8
Leader of the Liberal Democrats

One

Andrew Trentham set down the great book on his lap and glanced at his watch. The hands showed a little after two-thirty. He had been sitting absorbed in the old tale for more than three hours! Duncan had gone to bed hours ago.

It was too late now to make an attempt for home. He would do as Duncan had suggested and curl up on the couch under several of the old plaids.

The names of the ancient tribes and clans themselves contained such unexplorable mysteries . . . Borestii, Maeatae, Pritenae, Scothui . . .

The mere whispered sound of the old Celtic words on his lips sent a shivering tremble of filial affinity through his body.

He opened the book again and flipped through the oversized pages to the story he had read a week ago. He remembered something . . . there it was—

. . . nonetheless did the Wanderer’s blood flow throughout all the branches large and small that went to make up this surging tide of human occupation.

Now he scanned again through the story he had just read, locating another passage.

The wild blood of Taran’s Celtic stock ran hot . . . other tribes were pushing ever closer . . . sharers of their own primal Celtic blood . . . that blood had been so intermingled as to seal the brotherhood of these peoples for all time. . . .

Was the idea too far-reaching that these might be narratives not only of the beginnings of this northern region of Britain, but the beginnings of his own family tree as well?

Andrew’s eyes began to grow heavy. He reached across to the couch and pulled a tartan blanket toward him. He draped it unceremoniously across shoulders and knees. As consciousness slowly faded, his visions of the old adventurer and the two brothers began to mingle with his own dreams.

As sleep overtook him, unsettling sensations began to gather about the scene of the two ancient brothers on the overlook to their private loch and falls. But the scene was no longer a happy one.

The faces slowly changed.

It was he and Lindsay now, not the brothers of the story . . . they were playing, running toward their own clifflike vista . . . laughter, a summer romp over the fields. Suddenly Lindsay slipped . . . now his sister was falling, her head hitting against a stone . . . his own mouth opened wide to scream after her, but no sound came out . . . the silent splash into the lake below . . . now he was running, running, his clothes wet, tears streaming down his face, panic and fear and guilt seizing his heart . . .

Suddenly with a jerk Andrew awoke.

He drew in a deep sigh of relief, then another, glancing about Duncan’s silent cottage trying to collect himself, remembering where he was. He pulled the blanket more tightly around him and after some minutes began to doze again. The nightmare did not revisit him.

Before Andrew was even well asleep again, the new image of an intrepid pilgrim came into view in the scene of his mind’s eye. While dressed in skins and carrying a long, crudely made spear as he ran across a vast moor of obviously Highland locale, this new adventurer bore a striking resemblance to one who would one day represent the north of England in the Parliament of Westminster. He sped over the ground bare of foot, eyes aflame with purpose, and suddenly was standing not on open heath, but on a concrete corner before the Houses of Parliament. All around passersby and reporters clamored toward him, taking pictures and thrusting microphones in front of him. But the only sound to emerge from his lips was in an ancient and long-forgotten tongue that none could understand.

Now boldly he walked past the guards and toward the doors of the great modern Palace of Westminster, and a great hush descended upon the city in anticipation of what would happen. But gradually the images faded, and dreamless sleep followed. . . .

It was thus that Duncan MacRanald found his young friend five hours later, head slumped back, open book still in his lap under the colorful wrap, sound asleep and dreaming of the ancient beginnings of a people he was already beginning to call his own.

Two

Andrew awoke a little before eight to a blazing fire. To one side hung the small black cast-iron kettle with steam pouring out its top in anticipation of its coming duty in the matter of the tea.

“Weel, laddie!” exclaimed the old Scotsman, approaching him from behind the moment he saw his young guest rousing, “’Tis plain t’ see ye slept sound enouch!”

“Very well indeed, I am happy to say,” laughed Andrew. “After I finally fell asleep sometime in the middle of the night!”

“Ye’ll be thirsty fer a drap o’ tea, nae doobt,” said Duncan, swinging the kettle toward him out of the fire. “I’ve already seen t’ yer mare in my wee barn. She was a mite hungry, but none the worse fer her night away frae hame. She’s breakfasting on oats.”

“Thank you,” said Andrew.

He threw the blanket from his chest and discovered there the book still open where he had left it. Setting it aside, he stood and stretched to shake off the remnants of drowsiness and make himself ready for the day.

Snow had indeed fallen that night, to a thickness of about six inches. When Andrew opened the door and took a few steps out, the sight greeting him was of a winter fairyland. The clouds had journeyed south with the storm, and a brilliant cold sun was just beginning its climb up the sky in the east. The first arrows of its light shot across the glimmering surface as if igniting a million frozen water-jewels into tiny crystals of light that shot in every direction.

The dazzling white blanket spread out silently in all directions, broken only by wintry trees whose thin branches did their best to retain their thin white treasures as long as possible, and by the stone dikes, white-topped but gray-edged, that meandered throughout the countryside. All nature save the sun seemed dead under the white sheet. Yet how could it be dead, for the life contained deep inside the earth cannot be killed, any more than can the inner life of the men and women who inhabit it. In truth, even now, frozen though it was, life was in that earth—awaiting fresh opportunity for resurrection.

Andrew took in the sight with relish.

As he stood at Duncan’s door, the keen air sent the warm blood to his cheeks. Immediately his heart began to beat more rapidly. But he would have to get back home before long, he told himself. There were things to attend to.

Alas, his duties in London beckoned. He must be back on Monday morning.

Three

The darkened atmosphere of the Knightsbridge pub was noticeably more subdued than it had been upon the evening when the same six men had gathered some weeks earlier.

The intent of this gathering was ostensibly to mourn a fellow parliamentarian. Beneath the somber tones and lugubrious comments, however, a discerning eye might have detected here and there a twinkle of repressed gaiety. Their sympathy was genuine. Yet it could hardly be denied that the honorable gentleman’s death, shocking though it was, could have the effect of advancing their cause.

The Glenfiddich tonight flowed somewhat freely from its slender green neck into the crystal tumblers throughout the room, and from the latter into the mouths of the assembled Scots politicians, gradually igniting the orbal fires and loosening the tongues of those thus gathered.

“To Hamilton!” toasted Glaswegian Lachan Ross for probably the fourth time. It was the simplest and quickest method to justify sending repeated swallows of his favorite evening fare down his throat, and thirst was not lacking for the barley brew.

“Hear, hear!” came two or three sober rejoinders, followed by the sound of chinking glass.

It was silent a moment. At length the stillness was broken by the beginnings of a muted chuckle. Then, as if that had been a spark set to dormant flame, several more deep-throated murmurs of humorous response began to sound softly. When they gathered just after the election, their elation over its outcome had been tempered by the knowledge that their true goal was far from realized. Now suddenly the opportunity they had long dreamed of seemed at hand—the chance to push forward their agenda with a reasonable promise of success.

“I told you all before,” said their leader, “that if we awaited events, a critical moment would come. Not that I would have wished for it to arrive in such a manner. But as it has happened, we would be foolish not to make the best of it.”

“Your gambit has obviously succeeded, Dugald,” Gregor Buchanan said to MacKinnon. “I didn’t believe it would, but the campaigning of our people for their candidates in the election five years ago certainly played a role in Labour’s strong victory and got devolution on their manifesto. And they know well that, had it not been for our support, they may have lost this recent contest.”

“I didn’t think it would help,” said one Archibald Macphersen. “I was certain the prime minister included it merely to get Scotland’s vote and our support.”

“Oh, I have not the slightest doubt, Macphersen, that you precisely represent the good Mr. Barraclough’s intent,” laughed MacKinnon. “Both parties have been playing that game since Mr. Major’s passionate speech about returning the Stone in July of ’96. But we will not let the prime minister forget our role in his coalition. And now perhaps the time has arrived to remind him that we are a constituency whose needs he must continue to address.”

“Twenty-one seats in six hundred fifty-nine hardly gives ground for us to remove our offices to Edinburgh along with our Scots’ parliamentary colleagues just yet,” commented William Campbell, bringing a note of dubious realism to the discussion.

“True enough,” rejoined MacKinnon. “But I would not have gone to Barraclough before the elections with, shall we say, my proposed bargain, if I did not think it a gamble unquestionably worth taking. I would assume that you, Campbell, with the dark history surrounding your name, would not be one to flinch in the face of great odds.”

“It is not the odds that worry me,” responded Campbell, ignoring the sly dig at his heritage, “but the practicality of our efforts. So I ask you, MacKinnon, what do you actually propose to do now?”

“As I promised him, we have been faithful on every issue. We have been, for all intents and purposes, Socialists ourselves. We have given Richard Barraclough our complete support.”

“Well and good, Dugald,” pressed Campbell again. “But what now?”

“I believe Hamilton’s death gives us the opportunity to press him further.”

“Press him?” repeated Campbell.

“By threatening to withdraw our support.”

“He could carry the coalition without us by keeping the alliance.”

“LibDem support may change—don’t forget that. The prime minister may not be able to count on it so automatically now, with Reardon at the helm of the Liberal Democrats. I have the feeling the threat of a No vote from us may make Barraclough consider bringing full home rule onto the agenda. He will not be at all eager to lose us right now.”

“As much as he has tried to curry Scotland’s favor, he still views Scottish issues as fringe matters,” remarked Buchanan.

“And he is mistaken,” rejoined the Scottish Nationalist leader. “He will underestimate the power of yet greater sovereignty to capture the imagination of our people. As I have said, devolution is but the tip of an iceberg that neither Labour nor the Tories fully see. Wales may be satisfied with a regional parliament. But I for one am not satisfied with such for Scotland’s future. And neither, I suspect, are most of us.”

“Sounds to me as if you like to attempt the impossible,” remarked Archibald Macphersen.

“Our cause has been viewed as impossible since the National Party was formed in 1928,” replied MacKinnon. “Yet look how far the movement has come in that time. We had one MP in Parliament in 1970, and by 1983 only two. The referenda of 1979 and 1997 had their effect, each in its own way. Now there are twenty-one of us, devolution has come about, Scotland has her parliament. Many of us would have termed that impossible even ten years ago.

“I tell you,” he went on, “what we have seen is only the beginning. These are but the first steps in the complete eventual reversal of 1707.”

A long pause followed as his colleagues reflected on MacKinnon’s stirring words.

“By the by,” said Macphersen, “do we know any more on the cause of Eagon’s death? I worry about a backlash in our direction, especially if we move too soon.”

“I wouldn’t concern yourself,” replied MacKinnon. “Nothing about the affair can point toward us.”

“I’m not so certain. The way the Yard still suspects us in the Abbey theft . . . I don’t know, I think they’ll see a connection. Especially in that if we move too quickly we may be seen to benefit from his death.”

“We haven’t had the slightest connection with Hamilton,” remarked Buchanan. “Our hands are clean.”

A brief discussion ran round the room.

“I said an opportunity would come,” said MacKinnon at length. “It would appear that moment is now at hand, though it has arrived much differently than anticipated. It now appears that our best chance for influence may lie not so much with the prime minister, but with whomever the Liberal Democrats choose as the new leader of their party.”

The only man who had not spoken, and who indeed had remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the exchange, was the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Baen Ferguson.

Four

It was midmorning by the time Andrew finished breakfast, saddled Hertha, and swung into the saddle for the ride back from Duncan’s cottage.

The sun had risen high by then and actually felt warm beating down on his bundled shoulders. It had not even begun to thaw the snow from last night’s fall—that would take a week or two, if more did not descend in the meantime. But it was a spectacularly gorgeous day, notwithstanding cold hands and feet, to ride across the virgin blanket of white and to let his thoughts wander where they would.

It didn’t take long for the story he had read the night before to float to the top of his mind—and with it, the recent death of his party’s leader. He could not avoid seeing a parallel between the two. As he considered it, he found his own opinion gradually tilting toward some unknown political motivation in the unsolved case. What else could it be? he thought as he rode. It wasn’t just the ancients who could go to such lengths to further a cause.

Neither had he forgotten the dream that had haunted him in the middle of the night. And now, as the mare picked her way across the rocky fell, he realized he needed to stop at the overlook again—to attempt once more to come to some kind of terms with what had happened there.

It was strange how snow could change the look of a place, he thought when he finally stood again at the spot where the path dropped off over the lake. The covering of white seemed to soften the edges of the landscape, transforming it into something both familiar and strange. He brushed the cold powder from the rock he had used as a seat countless times, then sat down and stared out over the expanse of cold water below. He could almost hear Cruithne, Fidach, and the bard’s son Domnall laughing and crying out in glee as they dove into the pool from high above the Falls of Bruid.

But then other cries intruded into the ears of his memory, replacing the cries of happy adventure with sounds of terror. He knew well enough that the silent sounds in his mind came from his own mouth, for he had relived the incident over and over since that fateful morning.

It had been warm, a magnificent day of high summer. The sun had shone as brightly as today, but the hillsides had been green with the fragrance of moist and vibrant growth.

He and Lindsay had tethered their horses some way down the slope and had run and laughed their way up to the overlook. His sixteen-year-old sister had been in a gay mood, full of frolic and fun and spirited teasing.

She was always good to him in ways that many an older sister would not have been to one so young in her eyes. When they rode and romped together, though she was six years his senior, she treated him as an equal and a friend. She taught him to ride, to swim, to recognize plants and flowers, and let him accompany her on many youthful adventures in the hills around their home.

They had visited the overlook many times before. Though steep, it was actually not as dangerous as it appeared, for after the first drop-off the ground gave way in a succession of naturally terraced ridges rather than a single sheer plunge. But two days of rain had drenched the district, and on that particular day the earth was soft and soggy, the footing not the best.

They reached the favorite spot and plopped down to enjoy the view of gulls and water. But the sun and warmth and ride made Lindsay giddy and carefree. Too carefree. The next instant she was scrambling over the edge, stretching her legs down to the ledge about four feet below the top.

“Lindsay, don’t go down there!” cried Andrew in his high ten-year-old voice as he ran up a few seconds after her and saw what she was doing.

“But look—there’s a wild lily. They smell just lovely, and I haven’t seen one all year.”

“But it’s too close to the edge.”

“Look, I’m down already,” she said gaily, turning to stoop toward her prize.

“Be careful!”

But now Andrew’s sister was down on her knee, reaching past the ledge amongst a loose collection of stones for the little yellow-and-white bloom as her brother watched in terror.

She tried to draw close to it. But her toe shoved through a soggy bit of sod near the edge of the supporting ledge.

It gave way. She gave a little scream and slipped. One of her legs dangled over the side.

“Lindsay!” cried Andrew.

All thought of the blossom was immediately gone. His sister finally realized her danger. Frantically she clutched at the thick grass and tried to pull herself back onto solid ground. But it was wet and loose. If she pulled too hard, it too would give way.

“Help me, Andrew,” she said. Her voice was quiet and full of controlled fear. “See if you can reach down and get hold of my hand.”

On his knees now Andrew stretched down over the top edge as far as he dared. She reached up. Just as their hands met, Lindsay shifted her weight for one more upward thrust. The clump of grass in her left hand pulled loose.

She tumbled from the ledge with a scream.

“A-n-d-r-e-w!” sounded the wail of her voice in his boyish ears.

He watched in horror as she bumped and fell, crashing and twisting helplessly against the rocky face of the steepening slope. At last came a splash in the black water below.

Andrew looked down where she had fallen. But the shoreline was obscured from his sight. No more sounds came from below.

Already he was running back for the horses as fast as he could. He leapt onto his mount and in seconds was galloping at full speed along the trail that led the long way around down to the lake. Miraculously the horse didn’t stumble as he urged it down the slope. Three minutes later he dismounted. The water of the surface was slowly calming from the disturbance. He found himself praying it had been caused by some rock her fall had set to tumbling.

“Lindsay!” he screamed. “Lindsay . . . where are you?”

Nothing but silence met his ears.

Frantically he ran about the water’s edge. He came to the spot of impact. From the disturbed bank and traces of mud in the water, he knew that more than a mere stone had fallen into the lake.

He didn’t think to tear off his clothes but dived in. He struggled below the surface and felt about. His hands reached the bottom. But he felt only mud. Kicking and thrashing violently, he struggled to search and probe about.

He surfaced, took a gulp of air, and went down again, widening his frantic swim. But the lake was deep and its water, even at the best of times, murky. He could not see more than six inches in front of his face.

Again Andrew surfaced . . . and dived again—again and again, until exhaustion threatened his own safety. Panting desperately, lungs aching, he saw nothing, he felt nothing.

Up he came for a final time, gasping desperately for breath, then scrambled onto the shore, glancing about desperately in the hope she might have appeared in the meantime. But there was no sign of Lindsay anywhere.

Genuine panic now set in. His eyes reddened and filled with tears.

He flew to his horse and galloped back to the Hall faster and more recklessly than he had ever ridden in his life, crying shamelessly and freely.

“Mother . . . Mother!” he cried while a long way off. “Mother!” he screamed, “ . . . it’s Lindsay—she’s fallen!”

By the time he reached the door his mother was already outside.

“She fell . . . she fell in the Tarn Water!” he blurted out hysterically. “I couldn’t find her . . . I tried . . . she wouldn’t come up . . . I looked and looked . . .”

Already Lady Trentham was calling for Horace and some of the other men. Within minutes they were on their way with horses, a wagon, ropes, and blankets.

But all the afternoon’s rescue efforts proved of no avail.

Lindsay’s body did not surface until late that afternoon, with a tremendous gash on the side of her head where she had been knocked unconscious during the fall.

It was in the hours between, after he had explained to her what had happened, and before Andrew’s father returned, that Lady Trentham and her son had the brief private talk that had so deepened the impact of the incident in his impressionable young mind.

“I think it best, Andrew,” said the woman in the shock of realizing her daughter had drowned, “that we tell no one that you and Lindsay were together today.”

Red-eyed and whimpering, yet struggling to be brave, Andrew looked up into her face with a questioning look and nodded.

“It would cause too many questions, you see,” she went on. “Of course you didn’t do anything wrong, Andrew. I know that. But there might be talk, you understand. I simply want to protect you, and the family, from any more unpleasantness. We will just say that Lindsay was riding and had an accident, which is the truth. It will be our secret, yours and mine. And we won’t need to talk about this, will we? We’ll just put it behind us and keep it to ourselves.”

Again Andrew nodded, his eyes wide, the words penetrating deep into his soul. His mother was always in control. He would do as he was told.

Whatever her reasons were for such cautions, even she could not have said. The poor woman’s brain had nearly ceased to function. She spent the next few days in a stupor of pale shock, which continued through the church service and burial. True to what she had said, they had never spoken of it again.

Ever after would he and his mother be linked by a secret that could do nothing but increase his guilt over the affair. No doubt she quickly disregarded, or even forgot, the vow of silence she had enjoined on him. And she never knew its effect.

So many questions had plagued him since. Why had he not gone to Duncan’s cottage, closer than home by half? It might not have done any good, but the thought haunted him. Why hadn’t he tried to dive just once more? Why hadn’t he gone deeper . . . done something different? He had been so frantic, so powerless!

And ever after that day, like Cruithne, he had been destined to assume a mantle of family elderhood—he could hardly call it chieftainship in this modern day—that should have belonged to another, and that, however long he wore it, he would gladly have relinquished could the personal history of his family be rewritten.

Did that explain why the old tale had struck such deep root within him as a teenager? Without realizing it, had he shared Cruithne’s pain at the loss of his dear Fidach? These were questions he had never before considered, questions that now deepened all the more this soul-searching season of personal reflection.

Andrew rose from the spot, drew in a deep breath, and continued his ride back to the Hall.

If only, he thought, like Cruithne, he might rise above the pain and loss of the past, and, though the younger, yet prove to be a worthy heir to the legacy that fate had cast upon him unsought.

Five

The fifty-one members of the Liberal Democratic party gathered a week after Eagon Hamilton’s funeral to elect his successor to party leadership.

The mood of the gathering was quiet, as befitted the sobriety of the occasion. Discussion between them kept returning, as it had for the last week, to the unbelievable circumstances of their former leader’s death. Yet they all recognized, despite their grief and shock, that they needed to move forward with the business confronting the party.

Deputy Leader Larne Reardon, looking uncommonly wan, with his suit uncharacteristically rumpled and sparse hair in disarray, presided over the vote.

The first ballot was taken. Surprisingly Reardon did not come away with a majority. Party secretary Charles Wilcox, from Kent, read the tally:

“Larne Reardon, twenty-two votes,” he said—

A few puzzled glances went about the room.

“Maurice Fraser-Smythe, fourteen,” Wilcox continued. “Edwin St. John, six, Andrew Trentham, five, Sally Lutyens, two, and Charles Wilcox two.”

The surprised looks and glances, with a few mumbled comments of astonishment, evidenced the fact that each of the twenty-nine who had not voted for Reardon had expected his own vote to be one of very few such cast. But apparently more of their number than anyone could have predicted had chosen to express their admiration for others in their ranks, assuming their vote would make no difference in the outcome. What it had done, in fact, was to prevent the Deputy Leader from achieving a first-ballot majority.

“To speak truthfully, my friends and colleagues,” said Reardon with a peculiar smile, “I am not surprised at this result.”

He paused with serious expression. They could tell something momentous was on his mind.

“I have been somewhat ambivalent about my future since the night I heard about Eagon,” he went on. “You can imagine what a dreadful blow it was. I do not think it is that I am afraid for myself—though perhaps I am. In any event, I have found myself questioning whether leadership of the party is what I really want, at least now. I have my family to consider. I think I am going to require more time to reflect upon my future. And this vote we have taken . . . well, it only confirms the direction I feel I should take.”

He paused briefly.

“What I am trying to say,” he resumed, “is that I feel it best for the moment that I withdraw my name from further ballots. I think the Liberal Democratic Party will best be served with one of you at its helm.”

More vocal expressions of astonishment went round the room, accompanied by no fewer than a half dozen objections and counterarguments that loudly extolled Reardon’s accomplishments and qualifications.

“I am afraid my mind is quite made up, gentlemen and ladies,” insisted Reardon. “I should have made my announcement before. Perhaps I felt a lingering sense of duty should the vote have been strongly indicative that you felt I was the only one possible. But such is not the case. These of my esteemed colleagues for whom you have cast ballots—any of them will be well capable of filling Eagon’s shoes. At this point, I’m afraid my decision is final. Because I remain acting deputy leader, however, I will continue to preside over this election. Now, with my name no longer under consideration, we will vote again.”

The room continued in a hubbub of mumbling and astonished comment. But Reardon stood calmly in front of them, waiting, unmoved by their attempts to persuade him to reconsider. Then one by one, as they finally realized he was in earnest, the party members again took their seats and quieted before setting about the suddenly unanticipated and newly unpredictable business before them.

This time the vote took nearly twice as long.

Again the MP from Kent read out the results, which came as an equal surprise from the first ballot.

“Maurice Fraser-Smythe, thirteen,” Wilcox said. “Edwin St. John, seven. Andrew Trentham, nineteen—”

That most in the room, including the fourteen who had switched their votes in his favor, were taken aback the moment Wilcox, with slight emphasis in his inflection, uttered the word, was more than obvious. Again a low buzz of astonishment spread among them.

“—Mrs. Lutyens, six,” continued the secretary, “Thomas Parsons, four, and Charles Wilcox, two.”

“Well,” laughed Reardon, displaying the first sign of humor they had seen from him in more than a week, “this is proving more and more interesting as we go. It looks as if we shall have to do it again.”

“I must speak up,” now added Secretary Wilcox, still standing beside the deputy leader, “to ask that my name be withdrawn. If you would like me to continue in the capacity of the party’s secretary, I am happy to serve. But more than that I do not feel appropriate.”

A few nods of acknowledgment followed.

Thomas Parsons, MP from Wales, now rose from his seat. “While I appreciate the confidence of those who entered my own name,” he said, “I must follow Mr. Wilcox’s lead. My family simply could not take the added strain at this time. I respectfully request that no more votes be cast on my behalf.”

“Any of those who remain would certainly be capable leaders,” said Reardon, glancing about the room. “Let us vote again.”

A third time the room quieted as the members considered their party’s future. Four minutes later, Wilcox announced the results of his latest computations.

“Maurice Fraser-Smythe, eleven,” Wilcox began, “Edwin St. John, five—”

The dropping numbers of the others already more than hinted at what was coming.

“—Mrs. Lutyens, four . . .”

Wilcox paused for obvious effect, drawing out the word.

“—and Andrew Trentham, thirty-one!”

A few cheers and sporadic applause briefly broke out.

“It looks like that is it—congratulations, Trentham,” said Reardon, beckoning Andrew forward. “It looks as if the new head of our party is a Cumbrian.”

His mouth open in a half smile of disbelief, Andrew rose to his feet.

“Get up there, Trentham,” said Edwin St. John beside him. “You’re our man now.”

Still amazed that his name had even been considered, yet not feeling at liberty to withdraw it without compelling reason, Andrew stumbled forward, the bewildered look on his face gradually giving way to nods of gratitude to those around him.

“Come on up,” persisted Reardon, extending his hand in congratulations, “the gavel is yours.”

Andrew took it. Reardon sat down. Shaking his head slowly back and forth as he gazed upon his colleagues, Andrew found himself at a loss for words.

“I hardly know what to say,” he began. “The only thing that comes to my mind is to ask if you are all sure you want me as your leader and spokesman.”

Laughter broke out. Slowly it gave way to applause. Gradually the sound grew louder and louder. Andrew stood, still shaking his head, but unable to keep himself from smiling as his colleagues clapped and cheered their rousing endorsement of the results.

“Yes,” said St. John, standing and walking forward to shake Andrew’s hand. “We do. You are the right man for the job.”

“Here, here!” added Maurice Fraser-Smythe, rising and coming forward also to extend his personal and enthusiastic congratulation.

One by one, the rest followed suit. With the vote less than five minutes behind them, already the sentiment seemed strongly confirmed in the minds of all that they had made the right decision.

“In fact,” said Maurice Fraser-Smythe above the congratulations, “I move that we make the vote unanimous.”

“Here, here!” came voices from around the room. Another and even louder round of applause followed.

Six

The first Patricia Rawlings knew of the unexpected turnabout at the top of the Liberal Democratic Party was from the afternoon’s edition of the Post, which startled all of London.

“Cumbrian Trentham Named New Leader of Liberal Democrats!” read the headline.

Her eyes probed the photograph of Andrew Trentham, as if the black-and-white image would tell her something if she stared at it long enough. Slowly a smile spread across her face.

“You have something to tell me, don’t you, Andrew Trentham?” she said softly to herself. “There’s a story here. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll find it. And somehow you, Mr. Trentham, are at the bottom of it.”

She grabbed a pen and tablet from her desk, and then began to read the article, taking notes as she went, and jotting down the names of the principal players in the unseen drama she was certain lay somewhere between the lines of this news report.

Twenty minutes later she had been through the article twice, with numerous pauses for thought.

Her tablet, between doodles and cross-outs, contained several queries to herself, which she now underlined and circled for emphasis:

What connection Stone and Hamilton?

Links between SNP and LibDems?

Why Reardon’s withdrawal?

Motive for murder—political . . . religious . . . nationalistic . . . other?

Motive for theft—same?

What connection Trentham with above?

At the bottom of the sheet she listed several names. Around them she now drew a little box, as if to highlight that at last her search for a story had some specific leads to follow. She would talk to them all, she said to herself—obviously all except the first . . .

Eagon Hamilton, former leader LibDem

Andrew Trentham, new leader LibDem

Larne Reardon, deputy LibDem

Dugald MacKinnon, leader SNP

Baen Ferguson, deputy SNP

—and she would begin immediately.

Tucking the tablet into her bag next to her portable tape recorder, Paddy rose and left the office.

Seven

Andrew’s telephone was ringing even as he walked into his flat the evening of the balloting.

“I called to reiterate my congratulations and wish you well,” said a familiar voice as Andrew answered it.

“That is very gracious of you, Larne,” replied Andrew. He set down his briefcase and threw his coat over the couch. “I must admit I am still stunned by the sudden turn of events.”

“Within days it will seem quite natural. You’ll see. And I want you to know that you can count on me for anything you need.”

“I appreciate that, Larne. It means a great deal, coming from you.”

“I hope I may be able to do some good behind the scenes, as it were. I will help guide you through the political land mines however I am able. I hope you will feel free to turn to me often.”

“I am happy that the party decided you should continue on as my deputy leader.”

“I am honored to do so. By the by, did you hear any more from Scotland Yard while I was out of the city?”

“Only that they are trying to trace the movements of some East Ender.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. They managed a partial print from some papers they think were Eagon’s—they found them on an embankment upriver from where the body was located.”

“Hmm, well—that’s . . . uh, good news—that there appears to be progress. What kind of papers?”

“Inspector Shepley didn’t say.”

“Have they found the fellow?”

“Not yet. I think there’s a connection to a pub—O’Faolain’s Green . . . ever heard of it?”

“Uh . . . no, I haven’t,” replied Reardon.

“What it has to do with the fellow they’re looking for, I’m not sure.”

A few more pleasantries followed. Andrew hung up, still shaking his head at the turn of events, and went to change clothes.

Just one day ago he had been but one of 659 members of the British House of Commons. Now the Liberal Democrats had chosen him as their new leader. At age thirty-seven he would, in the tradition of Paddy Ashdown, become leader of Parliament’s third-largest party. Given the technical aspects of what was required to keep the government’s coalition intact, that position would make him one of the most influential men in the United Kingdom.

Eight

Andrew telephoned Derwenthwaite Hall later that same evening.

“Well, son, it would appear congratulations are in order,” said his father. “I heard of your election on the news.”

Andrew laughed. “Quite a shocker, eh, Dad?”

“My money was on you all the way! Was the vote close?”

“Three ballots,” replied Andrew “Then they made it unanimous.”

“Well, you have my heartiest congratulations. Imagine . . . my son the leader of his party at the ripe young age of thirty-seven. And Barraclough knows that he needs you to hold on to his government.”

“He’s already called,” laughed Andrew. “Very gracious and congratulatory as you would expect. As did Miles Ramsey of the opposition. They’re both already trying to win my loyalty.”

“As I would expect. If Ramsey could turn you, it would put the Tories back in power.”

“I’ll need time to sort it all out.”

Father and son continued to chat lightly for several minutes.

“Ah, here’s your mother,” said Mr. Trentham. “She’s been storming and ranting ever since the news broke, waiting to talk to you!”

Andrew could picture his mother doing exactly that. He wondered if this latest twist of his fortunes would heighten her confidence in him.

“What are you going to do about the Scottish question, Andrew?” his mother asked the moment she had taken the receiver from her husband.

He could feel her uncertainty across the 340 miles that separated them.

“You must have been watching the news,” commented Andrew wryly.

“And reading the papers. You’re everywhere these days. But I want to know how the thing looks to you.”

“I don’t know, Mum,” sighed Andrew. “The pressures have been mounting from all sides since Eagon’s death. Now it’s bound to get worse.”

“The Scottish Nationalists?” queried Lady Trentham.

“This is the chance they have been waiting for to up the stakes toward independence, and they’re throwing everything they have into it.”

“What I want to know is, do Labour and the SNP stand a chance of passing anything without your support?”

“If they got every Labour MP, every Scottish Nationalist, and all twenty-four MPs from the minor parties, that would give them exactly the 330 majority needed. No,” Andrew went on, “I would rate the chance of that happening at about one in ten thousand. A coalition like that would provide the perfect opportunity for one man to control government single-handedly. One of those twenty-four would be bound to vote against the coalition, if for no other reason than to be known as the man who toppled the Labour government.”

“That places you in a powerful position.”

“Or a vulnerable one,” remarked Andrew. “How would you like to take my place, Mum?”

The light comment had just slipped out. The moment he said the words, Andrew wished he could retrieve them. He knew well enough who his mother would have put in his place if she could.

A brief, and for Andrew awkward, silence followed.

“I don’t think the Liberal Democrats would have me,” replied Lady Trentham after a moment. Thankfully she did not add an allusion to Andrew’s sister.

Another brief silence followed.

Suddenly everything had changed for the young MP now engaged in conversation with his mother. There were decisions that would soon fall to him as the new leader of the all-important Liberal Democrat contingent of the House of Commons. It could quite literally be said—and every editorialist in every paper from the Times to the Sun was getting ready to say precisely that in the next day’s papers—that young Andrew Trentham, as a result of today’s vote by his party’s colleagues, would be one of the key men holding Labour’s slender coalition together. At just about any moment he chose, Trentham would be capable of bringing Richard Barraclough’s government into dissolution and force Parliament to go to the country for new elections a second time within a very short period.

Many questions about him, therefore, were certain to arise in days to come.

Who was this young MP who had suddenly risen so high? What did he want? What was his game? What was his personal political agenda?

By now everyone knew that the SNP was planning to waste no time forcing more and more issues concerning Scotland to the front burner of national attention. They had steadfastly disavowed involvement in the removal of the Coronation Stone and did not intend to allow either the theft or the murder of Eagon Hamilton to change their plans.

Andrew would have until September, therefore, or perhaps early October, to figure out where he stood on these Scottish questions. By then the prime minister would be calling his cabinet back for meetings at Number Ten Downing Street to put together the elements of the speech he would hand to the King.

Thus Andrew had six or seven months to sort through the issues and his thoughts on them.

Where did he stand? If Scotland’s future did get put onto next year’s agenda, and if it later came up for a second debate reading, how would he vote?

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about the Scottish Nationalists at this juncture,” his mother finally said. “They are certainly in the public doghouse over the business with the Stone.”

“I’m not so sure they’re behind it,” said Andrew.

“I thought there was evidence,” said Lady Trentham.

“Supposed evidence,” rejoined Andrew. “But why would they do something so foolhardy after devolution has given Scotland a regional parliament, and so soon after the Stone had been returned to Edinburgh? No, I think there’s more to the theft of the Stone than meets the eye.”

As Andrew put down the telephone a few minutes later, a strange feeling of aloneness invaded him. This was a day that should represent the summit of his career thus far as a politician. His name and picture would now regularly appear on the front page of the Times and all the other papers. He should be basking in the glow of his triumph. What man in the country wouldn’t envy him?

Yet strange and unknown sensations were rising up from somewhere within him. Questions about himself, about who he was and who he wanted to be—questions about his past, questions about the cultural expectations that might be said to have guided his destiny thus far.

Pinnacle of his career or not, Andrew Trentham felt he was at a crossroads. He needed perspective. Despite the press of so much demanding his attention in London, he needed to get away from the city again. Even if it meant only another brief weekend at home, the mental and emotional rest would be worth it.

Nine

Before Andrew could think any further about the weekend, his phone rang.

Halfway expecting to find his mother on the line again, he picked up the receiver. “Andrew Trentham,” he said.

“Hello, Mr. Trentham,” said a pleasant voice on the other end. He knew it instantly and did not require the identification that followed. “It’s Patricia Rawlings calling, BBC 2. Perhaps you remember me?”

“Of course, Miss Rawlings,” replied Andrew. “I remember you perfectly. And I must say you handled yourself very well last week,” he added. “That was rather brave of you, jumping right back into the fray . . . and with a question about a division, no less!”

Rawlings laughed.

“Well, you were very kind in the way you fielded my blooper the first time I brought up the subject,” she said. “I appreciate the fact that you said nothing to make me seem a bigger fool than I already felt!”

“Everybody makes mistakes,” said Andrew. “I’ve made more than my share.”

“In any case, you were most gracious.” Paddy paused.

“The reason I telephoned, Mr. Trentham,” she went on after a moment of silence, “was to ask if you would perhaps grant me an interview.”

“Hmm . . . something on camera?”

“No, nothing like that. They don’t trust me yet on film,” Paddy added, laughing. “And I’m sure you can see why.”

“Do you mean because you’re American, or because of your lack of experience?” rejoined Andrew good-humoredly.

“Both!”

“Tell me what you have in mind.”

“Nothing formal. I just thought you might be willing to talk casually. I really am very interested in the questions I raised that day. Is there some way we could get together briefly sometime?”

“I’m planning to leave for Cumbria tomorrow afternoon.”

“On holiday?”

“Just the weekend.”

“Next week?”

“My schedule’s rather full—” hesitated Andrew.

“Only for a few minutes, then. I would just like to meet you in a more relaxed setting than the middle of the street. I could come to your office anytime you like. I promise I won’t put you on the spot.”

Andrew debated with himself. All his training told him to be cautious in such circumstances. There wasn’t a single thing he could gain by an interview of this nature, and much he could lose. Hadn’t he already turned down half a dozen or more requests, including a call just this morning for an on-camera question-and-answer session presided over by none other than this woman’s cohort Kirkham Luddington?

Yet for some unknown reason, suddenly he found himself answering in an altogether uncharacteristic manner.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “why wait until next week?—How about lunch tomorrow?”

“Oh—” exclaimed Paddy, trying to hide her astonished delight. “That would be wonderful.”

Ten

Because of its location just off Whitehall, Granby’s at the Royal Horseguards Hotel was a favorite dining spot for politicians. If any of Andrew’s curious colleagues were here for lunch today, however, and wondered what he was doing with the lady from the BBC, neither the young woman nor the new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party took notice. They had been talking together now for forty minutes.

Paddy’s salad and Andrew’s plate of veal both stood only half completed. The conversation had long since diverged from what would be termed a political “interview.” The young American had been quizzing the MP on some of the finer points of the parliamentary system.

“As long as I’ve been here, and as hard as I’ve studied trying to understand everything,” Paddy was saying, “I still find myself in situations where my background doesn’t prepare me for the way you do things here. When I first got on with the BBC, they had me doing other things. What’s most embarrassing—I really do know what division means! I guess when I heard the word that day, my brain called up the American usage before I even had a chance to think—then suddenly I’d blurted out that idiotic question!”

Andrew threw his head back and laughed.

“But it still is beyond me,” Paddy went on, “how you run a government as you do, when every bill that comes before the House of Commons has to pass. It’s so foreign to our way of thinking in the States. What purpose does the opposition even serve?”

“To articulate opposing viewpoints and to represent their constituencies,” replied Andrew.

“But they have no power. Why do they bother coming at all, if every vote is a foregone conclusion?”

“It is important to give voice to all sides, even if the government dictates the agenda.”

“It’s absolutely antithetical to our system, where the president and the two parties in Congress have to battle it out over every issue, and where some bills go one way and others the opposite—and that’s another thing,” Paddy went on. “The government’s agenda. Is all legislation really established a year in advance?”

“Pretty much. The Queen’s speech—pardon me, I mean the King’s speech—sets the agenda for the year.”

“And the prime minister and his cabinet decide the agenda, I know that—but what happens when things unexpectedly come up?”

“The prime minister can introduce something not on the agenda if need be.”

“And is the government obligated to bring up every item from the majority party’s manifesto for a reading in the Commons?”

“Not obligated. But if they don’t take some action on most of them, they will likely not be returned in the next election.”

“What are your thoughts about being a leader in Labour’s coalition?”

“That sounds strikingly like an interview question. So I will give you the stock political response—it is too early to comment.”

Paddy laughed. “You are pretty good for having been a party leader such a short time.”

“When you’re in politics you learn—”

Andrew stopped abruptly. Where she sat across from him, Paddy followed his eyes to the other side of the room. They had magneted on a tall man and blond woman just entering the restaurant.

“Pardon me for a moment, please, Miss Rawlings,” Andrew murmured. He rose and slowly approached the newcomers.

“Hello, Blair,” he said, then nodded slightly to the man at her side.

“Andrew!” she replied with a start, then quickly recovered. “—How are you?”

“Well. And you?”

“I’m fine—oh, Andrew, it is good to see you! And you’ve become so famous all of a sudden.”

“Hardly that.”

“I hear about you everywhere.” She glanced in the direction of the table from which Andrew had come. “And I’m so happy you’ve found someone else,” she added.

A puzzled look came over Andrew’s face, then he smiled thinly. Suddenly he realized how very different he and Blair were. The insight pained him afresh. It would be pointless to explain. It had only been a few short months, yet suddenly he felt they were worlds apart.

“But I am forgetting my manners,” she went on. “Andrew, do you know—”

“Yes,” interrupted Andrew, now shaking hands with her escort, “—hello, Hensley. It’s been a while.”

“Trentham,” nodded the man called Hensley.

“Still writing those press briefings for the Yard?”

“Keeps meat on the table.”

“What do you hear about the Stone these days?”

“Nothing much. Got our boys more than a little mystified.”

“Well, nice seeing you, Hensley . . . Blair,” said Andrew.

He returned to his seat while the two were shown to a table on the other side of the restaurant.

“Friends?” asked Paddy as he sat down.

“A former acquaintance,” said Andrew in a sober tone.

“From that look on your face, I would say a close acquaintance.”

“You are very perceptive, Miss Rawlings,” he said with a pensive smile. “But you’re a reporter, and that is personal.”

“Oh . . . I’m sorry,” replied Paddy, embarrassed. “I meant nothing—”

“No problem,” smiled Andrew.

“I suppose I’m also an American—blunt, forward, tactless . . . all those qualities we are famous for. . . .”

“Miss Rawlings, please . . . I meant nothing of the kind—only that I’d rather not go down that road. But you are right in what you said—she is someone I cared for very much. Yet seeing her again . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“Maybe I’m changing more than I realized,” he added after a moment. This time Paddy said nothing in reply. A lengthy silence followed, during which she busied herself with her salad, he with his veal.

“But wasn’t that Fred Hensley with her?” said Paddy at length. “I read something he released to the press about the Stone. It seemed to raise more questions than it answered.”

“It certainly has been a mystery. Frankly, I’m surprised the Stone hasn’t shown up by now.”

As the conversation continued, they chatted further about the British system of politics. Scotland was mentioned. Then the subject of Paddy’s name was raised. She had just mentioned that her friends called her Paddy, with d’s not t’s.

“Why Paddy?” Andrew asked. “Isn’t it a man’s nickname, and an Irish one at that?”

The American paused. A reminiscent expression of mingled nostalgia and pain crossed her face as she recalled the first time the name Paddy had sounded in her ears. What a happy day that had been—a memory that had now turned bittersweet. No, she wasn’t quite ready to open that box of memories for her new acquaintance Andrew Trentham.

“Let’s just say it is a nickname a friend gave me when I first came to England,” she sighed at length. She forced a smile to pull herself back to the present.

“Why are you interested in Scotland?” he asked, diverting the conversation in another direction.

“That’s supposed to be my question!” Paddy rejoined. “I’m the one who asked you about Scotland, remember?”

Andrew laughed. “Just curious,” he said. “I’m rather fond of the north, you see. I was raised just a stone’s throw from the border, though to tell the truth, we rarely ventured across it—my family’s interests have always focused toward London. But now that recent responsibilities have been thrust upon me, I feel an urgency to understand as much as I can about the issues coming up. I always did my best to stay informed. But now I feel I need to know more—not just the facts but what is behind them. Understanding Scotland and its history suddenly seems vital to me.”

“All right—I can see that. But you must realize that you may now very well become the center of the entire debate.”

“Right now I would prefer not to think about it. What do you say we change the subject?”

“All right, then. Let me ask you about your recent election. Why did Mr. Reardon step down?”

“I honestly don’t know—family, personal reasons. Actually he didn’t share many details with us about it. But I’m not sure that was enough of a subject change to suit me, Miss Rawlings,” laughed Andrew. “So I’ll have a go at it. What’s it like being a reporter—do you enjoy it?”

“That is a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn!” she rejoined. “But to answer you, yes. Of course—I love doing what I do. Though if I was to be absolutely truthful—”

She paused and glanced into Andrew’s face.

“—off the record?” she added.

He nodded.

“To tell you the truth, aspects of the job are hard for me.”

“How so?”

“I’m afraid I’m really not as forceful as you have to be to make it in this game.”

“You could have fooled me!”

“You have to put on a journalist’s persona. I love news—the process of investigation, being in touch with what is going on. But it’s often difficult to be the kind of person you have to be to succeed. Sometimes I wonder how long I will be able to keep it up,” she said. “And you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you like being a politician?”

“I would give you the same answer you gave me—of course, though it too has its difficult side.”

“Such as?”

“Off the record?”

Paddy nodded.

“That’s not good enough,” smiled Andrew. “You have to promise me that what I say will remain just between the two of us.”

“You are a shrewd one. All right then,” she replied. “I promise.” She extended her arm across the table.

They shook hands to formally seal the pact of confidentiality.

“All right then,” Andrew said, “I too find that the persona I must wear weighs a bit heavy at times, simply because of who I am.”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean my mother and her reputation, not to mention her expectations . . . and everybody in the city knows my father . . . and here I come, the young scion carrying on the Trentham name. I don’t know—lately I’ve found myself wondering who I am all by myself, if there is a me that represents something deeper than all the external things people see when they look at me.”

“You’re going through a time of personal reflection—is that what you’d say?”

“I suppose. I’m wondering as well about my roots, about where I came from.”

“But don’t you know?” she persisted. “I mean . . . your family is an old one, right? I thought you would have, like a coat of arms or a family archives or something.”

“I suppose perhaps we do, somewhere. But you have to understand I come from a long line of modernists . . . yes, even my Conservative mother in her way. We’ve never been much for tales of the old days.”

“But that’s changing now, you say . . .”

“Something’s changing.” He shook his head. “I don’t really know where I’m going with all this. Suddenly it just dawned on me that, here I am—well-known, my name in the papers, journalists—like you!” he added with a grin, “—wanting to talk to me . . . and I find myself wondering if I’ve ever stopped to try to figure out who I was.”

“Did Eagon Hamilton’s death trigger all this introspection?”

Andrew thought for a moment.

“No, it began before that. Actually, I think the theft of the Coronation Stone may have had more to do with it than what happened to Eagon. But whenever someone you know dies, you can’t help but grow pensive.” Andrew smiled. “A fateful lunch with the young lady over there,” he added with a smile, “contributed its share. And come to think of it, actually your question about division helped stimulate my thoughts too.”

“I’m glad something good came of it! But how could that have had anything to do with it?”

“I don’t know . . . that you were willing to launch out into uncharted waters.”

“American accent and all!”

“Exactly. I found myself envying your being in a position different than would be expected of you.”

“Certainly none of London’s journalists expect it of me.”

“I look at what you’re doing and I see a freedom I’m not sure I’ve ever known.”

A brief silence fell.

“And then a visit to an old Scotsman who lives on our estate up north added to my reevaluation,” Andrew said, as if picking up the previous thread of conversation. “That did it most of all.”

“So all this does have to do with Scotland?”

“Suddenly this has a sound very much like an interview.”

“No, I promise. I’m just interested.”

“To answer your question—no, I don’t think it is the home-rule issue so much as my own personal role in it. Roots, as I said before.”

“That statement has very much the ring of an eldest son trying to forge an identity as his generation rises to prominence in a well-known family.”

“Did you study psychoanalysis as well as journalism?” laughed Andrew. “That statement has very much the ring of someone trying to get inside my psyche!”

“As I said, I’m just interested. Are you the eldest in your family?”

Now it was Andrew’s turn, as she had done a few moments before, to draw down over his thoughts the protective cloak of silence. It was obvious from the expression that briefly crossed his face that there was more pain to the answer than he wanted to divulge. Neither was he ready to open his box of private memories just now.

“No,” he answered softly after a moment. “I had an older sister—”

He paused, then added, “—she died when I was ten.”

“I’m sorry,” said Paddy, nodding thoughtfully.

It was clear there was more to MP Andrew Trentham than even she had realized.

When she arrived back to her office after lunch, Paddy took out the list of individuals and questions she had drawn up earlier. To the bottom of the paper she added the words:

Also keep track of for related interest: . . . Fred Hensley, Scotland Yard . . . as well as Andrew’s former friend—blond . . .

Paddy’s hand paused momentarily as she briefly replayed the incident in her mind. Then she added—

. . . shifty eyes . . . a user.

She put the paper away, smiling to herself. Were her instincts accurate? she wondered. Or had a hint of female rivalry risen up to cloud her perspective?

Eleven

The early spring’s snow still lay thick on the hills when Andrew arrived again in Cumbria.

After Saturday’s breakfast, as Andrew passed through the entryway, his eyes fell upon the four family portraits that hung symmetrically on the wall to his left—his mother and father, Lindsay at fifteen, a year before her death, and he upon his graduation from Eton.

He gazed into his sister’s eyes and upon her smile longer than was his custom, then wandered into the expansive drawing room, where a cheery fire burned in the large hearth. He stood a minute or two glancing around the room, so familiar since his boyhood. Antique furnishings, thick red carpet, two massive sideboards, three couches, and six or eight overstuffed leather chairs were spread about the room. On the wall over the enormous fireplace hung a huge and ancient fading tapestry. On each side were mounted heads of a red mountain stag and a great horned ram. On the opposite wall hung a large mirror framed in ornate carved oak.

Andrew took in each item in its turn. Suddenly, as if beholding them all for the first time, he found himself wondering where the antiques and mirrors and stuffed heads and tapestries had come from. Till this moment, it seemed, he had taken everything in this house for granted.

Who had brought them all here, he now pondered. And when?

He ambled toward the wide and expansive staircase that rose majestically from one corner of the drawing room toward the upper floors of the house.

Methodically he took the great stairs one slow step after another, gazing now to the right, then to the left at the gallery of paintings hanging on the walls—men and women, scenes, houses, castles, landscapes as familiar to him as his own hand. The sight of every one sent stabs of nostalgic longing through him—but for what he did not know.

He recognized each face distinctly. Yet now he realized he knew them not at all.

Who were these people, whose silent expressions had gazed down from these walls upon him during all the years of his life, never offering comment, never passing judgment, never changing expression through the years? Whose were these eyes that now seemed to stare so intently into his consciousness with their concealed messages of antiquity, as if waiting for him to discover the secret that they knew . . . but that he had yet to uncover?

What were they trying to tell him? What were their secrets?

On he climbed, turning round one landing, then another—up to the first floor now, where a length of gallery leading to his right opened as a loft above the room he had just left, while in the other direction the staircase bent round again and continued its upward ascent. He was at the level of the goat and stag heads now, opposite him, flanking the fireplace below.

Up he continued. More faces adorned the walls. Relics from the past sat on shelves and upon benches that were formed into the stone walls under the windows at each outside turn of the staircase. A giant bell . . . a bronze statue of a horse and rider he remembered loving to touch as a child . . . a handsomely painted miniature ship . . . more portraits of what he could only take as representations of his own ancestors. . . .

His eyes fell on the portrait of an ancient warrior in green-and-black kilt and full accompanying Highland dress. It hung in a heavy gilded frame among the others. Funny, Andrew thought to himself, he didn’t remember noticing that painting before.

Andrew stared up, gazing deeply into the ancient Celtic eyes, trying to apprehend what the man would tell him if he could but speak.

Who are you? thought Andrew. Why are you here, old Highlander, watching silently over this English estate?

Was this old portrait of a Gordon . . . could the fellow be a Trentham ancestor?

Slowly Andrew continued upward, still turning the matter over in his mind, and arrived at the second floor. He left the staircase and approached the Derwenthwaite library two doors down the wide corridor. He opened the large double doors and stepped inside.

As with everything he had seen this day, a wave of melancholic nostalgia swept through him at the sight and smell of this familiar yet all at once unknown place. Everywhere sat more silent reminders of the past. Though there was a large contingent of newer volumes, the bindings and the dusty aromas of the older books drew him with sudden sensations of long-past mystery.

Here were stories and tales and legends innumerable! They had been right in front of him all his life.

Standing before the bookshelves of the Derwenthwaite library, pale light coming in from the tall window behind him, he recalled the tales of the Maiden, the Wanderer, and Cruithne. With the remembrance came a realization that had escaped him before—that the Wanderer had no doubt settled very near here, just south of Scotland’s border.

He turned and left the room, returning down the stairs in a tenth the time it had taken to ascend them.

He found his father seated in the private sitting room on the ground floor.

“What is it, Andrew?” Mr. Trentham asked in some alarm, seeing the expression of urgency on his son’s face.

“I’ve got to know a few things, Dad,” Andrew replied.

“About what?”

“About the family. For instance, who is that old Highlander upstairs?”

“Old Highlander?” repeated Trentham.

“The portrait up on the second floor.”

“Oh . . . right. Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall some strangely attired fellow up there. Rather imposing-looking, if I recall.”

“But why is his portrait hanging in Derwenthwaite? Is he in the family?”

“He’s been there since before I can remember, to tell you the truth. No doubt he is an ancestor of some kind, now that I think of it. There were some Scots in the family, you know, back in the last century.”

“What about the other portraits?”

“I’m sorry, Andrew,” said Trentham, “I just can’t help you. I don’t think one of those paintings has gone up or come down since I was a boy. I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about most of them.”

“What about my name? How did you and Mum choose it?”

“Andrew—that was your grandfather’s name.”

“And my middle name?”

“Gordon—that is a family name too.”

“Where did it originate?”

“I can’t actually remember—let’s see . . . somewhere way back, one of my . . . hmm, it would have been my great-grandfather—maybe my great-great-grandfather—married a woman named Gordon.”

“Who was she?” asked Andrew with continued importunity.

“I can’t recall—we’ll have to get out the old family records. But why the sudden interest? What’s the matter with you, son? Till now you’ve never paid any more attention to them than I have.”

“Just curious, I suppose, Dad.”

“Why now?”

“Somehow it just suddenly seems to matter a great deal.”

“Without going into the records,” sighed Mr. Trentham, “I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. It’s all there in some book in the library. But tell me,” he went on, attempting to turn the conversation toward politics, “how are you and the PM getting on? Is everything I read in the paper about Barraclough true?”

“More or less,” answered Andrew distractedly. “I’m sorry, Dad—I’m not in a political frame of mind right now.”

He turned and left the room, leaving his father puzzling over the strange swing of his son’s mood since the morning.

Much of the remainder of the day Andrew spent upstairs in the library, digging out several books from its shelves that he hoped would be able to shed more light on the next period of Scottish history which had begun to fascinate him.

Twelve

The scene in Edward Pilkington’s London office late that same day was much different from the last time Patricia Rawlings sat here nervously wondering if she would still have a job at day’s end. Her American newshound’s personality had surfaced and she paced about the small room with obvious agitation.

“I tell you, Mr. Pilkington,” she said, “there is more going on in the mind of the Honorable Andrew Trentham than anyone realizes.”

“Meaning what?”

“Nothing I can put my finger on exactly,” replied Paddy. “But this Scottish thing goes deep with him—deeper, I’m convinced, than anyone in this city realizes.”

“Nearly every MP backs devolution and the recent changes. It’s the wave of the future. It’s not news that Andrew Trentham’s for it too.”

“It’s more than that. It’s personal with him.”

“Personal—how do you mean? Are you on to some skeleton in the closet of the, quote, Honorable gentleman?”

Paddy shrugged. “I doubt that—I’m not even sure what I mean. It’s just a sense. Isn’t that what reporters do—rely on instinct and intuition?”

“In books and movies,” replied Pilkington sarcastically. “In real life, it’s facts that count. What about the real news—say, for instance, the murder of Hamilton and the theft of the Stone? You get me some hard news on those items, Rawlings, and you can write your own ticket.”

“I’m working on it,” rejoined Paddy.

“Yeah—how?” asked Pilkington, obviously intrigued.

“I’m going to talk to some people. I’ve got some theories.”

“Anything you care to share with a seasoned veteran?”

“When I’m ready,” smiled Paddy. “But did you mean what you said? If I get you facts, as you say, on either—”

The door opened behind her. In walked an impeccably tailored Kirkham Luddington.

“I understood there was some discussion concerning possible new information on Andrew Trentham,” he said. He sat down and eyed the two.

“How did you hear that?” snapped Paddy. She turned toward the newcomer with a look of anything but welcome on her face.

“I know what goes on around here,” replied Luddington with an unmistakable superior air. “Tell me, what’s up?”

“You keep out of this, Kirk—this is my story!”

“Everything around here is my business, Miss Rawlings—tell her, Edward. Doesn’t she know how seniority works?”

“Not if I get something you don’t have,” Paddy retorted. “Then where is your seniority?”

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, a respected member of Parliament is not about to divulge any tidbits of news or inside scoops to a novice American whose knowledge of British politics is almost as inept as her use of the English tongue.”

The smile that followed the words of the veteran television personality aroused the fury of her sex and the independent blood of her nationality.

“We shall see, Mister Luddington!” said Paddy, making no attempt to hide her ire.

Face red, she now turned to Pilkington, who sat behind his desk, rather enjoying the heated exchange to liven up an otherwise dull news day.

“You told me not long ago,” she said, “that if I found you a story no one else had, we’d talk again about my getting a shot to go on camera. Well, I’m ready to talk.”

“Do you have such a story?”

“I may . . . before long.”

“Bring it to me and we’ll see.”

“No deal, Mr. Pilkington. If I’m going to stake my career on something, I want to know you won’t just hand it over to Kirk.”

She glanced toward Luddington, who sat listening with that infuriating smile on his face, amused at the notion that this upstart American could ever land a story he wouldn’t know about first.

“Do you have an angle?” asked Pilkington.

“I’ll get one.”

“Not so easy with parliamentary leaders. They guard their flanks.”

“Trentham’s different.”

“None of them are different,” put in Luddington with derision in his tone. “They’re all the same.”

Paddy kept her eyes focused toward her boss.

Again Pilkington leaned back in his chair, thinking.

“You bring me something really good,” he said at length, “something no one else has and something with some news value and punch—all right, I’ll give an American a chance on the BBC. You bring me such a story, and I’ll put a camera in front of you and see what you can do.”

“And Kirk’s seniority?” she added, eyeing her boss, and this time not even glancing in the direction of her competitor.

“I’ll let you go with whatever you uncover,” replied Pilkington. “Seniority will not apply.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pilkington.” She turned to go.

“But if you slip up again, Rawlings,” Pilkington’s voice sounded behind her, “it will be the end of what little seniority even you have.”

Paddy nodded.

She turned and exited the office. As the door closed behind her, she heard the sound of Kirkham Luddington’s voice in mumbled comment, followed by the sounds of both men chuckling.

Let them laugh, she thought. For once it didn’t annoy her. She would show them what kind of reporter she was.

When the camera zoomed in on her face to report her findings to the country . . . they could see who was laughing then!

Thirteen

He was next on her list anyway, Paddy thought as she left the building. She had been trying to set up an interview through official channels without success. She would try the direct approach. It had worked with Trentham.

She caught a cab and headed straight for the Norman Shaw building, where the office of MP Larne Reardon was located. It was forty minutes before Commons convened. If she was lucky, she might be able to nab him as he left his office.

Conning her way past the guard and into the building with a fake ID, Paddy took the stairs to the third floor, then slowed her pace. She kept her eyes on the busy corridor, trying to monitor the traffic without being too conspicuous.

She drew nearer to Reardon’s office. The double doors were closed. She sauntered past, continued on for some distance, then casually turned. Someone was bound to notice her if she hung around too long.

But wait—the door to Reardon’s office was opening!

A figure emerged and strode down the corridor in the opposite direction. Paddy glanced at the newspaper photograph in her hand and took note of the narrow face, the thinning hair.

It was Larne Reardon. She was sure of it! She hastened after him.

“Mr. Reardon,” she said as she drew alongside, “I hoped I might have a moment of your time.”

“If you don’t mind walking—I’m on a tight schedule.”

“No, not at all,” replied Paddy, doing her best to keep up. “I wondered if you might be able to tell me why you withdrew from the election for your party’s leadership.”

“Personal reasons,” replied Reardon. “Why?”

He paused slightly and glanced toward Paddy. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Patricia Rawlings, BBC2.”

“Ah, a reporter . . . I should have known. I think I’ve already given the only statement I care to make to the press. How did you get into the building?”

“Would you sit down with me sometime and discuss the matter in more detail?” persisted Paddy, thinking it best not to answer him.

“I really doubt I would be interested in—”

Reardon hesitated. Paddy glanced toward him in time to detect a slight flush of apparent anger in his neck. Her eyes followed his down the hall to a tall man near the elevator. Though they appeared not to know each other, the eyes of the two men had clearly met.

The next instant Reardon recovered himself. He glanced with a smile toward Paddy.

“—I really don’t think that would work at all,” he said. “I am interested in no more public dialogue on the matter. Good day, Miss Rawlings.”

He hurried off and left her standing in the hall, watching his back recede as he moved away from her. Instead of taking the elevator to the ground floor, however, Reardon turned toward the stairs. As he opened the door, Paddy detected a slight nod of his head toward the other man, who followed him a moment or two later.

Without pausing to think what she was doing, Paddy hurried after them.

Cautiously she opened the door. The corridor was deserted. The sound of the two men’s footsteps came up from the stairwell below. As softly as they were attempting to speak, portions of their heatedly whispered argument echoed up into Paddy’s ears.

“. . . no idea what you’re talking about . . . never heard of someone called Fiona. . . .”

The speaker was Reardon. Now came the other man’s voice, in a thick Scottish brogue.

“. . . did with Hamilton . . . won’t work with me . . .”

“. . . voice down, you fool . . .”

Other words followed that Paddy couldn’t make out.

“. . . madder than a March hare . . .”

“. . . druids took . . .”

“. . . imagine you think I had anything to do with . . .”

“. . . can’t double-cross me . . . where is she . . .”

“. . . do you think . . . didn’t come down with yesterday’s rain . . .”

“. . . Celtic compound . . .”

“Never heard of it.”

“. . . don’t believe you . . . if I find you . . .”

“. . . call the police if you try to threaten me . . .”

The door below opened. Suddenly the voices were gone.

Paddy hurried down the stairs after them. She emerged from the building but saw no sign of either man.

So, she said to herself, the plot thickens!

But what plot? What was it all about? And druids, for goodness’ sake—why were they talking about ancient pagan priests? And what compound?

With many new mysteries suddenly to unravel, Patricia Rawlings slowly returned to her office.

She didn’t yet know a lot of people in London. Nor had she accumulated enough favors—that elusive commodity that lubricated the engines of both politics and journalism—to shake a stick at. But she had made a few friends in several of the right places.

Her thoughts immediately turned to Bert Fenton, a would-be novelist whose day job at a travel bureau had turned him into something of a computer whiz, if not a hack.

She would call him.

Fourteen

The following morning, on Sunday, Andrew was up and away from home early. He had planned to go to church in the village with his parents as he did most Sundays when he was home. But at the last minute he decided on this drive instead.

Yesterday’s image of the old Highlander staring down from the wall of the house still haunted his memory, blurring with the woodcut of the Wanderer. How near to this very place might have been the Wanderer’s home?

Is your presence still haunting these regions, old wandering ancient, he thought . . . filling your descendants with the same northward beckoning that lured you?

Might even some of the mammoth’s bones be lying under the ground nearby, Andrew wondered, lost to the centuries in a burial crypt of dirt and stone and peat?

Who were all those people hanging upon the walls of his home? Was it from Cruithne’s stock they had come?

Perhaps someday he would find out. Today, however, he was after another piece of the puzzle, one suggested by yesterday’s research. He had decided to drive eastward to Carlisle, then northeast through Brampton to the remains of Hadrian’s Wall north of Haltwhistle. He had visited there once before, as a schoolboy, but little remained in his memory other than vague impressions of rocky ruins. Now, with his adult interest newly piqued, he wondered what he might learn.

A driving rain set in as Andrew followed the road along the ancient Roman boundary, watching for bits of the wall that remained across the countryside. His first stop was at the ruins of the Roman fort at Housesteads.

After ten or fifteen minutes in the gift shop and museum waiting for the downpour to let up, Andrew bundled up as best he could and set out for the half-mile walk up the hill to the ruins. A biting wind whipped past his ears and stung his nose and face. Gradually the rain eased.

Though all that remained of the fort were stone walls and the outlines of rooms a few feet high, as he walked slowly among them he felt a great sense of ancient reality. Thousands of men had actually lived in forts just like this—solitary outposts that represented the final reach of the Roman Empire. What a difficult life it must have been! The weather alone would have been daunting if today’s fierce blasts, speckled with hail, were any indication. Yet the remains showed solid construction. And the still-visible floor pillars of the bathhouse gave evidence of Roman technology intended to keep the cold at bay and provide some degree of luxury even on a faraway frontier like this.

From the edge of the fort itself, Hadrian’s Wall stretched down across the fields to the northeast. The only sign of life visible as the stones faded in the chilly distance were a few sheep. They cared as little about today’s wind and rain as they did about the history of the ground upon which they grazed.

How had the Romans been driven away, Andrew wondered. How had the northern people done it? How had primitive people managed to reduce these once-massive and seemingly impenetrable forts to ruins?

He turned and made his way back across the soggy ground to the parking lot, then continued on his way to Hexham. After a brief walk through the center of the historic market town, he drove on to Corbridge and the ruins of another first-century Roman fort. The rain had let up by now. Though the wind continued to whistle among the stones, occasionally a ray or two of sunlight did its best to shine through.

The fort in this season did not attract many visitors. Andrew took the opportunity to question the woman in charge of the visitor’s center.

“What was it that destroyed this fort?” he asked.

“There were actually two forts built at this site,” she answered. “The first dated from the governorship of Julius Agricola in the early 80s AD, when he conquered this region. It was originally destroyed by fire.”

“Fire?” repeated Andrew. “How could these forts have been burned?”

“The circumstances have been lost to history. Some six or seven Roman forts were all burned around the same time.”

“But everything is made of stone,” said Andrew.

“The ruins we see at present, as I said, dating from the second, third, and even fourth centuries, are mostly reconstructions. The original first-century forts were largely made of wood. Some had stone foundations, but most of the roof supports and interior walls were of timber. Trees were much more plentiful in those days, you see. After the burning of many of their forts, however, the Romans resorted to more stone, higher walls, even slate for the roofs.”

“But how were the forts burned?”

“It is one of the mysteries of early British history. Along the north of this border, from coast to coast, the natives of early Scotland apparently repulsed the legions of Rome from further advances.”

“When did it happen?”

“The year was 105 AD”

Andrew thanked her for the information, browsed a bit more, purchased two books, then walked out to the site. After a brief walk through the remains of the fort, he made his way to a solitary portion of the outer wall. There he located a large, partially dried stone protected by a remnant of wall face, sat down, shifted the pack from his back, and took out the luncheon he had packed for himself.

He wondered if the descendants of Cruithne and Fidach might have been among those Caledonian tribes who withstood the Roman advances.

Andrew opened one of the books he had just bought. As he quietly ate his lunch, he began to read about that epoch between vague prehistory and known history. It had been then, in the first and second centuries AD that the Roman Caesars had attempted to subdue the most distant reaches of their empire . . . that northern portion of the isle they had named Britannia.