‘You like it?’ he says.
‘I carry it everywhere,’ she says.
Something inside him crumbles. How could he have doubted her? He curls her fingers around it and kisses them.
‘I’m sorry I am a bastardo today.’
She strokes his cheek. ‘You are worried about leaving?’
Grateful to her for understanding, he nods.
‘You should be,’ she says, kissing his mouth. ‘I have your heart.’
He laughs, returns her kiss. He’s never known anything like the love he has for her. The closest feeling was when he was painting the chapel. It’s a sense of reverence. A feeling like worship.
He kisses her again and then she pulls away.
‘I have to go. Con will be worried.’
He nods, kisses her once more. ‘You go. I’ll follow. Ti amo.’
‘I love you too.’
And she is gone.
He dresses slowly, enjoying the soreness in his limbs, the smell of her body on his; he is always reluctant to swim afterwards, but Dorotea insists that he practise, teasing that she won’t always be there to rescue him. Now, the thought of her not being with him is too painful, so he is grateful for the way the cold sea clears his thoughts. His swimming strokes are basic – Dorotea laughs that he looks like a dog – but at least he won’t drown. He dries himself quickly and walks back along the route to the chapel, trying not to look at the near-finished barriers. There are rumours that it’s possible to walk across some parts of them now. Perhaps, after he has gone, Dorotea will be able to walk back to the old house that she’d spoken about, in Kirkwall – she says she misses it. Perhaps she’ll try to buy it back. Perhaps she will find an Orcadian man to live with and they will have children, while he is miles away in Wales or somewhere else. Perhaps –
Stop!
There is a darkness creeping down from the sky and a few stars glimmering. It’s still warm at the moment, but he hasn’t forgotten the winter chill. Will it be as cold in Wales?
He is nearing the chapel when he hears a cry. High-pitched, then quickly cut off, like the calls of foxes he remembers echoing over the Moena hills. But there are no foxes on this island. The cry rings out again and, for a moment, he thinks of the stories Dorotea has told him about this place. The beasts that come in from the sea. The skinless creatures that breathe over the land, and the selkies, who cast off their skins and, underneath, are the most beautiful women anyone has ever seen.
The hairs rise on the back of his neck. The shout again – a woman’s voice, certainly, and then a man’s growl, afterwards.
The sounds are coming from behind the forge.
When he rounds the metal hut, there is a shadowy figure with many limbs writhing against the wall. He cannot, at first, make sense of what he is seeing. And then, all of a sudden, he can.
A man – a guard – is pressing a woman against a wall. He is trying to hitch up her skirt. The woman is batting at the man’s face, but it seems to make no difference. Cesare cannot understand why the woman is silent, and then he sees that the man is holding her by her throat.
He doesn’t think, but barrels into the man, fists swinging. The man is knocked off balance and sprawls flat on his back. The woman doubles over, gasping, her long hair falling over her face. And she steps into the moonlight, choking, hands at her neck.
Dorotea!
Everything happens so quickly that it is only afterwards he can piece together the fragments, and even then, he is unsure of what exactly happened. It is a series of images, each like a photograph branded onto his memory: Dorotea coughing and retching, her hands at her throat. His own hand, reaching out for her – numb, as if it is not his own, as if this is not happening. The man launching himself at Cesare, landing punch after punch on his chest, face, skull. Cesare’s ears ringing with the sound, but, through the sound and the pummelling fists, the awareness that the man sitting on his chest is Angus MacLeod.
Then a final thud, which Cesare does not feel . . . and Angus slumps on top of him, as if, in the midst of punching, he has fallen asleep.
And, standing behind Angus, with a baton in her hand, is Constanza. She raises it to strike again, to bring it down on Angus’s skull.
‘Fermare!’ Cesare shouts, and then Dorotea cries, ‘Stop!’
Time slips back into itself, like a joint into a socket. Cesare crawls out from beneath MacLeod’s unconscious body and checks his pulse.
Alive.
Then he stands and pulls Dorotea to him. She is weeping.
‘He was just . . . He was there. I couldn’t –’ She chokes.
He strokes her hair. ‘You are hurt?’ He examines her throat, where there are faint bruises emerging, but no other marks. ‘He hurt you?’
And he takes the baton from Con and stares at Angus’s body. He lifts it.
‘Stop!’ Both women speak at the same time.
Blood trickles from Cesare’s forehead into his eyes; his mouth tastes of copper. He spits, then looks at MacLeod’s prone body again.
‘What shall we do?’ he asks.
Con says, ‘We could roll him off the cliff.’
The women stand side by side. They look uncanny, otherworldly. He thinks again of the selkie myths. The stories of those mysterious women, who can drown sailors without remorse.
Dorotea sighs. And Cesare doesn’t know what she would have said, doesn’t know if she’s capable of murder, because, at that moment, MacLeod stirs, swears, rubs the back of his head, sits up.
He blinks at Con, at the baton in her hand.
Then he looks at Cesare, at Dorotea, and back to Con, with the baton. He sits upright,
