Nothing left to fear fro.., p.1
Nothing Left to Fear from Hell, page 1
NOTHING LEFT TO FEAR
FROM HELL
A note on the author
Alan Warner was born in 1964 in Oban. His 1995 debut, Morvern Callar, is a contemporary classic. He has won the Somerset Maugham award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, was nominated for the Booker Prize and was picked as a Granta Best Young British Novelist. His other novels include The Sopranos, These Demented Lands, The Deadman’s Pedal and Kitchenly 434. He teaches creative writing at the University of Aberdeen.
Also by Alan Warner
Morvern Callar
These Demented Lands
The Sopranos/Our Ladies
The Man Who Walks
The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven
The Stars in the Bright Sky
The Deadman’s Pedal
Their Lips Talk of Mischief
Kitchenly 434
NOTHING
LEFT TO
FEAR FROM
HELL
A Surreal Chronicle
Alan Warner
First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2023 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.
Birlinn Ltd
West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
www.polygonbooks.co.uk
1
Copyright © Alan Warner, 2023
The right of Alan Warner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978 1 84697 569 1
eBook ISBN 978 1 78885 530 3
Typeset by 3btype, Edinburgh
For Kenny Lindsay – a great writer and old friend
Chapter 1
Not even a breeze remained as the boat came out of the west in the weird silence, bowsprit broken away and cast overboard, sail lashed, rising and dipping oars sounding like the slap of linen shirts on riverside stones.
Onshore, mist thinned then thickened. Dropping oar blades were extracted, drawn over their thole-pins and stowed as the vessel came shoreward. A blunt phalanx of fumes manoeuvred from the outcrops of the low island, snuffing its colours down to a bulk.
A shore emerged from the briny effluvium, black rocks capped with scalps of wet kelp; sea-wrack crammed the stone gaps where the surface minutely swelled and the water became clear as good glass; behind this shore, higher up, sponges of bleached pink moss and peated moor tundra showed. A soaked island.
Suspended in the air was drizzle that seemed to both rise from the ground and fall from the bland zenith; in not a second, inseparable from the dancing steam clouds, a dust of tiny midges manifested in bouncing puffs. Some large bird above – no gull – was just a swift shadow in the cloud and then gone. Perhaps an owl?
The twelve men aboard the wooden craft were united in one collective, speechless action – they all glared with huge intent at whatever was, or could be hidden, in the landward coils of vapour.
The battered, fibrous bow wood made a dull thud hitting the rocks, and a man came down off the breast-hook very skilfully, one leg bent to absorb his landing; he wore heavy, sodden trews trimmed with buckskin. A horse rider, then. But his knuckles were snow, his feet were bare, pruned by the hard wet night crossing, perished-looking; he seized the dripping bow rope and searched for somewhere to tether, but there was nothing in this worked-over shoreline of stone. He used his full weight on the rope, as if heaving in a tug of war, trying to keep the prow point-on, preventing a yaw sideways, which made for a better musketry target.
Two more men came down, and one momentarily slipped to a knee on the wet stone. But he made no oath: just rose promptly, taking the rope, as did his comrade. With a sword tethered hard across his back, a stout older man, surprisingly lithe, jumped down onto the rock and spun round, held out a hand to offer assistance, but the tall pale man above him descended by placing his palm on the wood and he landed soundly on his feet. ‘Your good prayers worked, Father,’ the pale man declared. His voice was soft and weary, with an accent that was British but sounded odd. He wore a plain ochre coat, heavied by drenching, with fine blue working on old cuffs, a rough blanket round the shoulders.
The portly, armed figure danced aside and then inland; his flighty movements seemed to suggest both extreme awareness and brute defence. His bonnetless skull of wild grey hair moved to left and right like the flaps of worming sea kelp at the shore. More men came down off the boat and they tethered the rope by carrying in a large boulder to bind it round.
The pale man stepped forward then halted abruptly on a section of staired rock, mapped out with yellow crotal. Tipping his face forward from his slim neck, in a curious, not inelegant stance, he vomited liquid, spat, then sicked up much more, along with a deep eruption of stomach wind; this returning hit the stone all about his gaitered feet in splatters, but he made no effort to shift from his own inundations.
Of the watchers, one extremely youthful character, Calum, youngest of the boatmen, stared curiously and spoke in a low voice, pointing at the rock surface. ‘See now, sire.’
The pale man smiled through teary eyes, breathed out a chuckle and raised a hand to slap at the midges already settling upon his face.
‘Blooded flux, sire. You must immediately take great care to yourself.’
‘Peace on your tongue, child, no flux here,’ said the sword carrier, who had returned out of the mist.
The pale man spat again, smiled, spoke once more in his thoughtful, quiet voice. ‘You will be an apothecary yet, young Calum, but you mistake returned Burgundy for royal blood.’
‘Ah.’ The young man let his mouth drop, understanding. ‘Forgive me.’
Both the older men now smiled wryly, glancing one at the other.
‘I would say to pass the same bottle now, my fine fellows,’ the pale man said, ‘but it’s not all that must be out me. Fouler elements of water need beyond.’ He grunted, peeled the blanket from his shoulders and threw it far aside as he suddenly crouched, hoisting his coat and lowering his trousers. With startling force, a rope of brown liquid shot out and continued to spool from between his bared white buttocks. ‘And the midges will eat better than us upon my arse.’
Someone laughed.
‘Wheesht’ was the response from the bonnetless swordman.
‘Bring me rags again, fellows.’
Donald MacLeod, the old boatman, who still stood high on the bow, threw some damp fabric down to the swordman, who called in a louder voice, ‘Up, take heed, danger is everywhere. Eyes anywhere.’ He gestured impatiently with a hand. Two men with pistols went very fast onto the low slope then away from the shore till mist took them. ‘Do you know this place, Donald?’
‘Aye. Sound coving, four can pull in.’
The kneeling man bent forward with his underthings taut below his pale shanks while the bareheaded man with the sword stepped quickly ahead, holding out the cloth at arm’s length. The pale man took it, wiped, then sent the corrupted rag away into the water before he raised his trews.
The man with the sword, and the others too, had already moved away from him. Donald was crossing repeatedly between each gunwale, looking down into the water on both sides as if to judge submerged obstructions.
The pale man walked forward a step or more then sighed. ‘And now I must pish,’ he told no one, facing into the mist. He fiddled daintily at his loins and sent out a steady stream before him. ‘Not that I was ashamed to pish out on the water, my good friends, but it was the standing I failed in.’
The swordman returned out of the mist again. ‘It’s another settling here, sire. Nothing but away from the shores on this side. Choosing wisely is the way – into the declensions and seek fresh water for us all. It’s sorely needed with some shelter.’
‘Aye. Aye, O’Sullivan,’ the pale man said, elongating the syllables. ‘I am more at home on earth already. Is night close?’
‘No, it is morning-time, sire, hours or more. A poor choosing either way; we must take ourselves up away off this shore. Boys,’ he called out. ‘Three of you. Back aboard and shoal this out where Mr MacLeod tells you, please. Quick now, before this murk is gone and eyes are on us from all sides.’ He blinked out into the mist. ‘It’s more the sea torments me. They seek us from land also, but sea is the greater evil of this place. We will be undone if they spy where we land here.’
These desperadoes moved back from the shoreline then down onto a south-facing shore. Here, in the open and dragged free of the shingle into the machair, was a rotten and upturned boat, holed in its keel. They propped it up enough on the landward side and took turns to sleep beneath it when the rain came. Puddle water was fetched from pools in green Burgundy bottles. A night watch of sentries revolved. They dared not set any fire on an open coast, so their inundated clothes remained soaken.
The pale man slept in a ragged, damp sail, which he shook free of earwigs and sand jumpers, pulling the stiff fabrics around him, a neckerchief across his face against midges, chuckling and murmuring beneath the garment in other languages, till sleep took him.
Chapter 2
The Prince, O’Sullivan, Father Allan Macdonald and Ned Burke, on an afternoon trek to the latest embarkation, came upon a lone, lowly blackhouse of haphazard clods atop low walls. Moated by a glistening ring of puddled, fresh wet muck, the dwelling appeared as a thing erupted up out of the earth itself, risen from ages of stone before written histories.
Nothing moved but th e hearth smoke, which idled at the side of poor damp turf roof and birch thatch – until a hunched beast broke from the rear, sideways, trying to make straight out into the peat bog: dark cloakings, scarf-muffled mummified skull. So stooped and so stunted was it that each man momentarily took it for a black sheep or hog. Yet O’Sullivan lowered his hand, which had shot to his sword hilt, and he was upon that creature in a few hasty steps. ‘Hold up, woman. Hold up.’ He spoke some words of Irish. It turned its terrible head to him then upon them all. Its face was as midden black as the bog puddles. A terrible frown cracked along the brow, showing some tender pink in a single serration, like the glistening raw streak against the charcoal of barbecued mutton, skewered fresh and smoking from fire.
‘This is a mad woman or witch,’ the Father forewarned. ‘Living in chosen hermitage. Scorned.’
‘What pity,’ the Prince said. ‘Bring her by me.’
‘These creatures bite, sire.’
Ned cautioned, ‘Or sweep rags away to leave naked sights hard to cast from memory.’
The Prince laughed. ‘Look, my fellows, O’Sullivan is feared, he who fears no man. He will kill men, yet this Irishman goes canny with a she-thing. He who stands firm on two feet when a tall dragoon comes at him on a white horse.’ He turned a laughing, imploring face to his accomplices. ‘I have seen his bravery with my own eyes, but today he meets a match.’ He called out, ‘Give her a penny, for Christ’s sake, sir.’
The Prince crossed deliberately to Ned and intimately addressed him, so the younger man visibly stiffened at this private bestowal. ‘Ned, hear this.’ The Prince spoke in a virtual whisper, face close up to Ned’s cheek. ‘An Englisher dragoon near Carlisle was come through too far at our rear. O’Sullivan, caught off his horse directing our men, came around on the safe left side of the devil, cleverly took his sword point and, as if spearing meat from the campaign fire, put his point in where the dragoon’s tall boot ended and stocking began. He pushed forth the blade point, and the squeal of a girl came from that English boy’s mouth. That big English rider’s sword was brought down, and, in midst of such danger, he simply sheathed it in scabbard and dropped rein; his horse circled, and that rider began to feel at his fresh wound with his bare fingertips. A curious sight and, save for prisoners and taken officers, as close as enemy ever came to my person in hot heat, for I had drawn my fine sword too, to find it resting in my hand without reckoning it there.’ Cautiously he added, looking around them, ‘Though surely this closeness to the enemy could change any day now, if I am to be taken? Aye, Ned. That Englishman sat in saddle at middle of that lively mêlée as if he never knew what war was, until the sharp wound brought him from his sleep, leg out of stirrup, making quadrilles with his foot and his toes to test its remaining possibilities for a future dance in some great ballroom.’ He laughed. ‘Then the cheeky brave scoundrel trotted to their rear as we mocked cruelties after him, his commander and king.’
The helpless primitive was being led back towards them by O’Sullivan, utilising a mix of gestures and gentle encouragements to her left shoulder with his sword hilt – the long blade harmlessly dropped to the vertical, so that he did not have to touch her with his own gloveless hand. He repeatedly curdled his nose, flicked his head sourly backwards at the wafts of her vibrant spoor. The hems of her sacking shroud were a sodden mash that dragged over heather clumps, so the creature’s means of phantom locomotion beneath were invisibled. Her dark mask fell to uneven ground then defiantly rose, and she gave them all mad white eyes.
Her arthritic hands were also reptilian black, but for the lunulas and nail plates which for some reason – pruning shellfish, perhaps – were perfectly clean, so even the pale cuticles showed, high and pink against the ancient grime of her ways, the fingers as innocent and somehow tenderly human as those of a bairn.
‘Come, sir, we smell no sweeter, for sure.’ The Prince beckoned. ‘Stand restful before me, madam. No danger here. I predict you know it not. I am my father’s son, your prince and true king-to-be, and you my loyal subject.’
She made sounds like a frighted dog, and the Italian prince before her blinked. ‘What does she say to me in your good language, Father?’
‘That isn’t our language, sire.’
She farted massively like a gun horse, and there was a gurgle from her midriff, muffled by her vast slag of layerings. O’Sullivan stepped further back.
The Prince smiled. ‘Do I hear there a loyal prayer to King George?’
These pirate men all laughed, that dangerous, unified mirth of men.
The Prince sighed. He stood straight and surveyed all around him: the ghastly hovel and these flat islands of forever, a vast treeless stage, unhinged of purpose and formed out of absence. ‘So much fear in one with so little to lose in this world, bowels loosed when the fear should reside with us fine fellows. We, who have nothing left to fear from Hell, which seeks us everywhere. Strange, no?’
She fell to her knees so completely, the Prince took the flattery. He stooped low himself, spoke softly to her, holding up a hand. ‘Hush, madam, you have less to fear in me than from the robin bird at winter.’
O’Sullivan had come by his side, wary and defensive should any small offence be displayed; with his calf pouch he fumbled rapidly, producing the smallest coin he could select, and he then handed the currency to the Prince.
The woman’s eyes swiftly had the coin locked in very sane recognition. The black, sooted hand of a chimney clamberer reached out, the palm trembling, and the claw closed instantly on the alms which the Prince cautiously dropped to avoid her touch. Her head nodded in pleased acceptance.
‘Is coin of any use in this rough place, my men?’
‘Never far to go in this world to reach a place where money comes of use,’ the Father stated.
‘How do you eat, madam?’ the Prince frankly enquired. ‘Teach us something.’
Ned’s voice, ever located behind his master’s back, asked, ‘Might she have in there meat or bread?’
‘Bread? Hah!’ The Father looked at the blackhouse. ‘Her walls may as well be hung with coloured jewels from the Orient.’
The Prince straightened suddenly and the woman flinched. ‘How could we take even a crust from her, my men?’
The Father nodded obediently but still said, ‘Ned, look inside.’
The Prince kneeled again to study his latest object of interest. ‘Have you no family here, madam, no daughter or kin? Father, ask her to tell me how she eats in this drearily chosen spot.’
The Father came forward and spoke Gaelic loudly, as if he were shouting warnings into a dark cave. ‘Ciamar a tha ur stamag?’ The woman was looking up at him in some amazement. Suddenly, she answered in a voice calibrated through the incursion of smoke. Then she fell silent once more and crossed herself repeatedly. Then she spoke again at some length with trembling, petrified pauses. Everyone waited. Still leaning forward, as if he were cautiously peering over the huge cliff edges of Trotternish, the Prince asked quietly, ‘What does she speak of, sir?’
The Father coughed. ‘The beautiful she-creatures of the ocean crawl out of the water at night and bring her food.’
Ned was at the partly collapsed arch of the entrance to her dwelling, barricaded by something that resembled an ill-fitting door: crossed boards of faded driftwood fused with warped boat planks, hinged to the jamb by lashed and frayed ropes. Young Ned called back, ‘Selkies and mermaids. Well, I hope they come in daylight too.’ He tugged and rattled at the ramshackle hatch.
The woman’s head swung around, alarmed.
‘Take care,’ O’Sullivan shouted, without looking away from the huddled woman. ‘An armed man could be within.’
The Father spoke again in Gaelic – to reassure her, it would seem.
‘Why does she make life here, Father? I see no natural advantages of such a place.’
‘Why anywhere, sire? The pickings are the same. Her ancestors and those before will have been rooted in this spot.’
‘Tell me more of her curious sea creatures.’
