The Pearl Thief

by Elizabeth E. Wein

  ‘Oh!’ I gasped. I realised that here was someone who might actually know, who might remember. ‘Were there pearls in it?’

  Ellen dropped Jamie’s hand. For a moment she stood staring at me strangely.

  ‘No.’

  She held my gaze, just as she’d done when I’d first seen her in the hospital. She fixed me in the disintegrator-ray of her stony blue eyes. ‘There weren’t any pearls in it that I’ve ever seen. But there were pearls in it when we gave it to the Murrays. That was part of the price for the land. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘That’s the way the tale is told,’ said Alan McEwen gently.

  And then I wondered if maybe I’d just imagined the pearls. I wondered if Grandad had told me the same tale, and in my head I’d been so taken with the wonderful image of the immeasurably ancient black and silver cup filled to the brim with pearls, that I’d put them there myself without ever having really seen them.

  It made sense. In the past two weeks I’d learned that memory is a strange and unreliable thing.

  And yet … I thought I could still remember playing with those pearls.

  Ellen reached down to pick up her creel basket and sling it over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t think I’d get to see the Reliquary again,’ she said. ‘You come too, Euan. You’ve never seen it. You should see it before it’s sold.’

  The library was officially open, with a card posted in the window to let you know, and the great oak door was propped wide, welcoming. Pinkie, still damp from her swim, was too enthusiastic about coming in with us.

  ‘Euan spoilt her when she was a pup,’ Ellen said. ‘Bitches are useless anyway, but he had to go and carry her about in a bucket everywhere we went.’

  Ellen paused, waiting, as if something in what she’d said had been a test.

  Jamie figured her out ahead of me. ‘So that’s why she’s called Pinkie,’ he laughed. ‘Pinkie’s your word for bucket, aye?’

  I felt that I’d not passed. I was a bit meanly glad that it was me the enthusiastic dog didn’t want to leave. We finally had to shut the door on her. We could hear her mourning sadly outside, presumably lying pressed against the doorstep.

  I led the way through the library. We crossed the downstairs room with the glass cases, Euan silently following the rest of us in a heightened state of reluctant stealth.

  ‘Hallo the library!’ I yelled.

  Mary didn’t hear me. We made our way up the spiral stair to the Upper Reading Room. It was empty; Mary must have been in her study downstairs. Ellen looked around the room with an odd expression, for the first few seconds not taking in the collection spread across the tables, but just taking in the library: the smell of ink and foxy paper and old wood, the green view of the river beyond the leaded casement window propped open just an inch. As if she loved it, but was a little scared to be there.

  And then her gaze swept over the Murray Hoard. Her lips parted as if she were inhaling it like smoke.

  ‘We’re not supposed to touch anything on the central table,’ I felt obliged to point out. ‘Jamie.’

  ‘I shall put it back exactly where I picked it up,’ he said, reaching for the Reliquary.

  He held it out to Ellen.

  She hesitated for a moment, then took it gingerly, using both hands to cup it on the tips of her fingers. Just the way she held it made it seem more special.

  ‘It’s smaller than the one the National Museum have already,’ she told us. ‘So your grandad said. But maybe even older.’

  ‘Beautiful Celtic craftsmanship,’ said Jamie. ‘Were they interested?’

  ‘I don’t know. Strathfearn had a secretary read his correspondence, not me. Also, he’d crack away on the ’phone and make folk confirm what they’d said to him in writing, but then he’d often not bother to open the letter when it came! The Reliquary’s still here, anyway. Euan, you have a shot. You’ve never held it.’

  She passed the cup reverently to her brother.

  And then Mary popped up the stairs behind us.

  She and Euan found themselves gazing into each other’s faces over my shoulder.

  ‘God pity us all,’ I heard Euan mutter.

  ‘Oh!’ Mary cried. She stamped her foot. ‘Put that down this instant! How dare you come in here!’

  I had not ever seen her angry before.

  There wasn’t any space between the crowded folding tables and the big permanent chestnut one for Euan to back away. He gave the cup to Jamie, who put it back down hastily, in exactly the spot where it had been when we came in. Nothing else was disturbed in the least.

  ‘We brought the McEwens.’ I tried to make an excuse for them. ‘Please don’t be angry with Euan. He came with me and Jamie.’

  I didn’t say any of it loudly enough and Mary wasn’t looking at me to see my mouth move. I bawled at her good ear, ‘He’s with us! Euan and Ellen came with us!’

  Mary hesitated, watching my face and waiting for me to elaborate.

  ‘It was Jamie – it was me, poking around here, showing off. Please don’t –’

  Mary faced me with blazing eyes and railed as if Ellen and Euan weren’t within hearing distance, or as if they were incapable of taking instruction themselves.

  ‘How dare you allow those people to lay even a finger on the Murray Collection! If you brought them here, you tell them to get out, this minute, and wait for you outside! I won’t have them in here! After all you’ve been through, to think of going about with their kind!’ She paused for breath. ‘You tell them to get out.’

  Of course I didn’t need to tell Euan. By the time Mary had finished, Euan had already scuttled back down the stairs. I heard the clunk and crash of the heavy front door being opened hastily.

  For a long moment, Ellen held my gaze with a look of bleak frost in her smoky eyes. Then she drew herself up to her full height – not as tall as her brother, but nevertheless queenly among us slight Murrays – and said to Mary clearly, ‘It’s a public library. It’s Council property. Nobody need get your permission to come in when it’s open.’

  Mary turned around and galloped downstairs. Jamie and Ellen and I stood in the Upper Reading Room feeling rather stunned at how quickly the librarian had come and gone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jamie said quietly. ‘That was my fault.’

  ‘It’s you with the damp trousers,’ Ellen said bitterly. ‘And us the librarian chucks out.’

  But she didn’t go. She walked defiantly around the long chestnut table, her hands carefully locked behind her back so she couldn’t possibly touch anything. She was just looking.

  At last she stopped by the spear points. ‘See those drawings?’ she said, with a nod of her head at a sheaf of paper in the middle of the green baize table cover. ‘Those are mine.’

  She amended bitterly, ‘I mean, they’re not mine. But I made them.’

  She finished her tour of the room.

  ‘Well, I expect Euan’s waiting.’

  She would have gone down just then, I think; but now Mary, having left us alone with the Murray Collection for what seemed an unnaturally long time, came back up, pink and panting with exertion. It was silly to pretend I didn’t know what she objected to in the McEwens. But I’d never imagined Mary to be capable of such – well, of such meanness.

  Of course she must really be just as capable of meanness as anybody else. As capable of it as I am, for example.

  ‘I’ve spoken to you before,’ she said coldly to Ellen.

  ‘I’m away,’ said Ellen fiercely, and bolted down the stairs.

  Mary turned on me. ‘How could you bring them in here, Julia!’ she exclaimed. ‘And they were picking up the artefacts. I can tell that boy had just come from the river – his sleeves were still wet! My goodness. I do understand they can be good people – they did look after you when they found you in difficulty – but to bring that lad in here and let him touch things! And the way those folk mutter under their breath, blessing themselves and whatnot when they see me, as if I were a magpie sent
to foretell a death. It’s not civilised. Those people are careless as can be, and I’ve to be so particular with this room now –’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Jamie said, squeezing past her towards the stairs. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Kinnaird – I’ve just come from the river also.’

  Mary and I were left staring at each other.

  I moved my mouth silently, saying words I couldn’t quite bear to speak aloud because I didn’t quite mean them.

  I’m sorry too.

  Then I ran down the stairs after the others.

  They were gathered at the iron footbridge. Jamie and Euan, with his cap pulled low over his eyes, were perched on dangerously sagging rails opposite each other with Pinkie lying subdued at their feet – someone must have given her a severe talking-to. The heron was fishing under the bridge beneath them.

  Euan slid off his perch as I came out. I saw the bridge shudder, dipping closer to the rushing water, as he came down hard on his feet. The heron took off, heading downstream with long, slow wing beats. Euan tipped up the peak of his cap so he could see me, but didn’t take it off.

  ‘She likes me,’ he said briefly, and with a perfectly straight face, when I got close enough that he could say it without raising his voice.

  ‘Look, we like you,’ said Jamie. ‘I just didn’t realise. I wouldn’t have –’ He shut up abruptly. It was an embarrassing, excruciating apology for all of us, mostly because it didn’t do any good and never would.

  I caught hold of one of the cables fastening the bridge to the ground, gripping hard with both hands. Euan and Jamie jumped to attention at my elbows, concerned, as if they thought I was about to catapult myself over the cable and into the burn.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m just so angry.’

  Ellen watched me with something like disdain. ‘Not used to it, are you?’

  She opened her fisherman’s creel and drew out a little white clay pipe, which she filled from a leather tobacco pouch worn dark and soft before clamping the pipe between her teeth like a sailor.

  ‘Block the wind for me and I’ll give you a draw,’ she said to Euan. She dug out a box of matches and she and Euan worked together with cupped hands around the little flame. When they’d got the pipe alight Ellen had the first shot at smoking it; then, puffing out smoke like a steam engine, she handed it over to Euan.

  They passed it back and forth, sharing, but not with me and Jamie.

  The silence was heavy and awkward. Jamie threw me a querying look: Should we go?

  As we hesitated, they finished the pipe. Ellen leaned down to knock out the tobacco residue against the base of the bridge. She was just packing the pipe back into her creel when Sergeant Angus Henderson came barrelling along the drive at a terrific pace on his bicycle, his long cromach staff under his arm like a jousting lance.

  He came to a tearing halt before us, the bicycle tyres spewing up gravel almost as if he were reining in a galloping horse. He threw the bicycle aside.

  ‘Well now, young McEwen,’ the river watcher growled.

  Euan took a step backward and Pinkie cowered, the craven thing.

  Ellen stood with her fists clenched, the tendons standing out along her wrists, her face drained of blood.

  For a wild moment I imagined Sergeant Henderson was challenging Euan to a duel, perhaps with quarterstaffs like Little John and Robin Hood. He clapped his tweed hat squarely against the back of his head before thumping the cromach against the ground between him and Euan with a crack that would have broken Euan’s foot if he’d meant it to. Ellen jumped back and crashed into Jamie, who steadied her with a quick light touch of one hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Ye dare, lad!’ the river watcher said in that quiet, laden, tense tone – as if he were reining in passion. ‘Ye dare fright that good woman Mary Kinnaird – ye dare set foot in the house she lives in and watches over, ye dare touch any of the treasures she keeps there! She was fair weeping when she rang!’

  That was why it had taken Mary so long to come back to the Upper Reading Room after she’d chased Euan downstairs. She’d telephoned Angus Henderson to come and clear away the riff-raff.

  Euan’s face, like Ellen’s, was drained of colour. He was on the balls of his feet in their worn tackety boots, poised for flight. But there were too many of us crowded at the base of the narrow, swaying bridge for him to run that way, so he was cornered.

  Henderson’s staff rose and fell.

  Ellen reached out – instinctively, I think – to grab hold of the person nearest in front of her, and it was me. Jamie tried to shove past us, but Ellen was digging her fingers into my forearm so fiercely they left little round black bruises there later. At the time I didn’t feel it. I’d grabbed hold of her too. It all happened so suddenly.

  The cromach crashed across Euan’s shins. He stumbled, and Henderson hooked him by the ankle with his staff and hauled him back against his broad chest, so that he and Euan were nearly cheek to cheek over Euan’s shoulder. The river watcher held Euan fast.

  ‘Next time Mary Kinnaird tells me you’ve set foot on Inverfearnie Island I’ll throw you into prison for attempted theft.’

  Euan nodded understanding, his eyes clenched shut.

  Jamie managed to put me and Ellen behind him and boldly took hold of Sergeant Henderson’s staff. But he underestimated the force he’d need to wrestle it from Henderson’s grasp. The Water Bailiff lashed out to give him a warning whack across one shin as well.

  ‘You keep out of this, lad.’

  ‘Buckets of blood!’ Jamie swore, grabbing at a bridge cable and hopping on the other foot.

  Henderson turned his attention back to Euan. ‘Speak so I can hear ye, ye mucky tink,’ he growled.

  ‘I ken. I won’t set foot on Inverfearnie! I won’t use the bridges here!’

  Henderson glanced up at Ellen. ‘You see that he doesn’t, girl.’

  She nodded without speaking, still clutching me.

  Henderson threw his prey to his knees. I heard Euan gasp. Pinkie whined and shrank – heavens, what a useless dog. The river watcher cracked two more fearsome blows over the back of Euan’s shoulders with his cromach, and when Euan slumped forward, Henderson gave him a kick in the ribs for good measure.

  ‘Remember it, wee man. I’ll arrest you and I’ll knock your teeth in if I get another call from the librarian about you.’

  Sergeant Angus Henderson straightened up, resurrected his bicycle and pointed it back in the direction of Brig O’Fearn village.

  Ellen let go of me quickly.

  I couldn’t believe how fast this had happened, and how disorganised we’d been – how helpless in the face of authority and violence.

  With a grunt of effort, Euan suddenly dragged himself erect to avoid the humiliation of me, or his sister, swooping down on him in concern.

  The Water Bailiff tucked his staff under one arm and did an odd little balancing act as he turned back to us and doffed his hat, the way he’d done when I’d met him with Mary.

  He didn’t look at me but reproached Jamie gruffly, ‘I’ve warned you before about running wild, young Jamie, and I’ve a mind to have a word with your lady mother about the company you keep.’

  Then off he went.

  Ellen leaped to Euan’s side. I wanted to touch him too. I wanted to see he was all right. If Jamie had taken a beating like that he’d have let me peel off his shirt and mop his broken skin with clear burn water, but I couldn’t do that for Euan McEwen; and Ellen wouldn’t do it with us watching. I stood clenching and unclenching my fists in frustration as they inefficiently checked the damage.

  ‘Och, it’s nae bother,’ Euan said breathlessly. ‘I can walk. Friend of my dad’s was beaten so bad by the police he lay in a ditch for a day before anyone found him. He couldn’t work for two months. He hadn’t even done anything – just made a racket singing on his way back to camp after a night in the pub.’

  ‘You haven’t done anything either!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘I’m lucky.’ Euan winced and shrugged. />
  ‘Come along back to Mammy,’ Ellen said to him, and Jamie and I watched them go, Ellen with a supporting arm around her brother’s waist; just as Jamie and I would have been if it had happened to us.

  But of course it wouldn’t happen to us.

  The Water Bailiff had told Jamie to stay out of it. He hadn’t even dared to look in my direction.

  6

  FINDING OUT WHAT A PRECOGNITION IS

  Late in the afternoon I dived into Frank’s study, without knocking, because otherwise I’d have had to hang about in the passage and the older people would have been sure to tell me off for unchaperoned mixing with the contractor. But I had an idea for doing Euan a good turn and I thought Frank could help. My God! You have to be cunning as a vixen to get anything out of anyone. I am afraid it is going to be like this for the rest of my life; I thought I might as well continue as I’ve begun. Davie Balfour wasn’t going to get me anywhere, but the coquettishly eccentric Lady Julia might.

  ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt …’

  He jumped up from behind his desk with a smile like sunlight breaking through cloud: winning, warm, swift and honest. He was glad to see me. He could have been annoyed, but he was obviously delighted, and made me a spontaneous bow. It was elegant and natural and made my heart leap in a perfectly embarrassing way.

  But the heat rising to my cheeks also warned me to be careful. I knew I was smitten with him, and that we were already more intimate than anyone in the house was aware, and I knew I had to hide it. I really couldn’t imagine how Mother and Solange would have reacted just then if they felt I was flirting with an older man.

  He remembered my public name, tentatively formal. ‘Miss Beaufort-Stuart! Can I help you?’

  ‘You absolutely can,’ I said. ‘At least, I think you can. Do you need any more casual labourers? Only I wondered if you’d be able to offer work to the Traveller lad who took me to the hospital. Just for a few weeks, perhaps on an hourly wage? Helping to dig the pool or something like that? He’s camped at Inchfort Field and I rather owe him a favour. And Grandad always gave the Travellers jobs when they stopped here.’