A Handful of Ash

by Marsali Taylor

  Nate’s face swum again before my eyes, floating, with the scarring from the tiny fish on his cheeks.

  ‘Otway’s a landsman. The sea was usually there, so he expected it would be, or would be soon. I don’t think he felt guilty. Annette’s death was Nate’s fault, and he’d got exactly the punishment he’d deserved. His pretending to have magical powers had killed Annette, so he got a witch’s death.’

  ‘But that is what you think he did,’ Anders said. ‘You cannot prove that he did it.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Gavin conceded. ‘The phone calls, the sock, and the sand are all we have so far, and we can’t hold him on those. His lawyer’s pointed out that he admitted to being in the area that night, and that he had the dogs with him, so he was hardly likely to commit a murder.’

  ‘They’re very well trained,’ I said. ‘If he said “sit, stay” they’d have done it. Shaela heard a snuffling noise, like a dog. Is there any chance she can identify the devil she saw talking to Nate?’

  ‘She’ll recognise the suit, once we find it. He’s denying all of that, and from his confidence it’s not at his house. I presume he ditched it, after us nearly catching him last night. We’ll find it. Rolled up in a black bag and shoved under a stone or overhang of peat bank somewhere on the road between Scalloway and Lerwick, is my guess.’

  I remembered the officers on the hill as we drove to Mass. ‘Was that what they were searching for?’

  Gavin nodded. ‘Every officer we have. The suit’s distinctive, custom-made, delivered to him at his house. If we find it, if Shaela can identify it, that’s strong evidence. If we don’t, we may trace it from the maker’s end, and show her a photograph. Of course his lawyer will say he hid it because he didn’t want the ridicule of being known as a fake Satanist.’

  ‘Was it Peter who went back to Nate’s house, the person his mother heard going in?’

  ‘Naturally Otway says it wasn’t. I think he was pushing the witchcraft motive. It’s like you said: there was no need for Nate to display all the trappings. There was an empty cardboard box in the bottom of the wardrobe, and I think that’s where the chalice and black candles and all the rest of it normally lived. The last person to handle them was someone with gloved hands, and there’d be no reason for Nate to wear gloves, in his own house.’ He stood up, and I stood too, to let him pass me. ‘It’s all paperwork now. They won’t need to pay my B&B here in Shetland for that.’ He picked up a cardboard tube from the shelf and looked at Reidar. ‘Thank you for the drinking chocolate. I’ll try that fly of yours next time I’m after sea trout in bright conditions.’

  ‘It will lure them from under a metre of weed,’ Reidar promised.

  I went up the steps ahead of him, and we strolled along the pontoon together. Gavin had the tube tucked under one arm. I wondered what it was, but didn’t want to ask.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with your witches,’ Gavin said. ‘They’re just bored girls with fevered imaginations and not enough to do. We leaned on them pretty heavily about their hocus pocus up on the hill. Your local officer has his eye on them now, and he’ll make it obvious they need to keep their noses clean.’

  ‘I’m going to have to re-laminate one piece of my deck, where the peat lay longest,’ I said. ‘It’s an excuse to see if I can still remember my fibreglass skills – but they needn’t think I’m happy about it.’

  ‘They don’t,’ Gavin said. ‘I told them I’d been on board, and recognised them. That quietened them down. You’ll get it paid for, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you see them scrubbing the pontoon come spring, as their community service.’

  ‘I’ll avoid dark alleys, all the same.’

  ‘You should.’

  ‘And the fourth witch was Sarah from the canteen?’

  ‘She knew Rachel had run, and thought it was worth trying to pretend she’d been the other prisoner, rather than have her mum find out what she’d been up to when she was supposedly at her pal’s house watching teen movies.’ He smiled in the moonlight. ‘The others set me right on that one, with emphasis. She’ll have to keep clear of them for a bit, which will do her no harm.’

  ‘So Rachel wasn’t anything to do with any of it?’

  ‘Nothing at all to do with any of it. The lead witch told us all about it in the end, when the Lerwick constabulary told her she wasn’t leaving the cell until she’d made a statement we believed. You and Rachel, the rival witches, according to Nate’s gossip. They thought they’d lost their devil. They got the shock of their lives when he turned up. She said they weren’t going to hurt you with that nasty-looking knife, just give you a bit of a fright.’

  ‘Of course.’ I unlocked the heavy gate for him, and swung it open with a clang. ‘When do you go back to Inverness?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Like I said, it’s all paperwork now. The Lerwick men will take over.’

  He was going, and I didn’t want him to, yet I didn’t know what to say to stop him. I left the gate open, and came through it with him. ‘Thanks for the crewing job, last Saturday.’

  ‘Thanks for taking me. I enjoyed it. One of the other Inverness officers has a boat up in Fortrose, and he keeps saying I could crew for him. I’ll maybe try it.’

  ‘It might clash with fishing days.’

  ‘Still days are the best, for fish.’

  ‘No use for sails,’ I agreed.

  ‘How’s your headache, now you’ve destroyed their figure?’

  I rubbed my temple. ‘Still there. I think the college central heating is going for me.’

  My heart was thumping like a single-cylinder engine. My throat felt as if it would choke any words I tried to force through it. ‘Gavin,’ I said tentatively. The name hung in the air between us. He didn’t turn his head, but I knew he was listening. ‘I was wondering if your offer of Christmas was still open.’

  He turned towards me. The moon poured silver on the curve of his brows, his cheekbones, the long, rather wooden line of his mouth. I thought for a moment he might try to kiss me, and I braced myself not to panic this time. But he didn’t. He took the card roll from under his arm, and handed it to me. I looked a question at him, but he still didn’t speak, just nodded and got back into the police car. I was still standing there, the tube in my hands, staring stupidly as he turned the car and drove off.

  I watched the two cones of white light run smoothly along Port Arthur road and disappear behind the shed the Shetland Bus men had used. Their women had had to wait at home, not knowing if they’d ever see them again. That was the life of a seaman’s woman. A policeman might be an easier bet, if he was willing to be a seawoman’s man. The car reappeared again at the monument, slipped behind the shops, then the headlights lit up the pink front of the Old Haa, the withered vegetation of Mary Ruisland’s garden, and turned to two red lights as it went up the hill. I turned and waited, watching the road by the Scord, until I saw the lights again, travelling up, round, and dwindling into the darkness.

  The tube was featherweight in my hands. A poster, for their police Christmas Ball? I wasn’t going to open this in front of Anders. I took it aboard Khalida, lit the hanging lantern, and put two fingers inside to coax the paper out. It was much larger than a poster, and stiff, stiff paper, like a chart. I rolled it out under the flickering golden light, and found that that was indeed what it was: a proper seaman’s chart, hand-drawn in black ink, with every rock and headland marked, and the depths of every bay. I put a weight on each corner, and leaned over it. It began half way down his loch, with the three islands and the Barrisdale Narrows. A child had marked a solitary house by the point labelled Caolas Mor, and drawn a little picture of a man and woman beside it. The man wore a deerstalker and carried binoculars, and the woman had a fishing rod. There was a narrow passage to the head of the loch, then another little drawing: a building marked ‘Farm’, and a father with a bale of hay, a mother in an apron, feeding hens, and two boys, both wearing the kilt. The smallest one had red curls.

  There was a wid
er bay before the farm, with the contours running smooth round it. A pier was marked, but it would dry out at low tide. In the bay there were ten metres of water at the centre, sloping to three.

  It was an adult hand that had drawn a little anchor symbol for ‘good anchorage’ in the centre of the bay.

  Glossary

  Shetland has its own very distinctive language, Shetlan or Shetlandic, which derives from old Norse and old Scots. Magnie’s first words to Cass are,

  ‘Cass, well, for the love of mercy. Norroway, at this season? Yea, yea, we’ll find you a berth. Where are you?’

  Written in west-side Shetlan (each district is slightly different), it would have looked like this: ‘Cass, weel, fir da love o mercy. Norroway, at dis saeson? Yea, yea, we'll fin dee a bert. Quaur is du?'’

  Th becomes a d sound in dis (this), da (the), dee and du (originally thee and thou, now you), wh becomes qu (quaur, where), the vowel sounds are altered (well to weel, season to saeson, find to fin), the verbs are slightly different (quaur is du?) and the whole looks unintelligible to most folk from outwith Shetland, and twartree (a few) within it too; so, rather than writing in the way my characters would speak, I’ve tried to catch the rhythm and some of the distinctive usages of Shetlan while keeping it intelligible to soothmoothers, or people who’ve come in by boat through the South Mouth of Bressay Sound into Lerwick, and by extension, anyone living south of Fair Isle.

  There are also many Shetlan words that my characters would naturally use, and here, to help you, are some o dem. No Shetland person would ever use the Scots wee; to them, something small would be peerie, or, if it was very small, peerie mootie. They’dcaa sheep in a park, that is, herd them up in a field – moorit sheep, coloured black, brown, fawn. They’d take a skiff (a small rowing boat) out along the banks (cliffs) or on the voe (sea inlet), with the tirricks (Arctic terns) crying above them, and the selkies (seals) watching. Hungry folk are black fanted (because they’ve forgotten their faerdie maet, the snack that would have kept them going) and upset folk greet (cry). An older housewife like Jessie would have her makkin, (knitting) belt buckled around her waist, and her reestit (smoke-dried) mutton hanging above the Rayburn. And finally... my favourite Shetland verb, which I didn’t manage to work in this novel, but which is too good not to share: to kettle. As in: Wir cat’s joost kettled. Four ketlings, twa strippet and twa black and quite. I’ll leave you to work that one out on your own... or, of course, you could consult Joanie Graham’s Shetland Dictionary, if your local bookshop hasn’t joost selt their last copy dastreen.

  The diminutives Magnie (Magnus), Gibbie (Gilbert) and Charlie may also seem strange to non-Shetland ears. In a traditional country family (I can’t speak for toonie Lerwick habits) the oldest son would often be called after his father or grandfather, and be distinguished from that father and grandfather and perhaps a cousin or two as well, by his own version of their shared name. Or, of course, by a Peerie in front of it, which would stick for life, like the eart kyent (well-known) guitarist Peerie Willie Johnson, who recently celebrated his 80 th birthday. There was also a patronymic system, which meant that a Peter's four sons, Peter, Andrew, John and Matthew, would all have the surname Peterson, and so would his son Peter's children. Andrew's children, however, would have the surname Anderson, John's would be Johnson, and Matthew's would be Matthewson. The Scots ministers stamped this out in the nineteenth century, but in one district you can have a lot of folk with the same surname, and so they're distinguished by their house name: Magnie o Strom, Peter o da Knowe.

  For those who like to look up unfamiliar words as they go, here’s a glossary of some Scots and Shetlan words.

  aa : all

  an aa : as well

  aabody : everybody

  ahint : behind

  allwye : everywhere

  amang : among

  anyroad : anyway

  auld : old

  aye : always

  bairn : child

  banks : sea cliffs, or peatbanks, the slice of moor where peats are cast

  bannock : flat triangular scone

  birl, birling : paired spinning round in a dance

  blootered : very drunk

  blyde: glad

  boanie : pretty, good looking

  breeks : trousers

  brigstanes : flagged stones at the door of a crofthouse

  bruck : rubbish

  caa : round up

  canna : can’t

  clarted : thickly covered

  cowp : capsize

  cratur : creature

  crofthouse : the long, low traditional house set in its own land

  daander : to walk slowly, in an uneven, wandering fashion

  darrow : a hand fishing line

  dastreen : yesterday evening

  de-crofted : land that has been taken out of agricultural use, e.g. for a house site

  dee : you. du is also you, depending on the grammar of the sentence – they’re equivalent to thee and thou. Like French, you would only use dee or du to one friend; several people, or an adult if you’re a younger person, would be ‘you’.

  denner : midday meal

  didna : didn’t

  dinna : don’t

  dis : this

  doesna : doesn’t

  doon : down

  drewie lines : a type of seaweed made of long strands

  duke : duck

  dukey-hole : pond for ducks

  du kens : you know

  dyck, dyke : a wall, generally drystane, i.e. built without cement

  ee now : right now

  eela : fishing, generally these days a competition

  everywye : everywhere

  fae, frae : from

  faersome : frightening

  faither, usually faider: father

  fanted : hungry, often black fanted, absolutely starving

  folk : people

  gansey : a knitted jumper

  geen : gone

  gowled : howled loudly, like a child

  greff : the area in front of a peat bank

  gret : cried

  guid : good

  guid kens : God knows

  hae : have

  hadna : hadn’t

  harled : exterior plaster using small stones

  heid : head

  hoosie : little house, usually for bairns

  isna : isn’t

  joost : just

  ken, kent : know, knew

  kirk : church

  kirkyard : graveyard

  knowe : hillock

  lem : china

  Lerook : Lerwick

  lintie : skylark

  lipper : a cheeky or harum-scarum child, generally affectionate

  mair : more

  makkin belt : a knitting belt with a padded oval, perforated for holding the ‘wires’ or knitting needles.

  mam : mum

  mareel : sea phosphorescence, caused by plankton, which makes every wave break in a curl of gold sparks

  meids : shore features to line up against each other to pinpoint a spot on the water

  midder : mother

  mind : remember

  moorit : coloured brown or black, usually used of sheep

  mooritoog : earwig

  muckle : big – as in Muckle Roe, the big red island. Vikings were very literal in their names, and almost all Shetland names come from the Norse.

  muckle biscuit : large water biscuit, for putting cheese on

  na : no, or more emphatically, naa

  needna : needn’t

  Norroway : the old Shetland pronunciation of Norway

  o : of

  oot : out

  ower : over

  park : fenced field

  peat : brick-like lump of dried peat earth, used as fuel

  peerie : small

  peerie biscuit : small, sweet biscuit

  peeriebreeks : affectionate name for a small thing, person, or animal

  piltick : a sea fish common in Shetland waters
/>   pinnie : apron

  postie : postman

  quen : when

  redding up : tidying

  reestit mutton : wind-dried shanks of mutton

  riggit : dressed, sometimes with the sense dressed up

  roadymen : men working on the roads

  roog : a pile of peats

  rummle : untidy scattering

  Santy : Santa Claus

  scaddy man’s heids : sea urchins

  scattald : common grazing land

  scuppered : put paid to, done for

  selkie : seal, or seal person who came ashore at night, cast his/her skin, and became human

  shalder : oystercatcher

  sho : she

  shoulda : should have, usually said sooda

  shouldna : shouldn’t have

  SIBC : Shetland Islands Broadcasting Company, the independent radio station

  sixareen : double-ended six oared boat, around twenty-five foot in length

  skafe : squint

  skerry : a rock in the sea

  smoorikins : kisses

  snicked : move a switch that makes a clicking noise

  snyirked : made a squeaking or rattling noise

  solan : gannet

  somewye : somewhere

  sooking up : sucking up

  soothified : behaving like someone from outwith Shetland

  spewings : piles of vomit

  splatched : walked in a splashy way with wet feet, or in water

  swack : smart, fine

  tak : take

  tatties : potatoes

  tay : tea, or meal eaten in the evening

  tink : think

  tirricks : Arctic terns

  trows : trolls

  tushker : L-shaped spade for cutting peat

  twa : two

  twa-three (usually twa-tree) : a small number

  vee-lined : lined with wood planking

  voe : sea inlet