Women of the Dunes

by Sarah Maine

  That, Oliver thought, was a mistake. He saw Mungo’s expression change, and his eyes flicked towards Ellen’s midriff. “Do you tell me that—?”

  Alick pushed aside Oliver’s restraining arm and stood before Mungo. “Aye. But we will go, and not trouble you further.”

  “What has she told you? My dear Alick, the girl was willing! Enthusiastic even—”

  He got no further. Alick leapt at him and knocked the gun from his hand. The impact of his assault threw Mungo to the ground and Alick went down on top of him amongst the rocks, kicking and punching and swearing as they struggled.

  Ellen cried out to Oliver, “Stop them! Oh, for pity’s sake!” but Oliver could not get beyond flailing legs and elbows. Then suddenly Mungo was astride Alick, his hair falling forward, his fingers at his brother’s throat, swearing viciously.

  “Stop them!” Ellen begged, and moved behind him.

  Later, Oliver would see that moment played out slowly, theatrically, as if every movement of the nightmare scene had been planned, rehearsed, and perfected, but it was over in an instant. Alick’s eyes were bulging, his face suffused, while Oliver could only tug desperately at Mungo’s broad shoulders. “You’ll kill him, man. Let him go!” But Mungo removed just one hand to lash out at Oliver, sending him flying back against the ruin. And in that instance of release Alick gave a mighty heave, twisting his torso so that Mungo fell off him and Alick rolled onto his side. And in rolling he presented an exposed back which received the bullet fired from his brother’s gun.

  The scene froze.

  “Christ—”

  “Oh God!” Oliver knelt beside Alick, pressing a handkerchief to the wound, his hands soon covered with blood. He bent his ear to Alick’s lips and then sought a pulse.

  Slowly, unbelieving, he lifted his head and looked across at Mungo.

  Then both men turned to look at Ellen, who was standing stock-still, wide-eyed, the gun still loose in her hand. With a cry as wild as a curlew’s call she flung it down and ran to Alick’s side.

  Mungo struck out. “Senseless bitch!” he cried, and the swipe knocked her off her feet and she fell hard against the stones of Odrhan’s cell. Oliver went to her, but the blow had left her senseless. Perhaps better so, he fleetingly thought, and he rose to his feet to confront Mungo.

  Darkness had fallen, but in the grey light Oliver could see the horror written on Mungo’s face as he stared down at his brother. “Sweet Christ—” he said.

  And even as the same horror threatened to overwhelm him, resolve formed in Oliver’s mind, and it steadied him. “You call on Him? But He was watching and knows that this was your doing.”

  “The hell it was! That bitch—”

  “No. Your brother died by your hand.” Mungo looked up at him, thunderstruck, and Oliver knew that every word he said now would count. “And I will swear to it, on my honour and my soul, in court, and to the end of my days.”

  Mungo’s eyes widened and he swore. “You would perjure yourself? For that!” He gestured to where Ellen lay.

  “I saw you threaten your brother with a gun, I saw you fight, and then I heard a shot. Who else but you would fire?” Mungo stepped forward, but Oliver stooped quickly to retrieve the gun and pointed it at Mungo’s midriff. “Believe me, I’ll fire, for there’s nothing left to lose.” Would he have done so? he later wondered, perhaps not, but it was enough that Mungo had believed him. “As you said yourself, bring forth your witnesses.”

  Mungo scoffed but his eyes were wild. “Your word against mine? Ha!”

  “Your gun. Your quarrel. Ellen has spoken to others of the rape.” A lie, but Mungo could not know that. “You have a reputation. And your recklessness is well known.”

  Mungo scowled, and Oliver remained silent, watching him think. “Against me, and Pa, you haven’t a chance!” he said at last, but he sounded less certain, and Oliver pursued his advantage.

  “Who else would kill him? Not Ellen, his wife. And not I! I married them just yesterday, as witnessed and recorded.” Another lie, but truth had fled along with Alick’s departing spirit, and only justice, at any price, would now serve. A plan was beginning to take shape in Oliver’s head and he was thinking furiously. “I was aiding their departure and you, through jealousy or pride, were trying to prevent them. That much is true, and what other story could possibly be told? By accident or design, your gun discharged. Ellen never touched it.” Mungo glanced again towards the girl’s unconscious form and swore. “Be very sure, Mungo Sturrock, she’ll not hang for this.”

  “Nor, damn you, will I—”

  “No, you won’t.” Mungo narrowed his eyes, and Oliver met them steadily. “So listen—”

  And so, in the darkness which gave them cover, Oliver and Mungo carried Alick down into the dunes. Oliver had taken Ellen back to the manse, given her a sleeping draught, and returned with a spade. They dug a hollow into the side of a low mound and laid him there and, as they rolled him into it, the little gold cross which had sealed his marriage fell from Alick’s pocket; Oliver bent to retrieve it, closed the dead man’s hand around it, and prayed for his forgiveness.

  And they stood a moment agreeing to the story that would be told; then, as the moon came out from behind a cloud, they parted.

  Chapter 35

   Libby

  Libby picked up the sketchbook and stared at it, then handed it to Rodri. He took it, puzzled by her expression, and studied the open page. Then he raised his head and looked back at her.

  When Libby had first received the package, she had thumbed through the sketchbook, remembering it from childhood days, seeing again the sketches, her own jottings, and the fragment of the legend written in the back. The drawings were of the headland, she now realised, and the figures confronting each other, badly drawn and incomplete, were versions of the painted windows in the library, the same scenes depicted over and over. But then the cross had fallen out of it and driven the book from her mind. She had simply put both back in the package in which they had arrived and brought them up to give to Rodri.

  As a child, when she had read the fragment of the legend written on the back page, she’d thought nothing of it, but it was at that place that the book had fallen open:

  And so, Ulla stayed with Odrhan, and together they raised the child, in the sight of God, putting aside the evils of the past.

  The words had inspired her own childish imagination when she had sat dangling her legs over the wooden landing outside her grandmother’s house, considering other endings for the legend.

  And they lived out their lives in peace and a sort of contentment, lamenting the death of Harald and praying for the salvation of Erik. And Odrhan loved Ulla, as a godly man, for the rest of his days. Gosse Harbour 1930.

  The handwriting was unmistakable.

  “O.D.,” said Rodri, his eyes holding hers. Then he turned to Hector. “That minister who disappeared? What was his name?”

  “No idea. It’s mentioned somewhere in all that stuff.” Hector waved a hand towards the papers.

  Rodri went over to the table, and while he looked Libby explained to Hector what had brought her here, the stories she had been told, what they had discovered, and what she now surmised; he listened, all trace of cynicism gone from his features, and when she had finished he was silent.

  “What a tale,” he said at last. Then his eyes searched her face. “So it was that which brought you here, all that way. Something unresolved, you say.” He paused, still considering her. “And do you think you will change our fortunes, Libby Snow?” The smile he gave her was a sweet one, and for the first time she saw David in him. “We can only hope.”

  “Got it!” Rodri said from the desk, and came back to them with a letter. “I’d skimmed over it before, the first bit’s all about needing a new minister, but listen to this: “Our enquiries confirm that Drummond abandoned his ministry suddenly and without notice. It has been asserted that he had alienated his congregation by wanton acts of desecration and indulged in carna
l activities with a local woman living as a servant under his roof. She too has disappeared, presumably in Drummond’s company. Furthermore a search of the manse by the Honourable Mungo Sturrock, following Drummond’s departure, discovered a valuable item, believed to be the lawful property of the estate, secreted away in a desk.” Libby’s eyes went to the chalice. “No charges are being brought, but as these offences render Oliver Drummond unfit in every way . . . and so on. O.D. Oliver Drummond.”

  Libby looked again at the sketchbook. “But Jennet said it was a Sturrock man who ran off with a woman.”

  “She was wrong, it seems. Because if it isn’t Drummond in that mound, then it must be Alexander Sturrock.”

  “DNA.” Hector yawned. “That’ll confirm it.”

  “So did Drummond change his name to Macdonald? It’s a good one to pick. But who shot Alexander?”

  “The randy cleric,” Hector said with dry certainty. “A love triangle. Un crime passionnel.”

  But Libby was staring out of the window at the desolate garden, and the pieces of the puzzle began to come together. “Ellen said that she had killed a man. Everyone said that she was mad, and once he’d got her away Oliver Drummond probably encouraged them to think so.”

  “Why would he?”

  “To protect her.”

  There was silence as each considered this.

  “But why would Ellen shoot Alexander? And where, for God’s sake, did she acquire a handy little Webley?”

  Libby looked back at Rodri. “We’ll never know, but I think she spent the rest of her life mourning him, and it unhinged her mind.” She looked again at Oliver Drummond’s note at the end of Ellen’s sketch book. “He says he loved her all his life ‘as a godly man.’ I wonder what he meant.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Hector asked.

  There was more silence; then Rodri said, “And who was her child’s father, I wonder?”

  Hector gave a dry laugh. “A recurring point at issue in these parts.”

  “There was only ever the one child,” said Libby. “And he went to the bad.”

  “Must have sprung from Sturrock loins, then,” said Hector.

  “That’s all very well,” said Rodri, “but someone buried Alexander. Ellen couldn’t have done that on her own.”

  “Probably the devoted man of God. And for whatever reason, someone must have helped them get away, spreading rumours that they’d gone off together.” The breeze from the open window blew cigarette smoke across Hector’s face. He gestured to the paper on the table. “Mungo Sturrock, for one. Maybe he was throwing sand in everyone’s eyes.”

  “But the story is that Ellen went off with Alexander,” Libby insisted. “Lady Sturrock believed that, for one.”

  “I doubt she knew. And there was probably all sorts of gossip.”

  And all sorts of things they would never know. “And that’s the story which has survived,” said Libby, thinking of Angus and Jennet. “So much for the oral tradition.”

  Hector looked at her, drawing again on his cigarette, eyes narrowed. “So your ancestress murdered mine, it appears, Miss Snow-White. Seems Sturrock men are badly served by their women, one way or another.”

  “But are they well-used by Sturrock men?” Libby replied, and both men looked back at her.

  Then Hector gave another laugh, warmer this time. “Time we broke the mould then, don’t you think, Roddy boy? Too late for me, of course, but—”

  He stopped, and for a moment Libby thought he must have had some sort of seizure for he had stiffened and become very still, his face rigid as he stared straight ahead, the cigarette halfway to his lips. She followed the direction of his gaze and caught movement in the garden, and then followed his line of vision, and saw that Maddy was on the path leading to the front door, her red hair backlit by the dying sun, and walking purposefully in front of her was David.

  The driftwood and broken pallets made an impressive pyre, and the students were gathered around chattering and waiting for the command from Rodri to light it. Libby had spent the rest of the afternoon packing what she could, leaving only the tent for tomorrow. Things had happened too quickly, too many things, and the end come too soon—and now there was so much to absorb and consider. Rodri was nowhere to be seen, but his two boys had come down with Alice, bearing trays of food and drink, and rather later Angus and Maddy had joined them. There was no sign of David. Trestle tables had appeared from somewhere, and there was now quite a spread upon them and a barbeque had been lit. What the students made of all this in the face of yesterday’s tragedy, she had no idea, but it was good to see Donald and Charlie running around, the nightmare put aside for now.

  And then Rodri was there beside her. “Alright?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” And he called to Callum: “Send my lads over here, will you—and then let rip with the fire.”

  The boys came running, and he put an arm around each of them. Callum bent to the pyre, and there was a crackle and then a glow as the dried grass caught. A cheer went up from the students as the wood caught, and the flames licked high into the evening sky. Rodri turned to look over his shoulder towards the house. “They should see that, I imagine.”

  “Who should?” asked Charlie, his face lifted to his father.

  “Uncle Hector and David.”

  “Will David be coming down?”

  Rodri turned back to the fire. “Maybe. Later.”

  “Alice says there’re sausages,” Donald said.

  “Aye, there are. So off you go.”

  Libby watched them go. She wanted to ask him how it had gone, the meeting between Hector and his son, but felt she couldn’t. It was too deep, too painful. But once again, Rodri seemed to read her thoughts. “I left them to it,” he said, staring towards the flames. “Maddy stayed just a little while, and then went to find Alice. She said David was handling the whole situation brilliantly.” He looked over to where the two women were laughing together as they handed out sausages to the students, their shoulders touching, and grunted his satisfaction. “All seems well there, anyway. Tricky waters to navigate, these.” He spoke almost as if to himself, then turned to look at Libby, the light from the fire shadowing his features.

  “So did you get what you came for, Libby Snow?” he asked.

  She stayed silent, watching the flames corkscrew into little tornados of sparks and smoke, for there was no simple answer. It would take time to unravel the twists and turns of the story and to follow the threads, as complex a pattern as that on the window-seat cushions, as full of moth holes, misshapen and patched, faded and imperfect.

  But there were bright new threads to be woven in. “Rather more, I think,” she said at last.

  “Good.” He slipped his arm around her. “We can agree on that then, and go on from here. And what happened yesterday will be reported and remembered as a tragedy: a boating accident and a lovely woman drowned trying to bring the boys to safety. That’s the story your students will take away, and it’s the one we’ll all promote, because the truth is unbearable.” He looked over to where his sons were throwing wood on the fire, watched over by Angus. “And for them, even now, the memory’s starting to fade, and when they’re old enough to understand they’ll say nothing, and begin to wonder what really happened.”

  “And it proves that legends are unreliable—” she said; that, at least, they had learned from the summer.

  “Didn’t we already know that? But does it matter? Whatever happened was for their time, not ours.” He looked at her, a smile in his eyes. “You can dig up the whole damned bay if you like and see what else you find—though I quail at the thought. Your best bet would be in the church, as I’ve a strong hunch that the third baronet might not have found all the loot.”

  She turned to look at him and encountered that same slow smile. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve found bits and bobs there over the years. It’s squirreled away somewhere. Must tell Hector—”

  “So was th
at why—”

  At that moment Callum came over with two cans of beer. “You aren’t drinking,” he said.

  “I have been,” said Rodri, “rather heavily, in fact. But Libby hasn’t.” He took a can and handed it to her.

  “I’ll go and fetch a chair, shall I?” Callum said. “Where would be best?”

  “I can still stand, dammit!”

  “Rodri,” said Libby, her eyes on the path which led to the gate in the garden wall. “That’s not what he meant—”

  He swung round at her words, followed her gaze, and grew still. Then he said, in a low voice, “Right in the centre of things, if you will, Callum.” Together they watched Angus leave the group and go to Hector, who, still in his dressing gown, stick in hand and leaning heavily on the shoulder of his son, was slowly making his way down the path towards the burning pyre on the shore. “But well away from the smoke and the flames. The wind’s coming in from the north.”

  Epilogue

  Pádraig stepped ashore and gestured his followers to a place across the little stream. “There you will find a flattened rock, and it is there you will build. Make that rock the threshold.”

  Then he left them and went along the curve of the bay to the tumbled ruin on the headland. Twenty years had not changed it, except for the mosses and lichens. And he thought back to that night when he had run to the village, choking and distraught with the horrors he had witnessed, returning next day with men to help him, and they had buried Odrhan in his dwelling. Then he had commanded them to pull the stones down on top of him so that no one should disturb it, and they had obeyed him even then, a ten-year-old child giving orders. He had made decent the grave of Harald, reburying the severed head, and left with the villagers.

  No one went near the headland now, he had been told, it was considered an unlucky place. Once revered because of Odrhan, then avoided because of the woman he kept there, then ignored as Odrhan became known simply as a strange man who dwelt there with a child. And then, after Erik’s violence, it was feared.