Chapter Five

 

 

Rebecca paused inside the door to inhale the already familiar must and dust scent of the castle. Compared with the reek of mold behind the tomb the odor was not unpleasant at all. The enclosing walls seemed snug and almost peaceful. Dun Iain, she decided, had its moments of Alice in Wonderland, but a version that had been annotated by Edgar Allan Poe.

Dorothy came out of the kitchen door, coat buttoned, head swathed in a scarf, handbag securely under her arm. “Are you all right?”

What do I look like? Rebecca wondered, and smoothed her hair. “That humongous dog of Steve’s startled me. I’m not a dog person, I’m afraid.”

“That dog was the cutest little pup you’ve ever seen. Skippy, Steve called it then. That’s before he dropped out of school and started hanging out with those punkies and their loud music—if you can call it music. The company you keep tells a lot about you, you know.”

Ray, Rebecca thought. Dover’s all-star couch potato. “I know.”

“I keep telling Steve that animal will end up in the pound,” Dorothy persisted. “He lets it run loose and it tears open garbage sacks waiting on the curb. But kids! You try to help them and their ears fold up on you.”

“Steve’s mother,” said Rebecca, leaping into Dorothy’s inhalation, “must be very patient to put up with the dog.”

“Oh, she ran off with an auto parts salesman from Cleveland six or seven years ago. Right after Chuck died—my husband, that is. Went into the hospital for gallbladder surgery and the next thing you know, pffft!”

Rebecca’s head swam. “Steve’s mother’s gallbladder. . .?”

“No, no, my husband. Would’ve done better to have lived with the gallstones.” The lines in Dorothy’s face deepened, her expression settling like a house on uncertain foundations.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. And after an awkward pause, “Steve has no mother. I see.” The two women briefly met on common ground.

Dorothy’s expression lightened from grim back to merely dissatisfied. “Have to run. I promised my son Chuck I’d help them get settled in their new house. Just between us, Margie’s a dear, but no housekeeper. I hope she’ll improve now they’ve got the nicest new place in the development out toward Dayton. Savoy of Nob Hill Ranch. Real brick veneer fireplace in the family room.” She swept the stone walls, the huge wooden door, the queen’s effigy, with a withering glance. “This place makes you appreciate a real house.”

“Yes, it does,” replied Rebecca, but she meant the opposite. She’d grown up in a series of tract houses and apartments so similar she couldn’t remember which was in Denver and which in Atlanta. Dun Iain had character—if maybe a little too much character.

“I told Dr. Campbell about the tuna casserole I left you for dinner.”

“Why thank you. I didn’t realize your duties included cooking.”

“They don’t, but I thought you might be too busy to eat properly.” Her glance started at the crown of Rebecca’s head, traced a path to her toes, and moved back up. “Some women believe those fashion magazines with the models who look like they’ll blow away in a strong wind.”

“I never read fashion magazines,” Rebecca replied, and added to herself, I’m not that far gone. She found her keys in the pocket of her jeans but had no memory of having put them there. That was Eric’s blinding effect. “Actually I won’t be here tonight. I’m going out to dinner with Mr. Adler.”

“Oh?” Dorothy’s pale, drained eyes lit with a conspiratorial smile. “He’d be a great catch, wouldn’t he? Such manners. The kids today think manners are old-fashioned—they just honk their horns at each other. Good luck to you. Just remember not to act too smart. Men like their women decorative.”

Rebecca knew for a fact that she and Dorothy were from different planets. She picked up her typewriter. “Thank you,” she said with finality.

“See you next week.” Dorothy at last left.

It took Rebecca a moment to remember that today was Friday. She set the typewriter down again, went into the kitchen, and washed her hands.

That casserole had better go into the refrigerator; already there were punctures along the rim of the foil, made, most likely, by cat incisors. In the refrigerator Rebecca found additional odds and ends of food provided by Dorothy’s culinary altruism. She took enough pressed ham for a quick sandwich and completed her lunch with vile instant coffee and a stale Oreo she found in the pantry. One of the wooden shelves, she noted, was rickety.

Judging by the dishes in the sink, Michael had been in here calmly eating crackers, cheese, and tea while she’d been outside running an emotional gauntlet from elation to terror. Fine. She didn’t need a champion.

Out of habit she started to wash Michael’s dishes, too, then caught herself and washed only her own. She hauled her typewriter upstairs. Again the cloying reek of lavender hung on the air of her room. She looked again for an air freshener, still couldn’t find one, and opened the window.

Michael was in the Hall, down on his knees scrounging in a sideboard. Bits of crystal and cutlery were scattered on the floor around him. At her step he said to the depths of the cabinet, “Good of you to come back.”

If he was implying she hadn’t been working, she’d concede the point. By way of explanation she asked, “Have you looked at that bizarre mausoleum/ dovecote combination out there?”

“Technically it’s only a tomb, not posh enough for a mausoleum. Only a miser like Forbes would’ve thought of addin’ a doocot. Like feastin’ on his own dead.” Michael sat back on his heels and inspected a decanter.

“Yeah.” Even here in the brightly lit Hall Rebecca’s nape crawled.

“Gave me a cold grue.” He shivered, suiting action to word. “So austere. When I go I want to be planted in Tomnahurich, the firth gleamin’ beyond the yew trees and fairies pipin’ beneath the sod.”

“The big cemetery in Inverness built on a fairy mound? That’s an awfully romantic image for a skeptic like you.” Caught him, but his quick glance and dismissive gesture wouldn’t admit it. He didn’t have to. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one affected by the atmosphere of the tomb. She eyed the stack of black notebooks on the table. “Do you have any preference where I start?”

Michael stood up, dusted his hands, and started to stack his booty on the table. “I did the kitchen, the lobby, and the sittin’ room when I first got here. No much there. Been spendin’ most of my time here. Startin’ at the bottom and workin’ up seems as good a plan as any. There’s no order to this rat’s nest.”

“I noticed. What about the store—er, lumber room?” She wondered if he was dragging matters out just to irritate Eric, or if he was more meticulous in his working habits than in keeping his room tidy.

“Take more than one pair of hands to fetch and carry around that lot. I was thinkin’ of savin’ it for last.”

Rebecca wouldn’t have minded saving the cold, quiet upper room for last, but it wouldn’t seem so daunting after she’d grown used to the place. “Because the lumber room might have the most valuable things?”

“No.” He tossed a yellowed linen tablecloth onto a paper and twine package that might have contained anything from a Tupperware canister to the Holy Grail. “I doot it has the least value. Wouldn’t John have put his dearest things out where he could show them off?”

“But you said this morning he probably didn’t know what he had.”

“We’ll never ken what he had if we dinna look at it!” he retorted, a little louder than was necessary. Rebecca felt a prickle of shame; she’d been baiting him. Odd, she never acted like this normally, she was always Miss Meek and Mild, the harmless drudge. With a sudden laugh that made Michael’s brows knit, nonplussed, she chose a notebook labeled “Prophet’s Chamber” and asked, “There?”

“Be my guest,” he said, bowing her out the door.

In a chair in the study Rebecca found Dun Iain’s presiding genius, Darnley, curled up in the feline version of the fetal position. He acknowledged her entrance with his usual salute, a blink of the eyes and a stiffening of the whiskers. She paused a moment to stroke his sleek, warm head. Give me, she thought, an animal smaller than a bread box.

Just inside the door to the prophet’s chamber were two snuffboxes and a miniature portrait of a Tudor lady. Hilliard? Rebecca flipped open the notebook. Hilliard it was. That was a valuable piece the museum would want. She found a pencil on the desk and checked it off.

A faint gurgling and rumbling must be water pipes. Above the desk a brown stain spread like a Rorschach blot across the plain plaster ceiling. A pipe had leaked, or else someone had let the tub in what was now her bathroom overflow. Rebecca found a sheet of paper and made a list of repairs: shelf in pantry, stain on ceiling.

The armchair in front of the desk was a dilapidated affair of heavy varnished wood, the kind of chair Rebecca associated with bank presidents in prewar movies. It was not only not an antique, it probably wouldn’t even make a decent pile of firewood. She perched on its edge, opened the roll top of the desk, and winced. The jumbled contents threatened to spew into her lap. Sparring with Michael and flirting with Eric were all well and good, but now it was time to prove herself. She dug in.

Three hours later she sat back with a sigh. She had scrounged through the desk and the filing cabinets, searched the walls and the floors, and uncovered two other alcoves. No, Michael wasn’t dragging the inventory out just to irritate Eric. He was being remarkably efficient. It would take at least a forty-hour week just to catalog the papers in this room, let alone decide what was valuable, what was useful, and what could be used to wrap the garbage. And she had envisioned herself spending quiet evenings typing away at her dissertation. As usual, reality fell far short of fantasy.

So far Rebecca had found three snuffboxes and the Hilliard miniature that were mentioned in the notebook, and a yellowed letter written in the spidery script of the eighteenth century that was not. Of the two small daggers, the one the notebook labeled an 18th century sgian dubh looked promising. The other, a nineteenth century fish-cleaner, didn’t. A sheaf of letters and military orders signed by various historical personages was also duly listed, although several, including James of Monmouth and Robert Louis Stevenson, were missing. But it wasn’t surprising that some things would have been moved around in the forty years since James typed up the inventory.

She’d even found the typewriter itself, in its case in the corner. Its age and decrepitude made Rebecca’s tired machine look positively opulent.

What she hadn’t found was the Erskine letter. She’d have to search the inventories for it. The records of its sale to John in 1900 had percolated into academia; it had existed then. Fortuitous that Arabella Erskine, Countess of Mar, had defied discretion and written her sister about trading her newborn child for Mary Stuart’s suddenly and shockingly dead one.

Well, Rebecca thought, if I were giving up my child to be king of Scotland, and later England as well, I’d want someone to know it.

The file drawer of the desk was crammed with more black notebooks, James’s diaries, apparently. These were handwritten in faded sepia ink and shed newspaper clippings like a maple sheds autumn leaves. She’d have to go over those some other time.

As she struggled to wedge the one notebook she’d removed back into the drawer, she glimpsed a bit of white at the far back corner. She pulled it out. It was a scrap of James’s handwriting, maybe an abandoned draft of a letter: “. . . ever problem you are having you have brought upon yourself. I cannot help you any more than I already have. Your threats are. . .”

Useless? Rebecca concluded. Interesting. Maybe James’s life hadn’t been quite as dull as she’d thought. She put the scrap inside one of the diaries, shut the drawer, and looked up.

Above the desk was the most striking item in the room, a four foot long claymore dated to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s final defeat at the battle of Culloden in 1746. The sword looked lethally heavy, if far from sharp.

Rebecca cleared a spot on the desk, propped her feet on it, and unfolded the 18th century letter. Inside was a curl of hair almost the color of her own, a light tawny brown. She held the paper to the light. Oh—another lock of Prince Charlie’s hair. So much of his hair was in the stately homes of Scotland that the Young Pretender must’ve worn a powdered wig for more than fashion. Unless, like modern Hollywood stars, his flunkies handed out hair only purporting to be his.

It would be easy enough to check the handwriting on the paper against proven samples of Charles Edward’s. He was—Rebecca counted back—Mary’s grandson’s grandson’s grandson, heir to her feckless grace. If Charles really were Mary’s descendant. If James VI and I had been her son, not an Erskine. . .

Rebecca yawned. In this warm, snug room counting crowned heads seemed only slightly more stimulating than counting sheep. A beam of afternoon sun shone in the window, faded, and shone again, teasing gleams from the sword on the wall. The sound of the wind was muted into a gentle lullaby. The subtle gurgle of water was as soothing as the rush of a mountain stream. The lock of hair was soft in her hand.

The gurgling changed in timbre, becoming the swish of rain. The wind filled with voices growing first into shouts and then screams, blended with a staccato rattle of guns and the flat reports of cannon. Rebecca frowned, turning her head from side to side, struggling against the images, but still the sounds buffeted her ears and ricocheted across her skull. She felt the sting of sleet against her skin. She smelled gunpowder, cold steel, and the warm stench of blood.

The claymore above her head flashed. It wrenched loose from its brackets and drove right at her breast.

Metal rent, and the world turned upside down. With a short, strangled scream Rebecca crashed backward onto the floor. She lay stunned, her heart fluttering against her ribs, blinking as stupidly at the walls and ceiling as though she’d never seen them before.

Then she focused her mind and caught her breath. Weird! The sword hung innocently in its brackets. The room was quiet except for the rustle of papers and the background murmur of wind and water. And yet for a moment she had been someplace else: Culloden, 1746.

“Oh for heaven’s sakes,” she exclaimed, abjectly embarrassed. She’d dozed off, had a brief, if extraordinarily vivid, nightmare, and upset the chair. She was wedged against the wall in an inverted “V”, the lock of hair crushed in her hand.

Nothing seemed to be damaged except her dignity. But she couldn’t get up. She had no room to maneuver; she didn’t dare struggle too violently, she might break something. Something other than the chair, that is.

A movement in the door was Darnley, sitting with his head cocked to the side as if wondering what amazing gymnastic feat she would attempt next. She could, she thought dizzily, send Darnley for help, like Rin Tin Tin. No, she’d be mortified to have Michael help her, let alone see what she’d done. Even if she had to lie here all afternoon.

No, that wouldn’t work, either. Eric was picking her up at five-thirty. She held her wristwatch before her face and swore. It was almost five. She wriggled, trying to turn herself on her side. The thick arms of the chair seemed almost malevolent the way they clutched at her.

The sound of footsteps reverberated in the floor beneath her head. Darnley whizzed away. In spite of herself she drew her knees close to her chest and tensed. The steps came down the staircase, through the study, to the door. A vast pair of work boots stopped by her eyes, and hands the size of scoops on a steam shovel picked her up and set her on her feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Pruitt,” she said. She carefully peeled the royal lock of hair from her damp palm.

“I was just coming to fix that chair when I heard you go over,” Phil said. “Almost dumped Dorothy last week when she was dusting the desk. Looking through it, more likely. None of her business.”

So Dorothy was a snoop. After finding her wardrobe open Rebecca wasn’t surprised. She restored the hair to its paper wrapper and tucked it away. “Maybe one of the ghosts thought I was her,” she said, not sure just how funny she was trying to be.

Phil was inspecting the metal contraption that had hinged the seat of the chair to its base, turning it over and over in his hand. Sheared through, Rebecca saw. Just old and fragile. . . Wait a minute. The jagged rim of the break stopped suddenly at a shining straight edge.

Phil thrust the hinge into his rear pocket and picked up the two pieces of the chair. “The ghosts out here are pretty peaceable ones. I’ll take these out to the shed.” He tramped away, the rhythm of his boots going out not varying from the calm cadences which had brought him in.

Rebecca shook her head. That was an awfully precise break, almost as if the metal had been filed through. Had Phil set a trap for Dorothy? He didn’t look like a practical joker. He didn’t look like the fanciful type, either, and yet he agreed matter-of-factly that there were ghosts in Dun Iain. She followed Phil through the study and onto the landing. Considerate of him, to destroy only something that was worthless anyway. That’s the kind of consideration Michael would show.

In the Hall Michael was smearing white paste over a bowl, completely absorbed. He was the more likely candidate for practical joker, and yet if he were, surely he’d show some interest in the results of his joke. Maybe he hadn’t counted on Phil playing cavalry, maybe he’d been waiting to play the gallant rescuer after she was thoroughly flushed and flustered.

You’re getting paranoid, Rebecca chided herself. It was an accident. There was simply no reason for it to be any more than that.

The front door thudded shut behind Phil. Rebecca turned and hurried up to her room. Almost five o’clock, she wouldn’t have time to wash her hair.

The telephone jangled. An odd ring, in stereo. Oh—there was an extension on the fourth floor. It was probably a salesman, a computer selling aluminum siding, and she hadn’t even decided what to wear. “Hello. Dun Iain Estate.”

“Rebecca!” said a familiar voice. “There you are!”

Her mind hiccuped. She knew who it was—who was it?

It was Ray. “I’ve been worried about you, Kitten. You never called to tell me you’d gotten there safely.”

“You never told me you wanted me to call,” she replied, trying to ignore the accusatory tone in his voice. The man’s timing was incredible, calling her just as she was about to step out with another man. She tapped her fingernails against the table, the rapid tic tic tic displacing the quiet creaks and settlings of the house. But that was the protocol—while she was gone, they were to date other people. They were to give each other space. And here he was already violating hers.

“How’s it going?” Ray asked.

“Fine.”

“Have you found that letter of yours yet?”

“No.” She grimaced at her own impatience and tried not to peer through the adjacent door at the clock radio beside Michael’s bed. “There’s an incredible amount of material to sift through. We didn’t even get the inventories until a few hours ago.”

“We? Oh yeah, the guy from England.”

“Scotland,” corrected Rebecca wearily. She straightened and walked the length of the phone cord to look into James’s room. Here, too, was a strong odor of lavender. One of the cut-glass perfume bottles from Elspeth’s dressing table sat on the windowsill.

“I’ll bet he’s one of those funny old guys like our tour guide.”

First Jan, then Ray. Didn’t anyone realize that people were still bearing children in Scotland? It wasn’t all one big museum. “No, he’s about our age.” Rebecca took another step and almost yanked the phone off the table. That bottle hadn’t been there earlier. Dorothy or Phil must have moved it.

“Oh, I see. Good looking?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t noticed.” Liar, she said to herself. He has red glints in his hair, his eyes are as blue as a loch in the sunshine, and he has a tartan chip on his shoulder.

“Oh. Well. I see.” Rebecca pictured Ray settling back in his chair, pipe in hand. “So then. What have you had to eat?”

“Not much. I didn’t come here to cook, I came here to work.”

“The leftover meat loaf is gone,” he said. “I ate it last night. I was thinking of having the spaghetti sauce tonight, but there’s no spaghetti. You must not have put it on your list.”

Rebecca stifled an impulse to throw the phone against the wall. I’m busy, she wanted to blurt. I’m finally doing my own work, not yours. Inspiration struck. “Ray, this phone call must be costing you a fortune!”

“Oh yeah. Well, drop me a letter,” he said briskly. “I miss you, Kitten.”

“Take care,” she replied, and hung up feeling absurdly guilty, as if she’d been kicking a stuffed animal. She’d never suspect Ray of filing through a desk chair when he couldn’t even buy a package of spaghetti.

No, that wasn’t fair. It was her own fault he’d come to depend on her efficiency to smooth his path, just as she’d depended on his cozy banality to smooth hers. He’d provided security, she’d contributed stimulation. He did miss her, she was sure of that. It was startling to realize she didn’t miss him. She felt like a character from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, someone entirely different from the woman who’d once loved him.

She seized the glass bottle, whisked up to the fifth floor, and restored it to its place on the dresser. The pillow on the bed was hollowed again. Someone had decided to sneak a nap. She fluffed it up and catapulted back down to her room.

The odor of lavender hadn’t dissipated. Rebecca hoped it hadn’t permeated her clothes. Rejecting a frilly pink dress and her tweed skirt, she seized a dark blue skirt and white blouse topped by a colorful paisley jacket. As she tried wielding her curling iron with one hand and her mascara with the other she heard voices raised outside. Now what?

A ray of sun, slanting below the teeming clouds, washed the landscape in bronze. The Pruitt’s pickup looked oddly yellowed, like an unbrushed tooth. Slash, the monstrous Labrador, sat in the back with his chin draped over the toolbox. Steve lolled on the passenger side, addressing his remarks to the ceiling, while Phil hung on to the open door. The two voices, Phil’s bassoon and Steve’s nasal twang, reached Rebecca’s ears in bursts, fly balls batted by the wind. “. . .tie up that dog. . .only friend I have. . .dig flower beds over again. . .who cares, the old man’s dead anyway. . .honest day’s work for honest day’s pay. . .give me a break. . .”

Rebecca shut the window. That was the same chapter and verse her father had repeated with her brothers. Her mother would make placatory sallies into the fray and be repulsed again and again. Her only weapon had been instant accession to every request, if you could call that a weapon.

The engine of the pickup roared. Gravel spattered. The thick metallic light winked out, plunging the house into twilight. Rebecca turned on the bedside lamp, collected her purse and coat, and went down to the Hall.

Michael stood stretching. The bowl-like object he’d been polishing lay shining before him, revealed as a large silver goblet. “Look!” he said to Rebecca. “A copy o’ the Craigievar Mazer. A fancy drinkin’ cup. Accordin’ to the receipt in the package, John had it made in Edinburgh when he couldna buy the original from the Marquess o’ Bute. Worth a packet in the right places, even as a replica.”

“So not everything valuable is on display,” said Rebecca, and braced herself.

“Aye, I was wrong aboot that.” He beamed at his handiwork, rocking back on his heels.

Rebecca’s expression hung between a grimace and a grin. If Ray was aggravating because he was so predictable, Michael was aggravating because he wasn’t. “I’m going out,” she said. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

Only then did he notice her change of dress. “Ah?”

She couldn’t tell whether his intake of breath was an interrogative or approval of her grooming. “With Mr. Adler.”

“Oh. Well, there’s no accountin’ for tastes.” With a slightly off-center grin he added, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“How should I know what you’re capable of doing?” she retorted with mock indignation. The bottle of Scotch Eric had brought her still sat in pristine condition on the end of the table. Again she thought of hiding it. But she’d been petty enough for one day. “Help yourself to the Laphroaig.”

One of his brows quirked. “Oh aye?”

“Unless you’d rather I brought you some beer. Moosehead, was it?”

“The best is McEwen’s ale, but if you can get it here at all it’s much too dear. I’ll content myself wi’ the whiskey.” And he added belatedly, “Thank you.”

“No problem,” she told him.

He laughed. “Take the key hangin’ by the door. I’ll no be goin’ anywhere. Someone has to stay with the house bogles.”

His laughter was just a bit forced. He had, Rebecca remembered, been here a week by himself. A spooky old house, and the imagination could do strange things. She glanced back to see him in the same position, his face framed by the gleaming strands of his hair, looking at the silver goblet as though appraising it.

“See you later,” she said, and walked down the stairs. As she lifted the huge iron key from its hook by the door she heard a car on the driveway. Five-thirty exactly. She should have known Eric would be on time. Ray would have been early, and while she hurried to dress would’ve passed the time reaming and filling his pipe, dribbling bits of ash and tobacco on her carpet.

“See you later!” she called again.

“Have a good time,” came the reply, echoing in the stairwell.

Rebecca wrenched open the door and once again escaped to the outside world.