The Shadow Isle (3 page)

A shovel stood leaning against the hen house. Dougie fetched it, then strode over to the apple trees. In the shadows cast by their branches, he found it hard to see, but he dug as carefully as he could to avoid damaging the tree roots. He’d not gone down more than a foot when the shovel clanked on metal. Dougie laid it aside, then dropped to his knees and felt around with one hand in the damp chilly dirt. His fingers touched something cold, hard, and dirt-encrusted. By feeling around, he found its edges, then dug with both hands. Finally, he managed to pull free a casket, about three feet long and two wide.

Behind him, lantern light bloomed. Dougie twisted around to see Domnal, dressed only in his long nightshirt, walking over, a candle lantern held high.

“What damned stupid thing are you—” Domnal said, then stopped, staring. “God’s wounds! What’s that?”

“I don’t know, Da.” Dougie scrambled up, carrying the casket. “I had a dream, you see, about Evandar. He was telling me to dig here between the trees. I tried to ignore it, but it kept gnawing at me, like.”

“Oh.” Domnal lowered the lantern. “Well, let’s take it into the barn. I don’t want to wake your mother.”

His father’s sudden meekness troubled Dougie’s heart. He’d just lied to his da, he realized, but somehow he hadn’t wanted to tell him about Tirn’s strange gem on Haen Marn—he just hadn’t, though he couldn’t say why.

In the barn Domnal hung the lantern on a nail above a little bench. Dougie laid the casket on the bench, then found an old sack and used it to wipe away the dirt. Its long time buried in the wet earth had turned the casket so green and crusty that he couldn’t tell if it were silver or pot metal. When he tried lifting it, the lid came away in his hands. Domnal took it from him.

“What’s inside?” Domnal asked. “It looks like old rags.”

“So it does,” Dougie said. “I wonder if there’s somewhat inside them?”

One at a time Dougie peeled away the swaddlings—wads of rotten cloth on the outside, then a layer of oiled cloth, then layers of stained but sound cloth, until finally he came to a sack of boiled leather. Inside lay something solid and flat. Another casket? But when he slid it out, he found a book, bound in white leather, stained here and there from its internment. A black dragon decorated the front cover.

Dougie was too disappointed to swear. “I was hoping for a bit of treasure, Da.” He opened the book, but in the candlelight all he could see was page after page of writing.

“I wasn’t,” Domnal said. “When Evandar’s involved, you never know what you’ll get, but you can wager it’ll be a strange thing.” He took the empty casket and held it up to the light, twisting it this way and that as if he were looking for a maker’s mark. “It’s too filthy to see anything.” He set the book down on the bench. “Put that book back in, lad, and we’ll hide it under some straw for the morrow.”

“Well and good, then. Do you think this belongs to Haen Marn?”

“I do. The night he saved me, Evandar told me that he needed a messenger, and it was going to be my son, when I had one. I’m supposing he meant someone to bring them this.”

“And why couldn’t he have taken it over himself?”

“Witches can’t travel across water, nor the Folk of the Seelie Host, either, or so I’ve always heard.”

“So he needed a man to do his ferrying for him. I suppose that makes sense of a sort.”

“Naught about Haen Marn makes sense.” Domnal smiled with a bare twitch of his mouth. “I think me it might be dangerous to forget that.”

Dougie went back to bed. He woke just before sunrise, got up and dressed for the second time, then went out to the barn in the cold gray light to feed the cows. His brother Ian arrived soon after with his milking stool and pails. Dougie fed the horses, turned them out into pasture, then returned to the house to talk with Jehan. He found her in the kitchen, kneading a massive lump of bread dough.

Over the years she’d borne eight children and done plenty of farm work as well. She was stout and her hands were a mass of calluses, but despite the gray in her red hair and the lines around her green eyes, Dougie could see how beautiful she must have been when his father had won her.

“I was thinking of going back out to Haen Marn today,” Dougie said. “Will you be needing me for aught?”

“Not truly,” Jehan said. “But you know, it’s time you married your Berwynna and brought her home.”

“I’d like naught better, Mother. Berwynna says she wants to marry me as well. It’s Lady Angmar who’s dead set against it. She doesn’t want Berwynna to ever leave the island, not for a single day. She keeps saying it’s too dangerous.”

“Is it the local folk she fears? Once you two were married by Father Colm in the chapel, then all this stupid talk about witches would stop.”

“It’s not that. She won’t explain why.”

“You’re sure she has a real reason, then?” Jehan frowned at him. “Or does she look upon us with scorn?”

Dougie shrugged to show that he didn’t know. He was suddenly afraid, wondering if his Wynni was a witch, after all. His father had told him that witches couldn’t cross water, hadn’t he? Jehan paused to push a stray lock of gray hair back behind her ear with her little finger.

“I’ll tell you what,” Dougie said. “This very day, I’ll ask Lady Angmar about claiming my Berwynna. If she says me nay again, I’ll keep after her and see if I can find out if she truly doesn’t want the lass to leave the island or if she thinks I’m not worthy or suchlike.”

“Well and good, then.” Jehan looked up from the kneading. “You might as well know the truth.”

Before he left, Dougie put a clean shirt on under his plaid, then fetched the mysterious book from the barn. Since he was going to Haen Marn anyway, he figured, he might as well run Evandar’s errand for him.

Toward noon, Lon brought a bucket of fish into the kitchen hut behind the manse. Berwynna put on her oldest tunic, wrapped a fragment of stained, fraying plaid around her for a skirt, and set to work cleaning the catch. Marnmara’s six cats rubbed round her ankles and whined. The orange brindle leaped up onto the workbench with its usual dirty paws. When she yelled and swatted the animal, it jumped down again. Berwynna chopped off the fish heads and tails with efficient strokes of her long knife, then tossed them down at varying distances to give every cat a chance at this bounty. She gutted the fish, then threw the innards to the mewling horde as well.

Feeding the island took hard work. Despite the presence of so many large beasts in its water, the loch supplied full nets of fish all year long. Berwynna suspected that some sort of dweomer made the loch unusually productive, but neither her mother nor her sister would confirm her suspicion nor deny it. Man and dwarf, however, do not live by fish alone, as old Otho was fond of saying. The local villagers and farmers paid for Marnmara’s healing services with produce and what little grain they could spare. Mic’s coin bought beef, oats, and barley from the farmers on the richer lands to the south. Occasionally the boatmen managed to kill a deer. As well as medicinal herbs, Marnmara raised vegetables in her garden, and apple trees grew around Avain’s tower.

“Wynni!” Marnmara stood in the door of the kitchen hut. “Dougie’s just come across to the pier.”

“Oh, ye gods!” Berwynna said. “Here I stink of fish.”

“That won’t bother him. He’s besotted.”

Still, Berwynna scrubbed her hands with a scrap of soap and rinsed them in a bucket of well water. She wanted to change her filthy old clothes, but as she was hurrying toward the manse, she saw Dougie, just coming up the path, his tousled red hair gleaming in the sun. Under one arm he carried a bulky packet, wrapped in cloth.

“There you are!” Dougie said, smiling. “Ah, you look beautiful today, lass!”

“My thanks!”
He is besotted,
Berwynna thought.
Thank God!
“It gladdens my heart to see you, too.”

“Good. I’m hoping to have a bit of a talk with you and your mother.” He paused for a grin. “About us.”

Berwynna’s heart leaped and pounded. “Indeed?” she said. “Well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know what there is to talk about.”

He merely grinned and reached out to catch her hand.

They found Angmar in the great hall, where she was sitting at a window with mending spread out on the low table in front of her. Dougie laid his parcel on the table, then bowed to her.

“What’s all this?” Angmar raised a questioning eyebrow. “Usually you just sit yourself down without so much as a by-your-leave. ”

“Uh, my apologies, my lady.” Dougie’s face turned a faint pink. “I’ve brought you a very strange gift, and I was hoping that we, I mean Wynni and I and you, could have a bit of a chat.”

“If you’re going to ask me if you may marry her, save your breath. I’ll not agree.”

Dougie winced.

“I don’t want her living off the island,” Angmar continued.

“Truly?” Dougie said. “Or is that me and my kin aren’t grand enough for you?”

“What? Naught of the sort! Dougie, I know not how or why, but in my soul I do know that me and mine will cause you grief one day. I’d beg you to put my daughter out of your heart.”

“Mam!” Berwynna could stay silent no longer. “But I love him. I want to marry Dougie.”

He turned her way and grinned. When Berwynna held out her hand, he clasped it and drew her close.

“Wynni, heard you not one word of what I said?” Angmar flopped her mending onto the table and scowled at both of them. “Avain did see much grief—”

“What she sees in the water isn’t always true,” Berwynna said. “Sometimes it’s wrong, or else it comes true in some odd way that’s more of a jest than anything. Well, doesn’t it?”

“True enough.” Angmar paused for a long sigh. “But—”

“Besides,” Berwynna hurried on before her mother could finish. “If you won’t let me leave the island, why can’t Dougie come live here?”

“And what would your family say to that, then?” Angmar glanced at Dougie. “With you the eldest son and all?”

“They’d take a bit of persuading,” Dougie said. “But I’d keep at it and wear them down in the end.”

“Still, most like it be too dangerous. The isle be a jealous place, and I doubt me if you belong to it the way we do.”

Berwynna felt tears gathering just behind her eyes. She gave her mother the most piteous look she could manage and willed the tears to run. Her mother sighed with a shake of her head.

“Wynni, Wynni! You children don’t understand, and there’s no way I can make you understand, truly.” Angmar hesitated for a long moment. “But whist, whist, child, don’t weep so! Here, let me discuss this with Marnmara. But I’d not hope too much, either of you.”

She picked up the mending again and frowned at it with such concentration that Berwynna knew they’d been dismissed. She snuffled back her tears and wiped her eyes on her sleeve while Dougie patted her shoulder to comfort her. Hand in hand, they went outside and sat down together on a wooden bench under an apple tree. Above them, the white flowers were just peeking from their pale green buds.

“Well, now,” Dougie said at last. “So much for the grand speech I’d stored up in my mind. I never got a chance to speak any of it.”

“It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Mam’s got one of her ideas, and my dear sisters are dead set against us, too, from what she said.”

“I don’t understand. What did she mean about Avain seeing things?”

“Oh, she sees visions in a bowl of water.” Berwynna looked down, saw a pebble on the path, and kicked it viciously away. “Since she’s a mooncalf, Mam and Marnmara say that the angels or the saints are sending her messages that way. I don’t understand, and I don’t agree, but you heard Mam.”

“I did, and a nasty thing it was to hear. I’m willing to risk a fair lot of grief for you, but I don’t want you sharing it.”

“Bless you! But I’m willing to run the risk, too.”

Dougie threw his arms around her, drew her close, and kissed her. She laughed in sheer pleasure and took another kiss, but just as he reached for a third, she heard a warning snarl of a cough behind her. Dougie let her go. Berwynna turned on the bench and saw old Lonna, arms akimbo, glaring at her. Dougie rose and bowed to the elderly dwarf.

“I’ll just be leaving, then,” he said with a sigh. “Fare thee well, my lady.”

“I’ll walk with you to the landing.” She spoke to Lonna in Dwarvish. “Could you tell the boatmen to make ready?”

Lonna made a sound that might have been yes, then turned and stomped off toward the manse.

“Ye gods!” Dougie lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m beginning to understand why you want to get out of this place, truly.”

“Well, I don’t want to leave it forever. I just want to see more of the world than Haen Marn.” Berwynna paused, glancing around her. “There’s not much of it, is there? Just one small island, and every now and then I get to go over to the mainland with Marnmara when she gathers wild herbs or if someone’s ill in the village. Once we got to go to your grandfather’s dun, too, when the groom’s wife was so ill. That’s all I’ve ever seen, and all I’ve ever known, and, oh, Dougie, I’m sick to my heart of it!”

“I can understand that.” Dougie patted her hand, then raised it to his lips and kissed it, fish stains and all. “Let me think about this, lass. Mayhap I can come up with some scheme to get us married.”

Berwynna walked him down to the jetty and saw him off. For a brief while she lingered on the pier and considered the boathouse, a roof and walls with lake water for a floor. A narrow walkway ran along one side to give the boatmen access to the ladder that led up to the loft where they slept. Besides the magnificent dragon boat, the island owned two coracles, a large one for the fishing, and a small craft that Marnmara and Berwynna used for their rare trips to the mainland. These hung out of the water from pegs on the boathouse walls.

The question, Berwynna decided, was whether she could creep into the boathouse at night, get the coracle down, and lower it into the water without making a splash or other noise that would wake the boatmen.
Not likely,
she thought. If only she could, she could row across and meet Dougie, and perhaps Father Colm would marry them before her family caught her.
Even less likely, since he thinks I’m a witch.
She picked up a stone and hurled it into the water as hard as she could, then turned on her heel and stalked back to the manse.