The Pure Heart Read online

  Father had drowned, along with his stories of the outside world, but I still burnt to know of what lay beyond the horizon.

  I looked about the blackhouse – just one room containing everything we needed squashed bare stone wall to bare stone wall. And when the winter was bad we had to find room for animals in here too. Would a year spent as companion to a rich, educated girl be such a bad thing? I could return to the island full of knowledge. It would make me a more worthy leader.

  I rolled the scroll up carefully and pushed it into a crack in the wall where I kept secret things, slipping out of the blackhouse and heading for the shore.

  Only a smattering of clouds scudded across the toenail moon which had risen from behind the incisor-sharp sea stacks. The sky glittered, the stars too numerous to pick out any single one. Would the skies in the borderlands be just as celestial? Would the merchant’s daughter be at this moment staring up at the very same moon?

  My bare toes navigated down the well-worn path to the beach, the bay opening below me like an apron. The breeze lifted my hair from my shoulders, massaging my cheeks with soft briny fingers as I stole past the litter of blackhouses, all nuzzled close to one another for shelter. The wind was still tepid from summer but it had an edge to it, winter approaching with stealth, circling like a white-tailed eagle.

  Light was still spilling from under the door of the largest one belonging to the Fergusons, the faint murmur of men in council mingling with the gentle lap of the waves.

  Down below, the boat sat in the bay, its sails lowered, rising and falling on the calm waters, rocking its single occupant to sleep. The sailor would have been fed well, but strangers were rarely invited to spend a night in one of our beds.

  I sat down on the sand to be immediately greeted by one of the sheepdogs left on guard duty. This one I called Gaoth because she could run like the wind. I urged the dog to be quiet so as not to raise the men and she obliged by lying submissively on her back, demanding a tickle.

  ‘You are supposed to be working, you naughty thing,’ I chided her. ‘Guarding us from whoever is aboard that boat.’

  I looked out to the boat. That little craft that had come from afar. Maybe it had already sailed around all the edges of the world . . . if indeed the world had edges at all. Father had said that the world was round like a pebble, but Mammy insisted that was nonsense. I wondered if I would now find out for myself.

  ‘Do you think that the men will send me away?’ I said to Gaoth, stroking her dutiful head.

  The dog let out a soft whimper.

  ‘Innes will surely only do what is best for everyone,’ I said, laying my cheek against hers. ‘He knows that if I go, I will return to fulfil my duties here.’

  But then suddenly the dog sat bolt upright.

  ‘What is it, Gaoth?’ I questioned, observing her wet nose pointing out to the bay like she’d caught the scent of something.

  The dog whimpered again and moved around me protectively in a circle.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I reassured her, looking out towards the craft where all seemed to be still. I couldn’t make out the figure aboard so assumed the sailor to be lying down, sleeping.

  But then I heard it. A guttural noise, like the babbling of nesting fulmars. But that sound belonged to the sea stacks – the birds never roosted down here and most had flown the islands now for the winter.

  I listened again, sure it was coming from the bay, holding the dog by her scruff and willing her not to bark.

  ‘Shhh,’ I hissed, listening as intently as Gaoth, who was cocking her head to one side to hear better.

  There it was again. But sharper this time. Unearthly, almost. It reminded me of, but was not quite, the screech of a herring gull. A frisson of prickles ran down my spine.

  ‘What is that?’ I whispered.

  Gaoth was unable to contain herself any more. She let out a yap and the strange noise was immediately silenced.

  Then the door of Innes’s blackhouse clicked open, letting out a beam of yellow light.

  I stood and ran. The men would be angry if they found me here. My feet found the sandy path and I sprinted behind a stone cleit, observing the three hefty shadows that emerged and ran down to the shore.

  I wove back through the jumble of silent blackhouses, still pondering the strange noise, my fingertips guiding me through their maze of rough-hewn walls.

  But someone was following me.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t be in bed,’ said a hissed whisper, and Artair emerged from behind a collapsed wall.

  Without another word, he pulled me into his arms, my head burrowing into his musky beard.

  ‘You are not with the men?’ I whispered as I inhaled him, wondering if he already knew the answer to their debate.

  ‘They sent me away a while back,’ he said, a hint of desperation creeping into his voice. ‘Said I’m too close to it all to make a rational decision.’

  But the tone of his voice revealed everything. The men had decided to send me away.

  His tears came quickly, falling warm on to my cheek, mingling with my own.

  ‘I’ll wait for you, Iseabail,’ he said, swallowing hard to regain control. ‘I promise that I will wait for you.’

  The knock came early the next morning, just after first light. Innes Ferguson come to convey the decision reached last night. The island elders had voted unanimously to send me away with the sailor.

  I myself had only just slipped back into the black-house. Artair and I had been up all night, climbing the cliffs, discussing our plans for when I returned. But mostly we had held each other tightly, staring out to the curve of the horizon, to the edge of our world, where the glittering stars morphed into the rippling ocean.

  When Innes left, Mammy regarded our sealskin trunk in a daze, trying to work out what an island girl promised all the riches in the world would possibly need to take with her.

  ‘That trunk belonged to Father, didn’t it?’ I said, trying to lighten the mood though my tummy was rigid with nerves. ‘I’ll look after it – bring it back in good condition.’

  ‘I don’t care if I never see the cursed thing again,’ said Mammy, shaking her head at the disbelief of the situation. ‘Your father brought it when he returned to marry me, packed with all those books and quills. Look at all the trouble it has caused us.’

  Father had been sent by our landlords in the Outer Hebrides to collect rents paid with sheep hides and fish oil. But he’d fallen for Mammy, and in the end he’d settled here instead.

  ‘But Father loved this trunk,’ I said, stroking the smooth pelt stretched out over strips of driftwood. ‘And he loved you.’

  But Mammy just slapped my hand away, quickly packing the trunk as if to get it over with. Dried puffin, rough bread, a spare smock, a black and white hide from the finest Soay sheep, shoes sewn from a pair of gannets and, even more randomly, an animal skull bleached buff-white by sun, salt and sea. I guess in the end she decided that I needed things that would remind me of this place, things that would bring me back one day.

  It was Innes who escorted me from the blackhouse, linking my arm firmly as we walked down to the shore. Everyone that I had ever known was waiting for me there, my whole entire world standing on that narrow strip of creamy sand. I had lingered last in the blackhouse, committing every inch of my modest home to memory.

  ‘I give my word that Artair will not be married for one year to the day,’ said Innes. ‘Please, Iseabail – try and make it back safely before then.’

  I nodded my head. Innes Ferguson was famed for being a man of his word and if this merchant was too, then by the time September came again, I would be back on home soil, armed with valuable experience of the outside world. Still, my stomach knotted at the sight of the gathering on the shore, the crowd forming a horseshoe at the water’s edge around the boat.

  ‘I must tell you,’ said Innes watchfully, ‘we are not sending you just for the promise of supplies.’

  ‘Then why?’ I asked, bewildered.


  We were near enough to the crowd now to see that most would not meet my gaze. I spotted Artair standing with my sister near to the boat but had lost sight of Mammy.

  ‘For what other reason are you sending me?’

  ‘It’s the strange sailor,’ began Innes. ‘The men are afraid of him.’

  What harm to us all can one man be? My sister’s words when the boat sailed into the bay came back to haunt me. I stopped and looked up at the chief for an explanation.

  ‘Last night, we heard cries coming from the boat,’ he said. ‘Noises that were not human.’

  ‘Not human?’ I repeated, thinking of the sounds that I could not explain, the ones that had caused Gaoth to circle me protectively. I could not let on that I had heard them too. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘We want the sailor to leave our shores as soon as possible,’ said the chief, taking my arm again and urging me on. ‘We need to fulfil that letter’s request – otherwise more of his kind might come.’

  ‘What do you mean – more of his kind?’

  I looked at the sailor sitting at the helm of his boat, ready to man the rudder. I noticed for the first time how willowy he was, especially compared to the squat men of the island. His pale papery clothes stood out, ethereal against the dark sea, giving him the outline of an angel.

  ‘You will see that there is a strange symbol painted on the bow of his boat,’ continued Innes seriously. ‘An eye of some kind. The men think it might be the sign of the Devil.’

  ‘The Devil?’ I said, my voice rising. ‘And yet you still send me?’ Any excitement I had about leaving had quickly shifted to fear.

  ‘For your mother’s sake, please go quietly,’ said the chief, taking my arm again. Tighter this time. ‘You will see that this is already difficult for her. I’m telling you this to warn you, Iseabail. Be careful. Keep God close to your heart.’

  Too soon we reached the shore and the hushed crowd parted for me. I could see Mammy now, being supported by several women.

  Innes guided me straight past to where Eilidh and Artair stood up to their knees in the shallows. I could now make out the symbol Innes had spoken of, just behind Artair’s head: a single eye painted in black on the bow, a tear curling out from it. What on earth did it mean?

  Artair opened his arms and I ran to him sobbing, the fright finally escaping me.

  ‘Remember all that we discussed last night,’ said Artair, his strong hands around my waist. ‘Just think of all the things that you will learn – all the knowledge you will bring back to the island.’

  I turned to look at the boat, my throat as dry as a husk. The eye bobbed in the water but wasn’t too frightening up close, the black paint blistered and peeling.

  I turned to look back up at Artair, into the deep brown eyes of this young man who I’d known all of my life. The man who was still my destiny. Everything was going to be all right.

  Eilidh took my hand and made her way to the boat, looking up at the sailor who sat at the back at the helm. ‘Take good care of her,’ she said. ‘Take good care of my sister.’

  The bay was shrouded in mist, which only intensified the presence of my single com panion, the shore soon dissolving along with its inhabitants. The sailor glanced across whilst he leant back on the cabin door, steering calmly, his eyes lingering for a moment on my bare toes. I stared back fiercely at his outlandish clothes, his wavy dark hair and too closely cropped beard, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  I was still half expecting one of the men to come rowing out through the fog, Innes having changed his mind. But in no time at all we were clear of the bay, skirting the sharpness of Stac an Armin.

  That’s when the sailor sat upright. ‘Here, take this,’ he urged, indicating that I should take the rudder. But so taken was I by his strange accent and the way it rang out in the clear, cold air that I didn’t move a muscle.

  ‘Please, miss,’ he continued, his Gaelic unsure, stilted, his eyes kept downcast. ‘The wind has changed, and we could be blown back on to the rocks.’

  I stood wobbly on my sea legs, swapping places with him. Then I sat down at the helm, grasping the wooden tiller like it was the head of a poisonous snake.

  ‘Here, let me show you,’ he said in an amused tone, settling himself beside me. Then he clamped a slim, suntanned hand over my white knuckles.

  I recoiled at the intimacy but said nothing as he explained the basics, how to steer into the choppy waves, in which general direction we were heading and some other things that I didn’t quite follow. He spoke patiently, his white blouse flapping like a delicate butterfly against my rough smock, but seemed somehow afraid to look at me directly. Up close his green waistcoat looked impossibly shiny and thin and he smelt sweetly fragrant, like wild thyme mixed with gorse.

  But there were no outward signs of any devilishness or that he was anything more or less than human.

  ‘What’s that thing painted on the front of the boat?’ I blurted out as he slid out again to tend the sails, determined to eradicate what little fear I still had of him.

  ‘It’s known as the Eye of Horus,’ he replied as I grappled with the rudder. ‘A common talisman – used by sailors to ward off bad weather, that’s all. I should introduce myself by the way: my name is Marcus Amanza. At your service.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the Devil then?’ I pressed on, finally getting the hang of the steering.

  ‘It’s just a little token of protection,’ he laughed, a gathering of crow’s feet mustering around his eyes. ‘We sailors are a superstitious lot.’

  I wondered about his age. His skin was weathered and his dark hair showed the first signs of grey. Still, I could have placed him anywhere between twenty years and forty.

  ‘Will you be kind enough to tell me your name?’ he said from somewhere behind the sails, ducking down artfully as they swung about, tying a plethora of complicated knots.

  ‘Iseabail,’ I replied. ‘My name is Iseabail McCleod.’

  ‘Ish-ah-bel,’ he said, coming to a standstill as he melodically sounded out my name. ‘Just like the French Isabelle.’

  But I was looking back over my shoulder now. Only the tops of St Kilda pointed up through the mist, their crags iced with guano. ‘I was to marry the chief’s son in less than a month,’ I explained, my mind drawn back to last night up on the cliffs. ‘I was to be a Ferguson – a McCleod woman no more.’

  ‘Well, I know nothing about that,’ said Marcus, squatting to rummage in a sack. ‘I was only sent to take a girl to the mainland.’

  He made it sound so trifling. Not like I’d been ripped away from everything that I had ever known.

  ‘Oh, and I was instructed to give this to the chosen girl,’ he said, drawing out a flat leather box from the inside of his waistcoat. We swapped seats: I took the box while he took the rudder. ‘You are to put it on.’

  Balancing it on my knees, I flipped open the lid. Inside sat a necklace of leather twine with a perfectly round white stone wound into the middle, resting on a nest of velvet. The box was finer than the necklace, I thought.

  ‘Go on then,’ he said.

  ‘This is a present?’ I said, bemused.

  ‘I suppose that it must be,’ he said nonchalantly.

  I held the stone up by the twine. It was perfectly white but glinted purple, even in the overcast sky.

  ‘It’s a sea-pearl,’ I observed, looking to Marcus for confirmation. ‘We call them moon crystals back at home.’

  I didn’t want to seem ungrateful but pearls were common on our islands. I myself had acquired several, prised from the disgruntled mouths of mussels and clams. I had hidden them with my other secret things in the crack in the walls of the blackhouse.

  ‘Just put it on,’ said Marcus, impatient now.

  ‘What strange requests this merchant has,’ I said, stringing it round my neck and tying the cord. Marcus’s eyes followed the pearl as it came to rest on my bare skin just above the collar of my smock.

  ‘There,’ I s
aid, self-conscious now that he was still staring. ‘Is that to your satisfaction?’

  ‘It fits with my instruction,’ said Marcus, finally looking away. ‘There’s apples in the bottom of that sack, if you are hungry.’

  ‘Apples?’ I said with excitement, forgetting all about the necklace. I hadn’t tasted an apple in years. They were a real delicacy, rarely brought to our shores. The thought of having a whole one to myself had me rifling back in the sack.

  Selecting what felt like the biggest, I held it up heartily. It was so red, so shiny. Without as much as polishing it on my smock, I took a massive bite.

  Marcus looked on with interest, though his eyes darted away as soon as I looked up to meet them.

  ‘Excuse my manners,’ I said, wiping the juice from my chin with my sleeve. ‘It’s just that I’ve not eaten today.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ he said, now staring at my mouth. ‘It’s just that I’ve noticed that the people from your island . . . why, they have such white teeth!’

  I wiped the juice from my chin as Marcus’s own teeth flashed yellow beneath his beard.

  I turned away from his gaze to finish the apple. But now I faced the ocean instead. Black, undulating water. Powerful, deep; unforgiving.

  ‘You’re afraid of the sea?’ said Marcus, after observing me for several seconds.

  I shrugged, trying to calm my nerves, realizing that I was nibbling my apple core as fiercely as a rat. Marcus clearly knew that my people avoided the ocean at all costs. That instead of fishing, we scaled the vertical cliffs and sea stacks, harvesting seabirds and their eggs rather than venture out on the dark water.

  My father was one of the few islanders who had sailed over the ocean. But in the end, it came back to claim him.

  ‘Or is it the creatures that lie beneath that you fear?’ Marcus continued, his voice teasing. ‘Like the selkies? Seals that can come to land and take human form.’

  I looked back at him incredulously. Was he mocking me? ‘I’m not a believer in those old tales,’ I said sharply, pulling myself together. To prove my point I threw the skeletal apple core over the side of the boat where it hit the water with a defiant plop. ‘And when I rule the islands with Artair, we shall only promote modern thinking.’