Death on Lindisfarne (6 page)

The garden was quiet, softly lit by the lamps along the verandah outside the chalet bedrooms. It was a joy to see that Elspeth was right. There was a glow behind the curtains of her own room.

She tapped briefly and stepped inside.

Rachel was back where Lucy had left her, sitting on her bed, with her feet tucked under her.

But there was something different. This was not the huddled and fearful figure, shrinking from the world, that she had been this afternoon. Rachel's long hair was tossed back from her face. Her eyes were bright. The food on the tray had gone.

“There you are!” Lucy said, trying to keep her voice light. “You gave me a fright when I found you'd gone.”

“Why?” Rachel's voice sounded stronger. “I can go where I like, can't I? It's not a bleeding prison.”

“Of course not! I only meant… Well, it's after dark, and you didn't tell me you were going out. I just like to know where you're heading, and when you'll be back. So I'll know when to start worrying.”

“I don't have to tell you anything. You're not my mother.”

No,
Lucy thought with a flash of anger.
I'm not the woman who was so under the power of drink and drugs that they had to take you away from her, for your own safety. I actually care what happens to you.

She swallowed back the retort before it sprang to her lips. She strove for the professional tone of calm and cheerfulness that years of training for life on the beat had instilled in her.

“You're right. I'm not your mother. But I was hoping we were friends. Friends trust each other. They tell each other stuff.”

“Yeah. Like that Jamie creature kept saying. Like Jesus was my best friend and so was he. And he was going to save me, if I'd just confess my sins to him. Creep.”

Lucy sat down on her own bed and gave a sigh. “I'm sorry about that. I truly am. I didn't think there'd be anyone like that on this course – the sort that tries to ram Jesus down your throat. It doesn't work like that. It really doesn't. That's what I want to tell people this week: saints like Aidan and Cuthbert, they weren't that sort of tub-thumper. They
lived
the gospel. And that was enormously attractive.”

A thought flashed across her mind. James, the self-opinionated evangelist. Was that whom Rachel had been with this evening?

No. Common sense caught up with her. James and Sue had been at supper with everyone else. Lucy had left them in the lounge.

Uneasiness was returning. There was an unnatural brightness in Rachel's eyes. Her policewoman's instincts alerted her. Drugs? But Rachel was in rehab. She'd been clean for months. This was just one of her bipolar highs.

A scowl darkened Rachel's face. She tossed her head angrily and gave a bitter laugh.

“You could tell he took one look at me, out of everyone else here, and thought, ‘Right, we've got a proper sinner here. Let's clock her up as my next convert.' He's right, isn't he? I'm rubbish.”

“Rachel! That's not true. You've been more sinned against than sinning. You're doing marvellously. You've been clean of drugs for ages.”

“Huh!” Rachel flounced off the bed and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

A selfish part of Lucy wished she had booked a single room upstairs for herself. She had enough to worry about as it was. And now she would have to spend the night with a volatile teenager who could swing from deep affection to open hostility. It was a big responsibility.

She looked at her watch. She had wrested authority back from James by saying she would lead evening prayers herself. She picked up the liturgy of the Northumbrian Community and thumbed through the pages.

She found the service of Compline for Saturday evening:

It would be among the service sheets she had duplicated for use this week.

Where
had
Rachel been in the dark?

“T
HAT'S
MORE LIKE IT
.”

They turned a corner between the houses and Melangell gave a little skip as the ruins of Lindisfarne Priory came into view. Aidan couldn't help it. His hand closed round his camera. He already had shots in plenty. Shots he had used to illustrate Jenny's book. But the broken pillars, the single perfect arch soaring above the short green turf stood out against the blue sky in a way that called to him irresistibly to capture them through his lens.

They reached the statue of St Aidan: tall, lean, calm-faced. You could tell the encircling sea was in his uplifted eyes. Golden lichen peppered his shoulders and tonsured head.

Melangell stroked the reddish concrete folds of his robes, almost possessively. “Hello. I've wanted to meet you for such a long time.”

St Aidan's namesake could see the knot of people gathering on the turf that had once been the nave of the Norman priory's church. It was too soon yet to be certain of faces.

The woman in the entrance booth waved them through. The solid figure of the student Peter, his shaggy hair flopping over his dark-rimmed glasses, was waiting inside. He handed them their tickets.

“Hi. You found it.”

“It's hard to miss.”

“We're special, aren't we?” Melangell turned up a happy face to Aidan. “We can come in as soon as we like. Everybody on the mainland will have to wait until the tide goes down.”

It was early enough on an April morning for there to be an edge on the breeze. But the clear sunshine was warming the sandstone to a
rosier red. Melangell ran across to one of the pillars. She let her hand caress the chevron pattern incised in the stone. Then she turned, and Aidan was rewarded by her gasp as she saw the high rock of Lindisfarne Castle perfectly framed by the slender arch that had once spanned the chancel. Between the priory and the castle, boats were drawn up on a curve of pale sand.

It was as perfect as he remembered it. As perfect as it had been when it had captured Jenny and Aidan's hearts.

His finger stilled on the shutter.

He was near enough now to see the group of people around Lucy in her blue trousers and anorak. To his surprise, Rachel was there. Yet even now, she seemed poised to flee, like a bird that might take flight at the slightest alarm. Aidan was less happy to see the pastor James and his companion Sue. Last evening, James had made disparaging remarks about Lucy's use of the Northumbrian Community's liturgy. But the cadences of the threefold Celtic prayers had fitted perfectly with their setting.

Valerie was there, slim and elegant in heathery tweeds and a violet anorak. Not surprisingly, the non-believing Elspeth was absent from this morning service. Or was she? Just for a moment, Aidan caught a movement in the open space beyond the ruined church. No doubt the history don was seizing this opportunity to explore the site before the place was overrun with visitors.

Aidan and Melangell joined the group. He felt it difficult to meet the others' eyes after his display of temper last night. He was conscious that they were looking at him warily. Lucy caught his shifting gaze and gave him a brief smile of encouragement. A slight frown creased her forehead. He thought she looked nervous.

His eyes went back to Rachel. The teenager's hands were thrust into the pockets of her black jacket. She seemed unable to look at anyone directly. She shifted uneasily, still not seeming certain to stay.

“Hello,” he said. “How's things?”

“'Lo,” she returned curtly. She did not answer his question.

Aidan looked around again. There were still people missing, weren't there? It took a moment to place the absentees. David and Fran
Cavendish. Even as he remembered their undistinguished presence yesterday, he saw them coming through the gate. Peter followed behind like a shepherding collie.

David was looking ahead with a smile on his face. He increased his pace as he realized they were the last. But Frances had her head turned to him as she picked her way in heeled shoes across the still wet grass. Her voice came clearly on the breeze.

“I hope she doesn't expect me to sit down on this. And I'm not standing all the way through a church service. Beats me why we can't go to a proper church with chairs.”

Lucy must have heard this, but she greeted the pair with a bright smile.

“Hello. You made it. Good. We're just about ready to start. No chairs, I'm afraid. But you're welcome to sit on the remains of the walls. I promise not to keep you too long. I thought we might manage a hymn to begin with.”

Peter came forward and passed around sheets of paper. The little congregation broke valiantly into “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah”.

As the words died away, Aidan heard a stifled cry. He turned in time to see Peter put a protective arm around a trembling Rachel. He looked round quickly to see what might have caused it. But the rest of the group were looking expectantly at Lucy. Only Elspeth strode between two far-off pillars and disappeared.

Lucy kept her service short. The rhythms of Celtic liturgy lapped around them like waves on the shore. But she brought things sharply into the present day when she reminded them of Urien's murder on the sands by someone on his own side.

“And all the time we fight each other, Jesus is calling us to go out into the world, as he did. Not to give people a theological examination, but to live the gospel where they are: male or female, black or white, churchgoers or secularists, Protestant or Catholic, straight or gay.”

Aidan glanced around. The faces of the Cavendishes were impassive.
He would not have been surprised if Lucy had touched on at least one of their prejudices.

James's indignation was more evident. Aidan saw Sue gripping his wrist, restraining him from jumping to his feet to protest. Just what in that list had upset him? Several things, probably.

He suspected that Lucy might know this. She stood firmly erect, like the pillar of red sandstone behind her. The dog collar showed as a flash of white at the neck of her sapphire-blue fleece. The breeze teased her short hair.

“Lindisfarne's story is sown with dissension. We like to think of it as Holy Island, a place of peace. And so it can be. But it has known a violent history, and the discord hasn't always come from enemies outside.”

Her blue eyes challenged them.

James stayed where he was, perched on the ruined wall of the church. A lingering fury scored lines in his face.

When the brief service was over, Lucy led them through the cloisters, past the statue of St Cuthbert with his knees calloused by prayer, to the outer court. Lindisfarne Castle loomed nearer on its pinnacle of rock. Across the water, the larger fortress of Bamburgh reared mistily on the far clifftop. Clouds were beginning to form. The sunshine was more fitful now.

This time, Elspeth joined them as Lucy settled her group around her again. She loomed bulkier than before in tweed trousers. She thrust a shooting-stick into the turf and settled her voluminous hips on the folding seat.

“They might have told us to bring a cushion,” Fran Cavendish protested. “My bottom's getting sore, sitting on all these old stones.”

Further behind, Aidan heard James's voice approaching. He looked round. He already suspected what he would see. James was walking close beside Rachel, talking to her with a savage intensity. “It means the difference between life and death.
Your
death.”

She tried to break away, but he caught her arm.

The Celtic earring flashed into Aidan's mind. The blood on Rachel's ear where it had been torn away. A shudder of distrust ran through him.

He jumped down from his perch on the wall.

“Hi, Rachel. I meant to say earlier. I think Melangell may have something of yours. Is it back at the house, Mel?”

His daughter gave a grin and fished in the pocket of her yellow and pink anorak.

“No. It's right here.”

The little mythical beast from the Lindisfarne Gospels lay in the palm of her hand. Sunlight winked on the red and gold enamel.

Rachel reached out her hand with more animation than Aidan had seen her show before.

“I thought I'd lost it!” Her fist closed round it, possessively.

“It was in the sand.” Melangell's eyes turned up to the older girl's face. “But you won't be able to wear it, will you? Your ear's hurt.”

The shutters came down over the teenager's face. Her head drooped, and the curtain of hair fell over her eyes.

Aidan looked past her and met the fury in James's face. Beyond him, plump, plain Sue looked bewildered.

He felt the undercurrent of dissension that ran through even this small group.

As he settled himself on the wall again, he feared for Rachel. Peter was watching her with concern.

James had talked about a struggle between life and death.

A metaphor, of course, but the words rang chill on the strengthening breeze in the scream of the gulls.

Lucy lifted her fair head. Aidan thought she looked more confident, now that she was back to storytelling.

“Yesterday, we left the heathen Angles triumphant on Lindisfarne. After Urien's murder, the Christian army fell apart. Northumbria was in the hands of the invaders.

“But they had blood feuds of their own. The young Anglo-Saxon Prince Edwin was the last of his family left alive. He fled before his uncle Aethelfrith the Ferocious. Astonishingly, he found sanctuary in the Christian west, with a Welsh king on Anglesey. And there he was baptized into the Christian faith. But Aethelfrith came striding west and slaughtered the British army at Chester. Edwin was on the run for his life again.”

Aidan let the familiar story wash over him. Edwin's wandering through the heathen Anglo-Saxon courts, abandoning his new faith for the old gods Woden and Thunor. The mysterious stranger who promised the return of his kingdom. Storming back to Northumbria to slay his murdering uncle and reclaim the crown.

Then his marriage to a Christian princess of Kent, who brought her bishop, Paulinus. How they tried for months to convert Edwin. Then that fatal night. The attempted assassination of Edwin in which the king was wounded. The queen going into labour and the birth of a baby daughter. With all three saved from death, Edwin gave in, and was baptized for the second time. Thousands followed him into baptism in the rivers of Northumbria.

“But easy come, easy go. When Penda, the heathen king of neighbouring Mercia, swept into Northumbria and killed Edwin, his Christian queen fled back to Kent with her children. Bishop Paulinus fled too. The light of the Christian faith went out in all but a few places.

“But light was shining somewhere else. When Edwin killed Aethelfrith the Ferocious, the old king's children had fled. As Edwin had done, the heathen princes found sanctuary among Christians. For them, it was the holy island of Iona, off the west of Scotland. There Prince Oswald fell in love with Christ.”

“We're getting to you, Daddy!” Melangell whispered to Aidan.

“He recruited an army of Scots and Irish. They marched into his homeland, and the Northumbrians flocked to his standard, determined to throw the invading Mercians out. With his own hands, Oswald raised a cross on Hadrian's Wall. Then he went into battle. Penda of Mercia and his allies were routed. For a second time that century, Northumbria had a Christian king.