home, stories about a ball of fire hurtling over the ruined broch; of music coming through Knocshee, the fairy hill; of the headless horseman … he had just heard bits from Donnie. Kirsty told only true things about folk she knew when she was young in Kildonan. His mother…. There was the glitter of the burn below him. It was his own burn, and the sight of it quickened his heart. He heard its voice—but it had more than one voice now, quiet-speaking voices, low down in the dark hollow. He had to cut through the voices, right through them, and then he was up the slopes—not running (never run)—and into the house. A long story told by his mother about an underground passage, a passage that went right under the Helmsdale river, flashed through his mind, not in thought nor in memory, but in sheer vision. The place was called “The Maidens’ Field”, and the subterranean passage could be seen to this day—a mile or so below Suisgill. It was called “The Maidens’ Field” because of the two girls who followed the two calves, when, playing and skipping, they suddenly ran into the passage. The girls followed, and followed, in the dark, until one of them and both the calves disappeared, leaving the other girl all alone. She groped along in mortal terror, until she could get no farther. She now stood in a low chamber—and overhead heard voices. She pressed wildly against a flat stone in the roof, screaming for help, and the stone moved. This stone was the hearthstone of a house in Learabail, and when it moved under them the family ran out yelling with terror, for they thought it was the Devil himself coming up. But when they plucked up courage to come back, and found the girl, then they knew what had happened. For the mother of the girl who was lost was a witch who had pledged her daughter to the Devil, and the calves …
Down through the dimness beyond the burn Finn saw a tall, dark figure come silently. His flesh ran together and his knees trembled. A curlew’s cry pierced the air, and fell away forlornly towards the House of Peace. Finn’s skin went cold as rime. The figure came to the edge of the burn, crossed it, disappeared, and through æons of time Finn waited—until it reappeared, first the dark head against the bright water, then the dark body, coming towards him. He sank down through his knees. The figure came on, and just before the great cry of terror got past his throat, he saw it was Roddie. And suddenly he could not speak, could not move, and when Roddie had passed, he lay for a little in the trance of his own horror.
Crossing the stepping-stones, he slipped and the shock of the cold water helped to steady his trembling muscles. When he got to the low end of the house, he leaned against the wall until he began to shiver from genuine coldness. He knew Kirsty would be in bed, because she had had a fevered chill a month or so ago and had never quite thrown off its effects.
Catrine looked up at him as he entered, the firelight on her face. Her look steadied; her eyes widened. She got up. “What’s wrong, Finn?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“Nothing,” he said with a touch of impatience. Why did she have to notice anything? He did not want to feel angry with her.
And now she was silent! “I slipped,” he explained casually, without looking at her, “crossing the burn, and wet my feet.”
“Sit here.” She went and put some milk in a pan and began to warm it, and handed him a towel so that he could rub his legs.
“Were you over at Meg’s?” she asked in a conversational voice.
“Yes,” he answered, rubbing his feet and his toes slowly with concentration.
“Were there many there?”
“A good few.”
She poured him a bowl of milk, then sat down and went on with her knitting. He drank it slowly, to fill in the long, silent minutes. There was a vag
ue heavy mood upon him that he could not break. More and more this sort of mood seemed to be deepening between his mother and himself.
He would have liked to ask if there had been anybody in, but he could not. His mother seemed calm and a little sad, as if nobody had been near her.
He had thought Roddie would have been at Meg’s.
It would be more comfortable in bed. “I think I’ll go to bed,” he said in an easy voice. At once she stirred, as if she might break in on him because his voice had been natural, but he gave her his shoulder as he went across to his bed.
Once in between the blankets, he turned his face to the wall. He did not want to see her sit by the fire or smoor the peats.
When the room was in darkness and his mother in bed, he felt more at ease. To-morrow he would spend all day at the flail in the barn, threshing oats. It was heavy work. He liked winnowing in a fine wind.
He would not quite let the question as to where Roddie had been touch his mind.
The last vision he had was of Una’s eyes. Eyebrows and eyes and face formed in the dark, out of the dark.
Strange the difference between Meg’s house with George’s “Money, money”, and old Lachlan’s house with the singing voices….
His mother did not sound restless. He fell asleep.
CHAPTER X
THE COMING OF THE PLAGUE
Before Finn was two years older he was at sea. It came about in a tragic manner, for his land was visited by what people called the plague, but which was, in reality, a form of cholera. Never had such a disease been amongst them before, and when the first rumours of it reached Dunster folk spoke of it in low voices. Their dread of it went beyond reason. They apprehended it in the imagination, and feared the evil of it more than they feared death, as though its uncleanness, its taint, its corruption, would not only destroy and rot the body but pursue the living quick beyond the grave itself. Their instinct of recoil was an instinct of pure horror.
Sandy Ware said it was God’s judgement upon them for their sins, for the carnal pleasure that turned its worldly face from the Almighty to make merry with Mammon. “When the silver herring were swimming into your nets God was forgotten. With money in your hands, you danced. The great ships came and took your barrels away. Away to the ends of the earth. The ends of the earth are very far away. But all ends are under God’s hand. The ships came back. The ships brought more money for merry-making. Yes! But what have the ships brought now? The flapping of the wings of the black bird of corruption and death! I cry unto you to repent while yet there is time….”
But a fisherman who had been visiting his wife’s relations in the country near Wick came home and, three days after, fell sick and started retching. When his bowels ran nothing but a watery fluid like whey, the folk knew the plague had come to Dunster.
Finn had been friendly with this young seaman, for his older brother, Don, had until last year been one of Roddie’s crew. In fact, this seaman was the David who, with Duncan, had sprinted behind Mr. Hendry’s gig when it had brought Roddie home from the storm he had survived off Helmsdale.
He was now a man of twenty-four, six months married, and his young wife, hearing that her mother was ill and touched a little by homesickness, had prepared to make the journey on foot, for it was the beginning of the herring season. But as her husband judged she was not in a fit condition to do so, he had gone himself.
When he walked into the house and found the mother alone, in bed, her face incredibly emaciated and her sunken eyes half-closed, he was struck dumb. The atmosphere was sour and bitter and got him in the throat. He had called a greeting on entering, and now he saw the eyes slowly focusing upon him. He went to the bedside and asked, “What’s wrong?” There was a movement of the hands, repelling him, shoving him away. Her voice was low, a whispered hoarseness he could not understand. Then, after a gasping sob, she lay exhausted. He listened for someone in the house. There was no sound. Into the appalled emptiness of his mind, a high-pitched voice cried his name from outside.
He went out and there was Nan, his wife’s elder sister, wringing her hands, her face pale as chalk, some twenty yards from him up the slight slope. Beyond, were one or two others he knew. He walked towards her. She backed away, crying, “David, go home! Go home at once!”
He realized now that he had been in the presence of a woman dying of the plague. He stood quite still, but perhaps because he had already been in the presence, there moved in his mind a deep revulsion against thus leaving a helpless woman to die alone.
“Is no one looking after her?” he shouted.
“We can do no more. She drove us out.” Nan wrung her apron. She was in terrible distress. “I am frightened for the bairns.” She had three young children, the youngest not yet weaned.
“But someone must look after her.”
“No more can be done.” Her voice rose to a scream. Her body writhed in a demented way.
“It’s all right,” said David, nodding and half-turning his back. She ran away, crying loudly and pitifully, as if she could not bear to stand still any longer.
David was in a desperate position. He could not just walk home straight away, arriving in the dark early hours with this dreadful news, all the more dreadful because indecisive. He would just have to tramp back here again for the final news.
The sour, diarrhœtic smell was still in his throat. He took out his snuff-box and dosed himself so heavily that, seasoned as he was, he sneezed. He rasped and spat. Those behind heard him.
He was fond of his wife’s mother. She had always had such good sense, and been so cheerful, and helped him when he was tongue-tied. Her husband had died when the third child had been born, and she had kept everything going herself. All three were married, and now she would die alone—to save them. That was the kind she was, by God, thought David. He wished Rob, her son, were here. Nan had always been of the teasing kind, and often enough had angered him.
Suddenly, not wanting anyone to come and speak to him again, he walked down into the byre. The cattle were gone. They, too, had been removed! He felt the loneliness as he had felt it in the house, seeping about himself and the dying woman, cutting them off. A dumb anger began to smoulder in him. He knew that eyes were watching the house, wary, frightened eyes, inimical to him, herding him in with the dying woman in the doomed house.
He went out and saw a boy of about fourteen standing at a little distance with a pitcher and something wrapped in a white cloth. The boy laid the pitcher and the white cloth on the ground, and cried, “This is food for you.” Then he turned and ran up the slope towards the house to which Nan had retreated.
David walked slowly to the food, and when he came to it a great rage seized him and he had all he could do to stop his right foot from kicking pitcher and parcel over the green. He saw the furtive heads without looking at them. When the blood-flush had passed from his eyes, he stooped, lifted the pitcher of milk with one hand and the oaten bannocks that slithered inside the cloth with the other, and strode down to the cottage. He would make food for his mother-in-law.
As he entered at the door, the smell got him again. She was lying on her back perfectly still, her face livid, her half-closed eyes showing only the whites. The words died in his throat. Without knowing quite what he was doing he laid pitcher and bread on the table by the head of the bed and took a step towards her. “Mrs. Keith,” he said. She did not move. “Mrs. Keith!”
He had never seen a dead person with open eyes. He wanted to touch her brow to see if she was cold, but could not. His eyes glanced about for something with which to poke the body. There was the long black tongs. God, he did not know what to do. “Mrs. Keith!” Then in an instant, his vision heightened by his tense emotion, he saw the body stiff as dark clay, with no breath, no last vestige of movement, left in it. Before him lay the stillness of death.
From big, gulping breaths his mouth stuck in a dry slime that had the taste of the evil smell in the house. His hand shook as he lifted the pitcher from the ta
ble, and from his lips the milk dribbled on to his breast. As he placed the pitcher back on the table he saw there were two pitchers. The other was the one he had brought in. He wiped the milk from his breast. He was trembling all over.
At the door he pulled himself up, and breathed the sweet air that was blowing upon it, for he had already noticed that folk were keeping to windward. He went out and walked deliberately towards the house where Nan was. Twenty yards from it he paused and shouted loudly, “She’s dead!” Then he turned on his heel and headed for home.
A lot of his anger and rage had been put into that last shout, and the thought of this was some satisfaction to him for quite a long way. In the gloaming he came to a pool in a little stream on a lonely part of the moor, and swiftly threw off all his clothes, scattering them around him on the heather. The water had an icy chill and he turned over and twisted in it, twice keeping his head under for as long as he could. From the bottom, he clawed fistfuls of sand and fine gravel and rubbed chest and arms and head, liking it the better the more it hurt. Naked, he jumped about on the moor until in a wild moment his feet fell into the steps of the Highland fling and he gave a throaty roaring laugh of challenge. His clothes he shook and flailed against the heather, like a madman knocking dust out of them. Dressed and shivering, he set off at a rapid pace, often running long stretches at a time.
Just after midnight, he came down on his own home in the heavy dark. The window was up on the edge of the thatch, above his head, for the house was an old one with extremely thick walls. Because of the shaft of light, he knew Ina was not in bed. All was silence. There was no one in but herself. He cleared his throat and passed on to the door, which he pushed open, at the same time crying her name. “Ina. Come here.”