The Monster's Wife(49)

“Christ, watch yourself!” He raised his fist.

They paid no mind. It was only when they reeled into daylight that she saw it was Andrew and Stuart. Dougie banged down his pint. “Calm yourselves. No need to scrap.”

Oona bumped past the table. “Stop!”

“Keep that petticoat away.” Stuart grabbed Andrew by the nose, fingers jammed in his nostrils.

Andrew yelped and punched him. “I’m saving you from yourself.”

Oona thrust her arms between them. “Leave each other be.”

Stuart’s elbow caught her chin. She fell against the table. The corner caught her in the ribs and she slid to the floor, watching the room sway. The men broke apart.

Andrew skidded to her side. “Are you hurt?” He touched her face.

“It’s a bump, no more.” Stuart scowled, his body still braced for a fight. “You’re forbidden this place. Did you not hear me in kirk? You’re not welcome anywhere in Quoy.”

“Stop your mouth, Stuart. It does nothing but lie.” She gripped the table edge and dragged herself up.

Andrew rested his arm on her shoulders. “Go home to your Granny, eh?”

She brushed him off. “I must know why you were fighting.”

They stood stupidly, breathing hard. A fly buzzed through the open door. Dougie took a moment to stare at the scene between slurps of beer as if he wasn’t quite sure it was happening. The peat fire in the middle of the room gave up the ghost.

After a while, Stuart smiled with one side of his mouth, as if he had just conceived some new mischief. “Very well. I went to Cormick’s shack to ask him a question or two. He was out, but I found this.” He opened his fist and slapped something hard on the table. A coin glinted. He dragged his sleeve over the thin stream of blood that trickled from his nose, smearing it onto his cheek. “I have searched for this high and low.”

Her head felt feathery, her eyes seeing the round shape of a coin sewn into a hem. “How do you know it’s your coin?”

“I marked it so no-one could steal it from me.” He held it up. Light fell through a hole in the middle.

The fly buzzed round her, looking for a place to rest.

“I’ll wager anything May took it for her fare to Hamnavoe.” Andrew clenched and unclenched his fists.

Stuart squinted at him. “That’s only part of it.”

“What’s the rest?”

He pulled something from his pocket. “This.”

It was a long length of fabric, dark red with darker patches splattered on it.

“May’s stocking, stuffed in a rusted old creel. Bloodied.”

Oona’s legs grew weak beneath her. She fell on the floor with a thump. “How-”

“I thrashed him half to death to make him talk.” Stuart smashed his fist on the table. The jugs jumped. One fell to the floor and smashed. “His eyes rolled up in his head before he’d tell me-” He paused and took a long look at his audience.

Andrew clenched his fists. “The wretch! How’d he do it? We’ll hang him up high.”

Stuart shook his head. “I’d have sworn by God’s blood it was Cormick, but the story that rusty guts told me rang true. He was rooting in the midden at the big house and found it with blood crusted on it. Now the time’s come to discover the reason and it’s as good a moment as any, because by all accounts the good doctor spends his Sundays hunting in the valley.”

Oona wrenched herself up from the floor and stumbled outside. Even though she stood still, the world rushed past her, grass and trees and sky spinning so fast they bled together.

May’s red stocking, knitted for her by Effie. There was no doubting it was hers. She’d had the pair as a gift upon her engagement. She must have hurt herself working, fallen and torn the stocking and thrown it out there. It was the only explanation.

Andrew came out behind her. “Go home to Granny.” He kept his voice low. “What we’re about is nothing you should see.”

Stuart grabbed Andrew by the shoulder and dragged him away. “I would go home and hide if I were you Oona. Don’t fear – we’ll deal with you anon.” He started up the path to the valley.

She stood by the door of the Smokehouse, fists clenched, watching their figures shrink and darken as they went from her. Their angry talk blew back, twisted by the wind.

When they faded from earshot she started after them.





42


The woman forced her gritty eyes open. Squares of peat glowed in the grate. Inside, the pain burned as it always did. She pushed her wrists against the wires binding her and felt them sink into her wounds like an old friend.

The man would come soon and give her small sips of beer and sit silently next to her, turned so that she could not see his face. Usually he was kind, though perhaps he was only biding his time until the moment came to take whatever it was he wanted from her.

The smell of the peat, of the room, was different today. She didn’t know why, but the scent of the air brought a feeling like her mind becoming clear water. Old feelings swam to the surface of it and she fancied she saw a high place she’d been to with a burn and hills on either side, where she’d dug down in the heather, nicked and cut the wet peat, stacked it in the open to dry. She remembered so many fragments but not who she was or where she came from, or even what her own face looked like. She strained at her bindings. The wires broke the swollen skin of her wrists and ankles, opened old wounds, scored new ones. Biting her lip to stop herself crying out, she sank back onto the pallet.