Sun Dance (12 page)

“Yes boy and a good morning it is. Sit down, sit down,” he said smiling. A chair scraped on the flag floor. Thanking his wife as she put a bowl of porridge at his elbow, he went on, “If the hay gets another day’s sun, it’ll do. I’ll gather it together and let the coilacks settle.”

“Would I be any use? I’d like to give a hand.” A large plate of porridge steamed beside me, smelling of fresh oatmeal. “Many thanks, Mrs. MacKenzie,” I smiled up. “Don’t be calling me that, you’ll make me feel old,” and behind Eachan’s back she winked, “we’ll leave that to himself.”

“Don’t you believe it woman,” and turning to me in mock seriousness, “There’s plenty young ones down at the pier give me a smile yet.” He broke into a grin. “Yes, see and come down to the hay, it’s the day for it. I’ll get you a pair of boots.”

Under a working sun which dried any hint of morning dampness, down to the hay field we went, myself with a spare pitch fork on my shoulder. No jackets, Eachan, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbow, arms burnt almost black. I doubted if they had ever been covered in his lifetime. Walking beside such health and vigour I saw myself, a pale sapling.

The little heaps of hay, tanned like himself and their scent as we began to move them more delicate than I imagined; not the plummy richness of tobacco, rather the sweetness of herbs left to dry on a window ledge. I caught up handfuls and breathed its fragrance. Such was the attraction I took several stalks and chewed them. Now I knew the secret of the sweet milk.

“We’ll put three or four coilacks together, make them into a wee stack, like this,” and he drove his hay fork into the first one and without apparent effort lifted it onto fresh ground. “The bottom of each coilack draws the damp; we’ll put it to the top of the stack, it does as a bonnet.” I followed, best as I could, the fork twisted in my hands. There was more knack than I thought.

Without haste we worked away all morning, the sun on our heads, the vast expanse of scenery open as the day. I revelled in it. From time to time we leant on our forks. The leisurely pace, not set by any demand of time or place, I feasted on its freedom, my hunger that of an animal released from a trap. The life about the place seemed equally unhurried, each group doing what best suited the day and its heat. A skylark which sang as we started work fell silent. The sheep grazed their way up to an exposed knoll. I watched the cattle saunter off through the dunes, single file, “They’re off to cool their feet,” laughed Eachan, noticing my attention. “We’ll have a wee seat to ourselves,” and he plumped down on a coilack.

All that morning, as we forked the hay into neat lines of round heaps, my eye couldn’t leave the island. A Sound ran between us, not wide but silky blue as the day’s cloudless sky. Although no ocean swell put a creaming edge to the shores, for there was barely a breeze, still here and there on its glassy waters faint white streaks of foam hinted at the strength of a running tide. Silhouette of Venus on the night of arrival now comely in grassy sun bright pastures rising step by step to a peak of weathered crags. It expressed the challenge of self-reliance, hill land, shore line and where the ground sloped down to greens of abandoned fields, the soil of a home and a living. Perhaps a bay sheltered behind the headland which in times of storm would break Atlantic’s power and tipping the skyline, the gable of a house.

Presently, as we stretched our legs and lay back, Eachan must have noticed my total absorption and sitting up he spoke slowly, “Yes, Hector boy, it’s an island made of peace.” That was the first time he’d used my name. “They called it Sandray,” and slowly, “yes, the Viking called it, Sandray.” He remained silent. I looked across. His eyes went far beyond the island.

“You should know that.” After a long pause, he began again, speaking with difficulty, “I saw you studying the old photo last night, that one above the mantleplace.” Slowly he turned to me, “Well now, who better than you should know: That man in the photo was my grandfather, drowned, as I told you and to you, Hector MacKenzie, that man was your great grandfather.”

I sat on a croft, amongst hay, having arrived as an alien. The island swam out of focus, from the curtain of moist eyes, into the vision which had become part of my being.

“I knew when I came on you sitting at the jetty who you were. I knew the tilt of head, the sharp face, same as old MacKenzie, the last to live on that island you’re studying. You had the cut of his jib, as they say.” He motioned towards the island, “There was no hiding the breeding that’s in you,” and turning to me, “and that, a’bhalaich is where our people began.”

How long we sat didn’t matter, the hay would make, the tide would ebb and flow, the world could turn. I knew who I was, where I belonged. No longer a life of vague discontent with cities, half formed pictures of what I wanted out of living. The old man’s words left me in a great emotional sweep of feeling. The whole inexplicable process of being drawn here became clear. Attempting a reason was for another day.

What the hell- I grinned stupidly to hide a bursting heart. Without caring of time, I listened to the cry of birds down on the shore. Nothing else broke the silence.

The hay smelt fresh and wholesome and the sun shone.

Nothing mattered, across the Sound lay the soil of home.

Each day the breeze of settled weather followed round to the west and died away with the evening sun. We built our coilacks of cured hay into little watertight stacks with no more hurry than the cattle who by afternoon wandered up from the beach to graze the machair. I marvelled at their contentment. Cows would stand licking the tail of calves suckling away beside mother’s flank. The boldest creatures ventured over to the fence, faces still milky white with froth and round eyes full of unblinking curiosity. Eachan laughed at them. I heard the affection in his laughter and the cows lifted their heads at his voice.

After supper one evening I sat out at the west gable as the sun put its crimson on the sea. Eachan, beside me on the bench, shading his eyes against the glare, began to speak quietly, “You know a’ bhalaich, the old grandfather I’m after telling you about could recall what his great granny told him, how her people, Viking plunderers no better than that, came to Sandray. You see it was handed down to her, word of mouth in the days when folk had time to listen. Yes boy, it’s an extraordinary story, about a raven, and I tell you, they’re nesting there to this day. He was a gifted bodach, he put the story to verse in the way she told it, something in the style of a Norse saga. Think you’re hardy, these were hardy, the folk. If you like you can get a read of it.”

Eachan rose and in a few moments came out with the manuscript. Though happily tired I took it eagerly. He leant on the wall beside me, “You know this, old Hector told me the way the writing came to him. It was a strange thing. You see, he was very fond of the cailleach.” He saw me frown, “the old woman, I mean his great granny. Anyway, on the third night after her death she spoke to him in a dream, told him her story over again. Well, that day, it was clear with the spring air and he went away to a cnoc, a hillock, overlooking the sea and wrote these words. He told me they poured out of his mind as if he were at sea with the Viking rovers through their storm and their coming to that island you’ve been watching every day. The gift was in him, sure enough as the blood they spilled and the women they took.”

Such was the flow of simple writing I seemed a part of it. The sacrifice made by an old woman to help a new born grandson and her people survive through the winter. Her last memories of love and children before the frost had stilled any thoughts How when the baby reached manhood a scarcity of land forced them to set sail. I quickened to the boat builders’ belief that the spirit of the tree they’d felled remained in the timbers of the boat it shaped.

Superstitions didn’t influence my scientific mind, or so I thought but in reading the tale of the Vikings’ faith in the sagacity of a raven which brought them to Sandray, I became increasingly uneasy; a sensation which turned to dread as I read the clarity of the old man’s impression of the horror of the drowning that was to be his own fate. Again came this recurrent vision, the streaming white hair, the twisted knuckles that went from gripping a gunnel to the sides of a coffin.

As I read in the falling light of sunset, my hand shook.

They were the words of a Viking saga

Limbs stiff and bent had once entwined, and moss

beneath an ancient larch

knew love’s passions flow,

Morbid strands the old crone’s hair where tousled

mass was golden spread

in the glow of evening light,

Gums drawn back, teeth stump black, eyes now shadow dark,

that nightly shone for him,

Eyes, once blue as summer long, had watched the empty bay,

were faded dim to a sea washed grey.

Nine had cried, sucked nipples full and red,
her last child saw no bed,

they laid it out upon the hill,

A twisted neck, too frail to feed, she kissed its brow,

the frost cut off his cry.

That night an open door, a birth bed cry,
another hungry maw,

the empty kist their belly store..

She touched blood’s new strand of life and knew its pang,

as memories shed their veil.

She heard a cry, her last one died that
distant year upon the hill,

She made a vow,

‘This night’s child must live, by my sacrifice.’

Softly as the winding sheet that binds, stealthy as the shroud

which covers death’s infallibility,

she crept into the night.

Haloed thrice, the moon’s white cloak turned the sea to ice,

bound their haven to the shore.

Snapping branches, low swept by winter’s weight,
made clawing

arms of patterned light,

And crone of crones, her stumbled path tore
knot worn hands,

and cut each barefoot step.

Against the trunk she sat, twined fingers on an empty lap,

her head to lolling sleep,

Yet through her pain grew summer’s bloom and he came
striding,

blue of eye, boat and shore,

Her man she held once more and lips their touch,
till shy young limbs

entwined beneath the crescent moon,

And sunshine bright each calling spring their
barefoot children ran,

and longboats put to sea.

Tangled branches piled a crag above her tree and year on year,

the raven reared its early brood.

Two gawking chicks pressed tight that night,
their head hung low,

no flesh had filled their gut,

Till scent on cringing air, death’s presence took its fingered grip,

and gliding wing, a single croak.

Strike of dawn, bones iron to the ground, icicles her shroud,

they stared upon a smile,

Her sparkled hair, crystal white, two sockets gaping red,

no eyes, the chicks had got their fill.

New babe at breast, a grandchild boy, lusty, sucking bold,

above the pyre of leaping flame,

Her rising soul joined the black of spiral wing.

Rope and cage, the cliff was scaled, one chick must have
her wisdom eye,

must join our family.

A raucous caw, the raven’s wing, pinions beat, a curved bill stooped

close to rip his flesh.

A nestling crouched, black Satan eyes shone from twig lined bowl,

he grabbed, a vicious bite sank home.

That night, a willow cage hung beside the crib, dark watching eyes

and newborn child were swinging, side by side.

Blue eyed manhood, bearded blonde, shoulders wide, and arms

to power a steer-board oar,

Though hands had still to take their gnarl, his face its hook to carve

by ocean’s cutting spume.

His father told, ‘Our plough has scraped bare rock today, worn horses

shoulders raw, no land is here to spare.’

Twenty seasons the larch had shed, needle orange, at its foot.

Axes rang, the crone’s tree sang,

‘No gale has felled my sway, the north wind sets a Viking free,

my strength goes with your ship.’

Cut and trim, she floated slim, by winter peat and oil lamp fantasy,

a dragon tongue was carved to lick the sea.

May’s the month of siren call, ages past an inner song to gnaw the heart,

cast eyes to landfalls far.

Mutton barrel, rye bread store, hogs of ale and thirsty sword,

he loaded thirty able men aboard,

Wives and sweethearts, skirts to thigh, carried men folk down the shore,

shoulder high, one kiss, goodbye.

Crack of rope, the sail unfurled, wing tip wide the raven soared to terrify,

make carrion of a foe.

Slanted tight she flew, south by west a dipping bow, her rearing stern

buried homeland’s snow clad sky.

Proud larch tossed the dragon prow, and high aloft in thrumming stay

swung childhood’s chick, wisdom’s raven now.

Last evening light, the nor-east gale quenched a flaming sun,

dashed crimson crests to the steerman’s face,