IV

Will, Frannie, and Rosa had boarded the Claymore at six-thirty.

Though the morning air was on the nippy side of bracing, they were happy to be out of the car, which had become a little ripe toward the end of the night, and into the open air. And Lord, was the day fine, the sun rising in a cloudless sky.

“Ye canna ask for a nicer day to be sailing,” the sailor who’d stowed their car had observed. “It’ll be as calm as a lily pond all the way out tae the islands.”

Frannie and Will made for the ship’s bathrooms, to wash the sleep out of their eyes. The facilities were modest at best, but they both emerged looking a little more presentable, and went back on deck to discover Rosa seated at the bows of the Claymore. Of the three, she looked the least travelworn. There was a freshness to her pallor and a brightness in her eyes that utterly belied her wounded state.

“I’ll be fine just sitting here,” she said, like an old lady who wanted to be as little bother as possible to her companions.

“Why don’t you two go off and have some breakfast?” Will offered to bring her something, but she told him no, she was quite happy as she was. They left her to her solitude and, with a short detour to the stern to watch the harbor receding behind them, the town picture-perfect in the warming sun, they went below to the dining room, and sat down to a breakfast of porridge, toast, and tea.

“They won’t recognize me if I ever get back to San Francisco,” Will said. “Cream, butter, porridge . . . I can feel my arteries clogging up just looking at it.”

“So what do people do for fun in San Francisco?”

“Don’t ask.”

“No. I want to know, for when I come over and see you.”

“Oh, you’re going to come see me?”

“If you’ll have me. Maybe at Christmas,” she replied. “Is it warm at Christmas?”

“Warmer than here. It rains, of course. And it’s foggy.”

“But you like the city?”

“I used to think it was Paradise,” he said. “Of course, it’s a different place from when I first arrived.”

“Tell me,” she said;

The prospect defeated him. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Tell me about your friends. Your . . . lovers?” She ventured this tentatively, as though she wasn’t sure she had her vocabulary right. “It’s so different from anything I’ve ever experienced.” So he gave a guided tour of life in Boy’s Town, over the tea and toast. A quick verbal gazetteer to begin with, then a little about the house on Sanchez Street, and on to the people in his circle. Adrianna, of course (with a footnote on Cornelius), Patrick and Rafael, Drew, Jack Fisher, even a quick jaunt across the bay for a snapshot of Bethlynn. “You said at the beginning it had all changed,” Frannie reminded him.

“It has. A lot of people I knew when I first lived there are dead. Men my age, some younger. There are a lot of funerals. A lot of men in mourning. It changes the way you look at your life. You start to think: Maybe none of it’s worth a damn.”

“You don’t believe that,” Frannie said.

“I don’t know what I believe,” he told her. “I don’t have the same faith you have.”

“It must be hard when you’re in the middle of so much death. It’s like an extinction.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Will said with unshakable conviction, “because we don’t come from anywhere. We’re spontaneous events. We just appear in the middle of families. And we’ll keep appearing. Even if the plague killed every homosexual on the planet, it wouldn’t be extinction, because there are queer babies being born every minute. It’s like magic.” He grinned at the notion. “You know, that’s exactly what it is. It’s magic.”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”

“I’m just playing.” He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“This,” he said, slowly spreading his arms to take in the table, then Frannie, then the rest of the dining room. “Us sitting talking like this. Queer politics over the porridge. Rosa sitting up there, hiding her secret self. Me down here talking about mine.” He leaned forward. “Doesn’t it strike you as a little funny?” She stared at him blankly. “No, I’m sorry. I’m getting out of hand.” The conversation was here interrupted by the waiter, a ruddy-faced man with an accent Will found initially unintelligible, asking them if they were finished. They were. Leaving him to clear the table, they headed up on deck. The wind had strengthened considerably in the hour or so they’d been breakfasting, and the gray-blue waters of the sound, though far from choppy, were flecked with spume. To the left of them, the hills of the Island of Mull, purple with heather, to the right the slopes of the Scottish mainland, more heavily wooded, with here and there signs of human habitation—most humble, some grand—set on the higher elevations. An aerial wake of herring gulls followed the ship, diving to pluck pieces of food, courtesy of the gal-ley, out of the water. When the birds were sated, they settled on the ship, their clamor silenced, and beadily watched their fellow passengers from the railings and the lifeboats.

“They’ve got an easy life,” Frannie observed as another well-fed gull came to perch amongst its brethren. “Catch the morning ferry, have breakfast, then catch the next one home.”

“They’re practical buggers, gulls,” Will said. “They’ll feed on anything. Look at that one! What’s he eating?”

“Coagulated porridge.”

“Is it? Oh hell, it is! Straight down!” Frannie wasn’t watching the gull, she was watching Will.

“The look on your face—” she said.

“What?”

“I’d have thought you’d be tired of watching animals by now.”

“Not a chance.”

“Were you always like this? I don’t think you were.”

“No. I owe it to Steep. Of course he had ulterior motives. First you see it, then you kill it.”

“Then you put it in your scrapbook,” Frannie added. “All neat and tidy.”

“And quiet,” Will said.

“Was quiet important?”

“Oh yes. He thinks we’ll hear God better that way.” Frannie mused on this a moment. “Do you think he was born crazy?” she finally said.

There was another silence. Then Will said, “I don’t think he was born.”

 

The ferry was coming into Tobermory, its first and last stop before they slipped from the sound and out into the open sea.

They watched the approach from the bow, where Rosa was still seated. Tobermory was a small town, barely extending beyond the quayside, and the ship was at the dock no more than twenty minutes (long enough to unload three cars and a dozen passengers) before it was on its way. The swell became noticeably heavier once they cleared the northern tip of Mull, the waves bristling with white surf.

“I hope it doesn’t get any worse than this,” Frannie remarked, “or I’m going to get seasick.”

“We’re in treacherous waters,” Rosa remarked, these the first words she’d uttered since Frannie and Will had joined her.

“The straits between Coil and Tiree are notorious.”

“How do you know?”

“I got chatting with young Hamish over there,” she said, nodding toward a sailor who was lounging against the railing ten yards from where Rosa sat.

“He’s barely old enough to shave,” Will replied.

“Are you jealous then?” Rosa chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to do the dirty with him. Not in my present state. Though Lord knows he’s a pretty thing, don’t you think?”

“He’s a little young for me.”

“Oh there’s no such thing as too young,” Rosa said. “If he can get hard he’s old enough. That’s always been my theory.” Frannie’s face reddened with fury and embarrassment.

“You’re disgusting, you know that?” she said, and stalked off down the deck.

Will went after her, to calm her down, but she could not be calmed.

“That’s how she got her claws into Sherwood,” she said.

“I’ve always suspected it. And there she is, crowing about it.”

“She didn’t mention Sherwood.”

“She didn’t have to. God, she’s sickening. Sitting there lusting after some fifteen-year-old. I won’t have anything more to do with her, Will.”

“Just put up with it for a few more hours,” Will said. “We’re stuck with her till we find Rukenau.”

“She doesn’t know where she’s going any more than we do,” Frannie said.

Will didn’t say so, but he was tempted to agree. He’d hoped that by now Rosa would be in a more focused frame of mind, that the voyage would have somehow aroused, buried memories in her, something to prepare them for whatever lay ahead. But if she felt anything, she was concealing it very effectively. “Maybe it’s time I had a heart-to-heart with her,” Will said.

“She hasn’t got a heart,” Frannie said. “She’s just a dirty-minded old . . . whatever she is.” She glanced up at him. “Go talk to her. You won’t get any answers. Just keep her away from me.” With that she headed off toward the bow. Will almost went after her to try to placate her further, but what was the use? She had every right to her disgust. For himself, however, he found it impossible to feel any great horror at who or what Rosa was, despite the fact that she’d taken Hugo’s life. He puzzled over this as he returned to the bow. Was there some flaw in his nature that kept him from feeling the revulsion Frannie felt?

He was stopped in his tracks by two gulls that came swooping down in front of him to squabble over a crust of waterlogged bread one of them had dropped in flight. It was a vicious and raucous set-to, beaks stabbing, wings thrashing and, as he watched it played out, he had his question answered. He watched Rosa the way he watched the gulls. The way, in fact, he’d watched thousands of animals over the years. He made no moral judgments about her because they weren’t applicable. There was no use judging her by human standards. She was no more human than the gulls squabbling in front of him. Perhaps that was her tragedy, or perhaps, like the gulls, it was her glory.

“It was just a little joke,” Rosa said when he came back to sit beside her. “That woman’s got no sense of humor.” The Claymore was swinging around, and a lowlying island was coming into view. “Hamish tells me this is Coll,” Rosa said, getting up and leaning against the railing.

The island was in stark contrast to the lush wooded slopes of Mull, flat and undistinguished.

“I don’t suppose you recognize any of this?” Will asked her.

“No,” she said. “But this isn’t where we’re getting off. This is the sister island. Tiree’s much more fertile. The Land of Corn, they used to call it.”

“Did you get all this from Hamish?” Rosa nodded. “Useful lad,” Will said.

“Men have their uses,” she said. “But you know what.” She gave Will a shy little glance. “You live in San Francisco, yes?”

“Yes.”

“I love that city. There used to be a drag bar on Castro Street I’d always frequent when we were in the city. I forget its name now, but it was owned by a lovely old queen called Lenny something or other. This amuses you?”

“Somewhat. The idea of you and Steep in a drag bar.”

“Oh, Steep was never with me. It would have sickened him. But I always enjoyed the company of men who like to play the woman. My sweet viados in Milan, oh my, some of them were so beautiful.”

If the conversation over breakfast had been strange, this was a damn sight stranger, Will thought. Just about the last thing he’d expected to do on this voyage was to listen to Rosa extol the virtues of cross-dressing.

“I’ve never understood what was so interesting about it,” Will said.

“I’ve always loved things that weren’t what they seemed,” Rosa replied. “And for a man to deny his own sex, and corset himself and paint himself, and be something that he isn’t because it touches a place in his heart that has a kind of poetry about it, to my mind.” She smiled. “And I learned a lot from some of those men, about how to pretend.”

“Pretend to be a woman, you mean?”

Rosa nodded. “I’m a confection too, you see,” she said, with more than a trace of self-deprecation. “My name isn’t even Rosa McGee. I heard the name in a Street in Newcastle, somebody calling for Rosa, Rosa McGee, and I thought: That’s the name for me. Steep got his name from a sign he saw. A Spice importer was the original Steep. Jacob liked the sound of it so he took it. I think he murdered the man later.”

“Murdered him for his name?”

“Perhaps more for the fun of it. He was vicious when he was young. He thought it was his duty to his sex to be cruel. Pick up a newspaper, and it’s plain what men are like.”

“Not every man kills things for the pleasure of it.”

“Oh, that’s not what he learned,” Rosa said, with a look of weary frustration at Will’s stupidity. “I took as much pleasure in killing as he did. No, what he learned was to pretend there was purpose in it.”

“How young were you when he was learning? Were you children?”

“Oh no. We were never children. At least not that I remember.”

“So before you chose to be Rosa, who were you?”

“I don’t know. We were with Rukenau. I don’t think we needed names. We were his instruments.”

“Building the Domus Mundi?” She shook her head. “So do you not remember being with him?”

“Why should I? Do you remember what you were before you were Will Rabjohns?”

“I remember being a baby, very vaguely. At least I think I do.”

“It may be the same for me, once I get to Tiree.” The Claymore was now perhaps fifteen yards from the jetty at Coll and, with the ease of one who’d performed the duty countless times, the skipper brought the vessel alongside. There was a flurry of activity below, as cars were driven off and passengers disembarked. Will paid little attention. He had more questions to ask Rosa and was determined to voice them all while she was in a voluble mood.

“You said something about Jacob learning to be a man—”

“Did I?” she said, feigning distraction.

“But he was already a man. You said so.”

“I said he wasn’t a child. That’s not the same thing. He had to learn the way men are in the world, as I had to learn the ways of women. None of it came naturally to us. Well. Perhaps some of it. I do remember thinking one day how I loved to hold babies in my arms, how I loved softness and lullabies. And Steep didn’t.”

“What did Steep love?”

“Me,” she said, with a sly smile. “At least,” the smile went,

“I imagined he did, and that was enough. It is sometimes. Women understand that; men don’t. Men need things certain. All certain and fixed. Lists and maps and history. All so that they know where they are, where they belong. Women are different. We need less. I could have been quite happy to have children with Steep. Watch them grow, and if they died, have more. But they always perished, almost as soon as they were born. He’d take them away, to save me the pain of seeing them, which showed he felt something for me, didn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

“I named them all, even though they only lived for a few minutes—”

“And you remember all the names?”

“Oh yes,” she said, turning her face from him to hide her feeling, “every one.”

By now the Claymore was ready for departure. The mooring ropes were cast off, the engines took on a livelier rhythm, and the last stage of the voyage was underway. Only when they were some distance from the island did Rosa finally look around at Will, who was sitting down, lighting up a cigarette, to say, “I want you to understand something about Jacob. He wasn’t bar-baric all his life. At the beginning, yes, he was a fiend, he really was. But what did he have for inspiration? You ask most men what it is that makes them men and it won’t be a very pretty list. But I mellowed him over the years—”

“He drove entire species out of existence, Rosa—”

“They were only animals. What did it matter? He had such fine thoughts in his head, such godly thoughts. Anyway, it’s there in the Bible. We’ve got dominion over the birds of the air—”

“And the beasts of the field. Yeah, I know. So he had all these fine thoughts.”

“And he loved to give me pleasure. He had his troubled times, of course, but there was always room for music and dancing. And the circus. I loved the circus. But he lost his sense of humor, after a time. He lost his courtesies. And then he began to lose me. We were still traveling together, and there’d be times when things were almost like the old days, but the feelings between us were slipping away. In fact the night we met you we were planning to go our separate ways. That’s why he went looking for company. And found you. If he hadn’t done that we wouldn’t be where we are now, any of us. It’s all connected in the end, isn’t it? You think it’s not, but it is.” She returned her gaze to the water.

“I’d better go and find Frannie,” Will said. “We’ll be arriving soon.”

Rosa didn’t reply. Leaving her at the railing, Will wandered the length of the deck and found Frannie sitting on the starboard side, sipping a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t,” she said. “But I needed it. Want some coffee? The wind’s chilly.” He took the plastic cup and drank. “I tried to buy a map,” she said, “but the ship store’s closed.”

“We’ll get one on the island,” Will said. “Speaking of which, . . .” He got to his feet and went to the railing. Their destination was in view. A line of land as unpromising as Coll, the waves breaking against its rocky shores. Frannie rose to stand beside him and together they watched as the island approached, the Claymore’s engines slowing so that the vessel might be safely navigated through the shallow waters.

“It doesn’t look very hospitable, does it?” Frannie remarked.

It was certainly Spartan at this distance, the sea surging around dark spits of rock that rose to bleak headlands. But then the wind veered and carried the scent of flowers off the land, their honey fragrance mingled with the sharp scents of salt and kelp, and Frannie murmured, “Oh Lord,” in appreciation.

The Claymore’s approach had become a tentative crawl now, as the vessel made its cautious way to the jetty. And as it did so the charms of the island steadily became more apparent. The waters through which the vessel plowed were no longer dark and deep, but as turquoise as any Caribbean bay, and swooned upon beaches of silver-white sand. There were a few cattle at the tide’s edge, apparently grazing on seaweed, but the beaches were otherwise deserted. So too were the grassy dunes that rose from them, rolling away to meet the lush meadows of the island’s interior. This was where the scent of vetch and sea-thrift and crim-son clover originated: expanses of fertile pasture dotted here and there with modest houses, whitewashed and brightly roofed.

“I take it all back,” Frannie said. “It’s beautiful.” The village of Scarinish, which was little more than a couple rows of houses, was now in view. There was more activity on its pier than there’d been at Coil: fully twenty people waiting for the Claymore to dock, along with a lorry loaded with goods and a tractor with a cattle pen in tow.

“I should probably go and fetch Rosa,” Will said.

“Give me the car keys,” Frannie said. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”

Will headed back to the bow, where he found Rosa at the railing still, studying the scene ahead.

“Do you recognize anything?” he asked her.

“Not with my eyes,” she said. “But . . . I know this place.” There was a gentle bump and creak as the Claymore nudged the pier, then the sound of welcoming shouts from both land and ship.

“Time to go,” Will said, and escorted Rosa down into the hold, where Frannie was already in the car. Will got into the passenger seat beside her, and Rosa slipped into the back. There was an uncomfortable silence while they waited for the ferry’s door to be opened. They didn’t have to wait long. After a couple of minutes, sunlight flooded the hold and one of the crew played at traffic control, signaling the half-dozen vehicles alighting here out one by one. There was a second, longer delay on the pier itself, while the laden lorry moved out of the way of the exiting cars, this maneuver performed with great hullabaloo, but no sense of urgency. Finally, the congestion was cleared, and Frannie drove them down the pier into the village itself. It was no longer than it had appeared from the seaward side: just a few rows of small but well-kept houses with even smaller, well-kept walled gardens, all facing the water, and a scattering of older buildings, some in disrepair, several in ruin. There were also a few shops, among them a post office and a small supermarket, its windows bannered with news of this week’s bargains, their silent advertisements still too loud for the hush of the place.

“Do you want to go and get us a map?” Frannie suggested to Will, bringing the car to a halt outside the supermarket. “And maybe some chocolate?” she called after him, “and something to drink?”

He emerged a couple of minutes later with two bags of purchases, “For the road,” as he put it: biscuits, chocolate, bread, cheese, two large bottles of water, and a small bottle of whisky.

“What about the map?” Frannie said, as he loaded the bags onto the back seat beside Rosa.

“Voilá,” he said, pulling a small folded map from his pocket, and along with it a twelve-page tourists’ guide to the island, written by the local schoolmaster and crudely illustrated by the schoolmaster’s wife. He passed the booklet back over his shoulder to Rosa, telling her to flip through it for any names or places that rang a bell. The map he opened on his lap. There wasn’t much to study. The island was twelve miles long and at its broad-est three miles wide. It had a trio of hills: Beinn Hough, Beinn Bheag Bhaile-mhuilinn, and Ben Hynish, the summit of the latter being the highest point on the island. It had several small lochs and a handful of villages (described as townships on the map) around its coast. What few roads the island boasted simply joined these townships—the largest of which consisted of nine houses—by the most direct route, which, given the flatness of the terrain, was usually something approaching a straight line.

“Where the hell do we start?” Will wondered aloud. “I can’t even pronounce half these names.”

There was a glorious poetry in the words, however: Balephuil and Balephetrish, Baile-Mheadhonach and Cornaigmore, Vaul and Gott and Kenavara. And they lost little of their power in translation: Balephuil was the Town of the Marsh, Heylipout, the Holy Town, Bail-Udhaig, the Town of Wolf Bay.

“If nobody’s got any better ideas,” Will said, “I suggest we start here.” He pointed to Baile-Mheadhonach.

“Any particular reason?” Frannie wanted to know.

“Well, it’s almost in the middle of the island, for one thing.” In fact that was its unglamorous translation: Middle Town. “And it’s got its own cemetery, look.” There was a cross to the south of the village and beside it the words Cnoc a’ Chlaidh, translated as Christian burial ground. “If Simeon was buried here, we may as well start out by looking for his grave.” He glanced over his shoulder at Rosa. She’d put down the booklet and was staring out of the window, the fixedness of her expression such that Will looked away immediately so as not to disturb her medita-tions. “Let’s just go,” he said to Frannie. “We can follow the coast road west as far as Crossapol. Then we make a left inland.” Frannie eased the car out into what would have been the flow of traffic, if there’d been any traffic, and within perhaps a minute they had passed the outskirts of Scarinish, and were on the open road, a road so straight and empty she could have driven blindfolded and more than likely brought them to Crossapol.