The Island House

by Posie Graeme-Evans

  Freya shut down her laptop and unplugged her phone. She grabbed an armful of books. Hurrying to the counter, she hit the bell, and then again; a moment or so passed before the door to the back office opened.

  “Miss Dane, I thought it might be you.” A slight quirk of the lips.

  Freya said breathlessly, “Sorry to trouble you, Miss MacAllister, but I have to go.”

  Katherine said, pleasantly, “It’s very Australian, isn’t it? Bugger. An expression of anything from outrage to mild disappointment, or so your father used to tell me.”

  Avoiding the invitation to offer a response, Freya made a stack of the books she’d chosen.

  “I’ve only dipped into a few of these—so much fascinating material. Perhaps I might take a couple, though I don’t have a library card, of course.”

  “I can make out a temporary slip, or you can join online. It will not be a problem; we know where you live.” The librarian actually smiled as she moved the books to her side of the desk.

  Perhaps she’s only got so many smiles and doesn’t like to use them up, thought Freya, but she chuckled politely. “You do. But there’s a few too many to fit in the pack tonight—very hard to choose.”

  Katherine nodded briskly. “If I may advise . . .” She worked through the books Freya had selected, frowning slightly. “Annotated Annals of the Parish of Portsolly and Perrin Bay, by the Most Reverend Andrew Gibone, DD, MA Cantab. An interesting man.” The book was impressively large and bound in sober calfskin, and Katherine was actually enthusiastic as she said, “Dr. Gibone had a passion for the ancient records of this region. He taught himself to read the runic inscriptions, of which we have a number in the area, and farther north, too, of course.” Lady, you don’t know the half of it, thought Freya.

  “He posits a controversial theory as to the origins of Compline House, though nothing has ever been proven. Not even by your father—though he certainly tried. Dr. Gibone believed the building stands on pre-first-millennium foundations.”

  Freya said, politely, “That old? Fascinating.” She leafed through the front of the book and saw the date of publication: 1842. The book had last been borrowed in September 2011; Bet it was you, Dad. She caught Katherine’s glance, and they both stared at the date stamp; Freya resisted the urge to touch the page.

  The librarian cleared her throat. “And this will be useful, Early Religious Foundations of the Scottish Peoples. Sir Neville Buchan, privately printed in 1903, as you see. Less elegant in style, but he was schooled by his mother, a redoubtable woman. They were the lairds of Findnar then, and in fact your father bought the island from his descendants. An extremely old family.” Katherine brushed an invisible speck from the binding. “The Buchans owned much of Portsolly itself once as well as Findnar, though they are sadly declined now. The male line only has one childless descendant and, should he pass without issue, the original family will be extinct.”

  Freya touched the gilded title of the book; it must have been expensive to produce. “I think I’ve met him. He’s certainly ‘declined.’ All the way to the lower primates, I’d say, maybe even the invertebrates.”

  Katherine raised her brows. “Robert Buchan?”

  Freya opened the book so the librarian could scan the bar code. “Yes.”

  “Was he very rude to you?”

  Freya nodded. “He was.”

  Katherine shook her head. “I am sorry for it. Young Robert has led a disappointed life, and some cope better than others with that, though that is no excuse for bad manners. There was always a strain of . . . shall we say, odd behavior in that family; too much intermarriage between cousins. Debt and death duties were a considerable problem—Robert’s father died without a will—and selling the island became a necessity, or so I believe.”

  Katherine cleared her throat busily, picking up another of the books. “Now, I would also recommend Island Life in Scotland: Recollections and Folk Memories from a Bygone Age by Elspeth Arlott.” She stroked the worn cloth as if it were a friend’s hand. “Miss Arlott never married but retained each one of her faculties until a very advanced age. I remember meeting her when she was an old, old lady. She had great natural powers of observation and would have made a fine journalist. Of course it was not permissible for women of a certain class to have careers in those days, such a waste.”

  Giving the book a final affectionate pat, she passed it to Freya, who stowed it with the others. “Thank you, Miss MacAllister,” Freya said. “I’d better be on my way.”

  Katherine smiled brightly. “Please call me Katherine. After all, I’ve heard so much about you, Miss Dane.”

  Freya felt her eyes filling and turned away. If he talked to you, why didn’t he talk to me? She mumbled, “Freya. Please,” and made a business of closing her pack.

  The librarian made a final, hopeful bid. “And don’t forget, you’re free to charge your phone and laptop at any time—we were always happy to help Dr. Dane in that regard.”

  The library door stuttered and banged open. Katherine hurried to close it. “So very annoying. The council keeps promising to fix the catches and the locks before winter but . . .”

  The air from outside smelled of rain. Freya extended her hand to the librarian. “Good-bye for now.”

  Katherine shook it and did not let it go. “Perhaps it is a little late to go back to the island tonight?” She seemed genuinely anxious. “I would not trust the strait on an evening like this.” Quickly, as if she might wish to take each word back having used it once, Katherine said, “I should be pleased to offer you a bed.” Perhaps Freya looked startled, because Katherine plunged on, though her color rose. “I’d enjoy to pass on my memories of your father while they are still fresh, if you would like that. The past is a fragile thing.” The librarian’s face was briefly undefended. She was lonely and proud—and dignified.

  Freya was touched. She paused; was she ready for this? “You’re sure it wouldn’t trouble you?”

  A minute adjustment of the Peter Pan collar and Katherine was back in control. “I should not have suggested such a thing if it were at all inconvenient. It is past time I closed anyway.”

  “Were you staying open just for me?”

  Katherine broke in over Freya’s confusion. She’d brightened up considerably. “I shall meet you at the street entrance—please be sure to leave nothing behind.” Katherine Wallace MacAllister marched through to the back office, flicking off blocks of lights as she went, heels tapping on the linoleum.

  Freya hurried out to the street, then she stopped; she hadn’t brought a change of clothes, and after her exertions at Findnar and in the boat, she felt grubby, not to mention gritty.

  “Is something wrong?” Katherine was unfurling an umbrella against the spatters of rain.

  Freya shrugged on her pack. “No. Well, nothing serious, just that I’d kill for a shower and I don’t have clean clothes.”

  The librarian laughed quite merrily. “Och, we shall find you something. But it will be a bath. Shower rooms, I’m afraid, are scarce in these parts. Come along.”

  Katherine stepped out briskly, and Freya hurried to catch up. She was soon concentrating so hard on not panting—as the gradient of the street got steeper and steeper—that she forgot to be concerned about spending the night in the house of a stranger, a stranger who knew her father better than she did.

  CHAPTER 11

  KEEL COTTAGE was the last house at the top of a narrow street and looked to the east. Katherine saw where Freya was looking. “Yes, there’s your island—we used to wave to each other.” Unaccustomed confidences, once voiced, are dangerous things, and the librarian laughed a little nervously. “Well, we said we did; just a silly joke. Much too far to see, of course.”

  The librarian unlocked her house in the milky evening light. She waved her guest ahead as she flicked the inside lights on.

  “Why, hello, little mother. And how are your babies this evening?” A tabby cat with white feet and moss green eyes wound her way in and out of
Katherine’s legs, mewing. With a quick glance toward Freya, the cat led them toward the back of the cottage, tail in the air.

  In a basket beside the Aga stove were four kittens. Ears still folded flat and eyes tightly closed, they were only a few days old. Their mother jumped in among them and began to lick each squeaking infant from nose to tail.

  Katherine knelt beside the basket lined with plaid and stroked the kittens with one gentle finger. “Such a very clever girl. What handsome babies you have.” The tenderness moved Freya sharply.

  The librarian felt Freya’s glance. She stood, brushing her knees vigorously. “I shall just get Ishbelle something to eat. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  There was a table with two chairs. Freya sat. “She needs her strength, feeding babies,” she observed.

  The cat rubbed against Katherine, gazing into the face of her mistress as she tied on an apron. The muttering purr ramped up a notch. “Have patience, child. There.” She placed a bowl beside the cat in which were heaped morsels of fresh fish. Both women watched with pleasure as Ishbelle devoured the food before a leap back into the center of the basket; she stepped around her squirming children and settled on one side, nudging her frantic kittens until each one found a nipple.

  Katherine sighed and turned to her guest. “A sweet sight, though what I’m going to do when it comes time to give them away . . .” She shook her head, denying the thought. “The guest room is upstairs, and so is the bathroom. I shall run you a bath.”

  The two bedrooms in Keel Cottage were divided by a small, blindingly clean bathroom. Tucked beneath the roof, each room had its own dormer window, and the second bedroom was simple though stylish. A white-painted rectangle with curtains of sage green silk, it had a single bed made up with rose-sprigged linen and a white hand-hooked rug on the floor. An IKEA chest of birch-wood drawers and an armchair covered in the same green silk as the curtains made up the rest of the furnishings.

  Katherine pushed the casement open. She waved her guest forward, saying, “It’s a pretty view.”

  Beneath, the village and the harbor were displayed like a naïve painting—all twisted streets and tiny houses bunched tight against each other, with toy boats clustered, bobbing, at the foot of Port-solly’s great cliff.

  “I try my best to get home for the sunset,” Katherine said.

  Freya looked out toward Findnar as the vault of the sky flushed gold with streaks of flamingo pink. “God’s a good painter when He wants to be; bit gaudy sometimes, though,” she said. The women shared a cautious smile.

  Katherine waved toward the east. “And there’s the comet—Cuillin Ursus. It comes from the constellation of the Great Bear. I saw it for the first time the night before last.”

  “There’s a comet?” Freya searched the sky. “Where?”

  The librarian pointed.

  Her guest squinted and saw, finally, the indistinct silver lozenge rising behind Findnar. “It’s not very big,” she said.

  Katherine closed the window and twitched the curtains together. The silk made a hushing sound. “It will be. Around here they still think of it as a portent of disaster—nonsense, of course. It’s a lump of rock and dirty ice with an erratic orbit.” She smiled at her guest. “The natives—so superstitious.” An edge of irony.

  They were seated in matching armchairs, one on each side of Katherine’s fake-log fire. The chairs were deep and the room warm—too warm—and Freya was fighting sleep since it was after dinner and they’d made inroads into a second bottle of Côtes du Rhône.

  “How long will you stay on Findnar?” Katherine’s inquiry was polite, possibly nothing more.

  Freya considered the question. “I had thought . . .” She cleared her throat. “I have work to do, so a couple of months, I think.” That long? Freya surprised herself.

  Katherine murmured, “Of course. Your father made so many remarkable finds, and it will be a puzzle to know how best to deal with them—there are so many regulations these days.”

  How do you know about Dad’s finds? But Freya did not voice the thought. “Well, yes, I’ll have to decide what I need to do with his things, but I meant my own work. The isolation will be good for that—no traffic, no city white noise. Maybe the peace will help me think better on paper.”

  Katherine expressed surprise with a polite smile. “You are a writer?”

  “Not ordinarily.” Freya was uncomfortable; she’d managed to ignore the thought of work all day. “It’s the thesis for my doctorate. Archaeology, of course.” Relaxed by the wine, the two shared a smile, and Freya found she didn’t mind. “It’s my contention that common themes in church art during the early medieval period were much more influenced by their immediate cultural surroundings than is currently accepted; that’s what I want to prove.”

  Katherine looked at her quizzically. “A comprehensive topic indeed.”

  Freya swirled the wine in her glass. “My problem is I can’t tease out a proper linking thread, and I’ve been stalled for months, going round and round in circles. Detailed research from Australia can be tough in a field like this, and though my supervisor is understanding up to a point, I’m very late delivering. Sometimes I think I’m not meant to do this. Maybe Findnar’s my last hope.”

  “But you’ll be able to hop across to Europe from Aberdeen or go down to the London collections should you want to—that might help.” Katherine seemed sincerely encouraging.

  Freya brightened. “It would be so great to visit the sites I’m interested in. I need to see the work, the manuscripts, the statues, even the vestments, in their context.” Yes, Dad, validation. “There’s a collection of early copes in the Victoria and Albert, for instance; it’s just not the same looking at things like that on the Net somehow.”

  “In that case, I have something to show you.” Katherine rose and took a small silver box from the mantelpiece. “This is unique, I think, and very old, but it bears on your topic. It’s from this area.”

  Inside, resting in cotton wool, was a crucifix half as long as Katherine’s palm. The body of the cross was made from two pieces of black stone—Jet? wondered Freya—but it was the figure of the Christ that made the piece remarkable.

  Carved from ivory that was dark with age, the body was not naturalistic, but each element of that tortured form added to its power—the ribs seemed to burst from the torso as if exploding, and the legs and arms were twisted in desperate agony.

  Yet it was the face that was truly shocking. One side was ruined by pitiable scarring, and this was not the damage gouged by time or a plow blade; these marks had been a deliberate choice, each tiny detail exquisitely rendered by the anonymous artist.

  Freya was mesmerized. Michael had written about a crucifix he’d given away. She glanced quickly at Katherine. “I think my father mentioned this—it was in his notes of a dig he did just before he died.” The word was still hard to say.

  “Yes, Michael gave it to me for Christmas.” Katherine said it lightly, as if this were a matter of small importance, but her eyes were defensive.

  Freya absorbed the words. The librarian had called her father Michael, and he had given this woman a present, a very important present, just before he died.

  Freya touched the crucifix gently as she tried to absorb the feeling in the figure. “This is very early, primitive almost. But I’ve never seen a Christ with a face like this one—it would have been blasphemous to show the Son of God as less than perfect. A very brave artist, or foolish.”

  They both stared at the face of the man who’d been frozen in agony for more than a thousand years. Katherine said softly, “I never tire of looking at it—horrifying and moving. And if I’m drawn by the spirituality of organized religion, he reminds me of the price to be paid for certainty.”

  “I’ve been reading some of my dad’s records. As you say, he found a great many artifacts on Findnar—early Christian material, but other objects as well, pre- and post-Viking era.” She paused. She should give the crucifix back to Kat
herine, but holding it, she touched her father’s hands.

  “I learned so much, and we had so many debates.” The librarian gazed at her guest. “You’re like him, you know—you have all his passion. He was obsessed by his work on Findnar. But be careful, Freya, or you’ll never leave; the island will claim you for its own as it did him.”

  The comparison to her father was kindly meant, a compliment, but the words punctured Freya’s mood.

  She put the crucifix in Katherine’s hands. “Thank you. You’ve given me lots to think about.” That was true.

  The wind blew itself out through the night, and by dawn, the world was calm.

  The girl in the white room half-opened her eyes to the radiant day and panicked.

  Holy Mother! I’ve missed the bells!

  From long training, her body responded, and the girl fell from the bed and onto her knees, crossing herself as she gabbled a desperate novena. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus . . .”

  A sound cut through the prayer—knocking, then a voice.

  “Would you like tea, Freya?”

  As she crossed herself and fumbled for a rosary that did not exist, Freya Dane sat back on her heels. Confused did not begin to describe the feeling.

  “Hello?”

  The girl closed her eyes, screwed them up tight. “I’d love a cup, Katherine—down in a sec.”

  “No rush, your clothes are by the door.”

  Freya stood shakily. She was wearing a man’s T-shirt lent by Katherine the night before. It was soft from much washing and old—the colors faded, so that the familiar image of the young Che could only just be made out. The image of a revolutionary seemed unlikely in Katherine’s house, and Freya did not want to think about the implications, not now.

  She rubbed her knees; they hurt from hitting the cold floor because instinctively she’d not knelt on the rug. Sinful flesh must be mortified.

  Where did that come from? Freya stared at herself in a small mirror near the window. She looked the same, didn’t she? Shivering, she sat on the bed. Too much to drink? She’d never suffered delusions before.