by Fay Sampson
“When the Mercians invaded, King Edwin was killed, and little Eanfled was whisked away to Kent with her mother. Now she was coming back to her birthplace to marry King Oswy.
“But it wasn’t an entirely happy marriage. Eanfled had been brought up in the Kentish court as a Roman Christian. Oswy had found his faith on Iona, among Celtic Christians. They had different ways of doing things – different dates for Easter, and that meant for Lent beforehand, and all the festivals after Easter. While the king was celebrating the greatest feast in the Christian year, the queen was still fasting for Lent.
“Into this divided royal household came a handsome teenage boy: Wilfrid.”
Aidan’s modern namesake heard the tightening in Lucy’s voice at that controversial name. She evidently thought the same about Wilfrid as he did. He saw the wind tugging her short hair.
A pang of grief hit him. The image of Jenny’s head after they had called a halt to her chemotherapy. The tiny hairs beginning to grow back in a golden fuzz.
The world rocked around him. Then he steadied himself to the sound of Lucy’s voice.
“Wilfrid asked for the queen’s help to make a career in the Church. Since there were no Roman monasteries in Northumbria, she sent him to Lindisfarne, to take care of a veteran warrior who was now disabled and was going to Holy Island as a monk.
“But Wilfrid had his eyes on more splendid things than Aidan’s leaking church on Lindisfarne. As long as Aidan lived, Wilfrid held his tongue. Everyone loved St Aidan, whether their churchmanship was Celtic or Roman. But when he died, things fell apart. Wilfrid heard scholars disputing the two traditions. He spent his spare time studying in the library, and became fired by the dream of seeing Rome. He appealed to the queen again. She sent him to her brother, the king of Kent. He found Wilfrid a reliable escort, the former warrior Benedict Biscop, who went on to found the great monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow.
“The young men set out. They stopped at Lyon, and Wilfrid was so blown away by the magnificence of the Church there that he let Benedict Biscop go on without him. The archbishop of Lyon even offered to adopt him as his son. Eventually Wilfrid tore himself away and arrived in Rome.
“He got the pope’s archdeacon to teach him. Then he set off to return to Britain, filled with the ambition to make the backward Northumbrian Church fall into line with the glory of Rome.”
Lucy shrugged her shoulders in her windproof jacket.
“He was a brave young man. Passing back through Lyon, he was persuaded to stay with the archbishop again and took his vows as a monk. But the archbishop had fallen out with the local queen. He and eight of his bishops were sentenced to death. Wilfrid rashly jumped onto the scaffold to join them, until somebody spotted that he was an Englishman and threw him off.
“So back he came to Northumbria. Here he began to plot with Oswy’s son, Prince Alchfrith, the downfall of the Celtic Church.”
Lucy stopped. Even Elspeth had held her tongue for the story. Now they were all looking at Lucy, their eyes demanding to know what happened next. Aidan knew, of course, but he had still been trapped in the magic of the story.
Lucy’s blue eyes sparkled, as they had not since Rachel’s death. The spell of Lindisfarne’s story had held her too.
“Enough,” she said. “It’s only Monday. There’s more to come. For now, try to enjoy yourselves. Of course, this isn’t the early fortress of Oswald and Oswy, but once you’re on the inside looking out, it could be. What better place to build a stronghold than on these cliffs, commanding the seashore and the Farne Islands and the coastal roads? Treasure the experience. Like the Celtic Church, the things we hold dear may not last forever.”
The sadness returned to her eyes.
Aidan was glad to see the burst of energy with which Melangell raced through the castle rooms, chattering about the exhibits as she passed. Sometimes she would whirl around and dive for a particular display, to become enrapt with its details: a table made from oak scavenged from a bridge the emperor Hadrian built in ad 120; the gigantic chains hung either side of a doorway in the Keep Hall.
“That’s what shire horses used to drag the shipwrecks ashore,” the attendant told her.
“Did they have lots of wrecks, then?” Melangell demanded.
“Could be as many as four a week.”
It was what she needed, a break away from the sadness of death, Rachel’s drowning, the bloodstained figure of James, the ominous presence of the police.
“Look, Daddy! They must have umpteen million swords. They’ve made a star of them over the fireplace.”
Everywhere Aidan looked there were weapons. Looking closely, he saw that they had been used.
He led her to the window. Bamburgh might have its own dark history, but here, today, the wind blew strong, the white foam streamed and horses galloped along the sands.
Aidan surveyed the seascape before them. Through the lens of his camera he could pick out the mêlée of seabirds on the stacks of Inner Farne, St Cuthbert’s refuge.
He put his hands on Melangell’s shoulders and turned her to look northwards.
“Can you see that smudge on the horizon? The bit on the right is Lindisfarne.”
“That’s funny.” She screwed up her eyes. “When we’re on Lindisfarne, we can see Bamburgh and it looks, like, really big.”
“That’s because it is. Remember how much smaller Lindisfarne Castle was? You can only just pick it out from here with the naked eye.”
“But Bamburgh’s huge, isn’t it?”
“Would you like to live up here? I mean, would you have liked to be a princess in King Oswald’s time?”
Melangell thought about it and pouted. “No. Because the Mercians killed him, didn’t they? They put his head and his hands on a cross. I wouldn’t want anyone to do that to you.”
“Thanks!” He ruffled her hair.
“Well said, Melangell. Those were rough times in Northumbria.”
Aidan turned at the sound of Lucy’s voice.
Hers was not as expressive a face as Jenny’s had been. She had a healthy outdoor look under her short-cropped hair. But still he noticed the lines of strain about her eyes. She was smiling for Melangell, but he sensed the cheerfulness was assumed now. A professional necessity. Today, she wore a black sweatshirt and jeans, with a dark blue windcheater. A white shirt collar showed at her neck. The austerity might well be mourning for Rachel, but it also made her look more like the minister of religion she was, even without her dog collar.
“Are you all right?” he said quietly, as Melangell scampered away to admire a suit of armour. He was still embarrassed by the way he had shouted at her.
“I’ll manage.” She gave him a brief, surface smile.
“You’ll be glad the police enquiry is over. Or it will be by the time we get back. They should have finished with James by then.”
“Yes.” She sounded less sure.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, after a moment’s hesitation, though he knew.
“Probably nothing.” She had her hands in her pockets, turning away from him into the wind.
“But?”
“Oh, I don’t know. That hunch you learn to get in the police, that something’s not quite right. You put your finger on it this morning. Those coastguards. They weren’t too happy about it looking like a suicide, were they? And DC Chappell. He thought he was on to something more than an accidental drowning. Even the detective sergeant asked more questions than her boss. It’s only DI Harland who seems ready to wrap it up.”
“I think you touched a sore point about police budgets.”
“Yes.” She made a face. “I didn’t mean to be hard on him. But if you know you may have a bill for a million pounds staring you in the face, you can’t help feeling relieved if you see a way to close the book on it. I’m not saying the police would ever do that deliberately, but, well, things work on your subconscious.”
Even indoors, the hollow sound of the wind haunted Aidan’s ears.
&nb
sp; “Then…” He looked at her sideways, suddenly anxious. The implications of what they were saying hovered on his lips. “We’re thinking it wasn’t an accident? Not even suicide?”
Lucy whipped round on him. He saw the alarm in her face. “I didn’t say that! God knows she had reason enough to wish her life over. It’s just…” The capable shoulders hunched now into her windcheater. “I wish he’d looked more as if he really wanted to find the truth. She deserved that.”
Aidan thought for a while. He looked down over the battlements below. Members of their group were beginning to gather on the middle ward, where Lucy had asked them to meet. He struggled with the truth that was on both their minds. If Rachel’s death wasn’t suicide or an accident, then… Could someone else on Holy Island have had reason to want her dead?
Valerie Grayson? He watched her tall figure from above. Ridiculous. The somewhat irritating but otherwise inoffensive Cavendishes? Elspeth Haccombe was a more forceful character, but surely nothing could have happened between her and Rachel in just twenty-four hours to warrant such a startling assumption.
There was Peter, of course. He’d known her far longer than anyone else. Could his air of anxiety, his protective presence at Rachel’s shoulder, be masking something more possessive?
And back on Holy Island, the more enigmatic and controversial figures of James and Sue. Did James remember now how he came by that head injury on the day of Rachel’s death?
“There’ll be a post-mortem, won’t there? They’ll find how Rachel died.”
“It might not help. There’s more than one way for someone to drown.”
She straightened her shoulders in that characteristic way. The professional smile was back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to spoil your afternoon away.”
He was saved from the need to reply by Melangell bouncing back, curls whipped by the wind, eyes shining. “If I was a princess, I’d want to be like those girls down there, galloping my horse through the waves.”
“You don’t have to be a princess to do that,” Lucy said. “Do you want to sit on an Anglo-Saxon throne?”
Outside in the inner ward stood a replica of the yellow sandstone throne, the remains of which they had seen in the museum. With a cry of glee, Melangell climbed up and threw herself onto it.
As she sat, gazing royally out to sea, a chill thought struck Aidan: If Lucy is looking at every one of us, assessing if we might have anything to do with Rachel’s death, what is she thinking when she looks at me?
Chapter Twenty-one
LUCY FELT THE WIND BUFFETING THE CAR as she drove back across the causeway. She concentrated on holding a steady course along the roadway between the advancing sea. While they had been at Bamburgh Castle the tide had turned. It was flowing in again over the rose-tinged sands.
In the back seat, Frances was chattering about the treasures of Bamburgh Castle. She sounded more animated than at any time since the Cavendishes had arrived on Saturday. It was as if Rachel’s death had not happened.
Beside Lucy, Peter seemed sunk in gloom.
She glanced briefly in the rear-view mirror and raised her voice to the couple behind. “You enjoyed it, then?”
“Oh, yes! The King’s Hall was lovely. All those portraits, and the beautiful china, and the furniture and everything. You could tell by that gorgeous carved roof that it was centuries old.”
“It’s fake, you know,” Peter said. “Nineteenth century. It’s not as historic as it looks.”
“Well… Still, I mean, looks like the real thing, doesn’t it? And the family are living in it. You can imagine how it was. Not like those old things you keep telling us about. Everywhere we go, you say, ‘Of course, this wasn’t St Aidan’s abbey. That was pulled down long before.’ And, ‘This isn’t King Oswald’s castle. The Normans built this one.’ You can’t show us anything that’s real from back then.”
“But I did!” Lucy protested. “We stopped at the church on the way back. I took you inside and showed you the black beam in the roof. The one that legend says St Aidan was leaning against when he died.”
“Yes, well,” Frances conceded grudgingly, “only that was so high up, you practically had to break your neck looking at it. Beats me how he could have been leaning against it.”
Lucy sighed. She had explained to them how the ancient church had become a site of pilgrimage until it burned down, and how that post alone had survived the conflagration. When a new church had been built, the sacred beam had been installed, not in its original position on the outside wall, but inside as part of the roof over the baptistery.
She wondered how much more of what she had said had gone over Frances’s head.
But Melangell had loved it. She had lain down on her back on the flagstones of the nave and gazed up at the blackened beam with eager wonder.
It must be great to be eight years old. To live for the moment. A pity she came from a broken family; that it had to be her father bringing her, not her mother Jenny Davison, who had written those books about Celtic saints. Lucy felt a sudden anger against Aidan. What had he done to bring that marriage to an end? She remembered that flash of temper and flinched.
The crossing was ending. She swung the car round, following the road that skirted the sandy southern shore of Holy Island.
A cold dismay was creeping over her. What had possessed her to revive her doubts to Aidan in the keep? There was no proof that there was anything more to Rachel’s death than what Detective Inspector Harland clearly thought it was. It was her own evidence, more than anyone else’s, that had convinced him suicide was the most likely verdict. There must be some logical explanation for why the body had been found on that beach.
So why was that insistent voice still telling her it was neither suicide nor a tragic accident?
The improbability that anyone Rachel had met in those fatal twenty-four hours on Lindisfarne could be implicated in her death struck home. It simply didn’t bear thinking about. What if Aidan told the rest of the group? It was as good as accusing one of them of murder.
The word made her feel physically sick. Peter gave a startled cry and shot out a hand as the car swerved.
“Sorry,” Lucy said, bringing them back on course.
She tried to imagine herself a young policewoman again. Just a uniformed constable, never a detective. What if she had gone to the senior investigating officer in a case like this and said, “I don’t think this is suicide”?
Images were gathering in her memory. The frown on the older coastguard’s face. Rachel’s unexplained absence on Saturday evening. The bitterness of Sue’s complaint about James’s relations with his young female congregation.
No proof. Just a deep-down conviction that there were more questions to be answered than DI Harland appeared to be asking.
She turned the car in at the gates of St Colman’s and parked in front of the house.
James and Sue’s car was back. At last she might find out what really happened at Lindisfarne Castle yesterday afternoon. If it was there that James had met with his head injury.
She got out. The detectives’ car had gone. They were on their own.
Lucy had hardly got inside the house before Mrs Batley accosted her.
“Reverend, I want a word with you.”
Her heart sank at the landlady’s accusing manner. She could understand that Rachel’s death had been as shocking for Mrs Batley as for any of them. The reputation of St Colman’s House was at stake. And she had rallied round with remarkable efficiency when James had come back dripping blood over her carpet.
But just now, Lucy had other things on her mind. Where were James and Sue?
“Could you give me a moment? Is James back? I really do need to talk to him.”
Mrs Batley sniffed. “You needn’t worry yourself about him. He’s out in the garden, holding court with his young lady as usual. And looking not much the worse for that knock on the head. Not like that poor girl of yours. But I really need…”
&nbs
p; “Thanks. Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
She sped towards the door at the back of the hall. Whatever complaint Mrs Batley wanted to make, it could wait.
James was sitting at one of the wooden tables on the lawn. Glasses and bottles glinted in the sun. Sue jumped up and went to stand behind him. Her hand rested protectively on James’s shoulder. Whatever tangled relationship linked these two, Sue had evidently swallowed her indignation towards James. In the face of the outside world, she was positioning herself on his side.
“James! You’re back.” Lucy’s quick eyes took in the shaved hair, the considerable swathe of plaster on the right side of his head. James managed to make even this look dashing. She should have known.
“Like a bad penny.” He flashed her a superior grin.
She fought down the temptation to jealousy that he could assume so easily that aura of charisma and authority that Lucy herself had to work at as an ordained minister.
She sat down on the bench opposite him. Elspeth and Valerie were making their way to their chalet room.
“The prodigal returns!” Elspeth boomed across the lawn.
The door closed behind the two of them. The Cavendishes made their quieter way to their own room, with only a curious stare at James.
Lucy leaned forward on her elbows. “I’m so glad it wasn’t any worse. I take it they’ve given you a clean bill of health, if they’ve let you out. You’re not going to pass out on us again?”
“Concussion. No permanent harm, thank the Lord.”
