The Island House (7 page)

And archaeology found me again because I was able to pursue work on my own terms here.

I hope you like living and working here too, Freya. If you decide to stay.

The soft light played with his words. “Sorry, Dad, not convinced I’m an archaeologist. There. Said it.” Freya chaffed her arms. Perhaps his voice in her head was amused as she read on.

Whatever you decide, my finds of these last years are all cataloged. There are site plans, drawings, and photographs, and I’ve stored the physical objects in the undercroft—others will call it a cellar, but I know you will understand what it is.

This house proper may be only a few hundred years old but in the lower layer it’s much more ancient, though linked in style to the Abbey; that’s what people have always called the ruins beside Compline, by the way, and “people” are right.

However, going further, it is my belief that parts of Compline House are very much older than even the monastic era. I feel they predate the turn of the millennium before last, and it is this aspect of Compline’s past for which I have pursued dating evidence; it’s become a quest—the center of my being. And it feels right, somehow, what I am doing here.

There are riddles in this place that I have never solved. But you? Well, you are different, you always have been. The head from me. The heart, the imagination from your mother. And that is why I feel compelled to tell you something I do not think I can share with any other person.

I have always thought of myself as a rational being, Freya, a person who deals with facts—so far as any archaeologist can. But there are other dimensions to this puzzle than concrete, datable evidence of the past. I am not able, any longer, to accept the deductions of my training, or my senses, alone.

Now, I look at what I have just written, and I see you shaking your head, yet it is very hard to find words to describe what I have experienced so recently on Findnar.

Lately, what I can only describe as visions have begun to disturb my sleep. These are not dreams, by the way—dreams have no structure—but what I see, what I increasingly hear, does. It is as if I am being given a new chapter of a story to absorb each night. The setting is always Findnar, and there is only a small cast of people, but the time is not our era.

Thraaaaaamp!
Something hit the back door. Freya jumped, heart jolting. She rose from the chair. Another thump. Harder. This one rattled the handle.

“Hello?” She heard herself.
Hello—how dumb is that?

Freya turned the key quickly and pulled the door open; wild air rushed past and riffled the papers off the table—absorbed in Michael’s letter, she had not heard the storm rise outside, and lumps of peat had been flung out of an upended basket by the force of the gale; they’d hit the kitchen door.

It was hard to shut the night outside, but Freya forced the door to close. She picked up the scattered sheets of paper and did not
sit down to the letter again until she’d drunk a hot, sweet cup of tea and lost the shakes.

Recently, just before Christmas, there was a week of fine weather and I decided to finish some work I had started. In the autumn just gone, I sank some trenches in the circle of standing stones—seeking dating evidence of construction.

To that point, the trial digs yielded little, but when I reopened a trench near the center of the circle, more digging yielded a number of remarkable artifacts. They were hidden—I’m convinced of that, by the way—but by whom it is impossible to say. Certainly pre the first millennium and utterly unique. I believe a crucifix I found there is the key to the visions—everything I have experienced began after I gave it away. You will find full descriptions of that piece and of each of the other objects in my notes. And please, Freya, look with particular care at the contents of the small lead box. Can you read Latin by the way?

Lead box? Crucifix? Freya frowned; archaeologists do not give away unique finds. Had her father been drunk by the time he’d written this stream of consciousness?

Now, you may say that a lifelong interest in the past and constant study is generating all that I am experiencing—or that I am drunk.

Freya sat straighter in the chair and faintly smiled.

At the beginning, I would have said you were right (in reference to the former, not the latter). Now, I am not convinced, and to engage with, to really examine, the meaning of recent events, the objects I have found must be properly placed in their contexts—validated, if you like.

If you are reading this letter, I will not have achieved my goal. And if that is so, this is where I must ask you to help me, though I have no right.

It would be a miracle, I know, if you were able to find written records for the people whose names I shall give you, for I have not been able to. However, I feel certain there will be something. Even a crumb of information, no matter how small, will be important.

And you must search for the grave and the tomb. I am convinced they

The writing ceased.

“Tomb?” Freya turned the page over, held up the folder, and shook it. Nothing, except for a small, yellowing newspaper clipping, which fluttered down, mothlike, to the tabletop.

It was from the Ardleith
Herald,
and it was dated January 1. The column was brief, under an arresting headline:
HEROIC RESCUE FAILS
.

In simple language the article recorded the death by drowning in the early hours of the morning of January 1 of Michael Dane, PhD ’52, born Sydney, Australia, but longtime resident and owner of the island of Findnar.

Dr. Dane, formerly an archaeologist, had died trying to assist a fishing vessel named
The Holy Isle
and its crew of two: Walter Boyne, fifty-seven, and his son, Daniel Boyne, thirty-one, fishermen, both of Portsolly.

The details blurred as Freya absorbed the facts. Walter Boyne had been there when it happened.

And he’d said nothing to her.

CHAPTER 6

S
IGNY WAS
starving. She stumbled as she walked the line where hard sand met shingle in the cove. She had to go back to the Abbey, to the killing ground; she must find Laenna’s body and bury it. After that, she would look for food; there would be gannets’ eggs, if nothing else. Then she would go home. She would find a way.

The last, steep turn in the cliff track nearly defeated the child. Just a few more steps, only a few, two more, one . . .

Signy collapsed on the grass as the sky whirled above her and settled to a high, blue bowl.

It was a warm day, quiet except for birdsong and the distant mutter and slump of the sea—perfect. But there was smoke in the air, an acrid tang.

Signy stared at the sun. “Help me, Cruach. Please.” She knelt in the grass, holding up her hands to the white disk above her head. “Make my sister be alive. Make this all a dream.”

A breeze lifted hair from her eyes, gentle as a mother’s hand. “Ma, oh, Ma. How can I tell you?” Signy thought there were no more tears, but they came from somewhere as delayed shock punched her down and she saw, once more, her sister’s crushed head.

“Poor little thing. Hush now, you’re not alone. Hush . . .”

Signy froze. Perhaps the hand on her shoulder was kind, but like an animal she curled in on herself.

Let the blow be fast. I won’t feel it if it’s fast.

“I can help you.” A woman’s voice.

Signy opened her eyes. Only a little.

Soft, crumpled skin was framed in white linen; or it had been white once, but now the cloth was filthy. Robes of black wool hid the dirt better.

The smiling woman held out her hands. “There, see? I am a friend.”

Instinct beat fear. Signy wrapped herself around the stranger instantly, twig arms stronger than any vine.

“What’s that?”

A man spoke.

Signy buried her head in the woman’s belly, quivering.

“Hush, Brother. She’s just a child, badly frightened.”

The man muttered, “Aren’t we all?” He cleared his throat. “One of ours, Sister? I do not recognize her.”

“No, Brother Cuillin. I do not know where she is from.”

What were they saying? It was the same gabble all the newcomers spoke; Signy dared to open her eyes. The man was staring at her—his eyes were bleak. He was about the same age as the woman.

“A heathen child. Local. Has to be unless she came with the raiders. No good to us either way.”

Why was his voice so harsh? The man seemed angry. Signy buried her head again, shaking—it was hard not to cry.

The nun, Sister Gunnhilde, put a finger to her lips. “Hush, Brother, you’ve scared her. At least she’s alive.”

Cuillin sighed. He was too tired to be offended. To help Gunnhilde, he bent to lift Signy, but the girl screamed when he touched her.

Gunnhilde put her arms around the child. “I’ll do it, Brother. There, girl, no one will hurt you.” She pulled Signy onto her hip and walked beside the monk toward the ruins of the Abbey.

Signy hid her head in Gunnhilde’s neck. She did not want to see what the world looked like, not yet.

The adults murmured together as they walked. “How many of the community are left, Brother?”

The monk shook his head. Like Gunnhilde, his eyes were red from smoke and grief. “No more than a handful. Besides me, two brothers from the Scriptorium, Anselm and Simon, and only one of the novices; he hid in the combe.”

Gunnhilde nodded. The combe was a small wooded valley beneath the Pagan stone circle, a sensible place to hide. “I saw Brother Vidor from the kitchen earlier, and one of my novices managed to run away also.”

Cuillin caught Gunnhilde’s glance over the child’s head. “Praise be, Sister, for this at least.” They’d both seen what happened to most of the Abbey’s novice nuns.

Signy felt something wet drop on the back of her neck. Tears. She clung on more tightly.

They were close to the Abbey when Gunnhilde stopped. Slowly she absorbed the extent of the blasphemy and the horror. She crossed herself, as did Cuillin. “The end of the world. You were right, Brother—you told us the traveling star was a warning.”

Cuillin’s anguish was very great. “Why would God punish His servants in this way, Sister?”

Gunnhilde hitched Signy higher on her hip. She was exhausted, but there was far, far too much to do to acknowledge weakness. “Perhaps, in His mercy, God will tell us. Then we can make reparation for our sins.” The nun walked toward the ruined buildings carrying the child as if she’d been a mother all her life.

Brother Cuillin caught up. “I forgot to say, there’s another one. A heathen boy—he came with the raiders, I think. He looks like them, rather than her.” He eyed the filthy child dispassionately. Black hair, black eyes, brown skin. The boy was blond, a superior type compared to the tiny native people. “I think he is dying, however. Perhaps we should put him out of his pain; it might be a kindness.”

Gunnhilde stopped. She faced Cuillin, eyes snapping. “If God has given us these children, it is for a purpose, Brother. They will be treated as Christ. It is our privilege to receive them and to bring them to Him.” She clutched Signy tightly and cradled the child’s head to her chest, muttering, “The idea. The very idea!”

Signy did not know or care what the adults were fighting about; all she knew was that the old lady would protect her. That was enough.

It was many days before Gunnhilde was sure the boy would live.

He’d been caught in the Abbey as it burned. One of the roof beams had fallen, breaking both his legs, and he’d been trapped beneath it. Someone must have seen what happened, for the burning timber had been pulled away and the boy dragged outside. Dumped behind a pile of rubble, he’d lain unconscious for all that night and the day afterward until found by Cuillin. By that time, shock from burns and blood loss was compounded by infection.