Fair Blows the Wind (1978) (17 page)

"The men of the north wanted warmer, richer lands, the men of poor cities wanted the wealth of the rich, and so they came raiding and looting, then finally settling down to be raided in their turn. So it will be in the new lands beyond the sea, and so it has been in those lands long before any white man came upon them.

"Long ago when I was but a lad we took a Spanish vessel on the high seas, and brought her a prize to Skye. Aboard that vessel was a great Spanish lord and my father held him for ransom, as is the custom.

"We waited months for the ransom to come, and I spent many hours with the prisoner, for he lived as one of our own family. He told me of Cortez and his conquering of the Aztec peoples. He said Cortez could never have done it had it not been for Indian allies, tribes recently conquered by the Aztecs, who hated them.

"The Aztecs lived in great cities of stone, but those cities were built or begun by other peoples who came before. The Toltecs, for example, and others even before them.

"So you see, Tatt, we hold this land only for a time. Whether we win it in peace or war, we hold it only in trust for other peoples, and other generations.

"When I was a wild lad I thought only of the sword and of fighting. I loved the wild raids, the fierce attacks, the crossing of blades. It mattered little who it was I fought; the fight itself was the thing.

"Yet with time I have grown wiser. I still like the battle--it is in my blood--but I also question myself, and try to learn from others. A soldier in a lifetime meets many kinds of people, and so it has been with me."

I had listened in silence, but now I had a question for him.

"But if the MacDonalds hold Trotternish, how does it happen that you can be here, when you are of the MacLeods?"

"Oh, they let me be! Perhaps they think me not worth the trouble, for I am seldom here. They know when I am here, and they know when I come and go, but they walk a wide circle.

"Afraid? Not the MacDonalds. I know them too well to think they fear. I have shed MacDonald blood, and this they know, yet I believe they like me a little and think perhaps I am better left alone.

"Someday ... ah, someday one of them may come seeking me. One or many. It is to be expected."

We fenced and fought with this weapon and that, and I could feel my skill growing, and my confidence. He was a great master. Whenever I seemed ready to equal him he uncovered a new trick, a new stratagem, a new device. His eyes would twinkle a little, and he would look at me slyly, enjoying the moment.

There came a night when we sat by the fire. Food was eaten, the dishes put aside, and there was rain upon the roof. Occasionally a gust of wind whined under the eaves. Firelight played on MacAskill's cheekbones, his shaggy brows, and the old scar.

"Aye," he said, "there have been bloody times. D'you ken the Isle of Eigg? 'Tis yonder." He gestured toward the south. "A few years back some MacLeod lads, denied the hospitality of the MacDonalds, butchered a beef upon the shore, but before they could flee they were come upon by the MacDonalds, who whipped them brutally.

"Norman, he who was the eleventh chief of the MacLeods, sent out his fleet. The MacDonalds, seeing themselves outnumbered, took their whole population into a cave and hid themselves. This was in 1577, if I recall. The MacLeods searched but could not find them and were sailing away when one of the MacDonalds, impatient to see had they gone, came from the cave and was seen.

"They tracked him by new-fallen snow, and when the MacDonalds would not come out, the MacLeods gathered brush and seaweed from shore and hill and placed it before the opening and set fire to it. All inside were smothered and killed. Not a one of the nearly four hundred survived."

"Was that an end to it then?"

"Is it ever? Ah, Tatt, we are a vengeful people, we Scots! The MacDonalds waited and they watched and they lurked about, wanting a chance for vengeance. It came on a Sunday morning. They slipped into the bay under the cover of a fog and they barred the door of the church which was filled with MacLeods and then they put a fire to the church and burned them alive, all but one woman who somehow escaped.

"Word had reached Dunvegan Castle where the MacLeods had gathered. Ah, how I remember that day! I was there, mind. I saw it with my own eyes, and did some of the killing that was done, too, for I lost a friend or two in that burning church, and a girl who ... well, no mind to that. I was there.

"Our galleys were swift, and the church took long to burn, and they stood about so that none might escape, beyond the one woman who did.

"Then when the church was down, and in embers and blackened stones, they took their loot and returned to their own boats. But they had reckoned without the tides, for their craft were beached high and dry by the ebb tide. And here were the MacLeods coming, and their Fairy Flag flying, too.

"I was the first man ashore, leaping from the bow of our galley and rushing forward. An instant and I was alone, surrounded by MacDonalds, and my claymore was out and swinging as I charged into them!

"Then all the MacLeods were ashore and the MacDonalds fell back to the stone dyke protecting the shore lands from the sea. They put their backs to the wall and they faced us! Ah, what a fight that was!

"The MacDonalds weremen! Fight them I did, but I hated them not a whit! I loved them for their strength and their valor, and the grand fight they made!

"It was sword and sword. I had cut two down in that first rush, but they had knicked me a time or two, and we set to it.

"In my time I have seen fights, but never a better one than there against the sea wall in the light of a waning day. Again and again they charged us, again and again we drove them back! Yes, we outnumbered them. We surely did, but before it was over I was glad for our numbers, although we cut them down, every man."

Again and again during the weeks that followed did MacAskill regale me with stories of the fighting between the clans, for they were a hardy and ferocious lot willing to fight at the drop of a hat, and to drop it themselves.

Several times we sailed to Lews, once to Eigg and to Rhum. I became more skillful at handling a boat in a rough sea. It was on one of these days, as we tied the boat after such a voyage, that I suddenly realized I was fifteen years old.

For months I had fenced, boxed, wrestled, walked, climbed, and sailed. The food we ate was simple, indeed. The life we lived was along the shore of the loch or on the sea itself, and I had grown, both in height and in strength. Immeasurably had I grown in skill.

The sunlight had gone from the loch that day, and the wind was picking a few whitecaps from the crests of the small waves. The reeds were bending and ripples ran through the grassland as it bent before the wind. I had come up from the loch with several fish, fresh caught from the cold water.

For a moment, as I often did, I stepped up on a small hillock near the cottage and looked over the moorland. It was then I saw him ... a rider on a gray horse, mane and tail streaming in the wind, the horse coming fast, weaving and turning to avoid obstructions of rocks or clumps of heather.

"Fergus!" I called it, not too loud, but above the wind.

He came to the door, book in hand.

"A rider," I said, "and he comes with grief and danger in his arms."

He came up beside me. "Aye," he said, "when they come that fast it is always trouble. Gather what you will take, lad, for we will be going now!"

Huddled for warmth we were, a hard wind blowing and the shortened sail frozen stiff, with a strong sea running. The blown spray was like icy needles against exposed flesh. We had no means with which to war against wind and sea but could only ride them and keep what hope we had living.

The waves were like walls of black ice rolling down upon us, their crests broken like bared teeth and spray driven before them like hail. It was no place I wished to be and I could only think of the snug cot we'd left beside the loch, and a peat fire burning on the hearth.

Three fishermen were with us, for the boat was theirs, a boat built for these strong northern seas they lived upon. Yet I knew from their faces that our condition was not one to seek, but to fear.

The Scots and the Norwegians of the Shetland, Orkney and Hebrides islands had galleys, sixteen to twenty-four oars, and in war-time, three men to the oar. They had birlinns also, a smaller craft with twelve to sixteen oars. Our craft was none of these but a simple fisher's boat fit for riding rough seas with a cargo of fish. Now she was empty but for us.

No voice was raised for none could be heard above the wind, and we huddled together, clutching our useless swords and losing our hearts each time the boat dipped into a trough between the waves.

Southward we drove, with the shores of Scotland far and away to the east and on the west all the wide width of the Atlantic. Our fishermen knew the strength of wind and wave, and how to handle their boat. We slid steeply down the slope of one wave only to rise abruptly on the cliff of the next.

Fergus MacAskill sat beside me, staring grimly into the storm, his beard streaming with blown water, his face like that of a graven image, hard cut against the wind, his eyes bleak as the stormclouds above.

Sharply he leaned forward, staring into the storm drift that obscured all before and around us. Something ominous and dark loomed there, low down on the horizon.

MacAskill grasped a fisherman's arm, pointing. "Jura!" he shouted, and I knew the name for an island.

The fisherman bobbed his gray head. Pointing to the westward, he shouted another name I could not make out. I saw him fighting to point our bow toward the black mass.

I clung to the boat. Suddenly she seemed to be making a hard time of it and I sensed that something was wrong. The fishermen began scooping water from the bottom and tossing it by the board, but I saw no sense to it for the next moment a great wave would leave us as full as before.

She felt soggy, and slower to rise, her buoyancy gone. We seemed to be tangled in something or caught in some underwater wreckage or mass of seaweed.

Then, through a break in the clouds we saw the island looming near, what must be the northwest coast of Jura. Fergus MacAskill grasped my arm. In his hand he held a small sack which he thrust at me. When I tried to push it away he would have none of it, so I hid the sack in my clothes to argue another time.

He put his mouth to my ear and shouted. "Don't wait for her to strike! When we are closer ...swim!"

Swim?Inthat? I could only ask the question of myself. How far to shore? A half-mile and closing. There were rocks along the shore so far as I could see, but the visibility was poor.

The boat was down now, well down. The gunwales were awash, but whatever was beneath her held us fast. Looking up, I beheld a snarl of raging white water, tremendous combers crashing upon a shore with a thunder beyond belief.

We rose upon a giant wave and I then saw the shore, only a short distance away now, the wind shrieking and howling like all the banshees in hell. Suddenly Fergus grasped my arm."Now!" he roared and, leaping up, he dove into the waves as two of the fishermen went with him. Only the old man sat still, and I, who had leaped up, grasped his arm. "Come!" I shouted.

He looked up and smiled, then shook his head.

And then the moment was past. The backwash of a great wave carried us away. I started to jump, then realized we were even further out now. Wind and current, by some trickery of the sea, were carrying us further out and down the coast. I crouched beside the aged man, clutching his thin old arm.

Too late! The moment had come and they had seized it, and I like a fool had hesitated. Only the old man was calm, no doubt resigned to death. Either he could not swim or he lacked the strength, so chose to sink with the boat or ride with it, and now I had no choice but to accompany him.

Yet it was not in me to sit, to yield. I must see and do. Rising, I lunged toward the mast and linked an arm about it, staring into the storm. The wind ripped at my clothes and body with brutal fingers, yet I clung. Glancing down, I saw the old man's fingers move, so he was yet alive. We were afloat--at least we seemed to have ceased to sink--and being carried by the sea off to what seemed the southwest, yet now the waves were again sweeping us toward the shore.

A great gulf or bay opened to the southward and I saw enormous waves hurrying one after the other into that vast maw, as if the gulf were swallowing the sea in great gulps.

The old man was almost shoulder deep in the water. I clung; one arm wrapped around the mast, but squatting, I reached for him. He did not resist but came up beside me. He said something, shaping the sounds with his lips, but the wind robbed me of their meaning.

The shore was rushing upon us now, or we upon it, and I clung hard, both to the mast and to the old man. Suddenly the waves seemed to lift us and throw us bodily upon the shore. We landed with a crash, thrown clear of the boat and sprawled breathless on the gravelly shore.

Scrambling to my feet, I grasped the old man and lilted him to the grass above the reach of the sea, then I rushed back to what remained of our boat and its pile of weed.

The sea was rushing in again and there was but a moment. With a wild grab I caught up my sword and my bundle. I was searching for the bundle Fergus had brought but was too late. The sea tore it from my grasp and the wreckage of the boat was again carried back upon the waves.