Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  Duncan paused, nodding to himself thoughtfully. Andrew waited.

  “O’ course there are parents,” the old Scotsman continued, “who ken hoo t’ lead their sons an’ daughters in the right way wi’ their maker, an’ who gi’ them confidence in themsel’s. Yet even then, ’tis perplexin’ hoo different youngsters can grow in the same home an’ reap different harvests from the same upbringing. ’Tis why ye canna lay it all at the feet o’ the parents. Young men an’ women need t’ find fer themsel’s who they be, take the good wi’ the bad an’ make the best o’ it. But I du allow that yer mum has given ye, an’ Lindsay afore ye, a tough row t’ hoe.”

  “Am I destined to be filled with self-doubts all my life?” asked Andrew.

  “Self-doobt isna really so bad a thing, laddie,” said Duncan with a chuckle. “’Tis what the Creator gives t’ keep us humble. So long as it doesna cripple ye an’ make ye so ye canna do a thing, a little self-doobt can du ye guid. ’Tis the seasoning o’ a gracious soul to keep it from thinkin’ too highly o’ itself.”

  “Self-doubts are rough to cope with in my position!”

  “Ye may be right. The Lord’s tellin’ a different tale w’ each o’ us. But the curse o’ the human lot is either thinkin’ too much or too little o’ oorsel’s. There’s self-doobt and there’s pride—an’ everyone’s got one or the other. Likely enough, everyone’s got a heap o’ both! But ’tis usually one or the other that’s the inner cross o’ character we each must bear till the guid Lord’s work in us is dune. Speakin’ fer myself, I’d rather walk through life wi’ the heavier dose o’ the doobt than the pride. ’Tis perhaps a wee harder t’ bear up under. But the one grows the fruit of Galatians Five in us if we let him have his way, but the other’s a sure ruin o’ character if we don’t.”

  Again Andrew contemplated Duncan’s words.

  “Dinna ye fret, laddie,” said Duncan at length. “Ye’re a man. An’ ye’re a man that’s walkin’ down the right road wi’ yer face held t’ the light. Ye’re just a mite more openhearted than most aboot the struggles ye got inside. But all men’se got ’em. All the men in yer Parliament, an’ yer prime minister—they’re all fightin’ the same battles. ’Tis jist that most never let anither see ’em. An’ there’s some that winna look them square in the eye themsel’s. Ye’re more a man, Andrew my lad, fer facin’ yer doobts an’ trying t’ win through them, not less.”

  Fifteen

  By the time Paddy’s plane touched down at Dublin’s airport, the flaw in her plan had revealed itself. In the time it would take her to pick up her hired car, the good Mr. Larne Reardon would be long gone!

  Well, she thought, she would just have to play it by ear.

  She waited in her seat until the 737 was mostly empty, busying herself rearranging the contents of her small bag so she wouldn’t be noticed by those exiting. The moment the coast was clear she got up and hurried out.

  There was Reardon up ahead, walking briskly toward the ground transportation exit. He apparently had no checked bags to worry about, nor was doing anything right now concerning the mysterious heavy box. By the time Paddy emerged outside the terminal, he was already ducking his balding head into the back of a taxi.

  She’d have to come back for her suitcase and the rental car. At the moment all she wanted to do was keep Reardon in sight.

  Paddy hurried forward, hailed the next taxi in line, and got in.

  “I can’t believe I’m going to say this,” she muttered to herself, “but . . . Follow that cab ahead of us,” she added, now more loudly, to the driver.

  It was not a long ride.

  Both cabs pulled to the front of the Doyle Skylon Hotel between the airport and the city. Paddy waited until Reardon was inside, then got out, paid the driver, and followed the MP into the hotel.

  Dusk was descending. Whatever he was up to, it looked like Reardon planned to spend the night here. At least it wasn’t a five-star hotel, thought Paddy, though still it would probably be more expensive than Pilkington would allow on her expense sheet. But she had no choice, she told herself. She had come this far—she had to see it through. Though for all she really knew, Reardon was on holiday and this flight to Ireland nothing more than an innocent excursion. If this turned out to be a wild-goose chase, her producer wouldn’t pay so much as a pound of her expenses!

  Paddy took a chair in the lobby and pretended to busy herself with a newspaper lying beside her until Reardon was on his way up the elevator. She rose and walked to the desk, hoping they had an available room.

  After she had checked in, and once she was satisfied Reardon would be inside for a while, she would return to the airport for her suitcase and the car Bert had reserved for her.

  Sixteen

  The morning following his eventful talk with Duncan, Andrew said good-bye to his parents. His father was jovial and talkative, perhaps trying to make up for his wife’s silent disapproval of the proceedings.

  He shook Andrew’s hand. “Good luck, son—enjoy yourself. But please—don’t come back wearing a kilt!”

  Andrew laughed. “I doubt my fascination with Scotland will extend quite that far, Dad!”

  He turned to his mother.

  “Good-bye, Mum,” he said. He approached and gave her a hug. She was stiff.

  “Andrew,” she said as he backed away, “you and I are going to have to have a little talk when you get back. If you intend to get anywhere in London, you’re simply going to have to take your responsibilities more seriously.”

  Andrew sighed inside, but did his best not to show his frustration.

  “Right, Mum,” he said cheerfully. He turned to his waiting car before the conversation could go any further down that road.

  “Well, cheers,” he said. “I guess I’m off.”

  Already his mother was walking back toward the house. Andrew waved one last time to his father, then started the engine and backed away.

  He glanced toward the house. His mother stood watching at the doorway. He gave a little wave, then accelerated down the drive.

  “Mother, Mother,” he sighed, shaking his head, “you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

  Andrew drove away from Derwenthwaite and toward Carlisle by his normal route. Turning left in the middle of the city, however, instead of south, sent a feeling of exhilaration and adventure through him that rose even higher twenty minutes later as he passed the blue “Welcome to Scotland” sign on the M74.

  The route was familiar enough. He had attended countless meetings in Glasgow and Edinburgh over the years. But as he drove north through the hills of Dumfries, every mile now appeared different to his excited eyes. Now it was his turn, following in the Wanderer’s footsteps, to explore this land . . . northward, ever northward, toward mountainous unpeopled regions not seen by many, appreciated only by those few capable of detecting their magic.

  The Burns verses came into his head:

  The winter it is past, and the simmer comes at last,

  And the small birds sing on ev’ry tree.

  It summed up just how he felt—happy and alive. For now all the pressure of Parliament, and even his mother’s watching eyes, lay behind him.

  The land of Caledonia beckoned!

  He would drive and hike the moors, the forests, the mountains, the open spaces. He would ferret out little-trod pathways. He would gaze in all directions from Scotland’s rocky peaks. He would walk its islands and stand upon its cliffy shores.

  Glasgow held little appeal to his present adventuresome outlook, nor did any city. More lonely places called out to him.

  Andrew therefore drove straight through the great northern seaport and metropolis, making his way westward along the banks of the Clyde toward the watery rugged coastline of the western isles and the Highlands. At Dumbarton he bore north around the shores of one of Scotland’s two most fabled lakes.

  Seventeen

  Back at Derwenthwaite, Harland Trentham sought his wife inside the house.

  “Weren
’t you being a little hard on Andrew?” he said in an uncharacteristic moment of criticism. “It wasn’t a very pleasant way to wish him a good trip.”

  Lady Trentham stared at her husband, not sure she had heard him correctly. “I know how things in London work, Harland. He would do well to ask my advice about these things.”

  “Perhaps he wants to stand on his own two feet.”

  “He simply has to learn how the political game is played,” she replied a little testily.

  “I for one happen to think he’s done pretty well for himself.”

  “Then why is he off gallivanting about like this?”

  “He’s had a strenuous year—he deserves a little break. And it wouldn’t hurt you to say you were proud of him once in a while. Don’t you know how much your approval means to him?”

  “Pshaw. He knows we’re proud of him.”

  “Maybe we’re proud of him, but are you proud of him? I’ve never heard you say so . . . and I’ll wager neither has he.”

  Lady Trentham stared at her husband blankly, as if the concept was utterly foreign to her way of thinking.

  After a moment her face went pale.

  “I . . . I think I’ll go lie down,” she said. “Suddenly I’m not feeling very well.”

  Eighteen

  Andrew’s mood quieted while driving along the famous loch, with thoughts of the bittersweet love anthem in his brain.

  By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes,

  Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomond . . .

  The words and haunting melody stole over him, and he quietly murmured and hummed the solemn Scottish ballad.

  . . . And ye’ll tak’ the high road,

  An’ I’ll tak’ the low road,

  An’ I’ll be in Scotland afore ye . . .

  A short time later, with the sad, nostalgic strains still weaving in and out of his brain, he passed the sign reading: “Crianlarich, Gateway to the Highlands.” An inexplicable thrill surged through him. He was about to touch the essence of what had for months occupied his heart and soul. The bare starkness of the hills called out to him. So empty they seemed in comparison to his own Lake District, which teemed with visitors and tourists at this time of year. The terrain around him spoke to his soul of wide expansiveness, of adventure . . . of myth and legend.

  Still unconsciously wrapped in the subtle folds of Lomond’s musical spell, which added its own distinctive melancholy to the compelling recipe of mystery, Andrew drove northward up onto Rannoch Moor—home to Foltlaig’s ancient tribe and to Brochan Cawdor of Clan Campbell—then down through the narrow, twisting gorge into Glencoe.

  As the surrounding mountain peaks rose towering over him on each side of the roadway, he relived once more the captivating story of the maiden and the young soldier. On which of these slopes had Ginevra and Brochan met? Where had they escaped during that fateful February night?

  He had made advance accommodation for his first night at the Ballachulish Lodge, nestled at the foot of Beinn a’ Bheithir on the shores of Loch Linnhe, where the Campbell troops had crossed by boat from Fort William.

  The following morning he rose early and drove back into the glen. He parked at the visitors’ center and walked along the banks of the Coe for an hour before breakfast, reliving again the compelling tale from long ago.

  His second day’s drive took him south along the shores of Loch Linnhe to Oban, where a ferry took him across the Firth of Lorn and Loch Linnhe to Craignure on the Isle of Mull. After a leisurely afternoon’s drive across Mull’s lonely southern hills, Andrew found himself standing at the water’s edge in the small village of Fionnphort, looking across the glittering, choppy sea to that Genesis point of spiritual beginnings of Scotland—the tiny historic Isle of Iona.

  The ferry ride across the Sound of Iona filled Andrew with many sensations—the sun, the sea air, the sense of mystery. This was the very place Columba’s mission had begun. The same rocks were here today that those early missionaries and pioneers had trod over so long ago.

  He and the few other passengers disembarked. As they set foot on the island, it was almost with a sense of reverence that all grew quiet. With his heart peaceful and full of feelings he could not identify, Andrew made his way to the hotel to check in. Here he would spend the night, then take the ferry back to Mull in the morning to continue his journey north.

  A brief walk about the village followed, then a visit to the abbey and the nearby grave of former Labour leader John Smith, the Scotsman whose sudden heart attack had stunned the nation a few years earlier.

  After dinner that evening, with book in hand, Andrew went out into the early twilight to walk about the sacred isle and make his way over the rocky rise to the opposite shoreline of open sea.

  Twenty or thirty minutes later he stopped at the water’s edge, pondering the wide expanse of Atlantic stretching out in front of him.

  Nineteen

  For Paddy Rawlings, journalist and amateur sleuth of late, suddenly MP Larne Reardon—whom she had been doing her best to keep track of for the last forty-eight hours—was far less intriguing than the green-and-white van ahead of her.

  More particularly, she was interested in what was inside the crate that sat in the back of the van!

  She had spent an uneventful day and a half at the hotel where, as far as she could tell, Reardon had not done much of anything interesting. Of course, he might have been making any number of telephone calls. But she couldn’t bug his phone, so she had had to satisfy herself with eyeball surveillance. Then suddenly an afternoon delivery truck from the airport had shown up . . . then fifteen minutes later the van.

  Reardon met both in front of the hotel, then supervised the unloading and loading of a large box. It looked exactly as Bert had described. When they brought out a portable hoist she knew it must be of great weight.

  Once the loading was complete, Reardon climbed into a car and drove off in the opposite direction. At that moment Paddy had a decision to make: Which vehicle was she going to follow? She still wouldn’t allow herself to believe what she was thinking. But she wasn’t about to lose sight of that cargo now!

  She hurried for her car, then pulled away from the hotel after the van.

  That was ninety minutes ago. All that time she had been driving through the spectacularly beautiful Irish countryside. They had come forty miles out of Dublin to the southwest, passing a few minutes ago through the town of Carlow. They had just gone by a country pub whose sign displayed faded green shamrocks, a tipsy leprechaun, and the name O’Faolain’s Green.

  Now at last the van began to slow.

  Paddy braked and pulled to the side of the road. That was the hardest part of trailing another car—the constant tendency to creep too close. She didn’t think she’d been seen, though she couldn’t be sure.

  Several hundred yards beyond the pub the van signaled, then pulled off the road to the left. Slowly it continued up a paved but obviously private road toward what must be an estate not visible from the highway. A minute or two later it crested a small rise and was lost to sight among the trees.

  She obviously couldn’t follow it. Her presence would be too obvious. Slowly Paddy turned her car around and returned to the pub. She would park and wait.

  Twenty minutes went by . . . then thirty . . . and forty.

  Suddenly she spotted the van heading back down the paved drive from the small cluster of hills where it had disappeared earlier. It turned back onto the main road, gradually picked up speed, and returned the way it had come. Was her brain playing tricks on her, or did the rear suspension seem to be riding a little higher as it went by?

  The moment the van was out of sight back toward Carlow and Dublin, Paddy started her car and proceeded from the pub along the road, turning left onto the mysterious entryway. Cautiously up the hill she drove, then down through a slightly wooded region. The road took several bends, then rose again into a clearing.

  Paddy gasped in astonishment. Spread out before her at a
distance of about half a mile was an imposing stone castle. Behind it, in the midst of a luxuriant carpet of green grass comprising at least two or three acres, stood twelve or fifteen upright stones set into the earth in a semicircular pattern. They were of varying sizes—two or three huge ones, and the others no larger than two or three feet in height.

  She remembered this place now! She had read about it a year or two ago—the castle and Standing Stones of Carlow.

  This was the Irish equivalent of Stonehenge! Druids gathered here once a year from all over the world to tap the great supernatural powers of the ancient stones. She remembered something about an uproar among the locals a while back. The BBC had interviewed some disgruntled ale-drinking farmers at a local pub—perhaps that same pub she had passed.

  She crept forward down the drive until she came to two great iron gates closed against further approach. To the right, carved into a stone sign with heavy Celtic script, were the words, Celtic Druidic Center. On the other side, anchored into the ground at automobile height, stood a remote-coded keypad and intercom.

  She wasn’t about to press the button to seek entrance. The sooner she got out of this place the better!

  Suddenly she saw three or four men in the distance. Two wore what she took to be druids’ robes. The other two burly fellows were attired as workmen, one carrying a shovel over his shoulder. Between them, from what she could tell, was the crate from the van.

  If only she had a pair of binoculars! The second workman was pushing the box along on a hand truck toward the open grassy area of standing stones. He appeared to be straining to keep the load moving.

  It couldn’t be possible. . . .

  With all of Scotland Yard involved in a massive three-month search throughout the whole country . . . had she actually managed to stumble on to it?

  Things like this just didn’t happen. Not to her.

  But there it was.

  If her suspicions were on the mark, how had Reardon been able to get it out of London right in the middle of Scotland Yard’s investigation? And then past customs and airport security into Ireland? Even MPs didn’t have that kind of clout. Reardon must have some kind of high-placed connection. Maybe, thought Paddy to herself, the answer was in that castle down there behind these imposing iron gates.