Episode 7: For the Stone, Chapter 4

"What was it like, then?" Flynn enquired, straightening up from his scrutiny of the tower masonry. "Full of people, brand new and shining..."

"Hmm?" Jenkins looked round. "Oh, much like most busy buildings. Much like a university building, in fact. A University library, perhaps, but without the books. The cafeteria on the ground floor, or below. The reading rooms and lecture halls up a level, where conversation can take place without too much distraction, then the upper rooms for the die hard researchers who had bedding rolls hidden under their desks."

"You sound like you've been," smiled Flynn, the memory of his own university days flitting across his mind.

"Once or twice," nodded Jenkins. "The people change, the knowledge grows, the books are added to, but nothing really changes. They all have that sense of mild obsession lingering around them. Especially in the library buildings."

Flynn nodded with a wry smile and they continued their search in comfortable silence. After a while, Flynn noticed Jenkins hadn't moved. He eyed the old man curiously. "What is it?"

"Hmm?" Jenkins looked round again, startled for the second time running. "Oh, just a thought, just a thought. Stone said he thought the manuscript said 'wall', didn't he? Only thought?"

"What are you thinking?" Flynn wondered, eyes narrowed.

"Well, there aren't many words one could mistake for 'wall', are there?" Jenkins replied. "He never said what letter, or letters he couldn't read, did he?"

"Only that the page was burnt," Flynn supplied, walking over to the Caretaker.

"But it was just the one word he had difficulty reading," mused the old man. "Wall. What word could be mistaken for wall? Ball? Fall? Gall? Pall? Tall? Perhaps, but none of those make any sense. Mall? Even less sense: it didn't exist then. Hall might work, but here there were the kitchens below the hall, so we strike out again. Changing the ending is even less productive! Change the middle though... Wall, well, will, woll, wull, wyll. Half of those don't exist. That leaves will, which does fit, and well. Below the castle well. Now there's a possibility."

"I don't see any well, though, Jenkins," responded Flynn. "With the river so close, would you even need one?"

"With the river so close," he replied, "you could dig down from the base of the kitchens and be sure of hitting a clean source before very long at all."

"And the kitchens being handily situated right below your great hall," continued Flynn, "that would be quite a convenient place to hide a royal relic?"

"Precisely," smiled Jenkins.

"And I take it you remember where that well might be?" Flynn continued. Jenkins smirked and turned his hands palm uppermost. Flynn laughed. "Of course you do."

XXXX

"What was it like, then?" Cassie wondered aloud as she gazed across the Clyde valley from the only outward facing window of the tower room. "The people who lived here: they would have stood here, right where we're standing, looking where we're looking. What do you think they would have seen?"

"Well," sighed Jacob, leaning back against the ancient sandstone walls. "The default pattern for nature here is the forest, so I guess they'd see pretty much what we see, at least nearby. And maybe the occasional siege tower, of course."

He reached out a hand and brushed the flaming red hair back from her face. He wanted to reach out and draw her near to him. To hold her close and never leave her side. If anything had happened to her in those caves... He contented himself with moving forward and turning her face to his, meeting her lips with his own.

"What was that for?" Cassie blushed, ducking her head with a smile and fixing her hair.

"What? I can't kiss my girl when she's being particularly beautiful?" Jacob grinned, running a hand through her hair again.

She batted the hand away. "What if someone comes up the stairs?" Cassie hissed.

"Let them!" Jacob laughed. "We'll hear them long before they'll have the slightest idea we're even here! It's a spiral staircase out there: sound bounces up it. One of the greatest inventions in a castle, besides the drawbridge if there was one. If you're attacked, you can hear your enemy well in advance, your sword arm is free to move on the way down and theirs is hampered by the central pillar on the way up. Plus they're one of the sturdiest parts of the entire building! It never bothered you in France if there was anyone else around. What's different here?"

"That was France," she retorted. "It's practically expected there. This is Britain. They're weird about stuff like that!"

"This is Scotland. It was the English who were traditionally weird about stuff like that, and it barely applies these days. It never really has up here!" Jacob drew her close again and kissed her.

This time she didn't pull away. Instead, she relaxed into the kiss, letting her arms rest on his chest, one hand reaching up to snake around his neck and tangle her fingers in his hair.

XXXX

"What is it like then?" Flora asked Eve, holding open a gate for her. "Being Guardian to such a young Librarian while a dinosaur like Galeas is still roaming the halls?"

Eve looked around her. They had entered the walled garden at Dunvegan, and she was conscious that the gate had only creaked open three times. Both Flora and Mhairi watched her with amused expressions.

"The boy will be perfectly safe in these grounds, don't worry," smiled Mhairi. "He left us to explore the wild garden some time ago."

"He's quite a young thing, isn't he," chortled Flora as Eve visibly relaxed. "Usually they've been through the degree mill a few more times before they are chosen. How many does he have?"

"Degrees? Ezekiel?" Eve blinked. "None, so far as I know. I hadn't really thought to ask. That's not why the Library recruited him, though. He has a very... particular skill set, and I suppose his qualifications are the reputation their practical application has earned him."

"You first Librarian?" Mhairi enquired.

"One of your first, I think?" Flora corrected. "But not the first, am I right?"

"He's one of four current Librarians," replied Eve, barely moving a muscle as she watched the old woman through narrowed eyes. "My fiancé was the first I met. Together we collected the three remaining candidates and trained them."

"A Library can change its spots then," mused Flora, pulling a face. "A Librarian married. There's a thing. And you intend to keep the job once you are married?"

"I can't imagine my life without it," shrugged Eve. "Jenkins, Flynn, Ezekiel, Stone, Cassandra: they're my family now."

"But not a complete family," murmured the crone, staring at the details of Eve's face. "Not yet, and not for a while, but not complete, not in your eyes. What is it you know, child? Have you a touch of the Odhar about you? Has the Seer's stone been found at last?"

"What?" Eve blinked.

"Our most famous seer, Kenneth Mackenzie, Coinneach Odhar to give him his Gaelic name. Born of a brave woman, a farmer's wife, who won her son's gift, or curse, through her own courage. Watching over her cattle one night, she saw the spirits of the dead walk forth from their rest in the nearby graveyard. One by one, through the night, the spirits returned, each entering its grave as soundlessly as it had left it until all but one were filled. Taking her distaff, the Seer's mother placed the staff over the grave of the missing ghost, determined to find out the cause of the spirits' tardiness. When the figure of a fair haired woman approached, it begged entry to its resting place. She challenged the ghost and demanded it tell its tale. The spirit told her then that it was the ghost of a Norse princess drowned and washed up on island shores. In return for entry to her grave, the spirit told her to walk to the shore and, when the dawn broke, to look down. The first light the sun touched would be a stone of great power, and she must take it and keep it safe to give her son when he came of age, for that stone would grant him the ability to see much that man could not. Some that was, some that is and some that had not yet come to pass. Both the good, and the bad. The woman did as she was bidden, and all that the spirit had told her came to pass. The Seer's life was not a happy one, and his prophecies oft gave him pain. None more so than his last, though, for it won him the ire of a vengeful woman and cost him his life. The stone, which he kept by him always, has never been seen since."

"That definitely sounds like a curse!" Eve exclaimed.

"Aye," Flora nodded. "A body can know too much about their own future, its true."

Eve looked at the old woman sharply. "Where did you hear that?"

"Hear it?" Flora frowned at her. "Do you need to hear me tell you the sky is blue for you to see it? Or that the grass is green? It's common sense, child. You don't have to 'hear' anything!"

"And that stone has never been found either?" Eve asked, changing the subject. "The Seer's Stone?"

"Not to my knowledge," replied Flora. "But I would not be best placed to tell you if a Librarian had found it and squirreled it away with his other treasures. Why? You've already seen what the future has on offer for you."

"Only a tiny snapshot," Eve assured her. "I jumped forward because of the Janus Coin, I returned to my own time almost immediately. My son was waiting for me with the coin in a box."

"Ah, that is why it holds such a large portion of your thoughts," the crone breathed. "You have met your son and now you want his future existence confirmed. Well, Janus Coin time hops are usually accurate enough. If you met him, he will exist. Unless you go out of your way to prevent his birth of course."

They completed their tour of the walled garden and passed back out into the main garden and a well manicured lawn. Two figures approached from the other side.

"I believe my daughter has found your missing Librarian," smiled Mhairi, watching them. "He seems quite taken with her."

"And her with him, by the look of it," laughed Eve. "Look at him: normally he would be charming everything he wasn't trying to aggravate. Now she has him eating out of the palm of her hand. I've never seen Jones be deferential to anyone but Jenkins!"

"So long as the young thief has no plans to steal the girl herself away, he can be as taken with her as he likes," Flora snapped, throwing a dark look at the girl's mother. "Seonaidh is next in line after Mhairi should ought happen to me. She must remain here, preparing to take her mother's place as heiress, just as Mhairi did, and her mother before her, all the way back to myself, and my mother and her mother before her and beyond. No good will come of a friendship between an heiress and a Librarian."

"But you have been friends with Jenkins for years?" Baird queried, frowning at the sudden storm-clouds in the old woman's demeanour.

"Precisely!"