If you get to a point where the dialect gets too broad, don't worry. I'll stick a translation in the afterword.


Episode 3: Annoying and Cryptic, Chapter 5

Cassandra took her cup of tea over to the settle and sat down. Something was nagging at her. She wasn't exactly comfortable with the tension between Flora and Charlene. She looked up to both women and each for different reasons. To see them openly at odds with each other had rattled her a little. When Mhairi disappeared with the empty plates, Flora sat down by Cassandra, her own cup in hand, and the redhead decided on one question at least that had been bugging her.

"Flora," she began, "How did you and Jenkins first meet?"

"First?" Flora laughed. "Oh, now that's going back a tad. Let me see. That was the year before Bruce was made Guardian of Scotland, so I would have been but a wee lass myself. About seven. Aye, it was autumn, and the geese were flying south overhead. I would have been just beginning my eighth year. Of course, there was less of the castle then. Nothing of the building we're in. Just the curtain wall and the old dun within. Any wishing to enter had to come by sea, where they were easily spotted aforehand. He was easier than most, standing there on the prow o' the boat, sunlight reflecting off armour a Norman would ha' been proud of. That was a novelty in Dunvegan. Nothing of that ilk had ever been seen before there. My father had seen it though, and weel he kent the bearer o't. My father, ye understand, was a strange man hi'sel'. He spake th'auld tongues and the new, oor own being somewhat in the middle. He it was that went doon tae meet oor newest visitor, and greet him in his own tongue. He it was that brocht him up to oor hearth and hame an' settled him in the finest room. A fearsome sicht he was to a wean. Hair as white as the spray on the ocean, sword as sharp as the grass in the machair. He smelt o' goose grease and leather, and the creak o' his armour heralded his passage the longer he stayed with us, for we had none o' the first to spare an' he brocht little hi'sel'. Auld Creaky we called him then, and the nickname stuck, at least long enough, in legends long forgot, to reach Woden's Broch centuries later and give it it's own version.

I niver did learn the full o't, but a wee one can aye hear more than it's elders wish, if it has the knowing o' a place. My eldest brother had been born just the winter before, the future chief, and a boy-child always trumped a lass in those days. The women o' the dun flocked by him an' left me to masel' wi' the ither weans. I had spent a glorious summer, exploring a' the nooks an' crannies o' a' the buildings within the curtain wa'. I found masel' a wee hidey hole by ma faither's chamber, and listened to all they talked of within.

Ah did but hear the bare bones of it then, ye ken, but time and the knowing of ma place in land, and ma power and the duty that went wi't filled in many o' th' blanks. Galeas, ma faither ca'ed 'im. An' so hiv I e'er since. They spake o' krakens, an' corryvreckin, and the blue men o' the minch, an' I understood e'en then that thae things meant danger on the water. Nae boats sailed frae the dun for the rest o' that year and part o' the next. No' wi'oot Galeas on board. Finally, as the new leaves were unfolding on the rowan, he returned one day to announce the waters were safe once more. I know now the blue men had o'erstepped their boundaries, an' he had sent them back south, but then stories abounded o' the monsters he had fought and the lands he had sailed to. The stories spread and gained legs in the telling o' them until there was barely a shred o' truth left. By the time I saw him next, his name had been forgotten by all but I, and his story was someone else's."

"But how could everyone forget him?" Cassandra asked, engrossed in the tale. "Forget his arrival, his adventures, his name, even!"

"A hundred years had passed, child," smiled Flora. "There were none left but I who had ever met him."

Cassandra's eyebrows rose. "I'm guessing he didn't recognise you then," she smiled.

"No, I had changed indeed, though he had not," the old woman replied.

Cassandra straightened, and steeled herself to ask what was really worrying her. "What about Charlene? You two don't seem to get on well at all. How did the two of you meet?"

"Ah," breathed Flora. "Well, now, I can't really say that we ever did, properly, before now. Magical mirrors are useful contrivances though, and we've known of each other for many years. I know much about her that she'd rather I didn't, and she thinks she can say the same of me. She certainly blames me for much. But neither of us knows the other truly, and perhaps we will be better acquainted by the end of this."

XXXX

Jenkins leant on the mezzanine bannister in thought. Jacob Stone still refused to leave the reading room, or allow any other intrusions therein. He had listened to two counts of advice, or permitted them to be given, anyway, and that was that. Cassandra Cillian, on the other hand, by Charlene's account of matters, was soaking up advice and information like a sponge. She had quizzed every married woman in Dunvegan. She had listened. She had considered. But she still had not come home. There was work to be done, though, and mostly at the castle, so maybe that was why. The back door clicked open and closed, and Jenkins looked down hopefully. What he saw, however, did not fulfil those hopes, but dash others. Inwardly he groaned. He could see the pattern of events ahead as clearly as if Kenneth Mackenzie himself had whispered them in his ear. Events that may yet have untold consequences. The consequences he was sure of, though, were painful enough.

"Ezekiel," he called down, and the young man froze. "Where have you just been?"

"Why?" Jones returned, without looking up. "I haven't broken any laws. I haven't slacked off from the job. I don't see what business it is of yours."

"You have no idea of the full weight of what you are getting yourself into," sighed Jenkins wearily. "Neither does the girl."

"And you do?" Jones retorted. "I need to check something in the Library. Excuse me."

Watching the younger man storm off, without once looking round to his mentor, Jenkins let his head fall into his hands. "You have no idea," he repeated quietly.

"We got it!" Charlene's shout broke the Caretaker out of his reverie. He looked down to see both her and Cassandra standing where Ezekiel had been some ten minutes or so before. The elder raised a dust covered tome in triumph.

"You found the original?" Jenkins asked, raising his head, previous worries set aside for the moment. "With illustrations?"

"We did indeed," cheered the retired receptionist. "And look: no warts!"

Jenkins threw her a look, at which she shrugged and headed for the central desk, depositing the book with a thump that made him wince. Behind him, Jacob Stone emerged from the reading room and glanced down at the source of the noise. Cassandra looked up and caught her lover's eye, but he looked away towards the desk and the book. Without returning the synaesthete's gaze Stone joined Jenkins in heading downstairs to study the fruits of their labour. When they met at the desk, he took care to place himself on the opposite side of the group from her.

The book was a collection of oriental legends several hundred years old. Jenkins took charge of the item immediately, pulling on a pair of white cotton gloves and turning every leaf with care. When he came to the tale of Kotan Utannai, he stopped.

"Cassandra, would you fetch Mr Jones please," he began, his eyes flicking through the hand written words on the page, "and da Vinci too? They should both be in the main Library somewhere. We will need the computer skills of the former, and the latter will do nothing but complain if he is left out."

The younger woman nodded and hurried off, casting an unreturned glance at Stone as she left. Within a few minutes she had returned, one man on either side of her.

Without looking up, Jenkins turned the book and passed it over to Ezekiel. "Can you find out if articles such as these have been sold in an auction?"

"In the last what? Six months?" Jones clarified, casting his eyes over the items illustrated and their descriptions.

"In the last however far back the records go," replied Jenkins. Any mention of them at all will give us somewhere at least to start looking."

Jones nodded. "It'll take longer..."

At the pause, Jenkins looked up. "What? What is it?"

"I've seen this before," admitted Jones. "Couple of years ago now, but..."

The others watched and waited as the thief flipped open his tablet and started searching in silence. The wait seemed interminable, until finally he spun the propped up rectangle round to face them. The collected costume had been sold at auction two and half years ago. It had been purchased for an exorbitant sum, but the buyer's other details remained protected by client confidentiality. Cassandra noted down the name and address of the auction house in her notebook. Stone took a photograph of the illustrations on his iPhone, and deleted the selfie Ezekiel had taken while he wasn't looking. Jenkins turned to reset the door.

"Oh, look, Philadelphia," Charlene commented, reading the address on the web page. "I had a colleague who was from there, once upon a time. City of brotherly love. Well, I guess we could all do with some of that."

"I know exactly what you mean," replied da Vinci, sidling past Cassandra to the older woman's side.

"Oh, I doubt that!" Charlene retorted with an acid smile.

XXXX

The city of Philadelphia climbed high above them, towering triumphantly to the skies. The streets were busy, and Jones and Cassandra fought to keep Stone in their sights as he hurried on ahead, pushing though the crowds. Eventually, with the help of a navigation app on Jones' phone, they caught up with him, leaning impatiently against the wall by a door. The sign on the door heralded their arrival at their destination.

"We're here," announced Stone's stentorian tones. "Go do your hacking thing and find out where this thing went."

"You know I do have other skills to bring to this team," Ezekiel pointed out.

"Yeah," nodded Stone, considering. "Computer researching, computer databases, bypassing computerised security systems..."

"Sometimes I think all I am to you people is a computer geek," complained the younger man, focussing on his phone.

"Only sometimes?" Stone retorted, earning a sharp glare from Jones. "Oh, don't worry: we know you're a thief too."

"Maybe once," muttered the thief. "But now I only use my powers for... Oh!"

"What?" Cassandra craned over Ezekiel's shoulder to see the screen. He passed the phone to her and she looked down. "Oh crap," she murmured, reading the name of the buyer with heartfelt anguish. "That's my Dad!"