Stormy Cove

by Bernadette Calonego

  “Who did you say discovered it?”

  “Who it was, I don’t know. A hunter in a pub first told me about it seven years ago. He told me later that, if he hadn’t been drunk, he wouldn’t have spilled the beans. But other people must have discovered the mound before then; they just didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Did people around here know about it?”

  “I don’t think most of them did. It reminds me of the Viking settlement in L’Anse aux Meadows at the northern tip of Newfoundland. You know it, of course.”

  “Yes. That’s where the first Vikings landed on the continent a thousand years ago, right?”

  “Exactly. The Norwegian, husband-and-wife archaeology team of Helge and Anne-Stine Ingstad once asked some villagers if there were any striking rises or depressions near the coast”—he stopped to free his pant leg from a thorn bush—“and the locals showed them the remains of a nearby ancient settlement.”

  “Did the people in L’Anse aux Meadows know that the settlement remains were Viking?”

  “No, they thought Indians had lived there many centuries before.”

  “So how did the archaeologists figure out that it was the Vikings?” Lori planted her feet carefully between stones and bushes as she spoke.

  “They dug up a typical Viking brooch—the ultimate proof.”

  One little brooch, Lori thought to herself. Sometimes a very small thing is all it takes to clear up a mystery.

  She suddenly noticed she still had her life jacket on. A tiny, blaring yellow dot in the vast tundra. Andrew would die laughing if he could see her. She stopped and looked down at herself with a grin. Weston turned around, and she handed him the camera.

  “Here, take a historic picture. I most definitely am the first person to run around the Barrens in a life jacket.”

  Weston grunted his amusement.

  “I thought you were just crazy about bright colors.”

  He took a few steps back and clicked the camera.

  “Think you could find your way back to Stormy Cove from here?”

  She shook her head.

  “You?”

  “More or less. But I’d probably fall into a bog on the way. It can happen to anyone. It happened to George H. W. Bush in Labrador.”

  “The US president?”

  “Yes. He was salmon fishing up in Labrador and wandered onto boggy ground and got stuck up to his hips. A secret service agent and a Mountie had to pull him out. The Americans came within an inch of losing a former president in a bog.”

  “When was that?”

  “I think it was after he’d lost the election to Bill Clinton. Sometime in the nineties.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Maybe I’d better leave the life jacket on.”

  He smiled.

  “As you like. That way I can’t lose you.”

  He’d have to have eyes in the back of his head, Lori thought, because Weston was walking three feet ahead of her, a sinewy, slim figure with a seemingly effortless stride, shouldering the tripod and backpack.

  She’d loved to have known what he was thinking at that moment. The second “groundbreaking” excavation of his life. Maybe even more significant than the first. If a well-preserved skeleton and a heap of funeral objects were lying beneath the boulders, this dig would make him one of the best-known archaeologists in Canada.

  Her curiosity got the best of her.

  “Are Beth and Gideon good friends?”

  He turned around.

  “Beth and Gideon? Why?”

  “I just thought—he put his arm around her.”

  Weston laughed.

  “Oh, she’s probably trying to keep his spirits up. Gideon’s very important to us. He keeps doing us favors when he doesn’t have to. But he likes to flirt—at least, when his sister isn’t around. She wouldn’t put up with that for a second.”

  He raised his eyes to look across the vast tundra.

  “It’s very ironic.”

  An inquiring look on her part.

  “It was an incredible fluke that we found the first grave . . . a pure fluke. We simply stumbled over it because our tents were nearby. We didn’t have a clue that anything like that was in the vicinity.” He shifted the tripod to his other shoulder. “Discovering this grave was also pure coincidence.”

  He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it.

  Lori wrinkled her forehead.

  “I thought your crew was living in Gideon’s lodge, not tents.”

  “We did stay there later, during the dig. We had money from the government at that point.”

  “And from oil companies?”

  Weston didn’t lose his cool.

  “No, universities.”

  Lori looked back and tried to locate the spot where they had landed.

  A thought kept echoing in her mind: finding the ancient Indian grave may have been pure chance, but it was no accident that Jacinta’s grave was found. The person who constructed that grave wanted it to be. It took a long time, of course, but the killer knew the new road between Stormy Cove and Cod Cove would go right through there. And the road workers would eventually find the grave. It was perfectly worked out.

  They walked along in silence. Suddenly, Weston changed direction and made a detour that brought them back near the beach that meandered in broad curves around the tundra. He dropped the tripod and put down the backpack beside a depression in the ground.

  “Here we are.”

  Lori could tell he was watching for her reaction.

  She walked across the indentation and lowered her camera.

  About seventy feet in front of her was a rather long bank rising out of the ground. She could clearly pick out large boulders, though moss and lichens filled up the gaps. She stood stock-still. Transported. It wasn’t the exterior of the burial mound itself that thrilled her; it was the thought that people had erected this monument seven thousand years ago, and that she, Lori, on this very day in the third millennium AD, could still behold it.

  Like in a dream, she approached a spot where rich green moss and white lichen contrasted with the dark background of the low, scrubby fir trees. And another color caught her eye, the red of rusty sand that circled the rocks. A reddish color that reminded her of the Tartan surface of tennis courts in Vancouver.

  She recalled what she’d learned about the first gravesite. That perhaps fifteen people—men and women from several families—had used moose antlers or their bare hands to dig a pit in the ground so deep that they couldn’t see over the top, and wide enough for twenty standing people. Then they laid the child’s body in it—a ten- or twelve-year-old—on its stomach, made a fire at its feet and beside its head. They laid gifts on the dead child’s head and next to its body. And then they did something that particularly baffled the archaeologists: the gravediggers laid a stone slab on the corpse’s back. As if its spirit must not escape from the grave under any circumstances.

  Finally, they filled the grave up to the top with sand and carried large rocks to it—three hundred of them, each up to twenty-five pounds in weight—and piled them up to form a mound. Like the one before her now.

  These people had no idea how long the burial mound would endure, or how long the world would. They might have known a few other clans along the coast, known the animals that would save them from starvation—caribou, sea lions, seals, fish, and a few birds. Their universe was a small section of the shore and the hinterland, with its bears and game. But something motivated them to bury a child, to perform a ritual, to imbue the child’s death with a meaning in their world that would allow their life to go on.

  Lori looked down to the beach and over the ocean to the cliffs on the horizon. It must have looked exactly like this back then; what she was now seeing was exactly what the people at that time saw when their brief subarctic summer began. Everything was about survival. Surviving hunger, forest fires, the icy winter, bears, and the dark forces whose messages their shamans conveyed.


  Lori’s gaze fell on Weston, who still stood where he’d dropped her equipment. He hasn’t breathed a word, she thought. Because he knows the effect these places have.

  Their eyes met, and he slowly came toward her. He waited for her to say something.

  “And you’re certain there’s a skeleton in that mound?”

  “Pretty sure. We found two empty graves in Quebec, but that’s because acid soil had dissolved the bones. That’s not the case here.”

  “So graves like these are rare?”

  “Seems so or else we’d have found more of them. I think these people couldn’t have managed to build many graves like these.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’d probably have to work on one for almost a week. That’s a precious amount of time in a short summer. Within a few weeks, they had to hunt enough animals to make it through the whole winter. There was no time to waste.”

  “And still they went to the trouble to do it.”

  She shook red sand off her shoes. Love’s labor’s lost—she saw that immediately. Sand was stuck fast to the spots where she hadn’t been able to scrub off the slime from yesterday’s fish. It sort of resembled German measles.

  Weston seemed to be deep in thought. Was he thinking about the archaeological treasures under the ground? What if he only found shards or colored dust? He cleared his throat.

  “What amazes us the most is that this occurred so early in the history of civilization. Two thousand years before the pyramids. And considering that the people here were truly under the constant threat of death. Wild animals, starvation—it was bitter cold and sometimes there was no ice in the spring, which meant no seal meat. Or there were forest fires and the caribou herd went somewhere else.”

  “Did they believe in any gods?”

  “Not in gods, but probably in forces more powerful than themselves that they had to submit to.”

  Lori didn’t look at him when she asked, “Could it be another human sacrifice?”

  He hesitated before answering.

  “If it’s a child or teenager, I’m not excluding it.”

  “Why should a child be sacrificed? Is it meant to atone for something?”

  He waited longer this time.

  “If I only knew.” He folded his arms across his chest and rocked on his feet. “If I only knew.”

  There was a tinge of resigned despair in his voice.

  Lori shuddered.

  CHAPTER 31

  Beth Ontara was obviously angry when she arrived at the burial mound an hour later. Lori was taking detailed shots of the white and orange network of lichens on the rocks.

  “Those damn reporters stick their nose into everything,” Beth said to Weston. “She turned up when we’d just finished loading.”

  “What? On the runway?”

  “Yes. All of a sudden, her car came speeding toward us, then she braked and hopped out. She was desperate to go with us. No way, I told her. Get lost. Then she worked on Gideon, who just laughed and kept quiet. What a perpetual pain in the ass!”

  “Is she still back there?”

  “No idea. Maybe she’s flitting about the tundra in her jalopy. I hope she falls into a bog. That’s the last thing we needed, somebody snooping around.”

  Beth stamped around the bushes in a rage. Lori could empathize. She felt better now that she wasn’t the only one mad at Reanna Sholler. Not a nice trait, Lori realized, but Beth had to defend the secret location of the mound. And she had to protect her book project.

  “She won’t find us,” Weston said. “And she hasn’t got the dough for a chopper.”

  He winked at Lori. But Beth was ready with a plan.

  “From now on, we need to have somebody stationed here at all times. Day and night. We’ve got the tents, and I’ll organize the guards.”

  Weston shrugged.

  “If you can find volunteers, I won’t stop you.”

  Lori had the impression that Beth wouldn’t be stopped with or without his permission. After all, it was Beth who’d saved the artifacts from the fire twenty years ago. She’d guard this site with her life too, and defend it against any and all intruders. She mentally texted Reanna: You versus Beth? No contest.

  “I’ll help Gideon unload,” Weston told her, and said to Lori, “Beth will take you back as soon as you’re finished.”

  Lori nodded.

  “I’m almost done. Just need a few more close-ups. And a picture with you in it. For scale.”

  “Put Beth in it. That’ll look just as good.”

  He smiled, and Lori admired the way he rarely drew attention to himself. Was it out of gratitude toward a longtime colleague who was loyal and discreet in almost every situation?

  She photographed Beth in front of the burial mound, an athletic figure bending over the monument as if speculating about what was hidden there.

  Then she put down her camera to relieve Beth from the unnatural poses that would nevertheless look quite natural in the pictures. She packed up her equipment and, on an impulse, asked Beth for a moment of silence. She needed some kind of ritual before leaving the place. Surprising herself, Lori promised the spirit, whose presence she believed she sensed, to honor the dead person’s dignity with her photographs.

  When she turned around, she saw Beth eyeing her with some curiosity.

  To break the spell, Lori struck up a conversation on the way back.

  “Do you think you might find projectiles in this grave that look like arrowheads?”

  Beth shrugged.

  “Dunno. Why do you ask?”

  “Because a projectile like that was found in Jacinta’s grave.”

  She was startled by her own boldness. What had gotten into her?

  Beth turned around sharply.

  “Where did you get that bullshit from?”

  “From somewhere—I think it was in a law journal.”

  “I haven’t read anything like that,” Beth declared, “and I’d have certainly known if that was the case. It’s definitely misinformation.”

  It was obvious that the archaeologist didn’t believe her. That encouraged her to keep poking. Without looking up, Lori said, “You’re probably right. Lots of rumors about that case are making the rounds. I heard a few days ago that Jacinta saw Robine Whalen kissing a woman, someone working on the dig, just before she disappeared. How absurd is that! I almost burst out laughing.”

  Beth was now visibly upset.

  “People in this place should be careful about the rumors they spread. This time we know how to guard against lies. This time they won’t drag our reputation through the mud. We—”

  She didn’t end the sentence. It was as if she’d been instructed not to talk about such things publicly. And that’s how Lori understood it.

  Beth strode ahead energetically, and Lori followed her in silence.

  Suspicion took shape in her head.

  Beth and Robine.

  On the flight back, Lori half-listened to Gideon Moore describing the confusion surrounding the first dig.

  The young people they’d hired hadn’t a clue about what meticulous work archaeology was, he said. They’d treated it as a fun gig for the summer—young, flighty girls and lazy boys—too many people romping around the site. Everything needed to be better organized, with more supervision, in his opinion.

  And there was much coming and going in and out of his lodge, he added, people who had no business being there, but he couldn’t keep track of everybody. So a few things went missing. Una Gould, for instance, had stolen Beth’s green jeweled bracelet, but what could he, Gideon, do if people left their valuables lying around?

  Lori’s curiosity was piqued. Would she find more extraordinary things in Una and Cletus’s old home?

  “Did Beth call Una on it?” she inquired.

  “Naw, that Una business came out later, after Beth was long gone. And everybody had lost interest.”

  “So nobody was watching the lodge the night it burned down?”

  Gi
deon went on the defensive.

  “I’d been invited to Lloyd’s birthday party and couldn’t say no. My brother was in Saleau Cove and my sister with our sick mother.”

  Very interesting, Lori thought to herself. Maybe Una also stole the arrowhead? Without suspecting that a photographer from Vancouver would find it behind the washing machine twenty years later.

  But what was with the arrowhead under the seat of Noah’s snowmobile?

  Lori was back home early that afternoon. From the living room window, she watched Weston’s SUV disappearing around the far end of the cove. He wanted her to go back up north as soon as they began excavating. Lori had a piece of toast with Patience’s homemade bakeapple jam and the Vancouver sheep cheese. She really had to call her mother that evening to thank her for it.

  She took a half-hour nap on the sofa and then diligently started to evaluate the morning’s photographs. Her first fear was that the strong sunlight might have robbed the locale of its secrecy, of its unfathomable, mythic nature. But the sunlight in the north was different from Vancouver sunlight, as she’d already noticed. Here, the sun was subordinate to the landscape, making it more transparent, more massive, often ghostly because of the dark shadows the sun threw.

  Lori grew more enthusiastic with each successful photo. She was so immersed that she didn’t realize how fast the time was passing. She didn’t even hear a car drive up and footsteps on the gravel. Which is why she gave a start when somebody opened the side door.

  A man’s voice called out, “Hello!”

  Noah!

  She quickly plucked the colorful barrettes out of her hair and tried to comb it with her fingers. Then she dashed into the kitchen.

  Noah was on the landing, holding a plastic bag toward her.

  “Thought you ought to have some fresh fish.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet of you, Noah. Yes, I’d like that very much.” She could hear herself talking way too fast. “Come in and sit down, and I’ll make some tea—or coffee, if you’d like.”

  He came into the kitchen. “No white wine?”

  They both laughed.

  “Beer would be great,” he said.