After carefully replacing the other books on the lightless shelf, Maggie walked with the filthy tome quickly, but carefully, back to her table. The yellow light over the table confirmed that there was too much slime to read either the cover or the spine. As if reminded by the filth on the book, Maggie looked down at her own very dirty hands, the scrapes on her palms covered in sticky grayish-green dirt. Setting the book on the table, she picked up her water bottle and twisted off the cap, trying to leave as little grime as possible on the neck. After removing some tissues from her backpack, she looked up at the light from the half-open door at the top of the stairs. No one was coming.
"I wonder if anyone ever comes down here," she muttered, surveying the dusty, dirty room.
She crossed over to the corner farthest from the stairs and bookshelves and poured water over her hands. Wiping strenuously with the tissue she was able to remove most of the sticky dirt from her hands. She was then able to confirm that she had in fact drawn blood. The bleeding had all but stopped though, due in part perhaps to the covering of gray-green dust. Maggie wasn't sure that was necessarily a good thing. In any event, the water had run off her hands and splattered and pooled on the stone floor by her feet. One brave band of water was setting out for a nearby crack, creating a small brook heading harmlessly toward the wall. Looking down, Maggie felt some small regret about pouring the water right there in the room, but then she noted with some approval that this particular corner now looked measurably cleaner than the remainder of the floor.
Drying her hands on the remaining tissue, she returned to the book she had found. Fetching additional tissues from her backpack, she tried to wipe off the spine of the book to reveal a title. Smearing the thick green dust away revealed a deep black leather spine, raised in an intricate and attractive pattern, but no title to speak of. There was also no call number, nor a red dot sticker affixed. Repeating the process with the front cover proved more difficult as the raised leather pattern was even more intricate there. She turned the book 90 degrees so the spine was nearest her, and held the clasp firmly in her left hand as she smeared the grime off the cover with her right, pulling the tissue straight down toward her body. This extra leverage allowed the tearing tissue to smear off most of the filth, but again revealed no title. Then, with horror, Maggie looked down to see that her left palm had once again begun to ooze blood. In fact, she had bled onto both the clasp and the cover of this undoubtedly priceless book.
With another loud "Damn it!" she frantically dabbed at the clasp with the clean side of an otherwise grime-covered tissue. As she did so, the ancient metal of the clasp rattled quietly and fell open with a faint clink.
Surprised, but undeniably pleased by this turn of events, Maggie grabbed the last tissue in her back pack and finished wiping her blood off the dark tome. She then carefully pulled open the front cover, grimacing at the painful crackling of the ancient spine. Unlike modern books, the first page of this text was not blank, but held words, more or less centered on the page. This suggested to Maggie some sort of cover page or similar function. What Maggie found most interesting about the words, however, was the very obvious fact that they had been written by hand, not printed on a press. Either this was a personal journal of some sort or it predated the advent of Herr Gutenburg's 1451 invention. In either case, Maggie felt confident in her conclusion that this was not Mr. MacAuliffe's treatise on 'The Religious Practices of the Ancient Peoples of Scotland.' Rather than this English title, stood six words Maggie couldn't read:
'Inh Liabhor Dhurgha Dhiassiain Ochus Dhamnothadh'
Below the words were three symbols. In the middle was a large circle with two lines inside it intersecting like a plus sign, to the left was a smaller circle with a single dot in the center, and to the right was something that looked exactly like a crescent moon facing back toward its companions.
Maggie looked down at the words, reading them again and again, waiting for her brain to finally kick in and recognize the phrase—or at least a word or two. But this recognition never came. The only word she thought she might recognize was the 'inh' at the beginning. This looked an awful lot like 'in,' the Old Gaelic word for 'the.' Assuming that was the case, then the fifth word could be related to the Old Gaelic word, 'ocus,' which came into modern Gaelic as 'agus,' meaning 'and.' But the rest of the words were unfamiliar, although the general orthography was clearly reminiscent of Old Gaelic. Reaching for her dictionaries and smiling at the challenge, Maggie sat herself down in the half-clean chair and set out to translate the cryptic phrase.
* * *
Maggie leaned back in her chair and let out a deep, slow sigh. She had confirmed that the language was Celtic in origin, but she had only succeeded in translating two of the remaining four words. Ordinarily such slow progress would have led to a palpable frustration and an acidic burn in her stomach. However, rather than acid in her stomach, she had butterflies. Although the entire phrase still remained untranslated, the ancient words filled her language-loving, dialect-researching heart with cautious glee. As it stood now, the translation of the title appeared to be:
'The (something) Book of Rites and (something)'
And it was written in a dialect of Old Gaelic which Maggie had never encountered before.
"This book," Maggie whispered to herself, barely able to contain her excitement, "may actually be written in the Hamilton dialect."
She thought for a long second, then corrected herself: "The Hamilton-Devereaux dialect."
Rather than have to piece together bits and pieces of a dialect some scholars doubted even existed, she might just have stumbled across actual source material. The Rosetta Stone of her dialect—if she could succeed in translating it. It had taken her forever to translate just four of the first six words. What time was it anyway?
Maggie bent down and looked at the watch still looped to her backpack. It was ten after five.
Her heart dropped. The front desk closed at 4:30.
Quickly, she shoved her things helter-skelter back into her bag. The newly found book was still too dirty to put in there, but that was just as well. If she was lucky, the nice librarian had stayed late and would let her check it out. She double checked the spine: no red dot. She was good to go. In no time she was up the stone steps, had turned off the lights and was locking the heavy wooden door. She sprinted across Floor B-3 and up the steps. When she reached the top floor her heart dropped again.
The reading room was deserted.
Maggie found herself faced with two dilemmas. First, what to do with this wondrous book she had found. Second, what to do if she found herself locked inside the reading room. She liked books well enough, but she was not eager to spend the night in a cold library. Not to mention the fact that Aunt Lucy and Uncle Alex would be worried sick. Especially with a killer on the loose.
Maggie looked down at the book in her hand. There was just no way she was leaving it behind. The librarian had said that any book without a red sticker could be checked out. She had also said that there were no computer anti-theft devices on the books; no alarm would sound if she exited the reading room with it. She nodded her head in decision, tucked the dirty book under her arm and strode to the nearest exit. The door opened easily enough and no emergency alarm sounded. Both dilemmas solved. She checked to make sure the door latched behind her, then looked around to get her bearings.
The sun had already set. She was still amazed that Aberdeen, being so far north, had such short days in the fall and winter. The fog had also rolled in, but it wasn't so thick that she couldn't see Regent Walk to her left. The street lights were on and she knew her way to The Boar and Thistle. They would still be open and she could call home for a ride.
Maggie looked around. A shiver ran up her spine, but not from the damp chill. She was stupid to have stayed out past sunset all by herself. She would feel a lot better once she'd made it to the pub and was safely inside. Pulling her backpack over both shoulders, and clutching her newly found text close to her chest, she
half-ran toward the lighted safety of Regent Walk and High Street beyond.
And from the darkness behind her, a pair of eyes watched. And waited. And wondered.
11. Offerings
It had ended up being rather a late night. Lucy and Alex had not been upset that she had called for a ride. Although the sun had set, five-thirty really wasn't that late and Alex had been happy to swing by the Boar and Thistle to pick her up after he closed up the shop at six. Maggie bided her time with a root beer, eschewing dinner at the pub in favor of Lucy's home cooking. After dinner and some light conversation over the dishes, Maggie had excused herself to her room where she immediately began further investigation of the black book. Although she had not cracked the dialect—not yet anyway—she nevertheless enjoyed looking at the handwritten pages with their various diagrams and illustrations. Any doubts she might have had that this was some sort of religious text were dispelled by the sketches of what very much appeared to be human sacrifices.
Just gimme that ol' time religion, she had thought sarcastically.
By the time she had finally set the book aside and fallen asleep it was after one o'clock in the morning.
When she woke up it was late—after ten o'clock. She felt a bit groggy and stumbled from the bed. As she passed the still dirty leather-bound volume lying attentively on her writing desk, she couldn't help but smile at her good fortune.
"You and me, book," she said aloud. "We're partners."
Then she dragged herself to the shower to start her day.
* * *
Having eaten breakfast by herself—both Lucy and Alex had already gone in to the shop—Maggie was ready to head into campus. Although what she really wanted to do was to spend her entire day locked in her room translating her book, she knew the first order of business had to be going back to the reading room and properly checking out the text. Still, she felt a bit uneasy about it. She was afraid that the librarian might require that the book be returned to the sub-basement and she would therefore lose her exclusive access to it. Even though there was no red dot sticker on the spine, the librarian had said that some of the books were 'simply too old and too fragile to be removed.' The black leather book was definitely old, although it seemed less fragile that she might have expected. Nevertheless, Maggie was afraid the red sticker had perhaps fallen off, or just as bad, the librarian would take one look at the old tome and slap a sticker on it.
"Well, nothing to be done about it," Maggie sighed as she climbed the stairs to fetch her things from her bedroom. "It has to be checked out properly."
She sighed again. "If it even can be checked out."
* * *
Soon Maggie was strolling along Mounthooly Street on her way to the Old Campus, dark book tucked away in the backpack strapped securely to her back. With any luck she would be there by 12:30 or so. It was a nice day again so she had decided to forego the bicycle she had bought just after the Mòd in favor of the more mundane use of foot power. Indeed, she had intentionally walked several blocks out of her way so as to combine the march into campus with a bit of exploring. The fact that she was in no hurry to surrender the book to the sticker-toting librarian may have contributed somewhat to this decision. In any event, when she had walked far enough out of her usual path, Maggie turned north again to see where she would end up.
About halfway down one of the city blocks Maggie spotted a white cat sitting by the entrance of an alleyway, casually bathing its front paw. The cat looked exactly like her cat, Bàn, back home. She had two cats, an all black one named Dubh and an all white one named Bàn—'dubh' meaning 'black' in Gaelic, 'bàn' meaning 'white' or 'fair.' Although Maggie felt reasonably certain that Bàn had not followed her from Seattle—white cats were not exactly rare, and Bàn didn't have any way to pay for an airline ticket—still she liked cats and crouched down to coo at him, hoping he might come over to be pet. The cat looked up at Maggie, then stood up and rubbed against the corner of the building next to him, his tail curling over his back. Then he let out the smallest "mew" and rolled over on his back, exposing his tummy for petting and locking his gaze expectantly on Maggie.
Maggie stepped over to the cat, saying, "Hello, kitten," as she bent down to pet him. But as if he'd never expected any such reaction to his display, the cat sprang up and bounded about three feet away, into the alley.
Following the cat with her eyes, Maggie could see that the alleyway was more of a pedestrian arcade really than any dirty back alley. Stone arches spanned over a cobblestone walkway and small doors lined the brick walls on either side, some obviously back doors to businesses facing the other direction, others appearing to be proper entrances themselves. The midday sun shone down on the wide walkway bringing out the rich red tones of the cobblestones. After about 50 feet, the arcade crooked to the right and she couldn't see past the bend. Meanwhile the cat had doubled back and stood about two feet from Maggie, rubbing against the side of the buildings again and purring loudly enough for her to hear.
Maggie took another step toward him and he waited until the last possible second before scurrying away again, deeper into the arcade.
He even acts like Bàn, she thought.
She took another two steps toward the snowy feline, but again he avoided her touch just enough to turn around and start purring again.
Maggie stood up and crossed her arms. She was not going to play this game. But then she remembered that she had taken this route specifically to explore interesting new areas—a category to which the arcade definitely belonged. And anyway, she was in no hurry to get to the reading room.
Fine, cat, let's see where you're headed. Maggie set out, intent on both petting the damned cat one way or another, and also seeing what lay down the walkway regardless. She half-hoped the arcade came to a dead end, just so the cat would have nowhere to scurry away from her. The animal, however, succeeded in avoiding her poisonous touch and soon they had reached the other end of the arcade, not a cul-de-sac, but an opening onto another cobblestone street and whatever businesses or residences it might hold. The cat stopped at the mouth of the arcade and waited for Maggie to catch up. This time he sat stock still while he finally let Maggie scratch his furry white head. Then he looked up at Maggie, let out a terribly loud "Meow!" and bolted out of the alleyway and down the street.
Maggie stepped around the corner to see where the cat had gone, but there was no sign of him. What she did see, however, was the absolutely most adorable street café she had ever seen. It was tucked away from all the traffic and boasted an enormous—by European standards anyway—outdoor seating area surrounding the trunk of a mammoth oak which Maggie guessed was probably older than her home country. As if on cue, her stomach let out a small rumble and Maggie had no difficulty deciding it was time for lunch.
In short order, Maggie found herself seated outside at a small table, her lunch ordered and a pint of amber stout resting companionably before her. There were a few other patrons at various stages of their own lunches and/or drinks, but Maggie paid little attention to them, deciding instead to do a little reading while she waited for her ploughman's lunch. Delving into her backpack, which she'd removed and set on the ground, she pulled out the black leather book, followed by her grandmother's book and her Modern Gaelic-Old Gaelic dictionary. Then, thinking better of beginning any serious translating just before the waitress would be bringing her lunch out, she returned the dark tome and the dictionary to the backpack and instead cracked open her grandmother's book. Time to see whatever became of Diarmit and Catrìona. But as she set her beer back down on the table top, a cold shadow fell across the page. Maggie looked up, a bit surprised that her lunch was ready so quickly. However, when she turned to face the source of the shadow, she saw not the short twiggy figure of her waitress but the tall silhouette of a man, outlined by the sun directly behind his head.
Maggie squinted as the man stepped around to the other side of the table. The sun no longer backlighting him, she could finally get a good look. He was tall�
�at least 6'2"—and appeared to be about 40 years old, or close to it. He was also impeccably dressed. A dark gray vest and slacks combined with a crisp white shirt to frame an absolutely gorgeous golden necktie. Over this he wore an overcoat of just the right shade of camel. Each garment appeared to be of the highest quality. Atop this ensemble rested a not altogether unattractive face, with thick strawberry blond hair combed straight back and a blond goatee hanging stubbornly from his chin. There was no mustache. Black eyes shone out from deeply recessed sockets, and a long mottled scar traveled elegantly from the corner of his left eye down the side of his left cheek to just below his ear. The overall impression was of a man who was very much in control of himself.
"Can I help you?" Maggie asked. This seemed the appropriate thing to say when a strange man elected to hover over one's pint of stout.
"I hope so, Miss Devereaux," the stranger replied.
This had the desired effect of startling her. At least she assumed that was the desired effect. In truth, his face betrayed no emotion or thought, but clearly he was waiting for some type of reaction. What does one say to a stranger who already knows one's name?
"You have me at an advantage, sir." Maggie liked that. It had a certain 1930s Hollywood charm to it.
The stranger smiled ever so slightly. "That remains to be seen. May I sit down?"
"Um. Sure." What else could she say?
The tall man sat down opposite her. The waitress started to approach to take his order but he dismissed her with a commanding glance.
"You are Margaret Devereaux?"
"Yes. And—" She didn't get to the 'and you are?'
"You're an American."
"Yes, but—"
"And you're studying at the university, correct? In the Department of Celtic."
Scottish Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 1) Page 10
