The Island House (33 page)

Dan took it from her carefully. Their hands did not touch.

“Open it if you like. It’s quite the surprise packet.”

He glanced at Freya and with supreme delicacy prized up the lid. “But this is . . .”

She opened the stove with unnecessary vigor and pushed more peat into the firebox. “Yes. It’s a manuscript. A very small one. I’m hoping Katherine will be able to read it; my Latin, such as it is, isn’t up to the task.”

Dan closed the little box with care, and Freya hesitated before she sat down again. “Look, I know it seems inconsistent, but each time it happens”—she paused, and gathered herself—“these . . . visions—I don’t know what else to call them—grow stronger. More vivid. I see and hear more; more detail, that is.”

Dan answered the implied question with a nod, though he did not speak.

She leaned forward. “And they happen either when I’m here alone or if I touch you. Or when you touch me, but not always.” She inspected her hands.
Slow down.
“It doesn’t work with anyone else, Dan. Not your father, not Katherine—just with you.” She muttered the last words to her fingers before she looked up.

He was staring at her. She couldn’t read his expression.

“I feel like an idiot, trying to put this stuff into words. They can’t just be hallucinations. You see them too.” She heard herself pleading.

Dan sighed, a long exhale. “It is hard to understand, certainly, or even believe, but I came willingly to this house, did I not?” The ghost of a smile.

He was making her work for this conversation, but Freya was more practiced talking about feelings than Dan was; perhaps that was fair. She said, pensively, “I thought I was going crazy. I was going to ring my mum and ask if we had schizophrenics in the family.”

“Hmmm. Always a possibility, I suppose.” Was he amused? Freya could not tell.

“We should deal with this systematically, eliminate unlikely explanations one by one.” Sturdy Scots reductionism—a way of denying his own fears about insanity.

Freya shifted in her chair. “How? It’s
all
so unlikely.”

Dan said carefully, “Well, we should experiment. Find out what makes it happen. For instance . . .”

He pushed his chair back and walked around the perimeter of the table until he was standing beside her. “If I do this . . .” He picked up one of Freya’s hands—she did not resist as he turned it over—and the tingle was a clamor
inside
her head now, but nowhere else.

“Do you see anything, Freya?”

She shook her head. “You?”

Dan frowned. “No. Give me your other hand.”

Freya did what he asked.

“Stand up.” He helped her to her feet with a slight tug. She stood in front of him. Dan was a head taller than she, and one part of her, that small part that remained detached, saw tension as the muscles moved in the column of his throat.

“It’s waiting for something.” Her words were a nervous blurt.

Dan dropped Freya’s hands and rocked back a step. “For what?”

She rubbed her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s just . . . a sense. But what’s
it,
anyhow?”

He said, lightly, “Tomorrow is another day, there’s no hurry. I’ll away to my couch of dreams.” He gave her a rueful smile with a bit of mischief in it, and the severe lines on his face were transformed. He looked young suddenly.

Freya tried not to stare.
So, you are human and quite nice when you want to be.
“Good night, Dan. No nightmares now.”

He shook his head. “The couch and I shall keep them at bay by main force. We’re famous for it, we Scots. Wrestling with the Boggart.”

They both laughed. That was a first.

CHAPTER 22

A
ND THIS
was with the crucifix?” Katherine would not acknowledge the little spurt of jealousy. “Yes—that’s what Dad’s notes say.”

The lead box lay open between them on Michael’s desk.

Katherine extracted the little packet of vellum. “This certainly is a surprise.”

“But interesting. Dad didn’t have time to translate the manuscript and—”

The librarian interrupted. “It’s in Latin.”

“Yes. Not my forte, I’m sorry to say, and I was hoping that you . . .”

Katherine’s expression changed. She looked much more cheerful. “You’d like me to translate it?”

Freya nodded. “If you can. Only if it’s not too much trouble.”

Not too much trouble.
Katherine eyed the little manuscript. “I can, and I’d be delighted—thank you for trusting me.” Her eyes filmed abruptly.

Freya was uncertain what to do. She put a hand on Katherine’s shoulder; after a moment, the librarian covered it with her own and sniffed. “Silly of me.” Awkwardly she patted Freya’s hand. “Coffee, I think you said, then I’ll get started.”

It was the perfect day for digging, radiant and warm but not hot. A soft wind set the seed heads nodding as Freya led Dan toward the girl’s grave site.

The tent she’d rigged was still securely pegged and, as she lifted up one side, Dan’s eyes widened. “
Blunt force trauma,
as they say in the crime shows.” He pointed at the skull.

Freya nodded. “Yes, poor girl—well, I think it’s a girl. A violent death, but I don’t think it’s contemporary.” A slightly breathless laugh.

“Did you put the flowers around the grave?” Dan looked at Freya curiously.

“Yes. Unprofessional, I know.” She climbed down into the excavation. “I hope you don’t mind, but I want to bag up the bones so I can take them back to the house for study later. Can you pass the ziplock bags and the bucket of brushes down?”

“Happy to help.”

She smiled at him, shading her eyes as he passed the tools down. “All right, that would be great. The skull will be tricky to lift. We could start with that if you like.”

Dan smiled his crooked smile. “If I am to be of use, I shall need your hand.”

Freya saw what he meant—a big admission.

“Okay.” Expecting the thunderbolt, she still reached up to brace Dan while he half-slid, half-scrambled to the bottom of the trench. They were both breathless as he found a steady place to stand.

“Daniel, I’ve worked it out.” The morning sun was a corona for Freya’s head.

He squinted, trying to see her in the dazzle of light. “What?”

“It doesn’t happen when we’re relaxed.” She’d been about to say,
When we’re happy.

After a moment, he nodded. Very deliberately he held out his hand. “Let’s test the theory.”

She gave him a paintbrush, smiling.

The delicate work of bagging up the skeleton had taken a while. The skull was in worse condition than the other bones, and that
made it tricky to lift, but Freya was finally satisfied that they’d cleared the grave of all the bones that still existed. And she’d been pleased to find a few scattered beads behind the top of the spinal column. Amber was not as good as coins with an actual date, or pottery, but at least they were contemporaneous to the burial.

“So, what now?” It was definitely easier to talk to each other this morning, and Dan even accepted Freya’s help to pull him out of the trench without comment.

“We can come back for her later. She’ll be quite safe here.” Freya placed the bags of bones under the plastic sheeting and carefully repegged the edges of the tent. “I want to show you something else. I’ve been digging up there.” She pointed toward the ring stones.

“Where the crucifix was found?”

“Yes.” Freya sauntered beside him at an easy pace.

Dan was not sure if he was grateful for her consideration. People said you felt an amputated arm or leg long after it was gone; he felt, all the time, the shape of his amputated independence.

She paused at the edge of the outer ring of stones. “They’re something, aren’t they?” She patted the nearest monolith. “But why won’t you talk to me?”

“You’d not understand their jokes.”

Freya wheeled. “How do you know?” But she smiled at him. “Dad dug here, and he wrote about looking for an important grave site in this area. He thought it was linked to what he was seeing.”

“Seeing?” Dan’s tone sharpened.

She faced him. “From the time he found the crucifix, he saw them too.”

Dan frowned. “Them? What them?”

Freya said softly, “The people we see, Dan. We’ve never really talked about that, not properly: if you and I see the same things?”

Unconsciously, he backed away just a step or two. “What do you want me to do, Freya?”

“Try to tune in. I don’t know—follow your instincts.”

“Ah.” That fugitive smile. “And what shall you do?”

“I, Daniel Boyne, shall continue to dig.” She pointed to her trench. “I found pottery shards here the other day—high-status ware. Might even be Roman.”

He looked dubious. “A long way from home.”

She laughed. “I meant Roman Era, though it’s a puzzle why it would be north of Hadrian’s Wall. But it could be an offering vessel, and there might be more material to find. Why don’t you just look around—get a sense of the place.”

“I’ve never been good at sensing things.”

“
Things
have changed, Dan. Just . . . try.” Freya nodded and clambered down into her trench. Soon she was absorbed. More shards, perhaps a different pot with higher sides and . . .

“Freya, come and have a look.”

Her head popped up.

At the other side of the inner circle of stones, Dan was standing on a patch of ground where the grass was different—shorter, much less dense.

“It might be nothing.” His tone was neutral.

She brushed soil from her knees and hurried over. Dan was holding a long metal spike. He offered it to her. “Push down—the earth’s quite soft.”

Freya sank the spike into the soil. It went down easily, as if through fudge, then the metal hit something. “Stone.”

He nodded. “Feels like it.”

“Could just be stone-stone?”

“Maybe, but it’s big. I’ve tested quite an area with the spike. I think the object’s long but not so wide.” Dan swept his arms out to indicate dimensions. “You asked me to trust my instincts.” He grinned.

She flashed a wary smile.
Two speeds this one, stop and go.

It took more than an hour to fully uncover the stone. A rough oblong, the slab was more than two meters long, less broad, and at least three handspans thick. But it was worked stone—the marks of tools were still visible on the edges.

Dan leaned on a shovel at the bottom of the pit they’d dug and stared at the earth they’d shifted—it was piled up on the edges of the trench. “Maybe it’s from the Abbey buildings.”

“What’s it doing here, then?” Freya stared gloomily at what they’d found; stone, after all, was just stone. “Hang on.” She brushed an edge and stared up the nearest monolith. “Does this look like similar material to you—to the uprights, I mean?”

Dan glanced around the inner circle. “Maybe, but I’m a shipwright, not a stonemason.”

“But could this be one of the stones? The monks might have pushed it over and . . .”

“It’s not long enough to be one of the uprights.” Dan’s tone was reasonable.

Freya’s enthusiasm flickered out. “You’re right.” She scrambled out of the trench and stared again at the circle. “You know, the odd thing is there’s no offering stone. Dad noticed that.”