The Island House

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  Freya slid a volume out from among its companions—there was almost no dust. These books had been frequently used.

  Holding up the lamp, she saw a number handwritten on each spine in white correcting fluid; so, Michael still had his own system, and, if she looked, she knew she’d find his card file—there’d be no computer database for Michael Dane. “Writing time is thinking time, Little Fee.” He’d always been a Luddite.

  Freya nodded. I know, Dad. I agree. She, too, liked to write things first in longhand—an anachronism, but his anachronism. Some things remained to her, of him. And as a child she’d loved his cards, each one an elegant statement of his love for what he did.

  Archaeology, of course. That thing, worse than another woman, the obsession that had taken him away; it must have been that. Family and archaeology—why had they been so incompatible, and why had she followed Michael into that same realm of the dead past?

  Freya snorted. She knew why; any bloody amateur psychologist could tell her why. She wanted to prove herself to him, wanted to be better than he was.

  Too late.

  Freya shook her head, angry, not sad. Can’t please you now that you’re dead, can I? She ran a finger across the book spines as she walked the length of the room. Gradually, as she knew she would, she was absorbed by the names, the bindings, the range of topics . . .

  She stopped. Of course! This library would be the most tremendous resource for her work. Freya laughed at the irony.

  No power = no laptop = no surfing the Net, but with all that was on these shelves, she’d not even miss the Web for research—her father’s books would get her to the end of her unloved doctorate. Michael’s deep knowledge of his chosen subject, the archaeology of the so-called Dark Ages, the early medieval to be exact, and the resources in this room would provide all she needed and more.

  Perhaps she was meant to come to this place after all. Perhaps, in the end, there were no accidents.

  Freya Dane sat down at her father’s kitchen table, the lamps placed on either side of the folder. She pulled it toward her. In that quiet room, the cardboard made a hushing sound as it slid across the plank top.

  She opened the flap. It had an internal pocket, and in that was a solicitor’s card. She scanned the plain black type—it announced that Hindhawk, Piddington, and Associates, Solicitors and Advocates, could be found at Kings Quay Chambers, 18 Balloch Court, Ardleith, KA33, Scotland. Scotland was embossed—a definite statement. Freya’s lips quirked. Scots independence rose up from that small cardboard rectangle—no United Kingdom for these gentlemen at law, apparently.

  She put the card aside. Inside the folder there was a mass of anonymous white pages, covered in her father’s writing. And then she took in the meaning and feeling behind the first words of his letter before they blurred.

  December 31

  Close to Midnight

  My darling Freya,

  Perhaps it is the last night of the old year that has made me write to you or perhaps because whisky, drunk alone, brings feeling close to the surface.

  Truth is always complex, but tonight I have, it seems, the courage to say what must be said between us. And also to try to record what has happened on this island, to set down the facts as simply as I can, because it is your right to know.

  For if you are reading what I’ve written here instead of talking to me over a companionable dram at last, that will be because I’ve left instructions with my solicitors in Ardleith.

  By now you’ll know that Findnar belongs to you, with this house and all its contents. And this document will be placed where, hopefully, you will find it if and when you decide to come here. I hope you do. If I close my eyes, I can see you sitting here, at my kitchen table. That provides a little comfort.

  Perhaps you do not believe that I am sad, desolate rather, that we have never met as adults? Believe me, I am. I have planned, so often, what we might say to each other, but each conversation in my head begins and ends with this. I want you to know that I have never, ever stopped loving you.

  Freya blinked. There was a pain at the base of her throat, and it was hard to breathe. The words swam, and it was some minutes before she went on reading.

  It’s such a very long time ago that your mother and I parted. I don’t know how much you actually understood, then, of the causes of the end of our marriage. I’ve often asked myself that question. Would it have been better if you hadn’t known the ins and outs, or worse?

  No answer to that question. I shall not write of such sadness now because I want to tell you about the life I’ve lived here, and I want to explain an instinct I have long cherished: that you, and only you, are the right person to own Findnar after me. I’ll try to explain when I have told you a little more.

  Of course, it will be your decision—and right—to keep this place or to sell it as you please. All I ask is that you read what I’ve set down here and suspend judgment, if you can. This is the most difficult letter I have ever written, but I am telling you the truth, so far as I understand it.

  I also want to describe something very odd—a puzzle, if you like, or a mystery, the greatest of my working life. I’ve not been able to properly decode the evidence either, though I have found so many hints, gone down so many false trails trying to do just that. Perhaps you will succeed where I have failed. I hope that you do.

  I know that you’re close to the end of your doctorate. By the way, I’m proud indeed that you have chosen to become an archaeologist. For this conundrum, however, you will need all the skills you have learned at university and something more, something I believe you have in your bones—instinct. I saw it in you as a child.

  Do you remember that summer dig in Norway when you were seven? Freya, you were a real member of our team, not just a passenger, or the boss’s daughter.

  Did she remember? Freya swallowed. Of course she remembered. Sleeping in a tent with just her dad, dirty and hot in the long, bright days, so happy grubbing in the dirt as they excavated the streets of the trading port from a thousand years ago. And the pride when, all by herself, she had found the enameled brooch and brought it out of the ground, intact. He had been proud of her, too, and there was a photograph of them both grinning—white teeth in dirty faces—as she held up the treasure she’d found.

  Nineteen years ago. Time was supposed to heal, to seal over loss. Freya cleared her throat noisily. Did you expect this to be easy for either of us, Dad?

  Freya, this island gives up its secrets reluctantly. Some, from the recent past—the last six hundred years or so—I have uncovered, but some, one in particular, are much more ancient and intractable. And elusive; I did not know that, of course, when I came here. Perhaps you’ve wondered about Findnar—and why I bought the island.

  Freya pushed back against his chair. “So, tell me, Dad.” When he left Elizabeth, Michael had done two decent things. He’d signed over the Sydney house to his wife, and he’d never shirked his obligation of maintenance payments for Freya as she grew up. Her mother had told her that—grudgingly—after the letter arrived from Scotland.

  To say Freya had been angry she hadn’t been told didn’t touch the sides, and the flare-up between the pair went nuclear. It still hurt not to have known that he’d cared about her, even to that extent, for all those years. Searing questions had been asked and avoided. Why did he leave you, why?

  He was searching. We weren’t enough for him.

  For what? Jesus Christ, what was he searching for? There has to be more. You’re lying to me; you have in the past, you’re doing it now.

  Freya blinked. She was sorry for some of the things she’d said to Elizabeth, and they’d made up after a day or so because fights were rare between them, but her curiosity had kicked in—and Michael was right. She wanted to know how he’d been able to buy Findnar, since Elizabeth implied her ex-husband was, so far as she knew, broke after giving her the house.

  I resigned from the university too—did you know that? That place was part of the problem be
tween your mother and me. I was never ambitious and Elizabeth was—for me, that is. I’ve always liked to dig more than to teach, and they knew that. I was passed over for tenure too many times, and I was never going to be dean, of course. Politics. Not my strong suit. So I ran away from Sydney, worked in the gulf, on the rigs. Entry-level jobs at first, roughneck and roustabout. I was leading a drilling crew inside two years, and I rediscovered my physical self. How to just be and not overthink everything—that saved me.

  “Overthink everything.” The pages trembled. “There’s a gene for that?” Freya shook her head.

  It was hard work, twelve, fourteen hours a day and dangerous, but very well paid. And I saved my dollars because with free food and accommodation I had nothing to spend them on (we were paid in US currency, tax-free, when the dollar was worth something in the world). I heard about Findnar from a Scot—we shared accommodation on the platform—a forced sale, he said. And the gulf was starting to heat up politically at that time so . . . I decided it was time to go. I flew to Edinburgh and choppered into Aberdeen, hired a car and drove to Portsolly. End of story. There was something about this place, and I didn’t care about the remoteness, that suited me. Findnar was so cheap, though, of course, it’s a while ago now, and though Compline had been uninhabited for years—another winter and the roof would have gone—I knew I’d have the time (fourteen days on, twenty-one days off) to restore the house. It turned out that the bank was desperate to unload the place for almost any price to set against the debts of the owners on the mainland, and I had enough put by for a deposit. That got me a mortgage, and I decided to work out of Aberdeen on the North Sea rigs. Wilder, much, much colder, but it was closer to home. And that’s what Findnar has become. My home. And slowly, Compline came good—as you’ll see if you look around. A lot of work, a lot of trips up and down that path, but satisfying to see the house come back to life.

  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

  SIGNY 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.