The flat stone beneath was pierced by small holes. “Finger holes,” Rose said. “It’s a trap door. Sweet!”
Thomas used a trowel to clear the mud away from the square stone and ream out the holes. Together he and Mick heaved the slab up and, with an echoing thud, back. Beneath it opened a dark, circular hole. A thick musty odor wafted up from it, centuries of mud and decay. “This isn’t a treasure room,” Maggie said. “This is the well.”
“So it is.” Pulling a flashlight from his pocket, Thomas shone it into the darkness. Rose, Mick, and Maggie bumped heads trying to look. The light revealed a cylindrical, stone-lined passage, clogged about ten feet down with rubble. Pale root tendrils clung to the walls amid rivulets of water. “Rats,” said Rose. Maggie had the feeling she’d almost said, yecch.
“We could clear it out,” Mick said, without enthusiasm.
Thomas’s jaw was set hard. Disappointment didn’t describe it. He was doubting his own judgment. Averting her eyes, Maggie straightened and looked around. As though disappointment wasn’t enough, she had the damndest itch between her shoulder blades … Well, everyone, especially Thomas, had looked over their shoulders as often as they’d looked at their work.
Except for the twenty or so sheep and a bird so high up it was almost microscopic, Maggie couldn’t see one living creature. The lamb stood at the edge of the lawn, a dandelion hanging from its mouth.
Flowers didn’t pop up out of frozen ground, she told herself. There was something here, they just had to find it. She looked at the engraved slab lying on its side by the wall. One corner was chipped. No big deal, it was an old stone … “Thomas?”
“Yes?” He tucked the flashlight back into his pocket.
“That stone there. Is it the same size as the capitalS stone?”
“The sources say the Stone is large enough for a man to sit upon without folding his knees to his chest. Taller than its sandstone copies. And larger than this. However…” Thomas knelt by the slab and traced the cross with his fingertip. Then he pulled out his handkerchief. “Mick, could you wet this in the rivulet, please? And fetch your sgian dubh.”
“This stone’s granite, isn’t it?” Rose asked.
“It’s schist, the common stone in this area, just as red sandstone is the common stone at Scone. Thank you, Mick.” Thomas wiped the stone clean.
It was silvery gray, dusted with tiny quartz crystals that sparkled in the sunlight. Holding the sgian dubh by its sheath, Mick leaned over and touched the handle and its black marble chip to the carved cross. “Ow! It’s gone and shocked me!”
A slow grin spread up Thomas’s face. “Let’s set this stone back in its place.” The trap door thudded down. The slab fit back into its template in the mud. “It’s not so heavy as you’d think, is it? Now take the knife from its sheath, if you would, Mick—the sheath is modern, the stone doesn’t recognize it—and fit the chipping to that broken corner.”
Kneeling, Mick held the knife close to the stone. The chip was the right shape, but the wrong texture and color … The sgian dubh flipped out of his hand and with a note like the ringing of a bell landed point first in the center of the circled cross. Landed, and sunk into the rock until the blade was completely hidden.
“I’ll be damned,” said Maggie.
“Oh no,” Thomas said with a laugh, “I think not. There you are, Mick, the sword and the stone. Rose, look!”
The silver of the stone darkened. It grew larger. Each upper corner sprouted into a curved extension—the horns of the altar, described in the Bible and discovered by archaeologists from Rome to Crete to Israel. The stone was a deep, luminous black, like ripe berries or the pupil of an eye. Its surface was carved with sinuous figures that seemed to change as Maggie looked at them—animal, plants, clouds. She shook her head in amazement, magic not being something she was ever going to get used to.
“Here I have been expounding on the Unseen,” said Thomas, “and yet I failed to recognize the Unseen laid before me. The Stone was incomplete. It was like a locked door that needed its key. Thank you, Maggie.”
“No problem,” she returned, with what was probably a dazed smile.
Mick reached toward the knife. “Should I pull it out?”
“I’d replace the chipping first.”
“But it’s glued on tight.” With wary thumb and forefinger Mick tried the chip. It came right off. “Ah,” he said, and set the chip into the broken corner. It attached itself to the stone and merged with it, the seam disappearing into the black marble whole. Mick removed his knife, effortlessly, and rock oozed back into the hole it had made, leaving the Stone unscarred.
“Glory be to God, by whom all things are made.” Thomas stood up, laughing as free a peal of laughter as Maggie had ever heard from him.
Rose and Mick gave each other high-fives. Blowing out a sigh, Maggie turned around and saw that fifty sheep stood ranged around the site. Where had they all come from? Their hooves were as silent as cat’s paws.
A wavering cry cut the still air and then faded away. A closer one rose and fell like the wail of a soul treed by the Wild Hunt. The sheep twitched. Rose took a jerky step closer to Mick. Mick went pale, but still managed a jaunty, “There are no wolves left in Scotland. He’ll not be scaring us away with illusions.”
Two cars appeared on the hilltop. “They’re no illusions,” Maggie said, her elation icing over. “Here we go, folks.”
Thomas’s expression went stern and cold. With his knife Mick traced a circle on the pavement. All four of them stepped inside and stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the Stone.
A green Humvee lumbered down the hillside, squashing plants and sending more than one sheep jogging away. A decrepit red Nissan lunged and bounced and finally stopped just below the brow of the hill. A tall, gangly man climbed out and hurried down the path of destruction toward the Humvee.
From the Humvee stepped three men, led, of course, by Robin. He was wearing what Maggie assumed was his Robert Prince outfit—black overcoat, starched white shirt, striped tie, fancy leather gloves. One of the other men was a jowly individual with slicked-back hair—wait, she’d seen him on television in Glastonbury. Reginald Soulis. The third man looked like a Dallas Cowboys tackle, his shaved head smaller than his massive neck, which rose like a tree trunk from his even more massive body. And Mick thought Willie Armstrong was muscle.
The man from the Nissan was Willie Armstrong, dressed in jeans and a jacket. He took his place beside the others, his blue eyes darting so quickly from sky to loch to sheep to Stone that Maggie wondered if he was using some kind of X-ray vision. Unlike the close-set lead-lined eyes of the other two men, staring sullenly at Thomas and Maggie, Mick and Rose.
Robin’s smile was the usual infuriating mixture of smug and malicious. He pulled off his gloves, slowly, aiming for maximum effect. “You’ve been having a busy day of it, haven’t you? You look to have been digging sewers. I must thank you for sparing me and my men here the dirty work. At least, the dirty work of digging.”
He strolled across the green grass. The black lamb hopped onto the ruined wall. A shudder went through Mick. Rose laid her hand on his arm.
Thomas raised his right hand. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, begone.” Robin stopped dead, grimacing. But he didn’t disappear. Thomas dropped his hand to his side, where it closed to a fist. On to Plan B, Maggie thought, whatever that is.
“See there, Stan,” said droopy-jowls to thick-neck, “he perverts the word of God. He needs stopping. In the old days he’d have been stopped, right and proper.”
Stan—Felton, Maggie assumed—turned a disgusted look on his companion. “So Mr. Posh Toff Soulis is God’s personal mouthpiece, eh?”
Armstrong looked down at his feet. Robin slapped at the lamb with his gloves, shooing it away, and advanced to the edge of the circle. “Stan, Reg, get this stone into the Humvee. Willie, you owe Mick here for bashing you. Come take his little pig-sticker. He’ll not hand you any trouble,
not if he wants to protect Rose.”
All three men started forward, Stan and Reg kicking at the dandelions, Willie trudging along behind.
Robin’s cold green eyes considered Rose. He ran his tongue between his lips. “Your faith has come to naught, now, at the end.”
“This isn’t the end.” Rose’s voice was perfectly steady.
“Not for you, no.” Robin looked Maggie up and down. “As for you, well, mutton can be as tasty as lamb. Especially well-seasoned mutton.”
Maggie saved her breath. Just goes to show you the banality of evil, she thought, that a real live demon came across as a B-movie villain.
Robin stared narrow-eyed into Thomas’s impassive face. “It will take only a moment for my friends here to drop you into that well. Burial alive in her cunt, isn’t that appropriate? You’ll have eternity to contemplate how terribly you’ve failed your trust.”
Thomas’s lips moved. “Pater noster qui es in caelis…”
Robin went on, relishing his moment, “I have two artifacts. They will summon the third from where you have hidden it. Winner take all.”
“Mater noster qui es in terris…” Thomas murmured.
Reg jostled Mick and Rose aside and out of the circle. Stan leered at Rose but was recalled by Reg’s muttered curse. They lifted the Stone and shuffled across the muddy flagstones, groaning and panting. Willie held out his hand to Mick. “Give me the knife, please, sir.”
“Don’t do this,” said Rose. “He’s not a Scotland Yard officer…”
Robin brushed her cheek with his gloves. “Close those delectable lips, Rose. Until I’m ready for them to open.”
Mick stepped in front of her indignant glare, the knife at waist height, and pushed her back into the circle. “Leave off.”
“Brigit daughter of Dugall the Brown,” Thomas said, “son of Aodh son of Art son of Conn son of Criara son of Carbre son of Cas son of Cormac; I shall not be slain, I shall not be sworded, I shall not be put in a cell…”
Reg and Stan walked across the lawn. Sheep stood between them and the Humvee. “Naff off,” Stan called to them.
Now would be a good time, Maggie thought, for Thomas’s prayer to be answered. A little divine intervention. Deus ex machina, even … A breath of warm wind fanned her hair. She heard barking. Not the howling of wolves, but the barking of dogs. Over the hill ran two border collies, their black and white coats gleaming in the sun. The sheep, all ninety and nine of them, roused themselves. The dogs urged them into a run. The black lamb leaped up onto the hill above the eastern end of the chapel, his halo glowing.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Thomas gestured, and the gesture alone knocked Robin to the side.
Willie leaped out of the way as Robin stumbled toward him. Stan and Reg dropped the Stone, turned to run, and were submerged beneath a wave of wool.
Even Maggie knew the text Thomas was setting. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.”
Mick sprinted toward the Stone, sheep parting like the Red Sea before him. Taking one of the horns of the altar in his left hand, he brandished the knife in his right.
Robin’s momentum brought him up against the ruined wall. His knees buckling, he sat down hard. His eyes flashed, his teeth ground, his mouth contorted into a sneer that was equally hatred and jealousy. “Get the Stone, Armstrong! Damn you, get the Stone!”
Stan and Reg reappeared, dirty and disheveled, as the flock stampeded past them. They staggered to their feet and toward the door of the Humvee. But the dogs were on them, snarling and snapping. Stan elbowed Reg aside. Reg kicked him. One dog leaped, got a mouthful of Stan’s coat, and jerked him down. Reg leaped into the driver’s seat and slammed the door not only on the second dog but on Stan.
Turning his back on Robin, Willie inched toward the Stone. Mick spun toward him. “Constable, you’re needing to choose yourself a side. Now.”
Willie stopped dead, raising his hands. “I only ever meant to be one of the good guys, and just now I reckon that’s you lot.”
Maggie and Rose lent their voices to Thomas’s, the words spilling out in a musical cadence, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
With a cry of rage, Robin vanished.
Reg started the engine. Stan threw himself at the Humvee. He opened the door just as Reg took off, spraying clods of dirt, and pulled himself inside. The car roared down the hill toward the highway, bouncing and heaving, Stan’s feet flapping out the open door. It disappeared behind the shoulder of the hill and the noise of its engine faded and died.
The thunder of hooves and the protesting baa’s dwindled into the distance. The sheep might never have been there, except the snow and the grass were churned by hooves. The lamb stood above the chapel, its dark eyes surveying the scene below with benign wisdom and no little humor. Maggie thought suddenly of what Gupta had said, about natural forces which are very much involved, intelligent, even ironic.
“Robin is powerless against the unblemished lamb,” Thomas said with a deep genuflection.
The two dogs took up stances on either side of and just below the lamb, their mighty wings opening, their swords gleaming … Maggie blinked. Three ordinary animals were scampering away down the hillside.
“Wow,” breathed Rose. Mick released the Stone and looked at his knife.
“What was all that in aid of?” Willie peered down the hill with a disgusted expression, no doubt thinking Robin had run after the Humvee. “Why were you staring at the dogs and the lamb?”
Thomas answered, out of breath, “We saw a vision.”
“A hallucination, like as not,” Willie corrected, “what with hyperventilating and all. I read about that in a science journal.”
Thomas conceded the field to Willie’s magazine. “Would you care for some food, Constable? There is a lovely picnic hamper in the back of the Rover.”
“Don’t mind if I do, it’s a right cold day and Prince left me sitting in a layby for bloody hours.” With a slightly snockered look at Rose, Willie marched over to the car.
Rose gave Mick a hug. “My hero!” she said with a grin.
“My heroine!” he returned, but his grin wobbled. He touched her cheek. “Are you all right, then, lass?”
“He didn’t hurt me. He just made me mad.”
Mick sheathed his sgian dubh. “It’s still tingling.”
“An object that comes in contact with a relic often takes on the virtue of that relic,” Thomas told him.
Maggie’s knees felt like jelly. She took Thomas’s hand and he returned her grasp. Was that what the knife felt like to Mick? Except the thrumming of power she sensed was not in an artifact of steel and bone, but in a man. A man who was, at the moment, so white around the gills he was darn near green. “The Stone—it caused the sheep and the dogs and—and everything?”
“That was what we in the religion business call a miracle. A glimpse of the Invisible.”
She wasn’t going to argue. “You deliberately risked our lives to get the Stone, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Once again I apologize for my presumption.”
“You just hoped we’d defeat him?” Maggie persisted.
“The relics perpetuate hope. If you needed any proof of that…”
“…I got it. If there were an objective test of a miracle, then it wouldn’t be one, right?” With a groan that was as much a laugh, she squeezed his hand and released it.
Willie came strolling back, half a sandwich in his hand. “Constable Armstrong,” said Thomas. “I assume you’re no longer working with Robin Fitzroy. Robert Prince.”
“Robin Fitzroy? Well, he’s lied about most everything else, why not his name?” Willie inhaled the rest of the sandwich. “He says you’re some sort of master criminal, Mr. London. But I reckon if you’d killed Calum Dewar, then you’d just as soon have left me to die at Housesteads. I wasn’t out c
old the entire time, mind you, just muzzy. I heard voices. Prince’s I placed when he was talking to Mountjoy, and Mick’s I placed in Edinburgh.”
“What did you overhear, then?” asked Mick.
“You asked Prince about the car I’d left in the car park. If you’d coshed me, you wouldn’t be pointing out I’d gone missing, would you? He told you I was okay. Even if he didn’t know I was lying there with my head bashed in, he had no call telling you I was okay. And why take you away to a safe house when Hexham police station was just up the road?”
Smart kid, Maggie thought.
“He and Mountjoy were going on about some religious foundation being under attack. Didn’t sound at all sensible to me, but then, you wouldn’t go wrong calling me an atheist. Each to his own.”
Rose smiled indulgently.
“Prince was flannelling Mountjoy about promotions and Scotland Yard and how everyone else was after bringing him down. Then, the way I hear it, the chief constable got onto Scotland Yard and they’d never heard of Prince. The chief was already unhappy with the way Mountjoy was handling the Dewar case, so had him in and dressed him down. Mountjoy resigned on the spot. When Prince rang me and told me I was still working for him, I came along to see what’s what. And I saw it. He’s some sort of master criminal himself, is he?”
“You could say that,” said Thomas.
“Well, art theft can be as rum a business as drug-running. Anywhere there’s brass there’s crime.” Willie made a face. “And I handed over that old book sweet as you please, didn’t I? Prince said he’d take it to the evidence room in Edinburgh, but I reckon he still has it. Damn and blast!”
Thomas suggested, “You were only following orders.”
“Ah, but there’s more than orders to follow, if you take my meaning.”
“I do.” Smiling, Thomas pulled a scrap of paper and a pen from his pocket. “Here’s my address and telephone number, Constable, and Mick’s in Edinburgh. Superintendent Mackenzie will vouch for us, if need be.”
“No need. I believe what I see.” Willie took the paper. “Glastonbury, is it? Grand place.”
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