Peter May - Entry Island

It quickly became clear that there was a problem. I led the children to the stall across the way so that they couldn’t see, although they could still hear well enough. But even in the semi-dark I could read the body language of the women gathered around the young widow. And their silent panic took me back to that day many years before when Annag and I crouched by the chicken wire at the door to the fire room of our blackhouse when my mother gave birth.

I left the children in the care of a family in the neighbouring stall and went to see for myself. At first the older women pushed me away. This was no place for a man, they said. But I forced my way through, bracing myself against the upright to see poor Catrìona Macdonald lying on her back with her legs held apart. The baby was coming out the wrong way, just as Murdag had done.

There was no experienced midwife on board, and the woman trying to help release the baby was hopelessly out of her depth. I closed my eyes and saw clearly through the smoke of the fire room how the midwife in Baile Mhanais had turned the baby. And when I opened them again it was even clearer to me that if I did not do something this child was going to die.

I pushed the woman out of the way, and I heard the others gasp their surprise as I took her place. I braced my knees against the side of the stall to steady myself against the yaw of the ship so that I could take a hold of the baby. I had seen it done. I knew I could do it.

It was coming arse first, arms and legs still inside. A little girl. I pictured what I had seen the midwife do, freeing the baby’s legs one by one, then gently turning and twisting to release first one arm, then the other. The mother’s screams very nearly unnerved me. As with my own mother there was a terrible amount of blood, and my confidence started to desert me. The whole body was free now, but the head still trapped inside. Suffocating. The baby was drowning in blood and fluid.

I could feel the life of the child in my hands ebbing away, my own sweat almost blinding me. I tried to remember what it was the midwife had done to free the head, fighting hard to concentrate on what I had seen that day. I recalled how she had felt for the head through my mother’s belly. And then pushed down and forward with the palm of her hand.

The women were screaming at me to let go, but I was convinced now that I was the only one who could save the life of this little girl.

My hand slid over the blood on Catrìona’s belly, and I felt the head of the baby there, round and hard. I supported the child in the crook of my arm, and pushed down hard, yelling ‘Push!’ as I did. The head came out so unexpectedly that I staggered and almost fell. I felt the hands of many women grab and steady me. And I smacked that baby’s bottom so hard, just as I had seen the midwife do to Murdag.

For a moment, there was nothing. Then a cough and a cry, and I cut through the umbilical with my knife to release the baby into my hands. And there she was, this tiny creature covered in blood and mucus, held to my chest, eyes opening for the first time.

I was very nearly overwhelmed by the emotion of cradling this new life in my arms.

The women gathered around with sheets to try to stop Catrìona’s bleeding. But Catrìona was oblivious to whatever pain or peril she might be in. She looked up at me in the half-dark with shining eyes and held out trembling hands for her baby girl. Someone took her from me and wrapped her in a blanket, then handed the child to her mother. Catrìona held her to her breast as if she were the most precious thing on earth. And in that moment, to her mother, I suppose she was.

Catrìona looked from her baby to me, and in a voice barely audible above the storm and the creak of the ship, she whispered, ‘Thank you.’

We have been at sea for forty-five days now. One of my fellow cooks is dead, the other is sick, and I am doing what I can to feed the remaining passengers. There has been no meat for weeks, the grain is done, and all that remain are a few shrivelled vegetables with which I am doing my best to make a thin soup to go round. Our water, disgusting though it has been throughout, is all but exhausted, too. If we don’t succumb to the sickness we will die from starvation.

More and more passengers have come down with the malady that took John Angus Macdonald. And now Catrìona is showing symptoms of it, too.

She has not been well since the birth of her baby, and is deteriorating fast. I spend most evenings comforting her and keeping the children occupied. The baby would have died I am sure had a woman a few stalls away not still been nursing, so I do my best to see that the Macdonalds and the nursing woman get enough food to survive.

Ciorstaidh is a distant memory now. But I know that for the rest of my days I will always regret the moment that I lost her on the quay.

Tonight I had yet another burden of responsibility placed upon my shoulders. Catrìona knows she is going to die. How could she not? I had just wrapped up her children in a blanket and stroked their heads until they fell asleep. I turned to find her watching me with big, sad eyes. She reached out to grasp my wrist and whispered, ‘My grandmother always told me that if you save a life you are responsible for it.’ She coughed mucus and sputum into her sheet and took a moment to collect herself. ‘When I’m gone, my baby is yours to care for. My children, too. Do what you can, Sime. There’s no one else.’

I am only eighteen years old. But how could I say no?

Yesterday, we slid three more bodies over the rail. All formalities have been dispensed with by now, although I always whisper Calum’s farewell to my father. Even if no one else hears it, I am sure that God is listening.

The weather has improved these last days, and we have been making better speed. I lingered on deck for a while after the burials, and I heard someone shout ‘Land!’ With others, I ran to the rail on the port side and strained to see beyond the swell of the sea. And there in the distance I saw a small group of islands breaking the horizon. A crewman at my shoulder said, ‘Thank God for that. We’ll arrive tomorrow or the day after.’

I felt such a sense of relief I wanted to shout out loud and punch the air. I wanted to be there now. I just wanted all this to end. It is strange how it is possible to hold yourself together when you know there is still a distance to go. But as soon as the end is in sight, somehow all your resolve vanishes and you can barely stagger to the finish.

However, my happiness was short-lived. The crewman said, ‘Don’t get yourself all worked up, son. They’ll not let us through to Quebec City just yet. We’ll be stopped at Grosse Île first. And if you thought this was bad...’ His voice tailed away.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What’s Grosse Île?’

‘It’s hell on earth, son. An island in the St Lawrence river, just a few miles downstream from the city. We’ll be held in quarantine there. The sick will be treated, and probably die. And the rest of us will be held until they’re sure we’re not sick. Only then will they let us go on.’

I could have wept.

It seemed extraordinary to see land on both horizons when we sailed into the mouth of the St Lawrence earlier today. But the opposing banks of it are so distant that they barely blur the line between water and sky. I had no idea a river could be this big.

Everyone who could, crowded on deck to watch our progress upriver, banks drawing in on either side. This was the great continent of North America.

But of the 269 passengers who left Glasgow in steerage, twenty-nine are dead and only 240 of us remain.

It was almost dusk when we sailed past a string of dark islands that loomed out of the stream of the river, to drop anchor finally at Grosse Île. There were eight or ten other tall ships anchored there in the bay, all flying the yellow jack of quarantine. It seems that we have brought all our diseases with us to this new world.