The Monster's Wife(56)

Had the man done this to her or had she always been this way? A tear seeped down her cheek. More fell and her ribs ached with the release of inheld coughs and sobs. She thought of the story, of how the Finman rowed from the underwater realm in seven strokes of the oar to catch a human girl. In his sea cave, the girl becomes a selkie wife, skin roughening to fins and scales. She can never return to the human world, for her kind don’t know her again.





49


Between the big house and Granny’s croft was the kirkyard. Every stone in it, be it the wall or the graves or the tiny kirk itself, had been blown sideways by winter storms.

Oona wandered between them, letting her hands skim the lichen-stained tops, thinking of the restless bones lying under her feet. They said if you laid your ear to the ground, you could hear their voices complaining about the living, always messing things up, quarrelling amongst themselves. The Minister said good folk make a quiet kirkyard, but who was truly good down to the bone? The far wall was the emptiest. It was there under the trees that the smallest stone read Stella Scollay, devoted Mother and Wife, 1784. She knelt down beside it.

“Everything’s broken, Ma.” She lay down and closed her eyes, her fingers tousling a clump of green moss. “Just as it was for you.”

For a long time, she’d had a memory of Ma rocking her when she was a baby and singing tura lura lura sheer the sheep. Ma’s face hung like a bright moon over her and she tangled her fingers in the soft, red fronds of her hair. She used to remember the song every night and it would send her to sleep. But when she asked Granny about it, Granny said her Ma had never once sung to her and didn’t like to sing. It bothered her for years, thinking maybe the memory came from someone’s story or hearing of someone else’s mother. Her fingers stroked the green moss, stroked and stroked it like hair and she lay there for a long time thinking of the song. Whoever’s memory it was, she had it now.

There was a rustling in the trees by the burn. At first she thought it was the wind kicking up, but then it sounded too loud. She opened her eyes. The light was pale gold now and thick with meadowsweet. She squinted at the darkling copse, expecting to see a crow fidgeting. A shadow moved, making twigs crack under it. No crow or cat, but broad and heavy as the man on the cliffs had been that day, hidden by the trees and watching.

It was the man with the scarred face and the hateful blue eyes, the one who was stalking Victor, the one who might have hurt May.

Oona could feel his stare from the shadows. She walked slowly along the path to show she felt no fear, tucking her hands under her folded arms to keep them from trembling. Birds sang and the sea lapped, but she heard no footsteps behind her. She couldn’t look, couldn’t turn back and see that hooded face. Her chest was so tight, she feared the bones of it might fuse.

At the croft, stockings and dresses and sheets hung in a droopy congregation. She stooped under them, feeling the safety of the house beckoning. If she could only get inside and into the nook bed, then nothing could hurt her. She would pull the door closed and bury her face in the blankets and sleep and sleep until a sunny morning came and the dark clouds melted away. She ducked under a clammy grey stocking.

Stuart leant in the doorway, his legs crossed casually at the ankles. “You’re late, Mistress Oona. Your Granny’s afeared for you.”





50


Stuart looked still bigger than Oona remembered. There was only a small gap between his arm and hip that allowed her see where Granny sat staring blankly into the fire. Had he been the one watching her?

“I needed to wash Doctor Frankenstein’s linens.” She swallowed and stared at the floor, knowing he’d know she was lying and not wanting to be found out in front of Granny.

“But that’s not the whole truth, is it?” Stuart smiled, though his eyes were as cold as ever. “The pair of you are...intimate...now. Is that the word for the sort of folly that befalls a maid and her Master, a dying girl and a soon-to-be-married man?”

Her heart seemed to stop for a moment and the world stopped too. She could hear herself just breathing, clinging onto life though everything she heard and thought was mad. Granny stood behind Stuart now, her eyes wide.

Stuart hooked his finger under Oona’s chin and tilted her head to face him. “Have you not heard about your killer lover’s other wife? Perhaps you were otherwise engaged at the Scollay place and found no time for talk?”

“What is his meaning, Oona?” Granny rubbed her hands anxiously. They sounded like dry leaves rustling.

Oona could not answer her, or Stuart. Her thoughts were too tangled. Before Victor told her about the monster, she’d been certain of Stuart’s guilt, but now she did not know who she really suspected.

She took a step back and Stuart’s finger fell from her chin. “I was in the kirkyard, visiting my mother.”

“I am sorry.” He bowed. “Since your lover has left you alone for now, why not ask me inside for a spell? We can talk like gentlefolk.”

“Can we?”

He smiled wide. “It doesn’t much matter what you say to me. Your Granny already made me welcome.”

“I cannot prevent that, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to go in, too.”

“So charming, you Scollays, I’ve always said so.” He went in ahead of her and looked around at the dresser and nook bed and half-full peat bin like a hawk coasting over a henhouse.