He took half an hour to walk the small field, but seemingly found nothing. He put the detector into the back seat, then the red car bumped down to the turning place in front of the graveyard. I thought it was time to make myself visible again, ready to do the innocent tourist routine of ‘What a surprise to see you here!’ He was focusing on the road, and didn’t seem to notice Khalida until he was halfway around in the turning square. I saw him lean forward, staring, then, with a jarring of gears, he glanced up at me, standing by the church in my scarlet sailing jacket. I saw him remembering Maman’s sailing daughter. He turned around and set off again, bouncing the car up the road, and juddering impatiently to a halt before each gate. I heard him drive away, but the sound didn’t die completely, and less than five minutes later the car appeared again, driving north along the road that led to Underhoull.
It was time I had my mid-morning cuppa. I settled myself in the sun once more, poured myself a mug of tea, and got back to Treasure Island. He could spend all the time he liked around Upper Underhoull and the broch; last night’s searchers had found nothing there. Time enough to move if he disappeared behind the hill.
It took him a good two hours, with a lot of stops for looking around him, and suspicious glances in my direction. He had binoculars too, for I saw them flash in the sun from time to time, but I was so visibly innocent, with my flask and my book, and Cat stalking dead leaves at my feet, that he lowered them straight away. I had no need to move, I reckoned, for all he had in his hand was the metal detector. Before he could dig, he’d need to go back to his car for a spade, and I’d see him doing that, and be strolling over before he’d got the first square of turf out. Besides, it was lunchtime. My belly was rumbling, and Cat had got tired of chittering at the wrens and was gazing at me with round yellow eyes and the occasional reproachful mew.
‘Okay, Cat, lunch,’ I said, and we walked down to the dinghy, ignoring the spyglass-flash from the broch. I felt him watching as I rowed out and climbed aboard.
I had the last of my soup, and fed Cat some tinned food, and by the time I’d done that Adrien had disappeared behind Vinstrick Ness. I installed myself in the cockpit, book in hand, waiting. He was gone for so long that I was half thinking I’d better go and check on him, when he reappeared on its crest, and began going over the exposed stones that Magnie had pointed out as Viking graves.
He went back, forwards, back again, round and round on the point of the headland, landwards a bit, a bit more, and then he found something. I could see it just in the way his whole body stiffened. His hand went to his breast pocket for what I saw now was a little monocular, and I lowered my own glasses just in time and bent my head over my book. A long look, then he turned away from me, fumbling in his trouser pocket, and brought out something small and dark – a trowel?
It was time I was interfering. I stretched, closed Treasure Islandat casual speed and clambered back into the dinghy.
He knew I was coming for him. He did a last small bit of fiddling with his machine – I wondered if it had an inbuilt GPS, to pinpoint a find again – and then turned on his heel and strode off up the hill towards his car. By the time the dinghy’s nose touched the beach he was a barely visible moving dot, and just as I set foot on the sand I heard the car engine. I looked up and saw it speeding away, back towards the main road.
I hoped the folk on the other sites were keeping a good lookout.
Chapter Six
I put the VHF radio on for the 13.10 Coastguard forecast. I’d been watching the course of this low as it tracked east across the Atlantic: a great swirl of anti-cyclonic air that would bring storm force winds up Scotland and across the North Sea. Now the Met Office was giving out a gale warning for all areas, and talking of a force nine within twenty-four hours. I could ride out a south-easterly here, even of that force, if I put both anchors out.
I spent the afternoon dozing in the cockpit, preparing the smaller anchor and chain, and reading another section of Treasure Island. Cat and I played his favourite game of tossing a ball of silver paper from the cockpit into the cabin: he scudded down the steps after it, played football with it for a bit, then brought it back in his mouth for me to throw again. I set the anchor light, to guide me back in the dark, and was on the beach at four, with Cat muttering darkly in his basket, when Peter’s bi-coloured Volvo came over the hill. ‘A quiet day?’ he asked, once I’d stowed Cat and myself inside, and fastened both our seatbelts.
‘Middling,’ I said, and described Adrien’s antics.
Peter frowned. ‘I thought the archaeologists had metal-detected all that section o’ hill. Maybe no. They certainly did the geophysics bit. There were several mounds traditionally said to be graves, and they reckoned only one actually was.’
‘Magnie said that, and showed me which it was. It looked to me like Adrien was focused on that one.’
Peter grimaced. ‘Well, he’ll be ower busy tonight to cause any problems, and forewarned is forearmed for tomorrow. You’ll keep a good watch tonight.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I agreed.
We came out onto the main road, looking out southwards over Uyeasound, a neat township of grey roofs, surrounded by silver water and guarded by the island of Uyea. Past it, the open sea gleamed – my road to Norway. A curve in the road, and we were enclosed between hills.
Peter nodded up to the right. ‘Gallow Hill, up there.’
Gallow Hill had brought me enough trouble in that witches business in Scalloway. I turned my head away from it, towards the long loch on our left, which had several ring cages in it. ‘A salmon hatchery?’
‘Salmon and trout.’
There were ponies grazing among the first daffodils on the verge, mostly red and white, heavy-bellied and strong-legged, with thick manes blowing in the breeze. They didn’t bother to lift their heads as we went by. ‘The Belmont stud,’ Peter commented, ‘and that’s the roof o’ Belmont House, just behind the farm.’
He turned in past a couple of modern houses. I caught a glimpse of the house from the front as the car came around the last bend: an imposing gateway facing the sea, with two curving walls ending in square pavilions topped by a pyramid roof, then the house itself, pale yellow, with a tall, arched window in the centre. The garden was golden with daffodils, planted in a double cross around a dark cairn. It was just a glimpse, then the drystane walls on each side of the road closed round us again, blotched white, and grey-green with furred lichen. We pulled up at the back of the house, beside a glassy porch. There was no sign of the minibus Maman had mentioned, but Dad’s 4x4 was parked there, as well as the red hired Fiesta, a grey hire car, and a black monster I suspected belonged to Fournier, so perhaps between them they’d decided they didn’t need it for this weekend.
Peter drew up beside the long shed. ‘I’ll no’ come in ee noo, they’ll aa’ be busy. See you later.’
Cat shifted in his basket as I clambered out. There was singing drifting out from a window above me, unaccompanied: Aricia’s lament at being given to Diana when she loved Hippolytus. Maman practising, I supposed, although it didn’t sound quite like her; the muffling window distorted her clear, soaring voice. The pale-blue door opened into a flagged porch, with a pine shelf for putting shoes under and gloves and hats on, and a row of stones and crabby backs on the window sill. I let Cat out of his basket, then gave the barometer a tap. It sank several points: storm.
Another wide door led into a corridor hemmed by grey doors. The first was a toilet and shower, with a mirror above the sink, and a ewer and basin beside it. It was blissfully warm. The next door was the kitchen, with ochre walls and a wooden dresser of willow-pattern plates. After that I came into the hall proper. Maman’s wool coat hung beside Bryony’s Edwardian jacket on the pegs by the curving staircase. There was a scarf and gloves thrown down on the seaman’s chest, and a hint of expensive scent in the air. The front door was framed first by a pillared archway, then by heavy curtains, red flowers on a silvery-white ground. Sun poured in through its glass p
anes, and brought the outside into the house: the long carriage drive leading straight to the dazzling blue of the sea. I dumped my rucksack on the chest, then eased the door open and stood looking down between the double row of daffodils. Beyond them, the water danced blue, the hills of Yell were summer green. The ferry terminal was down at the other side of the bay, with what looked like an incongruous scarlet double-decker bus sitting in one corner of the parking area. A lark twittered above my head. Cat jumped onto one of the wooden benches by the door, and began washing his paws.
There was a cropped lawn in front of the house, embraced by the curved walls that ended in the pavilions – the servant quarters, I supposed. I strolled over to the nearest one. The blue door opened on a square, bare room, whitewashed and wood-beamed, with a table and four chairs in one corner of the stone-flagged floor. There was a twelve-paned window looking towards the sea, more, I suspected, to match the house than out of any consideration for the servants’ eyesight. A wooden door in the corner opened to show the under-stair cupboard. The stairs creaked as I went up them to the wood-lined roofspace. There was a folded bedstead here, and a skylight. It was ice-cold now, but in the summer it would be a lovely place to sleep.
The murmur of voices and the chink of teacups floated on the wind from an open window. I’d need to go and face them soon. I’d brought my one pretty dress for later, but maybe I’d change into it right now. Maman would fit in here, like the lady of the house, while I was acutely conscious of my jeans and navy gansey putting me below the salt. I didn’t want to let her down.
Past the pavilion was the wall enclosing the house lawn. I turned to look back at the house, and was reminded of the old rule for boats: ‘If she looks right, she is right.’ It was a classic house shape, with three windows above, two and a porch below, and a chimney on each side. I knew nothing about proportions, but I could see this was right: the front almost as high as it was broad, the door lintel higher than the top of the downstairs windows, the windows themselves immediately below the roof skylights, the triangle of pediment just taller than the half the roof, the triple, arched window, the niche. I wondered what statue had been in it when the house was new. It was as beautiful and gracious as an Edwardian yacht.
On my left now, as I faced the house, was a maze of wooden fences: four squares, tall as a series of palettes standing in line, with an entry into each, and a grass walk between. At the head of the square was the curved roof of a little summer house, and I was just about to head up there for a moment’s peace to square my shoulders before I went to join the company in the drawing room, when a pale flash caught my eye. Someone who’d been sitting there had stood up in one abrupt movement. It was Kamilla, the sun lighting up her fair head. She’d taken a pace back from the summer house, face tilted down as if she was looking at someone sitting on a bench within it. Even as I began to slide backwards, not wanting to interrupt, she spoke in German, a word that hissed like a snake, then changed to English.
‘You are mad. Mad.’ The word echoed across the maze of fences. ‘You –’ Her hands rose to her breast, clenching, as if she couldn’t find the words, then pushed away from her, in a gesture of repudiation. ‘I want nothing to do with it, nothing. Nothing to do with you.’ She spun away and began striding towards me. I had just time to duck out of her way and back into the pavilion as she came around the corner of the fence-maze. I eased the pavilion door to, and held it there as her feet crunched across the gravel at the front door, and clacked on the stone step. The door grinched open, then slammed behind her, glass panes rattling.
Who had she been talking to? I began walking casually into the maze garden, but the summer house was empty. A gate leading to the back of the house swung wide, and angry footsteps crunched across the gravel behind the curved wall linking the pavilion to the house.
I’d been too late to see who she’d called mad, but I was pretty sure the footsteps were a man’s.
I came slowly back to the front door. A hand waved from the first floor window; there were light footsteps on the stairs, and Maman came out.
‘Cassandre!’ We kissed.‘I didn’t think you would be here so soon. Come in and have a cup of tea.’
I grimaced at my jeans. ‘Should I change first?’
Maman waved that away. ‘Oh, you will have plenty of time before the performance, while we are all warming up. You could even have a bath – you will love it, an old-fashioned bath, you will see. Hello, Cat. There is no fire for you, it is not permitted, and anyway the chimneys are blocked, but we have two comfortable couches.’
Cat paused in smoothing his spectacular tail, and looked up, then uncurled and stretched his front paws. He associated Maman with saucers of exotic leftovers, worth getting off his bench for.
I gave Maman a thoughtful look. She seemed tired: there were faint blue shadows under her eyes that not even her immaculate foundation could hide, and a line running down each side of her mouth.
‘Wearing?’ I asked her.
She nodded. ‘It’s been years since I did a tour. I had forgotten how tiring it was.’
I put an arm round her waist. ‘Are they all being very temperamental?’Mad ... I want nothing to do with you ...
She shook her head. ‘No. It is that which worries me. I would almost prefer a good row. Everyone is being very polite, but there is an atmosphere which feels all wrong. Kamilla – Adrien – Bryony – even Caleb feels on edge.’ She sighed. ‘And we are only halfway through the tour.’ She turned and drew me into the house. ‘Come, I must not stand here in this evening air. Come up and have a cup of tea.’
She motioned me up the spacious stairway, fresh with white paint and hushed by a raspberry carpet.The curved banister began with a carved flower on a snail-shell newel post, and was satin-smooth. ‘We have ordered the local restaurant, Saxavord, to come and make us a meal after the performance, for us and two of the trustees of the house, and two sponsors, and, oh, I have forgotten who else, but there will be enough for you too, if you wish to stay.’
A meal by the local restaurant sounded good to me. ‘Yes, please. So long as I can get a lift back to Khalida afterwards.’
Maman waved a hand. ‘Oh, your father will do that.’
In the square upstairs hall, the sun flooded in from the triple window. The view was gorgeous: the rows of daffodils; the green turf; the bay of blue water turning to whisky-gold now as the sun began to dip towards the hills of Yell.
‘The drawing room,’ Maman said. She opened the door on the right and gestured me inside.
At first glance it seemed dauntingly full of people: Bryony, on one of the couches, with a tea tray on the coffee table in front of her; Vincent Fournier, slightly aloof in an armchair; Dad, on the other couch, with Adrien leaning over it from behind. The musical director, Per Rolvsson, that was his name, an unexpected Norwegian directing French opera, was standing at the front-facing window, looking out across the water, with his willow-pattern cup and saucer in one hand, still full, as if he’d only just arrived, and Charles was sitting in the corner at the lidded desk, as if he was about to write a letter. I sidled in beside Maman, reached for the teapot, and poured myself a cup of tea.
My first impression was of how bright it was: there were windows front and back, the white wooden shutters reflecting the light into the room, and two more set in the west gable of the house, one on each side of the plastered mantelpiece. Above it, a curved mirror like a ship’s porthole reflected the room back to itself: the lidded desk and chair; the row of heads on the couches facing each other in the middle of the room; the half-moon sideboard. The floor was wooden, covered with a ruby Oriental carpet. Cat followed cautiously, willing to put up with all these people for the sake of a fire, then retreated behind the sofa in disgust at the sight of the pristine fireplace, and went back to washing.
There was a pad of feet on the stairs, and Caleb came in behind me. He was wearing boot socks, and had that healthy outdoor glow of someone who’d just been for a ten-mile tramp across t
he hills. He looked at the teapot, and shook his head. ‘I haven’t got accustomed to your English tea.’ He sat down beside Bryony, and waved a plastic bottle of Diet Coke at her. ‘I’ve brought my own.’
‘So,’ Per said, as if he was picking up the conversation at the point where Maman had come down to greet me, ‘the usual scales at 17.30, then you will have time to yourselves. If you wish to have more time with Charles, they will be setting out the chairs from 18.45, so it must be before then.’
The heads nodded as if this was all routine. I was interested that he was addressing the company in French. If Kamilla had spoken in French, I’d have known for sure whether the person she’d talked to had been male or female: fou or folle. I did a quick head-check; she was the only one missing. Then she slid through the door and sat down between Bryony and Caleb. ‘Sorry, Per.’
He nodded and repeated the times, then drank his tea. I leaned back to Adrien, whose manly aftershave was giving me breathing problems,and set the cat among the pigeons. ‘A lovely morning. Didn’t I see you having a walk out at Lund?’
I should have remembered he was an actor. He gazed at me blandly. ‘Lund, Cassandre?’
‘The old house. The Viking longhouse sites.’ I must have overdone the edge to my voice, for Bryony, Kamilla and Caleb all looked up.
‘I walked up there just this morning,’ Caleb said. ‘Up on the hill there.’ He waved an arm eastwards. ‘Fascinating, even if the flooring’s covered over. Presumably they hope to secure the site this season.’
He meant the Belmont site, I supposed, where Magnie and Peter had had trouble with teenagers. I kept my eyes on Adrien, and he took a sip of tea, then responded.
Ghosts of the Vikings Page 7
