The Book of Secrets (10 page)

‘Maybe we can find it … Well, yes, all right then. It will be the last time … we’ll be free after this. Free, you hear me?’

‘I hear you, Duncan.’

‘D’you wish to stay in Scotland too? Until I have made things ready for you?’

‘Ah, no, lad. You won’t be leaving me behind. No, don’t argue. I have no children to think of yet, as Mary does. And if I don’t come with you now, we may never have them.’

W
aves of migration had already begun, and word of the departure of the
Frances
Ann
swept through the Highlands. Preparations to leave began as soon as the decision had been made, and followed through the winter until the time to leave was on those who were going. Weeks before the ship was due to sail, horse trains began heading across the hills towards Ullapool. They carried the aged, and children, in crubag packs, wooden frames with wicker baskets. The trains were formed by tying each horse to the tail of the next by a hair rope, in this manner taking both goods and people to the ship. They came from all over, Strath Brora, Durness, Assynt, Lochalsh, Loch Carron, Kilmuir, Kiltearn, Kinlochewe and parts beyond, as well as from the town of Ullapool itself.

As the days passed, Isabella had grown stronger, seemingly by the hour. I am changed by what has happened to me, she said to herself, and by illness, but I am better, and better prepared for what is to come.

Still, at times she was overtaken by the magnitude of the adventure. As she looked around the encampment of people waiting to embark, she caught glimpses of what she was feeling in all their faces. She wrote then to her sister-in-law:

Ullapool, 12 July 1817

Two days later, Alec Roy and Dan Ban sounded the Coronach from the hillside above Loch Broom, as the travellers boarded the ship. The music unfurled like a dirge across the lake, nearly drowned out at times by the weeping of those who were left on the shore. Parents who were about to leave were wrestling with their own parents as they tried to drag children from their arms, believing that whole families were about to perish and some must be saved.

A woman standing next to Isabella as they were being jostled in the crowd while they waited for a rowboat to take them to the ship turned and cried, ‘Why have we been driven out? Why is there no place for us here, in our own country?’

As the ship pulled away, McLeod, standing on the deck, broke into the old lament of McCrimmon, and in a moment the voices of everyone on board had joined with him and were soaring back across the water to the watchers on the shore —
cha
tille
cha
tille
cha
tille
me
tuilleach
, return return return we never, in peace nor war return we never, with silver or gold return we never.

The Atlantic Ocean was all around them now as the sight of land slipped behind them in the night. Packed side by side with the other passengers, Isabella found herself fortunate to have a bunk, although where she lay the side of the ship pressed against her, splintered and patched, one patch on top of another.

By morning there was already filth accumulating underfoot. The deck tilted this way and that, and sometimes it was to the advantage of the passengers as human excrement slid overboard. At other times, those caught on the wrong side of the boat found their ankles awash. Slowly, an order of sorts was established and passengers who were not so seasick that they were unable to help began a routine that was designed to keep their health and spirits intact.

For the first two weeks at sea the weather held and the ship appeared to make progress. Duncan and Isabella were among those who walked on the deck early each morning, glad to make their escape from the thick stench below, where they were forced to spend their nights. Glancing at Duncan, Isabella often surprised a look of happiness on his face. She saw too McLeod, bent in a curious fashion over charts. He appeared to be studying the position of the ship and the winds and the ocean currents, as if he were the captain.

When they had been sixteen days at sea, they woke to find that the air outside had become strange and heavy. Emerging onto the deck they saw that the sea was dull and molten in its appearance, almost oily in its depths. The captain was up and down, checking charts, edgy and not speaking to anyone.

Duncan looked anxiously at the sky. ‘I have told them I will help muck out in the hold this morning,’ he said to Isabella. ‘I think you should go below too.’

‘Soon, if the wind rises,’ she promised.

One by one, people were withdrawing into the ship, huddled in on themselves, as if they expected to be plucked off the deck by a wave at any moment. Alone on the deck, Isabella felt a growing exultation, as if she had the ship to herself. The first winds to touch it were little puffs, sharp, but not hard enough to worry about, she was sure, although the ship was developing an unpleasant short lurch. She was fairly certain that below the stench of sickness would be increasing by the moment, and she determined to stay on deck for as long as she could.

She heard a sharp voice beside her and saw the captain. He was a
short, thickset man who had taken little notice of her on the voyage, as indeed he had not paid much attention to any of the women and children. He was an Englishman who so far had shown himself so uncouth that no one greatly minded his lack of interest.

‘You, get down below,’ he said now, indicating with his thumb towards Isabella. ‘We’re battenin’ down hatches.’

‘You think it will be a real blow, then?’ she called across the rising wind.

His mouth was set in a hard line. He did not answer her but shouted orders to the sailors to shorten the sails.

The sun, what was left of it, suddenly vanished. It was almost as dark as night over the sea, only an eerie bluish light showing them the way. Then across the water there was a jagged flash of lightning tearing the sky from side to side like a skirt ripped in two. The west wind slammed down on them, and a solid rain exploded around the ship.

‘Get below, woman, damn you, below,’ the captain shrieked at Isabella.

Duncan’s face appeared at the hatch. In a moment she was being thrown across the deck and was tumbling over, bruising her shins, as he forced her down. Her last glimpse of the terrible scene outside was a sail snapping, then flapping with thunderous roars; the captain taut in every muscle against the wheel and the men straining to control the rigging. And against the sky, the figure of McLeod, his body arched on the pull of a rope, his cloak thrown back, and the dark water cascading down his fisherman’s arms.

Below, a commotion of sobbing had broken out. Isabella realised she was wet through and that Duncan was furious with her for not having heeded the warnings sooner. But there was no time now for reproaches or for changing clothes. Little children were being tossed around, bouncing from side to side of the boat. She began to gather those who were unattended. Many of the fathers were as ill as their wives, and every man who could stand was being called to the pumps. With Kate MacKenzie of Durness who, like her, was still unaffected by the violent motion of the ship, she lashed the children into their bunks with bedclothes.

Outside the sea groaned, and the rain drummed, beating overhead. Through the portholes they could see it lashing as the ship heeled upwards, seeming to stand bolt upright with its bow
towards the sky, then they would come crashing down again, until the next thing they saw was the water beneath the surface bubbling, like a black cauldron, the fierce sea trying to force itself upon them, then back up again, and the ghostly glow of another lightning bolt lit up the pallid faces of her companions. It was becoming impossible to tell whether the crashes above them were giant thunderclaps or the breaking up of the ship. They could only hear each other by shouting with all their strength.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind dropped and it was over. Some of the passengers wondered if they were already dead, if this was the silence of heaven, although all round them the sordid evidence of their physical extremity suggested otherwise.

Soon there was a call for them to come out and they breathed sweet clean air under a sky like a pale bell-shaped dome. They looked from one to the other, smiling, touching each other, hardly daring to believe that they were all there, and alive, and that nobody had been lost.

McLeod stepped forward. ‘Let us pray,’ he began, and one by one they began to follow him, his voice a panacea for the terror they had experienced. Isabella wondered how long he would go on, for evening was coming on them now and a chill was in the air. We need hot food and dry clothes more than we need prayer, she thought.

But McLeod appeared to realise this as well, for he was soon finished.

Then the captain spoke, his complexion slightly more suffused than usual, and it occurred to Isabella that he had been giving himself some fortification while the rest of them had been praying.

‘I must tell thee all something,’ he said. ‘I am about to turn ship around and return home.’

There was stunned silence at first, and then the questions began, shouted from all directions. ‘Why, why?’ and, ‘Captain, we cannot, we have nothing left to return to, you cannot take us back. We have paid our fares, all we have in the world.’

The MacQuarries added their voices to this clamour. Isabella was afraid that Duncan was about to use his fists on the captain; it would have only needed one of them to start and it would be a free-for-all.

He raised his hands. ‘The ship be leakin’. We’re closer to the coast of Ireland than we are to America.’

McLeod had been standing by, quietly listening to all of this. ‘That is not so,’ he said.

The captain looked surprised, but replied quite mildly. ‘You suggestin’ you be better sailor than I, Mister McLeod?’

‘In this instance, yes, I must tell you that I am,’ McLeod replied.

‘Pray explain y’self, sir,’ said the captain against a background of indrawn breaths from the onlookers.

‘If you care to step below I’ll show you on the charts that we are actually closer to North America than we are to home,’ said McLeod. ‘I can demonstrate to you most clearly that our chances of safety lie in continuing our voyage. And you will see, by morning there will be a wind from the east to help us on our way.’

‘McLeod, that is enough, man. This is mutiny. I’ll be placin’ you in irons if there be any more of this talk.’

McLeod looked around them all, measuring his moment. Some of the passengers were close to falling at his feet in their anxiety that someone would continue to head the boat towards America. Others were wavering, confused and unsure whom they should listen to.

Isabella, sheltered from the evening breeze by Duncan, felt oddly removed from what was happening. She expected that they would do as McLeod said, and was grateful of his presence as an antidote to the captain. But it was clear to her, as she supposed it must be to McLeod, that reason alone would not compel the people to follow his instructions.

‘I have seen a vision,’ said McLeod, raising his voice. ‘In my vision we stand on the edge of a new land, and God speaks to us through the act of merciful deliverance from the elements. Then in my vision, my head has turned itself around, and I see nothing, only darkness, and the everlasting canyon. Which is it to be, my friends, deliverance or darkness?’

Their voices went up in a roar. ‘Deliverance.’

A woman at the back called out, high and clear above the rest, ‘We are delivered by the father, our father, Norman McLeod.’

In the dusk, Isabella could have sworn that McLeod looked over their heads at her alone and fixing her straight in the eye, dared her to challenge him. It was as if he needed someone who would support him in his convictions, in the responsibility he was taking on himself for all their lives. She knew, too, that he needed her support amongst
the women, for she had acquired a new stature herself in the last few hours.

Across the space which separated them, she closed her eye in a slow wink, certain that no one except McLeod could see her action.

His face filled with thunder, and then subsided. She wanted to laugh but touched her husband’s arm, indicating that he should speak.

‘I say we go with Norman,’ said Duncan then.

‘Aye. Aye. We go with him.’

The captain turned an ugly face on McLeod. ‘If we ever do make land, Mister McLeod, the minute you set foot on it, you may expect they’ll be arrestin’ you and clappin’ on the irons. I’ll see to that.’

But by morning, as McLeod had predicted, a fair wind from the east sprang up while the sea remained gentle. The ship, set on a good course, flew across the waves towards America. All the men aboard helped to man the pumps, which could not be left for a moment if the sea was to be kept at bay.