were so! But the lad had an absentmindedness about him. He’d be asking the right questions, showing a fair bit of sense, in fact, and then he’d be going off in a dream again, like he was doing now. Something on his mind, seemingly. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing for the question Finn had in mind, he wasn’t sure. Master Buchanan was a bit stand-offish, not easy in his ways, but maybe it was just shyness. Finn’s own father had once met Robert Stevenson, when that gentleman had been coming to look at the Calf thirty years ago. Nothing stand-offish about him – a very easy gentleman to work with. Finn was wishing it were Mr Stevenson here himself, so he could be speaking to him about the matter that was troubling him. Mr Stevenson would be able to do something about it too; Finn wasn’t sure this young fellow Buchanan had the power. Finn had been hearing yesterday how Master Buchanan had been seeing Master Quirk at Castletown yesterday, and seemingly Master Quirk had been saying afterwards this Master Buchanan was just a sprat, and it was the bigger fish he was after – waste of time talking to him in fact. But that was surely not fair. The lad was just the surveyor, doing his job: he’d not be coming here to be dealing in the politics.
Slowly Ellan Bride took on a third dimension. There was very little of it. It lay low and green, the lighthouse standing in the centre like an unlit candle. The sun winked on the lighthouse lantern. The island was hardly more than a rock with a strip of green, surrounded by the silvery sea. Archie and Ben had seen hundreds of islands like it, but there was still something about a new island, a sense of possible discovery. Archie felt his impatience draining away. The east wind that had brought them here might not take them back so easily, but after all, what did it matter? He had no urgent appointment until September. If he were forced to spend the halcyon days of May becalmed on Ellan Bride, wasn’t that simply a foretaste of all the unknown islands yet to come?
He’d spent too many years trying to hurry along and achieve things. There had been so much work to be done, and what greater work could there be – so it had seemed, at least until last year – than the immense task of lighting up the seas? What could be more humane, more advantageous, more audacious, and more conducive to the greater good of all, than illuminating the coasts of Scotland for all the shipping that had to pass, now and in the future?
He’d only worked with Robert Stevenson a week when the old man had taken him out to the Isle of May. That was ten years ago. Archie had never been to sea before in his life. They’d had a wild crossing, the little boat ploughing doggedly through turbulent seas before a rising wind. They weren’t even sure that they were going to be able to land when they got there. Somehow the boat had managed to slip through the rocks into the east landing, and then they’d struggled up to the lighthouse, which stood right at the summit of the island, against gusts of icy rain. Indoors the lighthouse was quiet and spacious, the workrooms and keepers’ quarters a model of naval orderliness. Archie had been deeply impressed. The sheer elegance of the new lighthouse, the opulent restraint of the Council Chamber where the Commissioners had their annual meeting, the clean lines of the tower itself, the scale and precision of the new lighting system … all that had been such a contrast, not only to the wild weather, but also to the squat little tower that stood in the lee of Robert Stevenson’s light. This was the ruin of the old coal-burning light, out of date and unregretted, preserved merely because of a passing poet’s whimsical desire for the picturesque. For it was Walter Scott himself who’d asked for it to be kept, back in 1814 when he’d been on the May with Mr Stevenson.
Ten years ago Archie had stood on the flat roof of the new Isle of May lighthouse, leaning into the wind, while the sea crashed on the rocks below. Though he hadn’t said a word, he’d been drunk with sheer happiness. Mr Stevenson’s new lighthouse was not only functionally perfect, but also an outpost of civilisation, a little piece of Edinburgh illuminating the chaos and the wilderness. It seemed like the embodiment of an ideal; this, it had seemed, was what his new job was all to be about.
Even now, Ellan Bride might hold its atom of discovery. It was always like this: as soon as he got away from Edinburgh Archie began to wake up. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the world he lived in; it was just that he preferred to be on the very edges of it, and yet somehow bring with him everything that was good about the civilised world. In his experience that was how new ideas were most likely to happen.
‘No one bides on the island but the lighthouse people?’ Ben was asking. Archie brought his attention back with a start. He should be making the most of every minute with Mr Watterson, finding out as much as he could. Where had his wits gone a-begging?
‘Not now.’
‘So there were others?’
‘There were one time. But that was a long time ago.’
‘And the lightkeepers? They telt us in Edinburgh that the keeper was a woman.’
‘That’s right. The sister to the last keeper, him that was getting drowned. And a little family with her.’
‘Have they got a boat?’
‘A fourteen-foot yawl. Nothing much. But they’re not going offshore but for a bit of fishing usually. I’m bringing in the oil for the light, and the coals for winter, and anything else they’re asking.’
‘What about mail?’
‘Mail? They’re not getting none of that. A few times a year, maybe. If there’s a letter and I’m passing, I’ll take it. I’ll be calling by sometimes when I’m at the fishing. Sometimes I’ll be taking a bit of extra fish.’
‘Otherwise they do their own fishing?’
‘They do,’ said Finn, and added presently. ‘They’ll be putting out baulks – long lines, that is – when it’s fair weather. Plenty of cod offshore – callig – ling – they’ll be getting that.’
The island drew nearer. The lines of rock were tilted at an angle of thirty degrees or so, as if the island was a layered cake slowly sliding off a tilted plate. Archie wondered if the layers below extended right across the sea bed. If only one could look down into the sea as through a glass … but the waters kept their secrets, and it was hard to see how it could ever be otherwise.
A cloud of birds hung over the island, and as they got closer they could see that they were ceaselessly circling round it.
‘Puffins,’ said Ben.
‘Tommy Noddies – Ellan Bride puffins,’ corrected Finn. ‘It was always the Tommy Noddies on Ellan Bride, and Manx puffins on the Calf. But back when my father was a boy, there were long-tails got ashore from a wreck on the Calf, and there’s not hardly no puffins to be found on the Calf these days at all, for all they would be getting a good living out of them for many a year before that.’ Finn glanced at the surf breaking over the Chickens. ‘Wind’s freshening. I’m hoping we’ll be making a landing, for all.’
‘You think we might not?’ Archie broke in sharply.
‘We mightn’t be getting into Giau y Vaatey. Or if we are getting in, I mightn’t be getting out again. I was hoping the wind wouldn’t be freshening. It’s too late with the tide now to be putting you ashore on the slabs.’
Archie bit his lip. But there was no point saying anything. The very wind that had brought them here so easily might now be their undoing. Having got so far, it would be maddening to have to go all the way back, beating into the wind. Nothing he could do about it. Nothing anyone could do about it, but wait and see.
There were puffins in the water, and puffins flying past the boat, some with beaks full of little fish. If it wasn’t for the tower at the top of the hill the island could have been primeval; the rocks and the birds belonged to … what? … the third day of Creation? The fourth? But now it was the sixth at least, because when Archie looked up he could see the lighthouse tower.
A crack appeared in the northern cliffs. They passed a stack with a pinpoint of light in its heart that gradually grew until the stack turned into an arch, and they could see the sea shining on the other side. Beyond the stack was a fissure full of tumbled boulders, and the dark mouth of a cave. Sea and sky were suddenly full of birds. A wild clamour rose from the crack, and a plume of