‘Ah, Dodie,’ she said softly, ‘so you found the jewels as well. You have indeed had a field day to yourself.’
Taking his big rough hand in her little one she went on coaxingly, ‘Come on Dodie, you must know where the rest of it is, you’ve been keeping a lot of wee secrets to yourself, but now the time has come for you to share them with me. I want you to be telling me how to find all the other nice shiny things like this one.’
‘In one o’ the lobster pots at Camus nan Uamh,’ he supplied willingly. ‘I found the wee bag when I found the photy, all o’ them tied to each other wi’ string and caught up together on a marker buoy. I hid the bag because I was feart to take it as well but when you didny want the wooden sign I thought you might like the bonny brooch and went back wi’ Hector to get it . . .’
He began to scrub his eyes, ‘That was when I saw Kalak Dubh in the cave, the dark maiden who is really a mermaid, and then I fell in the water . . .’
He turned and looked at her and suddenly his strange dreamy eyes were alert and very aware, ‘It was you Dodie saw in the cave, sitting on a stone, singing just like the mermaids used to sing to Old Joe when he was at sea in his boat.’
‘Ay, it surely was me that you saw, Dodie,’ she admitted quietly. Then grasping his arm she said urgently, ‘And I want you to come back there with me, back to Camus nan Uamh to show me which lobster pot the wee bag is in.’ He shrank away, dread on his face as he remembered the brackish water flooding his lungs, the choking terror of being unable to breathe, the numbing cold . . .
‘I canny! I canny go back!’ he yelled. ‘No’ to that place! It’s bad luck, Canty Tam said the Uisge Hags will get me the next time! I canny go back.’
‘Och, come on now – for me,’ she spoke persuasively, all the time holding his hand and gazing into his face. ‘I’ll be there with you, surely you know you’ll be safe with me, I’d never let anything happen to you. You’re my friend, Dodie, and if you don’t do this for me I’ll never be safe for as long as I live, and might even die altogether if I don’t get away from here.’
Dodie’s heart beat strangely, he couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to Kalak Dubh. She wanted to go home, back to the sea, and she had to take her shiny things with her, so that she could deck herself in all her finery when she sang with a voice like an angel to the fishermen who roamed the oceans and reported sightings of fabulous creatures as they travelled to far distant shores.
He gulped and swallowed back his fears, and his voice was rough with emotion when he said chokingly, ‘Ay, I’ll go back, I’ll show you where I hid the bonny things, just for you, I’ll go back, Kalak Dubh.’
‘Special man,’ she whispered, ‘I knew you would do this for me, for Kalak Dubh. Peter Menzies said I could have his boat anytime, it’s tied up in Mara Oran Bay, and that is where I will meet you tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, when the tide is on the turn. I need today to get myself ready, but I’ll be there in the morning, and remember, you mustn’t breathe a word of this to anyone, not even Mairi.’
Dropping a gentle kiss on his cheek she went to the door while Dodie watched, racked by so many strange feelings he couldn’t sort out one from the other, only knowing that his enchantment for the beautiful dark maiden would live with him for the rest of his days.
‘My photy,’ he whispered brokenly, ‘can I no’ at least have my photy?’
‘It’s one of the things I need, Dodie, to set me free . . .’ She looked at him sitting there, old and bent and thin. A tear caught in her throat, and impulsively she said, ‘Och, but I’ll give you another, one that Kirsteen took of me with a fancy camera she brought back from Glasgow. She just popped the shutter, a picture rolled out, and a few minutes later it was developed.’
‘Ay,’ was all he said, softly and sadly. He knew nothing about cameras, all he wanted was a photo of the dark maiden to remember her by, and maybe in this one she would be smiling and happy, the way she had mostly been whenever they had met one another on their lonely rambles around the island.
Chapter Twenty-three
Later that day, Colin and Andrew McKinnon, two brothers of twelve and thirteen, guided their wooden dinghy into the great cavern of An Coire and cut the outboard motor. They had heard all about the elusive being that was reputedly haunting the cave and for weeks they had been daring one another to go there to find out for themselves what all the fuss was about. Knowing full well that a visit to the Bay of the Caves would be forbidden to them, they had told Angus, their grandfather, that they were simply going fishing and could they borrow his boat. Having gained his permission they had set off, bloated with triumph, bolstering themselves up in the way that small boys do when trying to impress one another with their bravado.
But now that they were actually here, in this vast, alien place, their confidence began crumbling a little and they stopped chattering as the silence and the dimness enclosed them. Because it was an overcast day outside, the interior of An Coire was dark; dark and damp and eerie. The green walls dripped slime, phantom shapes loomed in the shadows, and the rocks looked like bent and brooding old men, doomed to spend eternity in the nether regions of a half-world.
Weird and wonderful stalactites hung suspended from the roof, glistening and dripping, gnarled and twisted, fearsome tapering spears that plunged down from nowhere yet at the same time went up and up, growing thicker as they went, on and on into some terrible unknown sphere of blackest space. And miles above, it seemed, was the opening that gave An Coire its name, the blowhole from which the water spumed out when the tides were at their highest, looking tiny from down here, a small gleam of illumination in the dome of An Coire, a ray of unreachable daylight that only served to emphasise the vastness of the cathedral-like cavern where flickering shadows danced on the wet walls and the water sparkled with tiny pinpricks of phosphorescence that came from myriad sea creatures darting hither and thither beneath the green swell of the tide.
It was beautiful, breathtaking, and awe-inspiring, but neither Colin nor Andrew was inclined to any of these feelings. To them the Cave of the Kettle was a world apart from the everyday reality that was normally theirs; each of them longed only to return to that reality, but it wouldn’t do to voice such a desire. Instead they tried to act and sound tough and to show one another that it would take more than a smelly old cave to get the better of them.
‘Where’s the mermaid then?’ Colin began in an aggressive voice, as he spoke looking over his shoulder to ascertain just how far in they had come. ‘You told me this was where Graeme Donald and the others saw something or somebody sitting on a rock singing.’
‘I didn’t say they saw it, I said they thought they saw it,’ Andrew asserted himself quickly.
‘Well, it was all lies,’ Colin stated flatly. ‘She isn’t here and we’d better go home. Dad will skelp our lugs for us if he ever finds out we came here without asking him first.’
He glanced round at the rock sculptures. There was something sinister in the way they were all huddled together, as if they were discussing something of great importance, perhaps deciding the fate of two errant schoolboys who had dared to come here and invade this awful, evil, slimy, world that had belonged to them from time immemorial.
‘I don’t like it here.’ There was a decided wobble in Colin’s voice now. ‘I wish we’d never come. You were the one who suggested it in the first place.’
Andrew’s lip jutted. ‘You’re just scared,’ he scoffed, jumping a little as a large wave slapped against the boat, making it rock in an alarming fashion.
‘No I’m not, I just want to go home, we’ll miss our tea if we don’t hurry.’
Andrew didn’t answer. With eyes that were wide and staring he watched mesmerised as a huge, gleaming wave whooshed in from the sea, catching the dinghy on its breast and lifting it up as if it were made of matchwood.
‘The autumnal equinox,’ he whispered, then, with a gulp, ‘coming in – fast.’
‘I want to go home!’ wailed
Colin. ‘Dad said we were never to come to this place on our own.’
‘Cry baby!’ Andrew jeered, even though he felt like crying himself and would have given anything to be home safe in his own house – on second thoughts, maybe not so safe, their father might tan their hides when all of this came out in the wash.
‘Stop blubbering,’ he went on in a shaky voice, ‘I’ll start the engine and we’ll get going right away.’
He yanked at the cord, again and again, but the little motor refused to start, and by the time he and his brother had manned the oars the sea was swirling relentlessly into the cave, lifting the dinghy higher and higher.
‘We’ll never get out now!’ yelled Andrew above the roar of the incoming tide. ‘We’ll have to get onto one o’ those ledges and sit it out. Come on, climb up, I’ll hold onto the boat.’
Like a young monkey Colin scrambled upwards, a short while later to be joined by his brother who, with great presence of mind, had held onto the dinghy by its rope. Between them the brothers attached the rope to a spur of rock, their fingers numb with cold, their hearts beating fast with shock and exertion. Shivering, they squatted close together, deafened by the thunderous roar of the ocean as it swirled and churned outside An Coire and came rushing in to throw itself out of the spout in the cliffs.
It was a breathtaking spectacle and the boys watched spellbound from their perch, while the water rose higher and higher, covering the heads of the ‘old men’, insidiously lapping the lower ledges, playing with the boat, making it whirl about and buck alarmingly so that it worried away at the rope, causing it to creak and groan where it rubbed against the rock.
‘What if it breaks!’ Colin cried in an agony of suspense. ‘We’ll never get away from here if it does. Nobody knows where we are, we might die and turn into skeletons or the gulls might eat us . . .’
‘Shut up!’ snapped Andrew, breaking out in a sweat at his brother’s words, his pulse racing as a huge wave spumed into An Coire, making both boys instinctively recoil to the furthest recesses of their rocky retreat.
Cohn’s fingers touched something wet and icy cold. With a smothered scream he drew his hand away quickly and simply gaped at the sight he saw in the greeny half light reflecting off the water.
It was the remains of a dead body, putrifying and partially eaten away by seabirds, only the clothes giving away the fact that it had once been a man.
Petrified and horror stricken, the boys moved as far away as possible from their gruesome find and clung together, trembling from head to foot, vowing to each other that never again would they venture anywhere without parental permission, nothing was worth this – and they still had to face the outcome of this particularly nasty adventure – if they ever got out of here alive. Hearts like stone in their breasts, exhausted, freezing and hungry, they sat on their ledge, forever it seemed, while the water crashed and foamed amongst the rocks outside before sweeping in to roar out of the blowhole and swell the level ever higher inside the vault.
And then it stopped; gradually but surely the volume of water lessened. Aeons passed, at least so it felt to the boys as they waited for the magical turning of a tide that had brought home to them a lesson that they would never forget.
When at last it was safe for them to leave An Coire they couldn’t get into their boat fast enough. Not waiting to try starting the motor they somehow found the strength to man the oars and went shooting away as speedily as they could, away from An Coire and the Bay of the Caves, away from the cold and silent body of a man who was unknown to them but who would remain in their minds for a very long time to come.
‘We found a body, Dad!’ Colin cried the minute he arrived home, the horror of his discovery overriding all else.
‘And it was dead!’ supplemented Andrew.
‘Oh, ay,’ Colin Mor, the boys’ father, grinned indulgently. ‘Is that a fact now? And I suppose you’re going to be telling me next that it sat up and said, “Boo”?’
‘No, Dad.’ Colin, near to tears, the effects of his experiences showing in the pallor of his face, spoke in a hushed whisper, ‘It really was a dead man’s body, up on one o’ the ledges o’ a cave.’
‘And where exactly was this cave?’ Angus, the boys’ grandfather, who had lived with his son ever since the deaths of their respective wives, asked the question in a deeply suspicious voice.
The brothers shuffled their feet and looked at one another, then Andrew, being the eldest, took the great decision to tell the truth. ‘It was An Coire.’
‘An Coire! The Bay o’ the Caves!’ Colin Mor’s eyes bulged. ‘How many times have I told you no’ to go there? It’s a dangerous place for anybody to be, never mind two lads wi’ nothing between their lugs but fresh air!’
‘Och, come on now, don’t be too hard on them,’ Angus intervened. ‘They’ve learned their lesson, the pair o’ them look as if they’ve had the shat scared out o’ them good and proper.’
‘It was horrible! It was bad enough being trapped on the ledge but when we found the man’s body and couldn’t get away it was like a really bad dream.’ Andrew, responding to the sympathy in his grampa’s voice, broke down and burst into a fit of tears which so surprised Colin he too gave way to his feelings and began sobbing into his grazed and grimy hands.
Colin Mor looked uncomfortable. ‘Ay, well, it was indeed a terrible adventure for you both, but that body must have been there for a whilie and will keep for a few hours yet. I’ll phone the police when I get my breath back, but for now, the pair o’ you had better get out o’ my sight before I thrash the living daylights out o’ you for disobeying me.’
‘Ay, but no’ before they’ve had a good hot bath and a bite o’ supper,’ Angus decided gently. ‘These lads have had a shock to their systems and, as any doctor will tell you, they will need a good bit o’ sustenance to help get them back on their feets – as I’m sure you know already, Colin, my lad.’
Colin Mor blinked, ‘I didny know any such thing in my day, you’re softer wi’ these lads than you ever were wi’ me.’
‘You had a mother, Colin Mor, never forget that. I knew fine that Ethel spoiled you when I wasny lookin’ – no matter what I said to the contrary.’
Colin Mor swallowed hard. ‘Right enough now,’ he said softly, ‘I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm if I was to make us all a nice hot mug o’ cocoa and we gathered ourselves round the fire to drink it.’
‘It would do nothing but good,’ agreed Angus, nodding in his easy-going way as he slowly and calmly lit his pipe.
Andrew and Colin gazed at him with affection. He hadn’t said anything about the white lie they had spun him in order to obtain the loan of his boat, and the gratitude they felt towards him brought fresh tears springing to their eyes. He was the best grampa in the world, they had always known that, but today he was something more, something special, a being apart from all the rest. Going to his chair they perched themselves on either side of him. ‘Thanks, Grampa Angus,’ they murmured quietly, rather shamefacedly.
His eyes twinkled. ‘Next time you go fishing see and catch some fish and no’ a body that is dead. I wouldny know what to do wi’ one o’ these if it was served up to me on a plate.’
The brothers burst into relieved laughter. They couldn’t forget their grisly find in the great cave of An Coire but for now it was enough to be here with their father and grandfather, everything else could wait – at least until tomorrow.
That evening, when Fern was sitting with Kirsteen and Fergus round the fire eating supper, she said unexpectedly, ‘Will you be listening to me for a minute? Tomorrow I am leaving here – when the steamer sails out of the harbour I will be going with her and I doubt if I’ll ever be coming back. I have packed my few bit things, nothing much to be sure, but more than the rags I stood up in when first I came to this island.’
‘Tomorrow!’ Fergus and Kirsteen cried in unison. ‘But why the hurry?’ continued the latter. ‘You never gave us any indication that you might be leaving!’
‘I knew this would come as a surprise to you both, and I can never begin to tell you how it grieves me to be leaving two people who have done so much for me. There is a lot I have to say to you – and at last I am going to be telling you the truth about myself. The travellers told you some of it when they were here in the summer, I did run away with a man called Johnny Docherty. Together we roamed the highways and byways of Ireland and then we ended up working in a mansion house near the sea. In no time at all the owners came to trust us implicitly, especially Johnny, he was a charmer was Johnny, silver-tongued and good-looking, a man who could twist any woman round his little finger . . .’
She paused and looked at them, sitting together in the ingle, listening intently to everything she had to say. ‘Ah, if it could have been for us the way it is for you two, but Johnny couldn’t keep away from the drink. He was like my father all over again and I wasn’t lying when I said he used to hit me and give me a terrible time. But he was all I had, and when he wasn’t drunk he was good to me – in his own way I think he loved me and wanted to look after me.
‘But I go too fast, there is so much to say. When the owners of the house went away abroad on business for a year they left us there as caretakers. Johnny knew every inch of the place, and it wasn’t long before he had cracked the safe and stolen the valuables that were kept there. He told me he was taking me to a new life in America and we got all our things together, passports, papers, everything we would need to start us off when we got to that country.
‘The owners kept a motor yacht in the sheltered bay just below the house. The name of it was Sea Witch and one night in March we took her from her mooring and set sail for our new life.’
She sighed and shook her head. ‘To be sure, it was all like a magical dream, sailing the seas with Johnny in that beautiful boat, the future rosy and bright before us. Then everything started to go wrong, a mist came down, it was night, we couldn’t see where we were going and were afraid to use the ship’s radio to make a mayday call for help. We knew there could be an emergency at any minute and so we had to act quickly. The jewels, our passports and other documents, were already sealed in waterproof packets and these I attached to my belt. Soon afterwards we foundered on the rocks at Camus nan Uamh and had to abandon ship.
A Rhanna Mystery Page 24
