Chapter 11
That afternoon, January’s wind rose again. As always, it came in off the Atlantic, damp and insistent, moaning against the croft’s slate roof tiles and pushing at the walls, as if trying to find its way inside.
Rachel sat at the table by the living room window, trying to sew, but the needle would not co-operate.
Her fingers, steady enough when lifting peat or kneading bread, fumbled at the hem of a pinafore that she had meant to mend weeks before.
With a sigh, she set the cloth aside and looked out.
The sea loch lay half-visible, a wide grey bowl beyond the low rise of rock.
From where she sat, she could not see the loch’s outer mouth, and would not see ships unless they came close.
But she knew that by now, Calum would have spoken, and the harbourmaster would have sent word.
By now, someone in a naval office would have read the message and jumped from their chair, alerted.
She sighed again, her stomach twisting with worry for Oskar.
She got up and crossed to the hearth. The fire did not need tending, but she took up the poker and stirred it absently anyway, then stood and pressed her palms flat against the mantel, staring into the dancing flames. “What have I done?” she whispered.
Oskar had written the words plainly, without tremor, in his own bold handwriting.
A strange pipe in the water. He had known the risk, and had chosen it – for Scotland – for her country.
And now, she was sure, the consequences would come, and not mercifully.
Tried as a spy. Executed. She remembered their discussion about what could happen if his boat were intercepted, and she knew that consequences in war did not move in gentle increments.
Suddenly, she felt trapped in the tiny room, and she wanted to try to see if she could make anything out on the loch for herself.
On impulse, she took up her warmest coat, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and neck, went to the door, and stepped outside.
The air tasted of salt and smelled of kelp; the wind blew at her skirt.
She set off for the headland, and stopped, breathless, at the crest. The sea loch spread wide below her, deceptively calm, sheltered as it was, the surface bearing only the slightest of white caps.
Narrowing her eyes, she carefully scanned every square mile as far as she could see, but there was no pipe, no shadow moving ominously below… .and no Danish trader.
Her breath coming in ragged waves, she folded her arms tightly across her chest, suddenly feeling sick.
Absence meant movement - if the navy had intercepted, if they had boarded, if they had searched - the Danish insignia would not hold.
Men trained for such things would look once at the deck fittings, and know.
And did any of the crew even speak Danish?
If they questioned them – if they questioned him. She shuddered at the thought.
She had read enough in the papers to understand the word spy.
Not prisoner of war, nor exchanged officer.
Spy carried no chivalry; instead, it carried court-martial, blindfolds, cold walls, and a firing squad.
Carl Hans Lody; she had read the name in a crumpled newspaper lining the grocer’s basket two months before - the German spy shot in London. Her stomach turned.
Oskar had rowed through the blackness on the water, and had come ashore knowing that. And she had watched his broad back disappear into the darkness without stopping him. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. “You fool!” she whispered, although whether she meant him or herself, she did not know.
Below her, a gull circled sharply and mewled, as if sounding an alert.
She scanned the outer reach of the loch, straining to see beyond the curve of land.
From that angle, she could glimpse only a sliver of the mouth where the open sea met the loch, and for an instant, she thought that there was something there, then realised that it was only the light shifting.
But her heart would not slow, and she tried to reason with herself.
Perhaps the British navy would only observe, and not board, satisfied that the vessel was indeed a Danish trader.
Perhaps the Freja had slipped away before dawn.
Perhaps she was lying in a cove in the loch’s north face, beyond a far peninsula and hidden from her sight, and that was why she could not see his boat.
Perhaps Oskar had gained the safety of the submarine in the night, and now lay miles below in the frigid Atlantic. She shuddered again.
But the Royal Navy intercepting his boat was only half of the problem.
If any of the German crew suspected him…
her legs felt suddenly weak. She sank onto the rough grass, heedless of the cold January dampness.
If the Germans accused him, what would they do with a traitor?
And if the British took him, would they believe that he had turned?
Would they understand why? Or would they see only a uniform and a codebook and condemn him without hearing a word? The thoughts were unbearable.
She threw her head back to the scudding, indifferent clouds.
“I never asked this of you!” she screamed.
The wind tore the words from her mouth and the tears from her eyes.
“I never asked you to betray your country, or risk a bullet in some London yard! OSKAR!” she screamed again then.
“I have only loved you!” She bent her head and sobbed into her shawl, great, wracking sounds that shook her entire body as she slumped on the earth, that tiny, dispassionate piece of Scotland that held her.
After a long moment, her tears depleted, she sat up, wiping her eyes with the heels of her palms. She stared out over the sea again, unable to look away.
Then, far away at the loch’s entrance, she noticed something move.
She stared, peering into the distance, trying to decipher what it was.
Smoke – a thin, grey plume, scattering almost immediately to the wind.
It was faint at first, then grew clearer as she wiped the last tears and her eyes adjusted. It was not fishing smoke, for it was too tall, and too steady. Her breath stopped entirely, and her fingers dug into the turf as a second plume appeared.
The wind tugging at her hair, she scrambled to her feet and stumbled a few paces forward, as if a few yards nearer could grant her more clarity.
The plumes thickened. She could not yet see hulls, but from pictures in the newspapers, she knew the shape of naval battleships.
“Oh God!” she breathed. Warships, whether British or German, she could not tell, and she imagined the worst.
She turned instinctively towards the direction where the Freja might be lying, beyond her vision.
Was he watching the same smoke? Did he understand what it meant?
Was he already under suspicion? In her mind’s eye, she saw him standing on the deck, her tall, blonde, handsome giant of a man, watching the advancing destroyer with his usual contained calmness, while inside his head, he calculated distances and outcomes.
Would he try to flee? How could he, for flight would be confession.
And where could he go? I can take care of myself, he had told her.
Her chest felt tight, as if iron bands had been screwed around it.
If he were taken, would she ever know? The village would hear of a boarding, of a seized vessel, of arrests.
They would speak of it in low voices in the streets or outside the kirk, and she would stand among them and pretend to be merely curious.
If Oskar was named as a prisoner, if the villagers learned that she had lied, that he had not been interned but had joined his country’s navy against them…
the thoughts made her sway; she could not breathe there where she stood, with her full view of the sea.
She turned and ran back down the headland towards the cottage, her skirts gathered in her fists.
She reached the peat shed first, the little whitewashed, stone building abutting the house.
She threw open the door, and stepped in.
The peat stack stood undisturbed, the last place his hand had touched on land.
She went to the far corner, and pressed her palm into the dark, crumbly surface where she had once found folded paper.
There was nothing there now, only the lingering scent of freshly-dug earth.
She stood up and leaned her forehead against the cool, stone wall of the shed.
“Please live!” she whispered. “Please live through this madness!”
Then, from very far off, faint but unmistakeable, came a dull thud, carried to her on the wind, the sound rolling across the water and into the hills.
A signal gun, she thought. Rachel closed her eyes - the British navy must have arrived.
And somewhere out there, she knew that Oskar stood in mortal danger because she had done exactly what he had asked.
She straightened slowly, realising that there was nothing more she could do.
Nothing but wait, and pray that when the smoke cleared, the war would not have taken him.