Lot of nonsense this old fellow was talking, anyway, but it was useful to know what folk were saying. Ben was used to prejudice against the lights. There was always a reason for it, and this Island had been a lawless country in the past by all accounts. There was no telling but what this chap knew a thing or two more than he’d say about wrecks. And there’d been some pretty fierce smuggling here by all accounts, but that was years ago, not since the war probably. The old fellow would mind all of that – probably he’d learned to sweet-talk the excise officers just the same way he was talking to Ben now. Anyway, it was just typical of these old fishermen, saying the lights had brought no benefit. You couldn’t convince anyone who chose not to listen. You couldn’t ever prove how it would have been without the lights, once they were there, and how the wrecks did get less, if you took into account that the shipping was growing and growing every year that passed.
It was true about the steamships though. They hardly ever got into difficulties the way the sailing ships did, because they could get themselves off the coast whatever airt the wind was in. Look at how they’d rounded the Mull yesterday morning in the Mona’s Isle. With almost no wind at all they’d made about eight knots ever since they’d left the Clyde. They’d never have done that in a brig. It was a shame in a way. There was something about a brig, about the feel of the sea under the keel, and the sound of the wind and the tide, that you just didn’t get on the Mona’s Isle with her engines clattering away and her paddle wheels turning. Young as he was, Ben had been bred to a different world. No wonder these old fellows took it hard.
‘You ken these waters pretty well,’ he remarked, as the old man relapsed into silence and pulled at his pipe. ‘You’ll ken Ellan Bride? The island beyond the Calf?’
The old man took his pipe out of his mouth and deliberately spat into the river. ‘Oh ay. Ellan Bride … it’s surely not to Ellan Bride you’re for going, young fellow? You’re never going there? It’s a dangerous journey, dangerous awful. More’n half a league south of the Calf itself, right out at sea. You’re surely never wanting to go out there!’
‘Ay. That’s where we’ll be working.’
‘You will? There’s a light at them there already, you know that? Been a light at them these fifty years. Fifty years and over it, even, or so they say. But you’ll be knowing all about that?’
‘I ken about the private light, ay. We’re going to replace it. Build a new one.’
‘Is that right? You’ll be coming here to build us a new light on Ellan Bride? Well, well, you’re coming along to do us all a favour. And you’ll be bringing more Scotchmen over with you, and putting them on Ellan Bride, God help them? Well, well, whatever would we be doing without fellows like you coming along?’
‘You don’t think a new light’s a good idea?’
The old fellow shifted his gaze from Ben’s face, and seemed to deliberately change the subject. ‘You’re seeing that castle there?’ He jerked his pipe towards the grey bulk of Castle Rushen above the quay.
‘I could hardly miss it.’ Ben decided not to mention his acquaintance with the jail. ‘What of it?’
‘Well, maybe I’ll be telling you something about that castle. See the big it is?’
‘I certainly do.’
‘Well, I’ll be telling you a story about that. That castle is old’ – the old man’s voice sank to a dramatic whisper ‘– older than the memory of man.’
‘Then who built it?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Themselves it was, was building it, and I’ll tell you, Themselves is keeping their rooms in it that no man can be entering. There’s rooms in that castle no man is knowing of. There’s folk gone in, now and then, over the years – young fellows, and a taste of Dutch courage taken at them – you’ll know what that is? But never a one was ever coming back. And then a fellow was going in, but he took a skein of packthread, to be marking the way, like, and he was going in. Down and down he was going, down the long passages in the pitch dark, league after league …’
‘A very big castle,’ muttered Ben, under his breath.
‘… until at last he was seeing just a flicker – just the smallest little flicker – of a glimmering of light. And that seemed to him the best thing he ever did see. So he was going on and on, right away up to the light, and he was looking in on the window. And inside that window he was seeing the buggane – it’s the truth I’m telling you now, mind – seeing the buggane, and he lying asleep on a great stone table, laying his head on a book he was, and gripping a great sword in his hand, and breathing hard in his sleep. So the young fellow was running for it, away from the light and back along all the weary way, following his packthread, and out into the light of day at last. And so he was the one who was living to tell the tale.’
The old man was looking at him again through half-closed eyelids, apparently gauging the effect of his tale. Ben didn’t like that look. He was fairly sure he was being made game of, but when he met the other’s eyes, the old man broke into the blandest of smiles.
‘Is that right?’ said Ben cautiously. ‘And what’s that got to do with Ellan Bride?’
‘Ay well, that’d be another story. But if it’s my advice you’re seeking, young fellow – and I daresay you’re not, for without doubt there’s more learning at yourself in a few years of life than at myself in all of threescore and ten, you with your Scotch education and all – but if asking you were, I’d say keep you away from that island, young fellow. Don’t you be going near Ellan Bride!’
‘There’s an island where I come from,’ said Ben, watching him closely, ‘that’s supposed to disappear on midsummer nights. So they say. My Auld Daa lived in sight of that island, and never once did it shift from its moorings, and you could see it any old time you liked, except when the mist was down.’
‘Ah, but you weren’t on that island, young fellow. Now were you? That’s the thing. You might be seeing Ellan Bride any day of the year, but this time of year particular – May-time – you wouldn’t want to be going too near the place then.’
‘Well, that’s a shame,’ said Ben cheerfully. ‘In fact it’s a remarkable coincidence, since it’s May-time now, and Ellan Bride is exactly where we’re going to be.’
Ay well, so much for that, thought Ben, as he strolled along the other quay a few minutes later. The day’s work was well under way. Warehouse doors stood wide open: he could see right into the chandler’s and the ropeworks next to it. There was another schooner unloading blocks of sugar, each one carefully wrapped in sacking. Ben skirted the dockers and their carts, and crossed a wooden bridge back to the townward quay. And so much for Young Archibald telling him to sound out another chainman. If the old man he’d just spoken to was right, it seemed unlikely that they’d get anyone from Castletown willing to take on the job. Maybe they’d have better luck in Port St Mary. The boatman would surely have some ideas. Ben would have to explain to Archie that it would be better to wait until they got over there. Young Archibald always wanted everything sorted out yesterday; he never seemed to learn that the further you got from Edinburgh, the less life was going to be like that.
At the end of the quay a muddy lane led past a row of thatched cabins that faced onto the bay. There was a strong smell of woodsmoke, muck, rotting seaweed and drying fish. Barefoot children and prowling dogs tumbled in the glaur. Ben came out onto a shingle beach with one or two rowing boats drawn up close to the