“No relationship,” said Thomas, “is without its moments of doubt.”
“Yeah,” Maggie said under her breath. Rose could make a pretty good guess what she was thinking, but her relationship with Thomas was her own.
Houses lined the road, their windows feeble gleams in the fog-thickened twilight. A huge yew tree stood beside a church, branches gnarled beyond all comprehension of time. Fortingall. Just past an Arts and Crafts style hotel, Thomas turned onto a gravel driveway. The house at its end was painted white. Each crow-stepped gable made a shelf of snow beside the slick black slate of the roof. Smoke curled from the chimney. The front door opened, light drove back the gloom, and Mick came down the walk looking like one of General Custer’s scouts.
Fixing a smile on her face, Rose climbed out of the car. “Hi.”
“Hello yourself.” His smile didn’t quite work.
“Hello, Mick,” said Maggie.
“Thomas, Maggie, I’m sorry I dinna have better news for you. You trusted me, and I let you down. I made a right good show of running away is all.”
“You didn’t let us down,” said Thomas.
“You did the right thing,” Rose told him, imagining his body lying in a trench like his father’s. “You saved the knife.”
“Well then.” Clearing his throat, Mick went on, “I was expecting the mini-bus.”
“I thought we should have a vehicle with four-wheel drive,” explained Thomas, “so I hired this Range Rover. I don’t suppose Fiona is preparing the tea?”
“That she is.” Mick scooped up Thomas’s satchel and Maggie’s backpack, leaving Rose to shoulder her own.
Two people waited in the doorway of the house. “Come in, come in,” said a man’s voice. A woman’s added, “It’s cold as a witch’s teat out there.”
Rose shook hands with Stavros and Fiona Paleologos. He was short and stout, and most of his black hair had migrated downward to an amazing moustache. She was tall and thin, with a forelock of gray hair and prominent front teeth. “Mick,” she said, “could you take the bags upstairs?”
Rose followed Mick while he dropped Thomas’s bag in one room and Maggie’s in another, decorated in flowery chintz. Throwing her backpack onto one of the beds, she gritted her teeth and turned to face him. Lines scored his forehead. His eyes glinted a hard steel-gray, like armor. He was wearing a blue Celtic cross. She tried, “Are you okay?”
He was looking her over, too. “Oh aye. Just. And you, with Bess and all? I reckon she was murdered, like Dad and Vivian, only not so direct.”
“Ellen freaked out after the tornado and kept trying to convert her and she freaked out over Ellen…” Rose looked down at her feet, slightly pigeon-toed as though recoiling from Mick’s feet a few inches away. “I’m trying to be compassionate, really I am, but it’s not easy.”
“What is?” Mick asked. “And the others—Anna and Sean?”
Rose looked back up, meeting his sober but non-judgmental eyes. “Sean decided to spend a couple of days with one of his buddies whose class is doing Boadicea’s Rebellion. Anna’s still at Temple Manor. She wanted to hear a concert at the Assembly Rooms, and she’s taking Ellen to a doctor—she’s got an infected hand. Mind, too, I’d say.”
“Robin, he’s like a plague, spreading distrust instead of disease.” Tentatively Mick brushed Rose’s hair back from her face.
She leaned into the touch, suddenly hopeful, still afraid to come right out and ask. “Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. It’s almost Christmas, New Year’s, Armageddon, the Apocalypse, whatever. I have to go home the first week of January, assuming there’s a home to go to, but right now home seems less real than—than Camelot.”
“Real as e-mail?” he murmured, his hand retreating.
“E-mail, yeah.” Let’s get this over with. “Mick, I got a message you meant for a girl named Jennie.”
“What? Bloody hell!” His eyes flashed from bewilderment to anger. “I got a message you meant for your sister, telling her I was a dead loss, that you’d rather have Sean.”
Rose went dizzy with relief. She set her fingertips against Mick’s necklace—like swearing on the Bible. “Sean was coming on to me at first. But nothing clicked, and then you came along.”
“Jennie is a lass at university I’d have asked out if all this hadn’t started up. If I’d not met you.”
“So Robin was messing with our minds! Why couldn’t I have trusted you?”
“And I you?” he asked with a grimace.
“Mick…” The name welled up from deep in Rose’s chest.
From downstairs Maggie called, “Mick, Rose, food’s on!”
Exchanging pained smiles, they walked side by side down the stairs. A calico cat greeted them with a meow. “Meet Ariadne,” said Mick.
“Hello there. Got any balls of string to guide us through the maze?” Rose bent to stroke Ariadne’s silky head. The cat purred.
Along the wall of the dining room were arranged several icons, the faces of Mary, Jesus, and various saints looking out from coronas of embossed silver and gold. Under the calm gaze of those eyes Rose sat down at the table and ate her tea, daring to hope that she’d find calm eventually.
Mick filled them in on his escape, concluding, “I wanted to help my dad by saving the Book.”
“You are helping your father,” Thomas told him.
Fiona and Stavros exchanged nods. Maybe they didn’t know who Thomas or Robin really were, but they knew the Story, like the Llewellyns at Durham and the Shaws at Otterburn. Swallowing her last bite of toast, butter, and jam, Rose asked, “Can I help with the dishes?”
“Not at all. You have yourselves a rest,” Fiona answered.
In the sitting room, Stavros poked the smoldering peats in the tiny grate until they flared into flame. Light danced across shelf after shelf, where photos of children and grandchildren nestled among stacks of books. Ariadne sauntered in and sat down on the hearth. Then Fiona clinked through the doorway with a bottle of whiskey, a pitcher of water, and six glasses. “Here’s a wee doch and dorris to see you on your way the morn.” She poured and passed. Rose held her glass to the light, admiring the whiskey’s gold glints, like captured sunlight. The morning, yes.
Thomas offered the toast. “May Mick’s courage of yesterday inspire us all in the days to come.”
“Courage? Well then, thank you kindly.” Mick drank deep.
Rose sipped. Her mouth filled with the sharp-sweet flavor of sunshine, grain, mist, and smoke. Her cheeks burned and her stomach glowed.
“We’ll get on with the clearing up,” said Stavros.
“Thank you,” Maggie called after them, and the others echoed her words.
Rose sat on the couch, Mick beside her. The tingle reached her toes.
“I knew Robin wanted me to lead him to the Stone,” Mick said, “but I never thought he wanted me to lead him to the Book.”
“So confident was he of his hold over Calum he imagined he could have both Stone and Book conveniently together,” said Thomas.
Maggie stretched her feet out to the fire. Ariadne sniffed at her toe. The firelight reflected off the glass in Thomas’s hands and the glasses on his face, reminding Rose of the silver and gold decorations on the icons in the dining room. She asked, “Are you surprised about Mountjoy?”
“I was afraid some shadowed corner of the man’s heart would lead him into Robin’s hands. It’s Armstrong who surprises me.”
“I reckon Mountjoy told him I’d tried to kill him, and brought him along as muscle,” said Mick. “But he didna seem at all hateful, not like the other two, and I’m not so sure he didna help me escape.”
Thomas nodded. “Then we shall keep an open mind. As for Mountjoy, I got onto Kay Dunnet last night. She’ll have a word with the chief constable of Northumbria, so that he can set Mountjoy straight. That should help us, but will do little to heal his fear and pride.”
“Who?” Rose asked.
“Kay Dunnet is a judge. She is also the
guardian of the Brecbennoch of St. Columba, the reliquary that was just given a place of honor in the new Museum of Scotland.”
“Bruce had the Brecbennoch at Bannockburn,” said Mick.
“It was carried into battle by the Abbot of Arbroath, an abbey that is important in the history of the Stone.”
“I suppose,” Maggie said, “it’s no coincidence that Arbroath Abbey was founded by King William the Lion in your honor.”
“Neither is it a coincidence that the English defeated William the same day Henry did penance for the murder at Canterbury.”
“God having a sense of humor.”
“I should distrust a deity without one,” Thomas said with a smile.
Mick shifted uneasily. “Mountjoy’ll not be doing me for assault?”
“Not unless he wants to be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal posing as a police officer.”
With a long exhalation, Mick slumped toward Rose. Ariadne dozed, her eyes bits of ancient amber, exuding tranquility. Crockery jingled in the kitchen. A clock chimed seven. Thomas said, “We must make an early start tomorrow.”
Maggie’s eyes were half-closed, like the cat’s. The cross resting on her sweater rose and fell, gleaming in the light. “Dawn patrol. Over the top.”
“The calm before the storm. The eye of the hurricane.”
Rose’s mind surfed down the flames in the fireplace and the glow in her body. Tomorrow. Outside this house waited fog, death, and the Devil. She’d expected Thomas to deliver another of his sermons, lectures, whatever, steeling them to face their—no sense in mincing words—dangerous quest. Not that anyone thought it was safe. Thomas trusted their intelligence and their courage … She drained her whiskey, wondering if its courage was any more false than any other kind. But no. You just had to choose courage, didn’t you?
Stavros looked in the door. “Anyone for Scrabble?”
“I’m on,” said Thomas. “Maggie?”
“Sure. Just don’t penalize me for American spelling. I take it y’all don’t want to play?” she asked Mick and Rose.
“No, thank you,” said Mick.
Rose waited until she heard the tiles clicking in the dining room and then turned to him. “I shouldn’t have given Robin the satisfaction of doubting you for even one minute.”
“Nor I,” he returned. “If I can trust anyone, lass, it’s you.”
She saw the words leave his lips like bubbles of light. Trust was truth. It had to be chosen, like faith, even though it sometimes took a heck of a lot of courage to do it. “At least,” she whispered, “if Robin keeps trying to break us up, then he keeps pushing us to make up, too.”
“Then let’s be making up,” Mick whispered back.
Rose slipped as easily into his arms as though she’d been doing it for years. She rubbed her cheek from the muscle of his shoulder up to the angle of his jaw, inhaling his scent of shampoo and wool, and buried her face in his hair. Yes, he’d existed in her own personal Dreamtime for a very long time.
His mouth brushed her forehead. “I was scairt I’d not be seeing you again. And there’s so much I’m wanting to see of you.”
“Yes.” And in blissful surrender she raised her mouth to his.
Chapter Thirty-three
Light streamed across a crystalline sky. The surface of Loch Tay looked like silvery blue glass. Nothing moved, not a branch, not a bird, not another car on the road besides the Range Rover. A loud noise or a heavy breath, Maggie thought, would shatter the fragile peace and reveal—what? Chaos? Or an even deeper tranquility? “Where are we going?” she asked in a whisper.
Even Thomas’s baritone was quiet. “To the center point of a triangle whose corners are at Fortingall, Methven where the Bruce was defeated, and St. Fillan’s shrine at Tyndrum. Between Killin, St. Fillan’s cell at the southwestern end of Loch Tay, and the village actually named St. Fillans at the eastern end of Loch Earn, lies a place marked on an ancient map as Tobar nan Bride, St. Bride’s Well.”
“Another Bridget’s Well,” said Rose.
Mick said, “You’re thinking Malise the deoradh hid the stone at one of those ancient shrines adopted by Christians?”
“I think so, yes.”
At last they passed another car. A haze hung over the roofs of Aberfeldy where Thomas turned south. Not far past Amulree he said, “Look behind us, please, and tell me if that’s a green Jaguar.”
Snapping around, Maggie took a long, hard look. “It’s a green car, but it just turned off.” She tried to look every direction at once, but saw only the landscape, all Celtic curves, the road, the hills, leafless trees, a stream rimmed with ice, walls built stone upon stone and snaking away over the skyline. Vehicles of any color seemed anachronistic.
A mile past the town of Comrie, Thomas turned onto a road narrower than Maggie’s driveway. A shabby red car passed, slowed as though for a look and then sped up.
Everyone pretended not to notice. The only reason Maggie couldn’t hear teeth grinding in the back seat was because her own were making too much noise. Nobody needed to speculate what might have happened to Mick two days ago if he hadn’t been as fleet of foot as of brain. Nobody needed to speculate just what might happen today.
As the road climbed above the trees the land opened out. The shining sheet of Loch Earn stretched away westward. Beyond it the mountains were waves of blue and purple shading into the blue of the sky.
Thomas pulled off the paved road onto a dirt track, and then after a few minutes went jouncing right out into a sheep pasture. Bundles of brownish wool with black faces stared as the car angled down the hillside into a hollow shaded by a Scots pine. Finding a level place, Thomas stopped.
They climbed out of the car and stood close together, their breaths rising into a sparkling cloud. “That knob of rock on the far side of the loch is an old Pictish fort, St. Fillan’s seat,” said Thomas. “Below it lies a well that pilgrims visited on the old Celtic holy days.”
Maggie nudged a hump of heather with her toe. The snow-dusted ground was so lumpy with rocks and brush that anything up to and including a Volkswagen could be hidden here.
“One source mentions a hawthorn grove instead of this splendid pine … Ah, several stumps. And the ghost of a path leading up from the loch—see, where the snow outlines a furrow?”
Rose brushed the snow from a bit of broken stone. “Here are some carvings. Spirals and knotwork, really weathered.”
“We’re in the proper place, right enough.” Mick hiked up his coat and pulled out his sgian dubh. “It’s buzzing like a bee.”
There was no wind. There was no noise at all besides their own hushed voices. Maggie couldn’t think of any place she’d ever been—museums, churches—as still as this lonely place. Still, calm, peaceful—and alert.
“Earth to Maggie,” Rose teased.
“Just appreciating the—the spirit of the place.”
“The anima loci,” Thomas said with a nod. “Mick, if you would be so good as to use your knife as a sensor.”
Frowning in concentration, Mick held the knife by its sheath and turned in a circle. “It’s like an electric current running up my arm, strongest there, by that ruined wall. It disna look like more than a sheep fank.”
“A small oratory once stood here, built of flat rocks angled inward at the top to make a roof. I daresay its stones were re-used.” Thomas stepped across the low wall and into what would have been the center of the building, assuming the building was the size of the Paleologos’s dining room. He began picking up rocks. “We’re committing archaeological vandalism here. Ian Graham has already offered absolution, but I think we should have a care not to create too much of a mess even so.”
Mick set the sgian dubh on the larger stump. With Thomas, the alpha male, directing, they cleared the interior of the building down to a few brownish-gold lichens and ferns. Then with the trowels and shovels Thomas had borrowed from Stavros they scraped away the plants and several inches of what felt like soggy potting soil,
revealing a slate floor.
The eastern end of the chapel was built into the slope of the hill. There the slate paving stopped at a rough slab of stone. Ordinary stone, Maggie saw, the same sparkly gray stuff she’d been heaving around. Scraping the mud off the slab revealed an incised Celtic cross. “Was this an altar? Don’t you always put a relic of some sort inside the altar?”
“Here, I should think, the relic is below.” Thomas brushed off his hands. “Very good. We’ve earned our luncheon.”
“I could eat one of those sheep,” said Rose, indicating the dozen or so animals which had meandered closer while they worked.
“We’ve attracted an audience,” Thomas said bemusedly.
“A riff on the Good Shepherd theme,” joked Maggie, but still she looked around to make sure only sheep were watching.
Mick was pulling Fiona’s picnic basket from the car. “Oh good—flasks of tea, sandwiches, cake. Apples. Here you are, lass.”
With a crunch Rose bit into the apple. Eve and the tree of knowledge, Maggie thought. Comfort me with apples for I am sick of love … Thomas handed her a sandwich. “Thanks.”
The sun hung far to the south. A quarter moon flirted with the western horizon, just as it had done the day she stood with Gupta outside the youth hostel. Toy-like cars moved on the road far below and a boat etched the surface of the loch. The human race hadn’t vanished, then.
“Listen!” Thomas said.
Water dripped. Icicles on the pine? No. The drips were coming closer together. Running water. Inside the semicircle of stumps, the sacred precinct, the snow was melting. Some of the bushes broke out with bright yellow flowers. The ground smoothed into a green lawn dotted with more yellow blossoms. Thomas took off his glasses, mopped them with his handkerchief, and put them back on. “Dandelions, St. Bridget’s flower.”
“We’re onto something,” said Rose.
Thomas nodded. “Very much so.”
The crisp air softened, a warm draft welling upward from the ground itself. A black lamb had appeared among the sheep, Maggie saw, an ambulatory stuffed toy who watched with bright beady eyes as they returned to the chapel and lifted the altar stone to one side.
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