The Island House (16 page)

The two bedrooms in Keel Cottage were divided by a small, blindingly clean bathroom. Tucked beneath the roof, each room had its own dormer window, and the second bedroom was simple though stylish. A white-painted rectangle with curtains of sage green silk, it had a single bed made up with rose-sprigged linen and a white hand-hooked rug on the floor. An IKEA chest of birch-wood drawers and an armchair covered in the same green silk as the curtains made up the rest of the furnishings.

Katherine pushed the casement open. She waved her guest forward, saying, “It’s a pretty view.”

Beneath, the village and the harbor were displayed like a naïve painting—all twisted streets and tiny houses bunched tight against each other, with toy boats clustered, bobbing, at the foot of Port-solly’s great cliff.

“I try my best to get home for the sunset,” Katherine said.

Freya looked out toward Findnar as the vault of the sky flushed gold with streaks of flamingo pink. “God’s a good painter when He wants to be; bit gaudy sometimes, though,” she said. The women shared a cautious smile.

Katherine waved toward the east. “And there’s the comet—
Cuillin Ursus. It comes from the constellation of the Great Bear. I saw it for the first time the night before last.”

“There’s a comet?” Freya searched the sky. “Where?”

The librarian pointed.

Her guest squinted and saw, finally, the indistinct silver lozenge rising behind Findnar. “It’s not very big,” she said.

Katherine closed the window and twitched the curtains together. The silk made a hushing sound. “It will be. Around here they still think of it as a portent of disaster—nonsense, of course. It’s a lump of rock and dirty ice with an erratic orbit.” She smiled at her guest. “The natives—so superstitious.” An edge of irony.

They were seated in matching armchairs, one on each side of Katherine’s fake-log fire. The chairs were deep and the room warm—too warm—and Freya was fighting sleep since it was after dinner and they’d made inroads into a second bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

“How long will you stay on Findnar?” Katherine’s inquiry was polite, possibly nothing more.

Freya considered the question. “I had thought . . .” She cleared her throat. “I have work to do, so a couple of months, I think.”
That long?
Freya surprised herself.

Katherine murmured, “Of course. Your father made so many remarkable finds, and it will be a puzzle to know how best to deal with them—there are so many regulations these days.”

How do you know about Dad’s finds?
But Freya did not voice the thought. “Well, yes, I’ll have to decide what I need to do with his things, but I meant my own work. The isolation will be good for that—no traffic, no city white noise. Maybe the peace will help me think better on paper.”

Katherine expressed surprise with a polite smile. “You are a writer?”

“Not ordinarily.” Freya was uncomfortable; she’d managed to ignore the thought of work all day. “It’s the thesis for my doctorate. Archaeology, of course.” Relaxed by the wine, the two shared a smile, and Freya found she didn’t mind. “It’s my contention that common themes in church art during the early medieval period were much more influenced by their immediate cultural surroundings than is currently accepted; that’s what I want to prove.”

Katherine looked at her quizzically. “A comprehensive topic indeed.”

Freya swirled the wine in her glass. “My problem is I can’t tease out a proper linking thread, and I’ve been stalled for months, going round and round in circles. Detailed research from Australia can be tough in a field like this, and though my supervisor is understanding up to a point, I’m very late delivering. Sometimes I think I’m not meant to do this. Maybe Findnar’s my last hope.”

“But you’ll be able to hop across to Europe from Aberdeen or go down to the London collections should you want to—that might help.” Katherine seemed sincerely encouraging.

Freya brightened. “It would be so great to visit the sites I’m interested in. I need to
see
the work, the manuscripts, the statues, even the vestments, in their context.”
Yes, Dad, validation.
“There’s a collection of early copes in the Victoria and Albert, for instance; it’s just not the same looking at things like that on the Net somehow.”

“In that case, I have something to show you.” Katherine rose and took a small silver box from the mantelpiece. “This is unique, I think, and very old, but it bears on your topic. It’s from this area.”

Inside, resting in cotton wool, was a crucifix half as long as Katherine’s palm. The body of the cross was made from two pieces of black stone—
Jet?
wondered Freya—but it was the figure of the Christ that made the piece remarkable.

Carved from ivory that was dark with age, the body was not naturalistic, but each element of that tortured form added to its
power—the ribs seemed to burst from the torso as if exploding, and the legs and arms were twisted in desperate agony.

Yet it was the face that was truly shocking. One side was ruined by pitiable scarring, and this was not the damage gouged by time or a plow blade; these marks had been a deliberate choice, each tiny detail exquisitely rendered by the anonymous artist.

Freya was mesmerized. Michael had written about a crucifix he’d given away. She glanced quickly at Katherine. “I think my father mentioned this—it was in his notes of a dig he did just before he died.” The word was still hard to say.

“Yes, Michael gave it to me for Christmas.” Katherine said it lightly, as if this were a matter of small importance, but her eyes were defensive.

Freya absorbed the words. The librarian had called her father Michael, and he had given this woman a present, a very important present, just before he died.

Freya touched the crucifix gently as she tried to absorb the feeling in the figure. “This is very early, primitive almost. But I’ve never seen a Christ with a face like this one—it would have been blasphemous to show the Son of God as less than perfect. A very brave artist, or foolish.”

They both stared at the face of the man who’d been frozen in agony for more than a thousand years. Katherine said softly, “I never tire of looking at it—horrifying and moving. And if I’m drawn by the spirituality of organized religion, he reminds me of the price to be paid for certainty.”

“I’ve been reading some of my dad’s records. As you say, he found a great many artifacts on Findnar—early Christian material, but other objects as well, pre- and post-Viking era.” She paused. She should give the crucifix back to Katherine, but holding it, she touched her father’s hands.

“I learned so much, and we had so many debates.” The librarian gazed at her guest. “You’re like him, you know—you have all his passion. He was obsessed by his work on Findnar. But be
careful, Freya, or you’ll never leave; the island will claim you for its own as it did him.”

The comparison to her father was kindly meant, a compliment, but the words punctured Freya’s mood.

She put the crucifix in Katherine’s hands. “Thank you. You’ve given me lots to think about.” That was true.

The wind blew itself out through the night, and by dawn, the world was calm.

The girl in the white room half-opened her eyes to the radiant day and panicked.

Holy Mother! I’ve missed the bells!

From long training, her body responded, and the girl fell from the bed and onto her knees, crossing herself as she gabbled a desperate novena.
“Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus . . .”

A sound cut through the prayer—knocking, then a voice.

“Would you like tea, Freya?”

As she crossed herself and fumbled for a rosary that did not exist, Freya Dane sat back on her heels.
Confused
did not begin to describe the feeling.

“Hello?”

The girl closed her eyes, screwed them up tight. “I’d love a cup, Katherine—down in a sec.”

“No rush, your clothes are by the door.”

Freya stood shakily. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt lent by Katherine the night before. It was soft from much washing and old—the colors faded, so that the familiar image of the young Che could only just be made out. The image of a revolutionary seemed unlikely in Katherine’s house, and Freya did not want to think about the implications, not now.

She rubbed her knees; they hurt from hitting the cold floor because instinctively she’d not knelt on the rug.
Sinful flesh must be mortified.

Where did that come from?
Freya stared at herself in a small mirror near the window. She looked the same, didn’t she? Shivering, she sat on the bed.
Too much to drink?
She’d never suffered delusions before.

It was true she’d gone to a church school in Sydney, but it had been Anglican, not Catholic; perhaps—but it was a stretch—something in Portsolly had triggered . . . what? She’d never been remotely religious. There was the Abbey, of course,
but you can’t catch hysteria from ruins.
Ridiculous! Too damn Jungian, and who believed any of that stuff anyway?
The shadow.
Nonsense. Yes.
Is it?

Freya moved too quickly, and the room wavered. She was dizzy. At least she knew why that happened. She’d always had low blood pressure, especially in the morning, and this was a tangible, physical cause, the opposite of mystical visions.

Clothes, outside the door, Katherine had said—and there they were, a neat pile; jeans, underwear, T-shirt, and thermals all washed and, yes, ironed.

Freya folded Che carefully and put him neatly in the center of the pillow after she’d made the bed. At the door, dressed in her own clothes, she looked back—Michael’s T-shirt, it had to be.

I had a right to him too,
that was Katherine’s message without one word spoken.

“Milk?” The kitchen was brilliant with morning light.

Freya blinked as she entered. “Thanks, yes.” She was distracted watching Ishbelle and her kittens; the basket had been placed in a splash of sun by the back door, and the cat was a tough mother, washing each squeaking kitten with a tongue like pink sandpaper. Not so different from Elizabeth, really—Freya remembered bath time as a little girl, how vigorously her ears had been washed, how much she too had protested. She smiled ruefully.

“Sugar?”

Freya nodded; she didn’t normally use sugar, but today was different.

Bright and fresh, Katherine deposited the cup in front of her guest before she sat down on the other side of the table.

Freya sipped the scalding liquid. “Maybe it was a strange bed, but something got to me last night. I had weird dreams.” Here she was, sitting across a table where her father must, once, also have sat. How many times—that was the question. Perhaps Keel Cottage felt like home to Michael. Was that Che’s message too?

Katherine cleared her throat nervously. “Your father . . .”

Freya jumped.

Katherine hurried on. “Has anyone told you where he’s buried?”

Freya shook her head.

“Michael has become part of Portsolly’s history.”

Freya put her cup down carefully; they were near enough to touch. “How so?”

“The cemetery is part of the grounds of the church. It was deconsecrated and sold—declining congregation and all that upkeep, the usual story. Your father was the last person buried in the Portsolly cemetery.” Katherine looked away.

Freya was uncertain what to do. Katherine was upset, and she should say something, but the librarian cleared her throat and said brightly, “Yes, indeed, the building’s been bought by an architect from Ardleith, and so the church has been deconsecrated. He used to come here as a boy with his family, and now he’s turning it into a summer home.”

“What Dad would have called a shack.” Freya tried to match the determinedly light tone, and her reward was Katherine’s smile as she offered marmalade.

“Well, the church is a little large for a shack, I suppose, and there’s the spire. Don’t often get one of those, even in Australia. But perhaps it is an odd choice for a holiday house—I’ve always thought it a grim building.” Katherine paused. “Perhaps you would like me to show you Michael’s grave? The churchyard
is actually rather lovely, and I could take you there on my way to work—I walk right past.”