The Wind Off the Small Isles Read online

  Contents

  Also by Mary Stewart

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Envoi

  Also by Mary Stewart

  Madam, Will You Talk?

  Wildfire at Midnight

  Thunder on the Right

  Nine Coaches Waiting

  My Brother Michael

  The Ivy Tree

  The Moon-Spinners

  This Rough Magic

  Airs Above the Ground

  The Gabriel Hounds

  Touch Not the Cat

  Thornyhold

  Stormy Petrel

  Rose Cottage

  The Merlin Series

  The Crystal Cave

  The Hollow Hills

  The Last Enchantment

  The Wicked Day

  The Prince and the Pilgrim

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain in 1968 by

  Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  This edition published in 2016

  By Hodder & Stoughton

  Copyright © M.R.M Stewart 1968

  Copyright © Jennifer Ogden 2014

  Foreword copyright © Jennifer Ogden 2016

  The right of M.R.M Stewart to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 473 64123 5

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  for

  ANGELINE and ROBERT,

  with love

  Dear Reader,

  The Wind off the Small Isles is a perfect example of Mary Stewart’s perfect writing.

  In all of her novels, as with this one, Mary always travelled to where she was going to set her book. Whilst she was there, she would make copious and detailed notes in order that she always had everything in her scenes set correctly. The extraordinary descriptive power of her writing shows this to be the case. Nothing less would have done for her with this novella set on the island of Lanzarote.

  Mary spent several holidays in the Canary Islands with her husband Fred, an eminent geologist and professor at Edinburgh University. It was a visit to Lanzarote – some part of which was spent clambering in and out of extinct volcanos! – that inspired this small volume. Fred had decided he needed Mary in his photos so that when he was using them in lectures he would be able to show his students how to gauge the size of the craters. Oh, the things she did for love. But just as much as these adventures, it was the local legends and the numerous and diverse numbers of wildflowers and the rugged, stark topography of this island which inspired her to set her story here. The title is really evocative of what it is like on Lanzarote: wild, beautiful and definitely windy.

  As her niece and also her constant companion for the last twelve years of her life, I came to know Mary Stewart (Aunty Mary) extremely well and also to realise how lucky we have been as a family to have had within it this extraordinary and fascinating woman. I miss her terrific sense of humour, her flashes of brilliance, her kind heart and her generosity to everyone she met or knew. Most of all, though, I recall her love for us, her nieces and nephews. We took the place of the children she could never have. The memories of her visits when we were small are filled with scenes of a beautiful woman who always smelled heavenly (Chanel comes to mind now), who was exquisitely dressed and always came armed with presents.

  I am sad there will never be another new Mary Stewart book, but the ones she wrote will stand the test of time to be read over and over again by new generations. It is so pleasing that this lovely, lost little book, The Wind off the Small Isles, has finally been re-published, in time to celebrate what would have been Mary’s one hundredth birthday.

  I hope you enjoy reading it.

  Jennifer Ogden

  23 May 2016

  Prelude

  Lanzarote, January 20th, 1879

  She knelt on the window-sill, looking out over the sea. The night was clear, with a faint moon rising, but the stars seemed dim and far away. It must be imagination, but they were not white tonight; the evening star had risen apricot-yellow, and now the main flock of stars crowded hazy and ill-defined above a horizon smoking with purple and cinnamon and grey. This was strange, for the day had been sharp and fine, with a sky settled to blue again after the eruption, and the wind blowing strongly from the north, straight from Cape Finisterre and the coast of Spain and down the chain of the Atlantic islands.

  Anxiously she peered into the darkness. Yes, the wind blew still. On the wall of the goat-pen near the cliff’s edge she could see the bougainvillaea tossing, and above the roof the palm-leaves shuffled and clicked like playing cards.

  Her father had gone to bed long since. He had won tonight, and lying wakeful, waiting, she had heard him call a jovial ‘Buenas noches’ after his friends. Then the heavy door had shut, and the men’s footsteps, with the quick pattering of old Señor Perez’ donkey, had dwindled up the lane into silence.

  That was two hours since, and soon the moon would rise clear of the cactus slopes behind the house, and by its light she would see him coming.

  Mother of God, let him come. He promised, and I know he is true. I know he will come. He promised.

  The rosary moved in her fingers, but she was not praying. That time was over. This was now, the night itself, the night the prayers were to be answered. The clenched beads scored her fingers, and she shut her eyes. When she opened them again, he would be here, his boat stealing round the headland into the bay … Till then, she would shut her eyes on that empty sea, and think about him, as if by thinking she might make his coming sure.

  Against the fizzing dark inside her eyelids she could see him now as she had first seen him three weeks ago, down there on the white sand of the bay, the muscles glancing and sliding under his brown skin as he braced himself in the shallows to pull his boat inshore. She had turned quickly away, as a modest girl should, but Conchita had run, childlike, down to the boat to peer in at the catch of fish. She had hesitated then, and called, but the child paid no attention, and then the young fisherman had turned, straightening, and smiled at her. He was barefooted, and his breeches were ragged, and faded with salt and sun, but the light ran and glinted on wet gold skin and black hair, and she could think of nothing but how the smile drove the deep crease down his cheek and lit the dark eyes … Then the smile had gone, and he was staring, and she had stood with her eyes on his and her heart choking her, till Conchita had run back, laughing, and pulled at her hand.

  She opened her eyes, and he was here. Round the north headland, shadowy on the shadowy sea, the boat stole like a night-bird, under sail. She thought she could even see him, a shape at the tiller, dark against the sea-fire as the boat heeled in the gentle curve that would bring him into the bay.

&n
bsp; She left the sill and moved over to the bed. Her sister’s breathing was so quiet that it hardly stirred the air. She hesitated, stooping over the bed, the rosary dangling from her hand, its tiny cross swinging on a silver link. She tugged at this, and the link parted, and she dropped the cross, warm from her skin, on the child’s pillow. Then she picked up the bundle of clothes wrapped in her shawl, and paused with a hand on the door. A cloud, thick and dark, drove past the window, but she did not need light to show her the room in whose familiar safety she had slept every night of her eighteen years – the bed of Canary pine, the coffer with its worn oak carving that had been her great-grandmother’s dower chest, the wrought-iron candlesticks, the crucifix on the wall: they had been here all her life, they had spelled safety and love. Now she would spell love her own way. And safety, too …? Mary Mother, but she must believe what her heart told her, and soon she would be sure …

  She slipped out through the door and along the flagged passage to the kitchen. The dog raised his head and blinked at her, and his tail thumped briefly. The wind blew strongly, and in the draught the straw mats rose along the flagstones.

  Something drove rattling against the window-panes, like a handful of rain. The moon’s light had gone, and now she saw how the dark clouds smoked across the stars. Against them, suddenly, light beat redly, and was gone. Then she smelt the faint, familiar reek, and knew the clouds, the sleet, for what they were: the ash-cone to the north, the little Loma, had woken again and was throwing out more ash and cinders. And the wind blew from there.

  She checked, while beside her the dog flattened his ears, and his ruff stirred. If she called now to wake them … La Loma was harmless; all it had done last week – all it ever did – was to shower the place with ashes, and singe a field or two … Ten minutes, and the boat could be clear of the island and beyond pursuit … But call them she must. She could not go like this, leaving them asleep …

  As she turned back from the door, she felt the air move like blast, and round the door the light pulsed red, then died to black again. The dog’s chain rattled; he whined, then began to bark, furiously. Somewhere a door slammed, and she heard her father’s voice. They were awake. She pulled open the heavy door as the night lit once more with an arched jet of fire, and the smell of blown sulphur rolled over the yard. A gull went up from the roof, screaming, and as she ran past the pens she heard the beasts bleating with fear.

  Her father called out again, and she saw her bedroom window flower with light as he ran in with the lamp. Her sister’s voice answered, shrill and startled. The light sharpened suddenly as he approached the window. The pane was thrust open, and the light spilled out to catch her where she stood, pinned against the outhouses like a moth.

  She saw the big head thrust out, peering past the flame. The night was black again. The mountain held its breath. But he saw her. He shouted, ‘It’ll be no more than last time. Let them bide, but see the windows are boarded. Then get yourself to the cellar with your sister.’

  The casement shut. The lamp withdrew. As she put a hand, dutifully, to the gaps that served the pens for windows, the mountain shot out a plume of fire that lit the night and showed her the boards fast in their places. She turned and ran across the yard and down the cliff path.

  He was there. He was waiting for her below the cactus slopes, as he had said he would wait. He had his best suit on, and a cloak made of coarse blanket, and he was bareheaded.

  He put his arms out for her and she ran into them.

  1

  Stolen to this paradise.

  KEATS: The Eve of St Agnes

  My employer, Cora Gresham, is a woman of wealth, and also a woman of whims. She is a writer of children’s stories, anything from riproaring adventure to animal cartoons and space fiction, and has the habit of using exotic and authentic backgrounds for what she calls their educational value. In consequence she is liable to set off for the most out-of-the-way corners of the world at a moment’s notice, and the life of her secretary and personal assistant – myself – is by no means a dull one.

  It came as no surprise, therefore, when it was the turn of a new ‘Coralie Gray’ adventure about pirates along the Barbary Coast, to be told to get things in train – and that within a matter of days – for a visit to the Canary Islands.

  This was my fault, if fault it can be called. I had had to do all the preliminary research; I had combed through loads of books from the library, haunted travel agents and pestered the air lines, and then presented Mrs Gresham with glowing and wildly enthusiastic descriptions of the islands which from time out of mind have been known as the Fortunate Isles or the Isles of the Blessed, and which, we are told, were the original Garden of the Hesperides. And if there weren’t still nymphs and golden apples, I told her, there were still dragon trees, and the great Mount Teide, twelve thousand feet high and crowned with snow, and for all we know with Atlas still up there on his shoulders, carrying the sky. There were warm indigo seas lapping on black lava beaches, and aquamarine seas lapping on white beaches, and everywhere flowers and bright birds and perpetual summer … I don’t think she was even listening. She sat looking at a map of the Canary archipelago, while outside the windows the northern English rain beat solidly down on the brave, soaked daffodils of March. Then she put a finger on the map.

  ‘That one,’ she said.

  ‘Lanzarote? But you can’t possibly – weren’t you even listening? That’s the one I told you was practically a desert! It’s all volcanic ash, and the book says it’s like a lunar landscape or something from another world. Heavens, they filmed Two Thousand Years before Christ there, and I’m told it looks like it!’ I drew in my breath. ‘What’s more, there’s a great chain of volcanoes called the Fire Mountains, still hot and active, and probably going off at any minute—’

  ‘It’s the one nearest Africa,’ said Mrs Gresham.

  ‘I dare say it is, but your pirates could just as easily get from the Barbary Coast through to Grand Canary, or Tenerife, and either of those would make a perfectly gorgeous setting.’

  ‘Probably, but I’ve been looking at the references you gave me, and it seems to have been Lanzarote they usually got to first. Look here at the map and you’ll see why. The point is that, apart from all the landings recorded – and there were a good many – there must have been dozens of small raids going on all the time, so anything I like to invent can fit in very well.’

  ‘Yes, but does that actually matter?’ I looked over her shoulder. ‘There must have been raids on the other islands, and you see how the Barbary Coast lies north of the Canaries, so if your pirates cast just a little further west they’d have missed Lanzarote and the other dry island – what’s it called? Fuertaventura – and come on the fertile islands in the westerly group.’ I ran my finger down the map. ‘That way.’

  ‘I see that, but I think it really will have to be Lanzarote. It fits my story too well.’ She tapped the pile of books beside her. ‘You remember that I want my pirates to run an expedition to recover some of their friends taken in the slave raids? Well, the Counts of Lanzarote seem to have done a tremendous amount of slaving along the African coast. In fact, I thought I might even use a genuine return raid, the one some time in the 1580s when the Countess of Lanzarote had to hide in that cave under the lava beds. I forget where you put the notes.’

  ‘They’re here. Yes, the Cueva De Los Verdes. All right, I give in. It would be rather good, I see that. I’ll put it down as a “must” for us to explore.’

  ‘I’m sorry you won’t see Teide and your dragon trees,’ said Mrs Gresham. ‘Some other time, I hope. And I’m sure Lanzarote can’t be as bad as you make out. It’s even coming on to the tourist route now, isn’t it? It wouldn’t do that if there wasn’t something to be said for it. At least one person I know – James Blair, as it happens, and my younger son was with him – spent a few weeks there getting over the flu last year, and I remember reading something he wrote about it. He loved it. He called it “the last paradise”.
Of course Michael raved about it, but that’s nothing to go by, all he thinks about is swimming.’

  ‘I’m rather that way myself. Ah, well, at least it will be different. Though as for “paradise” – I suppose it’s all in the mind. According to the pictures there are no trees, and they have to make special holes in the volcanic ash to grow their fruit, and there’ll be no flowers worth mentioning because it only rains about two days in the year.’

  ‘And that,’ said my employer, closing the atlas with a snap, ‘settles it. We go there. Fix it up, will you?’

  There is one thing about Mrs Gresham, when she has made a decision she sticks by it. Now that she had decided on Lanzarote, she would find it delightful, or die in the attempt. So when precisely ten days after the conversation (in my own way I am as efficient as Coralie Gray) she surveyed the strange, windy landscape of Lanzarote and exclaimed, ‘But Perdita, it’s beautiful!’ I was not surprised. What did surprise me was that I found myself agreeing with her.

  The island was every bit as wild and barren as I had imagined. The roads stretched, pitted and dusty, between ridges of black basaltic lava. The only tree was an occasional palm, the only hills the symmetrical cones of dead volcanoes, or, to the south, the great burnt ridges of the Fire Mountains, with the frozen black floods of lava filling the valleys between them. There was no grass. There were no woods. The villages were pure African – square flat-roofed houses painted white and ochre, set flat like little boxes on the baked earth. Above them, where one looked for minarets, the towers of the Spanish churches looked incongruous and foreign.

  Strange and exciting, you would have thought, rather than beautiful. ‘Paradise’ – no, never. But then it got you. You stopped the car on some deserted track they called a road, and got out into the silent afternoon, the thick dust muffling even the sound of your footsteps. You stood looking at the long, yellow fields, with their pattern of growing corn like ribbed velvet, the soot-black slopes honey-combed with pits each enclosing a fig tree in brilliant green bud, the burning range of volcanic mountains shouldering up in great sweeps of red against the dazzling sky … all these made a tranquil and somehow intensely satisfying pattern of shape and colour in the pure air. It was beauty more than naked; beauty pared to the bone. And always there was the wind. Cool and steady, the trade wind – ‘tracked wind’ – funnelled its way down through the small outlying islands to overleap these dry eastern isles and drop its rain on the flowers and green forests of Tenerife and Grand Canary.