“It was likely one of those aristocratic arranged marriages,” answered Alasdair.
“They had something like a dozen children, which proves—nothing, really. Maybe no more than that Dunmore had a strong sex drive. You know, that hot Highland blood and all.”
“Right,” said Alasdair, but his own stiff upper lip loosened just a bit.
“One of their daughters married a son of George III, to great controversy. I’m not sure why. Maybe it wasn’t anything more than that the young people didn’t ask the king’s permission.”
“Nothing doing with Lady Dunmore’s family’s reputation for witchcraft, was it, never mind the Enlightenment and progressive, rational thinking and all. Though I’m guessing that at the end of the day, the witchcraft story’s no more than a fancy of the Dingwalls’.”
“Well, Francis, Lord Bothwell, was a very real figure—supposedly Shakespeare based Macbeth on the trial of him and his coven. The provenance of the Witch Box does go back to the right place at the right time. And there are a couple of independent references to Bothwell owning a charm stone, although its relationship to Charlotte is only the Dingwalls’ theory, based on Charlotte’s ownership of the Box. So far as I know, anyway.”
Alasdair’s nod softened the rigidity of his jaw. There were actual facts associated with the matter. Good.
Jean looked back at the miniature in the display case, a life under glass. The tiny portrait ended just as the ruffles edging the neckline of Charlotte’s dress began, but the artist had taken care to include a necklace of fine gold wires woven in leaf and flower shapes and studded with small stones, like a more delicate, fairy-style copy of Rachel’s handiwork. “Are those dots of pink, white, and green supposed to be, say, garnets, diamonds, emeralds? Hey, emeralds are green stones. Not that there’s any significance to that.”
Alasdair repeated, “Right. What’s this charm stone, then? One of those so-called healing stones, like the Lee Penny? That’s the one in Scott’s Talisman, is it?”
“Belonging to the Lockharts of Lanark, yes—Barbara’s right about Lockhart being an old Scottish name. And the Stewarts of Ardvorlich had a stone, too. Those are bloodstone or crystal amulets mounted in silver.”
“Sounds to be the sort of thing used for potting a werewolf.”
Jean grinned. “The Lee Penny and the Ardvorlich Stone are healing stones. You swish them around in water and then give the water to a sick animal or even person. The Penny was supposedly brought back to Scotland by a crusader, and emeralds came from Egypt back then, and, well, charm stones weren’t exactly Christian relics, but were tolerated. Bothwell’s stone would probably have been un-Christian and anti-healing. Bearing in mind that the word ‘charm’ is a synonym for ‘bewitch’ and similar concepts, not just for ‘wow, this is appealing’, the way we use it today.”
“That empty spot,” Alasdair made an about-face and once again confronted the small carved wooden Box. “It might be a slot for a coin of some sort, not a stone at all.”
“It sure could, assuming you had a three-sided coin. Or some reason to put a round coin in a triangular setting. Of course, saying that the Clach Giseag or Am Fear Uaine . . .”
“The Taboo Stone or the Green Man,” Alasdair translated.
“. . . was in a triangular setting could come from the space on the Box. I don’t need to tell you how tangled up this kind of story can get.”
“No, no need to be telling me, lass.” He didn’t quite keep the groan out of his voice.
Jean looked at his profile, backlit by the spotlight shining above the Witch Box as though he, too, was a watercolor painting. Once she’d thought his features were ordinary, but not now, not after she’d plumbed the intelligence that had been shaping those features for over forty years. Now she saw his high forehead, his straight dark eyebrows, the hypotenuse of his nose, neither arched nor flat—now she saw his firm but hardly craggy cheekbones and jaw—now she saw his taut and yet supple lips as her America, her newfound land.
In Shakespeare’s day, America was new, but to her, America was been-there done-that, something Alasdair definitely was not.
Chapter Five
A group of evening-garbed visitors meandered out of the room and it fell silent, with only a faint echo of music, conversation, and clinking glasses drifting in from the atrium. Even so Alasdair spoke quietly, his voice less velvet than sandpaper. “The Dingwalls are pieces of work, aren’t they now? And you and Miranda, leading them on.”
“You catch more flies with honey. You’ve interrogated enough witnesses to know that. And Tim and Sharon aren’t witnesses to the theft at Blair, your own leading questions to the contrary.”
“Not witnesses, no, but persons of interest, with Kelly Dingwall at the scene.”
“Well, they’re persons of interest to me, too. I told you, talking to these people, it’s what I do. What Miranda and I do. We don’t make these stories up, we just report them, analyze them, test them for soundness.”
“And yet if you didn’t cultivate them, all the better to report them, could be they’d go dying a well-deserved death, eh?” Once again he turned his back on the Witch Box, like a bullfighter on a bull, and stepped over to another display case.
This was just one more paragraph in their dialog on credulity, belief, and motive, Jean told herself. It wasn’t indicative of any fundamental flaws in the relationship. Smoothing her hackles, she followed.
This display case was long and low, spread with needlework samplers, yellowed pages filled with ornate sepia writing, and a woodcut of Augusta, the Dunmore daughter who had married a prince. Next to them were photos of Blair Castle and Dunmore’s magnificent folly, a stone cottage built in the shape of a pineapple that was now a holiday home. The man, Jean thought with another glance at the Reynolds portrait, must have had a sense of humor.
She knew Alasdair had a sense of humor, dry as Scotch whiskey. She said quietly, as several more people walked into the room and swarmed around the portrait, the Witch Box, the miniatures, “Some day I’ll be telling Linda Campbell-Reid stories about Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, and you’ll be showing her the presents hidden in the closet and lecturing her on dentistry.”
This time his snort was one of laughter—presumably not at the thought of him still being with Jean when Linda was old enough for such stories. “Oh aye, you’ve got that right.”
“We, human beings, need stories like we need food and water.”
“Aye, that we do. And we’re needing the truth as well. I’m thinking your friend Matt’d be agreeing with me.”
“I’m agreeing with you. It’s just that truth can be relative and facts malleable, and it’s worth analyzing why. It’s worth digging around behind the stories to see where they came from and why people believe them. Then maybe we can have our stories and our truth, too.”
“I’m telling you what the truth is not. Opinion.”
She knew what he meant. And she recognized his subtext; that, immersed in her academic and journalistic milieu, he felt every bit as wrong-footed as she did during a criminal investigation. Like any man, he was covering his discomfort with assertiveness. But psychoanalyzing Alasdair Cameron was the next best thing to banging her head against the walls of Edinburgh Castle.
Judging by his sideways glint, he knew the feeling.
She considered the manuscript pages in the display case, trying to puzzle out the elegant handwriting. “There’s the word ‘stone’ . . . Oh. It’s just referring to repairing the bathhouse at the Governor’s Palace. I’ll bet Dunmore needed a bathhouse, Highland blood or no Highland blood. It can get positively tropical here in the summertime, and with those heavy clothes, well, there’s a reason ladies carried little nosegays. The slaves and the servants didn’t have that luxury. Maybe they learned to close their noses, like gills.”
“I’ve no . . .” Alasdair stepped back and collided with a woman who was pressing close to the display case. “I beg your pardon,” he said.
“No prob
lem,” she told him, and made an unabashed inspection of his finery. She herself wore black chiffon, narrow glasses, and a hairdo that owed more to static electricity than to a beauty salon. “I’m Louise Dietz, Literary and Cultural Studies at the college.”
“Alasdair Cameron, Protect and Survive, Scotland,” he returned.
Louise turned to inspect the example of Dunmore’s finery inside the case, a slightly frayed waistcoat embroidered with bands of flowers, leaves, designs.
The stitches were laid down in faded reds, greens, and blues by long-forgotten hands, so delicate that even with her glasses Jean had to squint. “Someone ruined her—and it was probably a her—eyes on this sort of work.”
“Male tailors did very fine work, too,” Louise pointed out. “Or are you a friend of Jessica’s?”
Who was friends with whom shouldn’t make any difference in historical fact, Jean thought. Neither should your political leanings. “Ah, no, we’ve met is all—you’re quite right, tailors did excellent embroidery—excuse me.”
Alasdair was working his way toward the door. Again Jean followed. Normally she didn’t mind walking behind him, not when he was wearing a kilt, the hem swaying tantalizingly above the braw Cameron calves. But this was getting to be too much. Trying not to think of leashes, she caught up with him and asked, “Did Rebecca say anything this morning about getting vibes, impressions, off the Box?”
“She’d have been obliged to touch it,” he replied.
“Well, yes, but it’s like the ghost-allergy thing, sometimes it gets so strong . . .” She didn’t know where she was going with that. Was she assuming that the charm stone—assuming it had ever existed to begin with—had really had paranormal powers? How about the Box? Had it picked up some sort of paranormal vibe from the stone, like a second-degree holy relic?
Now it was Jessica of the mutable last name who stood on the landing of the grand staircase, her attitude that of Caesar at the Forum, holding forth to several youths who were probably her students. “ . . . almost always women who were accused of witchcraft, Francis Stewart being one of the few men. And he was also one of the few who survived to tell the tale, masculinity having its privileges then as now.”
Wealth and power having its privileges, too, Jean added silently. She and Alasdair detoured to the opposite side of the steps. He murmured, “A bit of a Glenda, I’m thinking, but then, the granny, she was saying that already.”
In-your-face feminist, Jean translated, “Glenda” being a slang term based on outspoken actress and member of Parliament Glenda Jackson—who had once played Elizabeth I to great effect. Elizabeth’s successor was the son of her rival Mary Stuart, the James who was obsessed with witchcraft and demonology. “Francis survived because he was King James’s cousin. Although she’s got a point about women being more likely to be accused as witches.”
“Oh aye,” returned Alasdair. “I’m not denying there was prejudice enough to go round.”
Barbara Finch sat on a padded bench below the steps, Rachel beside her exposing five miles of nylon-clad leg. The older woman stared at the musicians without quite seeing them, lost in her own thoughts. The younger woman’s eyes focused well beyond her grandmother’s somber face.
Ah, yes. Dylan stood against the far wall, his arms folded across his chest, smiling roguishly across at Rachel. She looked at him, looked down, dimpled, looked up again.
Matt stood to one side, a glass of champagne sloshing in his hand, his gaze roaming from Jessica holding court to Rachel flirting with Dylan. His wince had engraved itself so deeply on his features it was now a grimace of pain. Not fair, Jean thought. His womenfolk were piling on.
Sharon Dingwall appeared from the throng at the foot of the staircase. “You realize,” she called up to the students, “that all you’re getting is establishment propaganda.”
The students glanced around. Jessica stepped forward, scowling. Her voice was deeper than Sharon’s, and fell into a sudden hush filled only with delicate music. “Since when have women’s rights been establishment? Get off that stupid hobbyhorse of yours before you fall off, Sharon. Or are knocked off.”
“We’ll see who’s knocked off of what, Jessica. We’ll see.”
“What? You want me to say it again, in front of all these people? Fine. Sharon, in colonial days you would have been accused of witchcraft. You’re one of those babbling women who slanders and scandalizes her neighbors. And we all know what happened to women accused of witchcraft.”
His hair-and-skin-striped head glinting above almost everyone else’s, Tim pushed through the crowd, seized Sharon’s arm, and pulled her away. “See you in court, Jessica,” he called. Sharon managed a flounce of fabric before turning her back. Having too little fabric to flounce, Jessica made a neat about-face and continued lecturing to the suitably scandalized faces of her students.
So that was the basis of the lawsuit? Jean asked herself. Did that cut count as slander?
The clamor of voices in the atrium swelled. The Dingwalls started working the crowd, handing out not tracts but business cards. Rachel contemplated her feet, now in awkward, pigeon-toed repose, and Barbara considered her fists clenched in her lap. Dylan seemed to be quelling a laughing fit. Matt had vanished. Embarrassment or disgust, like his daughter and his mother? Or was his absence just coincidence, a call of nature or a table booked for dinner like Miranda and Lockhart?
Alasdair stood as still as a cat at a mouse hole, looking from Jessica to Tim—since he couldn’t see Sharon in the crowd—and back again. “No love lost there, eh?”
“We knew that already.”
“Aye, but making threats in a public place, that’s a bit over the top.”
“You call those remarks threats? They’re hardly worth a lawsuit.”
He considered a moment, and his stance relaxed, if fractionally. “Not necessarily, no.”
“Jessica’s already over the top,” Jean went on. “So are the Dingwalls. Look at them schmoozing the crowd. Trying to justify their work, however you define ‘work’. Or however I will in my article, rather.” Jean helped herself to dollop of minced ham from the long table.
Alasdair accepted a grape, and didn’t ask her to peel it for him. “No surprise they were in a tearing hurry to get here, then.”
“And you’re in a tearing hurry to get away, I bet.” The ham blob filled her mouth with a rich meaty flavor almost overwhelmed by that of salt.
“You booked the half past eight o’clock seating at the tavern, did you? I reckon we’d best be riding the bus, then. You’ve got our passes?”
That didn’t exactly answer her question, but came close enough. “Yep. Come on then, we saw and we’ve been seen. We’re off duty now.” Without waiting for Alasdair to lead the way, Jean headed down the entrance passage—and then stopped when her back-of-the-neck sensors registered he wasn’t behind her.
There he was, standing beside the security desk, shaking hands with the uniformed guard who had suffered the Dingwalls’ indignant reaction to the alarm. He was offering either advice or commiseration—Jean was too far away to hear.
She drifted back toward the desk just as a woman stepped from a side passage. Her severe dark suit, while of a civilian cut and bearing no insignia, was still as much a uniform as that of the museum guard—except the guard’s shoes were polished into mirrors and hers were stained with mud. Her black hair was styled just as severely, so short as to be stark, and her black eyes were innocent of cosmetics, not that those luminous eyes and the smooth olive skin in which they were set needed any. The height and angle of her cheekbones reminded Jean of the famous etching of Pocahontas, the only likeness of the iconic figure actually taken from life.
“Detective Stephanie Venegas, Williamsburg Police,” the woman said to Alasdair.
“Alasdair Cameron, security chief at Protect and Survive, Scotland. Though my position here’s strictly honorary, mind.”
Without saying whether she minded, Venegas looked him down and then up again, inspecte
d his face critically, and only then nodded. They exchanged a handshake, as much a part of the ceremony as the mutual review, two knights taking each others’ measures beside the tourney lists.
Alasdair added, “And this is Jean Fairbairn of Great Scot magazine.”
Jean stepped quickly forward. “Hello.” Venegas’s hand was small and cold, briskly grasping and then releasing, committing to nothing.
Her dark eyes assessed Jean’s face, drew no discernable conclusions, and turned back to Alasdair. “Protect and Survive, the security agency in Edinburgh.”
“I’ve just heard that the replica Witch Box has been stolen. A woman named Kelly Dingwall set off an alarm—accidentally, she’s saying—and amidst the clamor, someone else pinched the Box.”
“Yeah, we got the bulletin.” Venegas turned to watch the crowd, where Tim Dingwall’s comb-over bobbed up and down like a dinghy on rough seas. From the side of her mouth she said, “I hope you guys have a good time here in Williamsburg.”
Jean was caught between cringing at that “you guys”—the dialect second-person plural, “y’all”, wasn’t nearly as grating—and at their abrupt dismissal. At Alasdair’s abrupt dismissal.
Distant lightning flashed in his eyes. He opened his mouth, then obviously thought better of pursuing the issue and said, “Thank you. Jean?”
Again she found herself hurrying along behind him, this time not just scrambling to keep up but positively outpaced.
Chapter Six
She caught up with him and several other escapees at the elevator. Inside, he stood in the same pose as Jessica and Rachel, his body emitting an irritated buzz that was almost audible. When the doors opened, he bolted across the entrance lobby toward the outside door.
“Slow down,” Jean called to him. “These may be sensible shoes, but they’re not rocket-propelled.”
“Sorry.” His large, strong, warm hand guided her way too solicitously down the steps and along the sidewalk to Henry Street, where a bus was just pulling up to the curb. She flashed their passes. He handed her through the doorway and onto a plastic seat about halfway back. Smoothing his kilt behind him, he took up a position on the aisle.
Charm Stone Page 5
