‘Cause?’ asked Dundee.
‘Independence,’ the psychiatrist said, an animated, excited gleam in his eye. Dundee couldn’t tell if he was just drunk or if this was the beginning of some extended joke.
‘You don’t mean for Scotland, do you?’
‘That’s exactly what he means, lad,’ said Gilmour. ‘Four hundred years living under London’s law, four hundred years of bending our back for London’s wealth. This war is going to stop it, believe me. Before we succumbed we’d had our own parliament for a thousand years and our own laws even before that. We’ll not offer up our backsides anymore.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Dundee, trying not to smile. Was this Charlie’s idea of some grand joke or was he serious? ‘I always thought Scotland was part of England.’
‘Even the Romans knew better than that, young man.’ It was Chambers-Hunter, the one-armed man. He was red-faced, either from drink or standing too close to the fire. His eyes were dark, set above deep pouches, and the flesh hung slackly around his mouth and jawline. His hair was white and thin and he had a scar running along his cheek from the top of one thick, slightly purplish lip, to his ear. He’d lived a hard life and it showed. His voice when he spoke was surprisingly light and cultured; he sounded like a lecturer in history Dundee had had at West Point. ‘Hadrian’s Wall is more than just a pile of earth and stone, it’s a way of thinking; a country is laws, culture, language, arts and industry, all of which are markedly different in Scotland than they are in England. In fact, you prove that yourself; you refer to the English as English and the Scots as Scots.’ He smiled broadly, showing off a solid-gold molar in the back of his mouth. ‘I dare say you’ll have the Cornishmen in the same position in a few years; you’ve already got the Welsh talking about their independence. The Irish are already halfway there.’
‘And it took a revolution to get them on their way,’ said Gilmour.
‘True enough,’ mused Gadsby, nodding.
Chambers-Hunter gave the psychiatrist a sideways glance and raised a weary eyebrow. He turned back to Dundee. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘We build ships on the Clyde, the best ships in the world mind you, and we build them for everyone, not just the English. That’s because the entire world knows that a Scottish ship is the best. Why shouldn’t we be allowed some benefit from that? We’re not asking for separation from England, just Independence and it’s not the same thing.’ He smiled again. ‘The Royal Navy and the Cunard Line will still be able to buy our ships – they’ll just have to pay a little more.’
‘Quite so, quite so,’ murmured Gadsby. Chambers-Hunter gave him another look. The one-armed man continued his speech, eloquently outlining Scotland’s equality, and sometimes its superiority, in subjects such as medicine and various other scholarly pursuits but Dundee was no longer listening; he’d suddenly seen the elaborate structure of Charlie Danby’s plan fall into place and he was mentally kicking himself for not seeing it sooner. It was, in fact, the only explanation for the events of the past few weeks. He’d said it himself when he entered the room; it was all a charade.
A black-garbed servant entered the room and announced that dinner was served. Dinner itself was a set piece of everything from jugged hare and steak and kidney pie to game hen and a bona fide roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth. For the purists there was a bloated, white haggis, which Gadsby very properly and ceremoniously cut with a sword. Through it all the lecture by Chambers-Hunter and several other guests continued. Dundee heard it all and remembered virtually nothing. He was too intent on what he’d finally figured out about Charles Danby’s intentions, particularly as they applied to him.
As he’d suddenly realised just before dinner, the operative word was charade or maybe more properly it was illusion. Like any magician, Charlie’s main objective was to divert attention from what his left hand was doing by making all sorts of fancy motions with his right.
Even before coming to Swan Hill, Occleshaw had clearly already formed an opinion about Dundee, probably due to conversations with other inmates of Shepton Mallet or captured members of Danby’s merry little band of deserters; conversations that included Dundee’s name either often enough or in such a way as to make him and Danby sound like they were partners in crime. Enough for seeds of doubt and suspicion to be planted in the Special Branch cop’s head and enough for him to have managed to collect enough information about him to assemble a dossier.
Presumably Occleshaw’s intention had been to put a fire under Dundee so that he’d go running off to Danby and on the surface that’s exactly what he’d done. In any court, if it ever got that far – which Dundee strongly doubted – it would look as though he’d slipped off the train in York, abandoning Jane and hightailing it off to join his partner. If Occleshaw ever managed to follow the trail as far as Akergill Hall and Gadsby’s group of mental misfits, all the better, because Danby was clearly willing to sacrifice the plump psychiatrist and all his Scottish Nazi friends for his cause: the cause of Charles Danby. Dundee had been seen at Akergill Hall, free and unencumbered, and he’d been seen here, dressed for dinner and partaking in debates about Scottish Nationalism.
Enough examination and interrogation in the aftermath and that would come out. Dundee’s job, as it had been from the beginning, was to take the fall. If Dundee had it figured correctly he wouldn’t be around to defend himself; the best illusion after all, was a dead one. Sometime soon, after his usefulness had come to an end, Lucas Alexander Decimus Dundee was going to disappear – permanently.
What wasn’t clear in all of this was what Danby was getting out of the operation. The only thing Dundee knew was that it had to be valuable enough for Danby to see his whole black-market ring of deserters disappear, not to mention Danby’s own vanishing act; he certainly wasn’t going to be able to remain in England or even the States when all this came out. What single thing was worth giving up your past, your present, your very identity for? Certainly not a sword and a crown.
‘Even the sovereign’s crown is Scottish,’ said Gilmour from the far end of the table, popping an olive into his mouth almost triumphantly.
‘Quite so,’ said Gadsby, seated directly across the table from Dundee. ‘Quite so.’ It was perfectly clear that he didn’t have the slightest idea what the Scottish Fascist was talking about.
‘What?’ said Dundee, startled as he came out of his long epiphany.
‘I believe you have a painting in your room that tells the tale. This very location has a great deal to do with it,’ said Chambers-Hunter.
‘Yes?’ said Dundee.
‘Yes. In 1603, King James the Sixth ascended the throne of Scotland and of England, where he was known as King James the First. He was in effect a Scottish king who conquered England.’ He flashed a quick smile. ‘There’s even an ancient prophecy about it.’
Gilmour cleared his throat and intoned: ‘If fates go right, where e’er this stone is found, the Scots as monarchs of that realm be crowned.’
‘Stone?’ said Dundee. It was becoming remarkably like his conversation with Danby in the gun tower about Hitler’s love of superstition and legend.
‘You may know it as the Stone of Scone, if you know it at all,’ said Chambers-Hunter. ‘It was originally supposed to have been Jacob’s Pillow on the plains of Luz in Genesis. It was transported from Ireland to this castle, where it was used in the coronation of Scottish kings until it was taken to Scone in 850. While it was here it was known as the Stone of Destiny. In 1296 Edward the First had it removed to Westminster Abbey, where it remains to this day. The crown that James wore at his coronation remains the personal emblem of the sovereign himself.’
‘Interesting,’ murmured Dundee.
They all should be in strait jackets. Stone of Destiny my ass.
Stones and swords and crowns, bundles of wood wrapped around a double-bladed axe, lightning bolts and crooked crosses. Simple, strong symbols for people to grasp. Maybe not so crazy after all. And maybe Charlie was even smarter than I r
ealised, thought Dundee.
Something scratched on the edge of memory but he couldn’t quite find the itch. Instead he begged to be excused, citing fatigue. No one seemed to care one way or the other. Conversation was moving around to golf as he left the table; Dundee had more important things on his mind, like getting out of Dunstaffnage with his life.
Chapter Twenty-six
He went back to his room, his keeper locking the door securely behind him. A cigarette and a few moments of pacing and running through the facts again made him positive that his theory was correct. One, Charlie would never be fool enough to commit himself or anything else to the likes of Sir John Gadsby, supposedly a Scots Nationalist but vain enough to allow himself to kneel before a British king for the sake of a knighthood. Two, Charlie wouldn’t risk his neck and his freedom inside Shepton Mallet Prison for the sake of a few anachronistic old pieces of jewellery, no matter what kind of price Hitler or any of his minions put on them. Three, above all he simply wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble; the easy way was Charlie’s way and this little escapade was nothing short of what his grumpy old history teacher at West Point would have called Byzantine: plots within plots within plots. Something else was going on here and Dundee was in a position where he could do something about it, if he could get out of here alive. And that, of course, led directly to: Four. Dundee’s appearance in Akergill and at this place was for show; he was meant to be seen and remembered, and then he was meant to disappear. There might even be informers among the staff, reporting what was going on to someone like Occleshaw. He had to get out of here before it was too late.
Which wasn’t going to happen in evening clothes; the days when spies wore tuxedos, smoked cigarettes in long ivory holders and wore monocles was long gone. He stripped off his formal wear, slipped into his ‘David Portal, merchant-mariner’ outfit and went to the cupboard. The mental itch he’d been trying to scratch presented itself again, this time taking the shape of a name: Evelyn, the English boy he’d befriended long ago at school. A book. Not an adventure, something a little more girlish than that, something that could get the boy in such terribly deep dung that he’d gone so far as to bury it in a tin box in the woods behind the stables. A gift from his parents in India, off on some Foreign Office assignment. What the hell was its name and why was he thinking of it now of all times? The author’s name was there, surprisingly enough: P. L. Travers.
Mary Poppins.
A nanny in Victorian London who flew around with the aid of a magic umbrella. Chimney sweeps. Somehow Charlie had found little Evelyn’s hiding place and any hopes the kid had of surviving within the school vanished. Even kids smaller than he was began to taunt him. Within a month he was sent to some relative living in Canada.
Dundee hung the tuxedo jacket up. What did the shameful expulsion of a little boy from a school in California have to do with his situation in Scotland today? He looked up and found the chain for the light switch and paused. Above the glare from the light he could see the faint outline of a plank trapdoor in the ceiling.
It wasn’t something you saw much of in places like Santa Barbara or L.A. but it was common enough in Northern California and Oregon: the trapdoor led to an attic or a crawl space, usually with peat moss or some other insulator packed between the roof beams. The kind of place where he and his cousin from Seattle used to go to smoke cigarettes.
Chimney sweeps.
Jacob’s Pillow on the Plains of Luz in Genesis.
Jacob’s Ladder.
And then he had it.
He went to the door and listened. No sound at all from the guard on the opposite side of the hall. What did he think about sitting there? Memories, women, food, drink, money? Did he do arithmetic problems in his head, count sheep, make lists of things to do and places to go when he won big at the track? Or nothing? Probably nothing, thought Dundee. He didn’t really care, as long as he stayed on the other side of the door. Turning away he looked around the room for what he needed. He picked up a chair that stood by a small writing table on the far side of the room, placing it underneath the trapdoor in the cupboard. He climbed up on it and reached. Not quite high enough; his fingers only brushed the ceiling of the enclosure. He went back out into the room and looked again. Nothing. He went into the bathroom and saw the answer immediately. There was a small utilitarian footstool beside an enormous tin bathtub that had its own built-in coal fire to heat the water. No wonder they called the Scots a hardy breed.
Dundee picked up the footstool, took it back to the cupboard and put it on top of the chair. Without stopping to think too long about what he was doing, he clambered onto the chair and then up to a precarious perch on the footstool. Trying to make as little noise as possible he lifted up the underside of the trapdoor with his fingertips then pushed it to one side. His nostrils suddenly filled with musty, age-old dust and he strained with the effort of not letting out an enormous sneeze. Obviously no one had been up there in a very long time. When the feeling passed he gripped the sides of the trap and boosted himself up.
He looked back down into the cupboard. The chair and the footstool made it obvious where he had gone and for a minute he thought of going back down, closing the door and switching off the light before going through the ordeal again but finally decided against it; doing so would probably save him no more than a minute or two in any thorough search. That wasn’t enough.
He stood up and looked around. The attic was enormous, running the length and breadth of the house. Twenty feet or so behind his room Dundee could see a narrow flight of steps that probably led to a small storeroom or vestibule at the far end of the hall. Other than that there didn’t seem to be any other access to the attic except through a chain of trapdoors, one for each of the rooms leading off the hallway and marked by narrow plank gangways that ran across the beams.
He’d been right about the insulation; the area between the massive, hand-adzed oak beams was filled with peat moss or something like it and the area between the struts holding up the roof had been jammed with straw and then lathed and plastered over. In dozens of places the plaster had crumbled and straw oozed out of the holes in great, tumbling masses. The only light came from the open trapdoor at his feet.
Dundee looked around, pleased with what he saw. The place was a firetrap for anyone of a mind to take advantage of conditions that looked as though they hadn’t changed perceptibly in the last two or three hundred years. In half a dozen islands on either side of a central walkway, planks had been laid over the joists and beams and all sorts of junk had been placed on these platforms in no particular order. Old luggage, chairs, tables, glass-chimneyed hurricane lamps, old rope, bundles of musty clothing, paper-wrapped framed objects tied up with string. Oddly, though, there was something missing – no matter where he looked there was nothing that indicated that a child had ever occupied the house. No old rocking chair, no broken high chair, no crib, no old doll, eyeless and abandoned. It was as though this had always been a place for adults, even though that didn’t quite seem possible.
Dundee carefully made his way down the central plank walkway, moving slowly, taking care not to make any noise. If he was figuring it right the plank walkway mimicked the hallway underneath, which meant that he was walking directly over the guard’s head. Eventually he made it to the end of the attic and the massive stone-and-brick construction of the central fireplace.
He put out his hand and laid it flat on the brick flue; it was hot, which meant that it was probably directing heat and smoke from the main fireplace in the sitting room. Bending down, he looked around at the base of the flue but it was too dark to see anything at all. He went back to the first of the junk-filled islands, carefully rummaging through it until he found what he wanted. Sitting on a trunk he found a hurricane lamp with an inch or so of kerosene left in its glass reservoir. He took off the chimney, tipped the glass slightly to put kerosene onto the dangling wick and lit it with his Zippo. Trimming the wick with the little wheel on the side of the neck, he repla
ced the chimney and carried the bright light back to the fireplace. Suddenly everything sprung into sharp relief. Dundee found what he’d hoped and prayed for ever since he’d thought of the fanciful governess with the magic umbrella and her chimney sweep friends.
The average house with a fireplace in the States didn’t really need the services of a chimney sweep but it was easy enough to hire a man to come and clean the bird’s nests and old leaves out of the chimney proper and then use a long-handled wire brush to get out as much of the soot as possible. A large house with more than one fireplace and burning coal rather than wood, like his cousin’s house in the wealthy Schmitz Park area of Seattle, might make use of a sweep from time to time. Dundee thought back to the day when he and his cousin had been enjoying a couple of ersatz smokes made out of rolled pages of a Bible they’d found in the attic and some Briggs Mixture they’d filched from his old man’s study. Suddenly a Negro’s head had popped out of nowhere a foot or so away, at the base of the chimney that stood against the attic wall. The black man was carrying an assortment of flue-cleaning tools and climbing what he referred to as ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ a series of U-shaped bolts built into the side of the chimney that went from the basement to the roof within a narrow chamber that allowed the man to clamber through the house without disturbing the occupants while he worked. More importantly, it ensured that the only person who got covered with soot was himself. The chimney sweep, after explaining his magical appearance, took a few drags on their foul-smelling cigarettes, thanked them and disappeared again.
Dundee and his cousin then spent the rest of the day crawling around in the flues, getting themselves absolutely filthy with soot and eventually incurring the good-natured wrath of his uncle who was far angrier about the missing Briggs Mixture than he was about the state of the boys’ clothes.
An American Spy Page 26