Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
While inspired by real events and the construction of the Italian Chapel in Orkney during the Second World War, this is very much a work of fiction. As such, characters and places have been invented and the names of locations and timings of events have often been changed.
Within this book, I wanted to give voice to the people who find themselves caught up in war, swept along by love and transformed as a result of circumstances beyond their control.
While editing the story, I found myself in the midst of a global pandemic and months of lockdown, watching the world close in on itself: people confined to their homes, yet still reaching out to each other, supporting each other, offering love through everyday acts of kindness. I was struck, once again, by the ways in which people under pressure seek escape, the ways in which we create beauty through art and the places where we find love and light.
Thank you for reading this book. I hope you enjoy it.
Epigraph
If the earth shook and the sea swept over the
fields, it was the Stoor Worm yawning. He
was so long that there was no place for his
body until he coiled it around the earth. His
breath was so venomous that when he was
angry, every living thing within his reach was
destroyed. People grew pale and crossed
themselves when they heard his name, for he
was the worst of the nine fearful curses that
plague mankind.
From Asipattle and the Stoor Worm, an Orkney folk tale
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Prologue
Part One
October 1941
Early January 1942
Mid-January 1942
Part Two
Mid-January 1942
Late January 1942
Late January 1942
February 1942
Part Three
February 1942
March 1942
March 1942
Part Four
April 1942
May 1942
July 1942
August 1942
Late August, Early September 1942
Part Five
September 1942
September 1942
Author’s Note
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
About the Author
Also by Caroline Lea
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
The girls, Selkie Holm, Orkney, September 1942
Of all the ways to die, drowning must be the most peaceful. Water above, sounds cushioned, womb-dark. Drowning is a return to something before the knife-blade of living. It is the death we would choose, if the choice was ours to make.
It is the death we would choose for others too – if we loved them enough.
The sea is cold, filling our noses when we surface. We dive back beneath the water to tug the foot free. Everything is blurred as the waves crash into the barriers. We clutch each other, kicking furiously to stop ourselves being smashed into the rocks, watching the pale body drift back and forth with each tidal tug. Above the waves, the storm churns – people on land will be smothering their lights, shutting out the lashing rain, the threat from passing planes and unseen monsters. They will believe the Stoor Worm is in a fury.
The body is silent now; motionless, apart from the movement of the waves. Our lungs burn. Moments ago, scrabbling nails had clawed at us and fingers had reached for our hands. A fierce, desperate tug. A final watery shriek. Then sudden stillness – the eyes fixed open, as if the body was alive and breathing brine, like some creature of myth.
We help each other from the water, both sobbing. And then we work to get the body from the sea, to free the clothing where it has snagged on the rocks. We dive in again and again. Our lungs ache. Our muscles shudder. Our hands grow numb and our fingers slip from the body’s slick skin.
Finally, it comes free.
We drag it upwards onto the barrier that the prisoners built. We’d watched them laying down stone, unspooling barbed wire, changing the shape of our island and bringing chaos to our doorstep.
Even before the war arrived here – before the guns and the guards and the iron huts full of foreign prisoners – Orkney hadn’t been a safe place. People have their own beliefs this far north: their laws are ancient and quick and brutal. These islands teeter on the edge of the world. Once, Orkney would have been a blank on a map. Terra Incognita – some skinny-shanked sailor’s drunken dream, the land rising out of the fog and disappearing again before he could set foot on the shape his finger traced on the murky horizon.
There are a hundred sunken tombs on these islands where we could hide the body – deep pits in the ground, covered with rock and earth, surrounded by the ragged incisors of standing stones that rear skywards – but they are too far away. Instead, we begin to drag it towards the quarry, where there will be shelter from the wind’s bite, and rocks enough for a burial.
The walls of the quarry rise dark around us; the wind snaps our hair over our faces, whipping tears from our eyes. We scrabble in the rubble, our hands wet and numb, until we find seven stones of a good size. We place them on the body, according to the ceremony. One on the forehead to still the beating thoughts; one on the chest to quiet the hammering heart; one in each hand and one on each foot, to end all movement; and a final pebble in the mouth to stop the breath. Without such precautions, the dead are restless and tormented and have been known to haunt the living. We say the rhyme:
‘Take blood and breath and flesh and bone,
take all between these seven stones.’
Finally, we take the metal heart from our pocket and place it on the chest, above the space where the living heart used to beat. We turn away so we cannot press our lips to the cold skin: the feel of that cooling flesh will be too much.
It is finished. We can do no more to say farewell.
The ground is rough beneath us as we sit next to the cold body, waiting for the last of the storm to die down.
After they find us, we won’t see the sky again. It’ll be a private hanging in a dark cellar, last used to string up smugglers and fish thieves. Or perhaps we will see sunlight when
