The Island House (38 page)

As Freya pulled her pack on, Dan gestured. “Like a hand?”

She shook her head. “I can manage. Thanks.” Edging around him, she went to step over the fish guts left by an untidy fisherman on the wharf steps. The stench hit her.
Like a corpse.
Shocked, she stumbled.

Dan reached to help. “Careful!”

She avoided his hands just as Walter nudged the guts into the water. “Very bad manners—you nearly slipped,” he said.

“But I didn’t.” Freya arranged her face into a smile as she raised a hand. “Thanks, though.”

Father and son watched her stride away among the crowds on the quay. Walter waved, Dan did not.

Walter turned to his silent son. “So, good weekend?”

CHAPTER 26

B
ROTHER
A
BBOT
?”

Anselm knocked timidly on the door of Cuillin’s cell. It was, he knew, as sparse as his own.

“In the name of God, enter.”

A prie-dieu was set beneath the unshuttered window, for Cuillin was known to spend much of each night in prayer assisted by use of the discipline. Anselm’s back twitched at that thought. A bitter east wind blew most nights in spring; couple that with self-inflicted injury and he could only wonder at his brother’s stoic piety.

“Yes, Brother?” Cuillin suppressed impatience. He did not relish being disturbed, and in the refectory below waited Solwaer, the visitor from the mainland, with a numerous entourage. On his instructions, they had all been provided with mead, barley bread, and cheeses, and told the Abbot would join them shortly. In his very bones, Cuillin suspected the man wanted something he could not, in all conscience, supply. Why else would he have come? Politics did not come naturally to the Abbot of Findnar.

“Brother Cuillin, I would not disturb you except that”—Anselm swallowed—“something most serious has occurred.”

Familiar pain began to throb behind Cuillin’s eyes.
Lord, bless me with fortitude.
“What concerns you, Brother?”

Anselm’s doom-laden expression deepened. “Sin, Brother Abbot. Of the flesh. Congress between a novice and a lay servant of the Abbey and, most heinous of all, blasphemy.”

Cuillin was astonished. “Brother, these are most serious charges. Whom do they concern?”

“The novice Signy, Brother.”

Cuillin closed his eyes. It seemed he had been waiting for this day, with dread, for years. “And with whom was this sin committed?” he asked. There could be only one answer.

“Bear, Lord Abbot.”

The weight of the silence that followed was tangible. It oppressed them both.

“And the blasphemy?”

Anselm struggled the words out. “A crucifix. The man carved it for her, a present, she said. He used his own face as the model of our Lord’s. I would have brought it to you, but I did not like to touch so profane an object.”

“His own face?” Cuillin blanched. Christ with a scarred face. A horror, demonic. He waved dismissal. “The girl is to go to the chapel and stay there. Send Gunnhilde. Our sister must watch that the girl does not run away.” He could not bring himself to say the name of the sinner.

Anselm crossed himself. “It shall be done.” He hesitated. “Before God, I feel responsible.”

Cuillin’s eyes were bleak. “And so you are. She, that . . . Pagan”—he mouthed the word as if it were a curse—“was in your care.”

Miserably, the monk bowed his head. The Abbot was right. Anselm knew that his flesh was very weak and that the penance he deserved would be severe—he dreaded that—but he did not dare imagine what might happen to Signy. He cared about the child still, and that was double suffering.

The door closed softly.

Cuillin knelt at the prie-dieu. Despairing, he asked, “Why, Lord, did you send us the heathen children? They have brought nothing but upset and confusion to this holy place and to your servant. Tell me what to do, I beg.” He sank his face in his hands.
Sometimes, in darkness, there was a voice of comfort to be heard, but now there was only silence. Had he been deserted, like Christ, in his own hour of trial?

So, he was alone. And he still had Solwaer to contend with.

It was deep night within the church, but the world outside was close to dawn, close to the time of Matins. Signy was cold. And terrified. And furious.

Barefoot and alone, she knelt on the hard floor just as she had done through the night. Her postulant’s habit had been taken away, and she was clothed in the tunic she’d found in her parents’ house. Sleeveless, it was no barrier to the frigid air, and she was shamed by its color, remembering how shocked Gunnhilde had been when she’d first seen it. The tunic was also very short on her now, leaving her knees and calves naked.

It had hurt her, very much, that Gunnhilde had disrobed her. Terrified of being shunned, Signy had pleaded with the nun, begged her to leave the habit even if the veil was taken.

But human feeling was a snare of the Devil, this Gunnhilde now truly understood. Too many times she had defended the girl, to the great cost of her community.

And so, Signy ceased to struggle as she was stripped—veil, habit, shift, rope belt, even her sandals were removed, until the novice no longer existed. In her place was a bareheaded savage dressed in red, the color of dried blood, a visible outsider—a Pagan. And this was what the Findnar community would see at Matins this morning. Gunnhilde, deaf to her pleas, had even taken the crucifix and the little lead box. Signy would never see either again.

She heard a rooster crow—night was ending, and it could not be long now. She’d endured the penance meted out by Cuillin but, exhausted and weakened without food, without water, she did not know why. Obedience? That had been one of her vows, and
she had accepted it, said the words that bound her gladly, hoping she would please the great and powerful God to whom she had promised herself. In the same spirit, she’d worn the black habit, since that was what He demanded in return for all the rewards she would be given after this life of suffering was ended.

Abbot Cuillin’s words echoed in her head. Was it only yesterday she’d lain prostrate before him in front of this same altar? He had said, coldly, that humiliation of the earthly body led the penitent, even such a sinner as she, to God.

In the cold and dark, as she’d gone over his words again and again, Signy had begun to understand something—the truth that lay behind the pious statements.

The Abbot wanted to break her, not for God or for the good of her soul, but because she frightened him. She always had. She’d been born a Pagan and a woman; he did not know how to control her.

“Don’t do this, Signy, do not let him win.” He was so close, warm breath touched the nape of her neck. Bear. A dark column above her, his face a lighter blur, but she could smell him. Warm, of the earth, of his animals, not the sour, cold reek of the monks in their unwashed wool.

“You must not speak to me, Bear. You must not use my name, for I have given it to God.”

“But it is your name, your clan name, called out by your blood father when you were born so that all in your family would know and acknowledge you. These people are not your family or even your clan. What family treats a daughter as they have done?”

Signy was proud, but she was close to breaking. It was true, her parents would ache to see her so crushed.

“Come with me. Now. We can leave together, just as we did all those years ago. I’ve built a coracle; it’s small, but it was made for us, you and me, and they don’t know about it.”

Was it so easy, then, to run away?

One of his hands found hers. Signy allowed him to help her
stand, but the blood fizzed in her legs after all the time kneeling. It was agony. If he had not held her up, she would have fallen.

“Signy!”

Gunnhilde was standing in the doorway that led to the robing room. She had a full habit draped across her arms: Signy’s clothes.

Bear grabbed Signy’s wrist. He pulled her toward the west door, the door that led out of the church.

“Wait!” Gunnhilde hobbled after the pair. She was frantic. “I am to help you dress, Sister. Our Abbot has decided he will not further scandalize the community. This is a great mercy, an act of compassion.” She held the robes forward with shaking hands. “But if you go with this man, you will prove his worst suspicions true. You will be outcast from our community.”

Signy’s vision blurred, she swayed.

Bear pulled her against his chest as she crumpled. “Do not listen.”

Gunnhilde gasped. “How could you have done this, Bear? After all the kindness of the past.”

“Kindness?” Bear laughed. A harsh bray. He shouted at Gunnhilde, shouted at the altar. “You people with your dying God and your stunted lives. Holy? All you see is filth. This is my woman, bound by blood, hers and mine—and ours.” His eyes lanced Signy’s. He was implacable. “Tell her.”

The world spun. Signy did not raise her head. “I will not speak of such things, Bear. I cannot.”

Taking her by the shoulders, Bear said urgently. “Real people do speak of such things. Tell the old woman.”

Gunnhilde did not know what to do. Very soon the community would enter the church; they might even have heard the shouting, though, mercifully, the walls were very thick. “Signy? Dearest daughter—”

“I am not your daughter.” The girl spoke in a whisper; she raised her head. “Bear is right. We are bound by blood—the blood of our daughter.”

Gunnhilde wailed. She clamped Signy’s habit to her chest. “Have you forgotten all your vows?”

Bear loomed over the old woman. “Not the ones that count.”

“What is this? What is this noise?”

Gunnhilde gasped. She darted to Signy. “Kneel. Please!”

“No!” Bear wrenched Signy away.

The Abbot had entered the church. “Sister Gunnhilde?” Cuillin gaped. Shock. Anger came later.

The monk wheeled quickly and bowed to his guest, trying to block the man’s view and that of his attendants. He gestured toward the east door.

“Forgive me, Lord Solwaer. Perhaps it will be best if you return to the refectory. We can pray together a little later.”

Lord
was a courtesy title. If he was seeking conversion for himself and his people—the professed reason for his visit—then Solwaer could be very important to the future of the Abbey. A Christian community on the mainland would help keep Findnar safe, and it would also be a source of wealth, for tithes, in return for spiritual oversight, were always welcome. Of course, Cuillin, having heard Solwaer’s self-gilded history, knew that his guest was an opportunist and most likely a liar—a formerly footloose rover who by energy and ruthlessness now dominated a part of the mainland coast. But God called all kinds and conditions of men to His service; perhaps this near brigand could be made a faithful servant of the Church through Cuillin’s teaching. A powerful thought.

Solwaer—tough, broad, and the shrewd survivor of a hard life that had already lasted far longer than was deserved—shook his head at the invitation to leave the church. An amiable smile split that brown face. “Abbot, I seek to know more of your ways and the ways of your God. Perhaps I should observe how you rule this island in His name, for you have much to teach me, I think.”

There are some men whom it is hard to deny, and Solwaer was one.

Cuillin frowned. To argue would be to diminish his authority;
so be it. Breathing hard, he strode the full length of the nave and, placing his hand on the altar, he glared at the trio before him.

Bear held the Abbot’s gaze, eyes wide and empty.

“Novice Mistress, explain what has happened here.” With effort, Cuillin spoke quite softly. Bear he ignored. To tell the truth, the gathering rage emanating from the larger, younger man intimidated the Abbot.

Solwaer observed this will-battle with interest.

Trying to force Signy to her knees, Gunnhilde quavered. “Abbot Cuillin, my erring sister has—”

Bear exploded past the old woman and took the altar steps in a leap. He shoved his face into Cuillin’s. “You do not own Signy, Monk. She comes with me.”

The Abbot picked up the altar cross in both hands. It was heavy, but he held it high, skinny arms twitching with effort. “You are a demon, a curse to this place, and always have been. The novice you speak of has given herself to Christ—you have no rights here.”