The Sea-wreck Stranger

by Anna Mackenzie

  We left Tarbet then. Pa looked for whatever work he could find, though it was never long before we’d wash up again at Leewood. Later, after Pa died, Marn and Bella took us in. Ty was still a toddler while I was raw and angry with my grief. Bella understood. She’d let me come to the bay as often as I liked because staring at the waves soothed me when nothing else could. It does still.

  On the hilltop above the bay I pause. The cloud-ragged disk of moon lights the downward turns of the path but I could find my way blindfold I’ve trod this track so often. Keeping a hand free to help negotiate the corner where the path jinks steeply, I rearrange my load.

  As well as the two eggs that Sophie left hidden in the nesting-box, I’ve a hunk of bread, a potato and a quarter-jug of Sal’s creamy milk. Milking is usually one of my favourite jobs but I was running too late tonight to allow myself the pleasure of leaning my head against old Sal’s flank while my mind roams off and away on whatever track it wants to follow.

  A cold breath of wind gusts in from the sea, setting me shivering. It’s late and the night’s chill. I had to wait till I was sure Tilda was asleep before I slipped out of our room and down the stairs. The kitchen door creaked a protest as I opened it, sending me skimming off across the yard, my heart pounding like that of a hunted rabbit. Once I reached the ditch I knew I was safely out of sight of the house but it’s still taken most of the journey to calm my nerves. It’s a half hour walk, there and back, to Skellap Bay, and the cave lies further still. Tiredness drags like a weight at my legs and eyelids.

  The cave is dark after the moon-washed bay and my eyes dart to the ledge, but there’s a faint glow from the embers of Ty’s fire to reassure me. Stumbling a little in my haste I hurry towards the rear of the cave, nose twitching at the faint hint of smoke tangled through the brine.

  At the foot of the ledge I stop, suddenly scared of what I might find. ‘Hello?’ I call in a loud whisper that rasps above the soft slap of the sea.

  There’s no answer; not that I expected one. I climb up onto the ledge and creep alongside the motionless body. I’m not yet ready to touch him. Stretching beyond his sea-grass bed I poke the fire into life, adding a few sticks of driftwood and watching them flare before I turn to study our stranger in the uncertain light. He hasn’t moved since we left him. Gathering my courage I touch his face but my fingers are too cold to tell me anything. Leaning close, I turn my cheek so that I might hear his breath.

  I think it’s there: there’s something anyway. ‘You’re closer to death than sleep,’ I say to break the silence, cheerless though the words sound.

  Lifting the man’s head, I tilt the pan I filled earlier to his mouth. The water dribbles against his cracked lips and runs off down his cheek.

  ‘All that water on the outside and you’re dry as a bone within,’ I tell him, rearranging my position so that I can force his mouth open with my thumb. This time I pour too fast because he gives a weak splutter and I think I might have choked him. I lift the pan away until I feel the change as his throat recognises the water, welcomes it, and begins to work at swallowing.

  I smile, triumphant. ‘So you’ve a little life left in you yet,’ I say. ‘Just you be stubborn now and hold onto it.’

  When he’s taken most of what’s left I set the water aside and try him with a tiny dribble of milk. He takes it, less sure but it goes down, and I lay his head back on the grass pillow Sophie made, thinking it’ll do him good for his belly to have just a hint of food. I’ve nursed enough lambs caught out in winter storms to know that you mustn’t give a starvling too much too soon.

  Next I turn to dealing with his arm. I’m no expert but nor do I need be to know that it’s pulled right out of the way it should be. I’ve had the thought of that arm in the back of my mind all evening, and I’ve been thinking through the time two winters back when Marn had me help with a young goat that had pulled its rear leg clear out of its hip joint in a snare. My clumsiness makes me glad that our visitor’s not awake to feel it when I pull and twist, but the shoulder finally rights itself with a noise that runs through me in an echoing shudder.

  I pack damp moss around the joint to keep the swelling down, then unfold my mother’s scarf. It’s one of the few things I have left of her, a beautiful square of rich greens and blues swirling into each other like ocean tides. She always wore it for best. When she died, Pa thought to bury her in it, but I begged him to let me keep it, and he did. I smooth the scarf out on my legs and fold it carefully in half. It’s one of the few things I could take without the risk of Tilda noticing. Gently as I can I tuck it behind our stranger’s shoulder and tie it into a sling, fixing it firm so that his arm can’t move when he tosses and turns. ‘Mama would be pleased to see it put to good use,’ I whisper, tears clotting my voice.

  After a few settling breaths I turn to his leg, unwinding the makeshift bandages I bound it with earlier. In the dim light it looks worse, ragged and raw. All I can hope to do is to keep the wound clean and free from infection. If I can’t – well, we may as well have left him to die on the beach because that’s how it’ll likely end if an infection takes hold. Even if it doesn’t, it’ll be a while before he’s walking easy again.

  Poking up the fire so that the driftwood flares and snickers, I study his face. His skin is smooth, unscarred and beardless, though dark stubble is starting to bristle along his jaw. The lines that etch out around his eyes place him closer to Marn’s age than mine. The face is strong, and even with his eyes closed and his lips almost bloodless I can see that he’s beautiful. It’s an odd feeling, the first time you notice such a thing in a man. Up to now I’ve never given beauty a thought, save for Sophie’s.

  Our stranger’s skin is burnished dark copper, and not just on arms and neck the way Marn is tanned, with a pale imprint of his shirt showing where the sun doesn’t touch his skin. His hair, too, is dark and reaches past his shoulders. I stretch a hand and shift a strand back from his face, then jump as he mutters a little, his breath warm on my fingers.

  It startles me back into action. ‘Well, I can’t afford to sit here all night,’ I tell him, my voice sounding foreign and frothy in my ears. ‘And you need to keep warm,’ I add. His clothes are stiff with salt but mostly dry, so I pull his vest and the strange jersey over his head, folding the empty sleeve across his chest.

  ‘We’ll have to find a name for you,’ I suggest, starting to feel easier with my one-sided conversation, ‘unless maybe you’d like to tell me what you’re called?’

  The last thing I expect is an answer but as I lower the man’s head back onto the grass bed his lips suddenly move and a sound, part word, part groan, slips out into the cave.

  I’m startled into silence, wondering if maybe a part of him somehow heard my question. He moans again and I shake my head in doubt. ‘What are you telling me?’ I ask. ‘What’s your name, sea-stranger?’

  ‘Da,’ the man groans.

  ‘Dan?’ I say, doubtful. ‘Davie?’

  The man mutters a few words I can’t make out. I shake my head. ‘I’m not sure what you’re saying,’ I tell him. This time there’s no response. I shrug. ‘Sleep then,’ I say, tucking the blanket tight around him. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough for talking.’

  Chapter 7

  By mid-morning I know that Tilda isn’t going to allow me a shred of space in the day. Each time I finish a task she has another lined up and waiting, but I make the most of any opportunities she gives me, slipping a few nuts and a wizened apple into my pocket when she sets me to sorting through the last of our winter stores and scouring the pantry shelves. But more than food, our stranger needs water. A few swallows surely aren’t enough to keep him alive for long.

  ‘Sophie!’ I call quietly, when at last I see a chance to talk away from Tilda’s ears.

  Sophie is still reluctant to have anything to do with our stranger. This morning I told her that I thought his name was Davie. I hoped it would soften her towards him, but she looks at me doubtful when I ask her to visit him.<
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  ‘Tilda’s not about to let me away,’ I say, resting a hand on the smooth handle of the pump, ‘but she’ll not miss you for half an hour. He’ll need water, and the fire’ll need tending.’

  Sophie tilts her head, considering.

  ‘If Tilda asks where you are, I’ll tell her you’ve gone to gather chickweed for the hens,’ I hurry on. ‘You might need to open his mouth a little with your thumb, like the first time you get the teat into a lamb. Just half a cup, then maybe a few sips of milk, if he’ll take it.’

  As if the words have summoned her, Tilda’s reedy voice snakes across the yard. ‘The water won’t pump itself any more than shirking will get it done. And Sophie, since you’ve time to spare for idle chat, there’s a basket of mending you can start on.’

  I bend to lift the bucket I’ve filled and walk a few steps towards the house before I glance again at Sophie, the plea sharp in my eyes. Sophie looks away. ‘After lunch,’ she says to my waiting, and I cast her a quick smile before turning back to my scrubbing with an easier heart.

  Next morning Tilda wakes with a headache. Maybe it was my ill-wishing that brought it on.

  ‘Take a dozen eggs to Merryn,’ she commands, ‘and bring back some of her tonic. A full bottle – don’t let her scrimp on the measure.’ Tilda doesn’t limit her meanness of mind to us children, she has plenty to spare for everyone.

  ‘And no loitering,’ she adds.

  I nod. Merryn’s farm is set to the sun in a fold of hills beyond the headland, the road circling south and east by Barritts’ and Shehans’ farms before it curves again towards Merryn’s and the sea. You can cut half an hour off the journey by following the footpath below Cullin Hill, and even more if you cross Skellap Bay and take the old fishermen’s path that climbs straight up the cliff.

  As far as I know, no one uses the cliff path but me. It was cut into the rock further back than memory, and it’s a long time, too, since any work was done to keep it safe. Pa told me it was made to give the fisherfolk who lived on the headland ready access to the bay, but the houses that once stood in a hollow near the western cliffs are now little more than a tumble of fallen stones and grassed ruins, while the cliff path has been left so many years untended that you need a steady heart to risk it. I don’t go that way often; not unless I need to get quickly to Merryn’s, or lately so I can avoid passing Ton Barritt’s farm, Cotterburn, for other reasons altogether.

  I don’t like a single one of the Barritts, least of all their mean-eyed son, Jed, who last summer got me on my own in the woodshed, though I showed him how I felt about what he tried to do. Marn heard back from Elsie Barritt that I’d given her son a black eye, and he beat me for it, saying it wasn’t fitting for a girl to be fighting. I’ve an idea, though, that he doesn’t much care for Elsie Barritt, and he didn’t beat me hard.

  ‘Do you plan to do nothing but stand there gawping?’ Tilda demands tetchily, tossing her head against the pillows where she’s propped like an invalid. Her headaches mostly last a day or two, keeping her in her room with the curtains drawn and an easier feel about the place for her absence. I’ve often had cause to bless those headaches, and this time more than most.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  Tilda sniffs. ‘And happy enough to get a lick of honey for your trouble, I don’t doubt,’ she grumbles. ‘That woman spoils you.’

  Since her husband died six years ago, Merryn has scraped a living from her orchard and gardens, and from the cordials and tonics she mixes, often sweetened, like her barley-cakes, with honey from her hives. Merryn is the only person I know who can convince the bees to swarm, and there’re some in the village who resent her for it. Some, too, who mutter behind their hands at how she comes by such a talent. Merryn’s secret is likely nothing more than that the bees like her just as much as I do. If she has any other, she’s wise enough to keep it her own.

  And if it’s true she spoils me, I think, as I turn my back on Tilda, then she’s alone in it. Part of Tilda’s ill-temper is because it’s Merryn she has to turn to. There’s an enmity between them that I’ve never understood and, though it’s Tilda alone who makes snide remarks, I don’t doubt the dislike is mutual.

  I take the road as far as the junction then dart back like a hare around the edge of the fallow field, keeping to ditch and hedgerow wherever I can. The ground beneath my feet is hard, and I know that Marn will soon be out with the plough, readying the soil for planting: oats and barley in the top fields; wheat and potatoes below the house. Winter’s end marks the start of a busy time for the farms that stretch like a tattered carpet across the island – and not only for the farms. Come planting and harvest plenty of townsfolk hire themselves out to the big landholders like Colm, while others sit tight through the winter months waiting for the summer trade that comes of money in the farmers’ pockets – again like Colm. He has his finger in every pie.

  Yet it’s the truth that everyone on Dunnett depends on the land to survive. It’s often said – especially around harvest – that farming is the heart of our island. Pa, when he heard that first from Marn, bristled up like a dog defending its bone, saying that maybe it was true but that once there was blood and breath as well, and that was in the salt sea and the ocean wind. I thought they’d fall out over it, but Bella had rested a hand on each man’s shoulder and turned the talk to other things.

  The blood and breath Pa spoke of is strong in my nose as I duck inside the cave, jumping a mound of seaweed left stranded by the tide.

  On the ledge our sea-stranger has turned so that he has his back to me. ‘Davie,’ I call quietly, not wanting to startle him if he should chance to be awake. There’s no answer so I place my hand on his shoulder and lean over to see his face. His hand suddenly shoots out and grips hard around my wrist while his face is sharp and twisted.

  ‘Leave it!’ he spits. ‘Are you trying to sink us?’

  He’s panting and my own breath is spiced with fear. ‘Davie!’ I cry, trying to twist my arm from his grip. ‘It’s Ness. Ness! I’ve been looking after you!’

  ‘I said they were fools to take you on!’ he cries. ‘You’ll answer for this!’

  His fingers crush my wrist so that I feel the bones grate. My voice rises to a shriek. ‘Stop!’

  His eyes are hot and hard. He’s not here, I realise, dim through the pain. In his mind he’s somewhere else. I’m someone else.

  My arm feels like to break. I kick out, hard, aiming for his injured leg. As my boot connects he cries out, falling back, and I’m free, my breath coming in gasps as if I’ve been running, my arm throbbing as though a hot iron’s been laid around it. When my vision clears I find I’m half lying beside him, holding my wrist with tears streaking down my face. Davie’s lips are white and his breathing is heavy. There’s no more anger in him.

  ‘It’s Ness,’ I say when I find my voice. ‘You were inside a dream.’

  Pain scythes up my arm as I push myself upright and I wonder if I fought back too late and the bones are broken anyway, but I think it might be worse yet if they were. Ignoring Davie I climb down from the ledge and go to bathe my arm in the sea. The cold water soothes me but the redness rising beneath my skin will turn to dark bruising before the day’s end.

  Davie’s eyes are still closed when I return to the cave. I hesitate, but he’s slipped out of consciousness, his demons at rest. With my good arm I raise his head but my other wrist is too sore to hold the saucepan firm and he gets less water than he otherwise might.

  Soaking a corner of my skirt I use it to dampen his brow, trying to settle the heat that rises from his skin.

  I know what that heat means. Beneath the bandage, the wound on his leg is wrapped in angry red. My stomach turns as I catch the smell and a memory I don’t want reaches up to snatch at me, sending me back to Bella’s bedside as she burned up with fever. The cut on her arm, that had at first looked harmless, had begun to blacken and fester, lines of red running like the troops of an invading army to
her armpit and fingers.

  A wave of grief tumbles through me as I realise that this stranger is likely to be just another of the people I’ve lost, following along after Mama, Pa and Bella. I don’t know him, but I wanted to. I wanted to save him, not just from the sea and the islanders, but from whatever it is that’s brought him here to us like this.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, my arm held tight against my chest, eyes fixed on Davie’s wound as I stare into the past.

  ‘Who are you?’

  The question creeps quiet into my ears. I should be wary but when I look up his eyes are clear.

  ‘Ness,’ I say. ‘I’m Ness.’

  ‘I don’t know you.’ His voice is low and carries his pain, together with a strange twist in the way the words sound.

  ‘We found you half-drowned and brought you here.’ I hope he’ll understand that we’re trying to help him, though it might not seem so in this unwelcoming place.

  Davie tries to lift his strapped arm and winces, his face paling.

  ‘You’ve damaged your shoulder and you’ve a gash on your leg,’ I tell him. ‘There’s water –’ His eyes flicker and I lift the half full pan to his lips, easing his head up while he gulps, greedy and fast, though it makes my wrist ache to do it.

  When he’s done drinking he closes his eyes. I can’t tell whether he’s still conscious. ‘We need to get some food in you,’ I say.

  He doesn’t answer. I take an egg from my basket and stir it into the quarter jar of milk Sophie left behind, then I feed the mixture to him in tiny sips and swallows.

  ‘You saved my life,’ he says quietly, once he’s taken it all. His words are part statement, part question. I shrug. Though it’s true, I find myself reluctant to acknowledge it. Anger simmers within me like water in a pot that’s near to boiling. If we’d been able to help him properly, the wound on his leg might not have festered and his statement would stand more chance of holding good a week or more from now.