Last Writes

by Catherine Aird

  He brought it back inside the house and carefully unwound the piece of split sheepskin leather from the stone, full of hope that it might have a message written on it.

  It had.

  Calling for Dougal, his clerk, he started to read out the letters roughly scribbled on the skiver.

  ‘Wait you, while I read it out,’ he instructed him. Holding the skiver to the failing light he called out the words. ‘It begins “MUCH, FRIENDS”… That’s not very helpful. I doubt if it’s any of our “friends” on the way.’

  ‘So do I,’ muttered Dougal under his breath, struggling with his quill.

  ‘Then it has “BOOK, TOWNSHIP” … What does that mean, I wonder?’

  ‘I canna’ begin to say, my lord,’ said Dougal, scratching the words down. ‘All it does mean is that someone has his letters.’

  ‘That’s a good point,’ said the sheriff fairly. Most of the insurgents wouldn’t be able to read or write, although that didn’t make them less good at the sword, but there would be one or two educated men among them. ‘It goes on “HARE, TREE” … Dougal, is there a somewhere near here with a special tree where hares meet?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, my lord,’ said Dougal, literate but no countryman. ‘Not until March, anyway.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the sheriff, ‘this is better. The word “SECRET” comes next.’

  ‘Secret,’ echoed Dougal, obediently writing this down.

  ‘And then there’s “SHIP”,’ said the sheriff pensively. ‘That’s all. Now, read it back to me.’

  The clerk said, ‘Much, friends, book, township, hare, tree, secret, ship.’

  ‘It disna mean a thing,’ said Rhuaraidh Macmillan, dismissing his clerk and settling down to think. It still meant nothing after he’d called for candles to be brought, the better to see the written words, and that meant that if anyone else saw the message it wouldn’t mean anything to them either, which might be important.

  Searching for the place name he needed so badly – if, indeed, the message had been from a friend – he took the first letter of all the words but could make nothing of them however much he jumbled them about.

  Even after he’d had the peat of the fire cast aside and logs brought in the better to warm his body on a cold night – and he hoped his brain, too – he couldn’t fathom anything in the message. Together the words were meaningless no matter which way he looked at them. Separately they meant very little more.

  Idly, he considered them one by one, pausing at ‘township’ since that was a word that did have connotations with all sheriffs. It had been the only English word which in French had also meant something to him. ‘Banlieue’ that had been – and banlieue in French meant the extent within which the sheriffs could exercise their manorial rights and send out their proclamations – banlieue literally meant the place of a sheriff’s jurisdiction. And this word he could understand – and remember.

  He didn’t need that clever young fellow from Castle Pitcalnie to remind him of the French for ‘ship’ either. It was ‘bâtiment’ or … what was it for a small sailing ship? Dammit, he’d had the word on the tip of his tongue already today. He kicked a log on the fire back into the centre of the flames while he gave himself time to think. ‘Radier’, that was it.

  Pleased that he’d called two or three French words to mind he looked at the others on the list. If he couldn’t do anything else, he’d see if he could translate them into French. The word for ‘book’ he knew was ‘livre’ because that had been the first one the dominie had made him learn and the second was for ‘hare’ which he had to know because he hadn’t got to confuse ‘livre’ with ‘lièvre’.

  Moderately pleased with himself, the sheriff settled back in his chair and decided to see if he could translate any of the other words. ‘Friend’ was easy – ‘ami’. The tutor at Pitcalnie Castle had adjured him to think of the English word ‘amiable’ and remember it that way. And so he had.

  He’d remembered the French word for ‘tree’ all right – that was ‘arbre’ – but not the one for ‘much’ or for ‘secret’. He tried putting the French words that he knew in the same order as the English counterparts from the enigmatic message tossed onto his land.

  (Much) Ami, Livre, Banlieue, Lièvre, Arbre, (Secret), Bâtiment.

  Much good that did him.

  What he needed, he decided, was whisky.

  The whisky having been forthcoming, he settled back in his chair, feeling much better.

  Much? Now he came to think of it, he did know the French for ‘much’. It was ‘beaucoup’ – as in ‘beaucoup le whisky’.

  He sipped his whisky and slipped that in at the front of the list of French words and spelt the first letters out – B A L B L A blank R. He frowned. Not ‘bâtiment’ at the end for ship but ‘radier’ for sailing ship. That was better.

  He sat up suddenly.

  It didn’t matter what the French word for ‘secret’ was – but the sheriff was prepared to wager that it began with the letter I, because those letters then spelt ‘Balblair’ which was where the jetty was.

  So Colum Mulchaich was coming by sea. All Mulchaich had to do was to land boatloads of men by night until they were all safely and silently across the Firth ready to march on Drummondreach and take the sheriff by surprise.

  That was all he needed to know.

  Sheriff Rhuaraidh Macmillan set his whisky down while he summoned his piper to action. And toyed with a phrase he’d got his French-speaking dominie at Pitcalnie Castle to teach him: ‘tous les rebelles furent pendus’ – the rebels were all hanged.

  He’d remembered that all right.

  THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

  ‘Friday of next week?’ said Wendy Witherington. ‘Of course, Henry, do come. We’ll be delighted to see you. The countryside is looking absolutely lovely just now.’

  Henry Tyler assured his sister that the view from his office in Whitehall was equally pleasant and that the sun was shining there, too. What wasn’t so pleasant at this unhappy juncture in world history was the international situation where – metaphorically, at least – the sun was not shining at all and the clouds might well – metaphorically, anyway – be described as dark and gathering.

  He did not say any of this to his sister but instead went on to talk about the ostensible reason for his visit to the little market town of Berebury. This was an evening engagement at Almstone College at the University of Calleshire.

  ‘I do wish you didn’t have so many things to do when you come down to stay,’ said Wendy Witherington. ‘It’s such a shame that you always seem to be so busy while you’re here.’

  ‘I’ve only got to go to a dinner with old Toby Beddowes,’ protested Henry Tyler. This was not strictly true but Henry was not in a position to explain the real reason for his coming down to Calleshire to stay with his sister and brother-in-law. ‘That’s on the Friday night. I’ll be with you all for the whole weekend.’

  ‘Good.’ Wendy brightened. ‘That means you’ll have time to take the children to the zoo, then.’

  ‘Well …’ he temporised, ‘I’ll certainly do my best.’

  Wendy Witherington played a mother’s trump card. ‘They’ll be very disappointed if you don’t.’

  ‘And have you told them that their doting uncle is forsaking London entirely in the interests of family unity?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve told them that you’re coming,’ said Wendy neatly, ‘but I’m not embarking on a lifetime of deception by telling them that you’re coming down here just to see them.’

  ‘Wise woman,’ said Henry affectionately. ‘Let them find out later that things are never what they seem.’ In these dark days things were never what they seemed at the Foreign Office either. It was a lesson he’d had to learn quite early on. The lessons that were being learnt after Herr Adolf Hitler’s march into the Rhineland were something very different. And as for Italy and Spain and their leaders …

  ‘And they’re pretty excited already,’ insisted his sister, igno
ring this. ‘Jennifer can hardly wait for you to get here so she can show you her new doll. It’s called Shirley after Shirley Temple.’

  Henry Tyler could hardly wait to get to Berebury, too, but for very different reasons.

  ‘So,’ went on his sister, ‘I hope your friend Toby isn’t going to take up all your time.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Henry airily. ‘I’m just going to be his guest at High Table at Almstone College, that’s all.’ It wasn’t all, of course, but there was no reason for his sister to know this.

  If Toby Beddowes, Professor of Botanical Sciences at the University of Calleshire, had wondered why his old school friend, Henry Tyler, presently rather high up in the more rarefied echelons of the Civil Service, should have angled for an invitation to a High Table dinner at Almstone College he was much too discreet to say so. Instead when approached he had merely said, ‘Of course, old chap. Any time.’

  ‘No, Toby. Not any time. Friday next week.’

  ‘Ah, I get you. Yes, of course. I’ll book you in.’ He chuckled. ‘You need to know that the meal starts when Hemerocallis fulva closes …’

  Henry grinned. He knew that Toby Beddowes’ famous Linnean Flower Clock was planted in a bed in the middle of the sacred turf of the college quad on the south side of the fountain. It was the botanist’s pride and joy, as well as a splendid teaching aid about the great Carl Linnaeus of Uppsala and his Philosophia Botanica of 1751. The plants in it formed the clock by opening and closing at certain – and succeeding – fixed times by which the time of day could be known. He paused for thought. ‘Let me see now, Toby, would that by any chance be anywhere near eight o’clock?’

  ‘Got it in one, old boy.’ Toby Beddowes sounded pleased. ‘You could have mentioned the dandelion, of course, instead.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t,’ responded Henry with spirit, ‘because I didn’t know that was one of your precious clock plants.’

  ‘Any of the Aequinoctales would do,’ said the Professor of Botany.

  ‘One of them will do for Friday evening, thank you, Toby, whatever that long word means.’

  ‘Right,’ said Toby. ‘I’ll see you at moonflower time, then. That’s when we foregather.’

  ‘I’ll look out for evening primroses, too,’ promised Henry, entering into the spirit of the thing.

  ‘Seven-thirty in the Combination Room for sherry first,’ said his old friend. ‘That all right with you?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be there.’

  Professor Beddowes, nobody’s fool, said, ‘Let me see now, where is it exactly you are working these days? Or can’t you tell me?’

  ‘The Foreign Office.’

  ‘Ah, of course. By the way, we go in to dinner at Hemerocallis fulva closing time sharp.’

  ‘I won’t be late,’ promised Henry.

  And he wasn’t.

  ‘Master,’ said Toby Beddowes on the Friday evening, ‘may I present my guest, Henry Tyler, an old school friend?’

  The Master of the College welcomed Henry with a civil handshake. ‘I trust you’ll enjoy your evening here,’ he said, adding rather wistfully, ‘Almstone isn’t an Oxford or Cambridge college but sometimes the conversation at High Table can prove most interesting.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ said Henry truthfully. He’d come to listen and listen particularly to what was said by and to a certain Gustav Soderssonn, also due to be coming to the college as a guest that evening. Actually, realised Henry now, having cast an eye warily round the company beginning to assemble in the Combination Room, he could see that his quarry was already here.

  The tall fair-haired scientist from Farnessnes Island was in the far corner of the Combination Room. He was being introduced to the little group round him by the member of the college who was presumably the man’s host that evening. That, he had been told, would be Professor Marcus Holtby, a shortish man with smooth hair and a Clark Gable pencil-thin moustache.

  Henry had been fully briefed on Professor Marcus Holtby before he had left London. The man held the Chair of Chemistry at the University of Calleshire but it was more the views he held that were of particular interest to Henry’s department of state, which had categorised them in its usual understated way as ‘doubtful’.

  Taking the glass of sherry – a good amontillado – being offered to him from a passing tray, Henry revised his thinking. He had been fully briefed on Gustav Soderssonn, biologist, too, though the man couldn’t really be called his quarry – Henry’s role this evening could be more accurately said to be rather that of eavesdropper than hunter.

  According to the appropriate attaché on the staff of the British Consul on Farnessnes Island the biologist was on a high-level tour of English universities seeking any very clever scientists who might consider emigrating to the presumed safety of Farnessnes Island ahead of the world war that was undoubtedly on its way. This Baltic island, not far from Sweden, and a rich source of both iron ore and diatomaceous earth, had for many years pursued a position of what Henry’s boss called ‘aggressive neutrality’.

  ‘Like the Swiss?’ hazarded Henry.

  ‘Not like the Swiss,’ the assistant secretary of Henry’s department had replied swiftly. ‘More like Pontius Pilate.’

  ‘And are we talking treason?’ asked Henry.

  ‘More the enemy within, I would think,’ the man had said. ‘You must remember, Tyler, that “Treason doth never prosper” …’

  Henry finished the quotation without difficulty. ‘“What’s the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason”.’ He wondered if their minister was being got ready for his Sir Edward Grey moment, trying to improve on ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe’, which they certainly showed every sign of doing again now.

  ‘Exactly,’ said the man at the Ministry appreciatively. ‘You can see the potential difficulty for us in having an island like that bang in the middle of the Baltic.’

  ‘And with a good sea route to Danzig to boot,’ pointed out Henry.

  ‘I’ve never been quite sure about free ports myself,’ murmured the other man with apparent inconsequence. He was old enough to have fought in the Great War – and to remember the Treaty of Versailles. He added, ‘And territorial waters are always a problem. If I remember rightly Farnessnes Island is just outside a quite number of them.’

  ‘Only just,’ qualified Henry.

  ‘And I don’t think we’re going to be saved by that whisker,’ sighed the other Foreign Office man, his particular department of state having a long record of being saved by a whisker. ‘The other thing we don’t know about Soderssonn, by the way, is what sort of biology he’s working on.’

  The outcome of this conversation was that Henry had been detailed to keep a weather eye on Gustav Soderssonn during his proposed milk round of English seats of learning.

  ‘A watching brief, you might say,’ said the assistant secretary, who had been trained as a lawyer before he went into the Foreign Office. ‘Probably no specific action called for at this stage.’

  Henry had all but crossed his fingers as he left the assistant secretary’s office.

  ‘Anyone you particularly want to meet, Henry?’ asked Toby Beddowes now, looking round the assembled company.

  ‘Not really,’ murmured Henry since it was true he didn’t want to meet Soderssonn; only observe who he was talking to.

  ‘Interesting bunch, of course, here. Almstone College has quite a reputation for science and philosophy.’

  ‘A good mix those,’ observed Henry sedately.

  ‘What’s that? Oh, quite,’ said Toby Beddowes. ‘Alan Walkinshaw’s our really top man, though. Done a lot of good work on the mathematics of trajectories. The word is that he’s in the running for a Nobel Prize. Odd that, considering that he’s said to be a pacifist.’

  ‘Money from old dynamite, you might say,’ said Henry, relishing the irony.

  ‘That reminds me, we’ve got a good geologist here, too. Name of Clifford, Malcolm Clifford.’

  ‘Why
the connection with dynamite?’ asked Henry, mystified.

  ‘Diatomaceous earth is a sort of sedimentary rock used in making the stuff. Malcolm Clifford knows all about that. Found in the Baltic. Off Denmark, anyway.’

  ‘Really?’ murmured Henry with a perfectly straight face.

  ‘We’ve got some excellent historians here at Almstone, too, to say nothing of our new department.’

  ‘Which is that?’

  ‘Criminology.’ Professor Beddowes pointed in the direction of a sharp-faced young man engaged in deep conversation with an elderly academic near the door. ‘Peter Reynolds, said to be very highly thought of in his line.’

  ‘Always a satisfactory state of affairs in an institution like this – to have good men on board, I mean,’ said Henry Tyler hastily. ‘You don’t want the half-baked here.’ He wished the same could be said of some of the incumbents of other institutions with which he had to deal. There were certain Mittel-European states whose behaviour at the present time could only be described as intransigent.

  ‘He’s just published a seminal work on motives for murder that was very well received,’ Beddowes informed him. ‘I’m told he has a tip-top reputation in his field, too, but I wouldn’t know about the murder side myself.’ He gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘I’m only a botanist and plants don’t kill – unless you eat the wrong ones, that is.’

  ‘Always excepting the Venus flytrap, old boy,’ said Henry as the dinner gong sounded and the group started to move towards the door. ‘That captures and kills, you know.’

  ‘Good point,’ said Beddowes amiably.

  As Henry had expected the food was good and the wine even better.

  ‘Almstone has always prided itself on its battels,’ said the large man with a booming voice sitting on Henry’s left when he mentioned this to him and who introduced himself as Malcolm Clifford, the geologist. ‘The inner man needs keeping happy. Most important.’