Flora waited at the milk cleit on the ridge, summoned there by Effie’s distinctive dog whistle. The walk up had been slow, with numerous stops to catch her breath, and she watched with something approaching jealousy as Effie ran barefoot up the slopes towards her.
‘Flora! Flora! He’s back!’ she panted, a stripling in the summer light.
‘Who is?’
For a brief moment, Flora’s heart leapt as her gaze swung to the bay for a sighting of a yacht. There had been so many dropping anchor in recent weeks – the calm seas and news of the islanders’ imminent departure had created a sort of tourist boom, with well-heeled sailors coming over in search of St Kildan socks and postcards that were now of limited stock.
James wasn’t due back in London for another month, but Flora indulged a fantasy that he would come back early and surprise her – on a yacht or on the Seamoth once more, circling the isle in a dazzling victory lap before he landed with a splash and took her away at last. It was a daydream that brought her comfort as the days and weeks wore on, the birth drawing ever closer, and she had almost convinced herself it was real; he really was coming to get her . . . But the only boat in the bay was the familiar Dunara Castle with its day-trippers.
‘Mathieson.’
The fantasy burst as Flora heard the frightened tone in her friend’s voice. ‘Oh God,’ Flora said, shielding her eyes as she looked down towards the village. It had been just over a month since his last fateful visit, Effie constantly on guard whenever the dogs began barking on the beach.
Effie panted, putting her hands on her knees and trying to get her breath back. There was a deep flush in her cheeks, a wildness in her eyes, and Flora knew her friend had run fast up these steep slopes, desperate to get away. The threat he posed to her was very real. What did he plan on doing now he was back?
‘. . . Did he see you?’ Flora knew they were both wondering the same thing – was he down there searching for Effie, right this moment?
‘No. I was at the burn when I heard, so I called you and came straight here . . .’ Effie shook her head, staring downhill anxiously. ‘Do you think he’ll leave again today too?’
‘If we pray hard enough,’ Flora murmured, but she knew that the evacuation gave him an excuse to be here, overseeing preparations. ‘In the meantime, you should stay over this side with us.’
Effie looked at her, her gaze dropping to Flora’s swollen stomach. There was no hiding her condition now and Mhairi’s even less so. She shook her head. ‘I’ll only come by later if he doesn’t leave with the Dunara.’
‘But—’
‘I don’t want him having any reason to see you on my account.’
Flora hesitated, then nodded gratefully. ‘But where will you go?’
Effie’s eyes remained trained on the village. ‘I’ll stay high, maybe catch some puffins. That way if he does come up, I’ll see him long before he sees me.’
Flora saw the sadness in her friend’s face as she looked out to sea and knew she wasn’t the only one scanning the horizon for boats carrying her lover. Lorna had told her and Mhairi of the pitiful sight of Effie standing by the post office every time a mail bag was brought over, waiting for a letter that never came. Sholto had left without a backward glance.
‘How are you feeling today, anyway?’ Effie asked, rousing herself from her troubles.
‘Like the ewes – hot, bothered and heavy.’
‘Mm, it’ll soon be your turn.’ Effie’s initial shock and anger at her friends’ predicaments had abated, although she still strongly disapproved of the McKinnons’ plan. ‘Remember to call if you need me. I’ll raise the alarm with Lorna.’ Effie had given them her smaller whistle, made from a puffin bone, to which Poppit was trained to respond. The dog’s broken leg meant she couldn’t run on the command of the three short pips as usual, and Effie herself certainly wouldn’t hear it all the way over in Village Bay – but the dog would. Short of a force ten gale, Poppit would hear it almost anywhere on the island and Effie would know, by the prick of her ears and the cock of her head, that the alarm had been sounded.
‘Thanks.’ It comforted Flora to have it in her pocket beside her other talisman, the red lipstick. ‘Look, I’d best get back to Mhairi. She’s sleeping a lot and this heat’s not helpful.’
‘Aye, I’ll see you anon.’
‘But, Eff – stay safe, all right? Don’t let him see you – but, if he does, make sure you’re not alone with him. Not for a single moment.’ Her friend nodded and they parted ways, Effie heading west for the encircling sweep of Mullach Sgar. The gradients were less severe there than below the drops of Connachair, and a track dotted the grass past the storm cleit, gradually dropping down to the Lovers’ Stone headland and looping back into Village Bay past Ruival.
Flora picked up the empty churns, feeling all the weight of her bump as she walked back, enjoying the sun on her face and the ground firm underfoot. These were her final weeks in her home and she wanted them to be happy ones. Soon James would be back, their baby would be born and they would be a family. This life and, for all its hardships, its simple pleasures too, would be behind her, and she wanted to drink it all in while she could.
Mhairi was already sitting by the peat fire by the time she got back down, forty-five minutes later. To her surprise, Mhairi was draped in a blanket, her red hair wet.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, setting down the churns.
‘One of the late-tups went into labour. I had to wash in the burn after the fluids went all over me.’ She was shivering in spite of the intense heat.
Flora fell still. ‘But . . . you shouldn’t have done that.’
‘I had no choice. She was breech, the first one was stuck.’
‘You mean it was twins?’ Flora asked. Mhairi had been determined they should lose no more sheep ‘on her account’; over sixty had perished in the sheep drama last November, when she had been almost killed herself. Now that they were evacuating to the mainland and their sheep stocks were to be sold at market, every last ewe, hogget and lamb mattered.
‘Triplets, but the last one died,’ Mhairi shrugged. ‘I’ve been lambing almost the whole time it’s taken you to come back down.’ She looked up at Flora with bright eyes. Too bright. ‘It was as well I was over that way. We’d have lost the mother for sure if she’d gone into labour overnight. Another sheep down.’ She shivered again, tucking her chin into her chest and clutching the blanket closer.
Flora nodded, but she didn’t feel reassured by the so-called win. ‘Sorry I was so long. I got chatting to Effie . . . Mathieson’s back.’
‘Again?’ Mhairi looked alarmed.
‘He came over on the Dunara so hopefully he’ll be leaving with them too but we need to be on the lookout for him, just in case. Effie’s hiding on the west slopes, so he may check for her here.’
‘You don’t think he’d try to . . .’ Mhairi’s voice faded out, as if she couldn’t say the words. ‘. . . Again, do you?’
‘It would be madness.’
‘But he is mad . . .’
They both looked up to Am Blaid, searching for the devil himself dancing on the ridge.
‘And if he doesn’t go back on the Dunara?’ Mhairi asked.
Flora bit her lip, hardly able to bear thinking about it. ‘Then Effie’s in for a very difficult few days.’
Flora felt herself pulled from her nap by a sudden breeze. She had been sleeping soundly, her weary body grateful for the middle-of-the-day respite – she could no longer sleep on her back, and sleeping on her stomach hadn’t been possible for a long while. She stared at the stone wall inches from her face. Donald had come over with some dinner for them both and it was partly to give him and Mhairi privacy that she had come inside. She suspected he would have started on his way back to the village by now though.
She pushed herself up to sitting and sat there, drowsy, for several moments before making her way outside. She stood by the entrance, blinking slowly and trying to summon the will to finish her chores. It was several moments before she realized what she was seeing, utmost fear arrowing through her veins.
‘Mhairi!’ The word was a hiss, Flora keeping herself hidden in the shadows.
Mhairi, sitting on the milking stool by the sheep fank, lifted her head and turned back at the sound. Flora frantically pointed up the slope at the sight of the factor, fast approaching.
Even from this distance, Flora could see her friend’s body flinch in horror too and the ewe she was stripping bleated in protest, escaping with a kick and a wriggle as Mhairi struggled to get up from the low stool; but it took an effort now. She knocked over the pail in her haste, fresh milk spreading into the grass.
‘Quick!’ Flora urged her, but Mhairi twisted on the spot in panic as she took in the distance from the sheep fank to the souterrain, Mathieson fast closing the distance between them. His arms were swinging stiffly with his signature angry stride and she was fully exposed. There was no question of her being able to hide in time.
‘Miss MacKinnon, I’ve been looking for you!’ he called, long before he reached her.
They were menacing words from a man who, the last time they had met, had thrown her to the ground and Mhairi, with a whimper, stayed rooted to the spot. Flora could see her hands pulling into frightened fists as she debated, still, whether to run, before suddenly leaning on the low fank wall before her, elbows splayed across the top in an incongruously genial pose. ‘I’m not hiding, Mr Mathieson. I’ve been over here all summer.’
Mathieson too seemed surprised by her demeanour; he stopped on the other side of the wall and stared. Had he wanted Mhairi to cower in his presence? Several moments of silence passed and Flora knew the details of their last meeting, up by the storm cleit on the night of the storm, were replaying through both their minds. He himself had no idea of how dangerous he had truly been that night, almost killing an unborn child. Had he come here to find Effie? Or to threaten Mhairi and assure himself of her silence?
‘Have you come to count the sheep?’ Mhairi asked quickly, offering him a third way. ‘Because I can save you the bother and tell you myself if it will help you. You must be so busy with getting everything ready for the evacuation. Flora and I—’
‘Yes, where is Flora?’ he demanded.
Mhairi hesitated. Her unnatural pose, leaning forward, brought her into far closer proximity to him than she would ever be comfortable with. If he were to come around that wall . . . if he were to come in here, there would be no way for either one of them to conceal their heavily pregnant figures. ‘Far end of Cambir Point, last time I saw her. One of the late-tups was getting into difficulty. We’ve had a few nights of it. Some breech births, but only one stillborn so far.’
Mhairi had never been a convincing liar but she was somehow holding her ground now.
The factor stood on the spot, perfectly still, as if he could detect the deception. Smell it. Slowly, he walked over to the wall where Mhairi was leaning and peered over it. She turned with him to look at the ground by her feet, her weight still carried forward so that the taut drum of her belly was concealed, for the moment, by her forward-hanging blouse and skirt.
‘You spilled the milk.’
Mhairi nodded sombrely. ‘Aye. She’s troublesome, that one. Always struggles.’
Mathieson glanced sharply at her, as if it was Effie she had been describing. Flora felt sure Effie’s ghost from that night was dancing in his mind – her fighting spirit, her loyal dog – but still he made no reference to what he had done, to what Mhairi had walked in on.
‘I’ve come for the slops,’ he said finally. ‘Where are they?’
Flora gasped, realizing too late his reason for looking over the wall. Not searching for Effie after all, but –
She saw Mhairi flinch too. The slops had been kept in the milk bucket by that fank there all summer.
Until yesterday.
‘The slops?’ Mhairi’s voice audibly quailed and the factor’s eyes narrowed as her fluster returned.
‘Yes, Miss MacKinnon. The slops. For which I have been paying you for the best part of a year to turn and cure in fresh seawater. The slops. Last time I was here, they were kept right there.’ He pointed to the spot on the ground by her feet, white bleeding into green. ‘Where are they?’
His stare grew darker and more intense as a long silence drew out. ‘Miss MacKinnon?’ The words were a growl.
‘I . . . I . . .’
‘Yes?’ The sound was just a breath. Expectant. Menacing.
‘I dropped them.’ The words ran from her like a mouse scuttling across the grass – tiny and rapid, quivering with fear in the open air.
‘You dropped them?’
‘In the sea. When I was turning them the other day. A wave came in suddenly and took the pail from my grasp. There was nothing I could do. I’m so sorry.’
Flora, frozen too, watched on in utter horror. The factor’s face was a marbled mix of contempt and rage. ‘. . . I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s t-true.’
‘No.’ He shook his head, his lips drawn fully back in a snarl as he grabbed her suddenly, holding her jaw in one hand. ‘You’re playing me. I know what you’re doing. Now the evacuation’s happening, you think you can make yourself a fast buck . . .’ He turned around on the spot, still holding her firm as his eyes darted everywhere searching for the bucket. Another pail was set by Flora’s milking stool beside the other fank and he released her with such ferocity she cried out. He tore over to it, throwing it against the wall in a fury in the next moment as he saw it was empty.
He turned back to Mhairi, trembling with rage. ‘Where are they?’ he bellowed. ‘I know they’re here somewhere!’
‘They’re not, I swear!’ she cried, holding up her hands defensively as he strode back to her in four paces. ‘I’ll give the money back to y—’
But the word was torn from her as he struck her hard across the cheek and Mhairi was knocked sideways by the force. She was on the ground, again. Beaten by him, again.
‘Don’t you touch her!’ Flora screamed, bursting from the dwelling before she had time to stop herself.
There was a moment of stunned silence as Mathieson absorbed the new scene: both young women there . . . Slowly, his open mouth began to shape into a smile as their secrets were revealed in one swoop.
‘Dear God!’ he cried. ‘So that’s what it’s all about!’ He laughed loudly, throwing his head back so that the peals could echo and the longer he laughed, the more frightened Flora felt. Oh God, what had she done?
Her gaze fell to a point beyond his right shoulder, the world seeming to contract around the glen.
‘Who else knows?’ he asked finally.
‘You can’t!’ Mhairi implored him, from her position on the ground, her cheek reddened from his strike. ‘Please, you can’t tell anyone!’
‘Oh, I think you’ll find I can do as I please, Miss MacKinnon.’ His eyes travelled over her swollen stomach, then Flora’s, taking in their relative differences in size. Flora’s bump was still significantly smaller, but Mhairi had only a couple of weeks to go now.
He looked at Mhairi quizzically. ‘Funny. I never took you for a whore, Miss MacKinnon. Her, yes—’
Flora gasped at his bare-faced insult. ‘How dare you!’ She spat at his feet but he merely laughed, as if enjoying her lack of decorum.
‘Come now, what else should I call you? Do you think marriage will absolve you of your sins? You’re a slut. A common prostitute, as I always knew you were. Oh yes – you were always destined to use your face and body to buy your way out of here.’
‘You have no idea what you’re talking about,’ she sneered with all the contempt she could muster. ‘Ours is a true love – but what would you know of that? No one’s ever loved you! I doubt even your own mother could summon much affection for you. And Effie? She despises you – you disgust her . . .’
She felt herself grow as her words landed with gratifying force, his expression changing. She lifted her gaze off him again, feeling her confidence bloom.
‘But when I see James again and I tell him all of the things you’ve said to me, the things you’ve done to my friends . . .’ She let the threat hang in the air, the words she had wanted to say before but swallowed back, now given voice.
For several moments he said nothing at all. He looked as stunned as if she’d landed a powerful punch on his nose. But then a look came into his eyes, one she knew all too well.
‘He’ll what?’ A small smile grew with his confidence. ‘Hit me? Have me fired?’ He tutted loudly. ‘No, no, Miss MacQueen. He won’t be doing any of that. He won’t be doing very much at all, by all accounts.’
Flora felt her blood run cold. What did that mean – by all accounts?
She saw the delight skip over his features at her ignorance. ‘Oh – you haven’t heard.’ He feigned surprise. ‘It’s been in all the papers. Your Mr Callaghan’s ship is caught in the ice. Held in a death grip, apparently.’
‘What?’ she whispered. She stared at him, completely unable to hide the terror she felt at his words. ‘But . . . he’s safe? They’re all safe?’
‘Who can say? They might already have frozen to death. Or starved . . .’
‘Don’t listen to him, Flora,’ Mhairi said anxiously, staggering to her feet. ‘He’s lying! He’s trying to frighten you. Word would have come if the worst had happened.’
Would it, though? How? She’d not received a letter from him since he left Iceland. He’d said they’d be uncontactable by all but radio communication – and there’d not been a radio mast on the isle since the end of the Great War.
Mathieson cast a disgusted glance towards her stomach. ‘You’ve got to rather hope he does die. At least then he’d be spared the ignominy of knowing his child was born a bastard—’
Flora gasped as a roar swirled around the glen and Donald suddenly leapt over the fank wall, launching himself at the factor. His approach back down the slope had been stealthy as he circled back, the factor’s attention entirely occupied by the two women before him.
Both girls screamed, moving back as the men rolled on the ground amid a flurry of bone-crunching punches, grunts and curses. Limbs struck out of the mêlée every few moments – a thrown arm, a flung leg – as they flailed, one atop the other, striving for dominance. But Donald was still weak from his accident.
‘Stop!’ Mhairi cried, as the factor landed a swift uppercut to Donald’s jaw and the two men were briefly parted. She looked around her desperately for something she could use to intervene. Donald was staggering, trying to rebalance himself, but the factor’s hand was already pulled into a fist, his arm drawn back for the next blow.
Flora screamed – but this time it was Mathieson who spun, his arm suddenly hanging limp as he fell to the ground. A vivid slash could be seen at his shoulder, dark blood bleeding into his shirt.
Flora looked across at Mhairi, who was holding the metal poker, her eyes wide. It had a heavy, blunt tip, and further back, a smaller point that curved away in a hook; Flora saw that it looked dipped in blood.
Mathieson groaned, his skin a sickly grey as he rolled in pain.
Donald, getting his breath back, took the poker from Mhairi and crouched in front of the factor, his lips curled back as he lightly poked the tip towards Mathieson’s chest.
‘You wouldn’t,’ the factor panted, his eyes fixed upon it nonetheless.
Donald smiled. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ He still wore the shadows of the bruises from his fall on Boreray, his shorn hair still growing back from where Lorna had had to shave him to clean the wounds. ‘You tried to kill me.’
‘No—’ Mathieson panted.
‘Aye, you did. You lied to the others while I was out cold, but I remember what went down – I never slipped.’ His voice was a low rumble, like thunder, but he was calm now that the other man was on the ground and incapacitated. ‘It would have been convenient for you, wouldn’t it – getting rid of the person who was calling attention to your crooked ways?’
There was a short silence as Mathieson looked back at him with renewed fear. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve a job to do and I do it.’
‘No.’ Donald shook his head. ‘I’m onto you, Mathieson, and you know it; your thieving doesn’t end with undercutting us. Even you wouldn’t bother trying to kill a man over the price of wool. Which tells me that if you wanted me gone that badly, then I’m right. The only question is, how big is it, this racket you’ve got going?’
He prodded the factor lightly with the poker and the man groaned, trying to squirm away. But he remained tight-lipped, his eyes burning with hatred.
‘You know full well that if I told the men what you did, it’d be more than a sliced arm you’d be going back with.’ Donald spoke slowly. ‘And we both know what would happen if I told MacLeod that his factor is robbing the tenants, trying to murder the men, striking the women, raping them . . .?’
Mathieson’s head snapped up.
‘Yes – I know about Effie.’
‘I never raped her!’
‘Only because you were stopped.’
‘She’s my wife,’ Mathieson hissed.
‘In no one’s eyes but yours!’ Donald roared. ‘You’ll stay well away from her, you hear me? Your so-called marriage has no grounding in any law, certainly not God’s. If you even so much as look in her direction, I’ll use this poker on you and I’ll not be so “polite”. Do we understand one another?’
‘Your threats don’t frighten me,’ Mathieson panted.
‘Well, they should. Because the day we dock at the mainland, I’m going to the police constabulary and giving them everything I have on you. And then you won’t just lose your livelihood and your reputation, but your freedom too.’
‘They’d never believe a peasant like you! You’re nothing. You’re no one.’
‘You think I’m not capable of outmanoeuvring a man like you, Frank?’ Donald asked, dragging the metal tip over Mathieson’s chest, jabbing it lightly. ‘You don’t think I’ve outwitted you already?’
He watched as the factor looked back at him in confusion. ‘. . . What are you talking about?’
‘I just got back from Harris yesterday. I had an interesting meeting with a buyer there.’
‘A buyer? For what?’ His eyes widened as he joined the dots. ‘. . . Where is it?’ He tried to sit up, but Donald simply prodded his arm with the poker again and he fell back with a cry of pain.
‘Uh-uh-uh. The ambergris money is mine. All mine.’
Mathieson gasped at the correct classification of the slops. He looked around them at the numerous cleits dotted about. Were they here somewhere?
‘Don’t waste your time,’ Donald said. ‘The deal is already done.’
‘W-who?’
But Donald just tutted and pressed a finger to his lips.
‘. . . Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because I want to be sure we understand one another. We are equal. I have something over you. Just as you have something over me.’
Mathieson’s gaze swept over Mhairi and Flora, a look of disgust at their swollen stomachs. ‘You mean you want my silence?’ he panted, still clutching his arm, beads of sweat at his brow.
‘No. I expect your silence. You won’t breathe a word about anything of what you’ve seen here: not Mhairi’s condition and not Flora’s.’
Mathieson spat savagely at the ground, incensed. ‘Why are you so concerned about these little whores, anyway?’
Donald struck his arm hard with the poker in reply, making the factor howl with pain. He raised his arm for another strike—
‘Donald, don’t!’ Mhairi implored, stepping forward.
Mathieson stared at her, seeing her concern – seeing how she watched Donald constantly. He looked back at Donald in disbelief. ‘It’s yours?’ He gave another cold laugh. ‘You dog!’
Donald struck him again, hard, a spray of blood flying through the air and spattering on the grass. The factor cried out but Donald said nothing; there was a coldness now to his violence, his anger spent. ‘We’re going to start a new life together on the mainland, she and I, thanks to the money from the ambergris. Thanks to you, I suppose, Frank . . . Mary will be provided for, too, so don’t think you’ve got any leverage over me there. I’ve nothing to hide, but I’ll spare Mhairi any unnecessary pain.’
The windfall had changed everything for them, Donald finally persuading Mhairi that the money and the evacuation combined offered them the future they craved: becoming a family.
‘But I’ll do it in my time, on my terms and you . . . you won’t know what’s hit you if I see so much as one wrong look or hear one wrong word. Do we understand one another?’
He didn’t blink until the factor nodded. ‘Say it,’ he demanded, kicking at his leg.
‘Yes . . . Yes, we understand one another.’
The two men maintained eye contact as Frank’s feet scrabbled against the ground and he slowly got up. He had to clutch his useless arm against his body and when he stood, he was stooped, his blood pressure low as the bleeding continued.
‘How the hell am I supposed to explain this?’ he demanded, looking down at himself. Blood had soaked his shirt and jacket.
‘Tell Lorna a gannet attacked you,’ Donald shrugged.
‘She won’t believe that!’
‘Of course not. But nor will she care. You’ve no friends here, Mathieson; the sooner we’re all shot of you, the better. Now go – and don’t show your face over this side again.’
The factor stared at the three of them, his gaze falling to the women’s stomachs a final time before he turned and limped away.
Donald put his arm around Mhairi; she was trembling violently and he pulled her into him as they watched him go. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be safe now,’ he whispered, kissing her hair. ‘He can do you no harm without hurting himself more.’
Flora stood apart from them as she watched the factor stagger back to the village. Destruction always seemed to trail in his wake, his fists a weapon, his words poison. He was down for now, it was true – but was he really out? The man who is born to be hanged will never be drowned, after all.
But she didn’t care about his fate. Nor his threats. Let him say what he wanted if that was how it was to be. She just needed to know the truth about James.
And there was only one person who could help her with that.