The Monster's Wife(3)

She looked at May, whose hands on the other oar were as thin and white as claw bones and she felt them, the invisible wires that had strung them together since they were small.

The wind flung May’s voice at her, fine and tight, pushed through the sieve of stormy air. “I’ll wager if we row far enough, we’ll see tall ships out in the firth—”

“Sailing to France!” Oona finished.

“Or to us from France.”

Squinting into the blackness, sharp with cold, Oona imagined a convoy of square-rigged frigates slung low, peppery with sulphur, the upper deck gun-laden. French sailors veered larboard and starboard, dancing the tune of the waves. The captain in his blue and gold and black tricorn, stood stern and stiff on the quarterdeck. A lad in the crow’s nest used his eyeglass to search out English land, Scottish land, territory. And somewhere in a distant country where they ate raw onions and chopped each others’ heads off, Napoleon gave orders - to kill and conquer, to rule the seas. She knew all this from Hamish Yule’s confidences to Granny - he always had a broadsheet from the mainland, sour with ill tidings.

“D’you think they’ll land here, take us prisoner?” May’s arms tensed on the pull back, sinewy and pale in the light of the full moon. “Some nights when I hear cannons, I fancy they’ll row onto the beaches, thrash us while we sleep.”

Oona pulled a face. “You never have heard them.”

“You know, you may be bookish, but it doesn’t follow that the rest of us are simpletons.” May arched her swan neck, frowning. “The cannons crack loud as thunder some nights.”

“That’s nothing more than your Da’s farts. One of these days a cannon ball will shoot from his bum and amaze us.”

May’s face split in a grin. “Aye, it reeks some nights, stuffed in that room with the four of ‘em when we’ve had neeps. Don’t have brothers, I say, and don’t share your kitchen with pigs.”

Oona grinned back. “Same thing.”

“Two brothers, one sow and her farrow. Comes to nine. The swine makes ten. Can’t wait ‘til I’m berthed with Stuart, bless his breeks.”

Oona’s smile faded. Something about May being a married woman, stowed away in the Flett croft, sat uneasily with her. “He likely farts too.”

May shrugged. “He can snore buckshot and fart cannonballs for all I care. One’s still better than nine. And when I’m a wife—”

Oona sighed. “How far are we?”

May’s oar stilled. She looked over her shoulder to the endlessness of dark sea. White knives jabbed the sky and vanished on the horizon. Hoy was small now and the yellow nubs of kitchen fires and candles were tiny points, mirroring the shape of slain Orion who sprawled in the sky, his bragging cut short by the scorpion’s sting.

The sky blanched. They both cowered, silently counting the thunder’s rebuke. They had roamed too far to swim home if things got rough and the boat capsized. The clouds split and spilled their bellies’ weight of water. Icy fine points drove into Oona’s lips and eyelids. Their vessel seemed to droop, as if it had sailed this far on a last rush of strength and now felt the heft of its cargo of crates. Oona’s back ached from rowing now they’d broken off and her gut tightened on sharp things, a growing bellyache, a sense that things were about to turn rotten.





3


May drew her oar in and dropped it, flapping her hands. “It’s ill news when you don’t feel the chilblains any more.” She pulled her blue lips back in a shamming sort of smile, showing her teeth as she never did. She must see it too, that fearful cast to the moon now the storm had hit. And she knew as well as Oona the folly of being out in it.

Another flash, dazzling and eerily silent.

Oona pulled in her oar, dropped it into the murky water that sloshed with the boat’s hip-sway. The oars rolled together, like boats themselves on a rough inner tide. “Why are we gallivanting here?”

The thunder again.

“D’ye reckon its cannons?” May slicked her wet hair back from her face. “The Sassanacks brawling with the Frogs?”

Oona’s body braced for the next crack. She shook her head. “Cannons don’t hum like that. What mischief is this, May?”

With a shaking finger May tapped her nose, turned her eyes to the sea in that skittish way she had. It was maddening, when Oona knew all of her twitches and looks and could read between the lines, could see, now, May’s hand skimming the top of the uppermost crate contemplatively. It was closed but not secured with rope or nails.

“Those crates give off a putrid stench. What’s in ‘em?”

May shrugged. “Bits and oddments from the big house. Rags and old trash I must get rid of.”

“Whatever could you need to jetsam at this hour, at sea, in a storm?”

May swayed with the rough clash of waves that pitched the boat to and fro, steadying herself on the stack of crates. “This is rough work. It needs both our strength.”

“Here to serve, am I?” She threw the words off lightly, however piqued she was.

May touched her arm. “I wanted to see you. Only I—“

Oona nodded, shrugged, looked away. She saw how it was. Swaying, her hands slippery and stone cold, she lifted the edge of a crate and peered inside. It was heavy and the bottom was slimy. The innards stank. “For God’s sake, May, these aren’t rags!”