“We won’t need much time,” he said complacently.
Once we left the shelter of the cove and entered open water, conversation became impossible. Mick seemed determined to get us out to the islet as fast as he could, so the boat leapt through the choppy water, hitting wave crests with bone-jarring smacks that sent streams of salt water splashing over us. It was like riding a bucking bronco through a car wash, and although a certain fun-loving portion of my brain was squealing “Whee!” the rest of it was entertaining profoundly covetous thoughts about Mick’s rain pants.
We slowed to a crawl as we approached the Chapel, and I wondered how on earth we would get ashore. The islet rose some forty feet straight up from the sea, a sheer-sided monolith festooned with bird droppings and slimy seaweed. But Mick was on home surf, and he knew his way around. He steered the boat to the islet’s north side, where a cleft in the rock held a series of broad shelves that stepped down to the water’s edge.
Mick guided the boat onto the lowest shelf and made a line fast to an iron ring that hung from a bolt driven into the solid rock. Damian paused to give the ring a tug before turning to supervise my death-defying hop from the boat onto the next shelf up. As I scrambled to the top of the cleft, using my hands and knees as well as my feet, I decided that if Abaddon had chosen Cieran’s Chapel as a camp-ground, he was an even bigger nutcase than I’d supposed.
When I emerged from the cleft onto more or less level ground, I saw that the Chapel was neither as exposed nor as barren as I’d expected it to be. The sheer stone walls formed a notched and irregular windbreak around the edge of the islet, and the uneven ground was covered with a tough, springy mat of low-growing plants that were spangled here and there with minute blossoms.
Mick waited in an elbow of rock, hunched against the freshening breeze, but Damian walked with me while I slowly crisscrossed the islet, scanning the ground for traces of a campsite. I saw none—no scorch marks, no ashes, no footprints, and no sign of crushed foliage where a tent might have been pitched. Damian squatted down now and then to study the local flora, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I could hear him thinking, “I told you so.”
I finished my search at the edge of a bowl-shaped depression on the east side of the islet. There, at the bottom of the bowl, lay a stone slab the size of a large door. An inscription had been carved into the slab, in Celtic lettering:
James Robert, tenth Earl of Strathcairn 1854-1937 The heart benevolent and kind The most resembles God
“It’s from Burns,” I said to Damian. “The quotation, I mean. It’s from a poem by Robert Burns.”
“It describes the old laird well,” Mick said, coming up behind me. “James Robert was a good man.”
I remembered why the tenth earl had asked to be buried on Cieran’s Chapel and smiled sadly. “I’m sure he was.”
“Is that why you came out here?” Mick asked, watching me carefully. “Did you want to pay your respects to the old laird?”
“Lori’s interested in folklore,” Damian answered smoothly. “After Sir Percy told her the legend of Brother Cieran, she couldn’t wait to visit the Chapel.”
“You should have known better,” Mick muttered.
“I beg your pardon?” I said.
“You’re a mother,” he said forcefully, and shot a reproachful glance at me from beneath his bushy brows. “You’re responsible for two young lives.You shouldn’t be taking such risks.”
I didn’t know what had angered the old man, but I tried to mollify him.
“Damian wouldn’t have called you if he didn’t think you could get us out here safely,” I said. “And I don’t mind getting wet.”
“I’m not talking about getting wet,” Mick growled. “Brother Cieran went mad, you know. He marooned himself and lost his mind. Did Sir Percy mention that?” He thrust a calloused finger toward the stone tablet. “It’s said he died right there, driven mad by grief and thirst and loneliness. That’s why the old laird chose the spot for his tomb.”
I looked down at the stony ground surrounding the old laird’s grave and felt pity well up in me. Of course Brother Cieran had gone mad, I thought. He’d glanced up from his prayers one sunny day to see black smoke billowing from the island. He must have known what it meant, yet he’d scrambled into his small boat, rowed hard to shore, and climbed the steep path to the monastery, where he’d found a smoldering ruin and, one by one, the bodies of his friends. How long had it taken him to dig their graves? How long had he stood staring out to sea before making the decision to return to the islet, release the boat, and condemn himself to death? Of course it had driven him mad.