The Silver Bough

by Lisa Tuttle

  “Weird,” said Ashley again, turning away and dismissing it with a shrug.

  “Well, are we ready to go?”

  “There’s more to the upstairs than this,” Graeme objected.

  “Yes, but you can’t get there from here.” She led the way, and one at a time they returned downstairs and across the reference room, then through the door marked EMERGENCY USE ONLY and up another, more solid, set of stairs to the old meeting room.

  “I’m afraid you aren’t seeing this room at its best, because it’s been used for storage.”

  “That’s the Wall collection, am I right?” Graeme gazed avidly at the glass-fronted bookcases.

  “That’s right. Soon to be sold off, once there’s been a proper evaluation.”

  “That’s not right.” He scowled. “Old Lachlan Wall donated his personal library—which included books his grandfather had collected—to the people of Appleton, for their education and enrichment.”

  She suspected Graeme would not be the only local resident to object to selling off an entitlement they had never seen or previously cared about. “Times change. Some of these books may have been cutting-edge when they were donated, but very few people are interested in reading them now. Some may be collectors’ items, but others”—her eyes fell on a set of books beautifully bound in dark burgundy-colored leather, with gilt lettering on the spines announcing The Collected Sermons—“just take up space. I think most people would rather we had funds to buy more new books.”

  “Most people are Philistines.”

  “Well, Graeme, if you want to read any of these books, there’s still time,” she said sweetly. “They’re all in the card catalogue, in the drawer marked ‘Wall Collection.’”

  “There is one I’d like to read—I know I asked you about it—Alexander Wall’s journal.”

  She nodded, thinking of the handwritten book on her bedside table. “If you’ll come in during opening hours and fill out a request form, I can have it for you the next day. It can’t be taken out, so you’d have to read it in the library, that’s the only thing.”

  He still looked dissatisfied. “I never got anywhere requesting it before.”

  “That was before my time. I’m telling you how things are now.” She glanced over at Ashley, who was looking faintly stupefied with boredom. “Come on, I’ll show you the last of it…although unless you have a special interest in storerooms, it’s not very exciting.”

  “I love storage rooms,” Graeme declared. “You never know what you might find.”

  The room beyond was at least twice the size of the meeting room, uncarpeted, and furnished only with industrial-type shelving. The shelves held back issues of old magazines, box files of old paperwork, documents, issues of the local newspaper dating back to the nineteenth century, and boxes containing some of the smaller items from the museum’s collection. Larger boxes and wooden packing cases were piled everywhere. The very sight made her quail at the magnitude of the task ahead.

  “You don’t have any idea what’s here?”

  She frowned, feeling her professionalism criticized. “Of course I do. I know exactly. There’s a list of everything in the museum collection, and the boxes are all labeled.”

  He crossed to a pile of cardboard boxes and pulled open the folded-down top. Before she could say anything to stop him, he’d rummaged inside and pulled out something wrapped in a sheet of old newspaper.

  “Hey, look, do you mind?”

  He looked ashamed. “Oh, sorry. But since I’ve got it out…?”

  She sighed and watched as he removed a small, round, red container carved with an oriental key pattern and topped with a blossoming tree. “It looks Chinese,” he said, surprised.

  “It probably is.” She went over to read the neatly printed label affixed to the side of the box. “Look: ‘Chinoiserie donated by Miss N. McLennan, ca. 1924; acquired by her late brother during his naval career.’”

  “But that’s nothing to do with Appleton.”

  “I know. People obviously had a different idea of what the museum was for in the past, so anything exotic, or unfamiliar, or beautiful…” As she spoke, he carefully rewrapped the trinket and settled it back inside the box.

  “What’s this painting?”

  They both turned at Ashley’s voice. She was standing by the far wall, gazing at the corner of a large, gilt frame sticking out from behind some boxes. Kathleen stared, trying to remember a painting.

  “Graeme, would you help me…?”

  Working together, the three of them quickly cleared away the obstructing pile of boxes to reveal an ornately framed oil painting. It was a big—more than three feet long—panoramic view of Appleton’s harbor. In the background the hotel and the golden dome and dominating pillars of the library were immediately recognizable, as were the palm-lined Esplanade and the pier. However, the umbrella-shaded café tables in front of the hotel, and throngs of brightly dressed pedestrians strolling through brilliant sunshine seemed to have been imported from the French Riviera, and the artist’s depiction of the water traffic was pure fantasy.

  The view of the shore might—allowing for a bit of artistic license—have been painted from life on a sunny summer afternoon, and the style was faintly Impressionistic. Beyond the water’s edge, however, the artist’s style had undergone a sea change, becoming weirdly hyperrealistic in depicting vessels and people that could never have been seen in this little Scottish town. Close in, a few ordinary, old-fashioned fishing smacks lay at anchor, and there was a red-chimneyed puffer recognizable as the sort of boat that had regularly made the journey from Glasgow to Appleton from the 1880s until the 1950s. But these familiar vessels were outnumbered, and overwhelmed, by the many far more exotic craft that filled the harbor. There were dragon-prowed long ships and oriental junks, gondolas, rowboats, several basketlike coracles, a Polynesian canoe, and numerous sailing ships, from sleek little two-sailed yachts to heavy, eight-masted schooners flying flags she did not recognize. The passengers and crew of the vessels were equally varied: Some were scarred, heavily armed, sinister-looking pirates, some had a royal appearance, were richly dressed, or looked like Aztec warriors, Vikings, naked and tattooed Polynesians, red-blond Celts and solemn Mandarins mingling in the scene with creatures that looked half-animal, barely human.

  A small, etched brass plate screwed into the lower part of the frame identified the picture as Fantasia: Appleton Harbour on Fair Day by Emmeline Wall.

  “Amazing,” breathed Ashley.

  “Alexander Wall’s daughter,” said Graeme.

  “Why isn’t it hanging in the museum?” Kathleen wondered aloud. She looked at him. “Did you know about this?”

  He shook his head. “I knew she was meant to be an artist, but I’ve never seen any of her paintings. I never really thought about it. If I did, I probably assumed she wasn’t any good, and that was why…”

  “But this is brilliant,” said Ashley. “How could they just hide it away up here? Are there any more by her?”

  They spread out around the room to check the walls, peer behind piles of boxes and on top of shelves. Within a few minutes, Kathleen was satisfied there were no other hidden paintings.

  “But she might have done some smaller ones; they could be in box files, especially an unframed canvas,” Ashley argued, her eyes roaming over the shelves.

  “If there are others, they’re listed. Mr. Dean was very good about his records.”

  Ashley didn’t look satisfied. “You didn’t know about that painting.”

  “I’d never seen it, that’s all.” This was a lie; she’d no idea the painting existed. But she was sure that it was recorded in the list of museum holdings—why wouldn’t it be? She rushed on, “There’s a book, a collection of Emmeline’s drawings, downstairs.”

  “Really? Could I see it?”

  “Of course.” She felt relieved by this simple conclusion. “Let’s go.”

  She ushered them back into the meeting room and locked the door to th
e storage room behind her. Turning back, she saw that Graeme, predictably, was reading the titles of the books displayed in the locked case, while Ashley loitered, dreamy-eyed.

  “Alexander Wall’s journal must be here somewhere, don’t you think?”

  “I think if you fill out a request form and give it to me during my normal working hours, I’ll find it for you.”

  “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.” He smiled ruefully, holding up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll go quietly now, ma’am.”

  She was following him toward the door when something made her look back at Ashley. As she turned, she caught a glimpse of motion, too swift to interpret, and then the guilt that flickered across the girl’s face.

  “What is it?” Her voice was perfectly pleasant, but she fixed her with the look she used when some kid was trying to lift a CD, or sneak an expensive book out under his coat. “Let me see.” She held out her hand.

  Her cheeks took on a dark red stain as she raised her hand from where she’d had it hidden below the table. “I was just about to,” she muttered. “I just saw it…I was just about to say…” She dropped what felt like a ball into Kathleen’s hand.

  It was a carved and polished wooden apple, invitingly smooth and heavy, a simple thing, yet strangely beautiful. As she ran her thumb over the fine-grained wood she saw a sequence of symbols had been incised around the top.

  “What is it?” asked Graeme. “May I see?”

  She gave it to him.

  He held it balanced in his hand, gazing at it with a kind of awe. “Well, well, well. This is a find. I wondered what had happened to it.”

  “What is it?”

  He pointed to the symbols. “That’s Greek. It means ‘to the fairest.’ Ashley, my dear, this was your grandmother’s prize. Where did you find it?”

  “It was just lying there.” She waved at the table, indicating an empty spot between two boxes of books. “I wondered what it was so I picked it up. Just to have a look; I wasn’t going to steal it!” She darted an angry look at Kathleen.

  Kathleen didn’t believe her. If the wooden apple had been lying on the meeting room table, she would have seen it herself before now. Ashley must have found it in the storeroom, poking into some box while her back was turned. Perhaps she hadn’t intended to keep it; that quick flash of motion might have been her attempt to leave it on the table.

  “But if it belonged to Phemie, what’s it doing here? If it’s my family’s property?” Ashley had made a quick volte-face from the guilty to the injured party.

  “The winner only got to keep it for a year.” Graeme handed it back to Kathleen. “It would be given to a new Apple Queen at the next fair. The museum’s the best place for it now.”

  “I agree.” She slipped the wooden apple into one of the deep, wide pockets of her skirt. “Thank you for finding it, Ashley. I don’t know how I managed to overlook it.”

  By the time they got downstairs, she felt apologetic. She didn’t really think Ashley was a thief, and it was not surprising that she’d felt moved to pick up something so beautiful. Even now, the weight of it in her pocket drew her hand to stroke it. Maybe she really had found it on the table; Miranda or Connie or one of the cleaners might have left it there recently. She had been surprised today by a figure in a painting and a whole shop she’d never noticed before; it was surely just as likely that she’d failed to see a carved wooden object in the shadow of a cardboard box on her last few visits to the room upstairs.

  In the reference room she went to the bottom shelf where the oversized books were kept, and withdrew a tall, skinny volume.

  “This is Emmeline’s work. Her father had it privately printed in Glasgow. I don’t know how many copies were made, but the library has two.” She put it down on a table and opened it, then stepped back so the other two could look at it.

  Doorways

  by Emmeline Wall

  Glasgow

  1912

  “She was just a kid!” Graeme exclaimed when he saw the date.

  “You haven’t seen this before?”

  He shook his head. “Never knew it existed. So, what’s it all about? What sort of book would a sixteen-year-old girl write?”

  Ashley had already turned the page, to a fine, detailed drawing of a heavy wooden doorway within a carved-stone archway, immediately recognizable to any Appleton resident as the entrance to the Free Gaelic Church or “the Tartan Kirk.” On the next page, the narrower doorway into the Lowland Church was depicted, and then those of the other three churches in town, as well as the crumbling archway into a ruined chapel on a hillside somewhere. There were other doors, to buildings both grand and humble, shops and hotels and private homes. The front entrance of the Public Library—her father’s design—was faithfully reproduced, and so were the detailed carvings on the doors into the museum.

  “Pictures of doors?” Graeme turned away from the table, his brow knitting.

  “The book is called Doorways,” Kathleen said with a smile. “Emmeline was an artist.” The only text in the entire book was on the title page, unless you counted the few bits of lettering above some of the doors: the date and dedication carved above the library entrance, the names of a few businesses, the shaky hand-lettered warning Mind Yer Heid above a low cottage door.

  Hand in her pocket, she caressed the wooden apple and felt her thumb catch on the Greek letters. “Fancy you knowing Ancient Greek,” she said. “Where’d you learn that?”

  He ducked his head, abashed. “Actually, I don’t. I knew what was written on that apple, because I’d read about it.”

  “They’re not all doors.”

  At Ashley’s comment they looked down at a picture of the graveyard.

  “Some of them you have to take metaphorically, I think.”

  “So what’s this?” She turned to the next page; a pile of stones in a grassy meadow, with hills rising behind it.

  “Oh, you know that!” He leaned over her shoulder. “That’s where I took you yesterday—it’s the reul, see there?” He ran a fingertip over the line of hills. “And those rocks…well, couldn’t that be the doorway—all fallen down, I admit—to one of the old stone huts?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She turned the page. “So how do you explain that?”

  The last sketch in the book was of the weird, imposing rocks that reared up beside the road into Appleton.

  “Easy,” said Graeme. “That road is the only way in or out of town—the entrance and exit—a door.”

  “But you can’t even see the road in the picture—just the rocks, and the sea, and the setting sun, and the empty sky.”

  “Maybe she meant the sea, then,” said Kathleen. “That was the main doorway to the rest of the world, in the old days. Those rocks do sort of frame it.”

  “Mmm.” The girl sounded skeptical. “She should have put a boat in the picture if that was what she meant.” She shut the book. “Well. Thanks for letting me see this. What else did she do?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “She couldn’t have just stopped—she was too good. If she was only sixteen when she did the drawings in this book…how about that painting upstairs? When did she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see a date on it. I’ll try to find out.” She smiled. “I have to thank you for making two big discoveries this morning! I’m going to get on to headquarters, see what I can find out about the painting, and get it on display as soon as possible. If we could uncover more work by Emmeline Wall, that would be even better. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Ashley smiled back, and she felt relieved that the brief unpleasantness about the apple had been smoothed over. It had occurred to her that she’d completely misread the whole situation. Rather than taking the apple, Ashley had been bringing it back. Maybe her grandmother had felt guilty about running off with it, and Ashley had felt moved to return it to the town—but secretly, so her grandmother wouldn’t be branded a thief.

  “I wouldn’t get your hopes
up about finding much more work by Emmeline Wall,” said Graeme, as they walked back to the foyer. “She died young.”

  “What happened?”

  “Suicide. She was an unmarried mother. Her father could forgive her anything, but I don’t think the rest of the town felt that way. Could be that’s why her painting wasn’t on display. Bad feelings linger. Even though she was dead, the townsfolk wouldn’t want to glorify someone they considered immoral—and possibly mentally unstable.”

  “Are you serious? God, people can be so narrow-minded! She was fantastically talented! That’s what matters.” Animated, Ashley was much more attractive, and Kathleen was startled by a sudden warm rush of affection for the girl. She wondered what it would be like to have a daughter, then backed off from the thought in alarm.

  Don’t go getting broody now, she warned herself. Bad timing!

  She walked with them to the back gate and let them out, then went to lock up the library. It was only after she was back in the house that she realized she still carried the wooden apple in her skirt pocket.

  She took it out and set it down on the hall table alongside her heavy ring of keys. The sight of it, first thing in the morning, would remind her to call headquarters and raise the subject of Emmeline’s painting and other important questions about the museum.

  From The Silver Bough, Vol. 1:

  Scottish Folk-lore and Folk Belief

  by F. Marian McNeill

  (William MacLellan, Glasgow, 1957)

  THE Celtic Elysium was situated not, like the heaven of the hymnist, “above the bright blue sky,” but here upon earth; but, as it was a subjective world, its location was vague…. Sometimes it was a mystic green island that drifted on the western seas. Men caught occasional glimpses of it, half hidden in a twinkling mist, but when they attempted to draw near, it vanished beneath the waves…

  The Green Island has been seen in almost every latitude from Cape Wrath in Scotland to Cape Clear in Ireland. Sometimes it was identified with a particular isle of the West.

  “According to Irish tradition,” says Professor Watson, “Arran was the home of Manannan, the sea-god, and another name for it was Emain Ablach, Emain of the Apples. This is, I suppose, equivalent to making Arran the same as Avalon, the Happy Otherworld.”…