The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter

SARAH SLEEPS LIGHTLY in unfamiliar places and is easily awoken by a violent shudder. Her senses feel their way around in the dark, searching for an explanation as to why the engines are silent. Without their reassuring drone, Sarah hears the howling wind more clearly, feels the pitch and roll of the ocean more acutely. Her fingers reach for the locket at her neck, remembering how surprised she’d been when John had given it to her, wrapped in a small square of purple silk fabric, tied with a matching ribbon. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, made even more beautiful by the locks of their children’s hair he had placed inside.

James and Matilda stir on her lap, rubbing sleepy eyes and asking why the ship has stopped and if they are in Scotland yet and when will it be morning. Sarah smooths their hair, whispering that it won’t be long until they see their uncle George and that they should go back to sleep. “I’ll wake you at first light. We’ll join the herring fleet as we sail into the harbor. The fisherwomen will be out with their pickling barrels. The fish scales will shine like diamonds on the cobbles …”

A chilling roar shatters the silence, followed by a terrifying cracking of timbers and the shriek of buckling metal. Sarah sits bolt upright, her heart racing as she wraps her arms tight around her children.

“What’s happening, Mummy?” Matilda screams. “What’s happening?”

James starts to cry. Matilda buries her face in her mother’s shoulder as the ship lists heavily to starboard. Dark, frigid water gushes inside at such shocking speed that Sarah doesn’t have time to react before she is waist deep in it. Lifting her children, one onto each hip, she starts to move forward. Terror and panic rise in her chest, snatching away short breaths that are already strangled by the effort of carrying her terrified children. She shushes and soothes them, telling them it will be all right, that they’re not to be afraid, that she will keep them safe. And somehow she is outside, the wind tearing at her coat, hard rain lashing at her cheeks as Matilda and James cling desperately to her. For a brief moment she feels a rush of relief. They are not trapped below decks. They are safe. But the water surges suddenly forward, covering her up to her chest and the deck is all but submerged. As she turns to look for assistance, a lifeboat, something—anything—an enormous wave knocks her off her feet and she is plunged underwater and all is darkness.

CHAPTER SIX

GRACE

Longstone Lighthouse. 7th September, 1838

I SLEEP IN UNSATISFYING fragments, the storm so furious I am uneasy, even within the lighthouse’s reliable embrace. As I lie awake, I remember when the lighthouse was built, how I was mesmerized by the tall tapering tower that was to become my home, three miles offshore from the coastal towns of Bamburgh and North Sunderland. “Five feet thick. Strong enough to withstand anything nature might throw at it.” My father was proud to know his new light station was constructed to a design similar to Robert Stevenson’s Bell Rock light. It has been my fortress for fifteen happy years.

Father wakes me at midnight with a gentle shake of the shoulder.

Dressing quickly, I take up my lamp and together we make our way downstairs where we pull on our cloaks and step out into the maelstrom to secure the coble at the boathouse, aware that the dangerous high tide is due at 4:13 A.M. The sea heaves and boils. I can’t remember when I have ever seen it so wild. Returning to the lighthouse, Father retires to bed, leaving me to take my turn on watch.

I take up my usual position at the narrow bedroom window, telescope in hand. The sky is a furious commotion of angry black clouds that send torrents of rain lashing against the glass. The wind tugs at the frame until I am sure it will be pulled right out. My senses are on full alert. Neither tired nor afraid, I focus only on the sea, watching for any sign of a ship in distress.

The night passes slowly, the pendulum clock on the wall ticking away the hours as the light turns steadily above.

Around 4:45 A.M., as the first hint of dawn lends a meager light to the sky, my eye is drawn to an unusual shape at the base of Harker’s Rock, home to the puffin and gannet colonies I love to observe on calm summer days. Visibility is terrible behind the thick veil of rain and sea spray, but I hold the telescope steady until I can just make out dark shapes dotted around the base of the rock. Seals, no doubt, sheltering their pups from the pounding waves. And yet an uncomfortable feeling stirs in the pit of my stomach.

By seven o’clock, the light has improved a little and the receding tide reveals more of Harker’s Rock. Taking up the telescope again, my heart leaps as I see a ship’s foremast jutting upward, clearly visible against the horizon. My instincts were right. They are not seals I’d seen at the base of the rock, but people. Survivors of a shipwreck.

Snatching up my hand lamp, I rush downstairs, the wind shrieking at the windows, urging me to hurry.

I rouse my father with a brusque shake of the shoulders. “A ship has foundered, Father! We must hurry.”

Tired, confused eyes meet mine. “What time is it, Grace? Whatever is the matter?”

“Survivors, Father. A wreck. There are people on Harker’s Rock. We must hurry.” I can hear the tremor in my voice, feel the tremble in my hands as my lamp shakes.

Mam stirs, asking if Brooks is back and what on earth all the commotion is about.

Father reaches for his spectacles, sleepy fingers fumbling like those of a blind man as he sits up. “What of the storm, Grace? The tide?”

“The tide is going out. The storm still rages.” I linger by the window, as if by standing there I might let those poor souls know that help is coming.

Father sighs, his hands dropping back onto the eiderdown. “Then it’s of no use, Grace. I will be shipwrecked myself if I attempt to set out in those seas. Even if I could get to Harker’s Rock I would never be able to row back against the turn of the tide. I wouldn’t make it across Craford’s Gut with the wind against me.”

Of course he is right. Even as I’d rushed to him, I’d heard him speak those very words.

I grasp his hands in mine and sink to my knees at the side of his bed. “But if we both rowed, Father? If I came with you, we could manage it, couldn’t we? We can take the longer route to avail of the shelter from the islands. Those we rescue can assist in rowing back, if they’re able.” I press all my determination into my voice, into my eyes, into his hands. “Come to the window to assure me I’m not imagining things.” I pull on his hands to help him up, passing him the telescope as another strong gust rattles the shutters, sending the rafters creaking above our heads.

My assumptions are quickly confirmed. A small group of human forms can now clearly be seen at the base of the rock, the battered remains of their vessel balanced precariously between them and the violent sea. “Do you see?” I ask.

“Yes, Grace. I see.”

I place my hand on Father’s arm as he folds the telescope and rests his palms against the windowsill. “The North Sunderland lifeboat won’t be able to put out in those seas,” I say, reading his thoughts. “We are their last hope of being rescued. And the Lord will protect us,” I add, as much to reassure myself as my father.

He understands that I am responding to the instinct to help, an instinct that has been instilled in me since I was a child on his knee, listening to accounts of lost fishing vessels and the brave men who rescued the survivors. I feel the drop of his shoulders and know my exertions have prevailed.

“Very well,” he says. “We will make an attempt. Just one, mind. If we can’t reach them …”

“I understand. But we must hurry.”

The decision made, all is action and purpose. We dress quickly and rush to the boathouse. The wind snatches my breath away, almost blowing me sideways as I step outside, my hair whipping wildly about my face. I falter for a moment, wishing my brother were here to help, but he isn’t. We must do this alone, Father and I, or not at all.

Mam helps to launch the boat, each of us taking our role in the procedure as we have done many times before. Words are useless, tossed aside by the wind, so that nobody quite knows what question was asked, or what reply given. I struggle to stand upright against the incessant gusts.

Finally, the boat is in the water. Stepping in, I pick up an oar and sit down.

“Grace! What are you doing?” Mam turns to my father. “William! She can’t go. This is madness.”

“He can’t go alone, Mam,” I shout. “I’m going with him.”

Father steps into the boat beside me. “She is like this storm, Thomasin. She won’t be silenced ’til she’s said her piece. I’ll take care of her.”

I urge Mam not to worry. “Prepare dry clothes and blankets. And have hot drinks ready.”

She nods her understanding and begins to untie the ropes that secure us to the landing wall, her fingers fumbling in the wet and the cold. She says something as we push away, but I can’t hear her above the wind. The storm and the sea are the only ones left to converse with now.

Once beyond the immediate shelter afforded by the base of Longstone Island, it becomes immediately apparent that the sea conditions are far worse than we’d imagined. The swell carries us high one moment before plunging us down into a deep trough the next, a wall of water surrounding us on either side. We are entirely at the mercy of the elements.

Father calls out to me, shouting above the wind, to explain that we will take a route through Craford’s Gut, the channel which separates Longstone Island from Blue Caps. I nod my understanding, locking eyes with him as we both pull hard against the oars. I draw courage from the light cast upon the water by Longstone’s lamps as Father instructs me to pull to the left or the right, keeping us on course around the lee side of the little knot of islands that offer a brief respite from the worst of the wind. As we round the spur of the last island and head out again into the open seas, Father looks at me with real fear in his eyes. Our little coble, just twenty-one foot by six inches, is all we have to protect us. In such wild seas, we know it isn’t nearly protection enough.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SARAH

Harker’s Rock, Outer Farnes. 7th September, 1838

LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT. Dark.

In the thick black that surrounds her, the beam of light in the distance is especially bright to Sarah Dawson. Every thirty seconds it turns its pale eye on the figures huddled on the rock. Sarah fixes her gaze on its source: a lighthouse. A warning light to stay away. Her only hope of rescue.

Her body convulses violently, as if she is no longer part of it. Only her arms, which grasp James and Matilda tight against her chest, seem to belong to her. She doesn’t know how long it is since the ship went down—moments? hours?—too exhausted and numb to notice anything apart from the shape of her children’s stiff little bodies against hers and the relentless screech of the wind. Behind her, the wrecked bow of the Forfarshire cracks and groans as it smashes against the rocks, breaking up like tinder beneath the force of the waves, the masthead looming from the swell like a sea monster from an old mariner’s tale. The other half of the steamer is gone, taking everyone and everything down with it. She thinks of George waiting for her in Dundee. She thinks of his letter in her pocket, his sketches of lighthouses. She stares at the flashing light in the distance. Why does nobody come?

A man beside Sarah moans. It is a sound like nothing she has ever heard. His leg is badly injured and she knows she should help him, but she can’t leave her children. The desperate groans of other survivors clinging to the slippery rock beside her mingle with the rip and roar of the wind and waves. She wishes they would all be quiet. If only they would be quiet.

The storm rages on.

The rain beats relentlessly against Sarah’s head, like small painful stones. Rocking James and Matilda in her arms, she shelters them from the worst of it, singing to them of lavenders blue and lavenders green. “They’ll be here soon, my loves. Look, the sky is brightening and the herring fleet will be coming in. You remember how the scales look like diamonds among the cobbles. We’ll look for jewels together, when the sun is up.”

Their silence is unbearable.

Unable to suppress her anguish any longer, Sarah tips her head back and screams for help, but all that emerges is a pathetic rasping whisper that melts away into gut-wrenching sobs as another angry wave slams hard against the rock, sweeping the injured man away with it.

Sarah turns her head and wraps her arms tighter around her children, gripping them with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, determined that the sea will not take them from her.

Light. Dark. Light. Dark.

Why does nobody come?

MINUTES COME AND go until time and the sea become inseparable. The light turns tauntingly in the distance. Still nobody comes.

James’s little hand is too stiff and cold in Sarah’s. Matilda’s sweet little face is too still and pale, her hands empty, her beloved rag doll snatched away by the water. Sarah strokes Matilda’s cheek and tells her how sorry she is that she couldn’t tell her how the lighthouse worked. She smooths James’s hair and tells him how desperately sorry she is that she couldn’t keep them safe.

As a hesitant dawn illuminates the true horror of what has unfolded, Sarah slips in and out of consciousness. Perhaps she sees a small boat making its way toward them, tossed around in the foaming sea like a child’s toy, but it doesn’t get any closer. Perhaps she is dreaming, or seeing the fata morgana John used to tell her of: a mirage of lost cities and ships suspended above the horizon. As the black waves wash relentlessly over the desperate huddle of survivors on the rock, Sarah closes her eyes, folding in on herself to shelter her sleeping children, the three of them nothing but a pile of sodden washday rags, waiting for collection.

CHAPTER EIGHT

GRACE

Longstone Lighthouse. 7th September, 1838

OUR PROGRESS IS frustratingly slow, the distance of three quarters of a mile stretched much farther by the wind and the dangerous rocks that will see us stranded or capsized if we don’t steer around them. We must hurry, and yet we must take care; plot our course.

After what feels like hours straining on the oars, we finally reach the base of Harker’s Rock where the sea thrashes wildly, threatening to capsize the coble with every wave. The danger is far from over.

Lifting his oars into the boat, Father turns to me. “You’ll have to keep her steady, Grace.”

I give a firm nod in reply, refusing to dwell on the look of fear in his eyes, or on the way he hesitates as he jumps onto the jagged rocks, reluctant to leave me.

“Go,” I call. “And hurry.”

Alone in the coble, I begin my battle with the sea, pulling first on the left oar and then on the right, sculling forward and then backward in a desperate effort to stop the boat being smashed against the rocks while Father assesses the situation with the survivors. The minutes expand like hours, every moment bringing a bigger wave to dowse me with frigid water and render me almost blind with the sting of salt in my eyes. Mam’s words tumble through my mind. A storm should be respected, but never feared. Show it you’re afraid, and you’re already halfway to dead. I rage back at the wind, telling it I am not afraid, ignoring the deep burn of the muscles in my forearms. I have never felt more alone or afraid but I am determined to persevere.

Eventually, three hunched figures emerge from the gloom. Men. Bloodied and bruised. Their clothes torn. Shoeless. Bedraggled. They barely resemble human beings. So shocked by their appearance, I take a moment to react, but gather my wits sufficiently to maneuver the coble alongside the rocks.

“Quickly. Climb in,” I shout, pulling all the time on the oars to hold the boat as steady as I can.

The men clamber and fall into the boat, one quietly, two wincing with the pain of each step, the flux in weight and balance tipping the boat wildly as they stumble forward. The two injured men are too stupefied to speak. The other thanks me through chattering teeth as he takes an oar from my frozen hands.

“I’ll help keep her steady, miss.”

Reluctantly, I let go. Only then do I notice the ache in my arms and wrists and realize how hard I’ve been gripping the oars.

“How many more?” I ask, wiping salt water from my eyes.

“Six alive,” he replies.

“And the rest?”

He shakes his head. “Some escaped on the quarter boat. The rest … lost.” Water streams from his shirtsleeves in heavy ribbons, puddling in the bottom of the boat where several inches of seawater have already settled.

My arms and legs tremble from my exertions as I clamber aft to tend to one of the injured men. He stares at me numbly, muttering in his delirium that I must be an angel from Heaven.

“I am no angel, sir. I’m from the Longstone light. You’re safe now. Don’t try to talk.”

The boat pitches and rolls violently as I tend to him, my thoughts straying back to the rock, wondering what is keeping my father.

To my great relief, he appears through the rain a moment later, staggering toward the boat with a woman in his arms, barely alive by the look of her. As he lifts her into the boat, she kicks and struggles to free herself from his grasp, falling onto the rocks. She crawls away from him on her hands and knees, screaming like an animal caught in a trap. Father scoops her up again, calling to me as he lifts her into the boat. “Take her, Grace,” but she slips from my arms and slumps against the boards like a just-landed fish before clambering to her feet and trying to climb out again.

The uninjured man helps me to hold her back. “You must stay in the boat, Mrs. Dawson,” he urges. “You must.”

“You’re safe now,” I assure her as she grabs at my skirts and my shawl. “We’re taking you back to the lighthouse.”

Whatever she says in response, I can’t fully make out. Only the words, “my children” swirl around me before she lets out the most mournful sound and I am glad of a great gust of wind that drowns it out with its greater volume.

Back in the boat, Father takes up his oars, pushing us away from the rocks.

“What of the others?” I call, horrified that we are leaving some of the survivors behind.

“Can’t risk taking any more in these seas,” he shouts. “I’ll have to come back for them.”

“But the woman’s children! We can’t leave them!”

A shake of his head is all the explanation I need and in a terrible instant I understand that it is too late for them. We are too late for them.

As we set out again into the writhing sea, the three remaining survivors huddle together on the rock, waiting for Father to return. But it is not to them my gaze is drawn. My eyes settle on two much smaller forms lying to the left of the others, still and lifeless, hungry waves lapping at little boots. I am reminded of my brother Job, laid out after being taken from us by a sudden fever. I remember how I fixed my gaze on his boots, still covered with sawdust from his apprenticeship as a joiner, unable to bring myself to look at the pale lifeless face that had once been so full of smiles. I turn my face away from the rock and pray for the sea to spare the children’s bodies as I turn my attention to Mrs. Dawson who has slipped into a faint. I am glad; relieved that she is spared the agony of watching the rock fade into the distance as we row away from her children.

After an almighty struggle, the coble finally moves out of the heaviest seas and around to the lee side of the islands, which offers us some shelter. The relentless wind and lashing rain diminish a little and a curious calm descends over the disheveled party in the boat, each of us searching for answers among the menacing clouds above, while Father and his fellow oarsman focus on navigating us safely back to Longstone. I glance around the coble, distressed by the scene of torn clothes, ripped skin, shattered bones and broken hearts. I pray that I will never see anything like it again.

I tend to the two injured men first, fashioning a makeshift tourniquet from my shawl before giving them each a nip of brandy and a blanket and assuring them we don’t have far to go. I return to Mrs. Dawson then, still slumped in the bottom of the boat, her head lolling against the side. I hold her upright and place a blanket over her. She wakes suddenly, her eyes wild as she wails for her children, her hands gripping mine so hard I want to cry out with the pain but absorb it quietly, knowing it is nothing compared to hers. “My babies,” she cries, over and over. “My beautiful babies.”

As she slips into another faint and the boat tosses our stricken party around like rag dolls, I hold her against my chest, my heart full of anguish because I can do nothing but wrap my arms around her shaking shoulders and try to soothe her, knowing it will never be enough. I wonder, just briefly, if it might have been kinder for her to have perished with her children, rather than live without them. Closing my eyes, I pray that she might somehow find the courage to endure this dreadful calamity.

That we all might.

CHAPTER NINE

SARAH

Longstone Lighthouse. 7th September, 1838

WHEN SARAH DAWSON opens her eyes, the sky is chalky gray above her. She looks at the young woman called Grace whose eyes are as gentle as a summer breeze and whose hands grip her shoulders. She watches numbly as the boat sets out again, back toward the wreck.

Her arms are empty. Where are her children? In a panic she struggles and falls to her knees. “They are afraid of the dark, Miss,” she sobs, clinging to the young woman’s sodden skirts, tearing at the fabric with her fingernails as if she might somehow crawl her way out of this hell she finds herself in. “And they will be ever so cold. I have to go back. I have to.”

The young woman tells her she is safe now. “My father will being your children back, Mrs. Dawson. We have to get you warm and dry now.”

The words torment her. Why had she been spared when her children had not? How can she bear it to know they are out there in the storm, all alone?

Her body goes limp again as the noise and panic of the sinking ship races through her mind. She can still feel the ache in her arms from carrying her terrified children, one on each hip, as she’d stumbled up the stairs that led to the upper deck, pushing past passengers she’d chatted with earlier that evening, and whose lives she had no care for in her desperate bid to escape the shattering vessel. Her mind wanders back to the warm summer day when the midwife told her the baby was gone. She sees the tiny bundle at the foot of the bed, blue and still. Now James and Matilda, too. All her children, gone. She tries to speak, but all that emerges is a low, guttural moan.