Death on Lindisfarne (4 page)

“I took Sue's word for it.” He glared at her. “I don't believe in all this stuff about Catholic saints and miracles.”

“Celtic saints,” growled the formidable Elspeth. “Not Roman. At least, to begin with.”

“Whatever. And Lucy, I have to tell you you're wrong that women like your Hilda should have authority over men. All the twelve apostles were male. And didn't St Paul say women should keep silent in church? No, I'm here because there's a tide of paganism sweeping over England these days. It breaks my heart to look at the sinful world around us. Fool that I was, I thought you would have some ideas for doing something about that.”

His blue eyes went challengingly round the room, as though the respectable array of people there were the epitome of drink, drugs and violence.

“It's true that I take my inspiration from the saints of the past,” Lucy countered. “But the last session will bring us up to date on what that means today.”

The door behind her opened suddenly. A teenage girl with long, lank hair stood there. Acne marred her sallow face. Her brown eyes looked frightened.

It was the same girl who had passed Aidan and Melangell on the stairs. And yet she was not the same.

The provocative smile had gone. As she looked around the room full of people from under hooded lids, she flinched like a startled animal. She turned for the door as if about to bolt.

Lucy was swiftly on her feet. Her hand went out to stay the girl.

“This is Rachel,” she said to the others. “Rachel Ince. She's a friend of mine. We came up together in my car from Devon. Rachel's here because… well, mainly because she needs a holiday.”

She spoke in a lower voice to the girl. “Are you all right? I missed you.”

The girl nodded silently and tugged the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. She let Lucy lead her to a chair beside her own and sat down. Aidan was close enough to see that she was trembling.

“Welcome back, Rachel!” James Denholme was looking across the room at her intently.

She hung her head and did not meet his eyes.

“E
LSPETH
H
ACCOMBE
. D
OCTOR
. Senior lecturer in history, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.” She bent a condescending smile on the rest of the group.

Then her keen eyes went back to Lucy. “Don't look so alarmed, padre. I'm a medievalist: thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. I shan't be trampling on your toes. I'm not a specialist in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. And in case you're wondering what I'm doing on a church-based holiday, Valerie likes this kind of thing. She's got a soft spot for your Celtic saints. Sentimentalism, if you ask me.”

Lucy forced a smile, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice. “You're right there, Elspeth. There
is
a lot of sentimentality about the Celtic Church. That's just what I'm hoping to lift the lid on this week. It wasn't all attuning to nature and talking to the birds. There were bitter disputes that tore the community apart. We'll be looking at those too. And by the way, I'm Lucy. There's no need to stand on ceremony.”

She could feel the disturbing undercurrents in the room. For a moment, James had frightened her, when he raised his fist to Sue. It had brought back terrifying memories. He obviously thought that Lucy had no right to wear a dog collar. He certainly thought he could run this course better than she would.

And Dr Haccombe regarded her with barely disguised contempt.
She may be right,
Lucy thought ruefully.
I'm no scholar. I just want to share my enthusiasm for this special place.

She had missed Valerie Grayson's soft-spoken introduction: “… assistant bookshop manager. And yes, Elspeth's right. I've always loved
the stories of the Northumbrian saints. The Venerable Bede's history. I'm looking forward to you telling us more.”

She has a lovely smile,
Lucy reflected.
I can see why even someone as prickly as Elspeth Haccombe loves her – if that's the right word. She makes me feel she knows I'm feeling a bit bruised, that she's on my side.

She gave Valerie an answering smile of gratitude.

“Aidan?”

She saw the red-headed man start. He had been sitting on a sofa in the corner, his foxy face watching everyone else. Suddenly he found the spotlight of her attention turned on him. She watched him struggle to come back from wherever his thoughts had taken him.

“Aidan Davison.” He answered more curtly than she had expected. “Photographer.”

He stopped, as though unwilling to go on.

“And you've come here because…?”

His eyes levelled on hers, almost with dislike. He swallowed. “I had… happy memories of this place. I wanted to show Melangell.”

The gruffness of his voice discouraged further questions. There was something more here. Would a week be long enough for him to trust her, to tell her more?

“Right. That leaves you.” She turned her smile on the couple sharing the sofa with Aidan.

Melangell's hand shot up. “Please, Miss Pargeter… Sorry! Lucy. You forgot about me.”

I've done it again!
Lucy cursed herself.
Acted as though an eight-year-old child couldn't speak for herself.

“Oh, Melangell! I'm so sorry. What did you want to tell us?”

“I'm Melangell Davison. Melangell after a Welsh saint. I'm eight years old and I go to St Nicholas Primary School. And I really, really wanted to come on your holiday, because I've got
loads
of books about St Aidan and St Cuthbert and St Chad, and all the rest of them. My mother wrote them.”

The girl was sitting so close to her father on the arm of the sofa that Lucy could not help seeing the shock that stiffened him.

He really hadn't wanted Melangell to say that. I guess it must have been a painful marriage break-up. Yet why come back here to awaken those memories?

“Thank you, Melangell. If you've got any of those books with you, I'd love to see them.”

Now there really was only the elderly couple on the sofa.

The bald-headed man beamed round at all of them. “David Cavendish. Retired. A gentleman of leisure now. To tell you the truth, we didn't set out looking for this sort of holiday. But we've always loved the north-east: Robin Hood's Bay, Scarborough, Alnwick Castle. And when we looked up on the internet to see where we could stay, this came up. And we thought, well, that sounds a bit different. Let's give it a go.” He turned to his wife. “Isn't that right, Fran?”

“Yes, dear. I'm Frances, by the way. Call me Fran. And like Dave says, we're retired. Used to run a children's home. We love kiddies.” She turned a warm smile on Melangell.

Lucy's heart sank at the same time as she heard the stifled gasp from Rachel beside her. This was all she needed. Rachel had spent much of her troubled childhood in a residential home. It was something she found difficult to talk about. Lucy had no idea what had happened there, but it had clearly not been a happy experience.

She glanced at the teenager with concern. Rachel was curled up in her chair, like a frightened animal that expects to be hit. Her face was covered by her hanging hair.

Lucy sighed. The Cavendishes were clearly an innocent, well-meaning couple who loved children. But their very presence and the associations they brought might be enough to undo the healing Lucy was trying to bring to Rachel.

It was only the first day, and she was already beginning to question the wisdom of bringing this disparate group of people together, with their human problems. But she was committed now.

She put a hand reassuringly on Rachel's knee. The girl was shivering.

A
IDAN SAW THE DOOR BEHIND
L
UCY
burst open. She turned sharply.

A large untidy young man in horn-rimmed glasses rushed into the room. He stopped abruptly. Dark hair flopped over his broad face. He was panting.

“I haven't found her,” he said to Lucy. “I've looked everywhere. I…” His dark eyes went past her. “Rachel! You're back!” A grin flowered over his perspiring features.

He looked around at the crowded room, as though he had only just noticed the others. “Sorry, everyone. I'm Peter. I guess I've missed the intro. Typical.”

Lucy smiled at him warmly. “Peter's another friend of mine,” she told the group. “An archaeology student.” She looked at her watch and seemed to make a decision. “Right, people. I think we've got time before supper to make a start. If you'd like to get your jackets and meet me by the front door in ten minutes, I'll show you where, for me, the story begins. And I can assure Elspeth it's not sentimental.”

Melangell jumped down from the sofa arm.

Frances Cavendish struggled to hoist herself off the cushions. She grumbled, “No one told me this was going to be a walking holiday.”

Lucy caught the protest on her way out of the room. She turned in apology.

“I'm sorry! I should have asked. Does anyone here have mobility problems? It's not far – honestly. I'm not taking you on a route march before supper.”

David Cavendish helped his wife up. “Don't listen to her, love,” he
said cheerfully to Lucy. “She'll be fine. We may not be as young as we were, but there's life in the old bird yet.”

“Here! You mind who you're calling old!” his wife retorted.

As they made their way upstairs to fetch their coats, Melangell turned to Aidan on the landing with a bright light in her eyes. “Did you see? That girl? She had a tear in her ear. There was blood on it. As if someone had pulled her earring off. Bet you it was the one I found.”

Aidan gave a start. His normally sharply focused eyes had not noticed this.

“You'll have to ask her about it.”

Aidan had half-expected the shrinking Rachel to be missing from the party that gathered outside the front door of St Colman's House. But she was there, a huddled figure beyond the edge of the group. Instead of the red jacket, she wore a shapeless black coat that reached nearly to her knees.

Lucy looked flushed. He wondered if there had been an argument. The large ungainly student Peter was standing behind the girl, like a protective sheepdog.

As he stepped out into the keen breeze of late afternoon, Aidan's eyes sought Rachel's face. Had Melangell been right about the blood on her ear, the torn lobe? Could anyone here have used force on the girl, so soon after their arrival? Who? Why?

Her limp curtain of hair made it impossible to see.

It occurred to Aidan to wonder whether it had been wise of the young minister to bring such a problem with her when she already had the responsibility of leading this group.

And where did Peter fit into their story?

Lucy led them down the now quiet road. The strait ahead was filling. Soon there would be no more traffic across the causeway.

Past the car park, she turned off onto the sands. Melangell tugged Aidan's sleeve.

“It was here, wasn't it? Where we came across the Pilgrims' Way? Where I found the earring.”

Aidan looked out along the line of poles that marked the route they had taken from the mainland. The water now lapped around all but the nearest ones. Out in the middle, the current would run deep and strong. There was that little refuge on stilts. It hadn't been foolish of him to take Melangell across that way, had it?

Lucy walked down on to the beach and seated herself on a grass-tussocked bank of sand.

“It's best if you face the water.”

Elspeth Haccombe made more of a fuss of arranging her tweed skirt than was necessary, wanting to assert her presence rather than let Lucy take centre stage.

Then there was silence. An absence of voices that gradually filled with the whisper of the waves and the sigh of the wind in the grass.

Out of that stillness, Lucy's voice came with more authority than Aidan had expected.

“I want to take you back to the year 590. The future of Northumbria hangs in the balance. Celtic Britain has been Christian for centuries. Don't believe those who tell you Augustine brought Christianity to us in 597. They're only talking about the heathen Anglo-Saxons in the south-east corner of England. Here in the north, the Anglian invaders are only just getting a foothold. Do you see there, down the coast, those ramparts on the cliff?”

The square silhouette was just visible in the early evening light.

“Bamburgh. It was a stronghold long before the Normans built that castle. By 590 the Angles had seized it. But all across the north there were the old Christian kingdoms of Britain. And the greatest of their kings was Urien of Rheged. From his capital in Carlisle he ruled from Galloway to Shropshire. He summoned the other Celtic kings to his banner to drive the invaders out: Rhydderch of the Clyde, Fiachna of Ulster, Morcant, whose land here the Angles had taken, and many more.

“The Irish king Fiachna captured Bamburgh from the usurpers. They harried the heathen and drove them back to this last redoubt, here on the island of Lindisfarne, which the Celtic Britons called Metcaud. They were on the brink of beating the invaders completely and driving them from our shores. Urien and his host were massed on those sands
opposite us. They blockaded the Angles on this island for three days and three nights.

“They almost did it. They were in sight of total victory. But something terrible stopped them. Over there, just across the water, someone assassinated their leader, King Urien of Rheged.

“Rumour has it that it was Morcant, who had been king here before the Angles took his land. He was bitter that Urien had given Bamburgh to Fiachna of Ulster, and not back to him.

“However it was, the blood of the greatest British king of the sixth century was spilled in the sand. And with it went the hope of a Christian victory. The lesser kings quarrelled and broke up. The heathen Angles took back their conquests. Lindisfarne was never called by its Celtic name of Metcaud again.

“The bard Taliesin sang the praises of Urien in the oldest surviving poem in Europe:

Her voice died into the weeping of the waves.

In spite of himself, Aidan shivered. He had not known this story.

After a while, Frances Cavendish stirred. “Very nice, I'm sure.” Her tone meant something else.

“And what exactly was the point of that?” Elspeth said more loudly. “Though I grant you it certainly wasn't sentimental. Unless you mean to show us the capacity of the Celts to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.”

Lucy laughed. “Something like that. I rather hoped you might contribute your own thoughts about what it might mean. And yes, that's a start.”

There was belligerence in James's voice. “You sound anti-English. Aren't you English yourself?”

“A mixture, like all of us, I suppose. I have ancestors on Tyneside. I like to think that some of my genes go back before the Anglo-Saxons to the Celtic Britons of the north, the people who fought the Northumbrian Angles.”

“Well, I'm proud to be English. I don't like the way you rubbished Augustine of Canterbury. Because of him, the English spread the word of God across the world.”

“Don't worry, James. All in good time. I can assure you there are plenty of Anglo-Saxon saints to come.”

The discussion became more general.

Aidan looked across at Rachel. She was sitting a little apart from the rest, with her knees hunched before her. Her head was lifted now to stare across the strait at the once bloodstained beach opposite. The wind lifted her hair. Just for a moment, Aidan saw what Melangell had: the slit in her earlobe, as though someone or something had torn the ring through her flesh.

Was it the earring Melangell had found? Who, then, had been that larger figure in his photograph?

He looked around him, at the brown leather bomber jacket James was wearing; Elspeth Haccombe's brown tweed coat. Even Peter, who had been searching for her, wore a shapeless khaki anorak.

“Well,” said Lucy, getting to her feet. “I guess Mrs Batley's supper must be on its way.”

As they trooped back to the road, Melangell stayed looking out over the grey water.

“Is it really true? Where we walked down to the crossing this afternoon – that's where he was murdered?”

Aidan laughed to reassure her. “That was a bit more bloodthirsty than I expected for a start. But you don't have to worry. That was more than a thousand years ago. I'm not expecting a murder on the sands while we're here.”