The Silver Bough

by Neil M. Gunn

  “Oh, sorry,” he murmured, his intelligent eyes drifting over the excavations. There was a click and Grant got up and turned. The spectacled young man was winding up his shot.

  “I should be obliged,” said Grant angrily, “if you would stop doing that.”

  The expression behind the spectacles grew even more solemn; that was all. The girl stood now with her legs apart.

  “We had no idea you would mind,” said the dark fellow. “We are all very interested in archaeology. My friend here was in Egypt and Crete. We thought we even might be of some help, as intelligent amateurs.”

  “No, thank you,” replied Grant, who, however, had once been an intelligent amateur himself. He felt confused and wretched, for he had a natural loyalty to all workers in the field, and Crete and Egypt were conjuring names.

  “In that case, we’ll make ourselves scarce,” said the dark fellow agreeably. “Sorry for intruding.”

  “Very good of you to offer,” replied Mr Grant. “But, as it happens, I’m finished for the time being.”

  “Oh, really? You did manage inside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah. How interesting!” He looked at the closed passage, then smiled and saluted. “We shouldn’t have minded being with you!”

  “The proprietor doesn’t care for people on his ground,” Grant explained with a difficult smile.

  “Ah—ha!” The fellow nodded with the air of one to whom no more need be said. “May we sincerely hope you didn’t draw a blank altogether?”

  “You may.”

  “Goodo! And apologies once more.”

  As she passed him, the young woman gave Grant the unexpectedly sweet smile of a girl in a crinoline. All three saluted Andie and his mother and went off towards the cliffs.

  Feeling he had behaved with outrageously bad manners, Grant found all taste for his sandwiches gone. With an intelligent young fellow like that, what a job he could have done! Not to mention intelligent companionship. He could not look at the idiot and busied himself getting his gear together. Then he told Mrs Mackenzie that there would be no more work for the day. “First thing in the morning,” he said. He had meant to speak to her privately but couldn’t. As a last thought, he had some more stones piled against the passage entrance.

  In the afternoon he wrote up his notes but couldn’t conscientiously guarantee even his total of humans buried in the cairn, and there were certain bones he would really have to do something about. And the soil would have to be sifted. And—O God, he had forgotten again to remove the vase!

  But it didn’t matter. Like the lean cattle and the fat cattle and the women kissed before, the things in the cairn didn’t matter. They had all been found before. It was the urn, the pot of gold . . . .

  The words “pot of gold” went through his head like a fairy legend. They were, in fact, a fairy legend. The pot of gold or the crock of gold, hunted all through northern legend but never found, because the fairies had buried it at the foot of the rainbow. And he had found it!

  Wild gleams and echoes went through his head, swirls of the little folk in a green light, eddies of laughter, and the winking gold in the pot. He ravished their world, lifting the pot high above their heads, and they danced around, thrusting up their hands, but not disliking him, because he was in their world . . . .

  He groaned aloud. He was of their world, sinking so low that his intelligence quotient was pre-logical; he was in Sheena’s age group. He had heard of softening of the brain; this is what it was like before softening could happen to it.

  He took the floor, walking it within the cage of the room. For he was not deceived. He had resolved the fairy story, had turned the archaeological key that opened the hidden chamber, had removed the stones of intrusion from the corbelled cell of legend or myth. All this he had done—to be foiled by an idiot in the guise of prehistory.

  Out of this mental extravagance, one small terrible thing did remain. Unable up to this moment to understand why he had felt so hopeless about finding the urn, when common sense suggested there was every hope, he now realised that his subconscious had decided on its own that finding it was not in the logical order of things. And if this was more fantastic than any legend or myth, it was none the less of a persistence that had the teeth of a dark rat.

  As he swayed in his tiredness, for his heart should have given out on him long before this—though actually it had never given him a twinge—he decided he would go to his bed. He would go to his bed and get up when the sun had set and then in the half-light, through the deep dusk of the summer night, he would stalk the idiot’s cottage, he would wander and watch, for he suddenly saw with complete conviction that it was only in that light, when the logical was asleep, that the crock of gold could be found.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The sounds increased. He listened for a while, looked at his watch—it was noon, closed his notebook and crawled back along the passage. Two legs stopped him at its end and he shouted. The legs rose up, and he rose up after them. The legs had belonged to Andie, who was defending the passage against the public. The girl in the shorts continued to wind up a camera while at least a dozen pairs of eyes concentrated on Mr Grant.

  “What’s all this?” he demanded, his eyes flashing. At such moments his pointed beard gave him a distinguished intolerance.

  “I was only wanting in to have a look,” said the man nearest to Andie, a mouse-haired fellow in slacks.

  “Well, you can’t have a look,” Grant told him.

  “And that’s that?”

  “Yes, that’s that! The work going on here is private. It is being carried on by—by special permission. It’s important that nothing should be disturbed. Absolutely important.” The camera clicked and his eyes flashed to the girl. She smiled to him in a melting sweetness within a small nod and hitched her pants.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Grant, with such control that his face visibly paled, “I appeal to you to go away.”

  Even children don’t like to be told to go away. Some faces grew stony, others smiled in a peculiar way. They were doing nobody any harm and it was a free country—so far. Someone laughed. They began to move away but not as if they were really doing it or had to. And now obviously some curious things were being said, some esoteric joke touched upon. The laughter caught at good humour. Some sat down at a little distance.

  Mrs Cameron had told him that tourists often came to look at Clachar but that as the cairn was out of sight of the road they generally missed it. “There isn’t much else for them to do, poor things.” And he had actually taken a note of her next remark: “It’s a favourite place for the Sunday School picnic.” At the time that had held for him a subterranean interest. But he had been miraculously free of visitors until yesterday and now these three, whom he might have asked to be discreet, had blabbed the news. There would be a spate from Kinlochoscar henceforth. They had found a fellow who was actually doing something on his own. At last the Highlands had provided a spectacle for their entertainment. They could stand and gape.

  Bitter as his thoughts were, he did not lose his cunning. At the right moment he slipped into the cairn again, leaving Mrs Mackenzie and her son as a human screen. This would have to be Andie’s last appearance on the site, for his gape value was obviously tremendous. Presently he called to Mrs Mackenzie from the passage. She bent down. “I want your apron,” he said, “but don’t let them see you taking it off.” He crawled out into the light, carefully placing the vase once more in front of him. It had been a laborious business and he was sweating.

  But when Andie saw the vase he became tremendously excited and vocal.

  “Shut him up!” said Grant hoarsely.

  “Andie, be quiet!” she ordered with a calm intensity. His flappings and staggerings eased, but the younger visitors drew near again, two of them indeed all but ran up, while the mouse-haired fellow definitely sauntered.

  “Gu—gu—gu——” continued Andie, for it is doubtful if any archaeologist had ever had so
enthusiastic an assistant.

  “Andie!” Her voice had the remarkable effect of turning off a tap that drips a few final mutters. Grant had the apron round the vase.

  “I’ll give you something to do,” he said to Andie with a social and vindictive smile as he came erect. “Get that slab against the opening.” He deposited all his gear, including the swathed vase, safely out of reach. Mrs Mackenzie interpreted his order with a single discreet gesture and Andie set to work. But though his neck swelled alarmingly, Andie could not upend the slab, not even with his mother’s unobtrusive but powerful help. However, they got it so angled and tilted that Grant was satisfied. “Now for the stones,” he said. And it was to be no light affair this time, it was going to be a complete block-up.

  “Carry on the work,” he said to Mrs Mackenzie presently, “and stand by until I return.” Then hung about with his gear and carrying the dark-swathed vase like a funeral offering, he set off for his lodging, followed by many eyes and a few feet.

  As he rounded the rock where he had found Anna and Sheena asleep, he glanced down towards Clachar House and saw two men who had obviously just left it and were now making for the cairn. There was no mistaking the black head of the enthusiastic amateur nor the movement of his companion of the spectacles. They had been interviewing Martin!

  By God, there’s treachery for you! he said through his teeth, and his whole body momentarily locked in rigor. Hell’s bells, what would Martin think? Mass invasion! The vase slithered as in collapse. His heart swole up and choked him. He went on blindly for a little way then rested. “I’ll carry this for you,” said Anna. He looked at her, then slowly looked about him. “Take off the apron,” he said, “and see if it’s whole. Very careful.” “It seems all right. Yes, it’s quite whole.”

  He nodded, “Thank God,” and breathed more lightly. “I wish I had stuck to you entirely.”

  She glanced at him, but obviously he was not being personal. She slung the strap of his bag over her shoulder and lifted the clothed vase. “You can trust me to take care of it,” she said.

  “I would trust you with anything,” he answered with a slight resurgence of vindictiveness. Then he got up and, walking beside her, told of the invasion.

  Mrs Cameron was hopeful as ever. “It’ll all pass in a day or two,” she prophesied. “Just something new for them to wonder at.” When she saw the vase on its rounded bottom: “Well, well, to think it was the best they had, the creatures!” Sheena wanted to see and Mrs Cameron lifted her up. “The kettle is boiling, Anna,” she called; “make Mr Grant a cup of tea.”

  “I’m just making it,” answered Anna from the kitchen.

  “Now come away, Sheena,” said Mrs Cameron.

  “Look!” said Mr Grant to Sheena, and, putting a hand into the vase, he brought out three of the white quartz pebbles. Sheena looked steadily. “Now what would they be for?” asked Mrs Cameron. “I wish I knew,” answered Grant. “Are there many of them?” she asked. “Seven,” he answered. “That’s a good number,” she said.

  Sheena put out her hand and Mr Grant placed a pebble in it. She looked at it and at the other two; then she looked up at her granny and lifted her face. Mrs Cameron stooped to listen. “Ach you!” declared Mrs Cameron. “She says they would be nice for playing five-stones.”

  “What’s five-stones?”

  “Och, just a lassie’s game!”

  “Indeed,” said Grant. “Have you ever played it yourself?”

  “Many’s the time that. As sure as the spring came in, we would be at it.”

  “That interests me very much. You couldn’t let me see how you played it?”

  “I could not then!” She gave a small laugh and called Anna.

  Anna came in with the tea on a tray, and when the round table in the centre of the room had been pushed to one side, she sat down on the floor with five white pebbles in her right hand. She scattered the pebbles, then, lifting one, threw it in the air, touched the floor, and caught it; threw it again, grabbed the next pebble off the floor and caught the falling one. As the stone came down for the fifth time, it clicked against the four in her hand and there were all five and not one had been missed.

  Grant was staring at her. She was slightly flushed, but the whole swaying movements of her body, the swift flash of the blue eyes down and up, the tumble of red hair, the very sitting on the floor, had a feminine enchantment about it, innocent and invigorating as spring’s own self.

  “Why seven?” he wondered.

  “We played with three, or with five, or with seven, but seven was difficult,” said Anna.

  “Ah!” He got up out of his chair.

  “Come away,” said Mrs Cameron, “for Mr Grant must have his tea.”

  “My chance,” said Sheena for the second time.

  “No, no,” said her granny.

  “Yes,” said Sheena. “My chance.”

  “Certainly,” said Grant before the small eyes could fill with tears, and when she missed her catch he said he could not do it better himself so he tried and did worse. She gave up the pebbles absolutely, but with so continuing a concentration upon them that he said, “You wait till you see the present that I’ll get you!”

  Then she looked at him and something still as her soul hung between one wonder and another.

  She kept looking back at him even after Anna began to lead her away. Alone, he stood quite still, for in the little face he had glimpsed, beyond all doubt, the ghostly presence of the owner of Clachar House.

  As he drank his tea, he felt quiet and detached. The turmoil had passed from him. What had to be done inside the cairn could safely wait. He could work for a few hours, very early in the morning, any day. For that matter, it could be done during the dead of night. Perhaps he had better go and see Martin, express his regrets at the mass intrusion, and say that he would have the stones put back on the cairn at once, so that the public would think the whole affair was over.

  About four o’clock that afternoon, as he drew near Clachar House, he saw the chauffeur come down from the garage carrying a parcel and a newspaper. “Excuse me,” he said, intercepting him, “but I just wanted to thank you for not mentioning our meeting the other night.”

  “It’s all right,” answered the chauffeur in an embarrassed way.

  “You didn’t in fact mention it, did you?” There was something a trifle stormy about the fellow’s eyebrows that troubled Grant.

  “I did meet two friends of mine, just after you left me, and I asked them if they had seen Foolish Andie. They said no. We scouted round a bit. That’s all I mentioned it.”

  “Oh. I see. Thank you . . . . Would the other two, do you think——?”

  “I shouldn’t think so, but it didn’t seem at the time that it was something to—hide.”

  “I understand. Believe me, I am not trying to blame you. Only, I don’t want the public crashing in here. I don’t want Mr Martin to be troubled.”

  The chauffeur said nothing, then glanced quickly over his shoulder at Mrs Sidbury as she drew near. After she had greeted Grant, she called. “I’ll take them, Norman.” Norman handed her the parcel and the newspaper and returned to his garage. “Please come and have some tea.” As he hesitated, she added, “I do get tired of having tea alone.”

  “Actually,” he said as they went to the house, “I was coming to see your brother. The public have got wind of our doings up there, and quite a few were on the site this forenoon. They are still wandering around.”

  “We heard something about that. Does it worry you?”

  “I was frightened it would worry you—especially your brother. And I wanted to tell him that I am finishing up—for the time being.”

  “You’re not going away?”

  “No. Not for a little time. Tell me, is your brother annoyed?”

  “Not more than usual!” She half swung round with an amused smile, then entered at the front door. “Have a chair. I’ll see about tea.”

  She was back in a couple of minutes. �
��What’s all this?” She held the newspaper in her hand.

  He looked at her face, then took the newspaper. The large headlines stared at him:

  CROCK OF GOLD discovered by SCOTTISH ANTIQUARY.

  In a mounting tumult he read: “The most remarkable discovery in the whole history of Scottish archaeology has just been made by Mr Simon Grant. The site is a remote cairn in the Highlands and the circumstances attending the find are already as fabulous as the Gaelic legends about the crock of gold which the fairies were alleged to have hidden under the rainbow . . . .” The print began to dance under his eyes as they moved down the column. Sub-title: THE CROCK VANISHES. “Working alone amid these old skeletons in the dead of night, Mr Grant found the pot of gold. Exactly what happened at this extraordinary moment is not clear. But some of the young men of Clachar, returning home at a late hour, were waylaid by Mr Grant and asked if they had seen his assistant, who had just run away with the treasure. Very naturally the archaeologist was at the time labouring under a considerable degree of excitement. The young men had not in fact seen the assistant and on their own joined in the hunt until the deep dusk of the summer night was lightened by the moon, when it was found that the assistant was in his bed. Strange as this story may seem, it now takes on a truly fantastic kinship to a midsummer night’s dream, for the assistant was, and is, no other than the village natural who is incapable of expressing himself in articulate speech. Admirable at hurling stones from the cairn or similarly assisting in the work of excavation, he possesses no language other than obscure guttural sounds and is directed in his labours by his widowed mother of whom he is the sole support. His childish passion for bright ornaments that gleam like gold is well known in the district, and the plain assumption is that he has buried the crock of gold in some private cache which one day may, or may not, be found. When interviewed the following day at the cairn, Mr Grant showed a marked reserve and would neither confirm nor deny . . . . “

  But Grant could read no further. His hands shook. He said, “My God!” He sat down.