Women of the Dunes Read online

  “With tents and stuff?” asked Charlie.

  “That’s right.”

  There was a noise in the passageway and he lost interest. “Dad!”

  The faces of all three boys had lit up. It might be an unconventional family, but it was a close one. She watched as the boys vied for his attention while the two women cleared away, and a cheery chaos again ensued. “How was the bank?” she heard Alice ask in a low tone as Rodri went over to the Aga.

  “Tell you later.”

  “That bad?”

  “Worse.”

  And then somehow the chaos resolved itself and, like the day before, Alice and Maddy, with David, gathered themselves and headed for the door. “Fishcakes, in the warming oven,” Alice called to Rodri. “And the Abbey doubled their order.”

  “Great stuff! See you tomorrow, then.”

  They left and Rodri hustled the two younger boys along to wherever it was that homework was done, then retrieved his plate from the oven and came and sat at the table. He rose again to fetch the half-finished bottle of Sancerre and two glasses.

  “Your professor has arrived,” he said, as he filled one glass and gestured an enquiry towards the other. “I called at the pub for a swift half.” She nodded at the bottle, thinking she would need to fortify herself for whatever tomorrow would bring. “He and his wife were just checking in.”

  “His wife?” She held her glass, arrested by the thought of Declan’s wife, who was hardly the type to relish a sojourn in Scotland. In March.

  “Leggy brunette?” he said.

  Ah. “Did you speak to him?”

  “No.” He glanced at her as he chewed. “You’re not looking forward to this, are you?”

  “Not at all.”

  He sat back and contemplated her. “I wonder why— Is he a pain to work with?”

  “He can be difficult. He likes to be the one in control.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “So he won’t like being upstaged and not knowing about all this.”

  “I see,” he said. Then, with a smile: “Well, trust me, Libby Snow, it’s going to go well.” And for a moment he looked just like his younger son, then he switched subjects. “Tell me about that cross,” he said, and her stomach lurched. “It’s something special, isn’t it?”

  “Possibly—” Ought she just tell him?

  “It was familiar,” he continued, “but I couldn’t place it, and then, driving home, I remembered. It’s on one of the library windows—I checked just now, the monk’s wearing it.” She had been right about the brain behind those sharp eyes. “I remember being told about it, it went missing decades ago. And now we know why.”

  Except it wasn’t quite that simple. And if she told him about the other cross, then she would have to tell him everything, and she wasn’t ready to do that yet.

  She lifted her glass and saw he was studying her from under his brows, his eyes narrowed a little. “And that’s one mystery solved,” he said, pushing aside his plate and leaning back again, filling his own with the last of the wine. “Hector’ll be pleased anyway.”

  “I thought he wasn’t interested.”

  “If it’s valuable, then he is. Very interested. And so is his lady wife.” There was an unmistakable dryness in his tone again. “Very keen on their possessions, those two.”

  “So losing the chalice was a blow.”

  “Dreadful business,” he said, and his eyes remained on her.

  She felt suddenly exhausted by the emotions of the day and needed to be alone, with space to think things through. Finding the copy of the cross had drawn her further in, linking her grandmother’s stories very directly with whatever had happened here, something connected with Ellen, and still reverberating.

  Had she really only been here two days? “If you don’t mind, I think I’m going to go up to bed—”

  He continued his rather disconcerting scrutiny, then sat back. “Good idea. And then we’ll see what the professor has to say.”

  Chapter 12

   Ellen

  It was dusk by the time Ellen was released from her duties at Sturrock House. She slipped out of the back door, across the courtyard, down the drive, and then followed the track that led to the church, the manse, and her mother’s cottage. Somewhere in a nettle patch she heard a corncrake’s rasping call, and pulled her shawl close, looking back to check that she was not being followed. He would hardly trouble her tonight, though, newly returned, and with his brother here; they would be making a family evening of it. Then the corncrake, neck outstretched and furtive, scuttled across the path in front of her and disappeared into the undergrowth where, a moment later, it resumed its persistent harsh-toned wooing.

  She stepped quickly over the stones in the stream. There were lights on in the manse ahead of her, and she saw a figure move across a window. Mr. Drummond, the new minister. She had only spoken to him briefly, but her mother had said that he had called on her and was a good man, so Ellen thought well of him. Quietly spoken, her mother said, and sincere with gentle ways. They had prayed together, she told Ellen, and he had promised to bring her the sacrament and to lend her a book of sermons that she might enjoy. Sermons! Ellen had laughed, and her mother had laughed with her.

  The door of the cottage creaked as she opened it and she saw her mother asleep in a chair beside what remained of the fire. The peat had burned into a bed of white powder and the house was cold. She hurried forward. Tam had promised that he would look in and make up the fire, but he must have forgotten in the hubbub of the arrivals, so Ellen threw aside her shawl and rolled up her sleeves. The pot which hung from a chain in the hearth was still half full. Had her mother not eaten today? Ellen had had no time to come home to make sure that she did—and then a thought clutched at her heart and she went quickly over to the still form in the chair and touched her hand. Stone cold. She circled the papery wrist and felt for her pulse, and found it, feather-light but regular, and she breathed again. Taking up her discarded shawl, she draped it across her mother’s thin chest and gave her attention to the fire.

  It was a good half hour before the warmth spread beyond a shallow arc in front of the hearth, and longer before the broth was hot enough to eat. By then her mother had roused and now sat, serene and uncomplaining as ever, and asked what news there was from the big house.

  For once there was something to relate. “Both Mr. Mungo and Mr. Alick are back. And Mr. Alick brought a trunk with him.”

  Her mother raised her eyebrows. “But surely his studies aren’t finished! He’s not been away for many weeks.”

  “Ten.”

  Her mother looked at her. “And did you speak with him?”

  “A little. I was preparing his room when he came in.”

  “And did you speak to Mungo Sturrock?”

  “No.”

  Her mother continued to contemplate her, saying nothing.

  “Everyone was surprised to see Mr. Alick, though, so it wasn’t planned.” Ellen tasted the broth on the end of a spoon and, finding it hot enough, ladled some into a bowl which she took to her mother.

  “We’ll learn in due course what brings him back,” her mother said, taking the bowl from her and lowering it to her lap.

  “Eat, Ma!”

  “I will, my dear. I will.”

  Eventually she did, but only a little, and then Ellen helped her to bed, propping her up as best she could so that her thin chest would not be wracked by the coughing which so weakened her. Usually at this time of day, once she had her mother settled and if the weather was fine, Ellen would walk out onto the headland and watch the seabirds dipping and rising over the waves or follow the groups of little shorebirds along the beach, their wingtips flashing white as they lifted from the sand. Just a few moments that she could call her own.

  Only by agreement with Lady Sturrock was she allowed to sleep at her mother’s house rather than with the other servants in the attics of Sturrock House; but the mistress knew of her mother’s need for her and was
kind. Lady Sturrock knew other things too and was a woman who had never shirked her Christian duty, taking on a responsibility that her husband would gladly have ignored. Not every woman, Christian or no, would have tolerated her husband’s misconceived half sister living on her doorstep, nor given her daughter employment. Ellen scraped the uneaten broth from the bottom of the pot into a basin and put it to one side. She sometimes wondered if she was kept on at the big house as a reminder of the price of sin, but if so, then Mungo Sturrock had learned nothing. But she and her mother were ensured a roof over their heads, at least, and she knew what was expected of her. At no time was she to allude to kinship with the family but was to do her allotted duty, and then return home having earned sufficient money to put food on the table. They lived modestly, rent-free, a concession wrung from the third baronet by the previous incumbent at the manse, who had been determined to safeguard the wronged woman and her child. And, for as long as her mother lived, they could not be evicted from the cottage.

  What would happen afterwards was something never discussed.

  From the Sturrocks’ perspective, it was fortunate that her mother’s illness kept her confined indoors where her presence could be ignored, Ellen thought as she scrubbed the pan clean. She could never forget that Mungo and Alick were her half cousins, and that the master, lofty and remote in every way, was her kin, and sometimes she allowed herself to imagine that Sturrock House was something more than her place of employment.

  Her imagination, her mother often told her, would be her downfall.

  She put aside the cleaned pot and listened for a moment to the wheezy breathing that came from the bed until its rhythm told her that her mother was sleeping. Then she quietly opened the cottage door, stepped out, and breathed deeply, filling her lungs with the soft night air, and pulled the door closed behind her. She would just stand here a moment listening to the night sounds. The air was so still, windless, and the scent of peat smoke hung there. Somewhere a curlew gave its wild cry, tempting her further into the night, and she was torn, but with Mungo Sturrock at home she would not risk the headland tonight, in the dark.

  “Ellen?” Her heart leapt in panic as a figure emerged from the blackness and her hand went to her throat. “Is everything alright?”

  It was Mr. Drummond, the minister.

  “Your mother? Is she unwell?”

  “She’s asleep, sir, and I was just taking the air.”

  He came closer and she could see his features, softly lit by the oil lamp inside the croft window. Strong, earnest features, confident yet kind. It was a good face. When she had first met him he had seemed a little distant, but tonight he seemed inclined to linger. “I’ve seen you sometimes walking out on the headland in the evenings,” he said.

  “I like it there.”

  “And on the beach.”

  “Yes.”

  In the darkness he seemed less of a minister and just a man. Perhaps he was lonely at the manse with no company other than his housekeeper, and always needing to be solemn and godly, set apart from the flock he served.

  Still he stood there, looking at her. “I like to watch the seabirds,” she said, for want of anything else, “and to think that it’s always been the same there. Nothing changed.”

  “Since Odrhan built his little chapel,” he agreed, “and for eons before then.”

  She considered this, then asked: “How long is an eon?”

  He laughed, but it was a kindly laugh, not mocking. “It is a long time, an age, but unmeasurable.” Her puzzlement must have showed because he added, “Maybe as much as a thousand years.”

  “So long! It seems too much.” She spoke half to herself.

  “For what?”

  “I can’t imagine such a stretch of time.”

  He smiled in the darkness. “Do you think those times feel closer or further away?”

  “Closer. Like something still remembered.”

  He stayed silent, then said: “Perhaps that’s what a legend is, a memory preserved over many generations.”

  She liked that idea. “How many?” Few people would ever speak to her about the stories of Ulla, but this man seemed to know things.

  He hesitated. “If a man’s lifespan is fifty years, then . . .” He paused again, calculating. “. . . maybe as much as twenty generations.”

  “Twenty! And we can only remember back to our grandparents.”

  “So that’s two. But they can remember back another two, making it four, and so on, reaching back into the past, an unbroken chain.”

  The thought delighted her. “To Odrhan. And Ulla.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And yet his house is just as he left it.”

  He gave his soft laugh again. “A little tumbled-down, though.”

  It was a few days later, on a rare half day off, that Ellen encountered the minister again. She had left her mother reading the promised book of sermons and had picked up her shawl, determined to take some exercise before the rain came. There would be no incentive to linger today, no chance to sit as she loved to do with her head resting on the stones of the ruin, eyes closed, drinking in the warmth of the sun, glad to escape the prevailing sense of despair which now attended thoughts of her mother— But she would make for the headland anyway; there would be no danger in broad daylight.

  No danger perhaps, but there was a chill wind coming off the sea, and it carried with it the scent of rain; it might be May but it felt like winter still. She stepped across the stream, her skirt brushing the clump of yellow marsh marigolds which grew on the far side, and followed the track along the ridge to the headland. Out to sea the clouds hung low, darkening the surface of the ocean, and she pulled the shawl over her head. When she reached the end of the causeway she clambered up the barnacled rocks and stepped onto the little plateau, and then stopped.

  A figure was sat there on a boulder, hunched over, head down and apparently writing. Mr. Drummond! How strange. He gave a start when he saw her and started to rise, but in his confusion he knocked over a tin of pencils at his feet and his hat, released from under his bent knees, blew away, taken by the wind.

  Ellen gave chase and rescued it from the edge of the rocks just as the wind lifted the rim, before it was lost forever. She wiped it dry with her handkerchief and handed it back to him with a laugh and a smile, then bent to help him reassemble his unruly belongings.

  “Thank you, Ellen,” he said.

  “I startled you.”

  “A little!” he said, laughing too. “I’d been thinking about Ulla and then suddenly there you were.”

  “You thought I was a ghost!” The idea of being mistaken for Ulla was most gratifying.

  He pulled a face. “My dear girl. I was simply engrossed in my drawing.”

  She looked down at the discarded notebook, which had landed face-up beside a measuring rod and a ruler. “What is it that you are doing, sir?”

  “I’m recording the ruin before it is lost to the sea,” he replied.

  She looked about her. “Will it be lost?”

  “I think so. One day.”

  “But you said it’s been here for—for an eon! Why should it be lost now?”

  “Not now, perhaps not for many years, but come and look.” He beckoned her to the edge of the little plateau where the turf overhung the rocks and pointed to where a clump of grass and soil compacted with roots lay below them. “See there? That must have fallen this winter. And how much fell the year before, and the year before that, going back all those thousands of years? Once the headland was much bigger, I think, so in another thousand years, what will be left?”

  She stayed silent, remembering the storms which battered the coastline in the winter and how far the sea could reach into the dunes. One night it had reached the wall which surrounded Sturrock House. “Will it reach our cottage?” she asked him.

  “Not in your lifetime,” he replied, with his gentle smile.

  “And even if it did, and if it washed the headland away, the le
gend would still survive, wouldn’t it?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So you know of the legend?” she asked, probing a little. Perhaps he knew more than she did; he was a learned man.

  “Sir Donald has lent me a book his father wrote, setting it all down as a poem.”

  His father, the third baronet, her grandfather. Did the minister know that too? If not, then he soon would, the gossips would make sure of that. She knew the book he meant. “Mr. Alick showed it to me.”

  He looked surprised. “Can you read, Ellen?”

  “As well as you can.” Stung, she frowned at him.

  “Forgive me, I meant no insult,” he said, then added, “If you came to the manse, you could look at it again, if you like.”

  “I’ve no need of it,” she said, piqued by his assumption of her ignorance. “I’ve learned the poem by heart, and I’ve known the legend since the day I was born.”

  He looked at her as if reassessing his idea of her. Out to sea the dark veils of rain seemed to have been blown south of them, and beyond them now were patches of bright blue. Perhaps it would stay fine after all.

  “Then, if you will, tell me the legend as you first heard it.”

  He gestured to the rocks and she hesitated, then sat, fastening her shawl in a knot between her breasts, and he sat opposite her, a little apart, on the tumbled stones of Odrhan’s cell, and prepared to listen. And so, with the sound of the waves and the wild birds as a backdrop, she told him the legend of Ulla as it had been passed down to her from her mother, and her mother’s mother, down the chain of generations.

  When she had finished, she said: “The poem tells parts of it differently, but Odrhan must have loved Ulla, don’t you think? To have cared for her and then for her child? He must have loved her. Even though he was a godly man and ought not to have done—”

  He contemplated her a moment, then bent to collect his belongings. “God’s love comes in many forms, Ellen. And as a godly man, he would certainly have loved her.”

  “But only as a godly man, not a lover?” Ellen persisted, not thinking to whom she was speaking.