The Island House (22 page)

“Signy?”

Shaking sand from his hair, Bear sat up. His panicked glance swept the empty beach; then he saw the line of small prints leading toward the trackway and the huts.

“Ah . . .” Bear was angry with himself, suddenly furious. She’d gone there alone, but as he ran across the beach, he saw her walking toward him, a little figure rimmed by rising light. She was carrying something.

He ran, waving vigorously, calling out, “I’m here! Here I am, Signy.”

She stopped and waited for him to reach her.

Bear was breathless. “I’m sorry, truly sorry. I wanted to be there when . . .” He saw the red tunic she was wearing.

She held up her hand—
Don’t speak
—and dropped the bundle at his feet. “These are for you. The shoes too.”

Bear bent down. He picked up the shirt and the tunic—even he could see how well they’d been made. He swallowed. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yes. A gift from my family.” She was only a little girl, and her dignity was heartbreaking. “They’ve gone, Bear, and I think they are dead.”

He blinked tears away.
No one should suffer like this.
The boy held out his arms.

That broke Signy’s courage. With a sob she fled to him, and he held that fragile body against his own thin chest, trying to breathe her pain.

“I have to go back, Bear.”

It was hard to understand what Signy said, the words sobbed out between great gasping breaths.

“But . . .”

She nodded, wiped her eyes fiercely, hiccuping. “I wanted to come home, yes.” She stepped back from him. “But there is no home for me. And now I must tell Laenna. She should know.”

Bear said the wrong thing. “But she’s dead, Signy.”

“Yes, she is dead. The raiders killed her. Just like my parents.”

Those dark eyes, awls to score Bear’s soul. He shook his head, pleading. “They may have gone somewhere else and we will find them.”

She yelled at him. “No. You came with them. You sacked the island with them, and then they did this. You’re just like them.”

“No, I’m not. Not anymore.” Bear shrugged the thought away, the treacherous thought,
Yes, I am.

He tried to take her hand and flinched when he saw the gash across her wrist. “Come to my home, Signy. Live with my family. Please. My mother will welcome you as her daughter—she only has sons. Just a few days’ sailing, that is all—we can float the ship again and travel on.”

Unwillingly Signy looked to where the hull lay, canted on the sand. It was true, the sea was returning.

“Laenna is all that remains of my true family on this earth, and I will not leave her. Not after this.” She pointed toward the semi-ruined buildings. Fire had done its work—it was easier to see that in daylight.

“Take the ship, Bear. You need it more than me.” Signy hitched up her tunic and ran toward a cove between high rocks.
White legs flashing, she was a red blur against black crags and the pale sky.

Bear called out. “Come back.”

But he had no choice. He ran after her, and the boy with the ruined face cried as he ran.

You would not have seen the coracle unless you knew where to look. Wedged upright at some distance from the high-water mark, it was the same color as the rocks, but Signy did not have the strength to pull it out, try as she might.

Bear wiped his face when he got close. He did not want her to see. “I can help.”

“Get away!” She bared her teeth, a small ferocious animal.

Bear reached up to grasp the odd little craft.

Signy bit his wrist. She drew blood.

Shocked, he dropped his hand. “Signy!”

“Leave me alone. I don’t need your help.”

“Oh, Signy . . .” Bear slumped. She meant what she said. He stared out toward the strait; now he did not care if she saw his tears.

Perhaps his sorrow shook her resolve. She licked one of her own bloody knuckles and after a moment sat beside him.

Poor Bear. It was a reflex action to put his arm around her bony shoulders. “We’re both hungry. Come on; we can sort this out later.”

Signy said nothing, but she allowed him to pull her up. Hand in hand they walked along the beach. There were oysters and whelks on the rocks and fish trapped in rock pools; food was there for the taking and driftwood, too, with mounds of seaweed cast up above the high-tide line.

Bear pointed. “If we can make fire, I can broil a fish or two.”

Signy pulled out her father’s knife. “All we need is something to strike against.”

Bear stared at the blade and grinned. “Maybe the Christ-brothers left tools onboard the ship; anything iron will do.” He trotted away toward the vessel and then stopped. Looking back, he called out, “You know it, don’t you?”

“What?” Signy was gathering driftwood.

“We’re good together, you and me. Us against the world.” He waved and ran off.

She watched him go.
Against the world.
How big was the world anyway . . .

CHAPTER 16

F
REYA WAS
trudging away from the cave in the rain pulling the cart. The journey back to the house was a repeat of the first but worse, much worse. Her mind seethed with images and sounds—and fear.

Walking time is thinking time—Michael always said that—and as Freya plodded on, her thoughts became calmer; logic is a wonderful thing sometimes.

The praying in Latin this morning, for instance; that had to be some kind of really,
really
vivid nightmare brought on by reading—and some of the material she’d dipped into at the library had been about early religious life in Scotland. Those monasteries must have been grim and cold, and blighted by an unforgiving code that had terror at its very heart. For a scholar, she was plainly far too imaginative—too much right brain, not enough left.

But there was the crucifix. That was trickier.

Freya reran the images in her mind. She’d been taking it out of its wrapping and peeling the cotton wool back when Daniel reached over to help. She’d tried to take it back, and they’d touched it together.
Boom.
She stopped, oblivious to the rain pricking her face, and stared at the strait. Storm or no storm, Daniel Boyne was already halfway back to Port in the sturdy little dinghy. He’d be wet by now. She hoped he was soaked.

Freya stared at her hands, held them up. The wallop when he’d touched her—
No, touched the crucifix
—had been like sticking fingers in a power socket, but there were no marks on her skin, no
aftermath. Daniel had gone white, though, and then green, as if he wanted to be sick. Then he’d flat-out lied.

They
had
both seen it—destruction, terror. It had felt like the end of the world.

She yelled at the sea. “Why did you run? Can you hear me?”
Of course he can’t, idiot.

Trembling, Freya wiped water from her face. She
knew
the world to be a solid place—well, at the nonmolecular level. (
So, not very solid at all, really.
)

But this cliff was real rock; the rain was very cold and it was wet. She looked down. There were pebbles on the path, and pebbles were actual
things,
here-and-now things.
But what you saw and he saw was just as real; it wasn’t a movie or something on the Net, some fantasy. And it wasn’t a dream.

Freya stared up toward the house. “Was this what you meant by ‘visions,’ Dad?”

Above, the path climbed away. If she wanted to be warm and safe inside Compline, if she wanted to know more—because she was convinced there was more to know—she had to do this. She started forward—and stopped. Her legs didn’t want to work like legs; they didn’t want to hold her up. Freya groaned; it was too hard, all of it.

“Come on, you can do this. Jesus!” Blasphemy—she tested herself, tested whatever had made her pray this morning.

Count. Count the steps.
Freya nodded: Elizabeth. When you can’t face the thought of something, walk toward it and count the steps—enough steps and you forget what you’re frightened of. And what was she actually frightened of here? Insanity? She was pretty sure, really fairly positive, that she was not insane. But she took a step and began to count. “One, two . . .

“. . . and four hundred and thirty-seven. Thank you, God, whoever you are.”

Freya stumbled around the last curve, past the twisted old rowan. Pausing to let her breathing settle, she hitched the pack
higher and flexed her right arm—stiff from pulling the cart. There was the house, cold and dark and empty. Forlorn; that made two of them.

A bath. Whisky! Who cared if it wasn’t even lunchtime; she didn’t. Only a few steps now,
four hundred and thirty-eight, nine, four hundred and forty. . . . So, Dad, I need to find where the crucifix came from. You have to help me, you owe me that—at least. Four hundred and forty-one, two, three . . .

She hurried into the house from the rain. What a relief it was to wipe her face and put her burdens down. She’d take out the books and . . . her present, later.

Now, if she wanted that bath, she had to make the stove fire up. Paper, dry heather, peat, flame—simple things, simple tasks, the remedy for confusion.

It was quiet inside Compline. Thick walls stopped most sound, and there was only the rain—fingers on the glass,
pat, pat, pat
—as Freya struck a match and the paper caught. Soon the firebox would heat up, and so would the kitchen. She pumped water to fill the pipes at the back of the range. Something was working, and that was a relief. Now for the whisky.

Freya put the empty glass on a stool beside the bath, but it wasn’t until she’d eased herself very, very slowly into the scalding water—gasping as her body flushed scarlet from toes to collarbones—that she saw why her father had bothered to build the dais that supported the tub. Fully relaxed, she leaned back and found her face at the perfect angle, the perfect height, to inspect the green mound that stood like a sentinel behind the house.

The hill—smooth, flat-topped, and symmetrical—was gracefully framed within a deep, single window set in the thickness of the wall. Rain blurred the image but only in the pleasing way of an Impressionist painting seen too close.

Natural optimism bobbed up as Freya soaped the length of her
body. All the nonsense she’d experienced had to have a reasonable explanation, and she was definitely going to find it. The things around her—the bath, the soap, the water, this house—were all just as real as the cliff; the rest, the visions, had to be about the work of an overwrought imagination and jet lag; sometimes that lasted for a week, and she’d been here only a couple of days. What other explanation could there be?

Humming, Freya pulled the plug, stood up, and saw the side of a building through the glass. She’d not noticed it before. Was that a bell tower? Curious, she slung a leg over the side of the bath and padded toward the window. The rain was heavier, streaming down the pane, when she got there, and whatever she’d seen the moment before was no longer visible.

Freya was perplexed. The only structures on the island were the house, the barn behind it, and the ruins. There was nothing else. Was there? Her feet were getting cold on the slate floor and, looking down, she glimpsed her own nakedness. Nauseated with a sense of sin solid as a blow, Freya wrenched a towel from a chair and covered her torso, her thighs, with trembling hands.