Treasure of the Celtic Triangle

by Michael Phillips

  “There is something I want to do … something I need to do. I am afraid of doing it alone. I have spoken with my parents, and they agree that it is time. I would like to ask the two of you to accompany me.”

  The three left the manor for town a short while later. They stopped at the Lorimer home where Mr. Lorimer had a buggy hitched and ready. He greeted Florilyn and Gwyneth and took charge of their horses while Rhawn went into the house for her son. A short while later the three girls and young boy, with Rhawn at the reins, set out northward.

  By the time they reached their destination, Florilyn and Gwyneth knew what was in Rhawn’s heart to do. At length Rhawn reined up in front of Burrenchobay Hall. With her friends at her side and her son’s hand in hers, they walked to the front door. When it opened, she asked the butler to see Mr. and Mrs. Burrenchobay.

  The wait of two minutes seemed like ten. When at last they heard footsteps approaching, Florilyn and Gwyneth stepped back. Florilyn had her own reasons for being apprehensive. She had not seen Colville’s parents since breaking off the engagement. She had no idea what they might have been told.

  What the butler had said, or whether they had suspected the truth before now, the expressions on the faces of the member of parliament and his wife were neither hostile nor unwelcoming. Lady Burrenchobay smiled, betraying slight nervousness. Her eyes flitted down to the boy at Rhawn’s side. Instantly her eyes filled as the years fell away and she found herself looking at the very image of her son twenty-two years before.

  “Hello, Sir Armond … Lady Burrenchobay,” said Rhawn. “I know this is awkward, and I know you may hate me, and I won’t blame you if you do, but you need to know … this has waited far too long. I would like to introduce you to your grandson, Amren. Amren, dear, this woman is your grandmother, and this man is your grandfather.”

  The boy smiled and nodded sheepishly, then held out his hand as he had obviously been told to do.

  Swallowing hard and blinking a time or two, Sir Armond reached down and shook it. “A good firm handshake, my boy,” he said in a husky voice. “That is a sign of character. Good for you.”

  Lady Burrenchobay, tears in her eyes, stooped down as her husband stood and stepped back. “Hello, Amren,” she said, desperately trying to keep from breaking down altogether. “I am so happy to know you. Would you like to come in and see our house, and perhaps have some biscuits and milk?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Amren. “Thank you very much.”

  Lady Burrenchobay stood then turned to Rhawn and looked deep into her eyes. “Oh, my dear,” she said, taking a step forward and embracing Rhawn affectionately. “I am so sorry for what you have been through. Thank you so much!” When she stepped back, she and Rhawn were both weeping.

  Rhawn forced a smile then turned. “You both know Florilyn,” she said.

  “Yes … certainly, of course. Hello, Florilyn,” said Sir Armond. Neither of Colville’s parents knew the full details of what had transpired between Florilyn and their son. They only knew there had been some change. They did not yet know, however, that Florilyn had formally terminated the engagement.

  “I would also like you to meet my friend, Gwyneth Barrie,” said Rhawn. “You will be hearing more about her, I am certain, in the future. Gwyneth, please meet Sir Armond Burrenchobay and Lady Burrenchobay.”

  Gwyneth stepped forward, smiled, and shook hands with them both. “I am very pleased to meet you,” she said simply. The man and woman returned her smile, disarmed by her penetrating expression and countenance.

  Lady Burrenchobay turned again to Rhawn. “Come in, my dear,” she said. “I think it is time you and I became better acquainted.”

  Rhawn looked back at her two friends. She smiled as if to say, I will be okay now.

  “Shall we come back for you later?” said Florilyn.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” said Sir Armond. “I will take Rhawn and the little fellow back to Llanfryniog. Perhaps you will stay and have tea with us, Rhawn,” he added to Rhawn. “Florilyn, if you would tell Styles that I will bring them home.”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  The Storm

  As the train pulled into the Glasgow station, Gwyneth stared out the window with wide-eyed anticipation.

  “Do you remember that first day we met?” asked Percy beside her. “You said you wanted to see Glasgow one day. That’s why you asked my name … so you would know who to look for when you came to Glasgow. Well, here we are … and you know my name!”

  Gwyneth laughed. “I remember,” she said. “I also said I wanted to visit London. Will you take me to London someday?”

  “Your wish is my command!”

  Having never before had occasion to meet Gwyneth when visiting Wales, Edward and Mary Drummond could not have been more delighted with their future daughter-in-law. After a few days in Glasgow, however, Gwyneth was anxious to see her father again. They had written him, but she wanted to tell him about everything that had happened in person.

  She and Percy sailed from Glasgow to Dublin, where Codnor was waiting for them. Though the great change in her life was only a few weeks old, already there was an obvious change in Gwyneth’s countenance. What a reunion they had with him and Grannie! Grannie seemed about to die of happiness at the double blessing that had come to Gwyneth. Percy also took her to meet Father O’Leary. With him accompanying them, they paid a visit to Gwyneth’s aunt, Vanora Maloney, telling her about Percy’s climb up to Percy’s Table and revealing Gwyneth’s engagement to Percy but not the full details of her altered social status.

  With Gwyneth now heir to Westbrooke Manor and its title, her future was obviously in Snowdonia. Her father and Grannie, too, were anxious to return to Wales. What to do with the house on the lower slopes of Lugnaquilla remained uncertain, though Codnor would sell his flock to neighboring sheep farmers at whatever price they could afford. He and Grannie, they said, would try to be ready to sail for Wales by summer. With their former cottages still vacant, both planned to return to life as it had been before. Learning of their plans, however, Katherine would hear nothing of it. They would come live at the manor, she insisted, where Grannie would be well cared for by loving hands and where Gwyneth’s father could help Steven with his duties and gradually replace aging Holin Radnor as the manor’s groom. Steven could not have been more excited at the prospect of working with his uncle. He had missed shepherding. And Adela was greatly anticipating sitting in the library with her brother and reminiscing about their grandfather’s library.

  As for Katherine’s new house on Mochras Head, due to be completed within a year, it was obvious that Courtenay would not be displacing her from the manor, at least anytime soon. After wondering briefly if she had been too hasty in constructing a new home, Katherine realized that Gwyneth and Percy, as Master and Mistress of Westbrooke Manor, would one day want to have a family of their own and occupy the manor’s family quarters on the second floor. Therefore, she would herself take up residence in her new home whenever it suited Gwyneth for her to do so. Notwithstanding that she herself would be legal trustee of the estate until Gwyneth herself turned twenty-five, Katherine quickly began to defer to Gwyneth regarding future plans.

  The glaring uncertainty about the future remained to be Courtenay. He returned from London after a month, clearly aware that the prospects of his legal contestation of Gwyneth’s position were not favorable. He was rarely seen. What his future held was anyone’s guess. Thus far, only Katherine knew of the financial dilemma facing him. Whether she would have bailed him out and cleared off his debt to Litchfield had she been able, she could not have said. But as her every available pound had been sunk into the construction of the new house, it would be two or three years before her resources would sufficiently accumulate to keep Courtenay from serious legal problems. If Litchfield pressed the matter to the extreme and brought charges of fraud against Courtenay, the specter of jail was not out of the question. But she did not see what she could do. She had no intention of asking for Edwa
rd’s help.

  In late May, a month after Percy’s and Gwyneth’s return from Ireland, a tremendous storm blew in off the North Atlantic, consuming Ireland in wind and hurricane tides. The battering spread through the Irish Sea to the west coast of Scotland and Wales, threatening to flood their low-lying coastal villages. The fishermen of Llanfryniog secured their boats in the harbor as best they could and prepared to ride out the siege, hoping they would not find their boats in splinters when it was over.

  The worst of the storm hit between three and five o’clock in the morning. Whether anyone in north Wales was still asleep was doubtful. Most lay awake in their beds, listening to the dreadful tempest doing its best to blow the roofs from their houses. Thankfully those roofs were of heavy Welsh slates!

  Percy finally rose about six thirty, thinking himself likely the first in the great mansion to venture from his room. Instead, he found Florilyn and Katherine already in the breakfast room with tea. Mrs. Drynwydd had just put out a pot of fresh coffee.

  Steven joined them a few minutes later. “Is the roof still on?” he laughed.

  “I thought my window would burst,” said Florilyn. “I kept thinking the glass was about to shatter and the rain come splashing in all over my bed!”

  “When it is light, Steven,” said Katherine, “we will have to check all the upper floors and the garret for leaks.”

  “I will see to it, as well as the windows on the west and north of the building.”

  “Where’s Gwyneth?” asked Percy, glancing about at the others. “I would expect her to be up at the crack of dawn. She loves tempestuous weather!”

  “I think I heard her door close and footsteps in the hall,” said Florilyn.

  “When?”

  “Earlier … an hour or more ago.”

  “Oh, no—then she’s out in it!” laughed Percy.

  “Do you think she’s in any danger?” said Katherine.

  “Not for a second,” answered Percy. “She could no more be in danger from the weather than Steven could from a sheep. She loves whatever face nature puts on and fears none of them, except snow in the mountains. She does have a healthy regard for the perils of winter.”

  Percy went to the window and gazed out. The dawn was still dark and gray. Fierce winds whipped at the trees as if it would uproot them with a single blast. In spite of his words to Katherine, the sight sent a momentary shudder up his spine. This wind was stronger than he had ever seen. It could sweep Gwyneth off her feet in an instant. If she stood too near the cliff edge or too close to the sea at the harbor … He shuddered to think what might be the result.

  After a cup of coffee and a few minutes more conversation, he excused himself, hurried back to his room, bundled himself in what protection from the elements he could, grabbed a second rain slicker, and then left the house by the back stairs and side door.

  A great blast of wind nearly knocked him over as he came round the side wall of the house and into the seaward brunt of the storm. Recovering himself, he set off down the drive toward the plateau, bending hard into the face of the tumult. There were only two places where he expected to find Gwyneth. This time he would check both.

  The rain had let up since the worst of its drenching onslaught between midnight and three. Percy trudged across the spongy, soaked turf toward Katherine’s new house. As he passed the house, he could see clearly to the point of the promontory of Mochras Head. It was obvious that Gwyneth was not there or had been blown into the sea!

  Percy turned toward town but then paused. He glanced back up at the newly constructed stone walls of Katherine’s proposed home. A dozen or more openings where the windows would be installed seemed to look out upon the coastline as if from dead, hollow eye sockets. One day this house would be full of life, Percy thought. Those window-eyes would gaze out upon the countryside with light from within. As yet, however, the edifice was an empty shell awaiting the life of human touch, in the same way that the human animal had been an empty shell until implanted with the soul-life of God’s divine touch.

  Moved by some impulse, he turned and walked toward the house. He entered through one of several openings where doors, like the windows, would eventually be installed. He had been inside the house with Steven a time or two since his arrival back in Wales but had paid little attention to the details of its interior. Now he stood gazing about in the darkness of a stormy morning. All around him were the signs of construction—piles of boards, half-finished walls and ceilings, and bare floors. The wind whistled and sang through its many openings, up and down staircases, around corners, and through vacant rooms.

  Slowly Percy made his way to the stone staircase at the center of the ground floor and up to the landing above the first floor. Something seemed to guide his steps. Ahead of him, the centerpiece of the entire house, envisioned in Katherine’s mind’s eye from the beginning, was what would be the large central sitting room, facing due west toward the promontory, its seaward wall comprised nearly in its entirety of three enormous windows, giving the entire room a spectacular vantage point of the promontory. The coastline stretched away north and south as far as the eye could see. The view straight ahead looked out westward toward Ireland, whose own coastline, Katherine hoped, on a clear day, might faintly be seen.

  As Percy entered, across the great room, he saw a figure seated on the bare stone floor six or eight feet away from the opening of the largest central window.

  The early riser knew whose footsteps were approaching behind her without turning.

  Percy sat down beside her and took her hand in his.

  “There could not be a house with a more beautiful view than this,” said Gwyneth quietly.

  “How long have you been here?” asked Percy.

  “I don’t know,” replied Gwyneth. “The storm drew me. I think I have changed my mind about Lady Katherine’s new house. It is the perfect place to have built it. How did you know where to find me?”

  “I didn’t. This time, if you weren’t here, I was planning to check the harbor next!”

  They sat for a few minutes in silence, gazing out at the wild, windy, gray sky and sea blended in turbulent motion. The sea appeared angry, but Gwyneth found it no less mesmerizing than on a day when its radiant blues and greens stretched westward to the land of her birth.

  “As I was looking up at the house, with the empty windows,” said Percy, “it reminded me of the empty eyes of the skull you saw in the cave.”

  “Don’t remind me. It frightened me to death!”

  “If ever a storm were going to wash the sand away from that old pirate again, this would be the time.”

  “Do you really think what I saw was the skull of the old pirate from Grannie’s tale, the same man who gave her the coin?”

  “I thought she said they found the man dead on the beach the next morning.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Then who did the skull belong to?”

  “Maybe there were two pirates. What if one of them made it to the cave, but the man Grannie saw didn’t? We’ll go look at low tide as soon as the storm passes!”

  “Not me, Percy!”

  “Then I will go myself.”

  “Well … maybe I will go with you.”

  SEVENTY-SIX

  The Cave

  The idea of exploring the cave again did not leave Percy all day. By late afternoon the storm showed signs of easing. When night fell, the moon was making sporadic appearances between the clouds, and the wind had nearly ceased. By then Gwyneth’s enthusiasm for the project had mounted as well.

  When Percy appeared in the breakfast room the next morning, she was eagerly waiting for him. “The tide is rising, Percy,” she said excitedly. “It will be high sometime before noon.”

  “What—you’ve already been out!”

  “Of course,” she laughed.

  “Don’t we need a low tide?” he asked.

  “Yes, and low tide will be late in the afternoon when the sun is going down. It will be perfect—the sun will shine off
the water straight into the cave!”

  “This afternoon it is, then. We have a date with a pirate’s skull!”

  They were at the beach by three, walking leisurely hand in hand along the shoreline at the water’s edge of the outgoing tide. It was obvious to Gwyneth’s eyes that the storm had wreaked havoc with the coastline she knew so well. She scampered about looking at everything excitedly.

  By four o’clock, the water had retreated most of the way out of the cave’s mouth, and they crept inside.

  “The cave floor is lower,” said Gwyneth as they made their way into the darkness. “I can tell that the roof is higher above me. The outgoing tide must have removed at least six inches of sand.”

  “Can you remember where you saw the skull?”

  “I don’t know—about halfway back to the end, I think.”

  As their eyes accustomed to the darkness, Percy went to his knees and began to crawl about on all fours, his eyes probing and his hands feeling the sand. Back and forth he crawled, feeling about, digging with his fingers all around the area where Gwyneth thought the skull might have been.

  “Wait … there, I felt something hard,” he said at length. He brushed his hands about the spot again. “Yes, there it is—look,” he said, removing bit of wet sand from the spot.

  “Look, yes … I think it’s a bit of bone!”

  Percy continued to rub away the sand then scooped more away with his hand until the rounded top of a human cranium was clearly visible. “It’s the pirate!”

  “Oh Percy, let’s leave him where he is. I don’t think I can bear to see those horrid empty eyes again.”

  “We’ve got to solve the mystery. What was he doing here? I’ll go get a spade from Chandos.”

  “Wait for me. I don’t want to be left alone … with him!”

  They ran out of the cave. In the distance, in the direction of the harbor, they saw two horses. As Percy ran toward them, he saw Steven and Florilyn.

  “Where are you off to in such a hurry?” laughed Steven. “I think we found the old pirate in the cave!” he replied. “I’m going to find a spade.”