Sun Dance (13 page)

Feet braced bare, a pitching helm, ‘The Raven’ skimmed

man and boat, bold mastery.

Moon torrent night is sea nymph’s tress, its spray, beguiling flesh,

a sailor’s dream, yet haunt of treachery.

Spindrift coiled in shrieking moan, a gale of devil’s glee,

the cage swung violently.

A sudden caw.

He knew the cry.

Swing the helm, full broadside wallow, sail crashed o’er the dipping deep,

a pitiless wave trough hollow,

Crack, crack, it split the mast, lee rail down, a sail lay bellied on the sea,

dragging stays, the cage awash.

‘Hack the mast, save the sail, to oar, to oar, head the swell, row boys row,

or it’s the gates of hell.’

Rope to waist, deep and green death’s choking cave he caught the cage,

held aloft the raven bird.

Amidst a tower of sea, an emerald plume, a burst of spray, a hidden rock,

the tip of Orkney.

Angled hard against the crests, bending oar, with young arm power,

a dragon reared to fight the sea.

Flashing waves, a headland drenched in spray, seas that drove them close,

‘pull my boys, for mighty Odin’s sake.’

Shoulders wide, one broken oar? A splintered wreck ashore,

tormented gale, a booming cliff.

Backwash surge, he threw the helm, born seaman’s touch put stern to sea,

and down the shores of wild old Orkney.

Cape Wrath abeam, the turning point, wide Minch ahead,

an island chain, plunder, loot and gain.

Behind the Cape, Sandvarten bay, in they slid beached safe,

beside four stravaiging galleys lay.

Night time fire weaved spark and star, ale- faced red told their raven’s wisdom call,

he’s fit for Odin’s shoulder in Valhalla’s hall.

Drinking horns, five would sail, the bird to be their guide, sword or strife,

its eye would find a home.

A roving wind brought terror down the Western Isles, slashing axe, blood stained sand,

the raven, silent in his cage.

Last headland, soft mist draped island hill, caped by morning cloud,

‘Hecla, Hecla, Hill of Shroud,’ the lusty steersman cried.

Caw, cawing, from the cage.

‘Loose its door,’ the raven flew, a circle thrice,

it vanished in the sun cast cloud.

Green fields beside the village smoke, a turquoise bay, beach sand sloped,

and open to the sky.

An island home,

A Viking home,

By the old crone’s eye.

The manuscript slipped out of my hand. The sun had dipped into the faintest pink horizon without my noticing. A challenge stared out of these pages. No rational consideration needed. No practical thoughts or doubts. Shadows of ill health vanished. A new life, heart pounding I came alive, could breathe, stretch body and mind. Abandon civilization, make the island my home. No hesitation, no question, the birth right of my people, make it home.

From the open front door the notes of fiddle music firmed my resolve. The music blended with the glory of approaching summer dim. Tunes soaked in the fabric of island life. Lively, then wistful, a shade melancholy, the old fingers of MacKenzie carried each mood at their tips. I went inside to watch the stroke of his bow. It touched the strings with the delicacy of a painter of sound. In his eyes, the music of his mind.

The lilt took me inside, “Go through,” Ella nodded to the sitting room door, “he often takes a tune to himself in an evening; it’s a good excuse.” I guessed what she meant. Eachan didn’t notice me until the down stroke of his bow drew the final notes of a beautiful plaintive air, “Come in, come in, sit over.” He must have noticed the sadness in my face. “That last tune was written by a woman who saw her husband and two sons drowned in a freak gale off Halasay Head. You see, the music was in her and her people before her. That tragedy brought it out, gave her comfort, and today that gives thoughts to many who hear it.”

Dram and bottle sat on the dresser, “Never mind the sad ones, have a wee toot yourself. I’ll give you something livelier.” He poured me a ‘fair’ dram. “Can you play anything yourself?”

I went over to the piano. Ella placed my glass on the lid and off Eachan set with a full down stroke. I guessed the cord. Into vamping, Key of G, did we not make it swing. Ella’s foot was tapping, she started clapping to the tempo, birling round the room. “You two’ll be playing in the Castleton next. I’ll get a dance, we’re needing out for a night.” We played on. Tunes I’d never heard, but they came to me as naturally as Eachan played them.

Eventually he put down the fiddle, “Well, Hector, you had the old piano bouncing off its casters. Great stuff boy. Slainte mhath!” Our glass raised to the drug of music. Though the evening remained warm, Ella had a peat fire in the grate and as we sat, I commented, “There’s quite a stack of peats at the end of the buildings. Where do you get the peat?”

“Oh, there’s peat banks out on the hill, not many folks bother with them now.” He pointed to the fire. “Those were cut last year and next year’s supply Ella and I cut last May. It’s a hefty job,”

After a lengthy pause, he took a sip at the glass, “When I was a boy the locals would ceilidh at this house. On nights when the moon was bright, the door would open, no knock, in they came. Sometimes they took a peat but always something that warmed you a little. It warmed a story just as well, a good one could last as long as folk would listen,” and laughing, “drams in between and the yarn would improve. Did you enjoy your great grandfather’s story? He had the gift with telling a story and could put it to the pen as well. That one would be true, it came down to him as I told you and that’s not the end of it.”

I could see Eachan differed little from those he’d just described. In the way of his old Highland stock, given a dram, there would be always a story waiting in the wings. I guessed he was as eager to tell more of Sandray’s history, just as I was anxious to hear it.

He savoured his dram, “No, that wasn’t the end of it. You see, in the days of that story, the folks on Sandray would be at the peat banks in May, same as ourselves. On the day I’m telling you about, a father and son were out at cutting the peat on the north side of the hill. The wind was in the northeast, that always gives a clear day and puts the mainland hills like a pencil line on the horizon, blue and sharp.”

His voice was low. I could tell as the story unfolded, it filled his mind’s eye. “The father was at the digging and the boy spreading them on the top of the bank, young and sharp-eyed for sure. Anyway, the boy looked up, ‘There’s five sails rounding Halasay head, slanted hard, drawing full!’ he called down. His father jumped out of the bank, startled, ‘Death’s on the wing,’ he groaned, ‘the raven soars,’ and shouting, ‘On you go, run, boy, run!’ Well, the loon was fleet of foot, down to the village by the bay. Some of its stones are still about. Anyway, when the boy caught his breath, he ran about the houses shouting his warning, ‘The heathens are on us, hurry for your lives, make for the Dun!’

Eachan warming to his story, caught up the glass at his elbow, “Now on the southwest side of Sandray and I’m talking long, long ago, there’s the stone walls of a prehistoric fort or a Dun, as we call it. The cliffs there are five hundred feet, sheer, and this Dun sits on a small stack of land, a patch of grass and nesting birds. The sea’s been eating away at its connection to Sandray since the Ice Age; there’s only a narrow neck of land left, no wider than this room,” he spread his arms, “and worse, its sides are straight into the ocean. Well now, the womenfolk gathered their children and the men took what tools or arms they had about them and hurried over to the Dun, single file, a dangerous, slippery path if ever there was.“

Fascinated by his face and actions, I raised my glass automatically.

“Wait till I tell you though, living amongst the island folk was a priest, a Holy man, perhaps from Ireland or Iona and he called after the fleeing families, ‘God speed you, save you, I alone will stay,’ and he stood before his tiny church watching the beach. Raven banners flying, the galleys drove hard onto the sand. Viking leapt over the side, waist deep, horned helmets, blonde hair flying, I tell you, Hector boy, the lust for killing was on them, flaring in their nostrils. Axe and swords were polished, just gleaming. This giant of man, a tall brute, broad as an ox, straight up the beach he came, running. The Holy man knelt at the door of his little shrine, making a prayer to the Virgin Mary, what else?

The big fellow reached him, stood over him. The priest, a poor creature, thin as a lath, held a wooden cross aloft with bony, skinny hands. Their eyes met. Norse blue and Celtic brown. They stood a moment, eyes locked. The priest spoke, not pleading, but gentle, ‘In the name of Jesus, the Saviour of all mankind, I forgive you.’ Up raised a massive arm, the axe crashed down, split the Holy man down the centre of his crown. There he lay, blood seeping into sand, puny hands gripping a fallen cross, all slippery, red and twitching.”

Dumbfounded at the strength of the tale and its telling, I sat rock still, the sickening crunch of blade on bone in my hearing.

Eachan stared up at the photo of his grandfather. “The Norseman, a split head, bleeding at his feet, slowly turned and looked down to the bay. Turquoise waters, sunlight over white sand. What had he destroyed? He stared a long time. I believe he saw beyond the sea, looked into an immeasurable abyss of his own making. The tide turned. In the immensity of the day, would it flow again? Would this clefted head step before him on the pathway of life?”

Stillness deepened into total abstraction. A Viking chief stood by the tide, blue eyes of horror stared into mine. Eventually Eachan spoke again, “The Atlantic boomed away below them, the women in the Dun gathered children about their skirts, wide eyed and frightened. The island men faced sword and axe. That neck of land was their only means of life. The surf, creaming on the rocks. The birds screaming. Either side, a five hundred foot chasm. Climbing, running, up the Sea Rovers came, berserk, howling, swords gleaming.

The Sandray men faced them. In moments, axes were crunching bone, swords slashing flesh. The narrow path was a track of blood. Alive or dying, the echo of falling screams took their bodies to smash on the black rocks below. No man was spared. The ocean was left to sting their wounds and bury the dead.”

Was he hearing and seeing the carnage? His voice was low and strong, “That evening as the first star rose in the southwest, the virgin star they called it, a weeping trail of women wound down to the empty village, empty except for their dead Holy man. The villagers gathered about him. A trickle of blood ran from the cloven head. An old woman of the village came forward and knelt by him and slowly she bent to suck its last drop. ‘All the sand that ever blew on this island is not fit to drink one drop of blood born to our Saviour Christ.’ You see, that humble act was a bridge. It was the union of their Celtic creed and the Cross of Calvary.’

Eachan looked out of the window. I followed his gaze. In the window frame shone the planet I had seen on the night I arrived. We both drank and turned back to the fire. “The evening chill settled in and soon the Viking had fires blazing. They slung their leather hogsheads of ale ashore from the galleys and filled their drinking horns. The ale washed away the blood and they eyed the bonnie women. That night in fear of their lives, they lay below the raven’s wing. Dark hills were on the sleeping sea and the great silver moon sailed on the bay. Sobbing women prayed in the words of their Holy man and strangely enough the drunken Viking listened.

Next morning on the flood tide four longboat sailed. One man turned. A huge blonde man, and he stood beside the open grave, bowed his head as they buried the clefted head. And far out on the hill the raven circled, free of its cage.”

I moved uneasily, the reality of a bygone horror invaded the room. I clung to the chair. The air chilled. Nothing moved, yet someone was in the room. Breathing? Afraid almost, I looked up to the face in the brown stained photo. Its eyes watched me. My hair rose. The story became a soft voice. His eyes didn’t leave me.

“That man’s longboat stayed beached. In fullness of the months his child was born. And he took the long-ship’s steer-board oar, the same larch he’d cut from his grandmother’s tree of death, and fashioned it into a cross. And he gave the island its Norse name, Sandray.”

The peats died away, “And that next spring, the raven reared its brood on a cliff at the back of the hill. The hill you’ve looked at since you came. The one he christened, Hecla, from the helm of his ship. Hecla, he cried, which means, Hill of the Shroud.”

Eachan picked up his fiddle.

A tune poured from its strings, from the depth of his story.

“It’ll be slack water in the Sound about now. There’s quite a run with the flood at half tide. It’s better crossing to Sandray just before the tide’s on the turn. You could take the boat yourself, if you wanted to. Ach, maybe best not, the old stone slip on the north side of the bay is easy seen, but there’s a reef off the headland. I’d better show you, seeing it’s your first time across.”

Eachan poured another cup of tea for us both. Ella had gone down the field, milk pail and stool on one arm, a bucket of cattle cake on the other. Sitting at the table, I could see her from the kitchen window. The cow stood quietly, her head in the bucket as Ella knelt with her head on the animal’s flank and milked away. Their other cattle peered over the fence. After a little I heard her in the dairy at the back of the house, rattling utensils. She’d be sieving the milk through a muslin cloth.

I admired the woman’s hardiness and perhaps more than anything, her kindliness. Placid and unruffled, in the fortnight I’d now been in their house, her voice was never raised. Moreover, though Gaelic was their customary tongue, they rarely used it if I were in their presence.

Days had slipped by; I marvelled at the lack of stress. My cough had declined to the odd bout. My limbs had hardened. Blisters on my hands bore evidence of the process. We’d finished the hay, I’d been to the village store on the back of Eachan’s tractor and bought suitable clothing. We’d pulled into the ‘Castleton “just a quick one,” he winked. It extended longer than his description. From counter conversations I learnt that the theme for the locals revolved round the activities which made crofting tick. Surprisingly they drew me in as though I were part of the system.