The Selkie Bride (10 page)

To calm the turbulent sea, some of the fishermen
resorted to old superstitions and towed behind their boats a mealy pudding made with the fat of seabirds found dead on the beach, usually nestlings whose first flights from the cliff face had ended disastrously. Where this less-than-charming custom originated I do not know, but according to Fergus’s books it is often used in the Hebrides. One had to wonder when the danger would grow so great that they would move away from Findloss.

Tawny bladder wrack had washed up on the flattened boulders around me where it blackened in the sun. The odor was not unpleasant, but every now and again a swelling bladder would burst, making a sound not unlike a pistol being discharged. The tide had mostly stilled. It was nearing slack water, tempting to wade out in, but I didn’t trust it for a minute; this area was notorious for its undertow and I had not forgotten what had happened on the day I had gone to see the faerie mound. Unnatural forces were at work all around—why did no one else see it?

Bright fingers of water wriggled among the crevices before surrendering to the pull of the tide and retreating ever farther down the shore. Of course some pools remained here and there, and on another day I would have stopped to investigate the creatures that braved the sea’s retreat to remain in these rocky puddles. That day, I had other things on my mind—like defying Lachlan and doing some exploring on my own.

In the distance were the remains of a few lazy beds, raised plantings called
feannegan
in the Gaelic. These had ridges of soil, fertilized with seaweed, and between the rows lay furrows for drainage so planted
root crops did not rot and so the farmer need not stoop so far to plant and harvest. It gave such land a mesmerizing rippling effect as wind passed over the wild grass that had claimed the old farmsteads. The villagers still grew some oats, turnips, potatoes and some stunted carrots in their cottage gardens; this land would never be farmed again.

The southern end of the cliffs was steep and deeply pocked and had become a sort of gullery in the last decade. No one walks in its shadow for fear of bombardment and the birds have grown fearless and fat. Their sound, while pleasant from a distance, is overwhelming up close, particularly if the gulls are alarmed by a predator. It did not seem a likely place for the finman to hide. My readings seemed to point to definite behaviors and divisions in the supernatural world: Creatures of the air did not mix with those of the sea.

The north end of the cliff was another matter. Nothing lived there except perhaps bats and a few tenacious plants that didn’t mind the bitter salt winds assaulting them daily. One needed to be nimble and careful to move about without mishap if one hiked there, especially when the tide was on the turn. It was difficult to judge the depth of the pools. Above the waterline and below, things were treacherous. There are many stretches of coast in the world where more ships have come to grief than the rocky shoals of Findloss, but none where the sinkings are more inexplicable. But then, this entire village and its haunted environs were impossible to explain to the rational twentieth-century mind that does not allow for things like sea monsters and faeries. I don’t like to think of
how many souls have drowned and disappeared in these unforgiving waters, never to be seen again until the day when the trumpet is blown and the sea renders up her dead for good and for all. Not that I much want to see them. Ugh.

I watched for a quarter of an hour as the birds rushed in and out of their stone houses, but nothing moved in any of the larger caves or tunnels; to all appearances I was alone on the finger of exposed beach that led up to the uninhabited cliff face. Which meant it was time to go to the kirk. Just to look around. Not in the crypts, of course. Not unless I was absolutely
certain
that I was alone.

Reason pleaded with me to reconsider my intention, but I did not. Fear stabbed my heart and belly, but I did not turn away. I couldn’t. Later I would understand that it was a compulsion coming from outside myself, but at the time I simply believed I was asserting my rights as a free person to investigate what I chose. At last reason threw up its hands and said, “Do as you like! I take no further responsibility for your safety or sanity.”

Reason’s voice sounded a lot like Lachlan. Would that I had listened.

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me…Draw out also the spear, and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt…Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them. For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.’

—Psalms 35:1-10

I met one person on the way to the kirk. Niall Magee was a “collateral”—a bastard, for those who prefer plain speaking—of an English lord who had come hunting in the North some twenty years ago and found a maiden he liked better than the local hart and grouse. Niall had, according to Mistress MacLaren,
the fair coloring and height of his father’s Nordic ancestors. He was also, because of the wages of sin, a seven-month child and a bit simple.

I liked him because he was always cheerful, if painfully shy except with Herman. If I had had the cat with me, he might have spoken to us, but since I was alone I got no more for my greeting than a quick duck of a capped head and a mumbled salutation as Niall fled down the path toward the cottage he shared with his mother and grandparents. So much for my plan of questioning any passing villagers.

I paused at the churchyard fence that ringed the cemetery, hand resting on the iron gate for a moment before entering. Prior to that day I had not paid particular attention to the graves, but that morning I stopped to read the stones that had been brought there as remembrances through the ages. The century was young yet, but had already been devastating to both Europe and America. It turned out that Fergus was not the only person buried in the churchyard; Mistress MacLarens’s soldier sons were there too. There were also graves for unknowns, strange fishermen whose bodies had washed ashore and never been claimed. It bothered me that anyone rested in this unhallowed ground, but I couldn’t really blame the villagers for using the churchyard for its intended purpose. After all, what was one to do with unclaimed and unidentifiable bodies?

I could see my blackened chimney stack from the churchyard and felt heartened by the small curl of smoke coming from it. Herman and a fire would be
waiting for me when I returned home. I missed the smell of wood fires, the narcotic of my childhood. The scent of hickory can still conjure up feelings of safety and a desire for sleep. But any fire would do fine in a pinch and I was glad I had left one burning.

The cottage, before the Culbins, did not have an especially evil reputation—at least not one remembered by the villagers or the people I had spoken with in Keil or Glen Ruadh. But I could not entirely forget that there was that disturbing mosaic on the hearth, the heart-sized crypt in the floor under a table that looked a great deal like an altar, the secret room filled with horrible books—and perhaps most telling of all, a witch’s roost on the chimney. This flat stone projecting outward about one quarter of the way up the stack had been built deliberately so that witches would have a place to rest on their travels to and from coven meetings. It was hoped by the builders that the witches would be happy to rest there and not enter the cottage itself.

As I have already said, Findloss, and my cottage in particular, were not normal places. It was odd to think of this village as being my refuge from an even greater evil.

The kirk’s massive wooden doors were ajar. This gave me a moment’s pause, during which I listened most carefully for sounds of occupation. There were none, but I could not shake off the sudden dislike I had of entering the place. Unlike my cottage or the post office or any other place in the village I had visited, this building felt not just abandoned but tainted by evil, an arrogant erection by arrogant men and now
tenanted by arrogant spirits. Reverend MacNeil’s exorcism had done nothing to improve the atmosphere.

There were some obvious reasons for my abhorrence of the place. Architecturally it offended. Being from the United States, which is a new land, we don’t have many of the reminders of our barbaric ancestors that Europeans do. For instance, my church at home had not possessed the type of rusty chains and shackles hanging from the wall of the kirk:
Jougs
, they were called, which I knew from my reading were used for a special form of medieval pillory that had made religious disagreement so much fun in the old country. Nor did our town square have an iron pole where witches were chained for burning. Instead we had rose gardens and a gazebo where bands played concerts on Sunday afternoons when the weather permitted. All religions mixed harmoniously at these events. Though, yes, once there had been a lynching in a shade tree at the edge of the park, I recalled unhappily.

The door swung halfway closed behind me without a sound, but with what I swear was an air of anticipation. As I walked slowly down the center aisle, there was still light enough to see by but shadows clung tenaciously between the patches of light let in by the sandblasted windows; and I felt pursued by the echoes of my own footsteps.

The kirk had a dusty pipe organ tucked away behind a wooden panel, which did not at first seem odd to me, but became stranger the longer I thought on it. Many churches have organs, but not the ones I’d seen in Scotland, particularly those of the United Free Church, which this had supposedly been. The kirks I
had seen were plain and unadorned by “popish” statues and stained glass. Or organs. Most Ecclesiastical edifices had been purged of idols back in the sixteenth century, when they were purging Jews and witches and Catholics and other “undesirables.” That meant they had gotten rid of gilded crosses and marble saints and especially pagan gargoyles. Stained-glass windows and ironwork were supposed to remain untouched, but those old-time religious mobs were apt to get excessive once they had a bonfire burning, and many things had disappeared.

A stray beam of light found its way through the maze of clouds and was resting on the organ. A part of me wanted to walk up to that keyboard and play “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” the only song I could at the moment remember, but I knew the bellows would likely be broken and leaking. Also, a part of me was afraid of what secret message might be whispered from those pipes’ rusty throats as the sound crept through the building’s deeper shadows—and who their breathless whispers might attract.

I missed Lachlan keenly. Having him at my side would have made me more courageous. But had he been around, I would be stuck in my cottage, assigned to the task of keeping the hearth fires burning while he explored in my stead. At that moment, this did not seem an entirely bad thing, but still I went on.

There were a few gargoyles hiding here and there in the rafters—hermaphroditic creatures with fins from what I could see, and I again had to wonder why such carvings had not been destroyed during the Reformation.
Had the villagers been too frightened of their sea monster to follow governmental and church decrees?

I searched halfheartedly. There was both relief and disappointment in the fact that there was nothing obviously incriminating in the church: no strange muddy footprints, no freshly drowned corpses hidden in the pews, no barrels of smuggled whisky or monogrammed and bloodied handkerchiefs left by the villain who had called the finman back to the village. If such a person existed. I had begun to doubt this theory. Couldn’t the finman have returned on his own to seek his lost heart? Surely he did not need an invitation. And, for that matter, who had taken his heart? And how? Was it the selkies? This seemed unlikely. Lachlan had been as surprised as I when we found the crypt in my floor, and selkies would most likely have simply killed the finman, had they ever seen him in their power. The best candidate for this theft was Fergus Culbin or perhaps his father, but if that were the case, why had the finman waited so long to retrieve his heart? Surely he knew the person who had stolen it.

Thinking about this gave me a headache. There was too much that I didn’t know. Speculating was fruitless, and it was also making me more nervous with every passing minute. Tired, I turned back toward the door, but then I heard a noise: a sigh. Unable to ignore the sound, I turned back. Normally I would have called out, but prudence kept me silent.

I had no trouble finding the stair down to the crypt Mistress MacLaren had mentioned. There was no door, only a decorative iron rail at the top of a circular iron stair that descended into darkness. This I ventured
onto with extreme caution, since the iron was badly corroded and I did not entirely trust it to hold my weight.

The daylight followed me for two turnings of the stair but then no more. I retreated on the shuddering staircase, unwilling to take any more risks. Had I not spotted the oil lamp sitting behind the pulpit—whose Bible, I couldn’t help but notice, was opened to the thirty-fifth psalm—I would have left, but the lamp was sitting there, a clear challenge against cowardice. Again, fate could have turned me away by failing to provide a means of lighting the lamp, or by leaving the vessel empty of oil, but such was not the case; the lamp was full and there were dry matches beside it.

Sighing in frustration, I lit the lamp and returned to the twisting stair. Again I listened with all my might but heard nothing from below. Even the sound of the ocean was greatly muted by the thick stone walls, which wrapped me in a smothering embrace. I was alone.

Down, down I went, one slow step at a time, testing each tread before putting my full weight upon it. I counted as I went. There were thirty-nine steps that corkscrewed through what appeared to be a natural chimney in the rock. Everything smelled wet and slightly rotten.

The basement of the church was a surprise. The slanting floor was lined with shards of broken glass and porcelain that sparkled cruelly, and I hesitated a moment before stepping carefully into the fragments of pottery and glass. What was this vandalism and where had all the glass come from? Had the locals thought,
on that stormy night when the sands came roaring ashore, to discourage the evil finman from coming among them by spreading glass on the floor, perhaps to cut his naked feet? Or was it to deter the unshod selkies who chased him? Or was this all more recent? Was this something to dissuade the Devil with his shoeless hooves, just in case exorcism didn’t work? Why else destroy every pot and glass and bowl?

I shuffled carefully as I approached the crypts built into the wall. The niches were made of limestone, which had been dug out with a pick. No bodies rested in the empty crypts. Like all those who had perished in the storm, the crypt’s dead had disappeared. There were twenty-six shelves and no markers, though I could see small holes where plaques had once been affixed.

Not unexpectedly, I found a tunnel leading from the crypt. It angled downward toward the sea. Men had finished the narrow passageway by smoothing the floor, but the walls and ceilings looked a great deal like the other natural tunnels I had seen, though this one was mercifully dry. There had once been some sort of stacked stone wall blocking off the tunnel, but it had collapsed outward. Not inward—not pushed in by smugglers coming up from a sea cave. Something in the crypt had pushed the wall down when it escaped seaward.

I had traveled perhaps a dozen steps into the tunnel when suddenly I could hear the sea begin to roar and gurgle. It seemed that I had again lost track of time and the tide had turned while I explored. Or was it the finman, somehow aware of my intrusion and sending the sea after me again?

The need to retrieve my courage and conduct after my panicked flight from the faerie mound kept me moving steadily if rapidly backward until I heard something scream with fury. The sound shook the very walls of the crypt. Then fear came upon me again, washing away whatever compulsion had lured me into the kirk. Being careful not to upset the lamp, I turned and fled back to the metal staircase and climbed it with much less caution than I had used in my descent. Survival before dignity. It is probably miraculous that I did not collapse the old spiral of rusted iron.

Still, enough was enough. I knew now that the kirk did indeed have tunnels that opened to the sea and could be used by the finman. Or by Lachlan. Or by anyone who did not want to visit the village in a conventional and honest manner. There was nothing else to see there, though, no parish records to investigate, not even graves where I mightgather names. I wouldn’t come again.