Dust to Dust

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “Too late for that,” said Michael.

  Rebecca held her notebook like a shield, and considered the concept of home. “Running away won’t solve anything, won’t finish anything, and won’t decide anything.”

  “The trial records are still in the safe,” Nora said. “You’d best put your book in there too.”

  “Hilary and I will have to work on the inscriptions sometime. Don’t worry, we won’t do it in any dark alleys.”

  Tony and Elaine appeared in the hallway. Nora jerked, startled, and backed into one of the sporting prints on the wall. Laurence grabbed it before it fell. “Do you need me in the crypt?” Elaine asked grudgingly. “You’re paying me to work, and Mackenzie says I can’t give in my notice.”

  “If you’d like to continue with the computer records,” Laurence told her, “it shouldn’t be necessary for you to go into the crypt.”

  “Right.” Elaine walked on down the hall, Tony, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slouched, just behind.

  “Tony says he never saw the trial records when Sheila had them,” Nora stage-whispered. “Does he want them back, now you have further evidence?”

  “Elaine did try to leave last week,” said Laurence.

  “Equal opportunity suspects,” Rebecca said with a sickly grin.

  The telephone rang in the office, a tourist family appeared at reception, and Michael and Rebecca headed back to the church. Don’t think about knives in the dark, she kept telling herself, attempting auto-hypnosis. Don’t think about it. Judging by Michael’s glum expression, he wasn’t succeeding in not thinking any better than she was.

  The crypt was mustier and stuffier than ever, and still as cold. Bridget wouldn’t be fixing Hilary’s sweater any time soon, not with the mobs of people descending on Rudesburn. Rebecca decided she’d wash her Missouri sweatshirt instead of burning it and let Hilary continue to wear the sweater. She felt vaguely hypocritical, after all, wearing the sweater Caroline had made for that mythological creature, her son’s fiancée.

  They copied and photographed every inch of the wall of the tomb. Quitting time didn’t come a moment too soon. Rebecca emerged into the opulent afternoon light deciding that history was becoming altogether too intimate. Poor Anne, reducing her loyalties to the lowest common denominator. Her country couldn’t help her, her church wouldn’t, and the men in her life—Thomas and Alexander—were either unable or unwilling to testify for her. As soon as the English appeared on the Gowan Water, her fate was sealed. Giving up the relics and the plate might have saved her, but that was a compromise she wouldn’t make. Compromising, she would have nothing left.

  But then, Rebecca thought, putting both her and Hilary’s notebooks beneath the mattress of her bed, compromising with Michael was hardly the same thing as selling out a sacred trust. With him, the vows had yet to be made.

  Something knocked against her side as she stood. She still had Mark’s Swiss Army knife in her pocket. Surely he wouldn’t mind her keeping it for a while; not only was it handy as a pencil sharpener but also its tiny scissors trimmed Hilary’s onionskin.

  Before dinner she sat down at the dining room table with Michael and Mark and outlined a script for Jerry’s press conference, giving the information as straightforwardly as possible, anticipating what questions would be asked, toning down the sensation.

  “What?” Jerry yelped when confronted with the script after dinner. He was already posing for photographs on the porch of the church, glad-handing the male reporters, leaning cozily on the female, reeking of sincerity and booze.

  “As official representative of the Rudesburn Development Group,” began Laurence, and Michael chimed in, “As official representative of the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission… .”

  With bad grace, Jerry gave in. But even with Laurence and Grant standing as admonitory bookends on either side, Jerry wrung every bit of drama he could out of the situation. He even bore in mind that two-thirds of the reporters were themselves English, and avoided expressing opinions on the ancestry and sexual orientations of Henry’s soldiery. To all the questions about Sheila’s murder, he smiled knowingly and said, “No comment.”

  Tony stood at the periphery of the group, deep in negotiation with Jenkins. “Well,” Rebecca heard Laurence comment to Grant, “I don’t see any harm in him selling some of his photos.”

  “Just make sure the RDG gets their cut,” returned the bobby.

  Like the Ancient Mariner, Adele expounded to anyone who would listen—and a few who wouldn’t—about the supernatural aspects of the find. Devlin and Mackenzie sauntered along the perimeter wall as though they were simply out for an evening stroll. Michael and Dennis, Mark and Hilary, stood beside the wheel cross, expressions from scowls to jaundiced smiles moving from face to face at Jerry’s pronouncements. Rebecca hovered on the footbridge with Bridget and Nora, watching the cottage, but no one beside the cats made any move toward the notebooks. And Lancelot and Guinevere and their twitching tails seemed much more interested in the human congregation across the stream.

  After the tours were conducted and the statements read, Michael and Mark took a thick wooden door from a closet in the hotel, affixed new hinges to the wall, and barred the stairway into the crypt. They made sure to present the key to Laurence, to keep in the safe, in front of as many people as possible.

  It was almost midnight before the students, Michael and Rebecca returned to the cottage. They sorted themselves in and out of the bathrooms with remarkable efficiency, and by the time Rebecca checked on the notebooks and sat down at her dressing table to take out her contacts a resonant silence had fallen over Rudesburn, as though the village itself were gently snoring. Here, with Michael, she felt safe.

  At the bottom of her jewelry case was the metal ring from the cap of a wine bottle that had once been her engagement ring. She covered it with a strand of beads and looked around at Michael. He’d dozed off with Colin’s notepad open on his chest.

  It had been two weeks since they’d made love; Rebecca didn’t count that awkward early morning scramble as love making. In a way she was glad Michael wasn’t breathing suggestively down her neck. In another way she wondered if he wanted her any more.

  No doubt he didn’t want to risk a rebuff. And now, with his arm injured, it would be a little difficult… . If he was really in the mood, she thought with a wry smile, he wouldn’t be intimidated by a full body cast.

  She took the new packet of pills, punched out the first one, and swallowed it. Another month wouldn’t hurt. It was best to be prepared.

  How about that? She’d actually made a decision, however small. Shaking her head, Rebecca turned out the lights, stowed the notepad in the drawer, and pulled the covers over Michael’s supine body.

  “Thank you, love,” he muttered, and turned onto his side. He hit his arm and grimaced in his sleep.

  “I do care for you,” she whispered. “In spite of it all, I do care.”

  He couldn’t hear her. From the dark silence outside came the ethereal sound of women’s voices: “Pater noster qui es in caelis… .”

  “Hallowed be thy name,” Rebecca concluded, and went to bed.

  1

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Rebecca’s back was against the sun-warmed stone of the church wall, and the cloister garth lay innocently in front of her. Unless the malefactor swooped down from the tower in a hang-glider, she was safe.

  The trial records were no longer as disturbing; like an old war wound their pain was blunted by familiarity. She transcribed and translated the sixteenth century officialese, feeling commendably efficient and just as glad the crowded conditions in the crypt let her work out here.

  A milkweed fluff of a cloud blocked the sun, casting her into shadow. The ferns and weeds on Battle Law waved fitfully in the cool breeze, like seaweed on a reef. Rebecca visualized Robert the Bruce’s minions moving an antique wheel-cross to the courtyard of the castle on the Law—had it originally been next to the one in front of t
he west end of the church? People back then had as finely tuned a sense of the sacred as people did now, except pilgrims went to Canterbury then, and now they went to Elvis’s Graceland.

  Rebecca rubbed her eyes and replaced the records in the portfolio. It would be Monday before Graham could send a copy of “The Dream of the Rood”. She thought wistfully of her boxes of books back in Missouri.

  The sun gleamed out again. She opened her and Hilary’s notebooks. Yesterday, in the darkness of the tomb, she’d quoted the verse from Matthew in its seventeenth century version. Today she realized that even allowing for the haphazard spelling of the sixteenth century, it wasn’t the same. She was letting preconceptions get the best of her. She read the verse as it was written. “Take therefore thought for the morrow, for the morrow must take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto today is the evil thereof.” A subtle difference, but enough to make Rebecca think Anne was indeed trying to leave a ghostly memorandum, as Jerry had said.

  Someone sat down beside her and she jerked in surprise. “You’re as jumpy as a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs,” teased Mark.

  “Catch-22,” Rebecca laughed. “Either I can concentrate on my work or be on my guard. Did Jerry let you go, or are you AWOL?”

  “He’s letting us take breaks in turn. Wants to keep moving, he said. All those pictures in the morning papers have gone to his head.”

  “At least Jenkins had the decency to mention the rest of us.”

  Winnie Johnston shepherded half a dozen tourists across the footbridge and over the lawns. They snapped pictures of the church, the cross, the ruined buildings, Mark and Rebecca. Winnie shooed them back toward the road. The roar of two buses jockeying for position in narrow Jedburgh Street trembled in the stones of the church, and a faint odor of exhaust wrinkled Rebecca’s nose. “Must be Saturday. The sightseers are out in droves.”

  “No accident,” said Mark, “that Jerry timed his conference for a Friday night. He ought to be grateful to Anne for putting on such a good show.”

  The blade in his voice was complemented by his expression; his features were whetted to a fine edge. “It bothers you,” she said, “working in the crypt.”

  “It would give anyone the creeps,” he replied defensively. “Anne’s not just a pile of bones. We know who she was.”

  “And that her child died with her?” He flinched. Before Rebecca could stop herself, she went on. “How long did your daughter live, Mark?”

  His eyes bulged. “How did you know that? Mackenzie?”

  “He told me about the divorce. I figured it had been a shotgun wedding. Then Devlin showed you the picture of his daughter, and you saw the baby’s bones… . Why do you still wear that belt buckle?”

  “Why do monks wear hair shirts? Mortification of the flesh.” Mark slumped, his hands folded across his stomach to hide the accusing gleam of the silver buckle; “Mark and Karen Forever”. “We thought we were in love. The white gown and tuxedo and fancy reception—that was fun. Our parents buried their hatchets and paid attention to us. But we were still in high school. We didn’t know any better.”

  I’ve put my foot in it now, Rebecca thought. Too late to say excuse me and slink away. “Were you there when the baby was born?”

  “Hey, I’m a certified sensitive New Age kind of guy.” Bitterness spilled from his voice, and Rebecca tasted it. “Karen had a terrible time. Hours and hours. She cussed me up one side and down the other—it was all my fault she was hurting so bad. I’d ruined her life. She just wanted to go shopping with her girlfriends. She didn’t want a baby. She didn’t want to be married. After a while the nurses started looking at me as if I’d raped her. But I never forced anything on her. Never.”

  “My brother said he never felt as helpless as he did sitting there in the labor room. The delivery room was a bit better. The end was in sight.”

  Mark held up his hands, miming a small bundle. “Chelsea lived three days. Placentia praevia, it’s called. Even if she’d lived she’d have been profoundly retarded… .” His voice cracked. His hands made futile movements in the air, as though trying to repair something that was irreparably broken. “I know it’s not my fault. I know it’s not Karen’s fault. But I can’t help but think, if only we’d wanted her, maybe she’d have been all right.”

  “I’m sorry.” Rebecca took his hand, pulling it away from its terrible pantomime. The tiny shape collapsed and disappeared.

  His fingers tightened on hers. “The day after the funeral Karen and I looked at each other and realized we’d lost the only thing we had in common. The divorce was a relief, like coming out of a fever dream. It was three years before I was able to touch another woman.”

  Rebecca remembered her comment about men getting their jollies and women paying, and bit her tongue. Voices echoed. Mark sat upright, smoothing his features into blandness. Rebecca released his hand. Grant ushered another group of tourists past the church and toward the Craft Centre. A couple of muscular young men started trimming weeds with scythes that looked like props from the third act of A Christmas Carol.

  “Have you told Hilary?” asked Rebecca.

  “Yeah, we’ve compared scar tissue. Illuminating, to have a platonic love affair.” And, with a shake of his head, he deftly changed the subject. “A platonic affair isn’t appropriate for y’all, is it?”

  Fair’s fair, Rebecca thought. “Once Michael told me he wanted me to want him. I’m not so sure he does anymore.”

  “And do you want him to want you?” Mark steepled his fingers and knit his brow, miming a psychiatrist’s grave nod.

  “My Ph.D. is like a grain of sand under his shell. I don’t know whether it’s going to turn out a pearl or a bit of muck.”

  “It irritates him because it gives you a reason to leave him.”

  “I haven’t exactly been expressing my undying devotion, have I? But if I have to play dumb for him, I wouldn’t respect either one of us.” Rebecca slapped shut the notebook. Her shoulder ached against the stone.

  Mark clasped his fingers together, squeezing intellect into emotion. “What if he simply doesn’t want you to show him up? Y’all are confronting some important issues, but there hasn’t been any time to deal with them.”

  “And we won’t have the time to deal with them until the dig is over and the killer apprehended and the treasure found… .” She stopped and faced Mark’s keen gray gaze. “Listen to me, making the same assumption the killer is, that there’s a treasure that can be found.”

  Hilary and Dennis came out of the transept door. “Oh, Lord,” said Mark, and called, “Jerry’s not looking for me, is he?”

  “Naw,” said Dennis. “Bob Jenkins just offered to buy him lunch.”

  “Hoping to loosen his tongue, no doubt,” Hilary added.

  “If his tongue were any looser,” concluded Dennis, “it would fall out.”

  Mark helped Rebecca gather her books. “Thanks,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she returned.

  Hilary hooked her arm through Mark’s and led him off toward the cottage, asking his advice on a recipe for tomato-cucumber salad. “Add chili peppers,” he suggested. She laughed.

  It was after dinner that evening when Hilary and Rebecca returned the notebooks and the portfolio to Laurence’s safe. The innkeeper showed them the key in his breast pocket and his cricket bat just behind the reception desk. Mackenzie sat in the lobby reading a newspaper. Rebecca wondered if he had cut holes in the page to peek through.

  The women walked across to the Craft Centre, where they found Hilary’s sweater as yet unmended. Bridget wasn’t there, only a shop assistant. From the makeshift police lab came the murmur of voices and the swish of cards. Hilary asked, “Was Mark telling you about his baby?”

  “Yes. I felt so sorry for him.”

  “And I thought men had no feelings.”

  “Or else they substitute ranting and raving for feelings. Men are as much the victims of gender roles as we are.”

&nbs
p; They strolled on to the toy shop. “Do you have any more postcards of the wheel cross?” Hilary asked the middle-aged man behind the counter.

  “That I do. Mr. Wright’s contracted tae have some o’ his photographs made into postcards, but they’ll no be in until Thursday week.”

  And Rebecca had thought Sheila was the battery of the operation. Shrugging, she admired the wellie bears, each in its miniature tweed or tartan outfit, and saw that the row of model Guards was holding formation without its Queen. The clock ticked peacefully. Beside it was a shallow, double-handled silver cup engraved with the Campbell coat of arms. “Is that a quaich?” she asked.

  “It is. An antique, used tae belong tae the Duke of Argyll’s piper. For the piper’s wee dram,” the shopowner explained to Hilary.

  “Hence the term, ‘paying the piper’,” Rebecca added. “How much do you want for it?”

  “Well noo, you’re workin’ wi’ the RDG—would fifty pound be too much?”

  Rebecca started. That would be way too much. But the cup was seductively smooth and cool in her hand, the engraved Campbell boar proudly walking on its engraved heather. “I can only afford thirty-five.”

  While they bargained, Hilary inspected a framed photograph on the counter, a kilted man and a woman in a wedding dress. “Is this your daughter?” she asked, when negotiations stalled at forty-two pounds.

  “Oh aye,” the man replied. “A shame she married the same day the telly lady was killed. No that I was here, mind you; I had tae close the shop early that night.”

  Rebecca turned away from the photo and put the quaich down. “Forty-two pounds? I’ll take it. Can you keep it until I get to the bank?”

  “It’s for himself, is it? Take it, lass. Pay me when you can.”

  “Thank you,” Rebecca told him, and bore the box triumphantly toward the cottage. Foolish, she thought, to get Michael something that expensive for a birthday present. Doubly foolish, to think it could serve as a wedding present as well. But it was such a lovely piece, and he would like it… .