The Inheritance

by Michael Phillips

  Maddy nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose. Got to keep the suits on tenth happy.”

  “And the deadline on the Campbell acquisition is looming,” Loni went on, glancing through her notes. “It’s next week—they want your final report by Monday.”

  “I’ll have it ready.”

  “All right, changing directions,” Loni said. “Here’s a list I’d like you to look at.” She handed Maddy a single sheet. “I’m trying to get you scheduled for fall. These are the speaking requests that have come in. I need to start prioritizing, let some of these folks know you won’t be available. You’ll see that a number of the dates conflict.”

  “Goodness, Loni!” exclaimed Maddy. “There must be ten or fifteen.”

  “Twenty-seven. Invitations have been pouring in. You’re the rising star in the investment world, Maddy.”

  “I had no idea. When did they all come?”

  “I’ve been saving them up. I thought it would be best for you to look at your calendar with everything in front of you. People are talking about you, Maddy. This is just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Are you trying to flatter me?” said Maddy with an amused smile.

  “You know I would never do that. Well, almost never. But just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, there’s a rumor floating around the building that Forbes is looking at doing a feature on you.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Really. The new face of investments and all that. True, it’s only a rumor. But there are reasons why rumors get started.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “Believe it, Maddy. Just look at that list—high schools, universities, investment groups, banks, senior groups. You’ve put a face on investing that everyone can identify with. Kids are interested, of all things! That Children’s Mutual Fund you started—sheer genius. You’ve sparked something, Maddy. You’ve brought the stock market into ordinary folks’ lives. They love it.”

  Maddy took in Loni’s words thoughtfully. She was quiet for several seconds.

  “You’ll notice I’ve got the Gleneagles conference blocked out for early November,” Loni added after a moment. “That’s when I’ll be gone—I assume you still want me to go to that thing?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “And you’re not planning to go?”

  Maddy shook her head.

  “That’s what I assumed,” laughed Loni. “I booked my flights this morning.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “But I wanted to talk to you before I scheduled anything for you during the week I’ll be gone,” Loni added. “Not that you couldn’t handle everything without me, but—”

  “Forget it, Loni,” interrupted Maddy. “You were being thorough and thinking of me. I appreciate that. You didn’t want my schedule to get overloaded when my able-and-talented right hand wasn’t here to help keep the plates spinning.”

  A sheepish expression came over Loni’s face. “I wouldn’t say it quite like that,” she said.

  “Well, you done good, Loni Ford, as always,” said Maddy. “All right, I’ll look over your list.”

  19

  Passing of a Legacy

  WHALES REEF, SHETLAND ISLANDS

  The morning of Macgregor Tulloch’s funeral dawned drizzly and cold. All along the coast, the wind tore the white tips of an endless succession of waves off into horizontal spray strong enough to reach halfway up the shore. Remnants of fog blew in vapory shreds from the sea until they disappeared inland in wind and rain. Miles of gray cloud separated the islanders from the great light above that brought warmth to the earth.

  The man whose body lay in the coffin, however, borne in a buggy pulled by two of his own specially bred, sturdy half-Shetland ponies, cared no more for the weather. He was gone from the world of shadows, taking his secrets with him. He now resided either in the Land of Light or in the Pit of Death. Opinion among those he left behind on the island that had been his lifelong home was varied as to which of the two was his final, and deserved, destination.

  Few of those following the makeshift hearse in the time-honored tradition could truly be said to be mourning on this bleak day, only in the sense that death of any kind reminded them of their own mortality. A pall of expected sadness had hung over the island since news of the laird’s death. Those who would truly miss the man, however, could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

  In truth, every one of them would miss him more than they realized before many months were out. For he had been to every man, woman, and child of them far more than a mere figurehead.

  Dougal Erskine—tall for a Shetlander, though a good two inches shy of six feet and approaching sixty—appeared especially auspicious in top hat and tails. Walking ahead of them, he led the procession with reins in hand attached to two of his master’s faithful equine friends pulling the carriage. The men who followed Erskine and the conveyance clattering over the rough cobblestones were dressed dutifully in their Sunday blacks. Their presence was not so much out of reverence for the dead, but from superstitious fear of offending the Powers of the unknown. No doubt they were also paying their respects to David, already being referred to as “the young laird.” Whatever their ambivalence toward Macgregor, his great-nephew was a favorite among young and old alike.

  As for the women, they had their own reasons for trudging en masse after the men in spite of the gusty wind and slanting rain. There was nothing quite so delicious as stirring up a pot of old gossip. Though no new information would be gleaned on this day, the funeral and its aftermath presented ripe opportunity to dredge up all the business from fifty years before, brought fresh to their memories by the occasion. The wagging tongues would carry on about the same things they had discussed a thousand times before in those fifty years—the dreadful humiliation visited upon their beloved Odara Innes in the prime of her youth.

  Few of them had ever forgiven Macgregor for marrying the Norwegian trollop, Hiordis Gudmund. What kind of name was that anyway? A princess she might have been in Norway, but on Whales Reef she was considered a hussy. Rinda Gunn and the bolder of the women didn’t mind saying so. That the woman had disappeared and come to an untimely end herself, or so the rumor went, “twas nae mair nor she deserved,” said Rinda. Offending Providence was the least of Rinda’s worries. She was a woman who spoke her mind.

  The procession out of the village and up the hill to the church also turned the minds of not a few toward the more recent controversy of twenty-four years ago. The effects still lingered in spite of the young chief’s attempts to erase memory of the Fountain of Light from Whales Reef. The mere sight of the church reminded them of the split and the bitter feelings that had resulted on both sides.

  Rinda Gunn had been outspoken then too, declaring the secret signs boasted by the Fountainites “the wark o’ the de’il, ye mark my words,” a blast from her tongue that included her own brother in its withering rebuke. Her conclusion was perhaps validated in part by the group’s judgmentalism, which was more in evidence following fresh outpourings than Spirit fruits. In spite of its enigmatic and evasive Christian jargon, whether the movement that had swept through their islands was truly a “cult” in the technical sense would be for the future history books to determine.

  As they walked, a few cleavages could be observed that fell roughly along the old lines separating the Fountainites from the rest of the village. None, however, dared speak of it. All agreed that the young chief was an even-tempered and pleasant young man, and that only one thing was capable of arousing his fury—any hint of the Fountain of Light. In his opinion it had been an evil time in the life of Whales Reef. Any man or woman who stirred that pot again would have him to answer to.

  Thus the black-clad villagers continued through the rain, silently pondering their now-dead laird, or Odara Innes and her Norwegian usurper, or those years when a “strange gospel” nearly destroyed their village.

  Most of the women would not hear a word the Reverend Stirling Yates uttered
in the church or at the graveside. Their attention would be riveted on Odara Innes, still in their eyes beautiful at sixty-nine. They would always see her in the flower of her youth—the Shetland beauty spurned by the youthful son of their laird now lying dead in front of them—destined to live the remainder of her life in loneliness.

  What would she do? they wondered. Would she spit on the coffin of her youthful love? Many had wondered whether she would attend at all.

  The carriage pulled up in front of the church. The two ponies came to a standstill as Dougal stopped and the reins relaxed. David Tulloch, chief and now presumptive laird of the small island clan, stepped to the back of the carriage, flanked by Noak Muir, Keith Kerr, and his uncle Fergus Gunn. Standing two on each side, the four slid the casket out and carried it into the church.

  Curious as they filed into the church what the minister would say about the old curmudgeon, the villagers spent the next half hour mostly listening to passages of Scripture about eternal life, with appropriate reminders to live well before their own time came.

  Forty minutes after they had carried it inside, the four men bore the casket out the church doors, across the gravel, and through the cemetery’s chipped and peeling black iron gates to where the burial site had been prepared.

  The trailing assembly closed ranks, gathering slowly and stiffly around the open grave. Celtic superstition mingled with reverence for tradition, along with just enough Christian jargon to keep them all more afraid of hell than sin, and fearful of offending Him who held the keys to death and Hades.

  Rinda Gunn stepped forward to join her husband Fergus on David’s right. Behind them stood several of their oldest children with their husbands and wives, as well as their two unmarried daughters, all of whom had returned to the island for the funeral. Bakery widow Coira MacNeill stood beside Odara Innes and her father, retired Whales Reef veterinarian and local curiosity Alexander Innes, now approaching ninety and considered no less an oddity now than he had been all his life. Keith Kerr, the closest friend David’s father had had in the village, stood beside him on the left, now joined by his wife, Evanna, and daughter Audney, the village beauty of the present generation.

  The Kerrs, owners of Whales Fin Inn, had left eighteen-year-old Rob Munro at the inn, though at this hour no one was likely to require the services of the pub, not even Hardy Tulloch’s men. The inn’s only guests, two American bird-watching tourists, had eaten an early breakfast and were gone to Lerwick for the day.

  Along with David and Dougal Erskine, two others in genuine mourning on this day were old Macgregor’s self-styled butler, Saxe Matheson, and his sister, Isobel, the dead man’s housekeeper, who stood stoically side by side. Both cherished a deep devotion to their now-deceased employer, an ancient loyalty that would be difficult for a modernist to understand. What was to become of them now, they did not know. But neither would lose a moment in transferring that same affection to Macgregor’s young kinsman. They were of the old school. Loyalty to chief, bard, laird, and clan was bred deep into the marrow of their souls.

  The wool factory’s manager, David’s cousin Murdoc MacBean, and his family stood behind the Gunns. Postman Sarff Fenris stood next to his sister, Grizel, and her husband, Tevis Gordon, with their son and two daughters.

  In ever-widening circles the villagers and island fishermen, wives, crofters, and all those employed at the wool factory gathered round. Even village eccentric Armond Lamont was present among them, though to anyone’s knowledge he and Macgregor Tulloch had never so much as exchanged a word. That assumption, in actual fact, was far from true. The two men were on closer terms than anyone, even David himself, who did know of their friendship, suspected.

  The only village native and relative of the dead laird conspicuously absent was Hardy Tulloch. He and the half of his crew comprised of tough Glaswegians were at his boat on this day, more indifferent than all the rest. Even those locals who were dependent on Hardy for their livelihoods would not work, whatever they may have thought of him, on the day the laird was rejoined to the earth. Among them, Gordo Ross and Rufus Wood were sufficiently traditionalists to join the day’s mourners. Even young Ian Hay, in whose eyes Hardy could do no wrong, had been pressured by his parents to attend.

  While his second craft bobbed idly in the harbor, Hardy set out with the Hardy Fire into a sea far too rough for more prudent men.

  At the graveside, Reverend Yates’s brief comments and lengthy prayer were unmemorable. It was a bitterly cold day. Every one in the company was relieved when the final Amen was pronounced. All that remained was to lower the departed into his final resting place. The honors were carried out by Noak Muir and David Tulloch holding the ropes on one side, with assistance from Fergus Gunn and Keith Kerr on the other. The company then filed silently by, the men’s heads uncovered, each with his or her own final thoughts about the man at rest at the bottom.

  Last in the line—whether by intent or by the collective subconscious design of the company it would be difficult to say—came the spurned love of Macgregor Tulloch’s youth, Odara Innes.

  The eye of every woman peered from beneath their black bonnets, anxious to witness for themselves what she would do.

  Even the heavens seemed to sense the dramatic tension of the moment. The rain let up. The wind eased.

  Odara came forward behind her father, then paused beside the grave.

  The shuffling of the many feet ceased. Silence descended.

  Odara stared down into the hole. A tear crept down her cheek. Her lips moved almost imperceptibly.

  Then one hand, trembling slightly, went inside her black coat and produced a single rose on its stalk. Its blossom was of a deeper red than blood itself, so deep that in this light it almost appeared black.

  She held it several seconds, then tossed it into the hole where it came to rest atop the casket.

  An audible gasp went round the churchyard. Those for whom the day represented an opportunity for revived gossip about Odara Innes and Macgregor Tulloch had certainly been provided ample fodder for their itching tongues.

  But already Odara was gone from the grave.

  She walked briskly through the iron gates of the cemetery back toward the church. Umbrella slanted against the resuming rain, she continued around the building, caught up with her father, slipped her hand through his arm, and the two continued on in the direction of the village. None hurried to accompany them.

  A slow murmur crept through the crowd at what they had witnessed. Noak, Fergus, and Keith began filling the hole. A few of the men joined them.

  The rest proceeded in slow procession back down the hill in the wake of the enigmatic Innes father and his daughter.

  Once through the black gates and removed a safe distance from the silent listening stones of the dead, low whispers erupted into a dozen private conversations.

  The men were unconcerned. The women were all asking the same question about what they had seen. What did it mean?

  Had Odara actually forgiven the man? Or was the rose on the coffin a final act of spite, her chosen means to trample on his grave in triumph that at last he was gone to the hell he deserved?

  Halfway to town, David fell into stride beside his aunt Rinda Gunn, whose husband Fergus had remained behind with Reverend Yates and a few others to see to the final interment. She was engaged in lively conversation with Evanna Kerr about the mysterious rose. Sensing David behind her, and knowing his hatred for gossip—today she was not inclined to provoke an argument—she swallowed what she had been about to say.

  She turned toward her nephew. Though on this day his serious side predominated, David nevertheless flashed the two women a wide smile. Even to her critical eye, his aunt had to admit that he was a handsome young man dressed as he was in black suit and tie. His characteristic sandy-brown crop of hair blew about in the breeze. His rugged face, not so weather-beaten as those of the island fishermen, was filled with a kind, sincere, and honest expression.

  “Hello, Auntie. And you, Ev
anna,” he said as he joined them.

  “Weel, young David,” said Rinda, “ye’re the laird noo.”

  “No laird yet, Auntie.”

  “What for no?” retorted Rinda.

  “When a man dies, there is much to be done. It’s only been a few days. Uncle Macgregor’s solicitors have to sort through the papers to make sure all the laws and protocols are followed. Ownership of land is legally complicated, transferring deeds and titles—everything takes time.”

  “Tish tosh wi’ all that!” rejoined David’s aunt. “The man’s deid, an’ good riddance!”

  “Auntie—dinna speak ill o’ the deid!” exclaimed David, lapsing into Scots dialect. “I loved the man.”

  “Weel, I didna. He was an ill one.”

  “If Odara can forgive him at the end, surely ye can yersel’,” said David.

  “Oh, aye—forgive him, ye’re thinkin’! Is that what ye think the floer in’s grave was meanin’?”

  “What else, Auntie?”

  “Didna ye see it? Twas a black rose—a rose o’ death. What was she doin’ but layin’ one last curse on the man as he lay in his grave?”

  “Auntie!” exclaimed David. “She was doing no such thing. It was a gesture of forgiveness, you mark my words.”

  “What think ye, Evanna?” said Rinda.

  Mrs. Kerr cast a quick glance in David’s direction. No doubt aware that David was soon to become the most powerful man on the island, she was far less inclined to offend her chief than was his aunt. “I cudna rightly say, Rinda,” she replied. “The rose looked to be mair red tae me.”

  “It was black, I tell ye! But, David,” Rinda went on without pausing, “when will ye be movin’ tae the Cottage?”

  “I told you not to get ahead of yourself, Auntie,” replied David. “There are titles and deeds to be sorted. I haven’t exactly made up my mind what to do. I am fond of the Auld Hoose.”

  “’Tis no a place fit for the laird o’ Whales Reef.”

  “It was the laird’s home for generations, and it is fit for me.”