For two days after the rescue in the geo, Robbie waited for his chance to speak alone with Nicol Anderson.
“I need a word with you, Nicol,” said he, the moment he found this chance. “A private word about Finn Learson and Elspeth.”
“That’s none of your business,” Nicol told him sharply. “But if you must talk about it, talk to your Mam and Da. I don’t want to hear what you have to say.”
“But you’ve got to,” Robbie insisted. “My Mam and Da thought the world of him even before he saved me from drowning, and now that’s happened, they’ll not hear a word against him. I’m sure of that, and so what use is it to try talking to them?”
“Then try holding your tongue for a change,” Nicol retorted. “You should think shame, anyway, for even wanting to speak against a man who has just saved your life.”
“If he had guessed what I was thinking about him,” said Robbie miserably, “he would have tipped me back into the water and left me to drown in good earnest. That’s something else I know for sure.”
“Robbie Henderson!” Nicol exclaimed. “That’s a terrible thing to say about anybody!”
“I know it is,” Robbie admitted, “but I’ve got a good reason for saying it about Finn Learson. It came to me suddenly when he was shoving me back into the boat, and I’m certain I know the truth now.”
“The truth about what?” Nicol demanded. “You’re talking in riddles, boy.”
“Then I’ll begin at the beginning,” Robbie told him. “Do you remember the night he came ashore, Nicol – the night of the storm that wrecked the Bergen?”
“Of course,” Nicol nodded. “But what’s that got to do with it?”
“Just this,” Robbie answered. “He came ashore looking like a survivor of that wreck, and so everybody took it for granted that he was. But he never claimed to be a survivor. He never spoke about the Bergen as my ship. Whenever he mentioned it, he called it ‘the’ ship.”
“And what’s that but a slip of the tongue?” Nicol asked. “He’s a Norwegian, isn’t he? At least, the ship was Norwegian, and you can tell from the way he speaks that he’s some sort of foreigner. And anyway, if he didn’t come from the ship, where could he have come from?”
“I’ll get to that in a minute,” said Robbie. “But have you noticed, Nicol, that little smile he sometimes gives – as if he was enjoying some secret sort of joke?”
“Well – now you mention it, I suppose I have,” Nicol admitted. “But, Robbie –”
“Wait!” Robbie interrupted. “Let me tell you about his first night in our house, Nicol. We had trouble with Tam barking and growling then; but late that night he stared into Tam’s eyes, and the creature was frightened of him. It was after we were all in bed that this happened, but I saw it because I was awakened by Finn Learson playing on my Da’s fiddle.”
“Playing what?” Nicol asked curiously. “And why would he do that?’
“I can’t tell you why,” Robbie admitted, “but I do know what he played. It was selkie music – the kind of singing sound that selkies make in the geos at this time of the year – and it was all so strange that I thought afterwards it must have been a dream. Then, just before I fell overboard a couple of days ago, I heard the selkies making the same music and I knew that it hadn’t been a dream at all.”
Nicol stared at this. Then he glanced around to make sure there was no one else within earshot, but it was down at the voe that this conversation took place and there was no one but himself and Robbie there.
“You’re talking very strangely now,” he remarked. “And I’m not sure I should let you say any more –”
“Yes you must,” Robbie interrupted again. “There’s the gold coin he gave us, Nicol. Old Da backed me up when I said it must have come from a sunken treasure ship, and Finn Learson never denied that was the case. He just said it was something he had picked up on his travels.”
“And so it would be,” Nicol argued. “That’s what your Da thought it was, anyway – he told me so himself.”
“Aye, but Finn Learson never said when or where he had picked it up,” Robbie pointed out, “and I think I know the answer to that now. A selkie could dive deep enough to reach a sunken treasure ship, and when Finn Learson pulled me out of the geo, he felt like a selkie.”
Nicol stared again, then he smiled and said, “Oh aye, Robbie. And what other clues do you have to the ‘truth’ about Finn Learson?”
“Things my Old Da told me, just before he died,” said Robbie, trying hard not to notice Nicol’s smile. “He didn’t trust Finn Learson, and he told me not to trust him. He said it had all happened before – that there was another man who had come ashore like Finn Learson. And he said that Elspeth was the one in danger.”
Nicol’s smile vanished at these words. “She’s in danger of marrying him, if that’s what you mean,” said he sourly. “I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“But that is the danger!” Robbie cried. “I know it is, from – well, from other things my Old Da told me.”
“What do you mean by ‘other things?’” Nicol demanded. “What sort of things?”
“Well,” said Robbie carefully, “it was when I was only a wee boy and he told me about the Great Selkie that rules in the deepest ocean. He has a palace of crystal there, Old Da said, and this palace is roofed with the hair of girls he has tempted into his kingdom and drowned there when they want to go back to their own kind – girls with golden hair, like Elspeth’s.”
Nicol heaved a great sigh of impatience at this point. “But that’s only a story,” he pointed out. “I heard it myself when I was a wee boy, but even then I didn’t believe it was true.”
“Neither did I at the time,” Robbie admitted. “At least, I wasn’t sure about it. But there was something else Old Da told me. He said that selkies love to dance – and you know how true that is of Finn Learson! Moreover, they come ashore to dance, Old Da said; and when that happens, they cast off their skins and take the shape of men. Then he sang to me about the Great Selkie – a bit of an old song that said, “I am a man upon the land, a selkie in the sea …” And that’s what Finn Learson is Nicol. That’s why Old Da warned me against him – because he had guessed that Finn Learson is the Great Selkie!”
“Oh, rubbish!” shouted Nicol, his patience breaking at last, and Robbie backed away in dismay at the anger in his voice.
“But I told you,” he protested. “Finn Learson felt like a selkie. I know, because I picked up a young selkie that same day, and held it close. And there’s another thing, Nicol. The omens on the day of Old Da’s funeral – the footprint and the raven. They said Elspeth would die, but Finn Learson told her, ‘You will live to wed the man of your choice, and you will be rich when you wed.’ That didn’t make sense at the time –”
“It still doesn’t,” Nicol interrupted, but Robbie cried, “It does, it does! Finn Learson is rich – he must be, if he is the Great Selkie, for he can get gold any time he wants. But if Elspeth agrees to wed him, he will carry her off to his kingdom under the sea. And then, to us at least, she will be dead!”
Nicol said nothing for a few moments. He just looked at Robbie as if he were really seeing him for the first time and didn’t quite know what to make of him. Robbie took his silence for an encouraging sign however, and so he added, “There’s just one last thing, Nicol. Selkies are the sea wanderers of the world – you know that! And just think of all the travelling Finn Learson has done. Think of the way he took the chance of going to the haaf, so that he could be out there in the deep water again. Doesn’t that help to prove I’m right?”
Nicol shook his head, “I could point you a dozen men on this island as far travelled as Finn Learson,” he remarked; and in desperation then, Robbie cried, “But you’ve got to believe me, all the same, Nicol. You’ve got to see how everything fits – the way Finn Learson fooled us all into taking it for granted he had come from the wreck, the gold, the dancing, the selkie warmth I felt from him, the way he is courting Elspeth now – they all add up to the same thing. He’s not a man at all – that’s the trick he’s played on us, and that’s the secret behind his smile. He’s the Great Selkie come ashore in the shape of a man!”
“If you believe that,” Nicol declared, “you’ll believe anything! That’s my opinion, Robbie; my honest opinion. And it’s my opinion, too, that it’s high time you stopped making up such fanciful tales.”
“And what abut the selkie music I heard in the geo?” Robbie asked. “I didn’t make that up, and it was the music Finn Learson played on his first night here. Then there’s the dancing and the magical way he seemed to get Tam into his power. I didn’t make them up either.”
“Och, be reasonable,” Nicol protested. “You said yourself you had dreamed the bit about Finn Learson playing the selkie music and getting some sort of hold over Tam.”
“But I didn’t dream it after all!” Robbie exclaimed. “I said that too, Nicol, and that’s the whole point. Besides, the power he put out on Tam wasn’t his only piece of magic. It was magic he used too, to save everyone from the Press Gang. I know, because I saw it; and there was no ordinary man could have drawn them on the way he did.”
“Oh, wasn’t there?” Nicol snapped. “And how do you know what any of us could have done if we’d been given the chance?”
With great dismay then, Robbie saw how he had blundered, and quickly tried to get free of his own trap.
“I didn’t mean to insult you, Nicol,” he began, but Nicol was too annoyed now to let him continue.
“I told you at the beginning that this was none of your business,” he said curtly, “and I should have had the sense to stick to that, instead of standing here listening to all this nonsense about the Great Selkie. And now I’ll tell you one last thing, Robbie. It’s a case of ‘may the best man win’ between Finn Learson and myself, and I’ll have the whole island laughing at me if I let a boy of your age bring such nonsense into it. And so don’t you dare to say a word to Elspeth of all this, or I’ll give you a hiding that will make you wish you had never been born!”
He meant that too, thought Robbie, looking up at Nicol’s flushed and furious face; and was all the more impressed by it because Nicol was usually so easy-going, and so friendly with him.
“All right, I won’t tell her,” he promised, but he looked so forlorn as he said this, that Nicol relented a bit.
“Och, come on,” said he. “I’ve been a bit rough with you, I know; but it’s for your own good, Robbie. And later on, maybe, you’ll thank me for not letting you make a fool of yourself, as well as of me!”
Robbie looked him straight in the eye. “I’m not the fool around here,” he retorted; and turned away, feeling miserable enough at the way things had turned out, but still determined not to let it be the end of the matter.