The Island House (47 page)

“Who is to say we did not?” He flashed her a cheeky smile. “Finish the omelet. I might not be able to do it again.”

“I think you’ve found your cooking mojo.” She mopped up bits of egg with bread. “Delicious, truly.”

“Just tapped into instinct—something else I never suspected.” Dan took the plates to the sink.

Freya lazed in her chair and contemplated this utterly unexpected man. “But you’re a creature of instinct, Dan. You just didn’t listen to it before.”

“BF, you mean. Before Freya.”

She laughed delightedly. “Oh, let this all be true. Let this not dissolve like mist in the morning.”

“It will not dissolve, and neither will your piece of stone. And I shall come back to prove it to you.”

“You’re going over to Port?”

He held out his arms. “I am. It is a fair night, and you’ll get nothing done if I stay. Trust me.”

How intoxicating it was to kiss . . .

It was the dead time between deep night and dawn, and the house was quiet. At Michael’s desk, Freya rubbed her eyes. Dan had left hours ago, and she’d finished, finally, reading all her father’s card files. It was well past time to sleep, and she’d see him soon. Dan had said that. Ah, sweet anticipation. Perhaps she’d dream of him when she slept. How fast things changed.
BF,
he’d said. For her, it was BD.

And this time,
this
time, she would allow things to just be. She would not overthink or overplan or over-anything. She’d let him lead—he seemed that kind of a man, so different from any of the others. One day at a time, dear Lord. Just one day . . .

Freya stood and stretched luxuriously. She smiled at her reflection.

There was no answering smile. This was not her face.

Freya gasped.

Another girl stared at her from beyond the black glass—long hair, dark eyes, red mouth.
The girl they had seen among the stones.

The girl moved closer to the window. The image disappeared. Blinked out. And Freya saw her own face. White. Stunned.

She gripped the edge of the desk. Like an accident, like an emergency, time froze and she gulped air like a fish.

And snatched up the camping light. And ran.

Katherine sat up in the dark. She flicked on the light. Another night of broken sleep, and her heart was racing as she’d deliberately woken from a bad dream—made herself escape the formless thing that chased her. This, too, was familiar.

Katherine fumbled for her glasses. There was a writing pad on the little table, and she’d left a pen beside it. If there was one benefit of broken sleep, it was clarity of mind when she woke. She liked to make notes about things as the world slept; it was always a good time to organize the day to come.

But though the phantom had been willed away, Katherine felt uneasy as she picked up the pen. She’d finished the translation of the diary last night—a cause for celebration—but the last entry had been strange if the writer was indeed a nun. Freya would want to know. Should she try to ring tomorrow—today, rather?

And if Freya does not answer?
Katherine threw the covers back, suddenly hot. Perhaps she should go over to the island. She could not banish the certainty, the
necessity
of telling the girl what she’d read. Katherine’s long-banished Catholic childhood stirred as she named the thing; she had performed a sin of omission, and that must be remedied if her relationship with Freya was to be an honest one.

Loving Michael Dane, finding in him her intellectual equal, had given Katherine more than a technical understanding of archaeology.
It had peeled time open. Passion for him had ignited another passion in her—for the past, and for Findnar’s past as well. He had shown her how to see, how to look, how to find meaning in the evidence of people’s lives from long ago. That had been a comfort when he’d died, as if, in her own small way, she carried his work further. But there are many ways of seeing, and Michael had shown her that too. And some of the things he’d told her were as if he was using metaphors, or symbols, to tell the truth in a different way.

But now there was Freya, and she was so much Michael’s daughter. Looking at the girl in the last days, Katherine had begun to wonder what it would have been like to have a child.

Katherine knew she was not an emotionally open person, too disciplined—or timid—for that, but with Michael she had experienced unconditional love for the first time in her life. And he had allowed her to be brave, to take risks. He lived again, in some ways, in his daughter. It was delicate, but Katherine longed for her and Freya to be close.

“Michael, tell me what to do. Should I tell her?” Perhaps, if she put out the light, she’d sleep and he would provide the answer by the morning.

“Good night, my dear love. I so wish you were here. Your daughter needs you. Perhaps, though, I shall have to do in your place.”

Katherine yawned. She felt better sharing her anxiety with the empty air. She flicked the light off and lay in the dark with open eyes, listening. She still did not believe, not truly, that she would never again hear his step on her staircase. She sighed, and her eyes closed.

The night was windless. Breathless.

Abruptly, light spilled across Compline’s front windows, bluewhite.
It tracked back and forth, erratic scribbles over the grass, toward the cliffs, into an immense night sky.

“Where are you?” Freya put the light down and wiped her face. She was sweating. She’d run as far as the stones and all around the Abbey ruins, trying to find the girl. “I saw you. I did see you.”

Freya sagged. She huddled on the top step at the front of the house. “You were here.”

As her heart stilled and her breathing slowed, she heard the night. The sound of the sea, below, came back, and something else. A soft
pat-pat
. She looked down. A large moth was battering at the glass of the camping light.

Behind her, the front door creaked and opened softly with a click, as if a careful hand had eased the latch.

Light jumped among the shapes inside the big room, traveled over the desk, spilled across the floor as Freya ran inside.

The room was empty.

Freya stopped.

She could hear herself breathe; she could feel the blood in her veins. Her heart squeezed and then ran fast as fire.

The door to the kitchen was open; she’d closed it earlier.

One foot in front of the other.
Count the steps.
“One, two, three, four.” Shadows bled into corners when she raised the light high. The kitchen was empty.

But the undercroft door was ajar.

She had to do this. “Five, six, seven, eight . . .”

Freya placed her feet so carefully on the treads going down, and stopped at the bottom. “Hello?”

She stood in a circle of light, but all around was dense black. If she moved,
if
she moved, what would she see?

She swung the lantern in a slow, wide arc. The light passed over the walls—nothing. It traveled across the carved panel; the faces stood out stark—white against black trenches in the wood.

Freya walked forward—just a few paces. Then more—toward
the back wall. She was rigid, muscles corded with tension, as the light bounced and jerked.

There were footprints in the dust. A man’s boots; Dan’s. Her work boots as well, from the other day. But there were also other prints—delicate naked feet, the shape of the arch a pronounced indentation.

Freya was shaking, her whole body vibrating.

The small footprints led to the back wall.

And they did not return.

CHAPTER 34

T
HE STONES
were Signy’s refuge now, and on this warm morning, she drove the animals toward them. As the sheep and goats scattered to graze the slopes below, she approached the offering stone with a beaker of new milk.

Pouring the libation, Signy bowed. “Great Cruach, I beg that you hear me. And that my ancestors hear me.” She clapped her hands three times and stared up at the God in the sky for as long as she could.

Cruach’s power was too strong. Unwillingly, Signy squeezed her eyes shut, and it was a moment before she could see to place Bear’s gifts on the offering stone. She kissed that tragic face one final time; this was a very great sacrifice.

Though she tried not to show it, Signy was frightened, for it was a long time since she had made the proper observances. She bowed to the stone three times and each time felt Cruach’s warmth, like a hand, on her head; this, at least, was a good omen. Opening the lead box, she drew out a small piece of vellum covered in her own writing. It had been hard to make ink without the resources of the Scriptorium, but with soot and the white of a stolen egg, she had finally succeeded. Last night, beside her small fire, she had tried to make each word of the prayer perfect.

Throwing her arms high, Signy began to chant. “By the strength of the wind, by the height of the sky, by the might of the sea—by the power of all these things—I ask that you hear your daughter, Great Cruach.” She laid the prayer on the stone and knelt, her hands held out in supplication. “This is what I ask. May
Bear find strength and courage and guile to defeat his enemies. Stretch out your hand against those who would do him harm. Guard and protect Bear so that he returns to me. And protect me also, great Cruach. My father was once your servant, and though I am all that is left of my family, I shall serve you in their names.”

Signy lowered her arms. She was sweating. Would Cruach listen to her? She had deserted his service for a long time—he might not think her worthy.

She picked up a digging stick. “This is the last part of my offering and my prayer. I bring gifts.” She placed the crucifix on top of the lead box. “I give these to the earth—your sister and my mother. They are precious; may they lie safe in her embrace. And when time is accomplished and all is well, may they be returned to me, and may I meet my daughter again in the land of the sky.”