The Other Crowd

by Alex Archer

  “Has the Fouquet been offered yet?”

  The woman in thin, black-rimmed spectacles drew up the auction list on her computer and scanned it. “You mean the painting in the style of Jean Fouquet? Yes, Mr. Braden. That was just purchased. Is it what you’ve come for? I’m very sorry. We are offering a Parker, which is similar in style.”

  “Not interested. Can you tell me who did win the Fouquet?”

  “That information is private, Mr. Braden.”

  Beyond the glasses, the woman’s eyes gleamed brightly. Her skin was pale and flawless. Her features were delicate, even disguised beneath the stiff and proper gray suit. A butterfly struggling to explode from her cocoon.

  Garin leaned across the marble desk, lowering his voice and tendering it softly. “Would you deny the winning bidder the opportunity to double their money from someone who is interested in obtaining the work?”

  “Well…” She looked over her shoulder, checking all corners and the closed office door.

  Garin followed her finger as she trailed it across a line detailing the buyer’s name and address. He read upside down, and committed the information to memory.

  “Thank you, Miss…”

  “Haversham.”

  “A lovely name,” he said. “But not so lovely as you.”

  “Oh.” She glanced aside without the expected blush. “It’s a pity you missed the bidding.”

  “It is. But I’m not a man accustomed to being denied anything he wants.”

  She lowered her gaze and now she did blush. “I guessed that about you.”

  “Good afternoon, Miss Haversham. It was a pleasure.” He winked and turned to stroll out, controlling his need to punch the wall as he did so.

  So close. And the damned painting had gone for five hundred thousand. Was he willing to lay down a cool million for something he’d hoped would be burned and never again see the light of day?

  “Not if I can take it for free,” he said.

  10

  Somewhere in the thatched cottage half a mile north of the dig site, a clock chimed 10:00 p.m. Annja noted that it was difficult to track each chime for the ambient noise of smaller clocks ticking, infinity balls clicking one steel ball against the other, alarms chirping and one small wooden stick man climbing up a ladder.

  Mrs. Collins’s home, which much resembled a hobbit’s cottage on the outside, was a virtual museum of oddities and geegaws. Pack rat, indeed.

  “Daniel tells me you already own the spear of Lugh?” Annja tossed that out there. She was in a fine mood. Visiting and shooting the breeze had made her forget all about Beth’s return to camp. Okay, not forgotten, but she realized there was no sense worrying about her. She was safe and Annja intended to visit her tomorrow.

  Rachel Collins clasped her hands before her face. Crepethin skin did not conceal the faint blue veins beneath, nor did the twinkle in her eye master her bright green irises. “I’ve had the spear for decades. Come see.”

  Daniel stayed behind in the kitchen, drying the supper dishes. Mrs. Collins had served up a feast of raspberry lamb chops, basil-seasoned small potatoes and two different kinds of homemade bread rolls. The shortbread cookies for dessert must had been bathed in butter. They’d slid down Annja’s throat like a dream.

  So maybe family was all it was cracked up to be. If she’d had a mother to cook like that for her every night, Annja might be twenty pounds heavier and less of a world traveler.

  Led down the hallway that was narrower for the shelving from floor to ceiling, Annja noted the more interesting trinkets. A blue plastic, poseable Aquaman figure, minus one hand. A copy of a Fabergé egg, only thumb-size and very likely decorated with rhinestones. A few fist-size clods of dirt. Maybe they were imagined meteorites. She spotted what looked like an alicorn, twisted bone and all—as if unicorns existed. A perfect yellow rose was amazingly preserved in a bowl of clear marbles. It wasn’t silk, either; Annja touched it gently to be sure.

  They entered a small living room and Annja felt her vision go crossed from the utter cacophony of stuff. Everywhere things hung on the walls, inhabited the corners, dangled from the ceiling. There was a television, which she wouldn’t have immediately picked out were the sound not on and had the flash of a toothpaste model’s teeth not caught her eye. Yet another chord to the cacophony of whimsy.

  “An amazing collection,” she said, then managed to save herself from tripping over a small fluffy thing that could be a real dog, though the way it was sprawled on the white bearskin rug, she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t a large black stain. “Where did you get all this stuff, Mrs. Collins?”

  “Oh, I’ve been a collector since I was a wee lass. Always picking up bits and bobs wherever I go. I never spend much on any single piece. Most people give me things, or I find them. The digs are great places to walk after-hours. All kinds of interesting baubles to be found there.”

  Things a legitimate archaeologist, and the country of Ireland, would consider stolen.

  Annja winced. She crossed her fingers there were no real artifacts in here. She wasn’t sure how she’d react, much as Rachel was the sweetest little old lady she had ever met. And man, did she make a mean shortbread.

  “Here it is.” Rachel turned and displayed a small spear upon both hands. It was two feet long, made of wood and decorated with faded red paint that had obviously been stripped by sun and age. The head looked bronze for the green patina that tipped the base where it was fitted into the shaft. “The spear of Lugh.”

  She presented her find so grandly Annja found herself nodding in acceptance as the woman handed it to her. It was aged, but not centuries old. Certainly not an artifact. She wondered if the woman would be offended if she saw Annja search for the Made in China marking.

  “Interesting.” Annja tilted it in one hand.

  “Oh, no, dear, mustn’t attempt to hold it as if you intended to throw it toward your prey.”

  Annja smirked at the woman’s real fear. Okay, then. She’d have to get Eric to film a segment with Rachel talking about the other crowd. If anyone believed, it had to be this woman.

  “I understand the legend says that the spear of Lugh, when thrown, always makes a kill,” Annja said. “Then it returns to the owner’s hand.”

  “Exactly. And if it misses the target, it returns and kills the owner. Not a pretty outcome for you, dear.”

  “Nope.” She studied the tip, sliding a fingernail under the patina. It was bronze. So that ruled out China. “Those faeries certainly are a vicious bunch.”

  “Mustn’t speak of them so, dear. They don’t appreciate being named so bluntly. I prefer ‘the wee folk.’”

  “Wee folk, eh? And yet, weren’t the Tuatha Dé Danaan, who gave this spear to Lugh, great and mighty warriors?”

  “That they were.”

  “And they were man-size, not small.”

  “Yes, indeed. The folk come in all sizes, dear. I tend to the wee ones, I do.”

  “And how do you tend to them? Milk offerings on the back stoop?”

  “Can’t be doing that, the cats will get into it.” Rachel offered Annja a pitying once-over. She wasn’t about to waste her time explaining her beliefs to someone she guessed could care very little. “I’ll take that, then.”

  Annja relinquished the spear. Rachel held it reverently as she placed it on a shelf above the television. She had to give the lady credit for exercising her imagination. And honestly, if a child were brought up in an environment that revered the other crowd as real, then it wasn’t even right to argue with her.

  “That’s a pretty piece of quartz,” Annja noted of the stone above the spear’s shelf. “So clear and defined. You find that near your home?”

  Rachel handed her the cool piece of stone. About the size of an acorn, one side was roughed and curved, while the other had defined crystal facets.

  “Right where the newer dig camp has set up at the bog’s edge, actually. But it’s not quartz, dear, it’s a rough diamond.”

  Annja
lifted a brow at that, but didn’t challenge Rachel’s statement. Faerie spears and Fabergé eggs, so why not real diamonds? She had never heard of diamonds being found in Ireland. The country was overflowing with gold and uranium, but not the sparkly bling.

  “That bit of rock seems to fascinate many,” Rachel continued. “That Mr. Neville Danny brought over a while back wanted to buy it from me.”

  Frank Neville, the supposed leader of the bad camp that had wrestled control from a major management company? Annja studied the quartz more fiercely. What would Neville want with a bit of crystal? “How much did he offer you?”

  “A thousand pounds,” Rachel declared with as much amazement as she must have felt to receive the initial offer. “Can you believe?”

  “And you didn’t sell?”

  “Dear, a diamond that size is worth hundreds of thousands pounds sterling.”

  Annja clutched the stone. She had no training in discerning a real diamond from quartz. Geology was not top of her studies, but she knew enough. It was possible it could be diamond.

  “And yet you keep it on a shelf.”

  “Oh, I don’t need the money, dear. It’s just a pretty trinket I enjoy owning.”

  Annja sought a light source, but the only thing in the room was the TV. She didn’t know rocks. It could be common quartz. It could be something more valuable. Only someone in the know could determine. Like Frank Neville? Had to be if the man had offered her that much for it, and yet so little if it were real.

  “You know it’s illegal to keep items found from a dig site.”

  “It wasn’t a dig site when I found it, dear.” Rachel held out her hand. Two bends of her fingers demanded she return her prize.

  Annja handed the stone to the woman, who polished it against her sleeve before replacing it on the shelf.

  “Danny says I’ve not to worry about the things I find on my property.”

  Annja did the map work in her head, and figured she couldn’t have possibly found it on her property—the dig was set on property owned by a farmer who had let his crops go years ago—but she wasn’t prepared to push the argument.

  The stone was quartz, nothing more. And to find a rough diamond? That would indicate a diamond pipe in the vicinity. She wasn’t up on the mineral rights of Ireland, but felt sure it had to have been scoured for diamonds by now.

  “So you met Mr. Neville?”

  “I didn’t much care for the man,” Rachel commented as she touched the pink-furred head of a goggle-eyed alien. “He didn’t even try my blood pudding.”

  Much as the idea of eating blood pudding had made Annja’s stomach twist, she had to admit Rachel’s version with oatmeal and barley mixed in with the pork fat and blood had been delicious. Whew. She’d cleared that culinary hurdle. She guessed she wouldn’t get out of Ireland without running into tripe sooner or later.

  “He was missing something incredible,” Annja commented.

  “You ladies plotting ways to take over the world with mum’s arsenal?” Daniel tapped a cracked tin shield that Annja placed circa 1970s.

  “Your girl is very smart,” Rachel said. “I like her.”

  Annja caught Rachel’s beaming eye and decided it was time to nip this premarital fantasy in the bud. “It’s getting late. I left Eric to himself in a village with four pubs. I’d hate to have to explain that one to his family. It was a lovely meal, Mrs. Collins.”

  “You’ll come back soon, dear.”

  It was stated, not a question. Daniel offered Annja a shrug and led her outside. The night was still and the stars were out full force in the black sky.

  “She’s a marvel,” Annja commented.

  “Don’t worry, she’s not picking brides.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well…” He let that one hang.

  Annja had no intention of encouraging a romance. Something about Daniel appealed to her, and his age didn’t bother her at all. But long-distance relationships were deal breakers in her book. And one-night stands, while she entertained them on occasion, she had to be in the mood.

  “Thanks for the meal, Daniel. Uh, you’re not at all concerned about some of the stuff your mother picks up in fields and dig sites?”

  “You mean things that would have archaeological value? No. It’s all junk, Annja. You saw the plastic alligator with the pink glass eyes?”

  “I did. I also got a good look at her so-called diamond. She said Frank Neville offered to buy it from her. Why would someone offer so much money to buy a chunk of quartz?”

  “I wasn’t aware of the offer. How much is so much?”

  “A thousand pounds.”

  “Ah, well, then, I imagine me mum didn’t sell. Neville was probably humoring her. Mum gets so few visitors nowadays. And a handsome man comes to visit? Well.” He strode down the cobbled pathway to the white-painted gate before his mother’s home. “Care to walk a bit? I could show you my stones.”

  “Your…stones?” She didn’t even want to go where her mind was tugging her to go.

  “Big ones,” he said with a smile. “Just beyond the ridge. Come along. An archaeologist won’t want to miss this.”

  After a brisk amble across the field and over a hill capped by hawthorn and heather, Annja and Daniel descended a slope to a grassy field.

  “Not exactly Stonehenge, but it is a treasure all the same,” he announced.

  Annja stopped beside Daniel. Halfway between them and the river’s edge stood a circle of stones. A remarkable circle that sported three—no, four—standing stones twice as high as her.

  “It’s amazing. What’s the name of it? Is this cataloged as a monument?”

  “It is. And it’s called GrayStone Circle. Their history is that the devil tried to throw them in the Bandon River, but his reach wasn’t so good.”

  Annja smirked. “The devil threw a lot of stones about the country.”

  “Indeed, every other legend of standing stones involves the Old Lad. But it’s on Collins land so we’ve the right to allow or disallow people from visiting it. I get a lot of hikers passing by, but like to keep visitors to a minimum. Destroys the land to have vehicles driving through. Want to walk closer?”

  Annja didn’t answer. She took off down the slope, her pace increasing to a jog.

  Three pillars of roughly rectangular shape stood spaced about ten feet apart. The third pillar tilted at a forty-five-degree angle. One stone lay on its side and it rose as high as her waist.

  Daniel joined her and sat upon the fallen stone. She prowled the upright stones, spreading a palm across the cold, pocked surfaces as she marveled.

  “Ever do any excavations?” she asked.

  “There was one in the 1920s, and then later in the sixties my grandpa allowed an archaeological team a go at it. Found some bones in ceremonial ceramic pots and a bunch of useless shards. They’re all in me mum’s collection now.”

  “Even the bones?”

  “Aye.” Daniel lay on the recumbent stone and Annja leaned against the tilted standing stone. He crossed his hands at his stomach and closed his eyes. “When I was a lad, me and my friends used to come here and romp about. We’d play theater and this stone was the stage. Or we’d trick the lasses into laying down on this one and we’d play the doctor.”

  He opened an eye to catch her raised brow.

  “Ah, but we’d play sacrificial victim, too. Certainly Jones used to be the priest with the knife. He’d cut out our gizzards and offer them to the gods under the full moon.”

  “Wow, you must have had a lot of gizzards to spare.”

  “That we did.” He sat up and faced her in the moonlit darkness. “They’re magical gizzards, capable of regeneration under the full moon. Sacrifices were only done under the full moon, you understand.”

  “Of course.”

  “See there?” He pointed to the tallest stone, notched along the top. “On the winter solstice you can view the sunset through that notch. Only day of the year that happens.”

  Accor
ding to popular belief, druids had been lured to use these stone circles—crafted well before their time—as a means to tell time and season by carefully using notches and holes in the actual stone and aligning them with the sun and various planets.

  Daniel jumped down and stood before her, his face even with hers. “So what do you think? Do the stones bring out your inner pagan? Do you believe the Tuatha Dé Danaan may have once used this very circle for something?”

  “Possible.”

  “You’re lying through your teeth, Annja Creed. You are a skeptic.”

  “Someone has to be.” She leaned against the stone next to him and scanned the dark sky, sprinkled with star flashes. “I won’t dismiss their use for astrological time telling and calendars. And sure, sacrificial offerings can’t be disregarded. But as meeting places for faeries?”

  He stroked her cheek, brushing aside her hair with a forefinger. The touch was warm and it startled her, but not enough to want to move away. So maybe she could be put in the mood.

  “You New York City types have lost all imagination,” he said.

  “So I’m a type? I have a very healthy imagination. Sitting under the moonlight on this amazing monument to history stirs up all sorts of images of druids, Vikings and Celtic warriors. I’d love to have witnessed the creation of a site like this. Can you imagine the ingenuity? The planning? We think our technology is so remarkable, and yet, we can still only make conjectures as to how these stones were moved and what their uses were thousands of years ago.”

  “So you aren’t all about the bones and textbooks.”

  “Give me some credit. I am here looking for faeries.”

  “Indeed.” Daniel leaned in and kissed her.

  Annja leaned forward to accept the kiss. It was warm. Nice. He stroked a hand along her back and moved her closer.

  Moonlight kisses beat standing stone circles any night. And Daniel Collins knew how to kiss.