Episode 7: For the Stone, Chapter 3
Eve Baird stood looking out of the window of the great castle. Flora had hobbled off to make some tea. Jones was sufficiently in awe of, or sufficiently terrified by, the old woman to be more or less sitting on his hands, so she had no need to worry about him wandering off with the Chief's favourite heirloom. She stirred as feet were heard in the hall outside. The door opened to admit a woman of about Eve's own years, perhaps a little older, with nut brown hair streaked with silver that fell in a braid to the middle of her back. She was carrying a tea tray, and was followed by Flora with a plate of shortbread.
"This is Mhairi, the eldest daughter of my line," said Flora. "She knows my secrets. It is the tradition, hereabouts, that the eldest daughter shall know the secrets of the Caretaker should she be called upon to take up the mantle. Mine is what you might call an hereditary condition, in a way. A family calling. Throughout their lives each daughter of my lineage is taught the clan legends. Fairy stories, all of them, of course. Only when one heiress passes on is the next told how much of each story is true."
"Is this place like the Library, then?" Jones asked, sitting notably upright and still.
"No, laddie, nothing like that," Flora crooned. "The Library was created to contain all the magic of the world, throughout history. This castle is merely a kitchen cupboard compared to that. No, we concern ourselves only with the affairs of the Clan, and the Friends of the Clan."
"Friends like Jenkins?" Jones asked.
"Indeed not, my lad," grinned Flora. "Indeed not. And don't let him catch you saying so!"
"But I thought..." Jones' brow crinkled, but the old woman's marble hard stare ground him into silence.
"Galeas is well known here and well liked, by myself more than any other for-by that I know him personally. But as much as he may be a friend of my own self, my daughters and the castle, he is not what we mean when we say a Friend of the Clan, and well he knows the difference. May it be one day you do likewise."
"This is about the Fairy Flag," breathed Eve. "They're the Friends you mean, aren't they?"
Flora nodded. "The MacLeods of Skye have a long history with the bean sidhe, the fairy folk as you say; a history that goes back further than the name itself. Much further than our history with Galeas. He never did approve, but it was not my place to alter it. We fought it out many's a winter night by a warm grate."
"But if you are only concerned with the Clan and the fairy folk, you wouldn't have anything to do with the stone?" Baird asked.
"That we would not," Flora nodded. "But this I can tell you of the man who would hide it at least. He was a single-minded, curmudgeon of a buffoon. Kingly in all things, especially that! He came here to beg use of the Fairy Flag. Our flag. He tried to compel the Clan Chief of the time to use it against the English. Claimed he would denounce him as no true Scot if he held back the one thing that would grant him victory. Of course he laughed in the stubborn, idiotic man's face. He was no true Scot. He was a Norseman! An Islander! Descendant of King Harald! He would hold his allegiance to the land, not the man, and hold fast he did. The new king was made to listen and to see the truth of things, and much learning of government did he get from his time here. He took himself home again, to the mainland and the lowlands, and fought his battles there. It took time, but fighting a war always does. Winning it took courage, tactics, experience, local knowledge and the sheer bloody-mindedness I told him then was his greatest quality. He was minded then to call me an auld witch, a spider weaving it's web of fate. I don't believe it was the last time he thought of me as such."
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"The manuscript Stone found said the Stone would be hidden beneath the castle wall," called Flynn as the two men spread out around the ruined walls of the castle. "Stone's information about the Stone. Because that won't get confusing at all!"
"Worse if you include it's original owner," called back Jenkins. "The walls have changed somewhat since my last visit, I'm afraid, but the improved version is notably thicker than the original. To sink the foundations they would surely have dug up something of interest."
"They might have just through it was an old druidic stone and left it be," replied Flynn. "Or built it into the wall itself, or its foundations."
"Unlikely," mused Jenkins, scratching his chin. "Any local mason finding a stone like that would have applied to the laird himself for instructions, and even then would think twice about building with or around it."
"So you're saying it's not here?" Flynn asked, walking round the rest of the wall to meet the old man. "I thought you said you didn't know?"
"I said I didn't know if Archibald had hidden it," replied Jenkins in his usual sedate manner. "I can tell you he did not hide it under these walls."
"But you cannot tell whether or not he might have hidden it under the walls of the tower itself, say?" Flynn continued the thought for him. "How does the tower compare?"
"Shorter," said Jenkins, with an expressive shrug.
Flynn looked deflated. He glared at Jenkins. "Fine, let's go inside," he huffed. "You can tell me where they put the dinner table."
Jenkins smirked as the Librarian turned on his heel and headed for the tumbled down tower. "One flight up from the entrance, right above the kitchens," he reminisced to himself. "And the smell of those kitchens was enough to make your belly think your throat'd been cut!"
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Stone and Cassandra had paid their entrance fee with the rest of the public and were taking the opportunity of a lull in the trickle of winter visitors climbing the short staircase to the great hall to look out across the inner yard of the castle. Scaffolding around the great round tower at the opposite end, called the donjon, obscured part of the view, but they could still get a reasonably good idea of the layout of Archibald the Grim's castle. Well, his wife's castle, anyway.
They had walked around the inner yard already: looking down into the dry bottom of the moat around the donjon; guessing where the divides between the cluster of small shops and buildings along the back wall might have gone; pointing out the differences in the architecture of the chapel, whose walls alone remained, and that of the rooms above and below it. They had investigated every nook and cranny of the red sandstone at ground level, and now up at the level of the great hall too. That left only the donjon.
"It must have been quite something," mused Cassandra, leaning back into Jacob as they looked out from the largest and oldest window of the great hall. "Once upon a time, all in its heyday, people going back and forth living their everyday lives."
"Difficulty would be picking when exactly that heyday was," murmured her boyfriend, wrapping his arms closer around her. "Was it the original building, back in Moray's, or Murray's, day? The grand idea that took too much money and was never finished? Or was it the one Douglas built with his wife's money, making the best of the ruins the war had left him with? Or the one his son finished for him? Or would you rather see the place resplendent in its finery to welcome James the fourth, or fifth?"
"Whichever shows this room off at its best," she giggled.
"Early sixteenth century version then, after the upper windows there were put in," he murmured into her ear.
"Did you read every board we came across?" Cassie smiled, running her hands over his arms. "Isn't it just more fun to look and work it out?"
"We do have a job to do, darlin'," he mused. "It's all well and good for one of us to stand and visualise completed walls and missing floors, but one of us still has to check up on the details from time to time."
"Speaking of missing floors, let's go," she said, pulling away and taking his hand. "There doesn't seem to be a lot of people going in and out of the donjon just now. We can go in and take a look around, maybe even imagine the place as it originally was."
"Speak for yourself!" Jacob laughed.
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Eve Baird walked in step with Flora and Mhairi, one woman on either side of her, through the extensive and beautifully manicured gardens of Dunvegan Castle. They talked of many things: the men in their lives, at least the current ones; the demands of their jobs and of their families; juggling friends, family and lovers as they walked the tightrope of their own self. They, at least Flora and Eve, compared notes on Jenkins' many idiosyncrasies and debated whether he had mellowed over the years, or had become hardened by time. Mhairi held her peace, but listened keenly to her ancestor's tales. When the tide of the talk turned to pending nuptials, the heiress took her turn to take part. It was a while before they noticed that Ezekiel was not with them.
The gardens at Dunvegan are well worth the visit. They are spread out over a number of acres, and comprise a walled garden, a formal garden, a jetty, a boathouse, a loch, a wild garden and many heavily wooded areas. Wandering in these areas can lead to parties being split up and lost temporarily. It was after one of these particular wanderings that Ezekiel found the stream. It tumbled, sparkling in the low sunlight, over a mossy crag and into a worn rivulet in the rock below. He reached out a hand to it.
"Don't," called a voice. "It's bad luck to disturb the water. The selkies can tell."
Ezekiel turned to see a young woman watching him. Two thin braids held her long blonde hair back from her face, the rest of it tumbling down her back like the waterfall down its rocks, and grey-green eyes watched him inquisitively. She must have been only a few years younger than he was.
"S-sorry," stuttered the thief, his usual confidence faltering under that intelligent stare. "They will?"
"Oh, you've heard of selkies," the young woman concluded, smiling brightly and tipping her head to one side. "That's unusual. Especially among Australians."
"I met one once," he managed to reply. "Are you one too?"
The girl laughed, high and clear like rain on crystal. "Don't be silly! Selkies are beautiful creatures, even without their skin. They appear as the most beautiful woman, or man, you can imagine. If you'd really met one, you'd know that."
"I d... I did... I did know that," Ezekiel stammered. "I just... She just... You remind me of her."
A crease of puzzlement in her brows, followed by a deep blush of crimson in her cheeks, suffused the young woman's features. "You must be a friend of my mother's if you're here at this time of the year," she said, changing the subject. "Are you staying long?"
"Not... not really," replied Ezekiel. "My m... My colleague is talking to the caretaker and someone just now. Nothing to do with why we're here, really. Once they're done, we're out of here."
"Never to return?"
"I hope not," he replied, before his brain had time to process the words. She blushed again and looked demurely away. He took his turn to watch her with interest. "What's your name?"
"Seonaidh," she answered, looking up at him again. "Seonaidh MacLeod. I'm Mhairi's daughter."
At the back of Ezekiel's brain, a little bell was ringing, but it was being drowned out by something else. He held out his hand and plastered on his most dashing smile. "Ezekiel Jones," he told her. "World Class... Librarian."