by Caroline Lea
It’s the voice you might use with a frightened animal, but gradually, my breathing slackens, and my senses come back.
The tingling in my hands and feet fades and I’m able to see the gulls bombing the ocean, the clouds muscling over the horizon. I fill my lungs and close my eyes and turn my face towards the sun so that everything is red.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I think I would be calmer if I could just see Dot.’
He turns away from me, shaking his head. ‘Not yet.’
And I wonder what I have to say to be able to see her. I wonder what she has to say about me. Do we need to tell the same story? I won’t do it: I won’t blame her, and I know she won’t blame me. Perhaps we will be stuck here for ever, telling opposite stories.
A peregrine falcon sweeps past in the direction of the cliffs. It will sit like a church gargoyle. When it sights its prey, it will launch silently and smash into the bird mid-flight. Burst of feathers, then blood and bone: fierce life and sudden death.
O’Farrell stops walking and tugs gently on my elbow. ‘I have something for you. I nearly forgot.’ He reaches into his pocket and I have a moment to brace myself before he places something in my hand. Cold metal with a weight to it. I know what it is, but I force myself to look anyway.
The metal heart.
‘I thought it might help you remember.’
A duck thuds skywards. The peregrine falcon plummets.
‘I don’t remember anything,’ I say. The heart – Dot’s metal heart – is cold and heavy in my hand. I remember the first time she had held it and passed it to me: it was warm and we’d both laughed with delight at finding something so beautiful.
It’s a promise, she’d said.
I didn’t have to ask what the promise was for. But now that promise is chill against my fingers.
The peregrine strikes. The duck doesn’t make a sound.
John’s smile wavers. ‘Tell me about when you saw Angus last night.’
I close my eyes and picture grappling with him on the barrier. I imagine his hands around my arms. His voice was loud. Then the push, the drop, the cold water.
I don’t want to remember more than that.
The heart is about the size of my clenched hand. Cesare told me that each man’s heart is the size and weight of his own fist. My heart cannot be the same weight as this, surely. It feels so much heavier, thudding relentlessly in my chest.
‘When did you last see Angus?’ John asks. His expression is earnest, kind. Perhaps I could tell him everything I remember. But then what? Once you’ve told part of your story, it so easily grows and changes in other people’s minds, in other people’s mouths. Once you have told your story, it no longer belongs to you.
‘I can’t remember,’ I say again.
John O’Farrell walks away and I follow him, even though I feel light-headed now.
‘I feel faint.’ I turn away from him and from the thought of the heart. Then there’s the sea: waves like a heartbeat, bubbles of air, the smooth surface, as though nothing has happened. My mouth is parched. I close my eyes. I feel a surge of nausea.
‘Are you well?’ O’Farrell takes my arm. ‘Here, sit. This heather is dry.’
I sit and he crouches next to me, his eyes creased with worry. I take deep breaths and keep my eyes closed for longer than I need to. I can feel him watching me.
‘Are you strong enough to walk on the beach? I know you want to rest, but I need the truth from you. You must try to recollect, Con.’
I nod and he helps me to my feet.
As we start to walk, the peregrine sweeps past, towards the cliffs, where its scrape will be. In its claws, the limp, dark shape of the duck it has killed. The peregrine soars, elegant and beautiful: from this distance you cannot see the blood masking its beak and face.
The sea has dropped, sinking back onto the mud flats, exposing the wrecks of old ships and leaving a broad line of seaweed to mark the point of high tide.
I step onto the sand and walk down towards the sea, stopping between the line of seaweed and the sea – between the tide lines.
O’Farrell doesn’t follow me but stays back above the seaweed that marks the high tide.
‘I didn’t know you were superstitious,’ I say.
There is an old proverb that things of the devil have the most power in the stretch of sand between high and low tide, because the land there belongs neither to the earth nor the sea.
I can feel O’Farrell watching me carefully as I walk over the smooth patch of sea-scoured sand. Back where O’Farrell is standing, there are strings of bladderwrack, as well as things the sea has heaved up: pieces of metal, a scrap of cloth from a shirt, a man’s leather boot, dug into the sand as if mid-kick. It seems to me that the superstition is wrong: the high-tide line is the thing that should be feared. That’s where all the bad luck lands. That’s where things lost in a storm would wash up. My skin crawls.
I beckon to O’Farrell. He hesitates, then shakes his head and walks down to stand next to me.
‘I want to know what happened,’ he says. ‘If you tell me the truth quickly then I can help you.’
‘I don’t know the truth.’
I don’t tell him that no one can help me. It is only a matter of time now, and I am spinning out the hours like gold, hoping to save my sister, hoping to avoid the rope.
‘Come on, Con,’ John says, and there is a touch of impatience in his voice. His hands clench for a moment, although when he sees me notice, he puts them into his pockets. I fight down the quick, dark terror that clutches at me. I remind myself that he means me no harm. He is simply a man, with a man’s big hands and strong muscles. He doesn’t understand how the slightest movement from him might seem like a threat. He doesn’t know how a man’s muscles might frighten a woman into silence, or might make her nod yes, when every nerve in her body is howling no.
John’s eyes are fixed upon mine, and I know he is frustrated, though he thinks he’s hiding it. And he won’t understand how my whole body is thrumming with the knowledge that he could, if he wanted to, crack my skull like an egg, or cut off my airway with one of his hands. He may say things to me, like Quickly, Con, or, Come on, Con, and he may not mean them as threats. But threats they are, all the same. If I wanted to make myself equally menacing to an angry man, I would need to carry a knife. I would have to remove it from my belt during conversations, and slowly sharpen it while he trembled.
John reaches out to me now. ‘You’re not well.’
I tense my arm and flinch away. ‘Don’t touch me!’
‘Con,’ he says, his eyes shocked, his voice soft. ‘I would never hurt you.’
And he reaches for my arm again, and my breathing is loud, because all I can think of is Angus. His face, his breath, the weight of him.
A memory clicks into place.
Oh, God, the weight of him. The weight of his body as we dragged him, imagining his eyes staring at us. I’d refused to look properly at his face, afraid that it would come back to me in nightmares. Instead, I’d tried to see him as a set of body parts. Feet. Hands. Chest. Mouth. Eyes.
I put my hands over my own eyes now and I know I have to confess, fully. I have to tell John everything I’ve remembered, or Dot will never be free.
I swallow. I breathe.
Very quietly, I say, ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident.’
John takes his hand from my arm. ‘Kill who?’
I can’t say the name.
He pulls my hands from my face. ‘Kill who, Con?’ ‘Angus,’ I whisper.
Now he jerks from me. ‘Angus is dead?’ His face is stunned, his eyes wide and wary.
My eyes fill with tears and my throat aches. I know that my next words will condemn me, but I have to speak out. I have to take the blame.
‘It was an accident,’ I say. I close my eyes and I try to explain it, just as I remember it.
‘Angus ran along the barrier. I was so frightened. I wanted . . . He grabbed and I . . . We fe
ll. But he got caught in the rocks. I put him in the quarry. It was nothing to do with . . . It was all my fault. I’m the one to blame.’
I wait for his rage. I wait for him to call the guards, for them to drag me away and lock me up.
But he doesn’t look angry as he puts a hand upon my shoulder. He looks devastated. His eyes are red, as if he is trying to ward off tears. He swallows twice and then he says, ‘The body. The body in the quarry. You . . . believe it was Angus?’
I stare at him. I do not understand. It is as though he is trying to tell me something but I have lost the ability to make sense of language.
‘It was Angus,’ I whisper. ‘I saw him.’
‘Oh,’ he says, and he pulls me into a tight embrace. ‘Oh, you poor wee lassie.’ His pullover smells of bitter wool and the sea and, for a moment, it is like being embraced by my father, or by Dot, who loves me more than anyone else.
Dizzy, I close my eyes and lean against him. I brace myself, although part of me knows what he is going to say.
‘That body in the quarry,’ he says. ‘That wasn’t Angus. We don’t know where Angus is.’
John takes me back to the chapel to lie down. My head is pounding and twice I have retched and spat sour vomit into the gorse.
He will send a doctor to see me, he promises. He just needs to talk to Major Bates, to try to understand exactly what happened. In the meantime, they’ve dragged a mattress into the chapel, and I must stay here for one night, just while they discuss what they should do next.
I nod, barely hearing him. I go in whatever direction he leads me: up the hill, into the chapel, over to my bed, where he leaves me, with a promise to return tomorrow.
Then he shuts the door behind him and I am alone again in the darkness.
John’s words rattle in my head like sea stones.
That body in the quarry. That wasn’t Angus . . .
You poor wee lassie.
Time pools, unspools, unravels. I run my finger over the smooth edge of the metal heart. I heft it like a stone. I tap it lightly against my skull, then hold it to my temple. The beat of my pulse hammers up the metal into my fingertips.
I watch the chapel window. Light, then darkness – the true darkness that signals the end of summer. Darkness is the first promise of winter, when everything clamps shut for ever.
Across the water, in the Kirkwall morgue, lies a body and I cannot allow myself to think of it. Every time I do, my panic rises, like acid in my throat. Instead, I focus on the light in the window. Outside the chapel, there will be stars, like scattered seeds across the night sky. There is a glow in the window as a crescent moon sharpens itself against the night.
But it is no good. There is a body in the morgue and I’m not safe. I know it. Something is coming for me.
Constance
I jolt awake again and again, but each time I fall back into a dream that is worse than the last. Water bubbling over me, hands holding me under.
O’Farrell is in Kirkwall; he says he wants to save me but I am certain it will be a hanging. What else would they do with me, now I’ve confessed? My head aches. In the half-darkness and the spill of moonlight from the window, I try to catch sight of my reflection. The face that stares back at me is wide-eyed and pale. I can’t look into her deep-socketed eyes.
I curl around myself on the mattress.
I wake. I sleep.
I am trying to swim but my limbs are lead. On the sea floor is the wrecked hull of the Royal Elm. The dead sailors wave their bony fingers at me and grin their skullish grins. This is where I should be, cold on the ocean floor.
I wake. I sleep.
In my dream, Cesare and Dot are standing in the boat, talking about me.
It wasn’t her fault, Dot says.
Cesare answers, She is mad, I think.
Dot says, Throw her overboard and see if she floats.
They wrap their arms around me, and for a moment, I am close to them again. I cry out, reaching for them, Don’t let me go! They drop me into the cold water. I sink like a stone.
I wake. I sleep.
Seals circle me, laughing. Under their skin, each one is a beautiful woman.
When I wake again, it is dark and the door is opening. My heart leaps in my chest. A figure is walking towards me and the face is in shadow. I lie very still, pretending to be asleep. My blood beats in my ears but I keep my breathing steady. Under my bed, somewhere, is the sharp piece of metal I’d found under the font.
Who would sneak into the chapel at night? Is it the guard, come to check on me? Was I crying out in my sleep, perhaps? The nightmare returns to me: Dot and Cesare’s arms releasing me as she threw me into the water.
The figure moves closer and I open one eye. It is too slim to be John O’Farrell; it must be one of the guards – the boots squeak. I hold my breath.
Please go away. Please leave me alone.
A spill of silver moonlight casts his shadow onto the chapel floor. He looms over me, huge, then takes another step. He is standing right next to my bed. I can feel the heat from his body. I can hear the rasp of his breath.
Please. Please. I lie very still, hoping, waiting.
The figure leans over me. There is a moment of silence and then he grabs me, clamps his hand over my mouth, using his other arm to pin me down by my throat.
I open my eyes and try to scream, but the sound is muffled, as if I am underwater.
‘Wheesht!’
Angus MacLeod’s face is close to mine. There is blood on his forehead and his face is bruised and covered with dirt. I buck my body, squirming under him, struggling to breathe, struggling to scream, but I can’t gather enough air. There’s the smell of sweat and something darker – a feral, animal stench, as if he’s emerged from under the ground, as if he’s crawled here from some dark grave.
I swing my legs, trying to kick him, trying to fight free of his weight, but his whole body is on mine now. He presses down harder on the arm that is across my throat.
‘Lie still,’ he says. ‘Or you’ll be sorry.’
I do as he says. Dark spots cloud my vision; the blood hammers in my ears. I know that it would take only a little more pressure for him to crush my windpipe.
My vision blurs and I stare at him, begging with my eyes.
Air, I think. I need air.
‘If I let go,’ he says, ‘you won’t scream?’
I shake my head.
He releases me and I cough and cough, gasping deep lungfuls, my throat burning.
‘How . . .?’ I choke, my voice a strangled rasp. ‘You fell into the sea. I thought –’
‘Thought I’d drowned, did you? Or been carried out to sea? I washed up on the north of the island. Hit my head. It took me some time to get back. And I overheard some of the guards say they were keeping you here. So I thought I’d come to see you.’
‘Go back to Kirkwall,’ I say, coughing. ‘Your friends will be worried.’
‘I don’t care about them,’ he says. ‘I want to see you.’ He runs a finger down my cheek, down onto my neck.
‘Did I hurt you?’ he asks. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you, but I thought you might scream.’
‘You didn’t hurt me,’ I lie.
He strokes my neck. My skin crawls, but I don’t want to make him angry by flinching away, so I stay very still.
Leave, I think. Please leave.
‘Are you happy to see me?’ he asks.
I nod. The slightest inclination of my head.
He smiles. ‘Say it.’
‘I’m happy to see you.’ My voice cracks.
‘You hurt me on the barrier,’ he says. ‘I could have drowned.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. I turn my head towards the door. Surely the guard will have heard our voices.
As if reading my mind, Angus says, ‘The guard? John O’Farrell took him back to Kirkwall. I watched him go. So we have some time.’ He smiles and strokes my cheek again. A chill runs through me.
‘Don’t look like that,�
� he says. ‘Don’t be frightened.’
I try my best not to look frightened. My teeth are chattering. I clench my jaw.
‘Relax,’ he says. ‘Smile.’ He strokes my face.
I force my mouth into a fixed rictus.
‘That’s better,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t that feel better?’
I nod. My throat aches. My head is pounding. I feel a tear running down my cheek and I try to stop crying, because he wants me to seem happy. And perhaps, if I do as he tells me, he will leave me alone.
‘There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re old friends, aren’t we?’
I nod.
He leans in and kisses my cheek. His stubble scratches my skin. I close my eyes and hold my breath, trying not to inhale the stale, mushroomy smell of damp and darkness.
‘Look at me,’ he says. I open my eyes and force myself to look at him.
There are tears in his eyes. ‘I love you,’ he says. ‘But you’ve hurt me so much. You kept hiding from me and pushing me away.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.
His hand is on my neck, caressing me. ‘I said I love you, Con. Did you hear me?’ The pressure on my neck increases slightly.
I nod. ‘Yes,’ I whisper.
‘So, say it.’
My head aches and acid rises in my throat. My breathing is loud and fast.
Words, I tell myself. They’re just words. And perhaps, if I say them, he will let me go. Perhaps that will be enough for him and he will let me be.
Except I know he won’t. And I hate him. I hate his hopeful, tear-streaked face. But I can sense the pressure on my neck increasing again. And I remember the weight of his arm on my neck. I remember the way my vision narrowed, the way my chest burned. I remember that he hadn’t looked angry at all. The expression on his face had been calm, focused. Cold.
‘Say it,’ he says.
I hate you, I think.
‘I love you,’ I gasp.
‘Oh, Con,’ he says. ‘It’s going to be perfect. We’re going to be perfect. You’ll see.’
He crushes his mouth against mine and, as he forces my lips open and pushes his tongue past my teeth, my stomach twists with nausea.
Under my back, between my shoulder blades, there is something hard and cold. I recognize the shape: the metal heart. I shift my weight and he thinks I’m responding to him.