The Beachcomber (The Island of Sylt Book 2)

by Ines Thorn

  “I want to explain what happened,” Inga replied meekly.

  “I don’t want to hear it, I said!” Arjen cried, cutting through the air with the side of his hand.

  “You have to! You are my husband. You have to know what’s happening in your house.”

  Arjen sat down and looked at the tabletop, as though he couldn’t stand the sight of his wife. “I’m listening.”

  Inga’s hand slid across the table, but she didn’t dare touch Arjen. “I’m not with child,” she said miserably. “But people were talking. They stand around and ask why the pastor’s daughter still isn’t pregnant. And today, Antje looked at my belly and asked if it had finally happened. I didn’t know what to say . . .” She broke into tears.

  Arjen swallowed. “So you told people you were with child so they would stop talking.”

  Inga nodded and cried harder.

  Arjen sighed. He looked up at Inga and raised a hand as though to caress her head comfortingly, but then let his arm fall again. “When will you stop worrying about what other people say? It doesn’t matter what they think. They’ll talk about one thing today, and another tomorrow.” His voice had a hint of pity in it, but also anger. He stood up and looked down at his sobbing wife. “Poor Inga,” he said. “Life hasn’t been fair to you, and you haven’t been fair to yourself either.”

  Then he left her alone with her suffering. If Inga knew one thing for certain, it was that no one would help her. She would have to help herself. Her father had taught her that she was all alone in the world. If she had thought that everything would be different after the wedding, and that she would have a companion or a friend, then she had been terribly disappointed. Arjen was no better than her father. He was worse. She’d been able to deal with her father’s anger, but Arjen’s indifference was unbearable.

  She sniffed again and dried her eyes, ran her fingers through her hair, and smoothed her dress. She’d have to take care of herself. She got up, stretched, and tried to figure out what to do. She could tell people that she’d lost the baby; it happened often enough. But the real problem wouldn’t be solved, just delayed. Soon the women would be back to looking at her belly and asking if she’d become pregnant again. And maybe she’d get away with it if she pretended to lose a child a second time, but even then—she knew very well—she’d have to get pregnant soon. She needed a baby. She could go to the other side of the island, or take a smak to Amrum or Föhr. She could surely find some poor widow who would give her a baby. It would be a blessing for the child, and for the poor woman too. But then the widow might start to long for the child and come to Rantum. That would be even worse. It was clear: she had to get pregnant, no matter the cost. But how? She couldn’t just pounce on fishermen behind the dunes. And she wouldn’t be able to seduce anyone either; she’d never been a beauty and despair had made her haggard. She thought about the men in Rantum, and suddenly something occurred to her. The solution!

  CHAPTER 6

  Jordis sat on the bed with the injured man through the afternoon and the next night, constantly putting cold, vinegar-soaked cloths on his forehead.

  But the fever wouldn’t break. His teeth chattered, and every now and then, he spoke a few words in a foreign language that was familiar to Jordis. His narrow face was pale, and the lids fluttered over his gray eyes. His lips were tinged blue. The man had broad shoulders, his hair was a reddish blond, and his stubble was a similar color. His entire upper body was covered in blue bruises which bore witness to his battle against the stormy sea and the men’s attack on the beach.

  Occasionally, Jordis got up to stretch her legs or to brew an herbal remedy, which she gave to the man a few drops at a time. Once he opened his gray eyes. “Where am I?” he asked in a dialect similar enough to the language spoken on Sylt that she understood him. But he spoke with a strong yet familiar foreign accent, and Jordis knew he hadn’t spoken in his native tongue.

  “On Sylt,” Jordis replied, “an island off the coast of Denmark and the German territories.”

  The foreigner nodded, and his eyes closed again. The stump of his arm had finally stopped bleeding under the layer of spiderwebs, but the edges had a worrying blackish-blue tinge which did not bode well for his recovery. However, Jordis’s first task was to lower the man’s fever.

  Hours later, he awoke once more and moaned with pain. He gazed at the stump in desperation and closed his eyes. But after a time, he spoke again. “Where is my pouch?”

  Jordis immediately knew he meant the pouch that had been around his neck. “It’s here,” she said comfortingly. “I put it on the table.”

  “Don’t . . . don’t let anyone have it,” the man whispered before falling into a restless sleep.

  Jordis was so exhausted that tears of relief came to her eyes. She spread a sheepskin on the floor next to the bed and curled up on it. Just a short rest, she thought. But as she closed her eyes, her body gave in to fatigue, and she fell asleep.

  She was awoken by a loud knocking. Jordis started in surprise and sat up. No one had knocked on her door in ages. Could it be Crooked Tamme or Antje?

  Jordis got up off the floor. “Coming!” she called, rushing to the door.

  She opened it a crack and saw Arjen. He held a little clay pot in his hand.

  “This is the honey I promised you,” he said, coming closer.

  Jordis closed the door farther so Arjen couldn’t see into the hut.

  She reached out for the honey. “Thank you,” she said, and was about to close the door again when something occurred to her. “Wait a moment.”

  She took her shawl off the chair, wrapped it over her head and shoulders, and stepped outside. It had grown so cold she could see her breath. Jordis shifted from one foot to another in her wooden clogs and wrapped her arms around her body. She avoided Arjen’s gaze. Her heart still ached when she saw him. She would have liked to caress his long dark hair and rest her head against his chest. She still didn’t understand why he’d broken his betrothal to her and married Inga instead.

  “What happened on the beach last night?” she asked, as though she hadn’t been there.

  “A schooner foundered on the rocks. The beach overseer cordoned everything off. The cargo can’t be salvaged yet.”

  “Why not?” Jordis asked. The cargo from a shipwreck was usually salvaged as quickly as possible, before the sea could wash anything away. Salvaging normally began as soon as weather permitted.

  “There are rumors a man survived.”

  Jordis’s brow creased, and she looked down at her feet, so Arjen wouldn’t see the alarm in her eyes. “Where is the survivor?”

  “No one knows. Crooked Tamme swears he saw someone. A few men searched the dunes. There were several bodies on the beach, but the one they were looking for wasn’t among them.”

  “Who was he?”

  Arjen took a step closer. “I heard it was a man carrying something so valuable with him that it could influence the fate of entire countries, and that in the next few days, someone will be coming from Tønder to search for him. That’s what the beach overseer said. He said he’d been keeping a lookout for the ship for some time. He’d received a letter from Denmark that said there was something very important on board the ship, and the ship should be treated as a man-of-war. Ships like that don’t usually carry any cargo that can be salvaged anyway. But the man—and what he was carrying—was the important thing.

  Jordis tilted her head. “What was he carrying? Do you know?”

  “No one knows. But the beach overseer said that anyone who got near the wreck would pay with his life.”

  “Then I suppose we should stay away from it,” Jordis said lightly, and turned away.

  Arjen took her by the arm and held her tightly. “Jordis,” he said desperately. “I never stopped loving you.”

  Jordis tore herself away from him. “No? Then why did you marry Inga?” She turned on her heel and slammed the door.

  Back inside, she warmed the jar of honey in a pot of h
ot water. She tore fresh strips off the sheet and approached the bed. The stranger was still sleeping, and his breath sounded calmer than it had during the night. The fever still burned in his body, but less heat radiated from him now. Jordis shook out the blankets and carefully took the injured arm from underneath them and laid it on top. Then she put fresh linen on the wound and spread the warm honey over it. Etta had told her that honey helped wounds to expel impurities and would make them heal faster. The stranger continued to sleep. Jordis was glad, because Etta had always told her that sleep was the best medicine.

  Then she thought about what Arjen had said. People were searching for the foreign man. But why? Could it have something to do with the leather pouch he’d been wearing? The pouch lay on a chest under the window. Keeping an eye on the stranger, she picked it up, loosened the cord, and pulled it open. Inside, there were folded sheets of vellum. Jordis unfolded one of them and saw strange designs, letters, and symbols, but the ink had bled so much it was barely legible. She carefully unfolded the other sheets and spread them on the table to dry. She bent over them and tried to figure out what she was looking at, but aside from one drawing in a roughly triangular shape, she saw nothing she understood.

  In her haste, Inga had forgotten her shawl. The sky was covered in thick gray clouds, and the air smelled not only of salt and seawater, but also of snow. The dunes were coated with hoarfrost. She could hear the sea in the distance, casting waves on the beach at regular intervals. She was in a hurry because she was afraid she’d change her mind. She passed the bench where she’d sat with Crooked Tamme. Now it was empty. She crossed the road, greeting everyone she saw politely, but not stopping to chat, and took a small path that led into the dunes, ending at Crooked Tamme’s house. The house was small, and the reeds on the roof had seen better days. But the leaded-glass windows sparkled, and the gray door with red-painted designs was well tended. The little garden in front of the house was enclosed by a whitewashed picket fence and protected from the wind by a few gorse bushes and sea buckthorn shrubs.

  Inga paused, took a deep breath, and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she knocked. Antje opened the door. “Inga, you’ve come to visit?” Surprise was written on her face. “Come in.”

  Inga followed Antje into the small sitting room. Although they’d known each other since childhood, Inga had never been in their house. Antje and her brother, Crooked Tamme, weren’t exactly outsiders, but their poverty meant that Tamme spent very little time in the tavern drinking, and Antje didn’t come to the women’s evening spinning meetings often because she couldn’t bring cocoa or biscuits to share.

  “So this is your home,” Inga said, looking around. The walls of the sitting room were whitewashed too, and the floor was covered in polished wooden boards from ships, some still showing parts of ships’ names. Tamme must have salvaged them illegally. Hanging over the simple wooden table in the middle of the room was an old ship’s lantern made of clean polished brass. On the table was a finely embroidered tablecloth. There were two chairs standing by the table. Old sea charts hung on the walls, and the doors to the box beds were closed. There was an old, dented, but spotless whale-oil lantern on a shelf and a window seat made of ship’s planks covered with rough linen. There was no display cabinet with porcelain, no grandfather clock, and certainly no delft tiles on the walls, but there was a big wool tapestry of the Rantum church. In spite of its simple furnishings, the room was much cozier than the sitting room in Inga and Arjen’s house.

  “It’s lovely,” she said with amazement, and touched a beach rose sitting on the table in a blue pottery cup. The room smelled of herbs, and Inga saw several bundles hung up by the oven to dry.

  “Have a seat,” Antje said, smoothing her apron. “What can I offer you?”

  “Nothing, thank you.” Inga remained standing. “Actually, I wanted to see Tamme.”

  Antje nodded as though she’d known Inga wasn’t there for her. “He’s out in the dunes. Half the village is there. They all want to know what’s going to happen to the schooner. But you can wait for him here.”

  Inga thought for a moment. Actually, the short walk through the village had exhausted her so much she would have loved to sit down. She wouldn’t have minded waiting there for hours if she had to. But Antje was there too, and she wasn’t sure that she would get a moment to speak privately with Crooked Tamme. So she declined.

  “Thank you, but I’m also going to the dunes. I’ll find him,” she said, and left the house.

  She dragged herself through the sand. Her dress was soon soaked at the hem from the frost, and her shoes slipped on the slick ground. Panting, she climbed the first dune and stopped to catch her breath. She could see the shipwreck, which lay on its side in the shallow water of low tide, shifting a little every now and then with the motion of the waves. The masts lay broken in the water, and a light wind tugged at the tattered sails, which had caught in the splintered wood.

  Two men were pulling a body out of the water. Inga recognized the beach overseer and Everett as they laid the corpse of the drowned man alongside a dozen other bodies. The gravedigger and his assistants shouldered their spades and walked into the dunes to prepare graves for the deceased. The villagers were watching the proceedings from the tops of the dunes on either side. Two women said the Lord’s Prayer for the dead. Inga turned to the left, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, looking for Crooked Tamme. She spotted him a bit below the top of the dune she stood on. He sat in a depression in the sand protected from the wind and was winding a piece of cord around a wooden block. Inga would’ve liked to walk down to him right away, but she was still gasping for breath. She was worried, too, about walking downhill. She’d become so heavy she was likely to fall. So she picked her way down carefully, step by step, holding the beach grass for support and grabbing a gorse bush by mistake, crying out as a thorn scratched her finger.

  Finally, she arrived. She straightened her skirts, took a deep breath, and ran her fingers through her curly hair.

  In the meantime, Tamme had finished winding the cord. He stood up, and when Inga waved to him, he came toward her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, looking worriedly at her flushed face.

  “I’ll be fine,” Inga panted, noticing all at once that people didn’t usually ask about her well-being. “I’ll be fine,” she repeated. “My life is a living hell.”

  Tamme looked concerned. “Does Arjen treat you well?”

  How should she respond to that? Her husband treated her as though she were an unwanted piece of furniture in his home.

  “He doesn’t even see me,” she explained sadly. She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone about her terrible marriage, but she couldn’t keep it in anymore, and Crooked Tamme had always been kind to her. Suddenly all the trouble she’d so carefully hidden from the world came pouring out. “He barely speaks to me. He doesn’t touch me. I truly believe that if I were lying dead on the kitchen floor, he would step over me and go about his business.”

  Crooked Tamme nodded, as though he’d already known. “It wasn’t a marriage for love,” he said.

  “It was, for me. I loved him. I still do. But he . . .” She stopped.

  “But then why did he marry you?” Crooked Tamme asked. “He was betrothed to Jordis.” Most villagers hadn’t understood why Arjen had broken with Jordis and turned to Inga. But then they decided that Jordis was a witch, and who wanted to marry a witch?

  Inga collapsed onto the cold, damp sand. The day had been so arduous that she couldn’t stand a moment longer. Tamme sat down next to her. Inga waited for him to say something, but he just picked up a stick and scratched around in the sand with it.

  “You wonder why Arjen married me even though he didn’t love me? I’ll tell you. I forced him to.” Now that she’d spoken the words, she felt a little lighter. As though she no longer had to carry the weight of her secret alone.

  Tamme continued to scratch in the sand. “Why?” he asked. “I mean, there are other men on
the island. Men who weren’t betrothed to someone else. Men who could love you. Why Arjen?”

  “Because I loved him. Is that so hard to understand?”

  Tamme tossed the stick aside. “I, too, was in love. I still am. But the woman I love doesn’t want me. And I would never force her.”

  “You’re right,” Inga admitted. “You’re smarter than I am. I thought that love would come with marriage, like the sun follows the rain.”

  “What will you do now? How will you put an end to your unhappiness?” Tamme asked.

  Inga started in surprise. “I can’t do anything about it. I swore before God to stay with my husband. He is my destiny.”

  “Do you truly believe that God wants you to be miserable?” Crooked Tamme shook his head in astonishment.

  Inga didn’t answer. What could she say? Besides, she had a more immediate problem. “The villagers believe that I’m with child,” she said.

  “I know. Antje told me.”

  “Well, I’m not. And I will never bear Arjen’s child.”

  Tamme looked at her questioningly.

  Inga saw kindness and empathy in his eyes, so she continued. “I’ve become so heavy. Everyone keeps staring at me. I can see what they’re thinking: She still isn’t with child. What’s going on? I hate the stares, and I hate the gossip. I feel like a failure. Inga is the pastor’s daughter, and she can’t even give her husband an heir. That’s what people are thinking. That’s why I said I was pregnant. I said the baby would be born in summer. But there is no baby.” Then she broke into tears. She sat on the ground, her dress full of sand, her plump hands in front of her face, and wept.

  Crooked Tamme sat next to her silently for a while. What could he say? But then he stroked Inga’s back gently and made soothing sounds, like mothers do to calm their infants. Inga sobbed harder, but after a while, she had no more tears. She had wept so hard that she felt weak. So weak she thought her legs would collapse like reeds if she tried to stand. But she didn’t get up; she didn’t want to. She wanted to sit here forever next to Tamme, who understood her and didn’t judge her.