The Posy Ring Episode 65

Daisy can hear a skylark, its song impossibly high and distant, tumbling through the blue above them. She can hear the trickle of the nearby burn – did they deliberately build near a source of fresh water, those ancient people? – and further off the soft incoming swish of waves on the beach.

She can hear the rustle of the dog, ferreting about among last year’s heather stalks. And she can hear Cal’s breathing, feel the warmth of his body next to hers.

She opens her eyes, turns and finds that he is looking at her as though trying to puzzle something out.

His own feelings, maybe. Or hers. And then he’s kissing her. Or perhaps she kisses him first. Hard to tell.

His lips are firm and dry. It’s been a while since anyone kissed her but her instant response to him is almost frightening in its intensity. It takes her by surprise.

He tastes of water and desire and he smells of peppermint and heather. They topple over onto the flat top of the wall. There’s a familiarity about him.

The ground is dry up here and the stones are cushioned with turf. Years of sand have formed a kind of mulch in which small seafriendly plants have grown and spread, carpeting the stones.

This would once have been a first-floor gallery with others above it when the tower rose to its full height.

His face hovers above hers, questioning, intent, and they kiss again, awkwardly, as he tries to cushion her head against the stone.

His tongue is in her mouth. Her right hand is on the back of his neck where the hair is soft and fine, pulling him closer, but her left hand is on the stone, her fingers digging into turf, as though to anchor herself there, to ground herself in the real world.

It’s so fast, so sudden, this overwhelming desire that can so easily be mistaken for love.

But may not be.

“Cal!” she says, breathlessly.

At the same moment, Hector bounces up to them, and licks their faces.

“Oh, get lost, Hector!” says Cal.

But they sit up, the moment broken, however temporarily.

Cal gets up, hauls her to her feet with Hector frolicking around them. “Bloody dog,” he says.

“We should go back, anyway,” she says. There is no particular reason why they should go back, but she can sense herself dragging her feet to slow things down.

When she thinks about it, he’s a comparative stranger.

However well recommended he comes on the island, she doesn’t know very much about him, and doesn’t fully trust him.

They scramble down from the promontory and head back to the beach below the house.

Hector has rushed ahead of them onto the beach. He tugs at a piece of seaweed, shakes it, kills it satisfactorily, tearing it apart.

They follow more slowly, their bodies inclining inexorably together. She wants to take his hand again, but wonders if she should.

The dog has abandoned his seaweed and is now digging furiously in the sand beside a little group of rocks, scrabbling with his front paws, spraying damp sand out behind him.

He seems to have made quite a big hole. They walk over to see what he has found.

“What are you like, Hector?” says Cal, cheerfully. Then he halts, peers down, grabs the dog by his collar and pulls him, protesting slightly, away.

“What has he found?” Daisy asks, coming up behind them. “Is it something dead? They do seem to like disgusting things like dead seagulls.”

“No. I don’t know. It looks like... Hang on a minute.”

Cal squats down in the damp sand, and reaches into the hole, the little pit that the dog has created, scraping away some of the sand just beneath the shelving rock, seawater already seeping in.

He tugs at something and out it comes. “Look,” he says. “Look what he’s found. There, between the stones.”

He’s looking down at Hector in astonishment. The dog is sitting panting on the sand, oblivious and happy.

Cal brushes the sand away from the object and holds it out to her on the palm of his hand.

There’s the unmistakable gleam of pure gold.

1588

Before the candles were lit and the evening meal was served, and when Ishbel had wandered off, Lilias explained a little more about the forthcoming festival.

Samhain, at the end of October, was the feast to mark the time when the cattle were finally brought down from the summer pastures, to the north and west of Achadh nam Blàth.

Some would be slain and their meat salted, as much as might last through the worst of the winter, but most would be overwintered as far as possible, although feed for them was scarce and like to get scarcer the more the season progressed.

“Some of the other chieftains are sending cattle to the mainland, to be taken along the drove roads and sold at market, but on an island such as this one, it means shipping them and it’s an uncertain and dangerous business,” she said.

“If we were just a little closer to the shore, the cattle could be made to swim.” “Are they strong swimmers?” “They are. But not strong enough to get all the way from Garbh. Nevertheless, father has been considering sending the best of the beasts off in boats if it can be managed.”

“Do people stay up in the hills all summer?”

“Many of the folk come down in July to help with the summer work, the harvest and so on. But the remainder bring the cattle back round about now, at Samhain.

“You’ll see the bonfire lit upon the Dun there, and upon Meall Each as well. It’s a time of great celebration.”

“But you have never been allowed to go?” “No. For when I tell you that marriages are frequently celebrated afterwards, very soon afterwards, and babies born within a scant nine and sometimes eight or even seven months – plump and healthy babies I might add – you’ll know why.”

However well recommended he comes on the island, she doesn’t know very much about him, and doesn’t fully trust him

The Posy Ring, first in the series The Annals of Flowerfield, is written by Catherine Czerkawska and published by Saraband. It is priced at £8.99.