A memory clicks into place.
Oh, God, the weight of him. The weight of his body as we dragged him, imagining his eyes staring at us. I’d refused to look properly at his face, afraid that it would come back to me in nightmares. Instead, I’d tried to see him as a set of body parts. Feet. Hands. Chest. Mouth. Eyes.
I put my hands over my own eyes now and I know I have to confess, fully. I have to tell John everything I’ve remembered, or Dot will never be free.
I swallow. I breathe.
Very quietly, I say, ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident.’
John takes his hand from my arm. ‘Kill who?’
I can’t say the name.
He pulls my hands from my face. ‘Kill who, Con?’ ‘Angus,’ I whisper.
Now he jerks from me. ‘Angus is dead?’ His face is stunned, his eyes wide and wary.
My eyes fill with tears and my throat aches. I know that my next words will condemn me, but I have to speak out. I have to take the blame.
‘It was an accident,’ I say. I close my eyes and I try to explain it, just as I remember it.
‘Angus ran along the barrier. I was so frightened. I wanted . . . He grabbed and I . . . We fell. But he got caught in the rocks. I put him in the quarry. It was nothing to do with . . . It was all my fault. I’m the one to blame.’
I wait for his rage. I wait for him to call the guards, for them to drag me away and lock me up.
But he doesn’t look angry as he puts a hand upon my shoulder. He looks devastated. His eyes are red, as if he is trying to ward off tears. He swallows twice and then he says, ‘The body. The body in the quarry. You . . . believe it was Angus?’
I stare at him. I do not understand. It is as though he is trying to tell me something but I have lost the ability to make sense of language.
‘It was Angus,’ I whisper. ‘I saw him.’
‘Oh,’ he says, and he pulls me into a tight embrace. ‘Oh, you poor wee lassie.’ His pullover smells of bitter wool and the sea and, for a moment, it is like being embraced by my father, or by Dot, who loves me more than anyone else.
Dizzy, I close my eyes and lean against him. I brace myself, although part of me knows what he is going to say.
‘That body in the quarry,’ he says. ‘That wasn’t Angus. We don’t know where Angus is.’
John takes me back to the chapel to lie down. My head is pounding and twice I have retched and spat sour vomit into the gorse.
He will send a doctor to see me, he promises. He just needs to talk to Major Bates, to try to understand exactly what happened. In the meantime, they’ve dragged a mattress into the chapel, and I must stay here for one night, just while they discuss what they should do next.
I nod, barely hearing him. I go in whatever direction he leads me: up the hill, into the chapel, over to my bed, where he leaves me, with a promise to return tomorrow.
Then he shuts the door behind him and I am alone again in the darkness.
John’s words rattle in my head like sea stones.
That body in the quarry. That wasn’t Angus . . .
You poor wee lassie.
Time pools, unspools, unravels. I run my finger over the smooth edge of the metal heart. I heft it like a stone. I tap it lightly against my skull, then hold it to my temple. The beat of my pulse hammers up the metal into my fingertips.
I watch the chapel window. Light, then darkness – the true darkness that signals the end of summer. Darkness is the first promise of winter, when everything clamps shut for ever.
Across the water, in the Kirkwall morgue, lies a body and I cannot allow myself to think of it. Every time I do, my panic rises, like acid in my throat. Instead, I focus on the light in the window. Outside the chapel, there will be stars, like scattered seeds across the night sky. There is a glow in the window as a crescent moon sharpens itself against the night.
But it is no good. There is a body in the morgue and I’m not safe. I know it. Something is coming for me.Constance
I jolt awake again and again, but each time I fall back into a dream that is worse than the last. Water bubbling over me, hands holding me under.
O’Farrell is in Kirkwall; he says he wants to save me but I am certain it will be a hanging. What else would they do with me, now I’ve confessed? My head aches. In the half-darkness and the spill of moonlight from the window, I try to catch sight of my reflection. The face that stares back at me is wide-eyed and pale. I can’t look into her deep-socketed eyes.
I curl around myself on the mattress.
I wake. I sleep.
I am trying to swim but my limbs are lead. On the sea floor is the wrecked hull of the Royal Elm. The dead sailors wave their bony fingers at me and grin their skullish grins. This is where I should be, cold on the ocean floor.
I wake. I sleep.
In my dream, Cesare and Dot are standing in the boat, talking about me.
It wasn’t her fault, Dot says.
Cesare answers, She is mad, I think.
Dot says, Throw her overboard and see if she floats.
They wrap their arms around me, and for a moment, I am close to them again. I cry out, reaching for them, Don’t let me go! They drop me into the cold water. I sink like a stone.
I wake. I sleep.
Seals circle me, laughing. Under their skin, each one is a beautiful woman.
When I wake again, it is dark and the door is opening. My heart
