A Handful of Ash

by Marsali Taylor

  Past the smithy was Blackness Pier, a great space fronted with tyres, and above the pier, in a space of its own against the green hill of East Voe, was Earl Patrick’s castle. It was sand-brown, with four rows of windows topped by a great chimney. In its day it had been a Renaissance chateau like the ones along the Loire where my Maman performed in operas by Rameau or Lully, the composers of the Court of the Sun King. There were pictures inside showing how it had been, with tapestries on the walls, and wooden panelling, and a great fire blazing in the hearth. Now it was bleak and bare, dominating the town like a reminder of what the power of the lairds had meant for ordinary Shetlanders: wood from the tidelines to be diverted ‘for the Lairdis works’, the extra work of cutting and drying more peats for ‘the Lairdis fires’, and taxes, taxes, taken in fish and wool and butter. It was the taxes that had been Earl Patrick’s downfall; his cousin King James, son of Mary Queen of Scots, hadn’t minded the way he’d mistreated his tenants, but objected to him pocketing the taxes levied in the king’s name. He’d been executed in Edinburgh in 1615.

  Below the castle, modern Shetland fought back. The descendants of the men who had fished for the lairds had their own boats now, parked alongside the pier, where they could offload their catch straight to the green sheds of the auction room, linked electronically to the big fish market in Lerwick, and to buyers all over the world. There was a salmon processing factory here, and a brown square tower of ice plant, to fill the holds of these trawlers with ice before they went to sea. The boats here mostly caught whitefish, cod, haddock, and whiting; the big pelagic trawlers, who went down to Ireland, up to Iceland and across to Norway, were moored in Lerwick and Whalsay.

  A long finger of sea went behind the castle. I couldn’t see it from here, but it too was modern Scalloway, another marina filled with little motorboats and tall yachts. A fleet of wooden houses, navy, red, and dark brown, held the overspill of Scalloway folk from this old town of Scottish-looking houses among sycamore trees.

  I opened the washboards and went below. After I’d wrapped the meat up in newspaper and stowed it below the waterline to keep cold, I heated up the last of my pot of stock-cube soup. Real lamb soup tomorrow! Cat scoffed some of his fish, and washed his whiskers, then we headed along the twenty yards to the college.

  We walked straight into trouble: Antoine, the college chef, was on the warpath. He came bursting out from the café, in his chef’s apron and white hat, brandishing a rolling pin as if he was going to brain me with it. ‘Cass Lynch, you come here, immediately.’ He paused in mid-eloquence to kiss me on each cheek, French-fashion. ‘Come and see what that animal of yours has done now.’

  I sighed and followed, hoping that the latest outrage had happened at a time when I could give Cat an alibi. I reckoned that most of the thefts Antoine blamed him for weren’t his doing, but, cats being cats, I couldn’t swear a hundred per cent that he was innocent. I suspected that Antoine didn’t really believe he’d committed them either. He just enjoyed the chance to make a good scene in French.

  They were busy clearing away the debris from today’s lunches, and preparing for tomorrow. A girl was loading plates into the dishwasher, her face flushed. Nate bent over a bucket of fish; a little pile of fillets lay on one side of the steel draining board, a heap of heads and backbones on the other. His long, dark hair was shoved up under a cap. He looked up as I came in, and grimaced sympathetically, then drew a finger across his throat.

  ‘There!’ Antoine said, pointing dramatically. The damage wasn’t hard to spot. The greaseproof paper on top of a tray of plaice fillets had been pulled aside by a set of efficient claws, the fillets had been nosed among, one or two pulled out of the tray, and it was a fair suspicion that at least one was missing.

  ‘When did it happen?’ I asked.

  ‘Not half an hour ago.’ Antoine flourished the rolling pin. ‘I set the plaice aside so that we could clear the tables, and then have a cup of tea once all the customers were gone. A proper tisane, not your horrible strong English tea, with a spoonful of honey in it, real French honey that I brought from home, in spite of the airport madness. I do not overwork my staff.’ A sweeping gesture warned them they were being talked about; he returned to English. ‘I do not overwork you.’ When he turned back to me, Nate rolled his eyes. The girl made an ‘oh yeah’ face. ‘We hear nothing, nothing, then suddenly there is a clatter.’ His rolling pin indicated a fork on the floor. ‘I shouted, because I remembered your cat stealing before, and then I looked, and there was no sign, just the door open a little, and this. Now it will all have to be thrown out, these beautiful plaice.’

  ‘That seems an awful waste,’ I said. ‘Can’t it just be washed? Cooking will kill any germs.’

  Antoine sniffed. ‘And look at those clawmarks. That is definitely cat, and I ask myself, what cat is around the college?’

  ‘Several,’ I cut in. ‘There’s that big black and white bruiser from over the road, I’ve often seen him hanging about on the slip. There’s the ginger one from Ladysmith Drive. He comes down the hill every morning about nine o’ clock.’ I joined him in the drama, flinging an arm out towards the marina. ‘Half an hour ago, Cat was curled up on a bunk aboard Khalida, washing his whiskers after a good meal of the little fish I catch for him.’

  ‘You catch fish for him?’ Antoine’s tone expressed deep scepticism, in spite of having seen me doing it, when he’d come out of the back door to flap a discloth.

  ‘Off the end of the pier,’ I asserted. ‘Those little ones that hang around there. He loves them.’ Boiling them up made Khalida smell for the rest of the day, but Cat liked them so much better than tinned cat food that it was worth it. ‘And also, look at the size of those claws. You know very well Cat is just a baby. Those were made by a beast at least this long.’ Getting into the spirit of the debate, I indicated a size which would have done credit to a young puma. Nate stifled a grin. ‘And how would he have got in here? Through that open window?’ I pointed at the narrow upper window, which was propped outwards on a metal stick. ‘He is a very little kitten, you know.’ My hands made the size of the average hamster. ‘He could not jump up there.’

  Antoine snorted. Given that he’d seen Cat jump-scramble up to my shoulder, it was maybe too obvious an exaggeration. ‘Beside,’ I finished, with the air of one clinching the thing, ‘he’s a friendly little cat. If it had been him, he’d still have been here, ready to talk to you.’

  Antoine snorted again, but seemed to be conceding Cat’s alibi. ‘Well, if he was really with you on your boat this last half hour … but do not let me catch him in here again.’

  ‘You haven’t caught him in here yet,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Well, make sure I do not. We had a visit from those health and hygiene people, and they would not like a cat making himself at home here. Nate had to put him in his pocket, at high speed, and smuggle him out of the back door to the janitor, while Sarah –’ he indicated the girl ‘– put his dish into the sink and hid his box.’ I grinned. Antoine saw he’d given himself away, and shooed me out. ‘Off you go. We have work to do, and you have classes to attend, and already you are late.’

  I allowed myself to be shooed. I had just reached the café when one of the biologists came in, a tall woman with dark hair, swept up to show pearl earrings. She wore a businesswoman suit, grey with a narrow paler stripe, the colours of Cat’s coat, and shiny, long-toed boots. She nodded to me, and went on to the counter.

  Nate came out from the kitchen, his professional welcoming smile turning to sourness. ‘Now, Rachel?’

  It was obvious, seeing them together, that they were brother and sister. They both had dark wavy hair, the same long, narrow nose, and high cheekbones. That was an odd setup, I thought, the sister up among the lecturers, and the brother washing dishes. I wondered if she’d got him the job. If so, his tone said he resented it.

  Hers was equally brusque. ‘Is Antoine there?’ She flicked a glance at me, as if she was reminding him that there were stude
nts present.

  Nate inclined his head towards the kitchen, but she made no move to go through the door. ‘Go and get him, will you please?’

  Nate gave her a murderous glance. I was at the door into the foyer now, and just about to go out, but a crash of glass made me turn. Nate bent to the floor and picked up the stem and shattered bowl of a wineglass. He turned it in the light, and gave a twisted smile, then set it on the counter. His dark eyes met hers. ‘Still breaking things, are you?’

  ‘You know very well,’ she retorted, ‘that I was nowhere near it.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he agreed smoothly, ‘you certainly didn’t touch it.’ He picked up the glass again. ‘But it’s broken.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me.’ Her voice was made ragged by uneven breathing. She took a step back from the counter, then turned and hurried away, brushing past me as if she didn’t see me. Behind the counter, Nate watched her go, smiling and turning the glass in his hand, so that the jagged edges splintered the light.

  When I came out, two hours later, Nate was waiting. He had a plastic bag in his hand. ‘A present from Antoine,’ he said, falling into step beside me. ‘The fillets he said would have to be wasted.’

  ‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’ I had every intention, as Antoine knew full well, of eating most of them myself, giving only obviously tooth-marked bits to Cat, who’d slipped out halfway through the class on dealing with an airlock. When he’d returned, he’d spent the last of the session washing his whiskers. ‘And thanks for looking after him.’

  ‘No problemo.’ Nate turned his head to look at me. Without the cap, his hair fell in waves to his shoulders. If it was cut short, it would be a mass of curls. He had a thin, agile face, dominated by his eyes; they were dark too, staring at me in a way I found uncomfortable. I tilted my chin and stared back, and the moment drew out, becoming a duel. I wasn’t going to look away first, but I could see that he’d now taken it as a challenge, and wasn’t going to be beaten. I kept looking, raising my brows slightly as if I was amused, and in the end it was he who blinked first, and turned his head away.

  I smiled, and looked back at the bag in my hand. ‘We’ll eat well tonight. Thanks.’

  ‘He’s a clever little cat.’ Nate gave me another dark, glittering glance, then nodded ahead at the Otways’ garden. ‘Do you see much of Annette?’

  Branwell Brontë, Peter had called him, the talented one everyone expected to go far, except that here he was, well through his twenties, washing dishes in a two-bit café for nautical students. So what was he doing with all that talent? Getting to the highest level of fantasy computer games, drawing intricate pictures of motorbikes, smoking dope, and thinking universal thoughts so deep that the rest of us couldn’t possibly understand them? He had that superior air I’d noticed in people who take drugs. I liked him, but I wasn’t going to discuss Annette with him. ‘I’m the hired help,’ I said. ‘I don’t mix much with the family.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m worried about her.’ He grimaced. ‘We’re not particularly mates, but we got on fine during that play we did – did you see it? A Hallowe’en one, about zombies. I had to carry her off.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t see it, but someone was just telling me recently how good it was.’ Maybe that was where his energy went, on directing plays and acting in them. ‘What makes you worried about her?’

  ‘Well, it’s just …’ He gave an artistic pause, gripping his underlip with his top teeth. ‘See, I was out for a walk, I often do that, late at night, when I can’t sleep. I just go out, around the castle, and down to the Blacksness Pier, then back along New Street. So, three, no four, days ago, I was out, and I’d just got to the old smithy when I saw this girl on the pier. There was only a crescent of a moon, but there weren’t any clouds, so it was bright as day, with that silvery light, and I could see her, clear as anything, staring down at the ripples on the water. I was going to call out, you know, I thought she was going to jump, but then I was afraid to, in case I startled her and made things worse. Just as I was thinking I’d really have to do something, she moved away from the water, and came fast up the path towards me. I just had time to duck into the little lane by the anti-German inscription, opposite the Smiddy gate.’ He paused to draw a much-needed breath. ‘As she passed me, I saw it was Annette. Her hair was all over the place, and she looked as if she’d been crying.’

  He paused again, but I didn’t say anything.

  ‘And then I realised she’d been looking at the witches’ ducking stone, you know, where they put them to the test.’ His dark eyes gleamed at me. ‘You know about that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He jerked his head backwards, as if he hadn’t expected so brusque an answer; as if he’d wanted to re-tell the story and see how I reacted.

  ‘Maybe,’ I suggested, ‘she was thinking about how horrible it must have been for those poor women.’

  ‘They were witches, though. They confessed to all sorts of things – meetings with the Devil, casting spells, having a familiar.’ He looked along the pontoon at Cat, who’d got tired of waiting, and was trotting to the boat by himself. ‘You’d have been in the frame if you’d lived back then, you and Greymalkin.’

  ‘They also happened to be women who challenged the existing male hierarchy by surviving without a man.’

  HIs smile was unexpectedly charming. ‘Like you.’

  ‘So,’ I said, cutting that one off, ‘you think that Annette’s a bit depressed?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s anything as simple as that. She came out into the light as she passed me, you know, under the streetlight, it shone on her face and head, and I noticed –’ He let the silence hang, looking from the sea to my face, as if he was judging how much I’d believe. Finally, he came out with it. ‘I noticed what looked like claw marks around her throat.’

  Claws … ‘Maybe she was playing with the dogs, and got a bit rough.’

  ‘Maybe. But then …’ He looked over his shoulder, then his voice softened to a sly whine. ‘What if the Devil was loose in Shetland?’

  His tone sent a shudder down my spine, but I wasn’t going to let him scare me. ‘Nonsense.’

  His gaze shifted back to the sea again. His voice hardened to venom. ‘You saw that glass shatter. Today, in the canteen. Rachel was nowhere near it.’

  ‘Certainly not near enough to touch it,’ I conceded. ‘But why are you blaming her? Things just fall sometimes.’

  ‘They “just fall” a lot more often than sometimes when Rachel’s there. She’s done it all her life. Light bulbs go phut, TVs flicker, glasses break.’ He jerked his chin across at the Smiddy. ‘She’d have been on that ducking stone.’

  ‘Thank goodness we live in a more enlightened age.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ He leaned closer to me. I felt his breath warm on my cheek. ‘What are you doing on Hallowe’en?’

  Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be anything to do with witches. ‘Going to the All Saints’ vigil Mass,’ I said tartly. ‘Thanks for the fish, Nate.’ I unlocked the marina door, eased it open with its usual squeak, and closed it between us. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  I was conscious of his eyes on me as I strode along the pontoon. I swung myself aboard, raised a hand, then waited until he’d begun to walk along the shore before I took the washboards out and went below. His voice was whispering still in my ear: You saw that glass shatter … Rachel had certainly been too far away to touch it. I hadn’t been watching Nate’s hands, though. He could have dropped it – but why should he?

  What if the Devil was loose in Shetland? ‘Nonsense,’ I repeated to Cat, and busied myself putting the kettle on.

  Chapter Three

  It began to rain off and on as dusk fell, but by bedtime it was clear again, the moon shining like a frosted lantern behind thin clouds. The wind was rising from the north west. Little wavelets slapped against Khalida’s stern, and the wind tugged strands of my hair from its plait as I headed out for my evening walk
. I was used to more exercise than this round of garden and college was giving me, and after an evening spent aboard, with the candle lamp shedding an amber circle my notes and books, I was glad of a breath of air to help me sleep.

  Cat lifted his grey nose as I got up, but didn’t stand. I was glad of that. I felt like a good long tramp without having to worry about my little shadow. Nate’s stories had set up an uneasiness in my mind, so that I found myself glancing out at the dark water beyond my oblong windows, until I scolded myself and drew the curtains shut. I pulled on my sailing jacket, gloves, and hat, and headed out into the night.

  The air smelt of seaweed, of wet leaves and grass. I strode out along the west shore road, past Norway House, the dark red hut where the men of the Shetland Bus had stayed in the war, past the rusting slip where they had launched their boats. I paused to bow my head at their memorial, and marvel again at their youth. Their headquarters, with its carved wooden door, was fifty yards further, then I walked between the shops of the main street, former herring sheds on the sea side, and, facing them, houses with old-fashioned windows and front doors opening onto the pavement. Just past them, above Burn Beach, was a skip in the car park which was always worth casting an eye over. There’d been a notice in the shop that this would be the last one, due to council cost-cutting, so it was filling up quickly. Someone had flung in a snakes-wedding of blue nylon rope, a good thirty metres of it, but it looked too worn to be worth untangling. I went on past Mary Ruislip’s Garden, furred now by yellowed montbretia leaves, past the ironwork gate of curving plaice with goggle eyes, past the lavender blue wood of Seaholme, to the first of the coloured houses of New Street. The street lights cast a circle of orange in front of each one. On my right, below the Smiddy, the coal-black water rose and fell, as though the sea was breathing.

  Usually at this point I turned up Smiddy Closs. Today, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pass the witch’s garden behind the first house. It stretched right back to the big white house at the top of the hill, two sides of a square of low sycamores around tussocked grass hanging down from old steps and a rockery. At the lower end was a thick wall, which was all that remained of the house. There were the broken poles of a square-meshed fence, but the only barrier now was the iron railing to help older folk up the steep hill.