The Island House (64 page)

Solwaer snorted a laugh. “Ancestors? The monks threw their bones off the cliff, all of them. My orders. Oh, nothing to say?”

Signy drained white.

Solwaer strode forward, staring into her eyes. “And I shall choose where you lie. It will not be with him.” He wheeled. His finger stabbed Idorn’s chest. “She is not to kill herself. On your head.” He was gone in a whirl of plaid and sweat.

All the fury leached away, and Signy became an empty thing.

Idorn took a step toward her. He had to do this.

The girl raised her head. She’d brought Bear’s knife to her throat and, as the tears she’d not shed during the last terrible hours became a torrent, her hand trembled. Idorn twitched the blade away and captured her bruised arms.

Signy whispered, “Please, Idorn, do not let him win. Let me die.”

He held her, almost as a lover would. “Hush, little Signy, hush. First we must dress and . . .”

She slumped against him. “Will you give Bear the knife?”

“The knife?” Idorn hedged. The carved hilt was handsome, and besides, the brothers were well supplied with treasure already. Bear did not need another knife.

“It was the first thing he made. It is all I have to give since I shall not lie beside him.” She did not beg; that would have shamed Bear.

Reluctantly, Idorn nodded. It was a little thing and a kindness. He tried to be gentle, too, as he bound her, but in the end, that was not possible. The ropes must be tight and the knots strong, though he did not think she would try to run away. Not now.

It was done. Cruach bathed the faces of the brothers in his light for the last time as they lay among their splendor, the otter-handled knife close now to Bear’s hand. The monks were driven like animals by the overseers as, faster and faster, the two walls were built—the first inside the tunnel, the second at its mouth, the walls that would seal the grave for all time.

The work, even with so many, would take the whole Midsummer Day to accomplish, since some of the monks were too weak to lift the largest stones, even when six or eight worked together. But Cuillin was tireless—by his example he led them.

“For our Lord, my brothers, we bear this, for our God. Say after me, Our Father, which art in Heaven . . .”

In this way the monks worked steadily, chanting prayers that took them into an otherworldly state in which hours passed like mere moments.

They had almost finished when Cuillin stumbled and dropped a rock on the naked feet of a Portsol overseer. The whip of the agonized man caught the Abbot full across his face.

As he fell in a red fog, Cuillin understood, at last, how it must have been for Bear—how much he must have suffered as a boy.

And in that epiphany he saw, too, how he had broken that long-ago child’s soul. Bear had never allowed Christ to enter his heart,
for he, Cuillin, had driven the boy’s natural love away into a dark, distorted place governed by rage and lust for the Pagan girl—pretty little Signy. The girl who should never have been a nun.

And he, Cuillin, had unleashed a force that had destroyed them all.

And there was worse than this.

Bear had perished as an unredeemed, barbaric Pagan, his soul consigned to the Devil for all eternity, because of the pride of the man who should have been his spiritual father.

He, false abbot, false priest corrupted by worldly pride, must now endure what was meted out by the savage Norse and that treacherous apostate Solwaer, because he had failed Bear and he had failed all those in his care. Atonement must be made for what he had done.

On his knees at the closed-up entrance to the tomb, Cuillin called out, “Bear, Bear, can you hear me? Forgive me, dear child, in the name of Christ.”

The monks trembled; under the power of the whip, their Abbot had become insane.

But Cuillin had not finished. “I have sinned most grievously against you, Bear, and for this I accuse myself. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.” Cuillin knocked his brow on the rocks before the tomb, crying out the words most piteously as blood ran into his eyes.

The brothers dropped the stones they were holding. Oblivious to the whips of the overseers, they knelt around their fallen leader, crying out as he did. If Cuillin collapsed beneath the weight of punishment, how could they endure what must be endured?

Solwaer yelled at the overseers, “Stop them!”

The Portsol men shrugged. They were three against thirty, and the monks had formed a human knot, linking arms together like some writhing, many-legged animal.

“Edor!” Solwaer bellowed and kept bellowing until the leader of the Norse arrived.

Edor was sullen from a mighty headache, a relic of the beer and the smoke. “What?” He saw the problem, and his eyes widened. The monks had gone mad.

Solwaer pointed. “They have done all they’ll ever do.” He drew a finger across his throat. “It is time.”

Reluctant to the end, Edor finally nodded. Yesterday some of the monks had been made to dig a pit beside the entrance to the tomb.

Edor cheered up. If this was finally the end of the Findnar adventure, he could put to sea in his hulls. His hulls—that had a fine sound. He stared at Solwaer. “And the girl?” He mimed breasts and pointed toward the tent.

There was another pit. This, smaller and deeper, had been dug in the innermost stone circle. The monks had lined the sides with stone.

The Lord of Portsol flexed his shoulders; they pained him. “I agree, Edor. Yes.” He nodded without regret.

The Norse leader pointed to the monks and then toward the pit that had been dug for them.

The overseers looked at each other and then at the knot of howling madmen. Lunatics, it was said, are very strong.

The men of Portsol and the Norse dragged the monks, flailing, to the pit, though it took many to accomplish this task. There they stripped them of their clothes; naked they would go into the earth as, naked, they had been born.

But the girl was only a girl. She could not protest as she walked gagged and bound to her grave, pricked on by spearpoint; Solwaer had commanded it, though some muttered, saying it was best if her sacrifice, at least, was willing.

“Brothers, our martyrdom is upon us. We die for Christ. Rejoice and be glad, for He will shortly welcome us to Paradise.” Cuillin knelt on the edge of the greater pit, hands decently covering his genitals. One by one the brothers knelt beside him as they began to sing.

Their overseers were greatly relieved—the Abbot’s words and actions seemed to calm the monks. The raiders on the beach heard the chanting too. The sound was eerie, coming and going on the wind, the voices of ghosts. But soon the chant sputtered, grew less, less still, until, at last, only one voice sang on . . .

Idorn stood behind his master as Signy was brought forward to the smaller pit. To Solwaer would belong the honor of signaling her burial, since she was his slave.

But Solwaer was tired and, yes, even sad, for this process gave him no feeling of fulfillment or release. Standing above the grave that had been prepared for her, staring down upon her own grave goods—a little barley in a simple bowl waiting beside the opening in the earth—Signy seemed frail and small, shivering as the wind whipped at her pretty dress.

Weary with this festival of death, Solwaer wanted it finished. “Edor, I will speak with my slave. As men say, it would be better if she was willing.” He signaled that the gag should be removed. “Signy, there is a chance you will not die today.”

The girl spat the cloth from her mouth and stared at him steadily. She said nothing.

“I ask one thing only. Take back the curse.” Solwaer was superstitious, but superstition was the sister of caution, and that was the secret of his many successes.

For one unsettling moment Signy gazed at Portsol’s Lord. Then she said, “I have seen you break faith before.”

The man found he rather liked her hard certainty, for she dared to bargain with him at the edge of death. An unusual woman. But she knew the truth about Grimor and about Bear, and all women gossiped, especially the ones with a grudge. “Raise the curse and you will see.”

Before she looked into the pit at her feet, Signy smiled, and that was unnerving to all who stood there. “My father was a shaman.” Her eyes were glittering, bleak pools as she scanned the small crowd of men. “He taught his sons to follow him, but I learned well
from his example also.” Her glance, a blade, peeled the skin of Solwaer’s soul. “You do not mean for me to live, Solwaer; this is a lie. For that I curse you again, sleeping and waking, in your walking out and in your returning.” She raised her voice. “You will never sleep without monsters in your bed and your mind, and you will die without children. With my death, you condemn them. No sons will follow you.” The last words were a gathering scream of power.

Shaken, Solwaer pushed Signy to the ground, his foot on her neck. “Idorn!”

Others rushed to help, for such defiance in a slave toward her master was unseemly.

It was quick, since she was, finally, one girl and there were many men.

And so they trussed her, tied her in the form she’d once had inside her mother, head to knees, as she went to her new, dark birth. And when she called out their names from inside her tomb, they placed earth on her and then a stone, a large stone marked with a cross. As it dropped and she felt that final weight, she screamed out, “I am Signy. Remember me.”

Cuillin, awaiting his own end, heard the noise. It had distracted the men with the axes and the swords, but some of Signy’s tormentors laughed, and that piercing sorrow was the last thing the Abbot ever knew.

CHAPTER 48

L
IGHT BLINDED
them. It blazed through the ancient air, and for one flickering moment, the burial ship burned as the benediction of the sun for the first time in more than a thousand years touched silver to silver, gold to gold as the shining net spread farther, wider, until, at last, it found the skulls of the brothers, filling the empty sockets of their eyes.

And, as quickly as it had come, it shrank away, leaving the chamber and the passageway to the soft gray of morning.

Freya was close to speechless. “That was . . . it was . . .”

Katherine said, softly, “To have seen such a thing, after so many centuries.” She, too, groped for words.

Dan touched Freya’s shoulder. “We should seal the chamber?”

“Wait. Katherine, look.” Freya was leaning forward, pointing. “Is that . . . ?”

They stared at the bones of a skeletal hand. “I think it is.” Once a knife had lain close beside those fingers. The blade was gone, but the haft remained, an otter-handled knife.

“Could it be . . .” Freya hesitated.

“Perhaps it’s a coincidence.” Katherine’s attempt at reason.

“But she
described
the knife—and he made it; her friend.” Freya took a deep breath. “This is him, it must be.” She turned to Dan, eyes shining.

“And the girl under the slab?” Dan stared at her.

In a daze, Freya nodded. “She’s our writer—the one we’ve been seeing. She showed us how to find the ship and her grave.”

Simon, forgotten by them all, stared from Dan to Freya. “Showed you how to find the ship?” He laughed. “What is this?”

Dan stepped between Freya and Simon. “Shame you have to go. Must do it again sometime.” His tone was polite; his eyes were not.

Simon’s expression darkened, and Freya said, quickly, “Can you find some tarps, Dan? We’ll need gaffer tape too. Please.”

Dan’s eyes were dangerous, and he was simmering as he stalked away, but he did what she asked. Simon he ignored.

“Sorry to hurry you out of here, Simon, but Dan’s right. We should leave.”

“I remain curious, though.” Simon stepped back from the long-ship.

Freya, utterly weary, shrugged. “What about?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? I really could have helped.” His smile was rueful. “Said that before, I think.”

She looked away. The kiss. It had led to expectations and that was her fault. “Well, it all just sort of happened.”

He gestured at the fallen rocks in the passageway. “Just like that?” A little less rueful.