CHAPTER 18
THE ISLAND WITHIN THE ISLAND
On arriving at the small neat harbour at Portree on Skye, The Smith had disembarked at the stone quay and walked past the white-painted houses which lined the harbour, feeling an urgency that had been somehow increased by contemplation of the light being drawn into the dark basalt peaks beyond the town. He had made inquiries at the low-built inn at the end of the main street, and within ten minutes had engaged a man with a pony and trap to drive him to his destination.
Just under an hour later, he was standing on a stone bridge, new to him but already old in the memories of the present inhabitants of the island, looking down at the vertiginous drop into the gully between the rocks below where a stream had cut both sides of a small islet beyond, and where the water flowed on down to the sea and into the west.
“Ancient burial ground, that is,” said the driver, who was chewing on his pipe.
The Smith looked away to the other side of the bridge, where the ruins of a low-built blackhouse was falling slowly apart, breaking itself back down into the landscape, the roof gone, the rocks that had been its walls beginning to tumble to the ground from which they had been gathered. Stone bramble and willowherb had taken residence in the room-space within the walls, and a single elder had rooted in one wall-end and was slowly splitting it apart.
The Smith’s face hardened. He turned back to the driver.
“You’re tired, I think,” he said. “You’ll have a sleep until I return.”
“Well, it is true that I am tired,” said the driver, who until that very moment had been under the impression that he was brimming with vigour and ready for anything, and he yawned and sat back in his seat and began to snore.
The Smith stepped off the road and dropped down the steep slope beside the bridge, moving fast, but taking care not to slip as he descended. He emerged from the shadow of the stonework and forded the right-hand stream with little worry about getting wet, so that he arrived on the boat-shaped island with his trousers soaked to the thigh. He ducked beneath a bent rowan tree and found himself facing a grassy enclosure on the surface of which lay a series of rudely carved stones, like ancient grave markers. Some were incised with runic markings; others bore rough-hewn effigies of knights with pointed helms and swords held in their crossed hands. He strode over these and found a longer stone, almost buried below the wild grass. This stone was undecorated. He knelt and felt the edges of the thing; he shook his head. If anything had been listening, it would have heard him suck his teeth in disappointment. As it was, the pair of eyes watching him was too far away to hear, but they saw him shake his head, brace his muscles and then lift the edge of the stone. Teeth gritted, he held it ajar with one hand while he retrieved a candle from his coat, snapped his wrist to light it and held it in the hole, peering into what was clearly a deep space below.
He winced slightly, as if stung, and something in his face died as he looked in the hole, and then he scowled with an unaccustomed sourness, his face stuck halfway between dread and disappointment.
He extinguished the candle, stepped away and let the stone drop back into place with a dull thud. He stood very still for nearly fifteen minutes, as if absorbing what he had—or in this case had not—seen as he rubbed the small of his back, trying to ease the twinge which had made him flinch at his discovery. Then he smacked the dirt off his hands by clapping them together and strode away without looking back. He crossed the stream again, and climbed the wet rocks leading steeply up to the road with less care than he had descended them.
The driver woke to find The Smith had remounted the trap and was pointing at the ruined blackhouse.
“The family that lived there. Do you know them?”
“Ho yes,” said the driver, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Ho yes, and how would I not? A very famous family on the island they were too. MacCrimmon they are called, and great ones for the Pìobaireachd they were, yes indeed. Pipers you would call them in the English.”
“And where might I find them?” said The Smith.
“Oh, gone, gone away now, to be sure. Red Donald went away, and Black John—why, he was the last of the hereditary pipers, you see. No, no there’s none of them left, no pipers and the family gone. Except for the one chap, that would be Donald Ban, the fair-haired one. But he has no children Donald Ban, so the family is all but departed, which is a sad thing, they having been such ones as they were, yes indeed.”
“And where can I find this Donald Ban?” said The Smith.
“Oh, just where he always is. At the castle. He is the steward there, though he does not play the pipes as his forefathers did, more’s the shame of it.”
“Take me there,” said The Smith.
As they drove the driver expressed disappointment on The Smith’s behalf that the MacLeod himself had just left the island to visit his fine architect in Edinburgh, since he was sure that his lordship would have been delighted to welcome the English gentleman to his castle, in particular to show him around the new marvellous improvements that were being erected around it.
The Smith explained he was only interested in finding the MacCrimmon and the conversation petered out until they drew in sight of the castle itself, which was a suitably impressive and angular imposition on the softer curves of the surrounding landscape, perched atop an imposing block of columnar basalt that rose ten yards or so above the encircling waters of Loch Dunvegan: it appeared both impregnable but also severely under attack, the illusion of beleaguerment being given by the scaffolding which encircled the façades of the old stone fortifications like so many siege towers.
“Stonemasons brought all the way from Glasgow,” said the driver, shaking his head in wonder. “He’s no mind for expense these days, has the MacLeod.”
The Smith left the driver and made his way to the castle, crossing the narrow bridge on foot. He walked purposefully, and those he met were quick to take him to the steward, compelled by the authoritative directness of his manner and something fierce in his eyes that persuaded them that this visitor was on an errand that brooked no delay. A stonemason’s boy took him to the master of works who recommended him to a passing house servant who took him inside the castle, where an elderly retainer who appeared to have the undemanding duty of sitting smoking a pipe outside the main door passed him to a red-cheeked maid who was scrubbing the stone flags within the hall, and she finally took him to the steward, Donald Ban MacCrimmon.
Donald Ban was a pale, sandy-faced man whose watery eyes seemed happiest either when examining the floor or looking at an indeterminate patch of air just to one side of whoever he was addressing. This gave him an evasive manner that was at odds with his mode of speech, which was very precise in the way of the natural Gaelic speaker forced to express himself in a language of which he had a punctilious technical mastery but no great affection. His “j” was chopped out like a “ch” so that “just” became “chust” and he lingered on the “s” sound at the end of words so that, for example, “was” became “wass,” and thus all his sentences contained their own hiss of barely restrained discontent. He also smelled strongly of spirits. All in all, his demeanour was sullen and truculent even when The Smith had caught his eye and worked on him to ensure his compliance.
He met The Smith in the main hall, and once the cursory pleasantries of greeting had been done with, the traveller wasted no time in asking why the flag was no longer interred on the island-within-the-island.
Normally the abrupt question would have surprised MacCrimmon, but he was in the thrall of The Smith’s thunderous gaze, and so he did not think to wonder why this stranger was asking such a question, nor how he knew to ask it of him among all the other islanders. Instead he sniffed and examined the flagstone between their feet.
“It was not my doing. It was before my stewardship that it was brought to Dunvegan.”
“Why was it brought?”
“I am thinking that they just thought it would be safer,” he said with a shrug.
“Well. It is sometimes an island, when the tide is high, for the ditch fills with the sea. But better than an island, it is and always was a castle.”
“No,” said The Smith. “It is just a castle.”
This imputation of inadequacy was offensive enough to the MacCrimmon’s delicate sensibilities to drag his eyes from the wall just to the left of The Smith’s head and make him stare in outrage into the wintry face in front of him.
“Sir. Dunvegan Castle is the home of the MacLeod, Lord of the Isles. It is not just any castle.”
The Smith’s hands flexed and clenched into hammer-like fists, which he then forced himself to unclench as he leaned closer, not allowing the MacCrimmon the release of looking away.
“If all that was needed to keep the flag safe was a castle, we, the people who entrusted it to your family would not have gone to the extremely perilous inconvenience of bringing it here. There were other fortified places further south that would have been much more convenient.”
“It is safe,” said MacCrimmon, mouth working as if trying not to swallow something unpleasant. “It is here in the strongroom.”
“Then show me,” said The Smith.
It did not seem to the steward that there was anything at all odd about the request from this southern-speaking stranger to open his master’s strongroom, nor did it for a moment occur to him that he should do anything but comply.
In short order, he had led him down a flight of spiral stone stairs and had unlocked a thick ironbound door, studded with ancient nail heads. The strongroom was in the undercroft beneath the hall and was part armoury, part storeroom. MacCrimmon lit a lamp which smelled of fish oil and led The Smith to the furthest end of the room, where a long box lay against the walls.
He found another key on the heavy ring he carried and unlocked a rusting padlock on the long box, opening it with a deep squeal of complaint from the ungreased hinges. He nodded at the material-wrapped roll in the box.
“There you are, as you can see; there is no grounds for discontent,” he said.
“This is it?” said The Smith, bending to carefully push aside the linen dust-cloth wrapping the inner roll of fabric.
“That is the Fairy Flag itself,” said the MacCrimmon, a note of pride mixed with more than a little self-satisfaction colouring his voice.
The Smith ran his blunt fingertips over the exotic yellow material, sprigged with a carefully embroidered reddish/pink pattern. Then he stood, and cricked his neck to the left and right, as if working out a kink of irritation, before once more leaning into the MacCrimmon’s face.
“Two things. There are no such things as fairies, nor have there ever been, and believe me when I tell you this, for I should know. Secondly, Donald Ban MacCrimmon, this is not the flag your family was charged to guard. This is—I don’t know what it is. Silk. Foreign stuff. From the east.”
“It’s a thing of great power,” spluttered Donald Ban.
“No,” said The Smith. “It’s something someone has swapped for a thing of great power.”
Donald Ban stepped back, suddenly aware he was finding it unaccountably hard to breathe when standing close to this insistent and clearly angry stranger.
“It is not my fault,” he said.
The Smith followed him as he backed up.
“It was entrusted to your family.”
“It wasn’t entrusted to me. I didn’t ask for it. And I didn’t do anything with it anyway. It was my father who took gold—”
“He sold it—?” said The Smith.
“I don’t know what he did,” gasped Donald Ban, finding his ability to back any further away was now hindered by the rough stone wall pressing into his shoulder-blades. “He told me a man came and took it. A man with authority. A man with a ring. He said our family’s obligation was over. And the Macleod was paid a fine fee for the years of keeping it safe. And my father had some of it as a commission and went to try his luck with it in America before it crushed his heart and he returned a broken man. Why, it is that fee that has paid for all the improving works you see going on all around you …”
“What kind of ring?” hissed The Smith. Donald Ban wondered if The Smith was going to keep moving towards him until he pushed him through the wall, but The Smith stopped, nose to nose with him.
“Ach well, and but how would I be knowing that?” said the MacCrimmon. “I wasn’t there. It was my father, you see. It was himself treated with the gentleman.”
“I don’t see why he would do that,” said The Smith. “This was an ancient thing, entrusted to your family.”
The Smith’s eyes went far away for a moment, and his absence kindled a little spark of rebellion in Donald Ban, who certainly resented being pressed so close by this unwelcome and discomforting visitor.
“Well, whoever entrusted them maybe shouldn’t have done it.” He swallowed. “I say if you want a job done, do it yourself, and maybe they should have done the watching and the guarding and the keeping instead of getting other folk to do their work and never giving anything in return for it …”
The Smith’s eyes returned from wherever they’d been and stared coldly at him. Donald Ban flinched and regretted his momentary forwardness.
“Do you play the pipes?”
“No, I don’t play the cursed pipes,” blinked Donald Ban.
“And did your forebears. All of them?”
“Yes indeed. They were the finest pipers in the world, generation on generation,” said Donald Ban.
“And did your father?”
“Well. He did until he didn’t.”
“He stopped after the man took the flag box,” The Smith said, nodding slowly as he stepped back.
The MacCrimmon looked up at him, a glimmer of interest in his eyes for the first time.
“And how would you be knowing that?”
“Because your family was given something for their guardianship of the real flag,” said The Smith. “Something beyond price. Thank you for your time, Mr. MacCrimmon.”
Donald Ban watched his back as he headed for the door. He dismissed a faint thought that he should escort the visitor from the premises, but something else told him such courtesies would only prolong his exposure to the uncomfortable presence of the hard-eyed Englishman, and that he had much better lock up the flag in its box and then secure the strongroom by which time the uncomfortable presence would hopefully have absented itself without the need for any more contact.
The Smith strode out of the castle without a backward glance, and everyone who encountered him on the way seemed to suddenly have other business and a strong disinclination to engage in any kind of greeting with what was now rather more of a storm-front than a mere person.
He picked a loose stone from the parapet of the bridge as he re-crossed it and paused to hurl it far into the water beyond the castle. He stood and watched it splash into the wind-chop, and remained like that for a full five minutes. Then he shook himself out of his reverie and jumped back up on the carriage, waking his driver.
“Back to Portree, if you please,” said The Smith.
“So you’ll be going south now, will you?” said the driver, snapping his reins on the back of the horse to gee it into motion.
“No,” said The Smith, looking up at the louring clouds rolling in over the dark water of the sea loch below. “No, I fear I’ll be going north.”
CHAPTER 19
ARRIVAL
“Well,” said The Citizen with an irritation born of great exhaustion at the long and seemingly endless walk through the mirrors. “We have arrived.”
He and Dee stood beside the open door of an ornately mirrored cabinet. The room was a bedroom, with a fireplace and simple four-poster bed, from which hung thick curtains designed to keep the cold out. There was a very thin powdering of snow on the leaded windows, and the roof and wall opposite—which was all the view the window allowed—was similarl
y dusted in white.
“Colder than London,” said The Citizen, turning to Dee.
Dee turned and took a tinderbox from the mantelpiece and bent to light the waiting fire.
“I will return as we agreed,” he said. “There is no time to waste.”
“No indeed,” said The Citizen. “I shall recruit my energies and restart my experiments. If Mountfellon demurs, you may have more luck with the Templebanes, if any remain.”
“I know how to play them off against each other, have no fear,” said Dee. “We know how that tune goes of old.”
The Citizen gripped his arm as he stood up and watched the well-laid fire crackle into life.
“Mountfellon has a will almost as terrible as my own. If he suspects we are using him as a tool to obtain what he himself desires, things may go badly astray. I cannot countenance that.”
Dee looked at him coldly.
“You and I have each been on this trail for more than the span of a normal lifetime, have we not?”
The Citizen met his gaze and nodded, irritated. He had the surprised and uncomfortable look of a man not used to being stared down or treated as an equal.
“Mountfellon is a callow novice in this endeavour, for all he sees himself as a great and ruthless man. Our plan is calm and rational. His burning desire may be of use to us, but it will also be his downfall, for it enables us to mould him like a piece of molten glass. And in this case we shall, I think, use Templebane as the tongs with which to handle him and thus keep ourselves insulated and at arm’s length. He will be useful to us. And then we shall take what he finds from him for our own use, and bid him a fine and possibly necessarily final farewell.”
The Citizen nodded again.
“Yes, yes. Mountfellon a tool. To be betrayed at the right time. It is understood. All we need is the fire. The Wildfire is the thing. With the fire, all is possible; the world is ours to do with as we will and anything else is irrelevant and pointlessly lesser.”
“You are preaching to the converted,” said Dee, with a hint of tiredness. “Now, shall I announce you, call for a servant before I go?”
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