He Said, Sidhe Said

by Tanya Huff

  "Well," Carol laughed a little uncertainly, "it must be nice to be young. Doesn't that rock look just like an orange cat?"

  "You think? I don't see it."

  Sam sighed and headed for the dock.

  * * * *

  Ryan sat between the two girls on the way back to the mainland. There was a fair bit of giggling from all concerned.

  The lake was calm, the silvered blue broken only by the wake of the boat and a small school of herring rising to feed on the water bugs dimpling the surface.

  Sam had eaten, then curled up and gone to sleep in her backpack. Dangling a bottle of water from one hand, Diana leaned back against the gunnels and listened to Gary Straum list just some of the more than fifty ships that had gone down between Point Petre and Main Duck Island. She didn't know which ship her sailor had been from, but it didn't really matter.

  He was home now.

  "The Metcalfe, the Maggie Hunter, the Gazelle, the Norway, the Atlas, the Annie Falconer, the Olive Branch, the Sheboygan, the Ida Walker, the Maple Glenn, the Lady Washington..."

  When asked to write a story for Katherine Kurtz and The Tales of the Knights Templar, I devoured every bit of information on the Knights Templar I could find. And still missed a bit, having to add jewels to the medallion in later versions of the story to fit the new information Katherine had included in her afterword. In that afterword, she also mentioned that the splinter was believed to be one of the hallows that fell into the hands of Philip of France. Given the demands of the story, I chose not to believe it and Katherine kindly allowed my version to stand.

  This story makes me cry every time I read it. I don't think anything else I've written has that strong an effect.

  WORD OF HONOUR

  The prayer became a background drone without words, without meaning, holding no relevance to her life even had she bothered to listen.

  Pat Tarrill shoved her hands deep in her jacket pockets and wondered why she'd come. The moment she'd read about it in the paper, attending the Culloden Memorial Ceremony had become an itch she had to scratch – although it wasn't the sort of thing she'd normally waste her time at. And that's exactly what I'm doing. Wasting time. Sometimes, she felt like that was all she'd been doing the entire twenty-five years of her life. Wasting time.

  The prayer ended. Pat looked up, squinted against the wind blowing in off Northumberland Strait, and locked eyes with a wizened old man in a wheelchair. She scowled and stepped forward, but lost sight of him as the bodies around the cairn shifted position. Probably just another dirty old man, she thought, closed her eyes and lost herself in the wail of the pipes.

  Later, while everyone else hurried off to the banquet laid out in St. Mary's Church hall, Pat walked slowly to the cairn and lightly touched the damp stain. Raising her fingers to her face, she sniffed the residue and smiled, once again hearing her grandfather grumble that, "No true Scot would waste whiskey on a rock." But her grandfather had been dead for years and the family had left old Scotland for Nova Scotia in 1770.

  Wiping her fingers on her jeans, Pat headed for her car. She hadn't been able to afford a ticket to the banquet and wouldn't have gone even if she could have. All that Scots wha hae stuff made her nauseous.

  "Especially," she muttered, digging for her keys, "since most of this lot has been no closer to Scotland than Glace Bay."

  With one hand on the pitted handle of her car door, she froze, then slowly turned, pulled around by the certain knowledge she was being observed. It was the old man again, sitting in his chair at the edge of the church yard, staring in her direction. This time, a tall, pale man in a tan overcoat stood behind him – also staring. Staring down his nose, Pat corrected. Even at that distance the younger man's attitude was blatantly obvious. Flipping the two of them the finger, she slid into her car.

  She caught one last glimpse of them in the rear view mirror as she peeled out of the gravel parking lot. Tall and pale appeared to be arguing with the old man.

  * * * *

  "Patricia Tarrill?"

  "Pat Tarrill. Yeah."

  "I'm Harris MacClery, Mr. Hardie's solicitor."

  Tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder, Pat forced her right foot into a cowboy boot. "So, should I know you?"

  "I'm Mr. Chalmer Hardie's solicitor."

  "Oh." Everyone in Atlantic Canada knew of Chalmer Hardie. He owned... well, he owned a good chunk of Atlantic Canada.

  "Mr. Hardie would like to speak with you."

  "With me?" Her voice rose to an undignified squeak. "What about?"

  "A job."

  Pat's gaze pivoted toward the stack of unpaid bills threatening to bury the phone. She'd been unemployed for a month and the last job hadn't lasted long enough for her to qualify for Unemployment Insurance. "I'll take it."

  "Don't you want to know what it's about?"

  She could hear his disapproval and, frankly, she didn't give two shits. Anything would be better than yet another visit to the welfare office. "No," she told him, "I don't."

  As she scribbled directions on the back of an envelope, she wondered if her luck had finally changed.

  * * * *

  Chalmer Hardie lived in Dunmaglass, a hamlet tucked between Baileys Brook and Lismore, the village where the Culloden Memorial had taken place. More specifically, Chalmer Hardie was Dunmaglass. Tucked up against the road was a gas station/general store/post office and up a long lane was the biggest house Pat had ever seen.

  She swore softly in awe as she parked the car then swore again as a tall, pale man came out of the house to meet her.

  "Ms. Tarrill." It wasn't a question, but then, he knew what she looked like. "Mr. Hardie is waiting."

  * * * *

  "Ms. Tarrill." The old man in the wheelchair held out his hand. "I'm very happy to meet you."

  "Um, me too. That is, I'm happy to meet you." His hand felt dry and soft, and although his fingers curved around hers, they didn't grip. Up close, his skin was pale yellow and it hung off his skull in loose folds, falling into accordion pleats around his neck.

  "Please forgive me if we go directly to business." He waved her toward a brocade wing chair. "I dislike wasting the little time I have left."

  Pat lowered herself into the chair feeling as if she should've worn a skirt and resenting the feeling.

  "I have a commission I wish you to fulfil for me, Ms. Tarrill." Eyes locked on hers, Chalmer Hardie folded his hands over a small wooden box resting on his lap. "In return, you will receive ten thousand dollars and a position in one of my companies."

  "A position?"

  "A job, Ms. Tarrill."

  "And ten thousand dollars?"

  "That is correct."

  "So, who do you want me to kill?" She regretted it almost instantly, but the richest man in the Maritimes merely shook his head.

  "I'm afraid he's already dead." The old man's fingers tightened around the box. "I want you to return something to him."

  "Him who?"

  "Alexander MacGillivray. He lead Clan Chattan at Culloden as the chief was, at the time, a member of the Black Watch and thus not in a position to support the prince."

  "I know."

  Sparse white eyebrows rose. "You know?"

  Pat shrugged. "My grandfather was big into all that..." She paused and searched for an alternative to Scottish history crap. "...heritage stuff."

  "I see. Would it be too much to ask that he ever mentioned the Knights Templar?"

  He'd once gotten into a drunken fight with a Knight of Columbus... "Yeah, it would."

  "Then I'm afraid we'll have to include a short history lesson or none of this will make sense."

  For ten thousand bucks and job, Pat could care less if it made sense, but she arranged her face into what she hoped was an interested expression and waited.

  Frowning slightly, Hardie thought for a moment. When he began to speak, his voice took on the cadences of a lecture hall. "The Knights Templar were a brotherhood of fighting monks sworn to defend the hol
y land of the Bible from the infidel. In 1132, the patriarch of Jerusalem gave Hugh de Payens, the first Master of the Knights, a relic, a splinter of the True Cross sealed into a small crystal orb that could be worn like a medallion. This medallion was to protect the master and through his leadership, the holy knights.

  "In 1307, King Philip of France, for reasons we haven't time to go into, decided to destroy the Templars. He convinced the current Grand Master, Philip de Molay, to come to France, planning to arrest him and all the Templars in the country in one fell swoop. Which he did. They were tortured, and many of them, including their Master, were burned alive as heretics."

  "Wait a minute," Pat protested, leaning forward. "I thought the medallion thing was supposed to protect them?"

  Hardie grimaced. "Yes, well, a very short time before they were arrested, de Molay was warned. He sent a messenger with the medallion to the Templar Fleet with orders for them to put out to sea."

  "If he was warned, why didn't he run himself?"

  "Because that would not have been the honourable thing to do."

  "Like dying's so honourable." She bit her lip and wished that just once her brain would work before her mouth.

  The old man stared at her for a long moment then continued as though she hadn't expressed an opinion. "While de Molay believed that nothing would happen to him personally, he had a strong and accurate suspicion that King Philip was after the Templars' not inconsiderable treasure. Much of that treasure had already been loaded onto the ships of the fleet.

  "The fleet landed in Scotland. Maintaining their tradition of service, the Knights became a secular organization and married into the existing Scottish nobility. The treasure the fleet carried was divided amongst the Knights for safekeeping and, as the centuries passed, many pieces became family heirlooms and were passed from father to son.

  "Now then, Culloden... In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie returned from exile to Scotland and, a year later, suffered a final defeat at Culloden. The clans supporting him were slaughtered. Among the dead were many men of the old Templar families." He opened the box on his lap and beckoned Pat closer.

  Resting on a padded red velvet lining was probably the ugliest piece of jewelry she'd ever seen – and as a fan of the home shopping network, she'd seen some ugly jewelry. In the centre of a gold disc about two inches across, patterned with what looked like little specks of gold and inset with coloured stones, was a yellowish and uneven crystal sphere about the size of a marble. A modern gold chain filled the rest of the box.

  "An ancestor of mine stole that before the battle from Alexander MacGillivray. You, Ms. Tarrill are looking at an actual sliver of the True Cross."

  Squinting, Pat could just barely make out a black speck in the centre of the crystal. Sliver of the True Cross my aunt fanny. "This is what..." She searched her memory for the name and couldn't find it. "...that Templar guy sent out of France?"

  "Yes."

  "How do you know?"

  "Trust me, Ms. Tarrill. I know. I want you to take this holy relic, and place it in the grave of Alexander MacGillivray."

  "In Scotland?"

  "That is correct. Mr. MacClery will give you the details. I will, of course, pay all expenses."

  Pat studied the medallion, lips pursed. "I have another question."

  "Perfectly understandable."

  "Why me?"

  "Because I am too sick to make the journey, and because I had a dream." His lips twitched into a half smile as though he realized how ridiculous he sounded but didn't care. "I dreamt about a young woman beside the cairn at the Culloden Memorial Ceremony – you, Ms. Tarrill."

  "You're going to trust me with this, give me ten thousand bucks and a job based on a dream?"

  "You don't understand." One finger lightly touched the crystal. "But you will."

  As crazy as it sounded, he seemed to believe it. "Did the dream give you my name?"

  "No. Mr. MacClery had your license plate traced."

  Her eyes narrowed. Lawyers! "So, why do you want this thing returned? I mean, if it was supposed to protect MacGillivray and Clan Chattan at Culloden giving it back isn't going to change the fact that the Duke of Cumberland kicked butt."

  "I don't want to change things, Ms. Tarrill. I want to do what's right." His chin lifted and she saw the effort that small movement needed. "I have been dying for a long time; time enough to develop a conscience, if you will. I want the cross of Christ back where it belongs and I want you to take it there." His shoulders slumped. "I would rather go myself, but I left it too long."

  Pat glanced toward the door and wondered if lawyers listened through keyholes. "Is Mr. MacClery going with me?"

  "No. You'll go alone."

  "Then what proof do you want that I actually put it in the grave?"

  "Your word will be sufficient."

  "My word? That's it?"

  "Yes."

  She could tell from his expression that he truly believed her word would be enough. Wondering how anyone so gullible had gotten so rich, she gave it.

  * * * *

  Pat had never been up in a plane before and, as much as she'd intended to be cool about it, she kept her face pressed against the window until the lights of St. John's were replaced by the featureless black of the North Atlantic. In her purse, safe under her left arm, she carried the boxed medallion and a hefty packet of money MacClery had given her just before she boarded.

  Although it was an overnight flight, Pat didn't expect to sleep; she was too excited. But the food was awful and she'd seen the movie and soon staying awake became more trouble than it was worth.

  A few moments later, wondering grumpily who'd play the bagpipes on an aeroplane, she opened her eyes.

  Instead of the blue tweed of the seat in front of her, she was looking down at an attractive young man – tall and muscular, red-gold hair above delicate dark brows and long, thick lashes. At the moment he needed a shave and a bath, but she still wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating crackers. A hand, with rather a great quantity of black hair growing across the back of it, reached down and shook the young man's shoulder. With a bit of a shock, she realized the hand was hers. Well, this dream's probably not heading where I'd like it to...

  "Alex! Get your great lazy carcass on its feet. There's a battle to be fought." Her mouth formed the words, but she had no control over either content or delivery. It appeared she was merely a passenger.

  Grey eyes snapped open. "Davie? I must've dozed off..."

  "You fell asleep, but there's no crime in that. Lord John is with his Highness in Culloden House and Cumberland's men are up and about."

  "Aye, then so should I be." Shaking his head to clear the sleep from it, Alexander MacGillivray, lieutenant-colonel of Clan Chattan heaved himself up onto his feet, his right hand moving to touch his breast as he stood.

  His fair skin went paler still and his eyes widened so far they must've hurt. He dug under his clothing then whirled about to search the place he'd lain.

  "What is it, Alex? Have you lost something?" Pat felt Davie's heart begin to race and over it, pressed hard against his skin, she felt a warm weight hanging. All at once, she knew it had to be the medallion and that meant Davie had to be Davie Hardie, Chalmer Hardie's ancestor. Stuffed into Hardie's head, she could access what it held; he'd known the medallion had been in the MacGillivray family for a very long time, but had only recently discovered what it was. More a scholar than a soldier, he'd found a reference to it in an old manuscript, had tracked it back to the Templar landing in Argyll where the MacGillivrays originated, had combed the scraps of Templar history that remained, and had discovered what it held and the power attributed to it. He hadn't intended to take advantage of what he'd found – and then Charles Edward Stuart and war had come to Scotland.

  Pat could feel Davie Hardie's fear of facing Cumberland's army and touched the memory of how he'd stolen the medallion's protection for himself, even though he'd known that if it were worn by one with the right it could very
well protect the entire clan. That cowardly son of a bitch!

  When Alexander MacGillivray straightened, Pat could read his thoughts off his face. By losing the medallion, he'd betrayed a sacred trust. There was only one thing he could do.

  "Alex?"

  The young commander squared his shoulders, faced his own death, and tugged on his bonnet. "Come along, Davie. I need to talk to the chiefs before we take our place in line."

  You need to talk to your pal Davie, that's what you need to do! Then the dream twisted sideways and she winced as a gust of sleet and rain whipped into her face. The Duke of Cumberland's army was a red blot on the moor no more than 500 yards away. When Hardie turned, she saw MacGillivray. When he turned a little further, she could see the companies in line.

  Then the first gun boomed across the moor and Hardie whirled in time to see the smoke. A heartbeat later, there was nothing to see but smoke and nothing to hear but screaming.

  I don't want to be here! Pat struggled to free herself from the dream. Her terror and Hardie's became one terror. Dream or not, she wanted to die no less than he did.

  The cannonade went on. And on.

  Through it all, she saw MacGillivray, striding up and down the ranks of his men, giving them courage to stand. Sons were blown to bits beside their fathers, brothers beside brothers. The shot killed chief and humblie indiscriminately, but the line held.

  And the cannonade went on.

  The clansmen were yelling for the order to charge so they could bring their broadswords into play. The order never came.

  And the cannonade went on.

  "Sword out, Davie. We've taken as much of this as we're going to."

  Hardie grabbed his colonel's arm. "Are you mad?" he yelled over the roar of the guns and shrieks of the dying. "It's not your place to give the order!"

  "It's not my place to stand here and watch my people slaughtered!"

  "Then why fight at all? Even Lord Murray says we're likely to lose!"

  All at once, Pat realized why a man only twenty-five had been chosen to lead the clan in the absence of its chief. Something in his expression spoke quietly of strength and courage and responsibility. "We took an oath to fight for the prince."