The Island House (25 page)

Dan walked on, staring at the harbor. Streetlights lit the boats with an orange glow, intense as any apocalypse, but nothing, nothing to compare to what he’d seen on the old wharf at Findnar.
What did that mean?
Delusions? Brilliant. As if there wasn’t enough going on.

Women said they forgot the pain of childbirth, but his dad was right. Dan could not erase the pain of Michael Dane’s death—not mental, not physical. And it was etched in his bones now, in his damaged body and in the despair and terror and personal sense of failure—and the guilt. He just wanted it all to go away.

Did he have the guts to top himself? He’d thought about it quite often, especially after Alice walked away. His fault, of course—he’d not been able to ask for help and retired into a black night of his own making. Too much whisky, too much work to prove that he could, still, work—even if it wasn’t at sea—and Alice had got tired of the moods. Very tired of him too.

And now, there was Freya Dane. Dan stopped, staring out toward the island. A light burned there, just one, in the house on the other side of the water.

Maybe Freya was a nice woman, maybe she was not, but she frightened him. He’d never been scared by a woman before. Humiliated, yes. Scared? Not before this morning.

Dan breathed deep and took another step and then another. He welcomed the pain—it was potent, and it stopped the mad roiling in his head. Maybe he would go to the pub after all. He could see it up ahead, light streaming from the windows and music too—muffled but still insistent. He sighed. Why was there always a price to be paid for company, and why were songs always about love?

He half-turned, staring back toward their house. Walter would not sleep until he heard Dan’s key in the door, but he was thirty-one, not sixteen. Time to move on—if he could find a way to do that—time for a different life.

Ignoring the click and grind of his hip, Dan walked faster. Only a few steps now, not many (but who was counting?).

He stopped. Part of him had registered the tide was up, and the boats beside the quay were riding high at anchor. Most were familiar craft. He backed up a pace; Michael’s cruiser was tied to a bollard.

Dan stared. The phone in his pocket chirped. A text. He thumbed the icon; it’d be Walter—
Just worried about you,
or some such message.

But Dan was wrong, and his face changed as he read the words.
I can see you Daniel Boyne. Be careful how you pick your friends.
The number of the sender had been blocked.

CHAPTER 18

B
EAR HAD
managed to lash the boom back to the mast and now the trading vessel rode easily on the water secured by two separate lines to the beach. Each hide rope was anchored beneath a stone, the biggest Signy and Bear had found. It had taken them a morning, after they’d eaten the fish he cooked over the fire she’d made, to roll the boulders above the high-water mark. Now the ropes flexed as the ship swung on the tide, but they were good lines, well cured, flexible, and very strong.

“You are certain?” Bear hadn’t been able to change Signy’s mind in a morning of arguing. He glanced at the coracle. He’d carried it from the cove, and now it lay on the sand waiting for her to take it. His heart spoke, not his head. “It’s a long way to paddle alone.”

She did not look at him. “I’ve done it before.” That was a lie. She’d traveled with her siblings or her parents in the old days.

Signy ran toward the hide bowl, and Bear hurried to help her drag it to the water’s edge.

The boy stood in the surf, careless of his new clothes, and held the little craft steady. The coracle would buck and tip Signy out if the moment was not well judged, but she rolled over its edge and into the middle with practiced ease.

“Good-bye, Bear.”

He heard the tears in her voice. At the last moment, she reached up to kiss the good side of his face, and he felt her lips brush the soft bristle along his jaw.

“I hope we meet again in this life, Signy. You have been kind to me, and I will not forget that.”

How to cover desolation? Speak up, speak loudly. He raised his hand. “The tide will drop soon. Journey well, my friend.” He did not say,
This is madness.
She already knew he thought that.

Signy ducked her head and picked up the paddle as she settled her seat in the boat; balance was everything. She had little emotional strength left. “Push me, Bear, a good, strong push.”

With his help, the coracle bobbed over the crest of a small wave. As it slid down the back, Bear watched Signy dig the broad blade of the paddle into the sea. It was hard work, and she was tentative at first, but she began to find the looping, sweeping rhythm, and the little craft progressed slowly toward the harbor’s mouth. Soon, too soon, she would be on the open water of the strait, and Bear knew she would not look back.

“Signy!”

She did not acknowledge his shout.

“Signy, wait. Wait!” Bear could not control his voice; the shout became a plea.

That Signy heard. She slewed around, the coracle answering the movement.

Bear stood waist-deep in the tide. “You don’t need to do this. We’ll go back together in the big boat.”

Together.
The word rang like a bell.

Signy stared at him. She dropped the paddle and cupped her hands around her mouth. “You mean it?” The boy shouted back, “Yes.” How sad he looked. She let the waves sweep her back to where he stood but he said nothing as she scrambled over the side of the coracle and into the shallows. “I’m glad you changed your mind, Bear.” Signy touched his arm as they dragged the craft onto the beach. “Truly. It is better this way. The Christ people will have cursed us for taking their ship, I think. And perhaps the curse would have followed you. It needs to be lifted.”

“Doesn’t frighten me. They don’t have the power.” Bear spat into the tide. “They live on seaweed.”

Signy was shocked. “You can’t say that.” A curse was serious business and not to be mocked.

Bear took both her hands in his. “Signy, we’ll take the boat back because you want to and for no other reason.”

The girl stared toward the ruined clan settlement. “This place has been cursed too. By the blood of my family. Nothing will prosper here until that is atoned for also.” She did not mention Bear’s name. She did not have to.

After the terrors and privations of the previous year, the Christians on Findnar had been crushed to discover the new vessel, a replacement for the ones the raiders had taken, was missing. For Gunnhilde this had been a double loss because Bear and Signy had disappeared, too, and she felt personally betrayed.

Without the vessel, another want-filled winter loomed but with yet more bellies to be filled on the island. Gunnhilde, with great remorse, had prayed many private hours, seeking forgiveness for her part in the catastrophe, and if her knees burned, she knew she deserved the pain and bore the self-imposed penance gladly.

It was the guilt that shamed her most, and the disobedience of her heart. She had deliberately ignored Brother Cuillin’s warnings about the Pagan children, and the whole community was paying for their duplicity. She should have seen the Devil nesting in their souls, and yet it still seemed hardly credible that two such scraps could have stolen the ship.

“Sister, Sister, they’ve come back!”

Stretched prone before the altar in the part-built chapel, Gunnhilde did not, for a moment, make sense of Idrun’s words.

“Come back?”

“Signy and the boy.”

The two nuns hurried to the cliff path. It was true, the ship
had
returned, sailed boldly into the bay by Signy and Bear as if they had merely gone fishing. Gunnhilde could see them smaller than beetles below, securing the craft to the shore.

“Deo gratias,” the words were a bemused prayer of thanks. “Dear Lord, we thank you for bringing Signy and Bear back to us. This is a miracle.”

“We do indeed, Sister. Well may you thank our Lord, but gratitude is not enough. A theft was committed.”

Cuillin, the newly elected Abbot of Findnar, had arrived behind the women. “Sister, I ask that you bring the children to me in the chapel.”

Both nuns knelt in the pose of penitents. Gunnhilde crossed herself and said deferentially, “Of course, Brother Abbot,” and, as was proper, she did not look up, but she struggled with obedience to this man. She was still surprised by Cuillin’s sudden elevation—elected by the community in Chapter only yesterday—and absorbing the hurt of not even being proposed as Abbess of the nuns (and coleader of their double monastery). Perhaps the defection of the children had cost her this as well. Findnar might be a much smaller foundation than the Motherhouse at Whitby but with new members arriving so recently, it was clear their little community could be expected to grow. Many felt a calling to preach in the wilderness as the early fathers of the Church had done and perhaps one day, Findnar might be an important Christian center on this remote coast. Poor Gunnhilde. She burned to be allowed to contribute to a greater degree, if only to expiate sins and misjudgments of the past.

But Cuillin waved an impatient hand over her bent head. “Get up, Sister. I will await you in the chapel.” His shoulders slumped as he strode away. Though it was his clear duty to discipline the children, he knew it would be difficult imposing his will on Gunnhilde. On the one hand, she was too soft to be in charge of any of their young people—and it was for that reason he’d successfully argued against her becoming his coruler—but on the other,
Gunnhilde’s belief in the rightness of her own opinions was most unsuitable for any nun. And today there was proof—if he’d ever needed it—for later she dared to argue with him on the matter of penance.

“God is love, Brother. These two children cannot endure the privation of a long fast. See how thin they are.” Perhaps the brutal raid of last year gave the nun courage, for more suffering seemed pointless. “And the scourge. Please, Brother Abbot, not the scourge. The boy has not long recovered from his previous wounds, and Signy is just too little to withstand it.”

Cuillin, appearances to the contrary, was not without pity, and yet he hardened his heart.
For you, Lord, only for you is the stray lamb brought back to the fold with diligence.
With manful effort, he achieved a reasonable tone. “No, dear Sister, you are wrong. Bear and Signy knew what they were doing. The boy, as the elder, might have led her astray, but they chose this evil path willingly. And if they were strong enough to take that ship . . .”

Signy edged closer to Bear. Her understanding was not so good that she grasped the meaning of each word, but
fast
she knew, and also
scourge.
Big-eyed, she trembled as she knelt beside her friend. Bear saw the effect of Cuillin’s words on Signy, and he began to tremble also—with rage.

“But, Brother, they
returned
the ship. They thought better of what they did and brought her back to us. And they came willingly, knowing they would be punished, when they could just have continued on. Surely that counts for something?”

God’s warrior tried not to waver. “Perhaps our actions will seem cruel now, Sister, yet we are responsible for the souls of these children in all eternity. Through too much kindness, too much indulgence”—his gaze was implacable—“Satan came close to seizing them both. God’s intentions are clear, and by our chastisement of their bodies, the Evil One shall be banished from their hearts.”

Cuillin bent to pull Signy to her feet, but Bear knocked the
monk’s hand aside. Glaring into Cuillin’s eyes, he thrust his body in front of Signy. “I kill you.” Rage bloodied his voice, but his eyes were blank and wide—the stare of a man, not a boy.

Cuillin recoiled; he signed a cross between himself and the minion of Satan he now saw. “Child of Hell!”

“Brother. Brother!” Gunnhilde hurried forward. “They are just frightened and hungry and cold. Our Lord said, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’; He wants us to show them His light, not destroy it forever in their hearts.” She knew Cuillin would not forgive her, but she had to try.