by Lynne Jonell
Will didn’t tell Jamie any stories that week at the castle. But he did try to clear things up for his little brother. “It all really happened,” Will told him on Monday, “Sir Robert and all the rest of it, but it happened in the past, see? Like something in history.”
Jamie pulled the plastic Highlander out of his pocket and held it up like a talisman. “Go away!”
“But listen, Jamie, just try to understand—”
Jamie put his fingers in his ears and ran out of the castle kitchen. “La la la la, I can’t hear you!” His voice echoed in the stone hallway and up the stone stairs.
Will trudged up the stairs after him, frowning. There had to be a way to explain things to Jamie. But when he caught sight of his brother running from room to room, peering around corners as if hoping to see someone he knew, something in Will’s chest twisted like a cord knotting around his heart, and he walked slowly down again without saying anything.
His mother would have known how to make Jamie feel better. But she wasn’t here. Will sank down on the wide stone steps and leaned against the curving wall. He wasn’t Jamie’s parent; he was only a kid. It wasn’t fair that he had to deal with all this on his own.
And what happened to Mom, was that fair? countered a small voice inside his head.
Maybe not, Will answered, but she had made the choice that got her into trouble. He had not had any choice at all.
Something snuffled at his elbow, and Will lifted his face to see Gormlaith’s long nose and anxious brown eyes.
“Good old girl.” Will rubbed the dog gently behind the ears. Gormlaith drooled on his knee and nudged his arm with her wet black nose. Then she looked up the stairs and whined uneasily.
“Go ahead, Gormly,” Will said quietly. “Maybe he needs a dog more than a brother. If he even believes I am his brother,” he added under his breath.
Gormlaith barked softly, licked his hand, and padded up the spiraling tower steps with an air of purpose.
Will watched her fringed tail disappear around the corner. Did the dog really know how sad Jamie was? It seemed so. “Splendid Lady,” Will murmured, remembering the meaning of Gormlaith’s name. He had once thought it a stupid description for the clumsy, floppy-eared animal, but he didn’t anymore.
An hour later, when he saw Jamie walking with his hand on the dog’s back, Will felt an easing of the cord around his heart. Maybe it would be all right, after all.
Tuesday, Will brought along some of his spending money and offered to treat his little brother at the castle tearoom. Jamie came warily, lagging two steps behind, but his eyes brightened at the sight of the sweets in the display case.
The little boy was deep into a bowl of sticky toffee pudding when Will gave it another try. “Hey,” he said casually, “about Sir Robert and those guys—”
Jamie scraped back his chair and picked up his bowl and spoon. “I’m going to sit at another table,” he announced loudly.
The tearoom attendant glanced curiously at Will.
Will’s cheeks turned hot. He grimly put a fork into his cake—it looked like a checkerboard, but he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate it—and watched under his lashes as Jamie got predictably sticky.
Mom would want you to wipe his face, came the voice in his head.
Will rolled his eyes. Jamie didn’t want his help.
And his hands, the voice went on remorselessly. You promised to take care of him.
Sighing, Will dampened a napkin in his water glass and went over to wipe Jamie’s face, but the little boy ducked under his hand and ran out of the room.
Will gritted his teeth. Fine, then. If Jamie wanted to run off alone, Will wasn’t going to stop him. Let him run around looking for Sir Robert and anyone else he missed, for all the good it would do him.
Grumpily, Will stalked off to the gift shop. At least Cousin Elspeth would talk to him. Or maybe Gormlaith would be up for a game of fetch.
But Cousin Elspeth was talking to tourists, and Gormlaith was napping under the desk. Will browsed aimlessly through the display rack of books, trying to feel an interest and failing miserably. His thoughts, as always, drifted to his mother, the way a tongue went to the space where a tooth had been. Where was she now? What was happening to her? It wouldn’t seem so awful if only he could do something.
Suddenly he blinked at the book open in his hands. Where had he seen that picture before? A warrior with blue tattoos and a round leather shield looked sternly up from the page as if challenging him.
It was the same book that the old gentleman on the plane had let him look at! Will flipped through the pages with mounting excitement. Here were pictures of all different time periods. Maybe it would be easier to explain things to Jamie with pictures?
He looked at the price, did a mental calculation of pounds to dollars in his head, and winced. It would take nearly all the spending money he had left. No more visits to the tearoom, if he bought it. And he had wanted to try the sticky toffee pudding, too.
Slowly his hand went to his pocket and came out with a fistful of pound notes. “I’d like to buy this book, please,” he told Cousin Elspeth.
Her face glowed with delight. “Do you like history, then, laddie? Perhaps you can get my Nan to take an interest!” She rang up the purchase, talking all the while. “You’ll have to show her the page about the Romans. She visited an old Roman fort with her school class! But she didn’t seem overly excited about it,” the woman added sadly. “Such an opportunity, too.”
When Nan came in after school, Will told her his plan. And on the drive from the castle to the house that afternoon, Will pulled the book out of its bag. “Look, Nan,” he said, making sure that Jamie could see the pages, “I got this book so we could see what people dressed like when you go back in time. Hey, here’s King James the Fourth! He lived, what? Five hundred years ago, or so?”
Jamie paled, shot one startled glance at the book, and then went scarlet with fury. He glared at Will and slid as close to the back door as he could get, turning his whole body to face the window.
Nan slid her eyes sideways. “That worked out well.”
“Show her the Romans, Will!” Cousin Elspeth chirped from the driver’s seat. “You’ll be interested, Nan—you just had a field trip to Pinnata Castra! Or Inchtuthil, as we call it. In fact, some scholars think that might have been the original Pictish name—” She went on for some time.
Will had to admit he’d wasted his money; his brilliant idea had only made things worse. The minute the car stopped, Jamie stalked off without a word. And he spent the rest of the evening sitting by the burn with his arm around Gormlaith, staring into the distance as if waiting for someone to come riding over the hills.
By Thursday, Jamie had turned sullen. At supper, he said nothing at all, and his face looked so miserable that Cousin Elspeth told Will she thought he was going to be sick.
That night, Will went to his room five minutes after Jamie had been put to bed, but his little brother lay still with his face turned to the wall, his eyes shut tight.
Will got into his pajamas and under the covers. “I know you’re awake,” he said quietly.
Jamie did not stir.
“You can talk to me, you know,” said Will. “I’m your brother.”
Jamie said nothing.
“I know Mom and Dad aren’t here,” Will went on doggedly. “But Dad told me to take care of you, and I’m trying my best, really I am. I’m sorry you miss Sir Robert so much. I’m sorry about everything.”
Will listened until it seemed he could hear the dust fall and a spider spinning its web in a high corner. He breathed shallowly, waiting for a response, but it never came. After a while he closed his eyes.
He woke to a muffled sound he couldn’t identify. His eyes went to the clock on the dresser; it was after midnight. The moon had risen, and a cold pale light streamed through the narrow window.
The sound came again, and this time he recognized it: a sob, smothered in a pillow.
Will
pushed back the covers and sat on Jamie’s bed, his throat aching with pity.
The small body stiffened, and the sobs ceased with a gulp. Will laid his hand on Jamie’s hair, stroking it as he had seen his mother do, slowly and gently.
The silence grew. Just when Will was thinking of going back to bed, Jamie spoke.
“What?” Will leaned close. “I didn’t hear—”
Jamie rolled over, showing a crumpled face. “Gormly,” he whispered again.
The moon’s light caught the wispy ends of Jamie’s hair, standing up in sweaty tufts. His eyes were shadowed, but the pleading in them was unmistakable.
Of course they weren’t supposed to let the dog up into their bedroom. Nan’s mother had been very clear about that.
“All right. Wait here.” Will tiptoed down the hall, feeling like a criminal. Cousin Elspeth had been so kind; he really should obey her rules. She hadn’t made many.…
He quietly unlocked the back door and went out. The gravel hurt his bare feet, and too late, he remembered his shoes.
He squatted at the door to Gormlaith’s kennel and spoke quietly. “Gormly?”
There was a snuffle and a thump. Gormlaith launched herself out of the kennel, barking with wild joy, her paws heavy on his chest.
“Oof!” Will got out from under her with a sideways wriggle and rolled into the shadow on the far side of the kennel. “Quiet, girl! Shhh!”
Gormlaith subsided into muted, ecstatic whines. Will stared anxiously up at the darkened windows of the house. If a light went on …
But it didn’t. Five minutes later, his hand on Gormlaith’s collar to keep the jingling tags quiet, Will slipped up the stairs and into the bedroom he shared with Jamie.
“Oh!” Jamie sat bolt upright, and Gormlaith leaped into his arms, bowling him over in a frenzy of wild face licking. A muffled giggle emerged from beneath the squirming heap of dog, and Will closed the door quickly, grinning.
“Shhh!” He leaned over the bed, and his hands closed around Gormlaith’s muzzle. “Quiet, Gormly, or you can’t stay. You hear me?”
Gormlaith moaned softly in her throat.
“And, Jamie, you have to go right to sleep now. Promise?”
Jamie nodded. “Can she really stay all night?” he whispered.
“Most of it. I’ll take her out in the morning before Cousin Elspeth wakes up. And it’ll be our secret, okay?”
“Yes,” Jamie said, snuggling down again. He pressed his back against Gormlaith’s heaving flank and shut his eyes, smiling.
By some miracle, Will managed to wake up just as the sun rose and get the dog out before anyone discovered him. He stood for a moment, listening to the sweet repeated calls of what seemed like five hundred birds. In that moment, the pink-and-gold glory of the sky and the piercing sweetness of the birdsong made it possible to believe that everything would be all right. Any day now, a call might come to say that his mother was safe, and coming home.
“Please, please help it happen,” he said with his face lifted to the sky.
At breakfast, Cousin Elspeth watched Jamie closely, the skin above her nose wrinkling in a slight frown. When Nan ran out the door for the school bus, Cousin Elspeth stood abruptly.
“Will,” she said, rummaging in a corner closet, “I’ll let you lads use Ewen’s—that is, Nan’s father’s—metal detector today. You must promise to be careful with it, mind! But you can have fun looking for coins that the tourists have dropped. Who knows, you might even find something that’s been buried a long time.”
Jamie looked up. “Treasure?” he said, brightening.
Cousin Elspeth’s face relaxed into a relieved smile. “You never know, laddie!”
* * *
The metal detector was fun, Will had to admit. It had a box with a dial, and a long wand with a thing on the end that reminded Will of a ski-pole basket. Cousin Elspeth had shown him how to sweep it slowly over the ground; when it came upon something metal, it gave a high-pitched beeeeeep. Jamie, interested and happy for the first time in almost a week, followed with a trowel and helped dig up what they had found. By lunchtime they were richer by two crowns, fifteen pence, and a quarter.
“That must have come from an American tourist,” Will told Jamie, who happily put it in his pocket.
“You had good luck!” said Cousin Elspeth at the front desk when they showed her the coins. “You could spend that in the tearoom, for pudding!”
Will grinned. Pudding, he had found, was what Cousin Elspeth called any kind of dessert except cookies (which were biscuits).
“Yeah!” Jamie was beaming. “Can we, Will?”
“You’ll need more than a quarter. Here.” Will tipped the rest of the coins into Jamie’s pocket and watched him skip down the hall to the tearoom. There wasn’t enough money for Will to have dessert, too, but it didn’t matter. He had done it. Jamie was comfortable in his own time once more.
Will wandered out to the old kitchen garden, where they had left the metal detector, and, by standing on a convenient bench, hitched himself up on top of the gray stone wall. It was warm from the sun, and he lay back and gazed at the clouds scudding across deep blue sky. There was a wind, high up, but here in the sheltered garden he felt only calm.
Would his father be proud of him? Would it make his mother happy, that he was taking care of Jamie? Yes, he decided … as long as she could forget how he had refused to hug her that last time.
He had been angry, though, so angry it was like a bitter taste in his mouth. It wasn’t much of an excuse, but it was all he had. And while he wasn’t mad anymore—he couldn’t stay angry forever, he had found—the sadness wouldn’t go away. He still didn’t understand why his mother had left them.
No, he corrected himself, he could understand part of it. Those sick kids, they had needed her. He could see that. What he couldn’t get was how she had put those other kids ahead of him and Jamie. That part, he would never understand.
The clouds slipped away from the sun, and Will squinted against the sudden brightness. The warmth beat against his face in waves like heat from a fire, like light from a burning castle.…
And what would his mother think of what he had done? How he had run away when Castle Menzies went up in flames, after he had opened the door to the Stewarts?
Will made an instinctive motion of protest. He had gotten his brother and cousin to safety—that should be good enough for anyone. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He would just wait here on the wall for Jamie, and they would go looking for treasure.
His eyes closed slowly as his thoughts drifted. Nan would be home from school soon, too.… Maybe they would find more coins, enough so he could have his sticky toffee pudding after all.…
He awoke with a start and sat up, dazed. How long had he been asleep? And where was Jamie? The metal detector was gone.
Will hopped off the wall to wander the grounds, calling for Jamie and whacking at bushes with a long stick, pretending they were Stewarts. He was knocking a dead branch off a tree whose pointed sharpness reminded him of Neil Gointe’s face, when Nan found him. “You’ve got wood bits in your hair,” she informed him. “Where’s Jamie?”
“He’s off somewhere with the metal detector.”
Nan stared. “Mum let Jamie take Dad’s detector all by himself? Dad’s not going to like that if he ever finds out.”
Will gave the branch a last whack, and it fell with a dry-sounding creak. “Do you think I should go back and warn Sir Robert?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing.” Nan fished in her satchel and pulled out the Magic Eyeball book, which looked a little battered around the corners. “Here.”
“What’s that for?”
“Just in case you decide to go.” Nan gazed at him earnestly, her freckles standing out against her pale skin.
Will took it with reluctant fingers. “I suppose I could open a window,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt to look.”
“Face the castle,” Nan suggested. “Go back to
a time before the fire. Then we can run in quick, warn somebody—”
“Cook, maybe,” said Will, sitting up. “If I told her the old pot boy was really a Stewart spy, I bet she’d get Sir Robert to listen.”
“Go on, then.” Nan knelt behind Will and put her hand on his shoulder. “We can nip in and come right back.”
“All right.” Will held out the book at arm’s length.
It was easier every time he did it. Maybe everything got easier with practice. The past slid into focus, and Will could feel it there, waiting, behind the book in his hands. Only this time there seemed to be faint tracks that he could sense, too, like the fine glimmering threads of a spider’s web, nearly invisible. Now that he thought about it, he had noticed something like that before.…
Nan shifted behind him. “Better hurry up, before Jamie decides to come find us.”
“Quiet, will you? This takes concentration.” Will held the focus, moved it in and out slightly, and—there! It was as if the faint threads had suddenly caught the light. He could sense them clearly now. Some were thicker, as if they had been traveled more than once, or by more than one person.…
Will lowered the book to reveal the gray light of dawn. Through the ragged opening of the time window they could see the castle, a smoking, blackened mass of collapsed stone walls and burnt timbers poking up like rotten teeth. Around it, people huddled, weeping. Some were poking through the ashes.
Nan took in a breath behind him. “You’ve got to get to an earlier time.”
“I know.” He shook his head to break the focus and lifted the book to try again. If he did it right this time, there would be no fire, no ruined castle, and Sir Robert would be safe. Will gazed ahead, ever so slightly beyond the book, and felt with his mind’s eye for the shimmering sense that told him now, this was the right time, right here—