“How long did that take?” Wally said.
“It took hours,” Ariane said. “Hours.” She squinted up at the sky. “Long enough that I think it’s getting dark.”
“Getting dark?” Wally cried. He scrambled up. “That means it’s late evening! Mom may have left the castle! Come on!”
Ariane followed him through the heather to the road leading to Castle MacPhaiden. Up there, atop the hill they’d already climbed once that day, lights had just begun to glow through the tall, narrow windows. She trudged through the mist, hoping desperately that whatever awaited them, it wouldn’t require her to call on her magic.
At the moment, she felt about as magical as a haggis.
•••
As they laboured up the hill, Wally thought the best thing about finally completing – or even failing to complete – the quest for the shards of Excalibur would be never again having to be dissolved into water and reassembled somewhere else. The last two trips had stripped away any remaining wonder at the magic of it. And he hadn’t been joking about the last one being almost worse than the one during which they’d both almost dissolved into nothingness. That time, he’d been desperately trying to save them both, so at least he’d been doing something. This time, he felt as though he had been dragged to Scotland behind a horse, and it had gone on…and on…and on. He ached all over, and he had the strangest feeling he was missing a few pieces. How unusual, Mr. Knight, he could just hear some future doctor telling him, Someone seems to have stolen one of your kidneys.
Which was why what had started out as a run up the hill to the castle had turned very quickly into dogged, tight-lipped plodding.
Ariane was clearly in no better shape. She might not have passed out on arrival this time, but she had very thoroughly and noisily puked up her breakfast, which had been almost enough to make him do the same.
He gulped. Better not to think about it.
Whatever we do, he thought, we have to stop Rex Major from tranquilizing Ariane ever again.
As if they’d have much say in the matter.
They finally reached the castle courtyard, only to find Wally’s worst fears realized. The equipment van and his mother’s rented car were gone, although at least Rex Major’s black Jag wasn’t there, either. The only vehicle was one he hadn’t seen before, a rather spiffy silver-grey Sean-Connery-era-James-Bond Aston Martin, which made him think he was probably on the right track with his earlier thought that the owner of the castle might collect cars.
It was starting to get seriously dark now, and this far north, this time of the year, that meant it was late indeed. But the fact there were lights in the castle, and a new car outside, must mean someone was home.
“What…what do we do?” Ariane panted, catching up to him. “There’s no one here.”
“Yes, there is,” Wally said, pointing to the Aston Martin. Then he turned toward the castle. “I think the owners are back. Someone actually lives in this castle, remember. If what Mom said was true, probably even distant relations. Maybe they’ll know where Mom is staying.”
He took a step forward. Ariane grabbed his arm. “You can’t just walk up to the door and knock!”
“Why not?” Wally said. “They’re relatives – well, maybe. Anyway, have you got a better idea?”
Clearly she didn’t; she sighed and let go of his arm.
He strode resolutely across the wet cobblestones to the stairs from which they had so nearly disastrously fled just a few hours earlier. Castle MacPhaiden, Wally had noted earlier, boasted a doorbell – certainly not part of the original equipment. He pushed it, and waited.
The walls were far too thick for him to hear whatever sound the bell made inside. For a moment nothing happened, and he wondered if he was wrong about someone being home. Then, suddenly, a lot of lights came on – not just on the porch, but all around the courtyard, which suddenly blazed as bright as day – brighter, in fact, than this grey day had been.
“Ow,” Ariane said, throwing up her hand to shade her eyes.
“Security,” Wally said. He grinned. “We should count ourselves lucky – in the old days castle security would have meant pouring boiling oil down on our heads.”
Ariane gave him a look he’d become very familiar with over the past few months – he thought of it as the “stop being so Wallyish” look.
But he couldn’t help being Wallyish if he tried, so he just grinned even wider and turned back to face the door. He grinned at it, too, on the theory that anyone with that many lights outside the building was bound to also have security cameras, one of which must be trained on them right now. He glanced back at Ariane. She hadn’t been expending any energy trying to keep them dry on the long walk up the hill, and as a result, she looked, quite adorably, like a half-drowned kitten. He doubted he looked anything like that cute, but he hoped he at least appeared harmless.
Apparently he did, because he heard the sound of the door being unbolted, and then it creaked open, revealing…
Wally had to work very hard not to let his grin turn into a laugh, because the man the opened door revealed looked like every Canadian’s stereotypical image of a Scotsman – broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, red-haired and red-bearded. If only he’d been wearing a kilt he would have been perfect, but instead he wore khaki pants and a green pullover cardigan. Leather slippers encased his feet.
“Aye?” he growled at Wally. “What’re you doing, troubling me this time of night? This castle is not open to the public even during the day.” He had a thick Scots accent, though not as impenetrable as some Wally had heard, sometimes from people who had lived in Saskatchewan for decades.
“I’m Wally Knight, and this is Ariane Forsythe?” Wally said. “My mom is Jessica Knight, of Knight Errant Pictures? She was here shooting earlier today?” His voice had deepened alarmingly in recent months, but he did his best to sound as young as possible, and even though he detested up-talking, he swallowed his pride and tried to make everything sound like a question anyway.
The bearded man’s face and voice softened perceptibly. “She’s been gone these four hours, lad,” he said. “Where have you been that you did not know that?”
“We…” Wally looked at Ariane. “We…went down to…” He couldn’t remember the name of the village. In fact, he didn’t think he’d ever known it. “…um, to the village.” He dropped the up-talking; he couldn’t keep it up and live with himself. “We thought she was going to pick us up there but she never showed up and we don’t have cell phones and we thought maybe we’d misunderstood and we were supposed to go with Rex Major instead but he didn’t show up either and then it got late and so we did the only thing we could think of and we walked all the way back up here. Through the rain.” He tried to put just the tiniest of quivers in his voice, as if he might be about to cry but was too manly to show it. “Do…do you know where she went? We don’t even know what hotel she’s staying at!”
The man looked from Wally to Ariane and back again, and then sighed. “You’d best come in,” he said. “I have your mother’s contact information. We can call her and figure out what’s to be done.” He stepped to one side to let them pass. “My name is Alexander MacPhaiden,” he added. “Call me Alex. If your mother is Jessica Knight, née MacPhaiden, than I expect we’re distantly related.”
He led them down the hallway Wally remembered from earlier that day, but opened the first of the closed doors Wally had passed to reveal a staircase leading up. At the top was another door, behind which lay the last thing Wally expected – a thoroughly modern apartment that could have been anywhere. The only things betraying the fact it was actually in a centuries-old castle were the narrow windows cut through the thick stone walls, showing only darkness beyond. Everywhere else, the stone walls were hidden behind regular drywall painted pale green.
Alex laughed at Wally’s expression. “Expecting something a bit more medieval, lad?”
“I guess I was,” Wally admitted.
Alex grinned. “Bel
ieve me, if the old lairds of the castle had had central heating and insulation, they would have installed them, too. Today was a rather fine day by local standards. And the winters…brrr.”
I’m from Saskatchewan, Wally thought about pointing out, but stayed quiet instead – a first time for everything! – and just kept looking around.
On closer inspection, he spotted a few other hints that this modern apartment was really on the top floor of a centuries-old castle. A suit of armour stood in one corner, right next to the big-screen TV. Crossed swords and a shield hung over the low, sleek chrome-and-black leather couch. The huge fireplace was lined with massive stones, blackened over centuries. And above it hung a very old painting, showing…
Whoa!
Alex was saying something to Ariane, but Wally wasn’t listening, all his attention suddenly focussed on the old work of art. He walked over to the fireplace and stared up at the painting. It wasn’t very big, maybe sixty-by-sixty centimetres, and the varnish had darkened to the point the original colours could barely be guessed at, but what it showed…
…what it showed was a woman dressed in white, standing half-submerged in the waters of a lake, holding out the hilt of a broken sword to a man in armour, kneeling on the shore.
“What is this?” Wally asked, interrupting whatever Alex had been saying to Ariane – something about making tea.
Alex came over to the hearth. “It’s an old family legend, that is. The painting dates from the early 1800s, but that’s just some artist’s interpretation. The legend is much, much older.”
“What’s the legend?” Wally barely breathed.
Alex gave him a curious look. “Well, the story goes that the MacPhaidens were entrusted with a great treasure by none other than the Lady of the Lake – of the King Arthur legend, you know – herself.” Alex laughed. “All nonsense, of course. I think every Scottish family has some old legend attached to it, and half of them have to do with King Arthur. Strangely enough, since if he was real he most likely operated more in Wales and Cornwall.”
“What treasure?” Wally said, trying to keep his voice casual but not really succeeding too well. “It looks like the hilt of a sword.”
“Aye, lad, that it is,” Alex said. He deepened his voice so it boomed like a movie-trailer voice-over. “The MacPhaidens were given the timeless task of protecting the hilt of the great sword of King Arthur himself – Excalibur…bur…bur…” He let his voice echo away into portentous silence, then laughed. “Nonsense, as I said. How exactly we could have been entrusted with the hilt of an entirely fictional sword, I’m not quite sure.”
“Where…where’s the hilt supposed to be now?”
Alex laughed again. “That’s the fun part, lad. It’s supposed to be in Canada.”
Wally’s eyes slid past Alex to Ariane, who was following the conversation wide-eyed. “Has my mother seen this painting?”
Alex shook his head. “No, lad. I’ll be showing it to her tomorrow during the interview.”
“Interview?”
“Aye. I had to go to Inverness today, so we couldna do it this afternoon, but she said that was fine, she wanted to use the Great Hall to shoot her introductory narration. Tomorrow I’m to tell her all about the great Red Wedding, when our unsavoury ancestors seized control of this castle by killing the previous owners at a feast. Of course, most castles changed hands via bloodshed and treachery in those days, so I dinna think you can blame the MacPhaidens overmuch.”
Wally hesitated. He really wanted to ask Alex not to tell his mom about the painting, not to share with her the details of the legend that up until now she’d only heard hints of – but he couldn’t think of any way to justify it. Which meant that tomorrow his mom would hear that the mysterious MacPhaiden artifact wasn’t the Holy Grail at all, but the hilt of Excalibur, and while she wouldn’t make much of that, Rex Major certainly would when next he questioned her using the Voice of Command.
More than ever, they needed to see Grandma Knight’s book, and hope it gave some clue as to where the hilt had been hidden by her father-in-law.
“We’d better call Mom now,” Wally said. “She’ll…be worried.”
“Aye, lad. As I said, I have her contact information here somewhere.” He went to a sleek glass-topped computer desk with a brand-new Mac on it, and rummaged through a pile of papers.
Wally glanced at Ariane, who looked astonished that there actually seemed to be something to Wally’s wild hunch. He allowed himself to feel a little smug.
“Here we are,” Alex said, turning around with a sticky note in his hand. “She’s at the Claymore Arms – that’s a hotel in Clachgorm, two villages down the valley. I can run you over there if you like after you’ve talked to her.”
“Clachgorm? Two villages down?” Wally said. “Could you…show us on a map?”
Alex blinked. “Sure lad, but why? I willna make you walk.”
“I’d just like to…understand the geography better.”
Alex shrugged. “Well, let’s see…” He turned back to the desk, which held a shelf of books above the monitor. He ran his finger over the spines, found what he wanted, pulled down what appeared to be a local guidebook, flipped through it until he found a map, and then held it out open to Wally and Ariane. “We’re here,” he said, pointing out CASTLE MACPHAIDEN, “and south down the valley…here. The Claymore Arms in Clachgorm. Gets a special mention, even. Supposed to be haunted, you know.”
“So’s your castle,” Wally pointed out.
Alex grinned. “Lots of strange noises here at night, sure enough,” he said. “but considering the state of this pile’s plumbing, I’m not surprised. I’ve never seen a ghost, unless you count the really pale grooms who show up for weddings after their stag nights, looking as though they’d very much prefer to be still in bed. Very popular place for weddings, is my Great Hall, though you wouldna think it would be, given its history.” He closed the book and put it back on the shelf above the computer. “So, then, I’ll give your mum a call to let her know you’re all right, and drive you over there.”
“No need,” Wally said without thinking.
Alex frowned. “What?”
“I mean, no hurry,” Wally said hastily, but that didn’t sound right either, considering the story they’d come up with, so he rushed on to add, “what I mean is, could we…um, could I…have…get…a drink of water before we go?”
“Me, too,” Ariane chimed in.
Alex blinked. “Aye, certainly. “ He turned toward the kitchen. “I’ll –”
“We can get it ourselves,” Wally said quickly to forestall him. “While you call Mom.”
Alex raised a bushy red eyebrow. “Well…all right. Tumblers in the cupboard above the sink.” He turned to the phone, and Wally followed Ariane into the kitchen.
“You saw the map? You can get us there?” Wally whispered. Then he thought of something else. “Do you have enough strength?”
“‘Aye,’ to all three questions,” Ariane said, and grinned when he raised an eyebrow. “If there’s water nearby, of course.”
“This is Scotland, and it was raining all day,” Wally said. “I don’t think finding water will be a problem.”
He reached out and turned on the tap. He glanced back into the living room. Alex had his back to them. “Not getting an answer,” he called, and started to turn around.
But by the time he completed his turn, they were no longer there.
Chapter Nine
The Claymore Arms
Clachgorm, the village in which the Claymore Arms was situated, was only small, rather than miniscule like the one nearest Castle MacPhaiden. It boasted an ornamental fountain in the town square, the surrounding pool of which had just enough water in it for Ariane to materialize them.
Despite her assurances to Wally that she had strength enough for the short jaunt, she felt, as they climbed out of the pool into the fortuitously empty square, that she’d had just barely enough. Now she really did need sleep. And food.
Especially food.
The Claymore Arms wasn’t hard to find – not only was it just a couple of blocks from the town square, it was the largest building in Clachgorm. While the bottom floor looked as old as everything else in the town, the upper two storeys looked as if they’d been bought at a no-name department store and assembled from a big yellow box simply labelled HOTEL.
Ariane and Wally stood in a dark alley across from the hotel’s main entrance, a wooden door on a stone porch in the old part of the structure, fractured light shining through the tiny diamond panes of the large windows to either side. The faint sound of laughter and glasses and clinking cutlery carried across the street through the cool night air.
Someone’s having food, Ariane thought. No fair! Her stomach growled.
Wally glanced at her, and she realized to her embarrassment he’d heard it. “You must be hungry,” he said. “I’m hungry, and I didn’t throw up my breakfast on arrival.”
Ariane grimaced. “Don’t remind me.” She tried to ignore the siren sounds of dining and focus instead on the task at hand. “What’s the plan? It’s late. Your mom’s probably in her room.”
“So we need to get her out of it.” He frowned. “You know, it doesn’t matter if she knows I’m here. I can go to her room, tell her I’m starving, have her take me down to the dining room – and make sure the door doesn’t lock behind us, so you can get in. You can look for the book. It will be in her briefcase, most likely, or even out on the desk with her computer.”
“What if I can’t find it?”
“Then we’ll come up with another plan,” Wally said. “As a last resort I’ll ask her about it, but that’ll send up a red flag for Rex Major and I’m really really hoping he hasn’t made the connection between the hilt and the MacPhaiden family yet.”
Ariane chewed her lip. “All right,” she said. “But just one thing.”
“What?”
“If she takes you to the dining room, get me a doggy bag.”
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