“Mine’s even better,” replied Rebecca. “Marie.” She took the end of the flag. “Oh, nice. Cameronian Rifles, World War I.”
“Last night there were four Maries,” sang Michael, his tenor vibrating in the small room. “Tonight there’ll be but three. There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton, and Mary Carmichael, and me.” He shook out another flag. “Black Watch. I’ll be takin’ these.”
Rebecca closed her notebook and regarded the serene marble face of the Queen of Scots. “And the death mask.”
“Dr Graham, my boss, he’d no let me back in the country if I left that behind.”
Rebecca yawned. “Then there’s the sarcophagus. I guess the State’ll just have to leave it here. A solid chunk of marble must weigh tons… .”
They turned and looked at each other, eyes lit by wild surmise. “Why should it be solid?” Michael demanded.
“How fast can you get that crowbar?” Rebecca dropped the notebook with a thud and fell to her knees beside the carved marble of the tomb. A dark line ran beneath the lid where it overhung the sides by two inches. Shadow? She cursed the dim ceiling light, scrambled up, ran into the kitchen, grabbed the flashlight and ran back.
No, by Mary’s garters, that wasn’t a shadow, that was a hairline crack.
Michael galloped through the storeroom door, crowbar held like a knight errant’s lance. “Stand aside,” he ordered.
With a tooth-grating squeal the effigy shuddered and the lid slid aside. Rebecca shone the light into the dark interior of the sarcophagus. But there wasn’t much to see, only a thin leather portfolio gray and dismal at the bottom of the hole. Michael reached, strained, and hauled it out. Dust eddied and he sneezed.
“Bless you.” Rebecca snatched the portfolio from his hands. Art deco tooling. 1920’s. The papers inside were from the same era, receipts, a list of the items in the storeroom— thanks a lot, they’d had to make their own— and a letter from an art dealer in San Francisco. Amid the papers was a thick piece of parchment, yellowed with age. The ink on it was faded, the writing absurdly spiky. She squinted, turning it this way and that, Michael’s breath hot on the back of her neck.
It was written in 16th century Scots. “… being departit from the place quhair I left my hart… remember zow of the purpois of the Lady Reres… remember how gif it wer not to obey zow, I had rether be deid or I did it; my hart bleidis at it… . “At the bottom was a scrawling signature, “Zour gude sister, Arabella.”
Rebecca whooped, “This is it! This is it! The Erskine Letter!”
“I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Michael. “The first place and the last in the whole blasted house!” He swept her up and danced her across the entry and into the kitchen, where he plucked the parchment from her hand and spread it out on the table. “You’ll have a’ the copies you want, I promise you that. And I’ll translate it for you before I go.”
“I can handle a translation,” Rebecca said, recovering her breath.
She bent over the table, her head colliding with Michael’s, mouthing the words. Ten minutes later she sighed. “Well, so much for that.”
“It’s nae good, is it? James was Mary’s right and proper?”
“Arabella here did have a baby, but it died. That’s why she’s talking about her heart bleeding. Lady Reres— Margaret Forbes— hired someone else to be James’s wet nurse but took the credit herself.”
“Too little scandal there,” Michael commented, “tae wake a good gray historian from his afternoon snooze in the library.”
“I didn’t have any stake in the answer one way or the other.” Rebecca shook her head. “No scandal. That figures. I can’t decide if that makes it an anticlimax or a relief.”
“It’s a’ in the writin’ up. If anyone can make it into a— what do you call it, a dog and pony show— you can.”
“Thanks.” She tickled him affectionately, and went to find a cardboard box for the precious parchment.
That night she sat up late translating the letter, Michael dutifully keeping her pencils sharp. It was only when she was making coffee the next morning she realized it was Christmas Eve. In honor of the occasion Michael laid a fire in the Hall, and went into town to get wine, fruit, cheese and crackers for a picnic on the hearth. While he was gone Rebecca wrapped up the present she and Jan had found in the mall, a sweatshirt version of a soup can label reading “Campbell’s Cream of the Crop.” Then she set her typewriter on the Hall table and began typing packing lists. The end was altogether too near. But Mary Stuart herself had said, “In my end is my beginning.”
When Michael returned with the food he also had the mail. A box from L.L. Bean he whisked away before Rebecca could see it, leaving her to deduce it was her present— a tartan flannel nightgown, probably. A box from Rebecca’s mother turned out to be a care package of cookies and fruitcake, the enclosed card admonishing Rebecca to share the goodies with “that English guy.”
It was the nicest Christmas Eve she could remember. In some celestial alchemy the hazy day alloyed itself into clear night, moon and stars hanging in the almost invisible branches of the maples like ornaments on a Christmas tree. In the glow of the fire the Hall was pleasantly cool, not cold, and the light of the chandelier was soft and subtle. The wine was smooth and fruity, the crackers crisp, and the cookies melted on the tongue.
Later, Michael played the pipes while Rebecca filled boxes with books, her mind doing an effortless backstroke through the music—”The Sound of Sleat”, “Finley McRae”, “The Cowal Gathering,”, “Bonnie Dundee”, “The Sweet Maid of Mull”. And, again, he played “No Nighean Donn, Gradh Mo Chridhe”, slowly, lyrically, like the touch of a kiss upon a lover’s skin.
She’d just packed a book of Gaelic songs. She pulled it out again and checked the index. There it was, translated as “My brown-haired maiden, love of my heart.” Suppressing a grin, she put the book back in the box.
Michael started playing his own transcription of Runrig’s “Going Home”. He was getting to go home. He had a home to go to. When the melody ended the hum of the drones lingered on, stroking her senses. Michael laid down the pipes and pulled Rebecca to her feet, his hands squeezing her arms, his face set with resolution. Say it, she thought. I’m ready to hear it.
“Rebecca, come home wi’ me.”
Home. A place to settle down. Someone to settle down with. The hearth, the kettle and the kittens, enough to withstand any thunderstorm… . Something in her chest punctured and deflated. “I can’t.”
“I had a bed-sitter in William Street,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “but I could get something larger for us. What I’d like is a flat off the Royal Mile. The old wynds are bein’ tarted up by the MacYuppies. But I canna afford one o’ those. Yet.”
She echoed his manic grin, spread her hands across his shirt and felt the rhythm of his breath. His strong and gentle arms slipped around her waist. “I couldn’t get a job there. An American professor of British history looking for a position in Edinburgh? Talk about coals to Newcastle!”
“We’d find something for you, love.”
“I have to write my dissertation,” she insisted, as much for herself as for him. “If I don’t get that PhD, Michael, I don’t want to be able to blame it on you.”
“Ah,” he said, as though she’d just hit him in the stomach. His brows were clouds over the clarity of his eyes. “But I have tae go back, I have tae tend tae the artifacts.”
Rebecca pressed herself against his chest. Medieval executioners had ripped the living hearts out of their victims. When he left she’d find out just how that felt. “I’ll come next summer. Even though we’d be as poor as Burns’s church mouse.”
“Poor, but hardly timid.” He released her and picked up the wine. The cork was attached to a metal cap— one flick of his thumbs and it popped out of the bottle. The broken seal left a metal ring around the bottle neck. He pulled that off, lifted Rebecca’s left hand, settled the thin strip of metal around her fourth finger. “There. We’
re engaged. To have substantive talks as soon as possible, at the least.”
He gave no quarter, and expected none. “You lunatic,” Rebecca said. “I love you.” She pulled his head down and kissed him, savoring wine and the elusive tang of peat on his tongue.
“It’s high time,” he said against her mouth, “we were makin’ love.”
Yes it was, time ripened to inevitability. “My place or yours? Mine’s closer.”
An expression of gratified relief swept his face. Rebecca laughed. He took her firmly by the shoulders and steered her toward the door. She couldn’t resist saying after two steps, “Of course you have to rush out to the chemist’s shop now, don’t you?”
He retorted, “I’ve already done my shoppin’ the day.”
“Confident, weren’t you? But I’m teasing you. Matters are— well, taken care of.”
“Aye, I saw the packet of pills in your room.”
“Who didn’t?” Rebecca moaned, and started up the stairs.
With perfect timing, the phone rang. They shared exasperated grins. “Go answer it,” Michael said with a kiss and a tickle. “I’ll tidy the Hall.”
It was Jan. “Hi!” she said to Rebecca’s slightly jaundiced hello. “Just called to wish you a happy Christmas Eve. If you don’t have any plans, we were mulling some wine… ”
“Thank you, Jan, but we have plans.”
“Don’t forget your plans for New Year’s Eve are our party. For which I’m asking a favor. Can Michael play the pipes for us? Does he know ‘Auld Lang Syne’?”
Michael came into the kitchen to throw the wrappings of their picnic into the trash. Rebecca said, “Jan’s asking if you know ‘Auld Lang Syne’?”
“Does she ken ‘Yankee Doodle’?”
“I’ve been bragging to her how well you play, and she wants you to play for her New Year’s Eve party.”
“Oh?” He nodded, ego purring like Darnley stroked under his furry chin. “The State’ll no be sendin’ someone tae snatch the pipes from my hands at midnight. I’d be pleased tae play.”
“Oh aye,” said Rebecca to Jan, “he’ll be playin’, right enough.”
Jan giggled. One of Michael’s eyebrows tilted in playful affront. He cornered Rebecca in the angle where the cabinet met the wall, licked his lips and starting nibbling her neck.
“We’ll expect you about 11 o’clock tomorrow,” Jan said. “The kids’ll be having their stockings first thing, of course. It’d be cruel and unusual punishment to make them wait past six. But we’ll have the presents beneath the tree when you get here. I’ve got the turkey in the sink thawing, and I’m going to fix that cranberry relish of your mother’s.”
“Who?” Delicious frissons ran down Rebecca’s spine. Chasing them, Michael lifted the back of her sweater and excavated her blouse from the waistband of her jeans.
“Maureen Reid, your mother.”
“Oh?” Her mother’s name, not to mention her face, was absolutely the farthest thing from Rebecca’s mind.
“It’s the funniest thing about that recipe,” Jan went on. “Sue next door has a similar one. We were comparing notes, and she said something about cooking the cranberries.”
Michael’s hands slipped up under Rebecca’s blouse and unhooked her bra. He began exploring the joys of bilateral symmetry. His extraordinarily sensitive fingertips, she thought, must be the result of years of playing that chanter. She let her eyes cross in delight.
“But,” said Jan’s distant voice, “I’ve always made the relish with raw cranberries. It tastes all right to me. What do you do?”
Michael whispered in Rebecca’s unoccupied ear, “My jeans are gettin’ awful tight. You need tae come peel them off me afore anything’s damaged.”
“Rebecca?” Jan asked. “Are you listening to me?”
“No,” Rebecca replied. Making one last grab at coherence, she explained, “Jan, we have plans tonight. There’s something I need to tend to. I’ll have to let— you— go… .”
The line rang hollowly. Then Jan exclaimed, “Oh! Oh my gosh! How inconsiderate can you get? I’m so sorry— bless you, my children.”
Rebecca laid the receiver somewhere in the vicinity of its cradle. She turned, inserted her right hand into the back pocket of Michael’s jeans, and pulled him close. They stood clasped together, one of her legs hooked around his steady stance, his hands splayed on her bare back. Her senses, her wits, her cautious nature all cheered, go for it!
In some kind of amatory instinct they managed to get up the stairs without disentangling themselves. They found Darnley curled on the foot of Rebecca’s bed. He looked up, stretched, and sat with his head cocked in a benign smirk while she took out her contacts and laid the metal ring reverently in her jewelry case.
Michael picked up the cat, solemnly informed him, “We’ll be takin’ it from here wi’out your help, thank you just the same,” and set him down in the corridor. Rebecca turned down the bed, drew Michael back inside the room and shut the door. They looked inquisitively at each other, smiling with something between glee and amazement, in perfect accord.
All the windows of Dun Iain went dark. The castle closed its observant eyes and drowsed, finally at peace with love and time.
-The End-
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Table of Contents
OCTOBER
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
NOVEMBER
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
DECEMBER
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Ashes to Ashes Page 41