The Blackhouse

rocks all around them, he had never felt less in control. It was a raw confrontation with nature at its most powerful, and he seemed tiny and insignificant by comparison. And yet they had got themselves there in one piece, across fifty miles of storm-lashed ocean, and now there were only a few hundred feet still to cover. Duncan attached a line to the inflatable and kept her pulled tight to the stern as Padraig inched the Purple Isle backwards into the creek, keeping her anchor chain taut. The cliffs on the two promontories closed in around them, dangerously close now, and the trawler bucked and slid on the swell, one way, then the other. They could hear the sea snapping and slurping at the rock, as if it were trying to devour it.

Padraig signalled that he had taken her in as far as he dared, and Duncan nodded to Fin. Time to go. The rain was coming at him horizontally as he slid down the rungs of the ladder, wet fingers stiff in the freezing cold. Somehow he was still dry beneath his oilskins, but he knew that would not last long. His lifejacket seemed ludicrously flimsy. If he fell in the water, it would probably keep him afloat just long enough for the sea to tear him apart on the rock. The inflatable dinghy was swinging wildly, rising and falling beneath him, impossible to step into. He took a deep breath, as if about to duck below water, and let go of the Purple Isle, allowing himself to drop into the dinghy. As it gave way beneath his weight, his hands searched desperately for the rope that ran around the inflated perimeter. They found nothing but smooth, wet fabric. He felt himself slipping away, falling through space, the dinghy vanishing below him, and he braced himself for impact with the water. But at the last moment, the abrasive plastic of the rope burned the palm of his right hand, and he closed his fingers around it. The dinghy was there beneath him once more, and this time, clutching the rope, he rose and fell with it, securing himself by grabbing the line on the left-hand side.

He glanced up and saw Duncan’s white face a long way above him. He seemed to be shouting something, but Fin couldn’t hear what. He pulled himself towards the back of the dinghy and tipped the outboard over the stern. He opened the choke and pulled the starter cord. One, two, three, four times. Nothing. On the fifth, it coughed and spluttered and caught, and he gunned it furiously to stop it stalling. It was the moment of truth. Attached only by the umbilical of the rope, he was about to leave the safety of the mother ship.

The rope played out behind him as he swung the dinghy around, and her nose rose up through the swell towards the landing point. He twisted the accelerator, and the tiny orange vessel ploughed at a surprising speed towards the rocks. By the lights of the trawler, he saw the great black mouth of the cave opening up above him, and he could hear the cathedral roar and rush of the sea from deep within the belly of the island. A creamy-white frenzy of foam boiled all around him, and he felt the dinghy lifted by the swell and propelled towards the rocks. He yanked at the rudder and cranked up the motor to maximum power, pulling himself out of a collision at the last second, and the sea sucked him back out into the bay. The roar in his ears was deafening. He did not even dare to look back at the trawler.

He swung the dinghy around and faced the rocks again. They dipped up and down below the level of the swell, as if sizing him up, and then hiding in preparation for ambush. He hung there on the rise and fall for a full minute, gathering together all the broken pieces of his courage. He realized that timing was everything. He could not afford to run in with the swell as he had the first time. It was much more powerful than his tiny outboard and would dash him on to the rocks in a moment. He had to motor in as the swell receded, using his forward momentum against its retreat, to prevent a collision. Easy! He almost laughed at his ludicrous attempts to intellectualize his way through this. The truth was, if God existed, then Fin’s life was well and truly in His hands now. He took deep breaths, waiting for the sea to break again on the rocks, and then accelerated hard into the retreating rush of white water. Again the mouth of the cave closed around him, and it seemed as if he were making no progress at all, just holding his own in the mist of froth and spume, before suddenly he was propelled forward at a speed he could not control. He tried to pull the rudder around, but the propeller was out of the water, blades screaming through air that offered no resistance. The whole of An Sgeir seemed to be throwing itself at him. He shouted his defiance, as the sea held him in its palm and lifted him clear out of the dinghy and up on to the rocks with a force that knocked all the breath from his body. He could taste blood in his mouth, and felt the jagged edges of the gneiss tearing at his flesh. The boat was gone, and he was pinned to the rock by the force of the water. And then almost immediately the pressure that held him there dissipated, and the sea started sucking him back. He felt himself sliding down the glistening black surface of rock worn smooth by millions of years. He scrabbled for a handhold, but the green collar of algae all around An Sgeir squeezed through his fingers like slime, and he was aware of the power of the sea drawing him down into a cold, dark place where he knew that sleep was for ever.

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.

V

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.’