by Susan Cooper
“They have to tell us when to cook bacon,” Jay said.
Allie said suddenly, “I’m going to make cookies.”
Her father grinned. “Of course,” he said. Allie’s two favorite occupations were cooking and photography; it was a family joke, back in Toronto, that her response to any major problem was to dive into the kitchen and bake cookies or cupcakes.
“Chocolate chip cookies,” Allie said. “The Boggart might smell them and come running.”
“You’re in Scotland,” said Jay. “Granda doesn’t sell chocolate chips.”
“That’s okay,” said his sister. “You’re going to make the chips. Granda, can I have a hammer?”
And before long Jay was sitting on the kitchen floor with a large bar of dark chocolate from the store, broken into squares, enclosed in a plastic bag and wrapped in a dish towel. He spent an enjoyable ten minutes whacking it with a hammer, inspecting the pieces of chocolate for uniformity at intervals and eating any that looked too small.
Later that day, the kitchen counter was covered in cookies studded with large, irregular chocolate chips. They lay there on racks, cooling off. They smelled wonderful. Everyone was allowed two each, for a treat after lunch.
But there was still no sign of the Boggart or Nessie.
* * *
The rain faded away into damp air, but the air was warm. The twins went out to look for seals, none of which had been seen in their own part of the loch since the noise of Trout Corporation trucks and machinery began. They splashed through puddles and slithered over seaweed to a rocky promontory facing the Seal Rocks, but there was not a seal to be seen even there.
“No seals, no Boggart, no Nessie,” Jay said.
Allie said, “I really was hoping the cookies might bring the boggarts back. Like when Granda made porridge that time. I mean, where the heck are they? When the Boggart said we should have a council of war?”
“Maybe we should have our own,” Jay said. “Just you and me. Now.”
Allie looked at him blankly. “What d’you mean?”
“Remember what Mom said? About being part of the MacDevon clan? I mean, we are, aren’t we? So we should be doing something, besides all this petition stuff! But what?” Jay kicked at the nearest rock, as if it might help him find out.
Allie said, “She said the castle belongs more to the clan than to William Trout. Or for that matter, Sam Johnson.”
“And we’re the clan, what’s left of it, and he’s keeping us out.”
“So let’s go there! To the castle, when nobody’s looking. Maybe that’s where the boggarts are holed up.”
“Tonight? Instead of the meeting?”
“Yup. While Dad and Granda are gone.”
Jay thought for a moment, trying to come to grips with the vagaries of boggarts, whose emotions seemed to come and go as unpredictably as the breeze. He thought of his grandfather’s dinghy, and of taking it across the water to the castle. The motor was too noisy, he thought; they would have to row.
“Granda’s still got his castle key,” he said.
Allie said, “Portia saw them take that big model over to the castle, after the press conference. She said they nearly dropped it in the water.”
They looked at each other, grinning, knowing what they were going to do next, and they headed back along the rocks, past the Trout trucks, toward the store.
* * *
It was past sunset, though nobody had seen the sun that day. Granda stood in the living room, looking at them uncertainly. He said, “Quite sure ye dinnae want to come?”
“I’m tired,” Allie said. She curled up in an armchair, like a sleepy cat. “I’d rather go to bed early. You and Dad will tell us everything he says.”
Tom looked at her with concern. “You were all steamed up this morning about hearing this talk—what’s different? You sick?”
“No, no,” Allie said. “Just tired. There’s been lots of meetings. I’d like to look at Mr. Mac’s book again.”
Jay said, “I’m a bit tired too. Besides, maybe the boggarts’ll turn up.”
Granda picked up his laptop. “Well, we’ll not be too long. Two, three hours or so. Ye’ll be all right?”
“Of course!” they both said.
And when the door closed behind their father and grandfather, they watched from the window until the car disappeared over the hill. They had already taken turns, earlier, watching the workmen leaving for home, and Freddy Winter’s inflatable dinghy heading to the Trout Queen for the night. Now they pulled on their jackets, helped themselves to two flashlights from the store, and took down the enormous iron key to the castle that still hung from a nail above the door.
“We can’t use the motor,” Jay said. “Oars. The oarlocks are there too.”
They knew where Granda kept the oars to his dinghy—they saw them every day, propped inside the garage right next to the place where they parked their bikes. Down to the shore they went, in the soft evening light, each twin clutching an oar. The loch lay calm and glimmering beyond the piles of lumber and machinery, and Granda’s boat was moored at one end of a massive work jetty on which barges now regularly dropped steel beams and sacks of cement. He had argued bitterly with Freddy for the right to leave the boat there, and—for once—had had his way.
They had tossed a Canadian dollar to see who should row, and Allie had won. Jay sat in the bow, holding the line. As they crossed to Castle Keep, the water was so still that he felt even the small creak of the oarlocks was loud, but there was no other boat to be seen between them and the bright lights of the Trout Queen, farther up the loch. They could hear music pulsing faintly across the water.
“Light pollution, noise pollution,” Allie said crossly.
“Of course. Trout doesn’t care. And it’s not even good music. . . .”
With the dinghy tied up to the castle’s jetty, they climbed the steps and found, to their relief, that the lock in the heavy old door had not been changed. And the door still creaked, like the soundtrack to a horror movie—yet somehow managed to sound welcoming. Just inside, lying on the floor, they saw two untidy piles of orange flags, and thought hostile thoughts about Freddy Winter and the Trout Corporation surveyors.
They walked through the dark corridors, in a black world lit only by the small pale flickers of their flashlights, and they expected to feel scared but were not.
Allie said softly, “Hello, castle.”
Jay called out, hopefully, “Boggart? Nessie?” But there was no answer.
They went up the stairs to the library, and played their flashlight beams over the unfamiliar long table that now lay where the MacDevon’s desk had been. One end of it was filled by the big model of the Trout Castle Resort that they had seen at the press conference, draped now in its green cloth cover. From a plug lying on the center of the table, they could see a trio of little wires waiting for laptops or cell phones, and several folders and files of documents were stacked in front of the biggest chair.
“The invading man’s seat, I bet,” Allie said, and she sat herself in William Trout’s chair and pointed her flashlight at the folders on the table, opening the first of them and peering at the papers inside. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and clicked its camera on.
Jay moved his flashlight beam sideways to the model of the Trout Castle Resort. He pulled back its cover and played the light over the sprawling modeled hotel, and the marina that reached out into the loch like a geometric octopus. In this model Troutworld, it was hard to guess where Granda’s store had been.
From somewhere in the dark room he thought he heard a small, indistinct sound. He swung his flashlight to and fro, but he could see nothing in the shadows but the library’s roomy armchairs and the bookcases lining the walls.
“What was that?” he whispered.
Allie clicked her camera at one of the documents on the table in front of her, making a small, quick flash. “I didn’t hear anything,” she said.
As Jay swung his arm back ag
ain, the flashlight beam caught out of the darkness another massive object on a table farther away. It was the same shape as the resort model, but it too was masked by a cloth cover. He moved over to it and carefully folded the cover back.
It was a copy of the first model—but with one startling difference. Castle Keep, the familiar square tower on its small green island, was not there.
In its place, on an immense stretch of stone reaching all the way to the island from the shore of the loch, was a much bigger structure with stone walls and battlements, and a tall round tower topped with a flagpole. It was separated by a channel of water from the boat-thronged marina of the resort, and it looked very much like pictures of Windsor Castle, in England—though with two little plastic flags flying from its model flagpole instead of the Union Jack. One was the Scottish red lion, and the other a black flag with a big yellow T in the middle.
Jay thought he heard another soft sound in the room, but he was too startled to pay it any attention.
“Look at this!” he said, aghast.
Allie turned in her chair, and stared. Then she jumped up and reached for one of the documents on the table in front of her. She held it out.
“That explains this!” she said. “It’s a drawing labeled Castle Condominiums, and that—that . . . thing . . . is full of apartments. With all those fake battlement walls around it. There’s a spa in the middle, a gym and a sauna and a hot tub, and a little swimming pool! I thought it was part of the hotel, but it’s right there on that island. He’s going to pull down Castle Keep!”
“He can’t do that!” Jay said.
Allie said, “It’s in a folder called ‘Second Stage.’ ” She set the drawing next to the folder, and her camera flashed.
“Here, hold this,” Jay said, thrusting his flashlight at her, and he pulled out his own phone and took pictures of the second model from several different directions.
“He’s keeping it a secret till it’s too late to stop him!” Allie said.
“Just wait till Granda sees this! Talk about evidence!”
Allie suddenly looked at her watch. “Come on,” she said. “We have to go—Granda and Dad will be back soon.”
So in a quiet flurry they pulled back covers and put papers back into files, to leave the dark room just as it had been before they came, and they crept carefully out through the shadows, out of Castle Keep, back to the dinghy on the loch.
And in the MacDevon’s library, where until ten minutes ago they had been fast asleep, the Boggart and Nessie hovered in silent shock, not speaking even to each other, trying not to believe the things that they had just seen. Things that would finally drive their clannish souls to seek their own weapon of war.
FIFTEEN
Allie scrambled out of the dinghy and held it against the tall side of the new jetty, as Jay climbed out with the oars. A small wind had sprung up now over the loch, and the cloud cover above them was broken, so that they could see separate clouds moving through the almost-night sky. Ahead, they could see the lights of the house, and a car moving down the road toward them—but it wasn’t their father, it was a white police car, shining even in the darkness.
They paused, and so did the car. Ewan Nicolson opened his window and looked out at them. “Ah,” he said. “Ah—good evening.”
“Hi,” Allie said. “Granda’s not here.”
“I’m not here tae see him,” Ewan said. He looked oddly embarrassed, for a policeman. “Ah—I’m on duty for the night, out here. All night, every night, now. Request from Mr. Trout.”
“All night?” Allie said.
Ewan said hastily, “I’ll park myself out of the way, you’ll not have tae look at me. Don’t worry!”
And he drove slowly down to the shore of the loch, where the water glimmered in the almost-dark, and made his way round a stack of big stones.
“ ‘Request from Mr. Trout!’ ” Jay said witheringly. “He wants a cop out here in case we come out in the middle of the night and pull up his concrete posts? Give me a break!”
“Poor man,” Allie said, looking after Ewan. Then she looked farther away. “Hey, let’s get rid of these oars—there’s another car coming, it might be Dad.”
Headlights were coming down the hill. They hurried to the garage, and they had just propped their oars back against the wall when Tom’s car came to a halt next to Granda’s elderly Land Rover. Jay pushed the garage door shut as his father got out of the car.
“What are you two up to?” Tom said. “I thought you were both so tired.”
“Just checking,” Jay said vaguely.
“How was the talk?” Allie said.
“Excellent,” said Granda. He strode into the house, reporting on the scientist’s predictions of environmental disaster as he went, and the twins listened for several minutes before the news bubbling inside their own heads had to burst out of them.
Tom was saying to Granda, “But Trout will deny it all, that’s the problem. He’ll say there’s no proof, he’ll say, ‘My intentions are wonderful—’ ”
Allie pulled out her cell phone and held it up. So did Jay. “Look!” he said. “Here are Mr. Trout’s real intentions!”
“We got you some facts, Granda!” Allie said triumphantly. “Look at what he’s planning to do to Castle Keep!”
And there was a prickling silence, as Tom and Angus Cameron stared at the plans and the pictures of William Trout’s second stage of development.
Tom gave a long, slow whistle.
“Dear Lord!” Granda said.
“Is it illegal?” Jay said hopefully.
“Well, Castle Keep is historic, so it’s a listed building,” Tom said. “Which means you can’t change it in any way without asking permission from the local authority.”
“Which they’ll not give,” said Granda, “not when they see this! And maybe it’ll be the thing that finally turns their minds about Mr. Trout an’ his whole resort.” He reached out both arms and hugged the twins. “Well done, wee MacDevons! First thing tomorrow, this goes to the council!”
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Tom said.
“So it is. Well, first thing Monday!”
“Couldn’t we put his plans online?” Annie said. “Now?”
“I wouldnae do that—let’s not give Trout any warning, to dream up lies and excuses. Best for the council to spring it on him.” Granda opened the pantry door and took out a bottle of whisky. “The grown-ups’ll toast ye!” he said.
Tom said, “And even more important than the council, the Boggart has to see these pictures! When did you take them?”
“The model’s in the castle library,” Jay said evasively. “All Trout’s planning stuff is there.”
Their father was turning to the kitchen sink, with the kettle in his hand. He paused, frowning. “You went over there tonight?” he said. “You took the boat over? In the dark?”
“It wasn’t very dark,” Jay said.
“You should have asked,” Tom said.
“We were very careful,” said Allie. She had a sudden inspiration. “We saw that friend of yours, the policeman! He’s out there in his car, now, he has to stay all night. Mr. Trout wanted someone on duty.”
“Against vandals like us,” Jay said.
Granda said something short and explosive in Gaelic.
“But he’s nice, the cop,” Allie said. “It’s not his fault.”
Tom Cameron stood there holding the kettle, his face softened by memory.
“Ewan Nicolson,” he said. “Oh my. I should go out there and say hello.”
Allie said, “I could take him some cookies.”
“And maybe a thermos of tea,” Granda said. “Quite true, it’s no’ his fault, poor soul. Maybe a blanket, too, in case it gets chilly.”
A small flurry of activity began in the kitchen, and Jay opened the door and looked out. Out on the loch, behind the familiar silhouette of Castle Keep, the Trout Queen lay at anchor, strung all over with lights like a fairground carousel, but on the
ir own shore, beyond the machines and the piles of planks, he could just make out the glimmer of the police car’s white hood. He thought he could hear a voice, murmuring very faintly.
“He’s still there,” he said.
* * *
In his car, Ewan Nicolson heard the door of the house close, and he sighed, feeling isolated. For the sake of his car’s battery, he turned off the player on which he had been listening to an audio version of Stevenson’s Kidnapped, though David Balfour eating raw limpets had been a welcome distraction from the thought of William Trout. At least the rain had stopped. He looked out; through the broken clouds he could see a sliver of moon now, and two or three bright stars in the darkening sky.
And then the door over at the Cameron store opened again, and he saw a group of figures walking toward him. He sat up, warily, and opened the car window. One of the figures came closer.
“Ewan Nicolson!” Tom said.
Ewan’s face changed as if a light had been turned on inside it. He fumbled with his door handle and almost fell out of the car. “Tommy!” he cried. “Tommy Cameron!” He thrust out his hand, and they pumped fists for a moment; then they both laughed and gave each other an awkward hug.
The twins watched their father’s transformed face, fascinated.
Ewan smiled at them and reached out his hand to Granda. “Mr. Cameron, sir,” he said.
“Evening, Ewan,” Granda said.
Ewan gestured helplessly at the Trout Corporation construction site, and at his car. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said unhappily.
Allie handed him a plate.
“I made Canadian cookies,” she said. “We thought you might like some.”
“Thank you!” said Ewan, astonished.
“And hot tea,” said Granda, handing him a thermos. “Wi’ a dram added.”
“Oh!” said Ewan gratefully. Then, with an effort, he shook his head. “I cannae have whisky, not on duty,” he said.
“Ah, it’s mostly tea,” Angus Cameron said, “and who’s to know whether I lied? Just drink it, man.”
“Mr. Cameron, you are a gentleman,” said Ewan. “And duty or no duty, I want you to know that I signed your petition. Not as a policeman, you understand. As a Scot.”