A Strange Scottish Shore Page 31

  “But that’s where I found the sealskin!”

  “The sealskin?”

  “Yes. The rubber suit. Except it wasn’t rubber—”

  “My God! You mean my wetsuit? You found it in the cave? When?”

  “The day before the feast. I went for a row—”

  “Where is it? Did you take it?”

  “Yes. I brought it back with me and put it away.”

  She had turned to face me, and her eyes were bright and large. “Can you show me?”

  I hesitated. “I’m not quite sure where it is. The workmen moved our things the next morning—”

  A voice interrupted us from the doorway. “Actually, I know exactly where that sealskin lies.”

  I turned. “Silverton. There you are.”

  “Where?” asked Helen. “Where did you put it?”

  “I found it among our things, as we cleaned up after the night of the feast.” He shrugged. “Put it away in a chest and locked it up, so the servants wouldn’t discover it.”

  • • •

  That night, I waited for some time after Silverton’s breath had lapsed into sleep before I rose from the bed. I wanted to be absolutely sure he wouldn’t stir.

  As I swung my legs to the floor, the baby moved inside me. He had been restless all day, as if my own unease had communicated itself through the walls of the womb. Nobody else had noticed this disquiet, not even my husband. Put it away in a chest and locked it up, he’d said, shrugging, as if the location of the sealskin were nothing more than a curiosity. An innocent coincidence.

  The air was still and nearly black. In the neighboring chamber—which was part of our new quarters, connected to this room by means of a doorway recently cut in the stone—slept Helen. In order to reach her, an intruder would have to enter through our bedchamber first. Once Magnus returned, and Helen was restored to his bed as lady of the castle, her room would become the nursery for our own child. So I told myself, as I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the dying red light of the brazier in the middle of the room.

  But my nerves would not settle. The prickling of my skin seemed to lift each hair. Everywhere I went, these past five days, I had felt it, ebbing and flowing, like a piece of music searching for a climax. Had felt Max. Reaching out for me, just beyond the limits of my perception. Now it found a new pitch, so high and so strong that the baby felt it, too.

  I placed my feet on the rug and slid from the bed. Behind me, Silverton made a small, distressed noise. I held myself still, waiting for another sound, while the air beat and beat around me, but nothing came.

  Softly I walked across the hard floor and found the chest we had brought from our little hut by the sea. I ran my fingers across the beaten wood and found the latch. Opened the lid. Our clothes lay on top, folded neatly. I dug my fingers underneath the layers of woolen cloth until they touched the hard, familiar surface of my notebook. The one Silverton had brought from Edinburgh, the one Hunter had been so desperate to find.

  To this day, I don’t know what instinct drove me to creep next to the brazier and its faint light, to flip through the pages until I came to the drawing of the cliffs of Naxos. Put it away in a chest, Silverton said, shrugging, and in that instant a cold draft went through my veins, and I knew a desperate need to find that notebook, to assure myself that nothing had changed, that the pencil likeness of a woman did not now exist on one of its pages.

  I tried now to ignore the electric charge that titillated my palms and the tips of my fingers, originating from somewhere inside the notebook itself. But I could no more ignore that sensation than I could ignore the energetic twitching of the child inside me. I could no more stop myself from turning those pages than I could stop my own heart from beating. And when I flipped a final page and the familiar shape of the Naxos cliffs took shape in the dim, red light, I already knew what I would find.

  The pencil drawing of a woman, whose face I now perceived to be mine.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Silverton said, over my shoulder.

  I jumped and turned, nearly oversetting the brazier. Silverton caught my arm and drew me to my feet.

  “I drew that the night we were imprisoned here. Couldn’t sleep. Saw you lying there in my lap, and I found the pencil inside the portfolio, your pencil, which I kept all those years because your fingers had touched it—hush—”

  “Don’t let go,” I cried, into his chest. “Keep hold of me.”

  “My God, what’s wrong?”

  “Let’s go back to bed. Take me into bed.”

  He swung me up and onto the bed, under the covers, and I burrowed myself against him, shaking, clutching, lifting his shirt over his head, lifting away mine, needing his skin, his muscle and bone, a merger of me into him, him and me into one indivisible whole. I don’t think I intended copulation, but the two of us had not come together as man and wife since the morning of the feast, the longest abstinence of our marriage, and neither of us could withstand the shock of nakedness. Inevitably he turned me on my back and united us, murmuring words of comfort into my ear. I wrapped my legs and arms around him and told him not to stop, not ever to stop until morning, to keep us joined like this until the sun rose: as if the sun could hold back what was to come. And gamely he sought to obey me, to slow the beat of movement, to regulate the heat and friction as we ground together, while I held on in fury, fighting capitulation with all my strength. I relished the scratch of his beard on my cheek and the weight of his elbows against my sides, for they anchored me to earth. But you cannot resist a tide like that forever. Nature will have her way. Nature created this act for a single, ruthless purpose. At last my own flesh betrayed me, and the sound of my cry forced Silverton’s answering shout. We lay panting and tearful, wholly entwined, drained of all strength, and I gasped out, Don’t move, don’t leave, and he promised me he wouldn’t, of course he wouldn’t ever leave.

  But as I held his wet, quivering body with mine, I knew it didn’t matter. His promise didn’t matter. He wasn’t the one who was going to leave.

  • • •

  Possibly we fell asleep, or possibly we only slipped into the demi-consciousness that comes after intense physical passion. I only know we both jolted into alertness at the same instant, by the same sound—a woman’s scream penetrating the thick stone walls of the hallway outside our door.

  Silverton leapt out of bed and dashed naked through the doorway into Helen’s chamber. The door itself was already open, as was the door to our own room. I found my shift, damp and wrinkled beneath me, and I pulled it on and heaved out of bed in the same motion. Silverton emerged from Helen’s room, pale and shocked. “She’s gone,” he said.

  I threw him his shirt and ran to the door. Outside, my waiting woman knelt weeping over the body of the soldier who should have been guarding the entrance. A pool of dark blood spread from beneath his head; I could smell it in the air, bright and coppery. She looked up and said in Norse, through her tears, “I knew something wasn’t right, I came to see if you were well—”

  I fell to my knees next to her. Silverton was right behind me. He touched the man’s head, his hands. “Still warm,” he said. “Can’t have been long. Did you see whether her door was closed, when you woke earlier?”

  “It must have been. I never went to sleep.”

  Our eyes met above the bare, braided head of the waiting woman, and we shared an instant of horror. Had we remained watchful, had we not sunk together into oblivion, we should have heard if anything were amiss.

  And the intruder, if he came, must have passed within feet of our joined bodies.

  Silverton reached out and took my shoulder. “Stay here. I’ll go downstairs and canvass anyone awake.”

  “No. I must come with you.”

  “The danger—”

  “Silverton,” I said, “there is not a chance under heaven I’ll stay in that damned ro
om without you.”

  • • •

  Half an hour later, we rode postilion northward across a moonlit meadow. The gale had blown out; the sky was clear and tranquil, though the air remained damp. The stableboy had said he’d seen a man steal into the stable with a woman just before midnight and ready a pony, and the stableboy was too wise to intercede, but he went into the castle and told the waiting woman, who was his sweetheart. They had ridden north along the coast, he said. Wasn’t sure where. There was nothing that way for miles. No anchorage except for a small inlet, used occasionally by fishermen as shelter during the sudden gales.

  The pony was of that breed native to these shores, short and shaggy and rough-gaited but immensely strong. He bore our weight without complaint. We had eschewed a saddle, and I sat astride in the hollow between Silverton’s thighs and the pony’s withers, clutching tufts of mane for balance. Silverton had wrapped a cloak around us both, and the heat of his long, ungainly body warmed mine. His chin hovered next to my head; his beard scratched the tender skin of my temple. Perhaps a quarter hour behind us rode half a dozen sleepy guardsmen, fully armed, but I knew we wouldn’t need them. Even if they arrived in time, a show of force would accomplish nothing.

  The moon was nearly full, gilding the grass and cliffs, the silver-dark sea to our left. The breeze smelled of brine and rain. I felt it whip along my cheeks until my eyes watered. I felt the drumbeat of the horse beneath me, the flex of Silverton’s body at my back, and I thought I should always remember them. I should always remember each sensation crowding this particular hour.

  The terrain was hilly, and as we descended the last slope, curving down to meet the edge of the little inlet, Silverton slowed the pony to an impatient walk and then swung off. He kissed me briefly. “I’ll go have a look. You’ll be all right?”

  I nodded and watched him turn away to descend the bank in his familiar, loose-limbed gait. The moon touched his shoulders and the top of his head. He reached the bottom of the slope, where the cliffs had crumbled away to form a notch, and disappeared. I heard the faint crunch of his footsteps on the stones, and then nothing.

  The pony shifted beneath me and pulled at the bit. I was not accustomed to horses, had scarcely ever ridden one. I slipped to the ground and gripped the animal’s headstall. I strained my senses for any sign of what was happening on the beach below, but there was only the rush of the waves, the sporadic hiss of the breeze along the cliffs. Above all, the thump of my pulse as it struck the inner part of my ear. The tick of my nerves, the tingling along my bones. I closed my eyes and leaned against the pony’s neck, and the image of a man took shape before me. Not any man I knew. He was tall and gaunt and white-haired, wearing a strangely cut jacket of brown tweed, and his eyes were a deep, melancholy shade of blue as he stared into mine. He seemed to be trying to tell me something.

  My eyes flew open. I released the pony’s bridle and started down the hill, so quickly that my feet slipped on the damp grass as it gave way into gravel. The soles of my shoes were thin, and the stones dug painfully into my feet, and I couldn’t seem to breathe. Though my lungs gasped for air, my chest would not obey. At last I stumbled free of the cliffs to the base of the beach, where the inlet opened up before me like a ghost, and for a moment, spinning one way and the other, I saw only the shingles and the driftwood and the ragged cliffs, the few acres of empty sea shimmering in the moonlight.

  Then movement, in the shadows to the left.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and called out Silverton’s name. The cliffs echoed back the sound, but no reply came. Only the slapping of the waves, the rustle of wind. I peered into the night, where I had seen the shadows move, and it seemed to me I saw a pair of figures there, like specters, arranged near the fallen tree where Silverton and I had met.

  My throat closed in panic. I tried to call out again, but all I could voice was a strangled squeak. Move, I told myself. Move. But a peculiar paralysis seemed to have seized me, and I had to drive myself forward, one leg and then another, while a series of shocks traveled down my spine and lifted the hairs on my skin. The image of the white-haired man rose again in my mind. The tide was out, and the beach was still wet. I slipped on the shingles, recovered, slipped again. Called out again, and this time my voice engaged, the sound came out, and Silverton’s name rang desperately from the rocks.

  “Truelove?”

  “Yes! Where are you?”

  “Here. By the cliffs.”

  His voice sounded clipped and unnatural. I paused, struggling for breath.

  “Is anyone with you?” I called out.

  “Yes.”

  I gathered myself and plunged forward. The shadows grew sharper, and I saw there were not two figures but three. Two of them stood close together, as if embracing. A yard or so apart stood Silverton, taller than either of them by more than half a foot, his hair catching the full force of the moonlight.

  Another voice called out. Not Silverton’s.

  “Prim and Proper! Knew you couldn’t be far behind. Damn, I should have brought s’mores.”

  “Brought what?” said Silverton.

  “S’mores. S-apostrophe-M-O-R-E-S. You start a fire and make them on a beach at night. Hershey bar and graham cracker and roasted marshmallow. Damn fine. After your time, though. Maybe Mum’s heard of them. Mum? S’mores?”

  There was a broken-voiced No.

  “Huh. I guess it’s an American thing. Well, come on over, P and P. Don’t be shy. We were having a nice little chat, the three of us. Maybe you can help us out. You know, with the female perspective. Plus, you being pregnant and all.”

  I had been creeping closer during the course of this exchange, until the ghostly figures resolved into human beings, Silverton standing with his back to the sea, Hunter and Helen facing him. I had thought Hunter must be holding her in some way, binding her, but that was only a trick of the darkness. She stood near him but independent, holding her arms around her middle. The moonlight cast deep, frightening shadows on her face, and I thought I saw the glitter of tears beneath her eyes. By now, I was about a dozen feet away from her, and I came to an uncertain stop.

  “Closer, closer,” said Hunter. “Mum’s got a big decision to make. She needs your support. Don’t you, Mum?”

  Helen shook her head and turned away.

  “All right, all right. I’ll do the explaining, I guess. I mean, you’re probably thinking to yourself, hell, why don’t my big, strong hubby just do his commando moves and decapitate that motherf er? Then we can all go back to our nice, cold castle and snuggle under the blankets together. Right?”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Silverton said.

  “Nah, you won’t do it. Because it’s Mum’s decision, ain’t it? Big, big decision. A tough one, I’m not going to lie. And I’m sorry for putting you in this position, Mum. I really am. It’s just that I had no choice.”

  “You had all kinds of choices, Hunter,” Silverton said. “You’ve just decided to make the one that places your own mother in a most devastating position.”

  “Me? Hell, no. Nobody puts Mummy in a corner.” He laughed. “Yeah, you won’t get that one, either. Shame.”

  I said icily, “Perhaps, Mr. Spillane, you might have the goodness to enlighten me on the nature of this decision to which you’ve forced your mother.”

  “Oh, ho. You know my name, do you? I guess you and Mum had a heart-to-heart or something. That’s nice. I’m touched. Poor Mum hasn’t had a night out with the girls in years, I’ll bet. Cosmos and kale salad and how your man always leaves the milk out on the counter, all that s . She needs some good girlfriends in her life. So maybe you can help us out here. Asking for a friend. If everyone you loved were living on the other side of a door—the other side of a massively wealthy door, check it, millions of dollars, fancy cars and houses and f ing kick-ass antibiotics whenever you get a sniffle—everyone you loved except your hot Viki
ng stud, sadly, ’cause he don’t come with this deal—would you walk though that door?”

  “Helen?” I said. “What does he mean?”

  She whispered back, “He means he’s got the children. On the other side.”

  “The other side? The other side of where?”

  She lifted her hand and pointed to the rock face, and for a moment I didn’t quite understand. Did not comprehend what she meant by this, because how could a pair of young children become somehow imbedded on the other side of a cliff?

  And then I remembered. The cave.

  “They’re inside the cave?” I said, even though I knew that wasn’t quite right, that I had missed the point. I had missed it deliberately, because it was too awful to encompass, too terrible a thing for one human being to do to another.

  Helen crumpled into the sand, still staring at the faint, shadowed fissure in the rock. “No. Not any longer. Not here, anyway.”

  “J Ch ,” said Hunter. “F ing women. Drama, drama, drama. I mean, get to the point already, right? Here’s the story, Prim. That cave, right? I think you know it? That’s kind of my own personal portal. My dude, back in my time, who has the same juice as your boy Max. That’s where he puts me down and picks me up. You get what I’m saying?”

  “Good God.” I turned to Silverton. “You’re right. There is someone else. Someone else with Max’s power.”

  Silverton kept his gaze on Hunter’s face. “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter who. We’ll call him Hollander, okay? I’m not saying it’s his real name. Let’s just say for the sake of having a name. We have this arrangement, Hollander and me, by which he does his hocus-pocus and gets me out of Dodge, and my friends back home don’t f ing kick his ass into his armpits, right? And that cave is The Spot. That’s where it goes down. That’s how he finds me. You know the drill, right?”