TWENTY-TWO

1588

Before the candles were lit and the evening meal was served, and when Ishbel had wandered off, Lilias explained a little more about the forthcoming festival. Samhain, at the end of October, was the feast to mark the time when the cattle were finally brought down from the summer pastures, to the north and west of Achadh nam Blàth. Some would be slain and their meat salted, as much as might last through the worst of the winter, but most would be overwintered as far as possible, although feed for them was scarce and like to get scarcer the more the season progressed.

‘Some of the other chieftains are sending cattle to the mainland, to be taken along the drove roads and sold at market, but on an island such as this one, it means shipping them and it’s an uncertain and dangerous business,’ she said. ‘If we were just a little closer to the shore, the cattle could be made to swim.’

‘Are they strong swimmers?’

‘They are. But not strong enough to get all the way from Garbh. Nevertheless, father has been considering sending the best of the beasts off in boats if it can be managed.’

‘Do people stay up in the hills all summer?’

‘Many of the folk come down in July to help with all the summertime work, the harvest and so on. But the remainder bring the cattle back round about now, at Samhain. You’ll see the bonfire lit upon the Dun there, and upon Meall Each as well. It’s a time of great celebration.’

‘But you have never been allowed to go?’

‘No. For when I tell you that marriages are frequently celebrated afterwards, very soon afterwards, and babies born within a scant nine and sometimes eight or even seven months – plump and healthy babies I might add – you’ll know why.’

She gazed at him, her eyes full of good humour, daring him to disapprove. Her openness about such things would have embarrassed him at home. Here, he was beginning to understand it. She was reserved and dignified when she needed to be, and cautious in her dealings with the strangers. He sensed that if they ever overstepped the mark with her, she would retreat. All the same, she seemed to expect frankness about these matters of life, death and courtship, both in herself and in others. She was full of a sense of fun and sometimes it bubbled to the surface in spite of anything she could do to contain it. Nobody complained or reproached her for it. Perhaps this was because of her position in the community. Her mother was dead. She had no elder sister and it was clear that she was the apple of her father’s eye. McNeill relied on her and had given her a large measure of freedom and responsibility. She was a young woman of consequence in this small world of the island, and being quite outspoken seemed to be part and parcel of her authority. It discomforted and attracted him in equal measure. He thought that here was a young woman who knew her own mind. His own father would certainly have quelled any such behaviour with a glance and a harsh word, but Mateo found himself admiring her. He supposed it to be unusual, even here. He liked her. He had never been so openly friendly with any woman before.

*

The Spaniards had never seen anything quite like the celebrations at Samhain. To Mateo’s eyes, they seemed to be savage and unchristian: nothing like the autumn festival in La Laguna for the statue of Christ that had been brought to the island by the Archangel Michael himself. Well, Mateo was sceptical about that aspect of the story, but the statue of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth, in wood, both venerable and disturbing, was so extraordinary that it might as well have been made by angels, an image of suffering so profound that it was impossible to see it and remain unmoved. Now, he had witnessed so much of the real thing that he could attest to its accuracy, even while thinking that he wouldn’t be unhappy if he never saw it again.

At the end of October, the wind and rain that had been constant throughout the month abated, just in time for the return of the cattle from the shielings: compact and sturdy beasts in black and dun, very like the horses, the garrons, which were compact and very sturdy too. The climate and the terrain seemed to demand a measure of toughness if beasts were to survive. Beasts and people both. Bonfires were lit on the high hills, and those returning brought flaming brands down with them, and carried them sunwise around the houses, although carrying any torch around Achadh nam Blàth was quite an undertaking since the house was so big, the land around it so uneven. There were, besides, windy corners where the torches were in danger of being blown out, which was thought to be unlucky. When Mateo asked why they did this, he was told that it was ‘for protection’. They sang as they walked and Lilias translated for him.

‘May God give blessing to the house that is here,

May Jesus give blessing to the house that is here,

May Mary give blessing to the house that is here,

May Bride give blessing to the house that is here,

May Michael give blessing to the house that is here.’

So the Archangel Michael was known here too.

‘Everything must go with the sun, not against it,’ said Lilias. ‘Did you not notice? When we women are waulking the cloth, we pass it sunwise as we sing. Even the boats when they are brought onto the shore or when they are launched must never be turned against the sun. Our houses are blessed by fire in the name of God and his angels, but it must be sunwise. The very stones on the querns must be turned with the sun, otherwise the grain will go bad.’

‘And you believe this?’

‘Why would I not, when it is the God’s truth?’

There seemed no answer to this strange combination of Christianity and something older, so Mateo simply assented. This was a powerful invocation and who was he to quarrel with it? He had been at sea for long enough to know that all voyages were mired in superstitions and heresies. If, on the island, these extended to everyday life, then perhaps it was necessary.

Later, there was feasting in the great hall, to which he and Francisco were invited as guests, along with a great many islanders. Lilias told them that the empty places set at the table were for the souls of the dead who might visit on this night. After the meal, there was singing and dancing. Stories were told of which Mateo understood not a word, but the sounds washed over him and it seemed to him that they brought their own strange and vivid images to his mind, of ancient battles and long-ago quarrels and loves lost and won. It seemed to him that the songs were sadder than those of his island, and it occurred to him to wonder if it had something to do with the dark time of year, the absence of the sun, which was such a constant on his island. The long dark nights were difficult to bear and he’d been told that the days would grow shorter still. No wonder so many prayers and songs were invocations to the sun for its return.

‘But the days are much longer in summer,’ Ishbel told them. ‘You wait. There’s hardly any darkness at all in the middle of summer!’

He found it hard to believe, but he knew that it must be so. It was different from the world he had left and lost, although it didn’t make it any more comfortable to endure.

Late in the evening there were games of which, again, he understood almost nothing. Francisco had taken himself off to bed, well fed and as happy as Mateo had seen him since they left home.

‘I think I might sleep soundly for the first time in months,’ he said.

For himself, Mateo felt wide awake and animated. He had been sitting at some distance from her, but once the meal was cleared away, he had slowly but surely edged closer to Lilias, who was looking very lovely, in a yellow gown with creamy lace at the throat and cuffs.

‘Is this heather-dyed too?’ he asked, during a break in the music.

‘This? Why no, Mateo. This is a silken gown from my brother in St Andrews. He brought it for me the last time he came home. It’s the finest thing I own. Or have ever owned for that matter. I’ve never had a gown like it.’

‘It becomes you very well.’

‘Thank you, kind sir. Whatever did I do for compliments before you washed ashore? And have you enjoyed these celebrations that are so new and strange for you?’

‘More than anything for a very long time.’

‘Then I’m glad. I’ve never seen Francisco so happy.’

‘Nor me, since we left home.’

‘Is he sick for his home? Does he long for it as I would?’

‘I think he is.’

‘And you?’

‘A little. Not just so much.’

How could he say that he was sick only for her company? That the thought of her filled his mind, all day, and half the night. Whatever work he was asked to perform, he did it with her in mind. It would not do. Her father would never permit it. She had told him quite freely and cheerfully that there was a man called Seoras Darroch, who held a considerable acreage of land on a nearby island, and who could command many followers. It was the same family where her brother was fostered. Seoras had lost his wife two years previously, and there had been some talk of a betrothal, but nothing had been formally arranged as yet. She thought that perhaps her father was not so anxious to be rid of her and so he kept putting it off.

‘Do you want to be married?’ asked Mateo, even though it pained him to ask the question.

She pulled a face. ‘Not yet a while. He seems like quite an old man to me!’

At last, when people were leaving, to go home to their own cottages, to the rooms above the stables, to the chambers in and around the house and wherever they could find a bed, one of the lassies threw a handful of hazelnuts onto a flat-iron griddle and thrust it onto the fire. She called out her name, Cairistiona, and the name of one of the lads, Seamus, pushing the nuts side by side with a pair of tongs, trying not to burn her fingers. A group of girls gathered round, laughing, jostling, naming the little brown nuts, seizing the tongs and pushing them into pairs. Lilias was urged forward and chose the cobnut she fancied for herself, and then Cairistiona was pushing another nut alongside it, and whispering ‘Mateo’ and all the girls burst out laughing, so much so that the elders, huddled over their drinks at the other end of the hall, looked around in disapproval.

‘Daft lassies,’ said McNeill, and carried on with his discourse on the finer points of cattle-raising.

The nuts roasted and the smell of burning nutshell rose from the fire. Most leaped apart, many of them right off the metal plate and into the fire where they flamed up and disappeared. There were shrieks of mirth and disappointment. Love, like the nuts, would not last. One or two lay quietly side by side. Mateo stared at those named for himself and Lilias. The fire crackled and spluttered and the two nuts jumped up and leaped apart. He swallowed his disappointment. How foolish, he thought. What a silly game. But then there came another burst of flame from the fire and the two nuts rolled together again, and there they stayed, small, round, brown, and indisputably as close as it was possible to be.

Lilias got to her feet. Her cheeks were flushed, although whether from the heat of the fire or from embarrassment it was hard to say.

‘I must take my leave of you!’ she said to the group of young women around the fire, embracing her closest friends among them. ‘Goodnight my friends. Sleep well.’ She caught his gaze. ‘Mateo de Tegueste, my partner amid the flames, may you sleep soundly too. May the good Archangel Michael, bonnie fighter that he is, protect and keep you, now and always.’

She dropped him a curtsey, the yellow dress swirling about her, her vivid hair escaping from its confinement after the activity of the day, and left. He joined a sleeping Francisco in their small room, and he lay down on the bed, his hands pillowing the back of his head. But he barely slept the whole night. He was wearing a crumpled linen undershirt, and he found his fingers compulsively searching for the inner pocket, where he had concealed his sole precious possession: a small, golden ring.