Peter May - The Blackhouse

And then he felt it. The cold bite of iron, the movement of the ring as his fingers closed desperately around it, and held. And held. Almost dislocating his shoulder as the sea pulled and jerked, before finally, reluctantly letting go. For a moment he lay still, clutching the mooring ring, washed up on the rock like a beached sea creature. And then he scrambled for a foothold, and then a handhold, and the strength to propel himself upwards before the sea returned to reclaim him. He could sense it snapping at his heels as he found the ledge of rock on which Angel had built a fire of peats and made them tea on the day they landed there eighteen years before. He’d made it. He was on the rock, safe from the sea. And all that it could do now was spit its anger in his face.

He became aware for the first time that the rain had stopped, and huge tears in a black sky overhead released sudden and unexpected shards of moonlight to strike down across the island. He saw the Purple Isle in a pool of dazzling silver light motoring back out into the safety of the bay, still dipping and yawing on a sea furious at her complicity in Fin’s escape.

Fin fumbled for the torch clipped to his belt, hoping that it would still work. Its light flashed into his face, and he waved it in the dark to let the crew know that he was safe. Then he pulled his knees up to his chest, his back to the cliff, and huddled there for a full five minutes, trying to regain his breath and his composure, and his will to tackle the climb to the top. He flashed the torch at his watch. It was after 4 a.m. In under two hours, dawn would break in the east. He was almost afraid to contemplate what daylight might bring.

The rain stayed off, fragments of moon flitting in and out between scraps of breaking sky. Fin wondered if he was imagining that the wind had dropped just a little. He got unsteadily to his feet and shone his torch up the incline. There, caught in its beam, smooth and glistening in the light, was the chute the guga hunters used to haul their supplies up to the top of he rock. Still in use after all these years. Fin raised his torch and followed its angled progress up the steepest sections of the slope, and he saw the rope that they used snaking down across the jumble of rock and boulders. He climbed up until he was able to grab the end of it, and he pulled hard. It held fast. He tied it around his waist, and began the long climb to the top, using the rope to guide him in the dark, to pull himself up the steepest gradients, stopping frequently to wind it around his waist, a safety measure against the possibility of a fall.

It took him a full twenty minutes to haul himself up to the roof of the island and unravel himself from the rope. He looked back, gasping for breath, battered and buffeted by the wind that swept unimpeded across the chaos of rock and stone, and saw the lights of the Purple Isle winking out in the bay. As he turned, an almost full moon emerged from the ragged remnants of the storm cloud overhead, and spilled its light all over An Sgeir. He saw the squat silhouette of the lighthouse, bracing itself in darkness at the highest point of the island, and a hundred yards away across the shambles of boulders and nests, the dark, huddled shape of the old blackhouse. There was no light, no sign of life. But the smell of peat smoke carried to him on the edge of the wind, and he knew that there must be someone inside.

Petrel chicks puked and vomited on his feet as he stumbled across the rocks by the light of his torch, overturning nests and sending birds squawking off into the night. The tarpaulin hanging across the entrance to the blackhouse had been weighted down with heavy boulders. He yanked it free and pushed his way inside.

He could see the embers of the peat fire in the centre of the room glowing still in the dark, and he could smell the sour perfume of human sweat, a pitch above the pervasive smell of peat smoke. He flashed his torch around the walls, cutting through blue, smoky air, and saw the shapes of men lying hunched on mattresses all along the stone shelf. Several of them were already stirring, and his torchlight caught a pale, sleepy face full in its beam. It was Gigs. He raised a hand to shade the light from his eyes. ‘Artair? Is that you? What the hell’s going on?’

‘It’s not Artair.’ Fin let the tarpaulin drop again behind him. ‘It’s Fin Macleod.’

‘Jesus,’ he heard someone say. ‘How in God’s name did you get here?’

They were all awake now. Several men sat up and swung their legs around and slid down to the floor. Fin made a quick head count. There were ten of them. ‘Where’s Artair and Fionnlagh?’ Someone lit a tilley lamp, and by its spectral light, Fin could see all their faces through the smoke, staring back at him as if he were a ghost.

‘We don’t know,’ Gigs said. Another lamp was lit, and someone stooped to rake the fire and pile on fresh peats. ‘We were working almost until dusk setting up the pulleys. Artair and Fionnlagh left our group, and we all thought they’d come back to the blackhouse. But when we got here, there was no sign of them. Their kit was gone, and the radio smashed.’

‘And you don’t know where they went?’ Fin was incredulous. ‘There aren’t exactly many places to hide on An Sgeir. And they wouldn’t have lasted long out there in this weather.’

One of the other men said, ‘We think they must be somewhere down in the caves.’

‘But we’ve no idea why.’ Gigs fixed his eyes on Fin. ‘Maybe you can tell us .’

‘How in the name of the wee man did you get here, Fin?’ It was Asterix. ‘I didn’t see any wings on you yesterday.’

‘Padraig brought me.’

‘In this weather?’ Pluto peered at Fin through the gloom. He had been with the hunt the year that Fin was with them. ‘Are you insane?’

Fin’s sense of urgency grew to something approaching panic. ‘I think Artair is going to kill Fionnlagh. I’ve got to find them.’ He pulled aside the tarpaulin to head back out into the storm. Gigs crossed the blackhouse in three strides and grabbed his arm.

‘Don’t be a bloody fool, man! It’s pitch out there. You’ll kill yourself before you’ll find them.’ He pulled him back inside and dragged the tarpaulin across the doorway. ‘There’s no one going out there looking for anyone until we’ve got light to see by. So why don’t we all sit down and brew ourselves some tea, and we’ll hear you out?’

Flames were licking up around the dry slabs of peat as the guga hunters gathered around the fire and Asterix lowered a pot of water over the heat. Some of the men had blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Others pulled on flat caps or baseball caps. Several lit cigarettes to breathe more smoke into air already thick with it. And they sat in a strange, tense silence, waiting for the water to boil, and for Asterix to fill the pots. Fin found an odd reassurance in their quiet patience, and he tried to let a little of the tension drain out of muscles screwed taut by the events of the last hour. It seemed barely possible to him that he was here at all.

When the tea had masked, Asterix filled their mugs, and the tins of dried milk and sugar were passed around. Fin made his tea sweet, and took big gulps of the syrupy, milky liquid. It did not taste much like tea, but the heat of it was comforting, and he felt a kick as the sugar hit his bloodstream. He looked up and found them all watching him, and he had the strangest sense of deja vu . He had sat around the fire in this shelter on the rock every night that he had been on the island eighteen years ago, but this was different. This had the quality of a dream. Of something not quite real. And the dark spectre of apprehension began clouding his thoughts. He had been here before, but not in any way that he remembered.