Wayward Winds

by Michael Phillips

  Catharine walked toward her and placed her load of sun-ripened laundry on top of Maggie’s wicker basket, then picked it up with her two strong hands and began walking toward the cottage. Maggie opened the door and led the way inside and into the large sitting room.

  “Set it there, Catharine dear,” said Maggie, pointing to the couch.

  Catharine did so. Of one accord both women began removing the topmost items, folding and setting them aside in two or three piles.

  “Where’s Grandpa Bobby?” asked Catharine.

  “He’s out to Mr. Mudgley’s,” answered Maggie. “One of his rams is ailing.”

  They continued about the task a minute or two in silence.

  “What’s this?” asked Catharine, holding up a piece of white lace.

  “That’s a bit of Irish handwork,” answered Maggie. “Bobby’s mother gave it to me.”

  “It doesn’t look like tatting.”

  “It’s not tatting exactly, like I’ve been teaching you, Catharine. But similar.”

  “This is beautiful. Can you show me how to do this too?”

  “I’d be happy to, lass, if I knew it myself.”

  “Mrs. McFee didn’t show you the stitch—did she make this herself?”

  “That she did. But she was old when she passed on to me a chestful of her linens. This was in the box with the rest, but she never taught me the secret.”

  “We could figure it out!” said Catharine excitedly. “It looks enough like tatting. Let’s try, Grandma Maggie!”

  Maggie laughed. “You think we can, eh, lass?”

  “Why not!”

  Maggie rose from the couch and walked across the room to an oak secretary that appeared somewhat too ornate for the tastes of the humble couple dwelling in the cottage. But it was one of two ancient family heirlooms which Maggie treasured, fabricated by her own great-grandfather. From one of its front drawers facing the room Maggie withdrew two odd-looking clumps of white thread, to which were attached what appeared to be half-completed doilies, linked by single threads to two small contraptions known as tatting shuttles, one of carved whale bone, the other of solid ivory. Whenever Catharine came for a visit, they would sit on the couch together, working side by side as Maggie taught Catharine the little-known skill, and chatted together for hours. Maggie had done her best to interest Amanda in it as well, but to little avail. Catharine, however, had taken to it immediately. She and Maggie had worked on various tatting projects together for years, and the moments shared together in this way were among the most enjoyable and special in the memories of both.

  As Maggie returned, Catharine’s eyes followed her movements with an expression of curiosity.

  “I’ve watched you open that drawer and take out our tatting a hundred times,” she said. “But I never noticed the cabinet before. It’s funny how your eyes see and grasp more as you get older.”

  “It’s one of the facts of life, lass,” replied Maggie. “Young people’s eyes think they see everything clearly. But it takes years to begin seeing inside of things. What made you notice the old cabinet?”

  “It looks just like one in the Hall,” said Catharine.

  “The one that’s in your father’s library, you’ll be meaning, no doubt.”

  “How did you know!”

  “I’ve seen it there, lass.”

  “Why are they so alike, Grandma Maggie?” As Catharine spoke, she rose and went across the sitting room to examine the secretary more closely. “They’re practically identical.”

  “As to the why, I can’t say,” said Maggie. “But it might be explained by the fact that this particular cabinet was made by my very own great-grandfather.”

  “How does that explain it?”

  “Because just maybe he did similar work for the lord of the manor. Back in those days, all the local tradesmen and craftsmen would have had occasion to work for him at one time or another.”

  “I still don’t see how that explains it.”

  “No doubt he made one for the Hall that he liked so much he made another one for himself, or the other way round.”

  Full of thoughts, Catharine returned to the couch. Maggie had already moved the laundry aside. Catharine sat down beside her. As was their custom, their fingers unconsciously fell into the pattern of the tatting motion, Maggie’s moving with such rapidity that an observer would have seen only a blur. She picked up the shuttle with her right hand, pulled out the thread, and deftly wrapped it around her left hand. The shuttle began to fly back and forth over and under the thread in the left hand, back and forth, back and forth, stopping every eighth time to make a picot. She repeated the pattern several times, then pulled the ring of thread tight and then began the next ring. She had taught Catharine and Jocelyn the skill years before, yet beside her, Catharine’s fingers moved at only about half the speed.

  Maggie now paused and picked up the piece of Irish lace her mother-in-law had given her to examine its knots and loops more closely. A few experimental movements of her wrist followed, which she then examined and compared with the old lace. She went to the cabinet to fetch another ball of thread. She tied the second thread to her first and began working a chain between the original rings.

  The two worked together for another thirty minutes or so, combining the efforts of Maggie’s skillful fingers with Catharine’s youthful eyes to see if they could unravel the mystery of the ancient Irish lace.

  “When I’m working like this,” said Maggie, “I often wonder what kind of linens and lace it was that the Lord God instructed the old daughter of Israel to make for the priests’ robes and the altar blankets and the cover for the ark. Can you imagine a lace pattern of God’s own devising!”

  “I’d like to know their patterns!” said Catharine. “But does it really mention linen and lace in the Bible?”

  “It does indeed, dear—twined and fine linen, it’s called. And lace there is too. And it talks about cord of fine linen, which is all we’re making here, tiny cords. It’s all in Exodus, somewhere around the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth—well, let’s look at it, lass, and see what it says.”

  Maggie set down her shuttle and clump of thread, rose, and again walked to the oak cabinet and picked up the Bible that had been in her family since before she herself was born, from where it lay on top of it. She carried it back to the couch with her and sat down beside her young friend.

  The white-haired woman opened the ancient Bible and began flipping through it. But she did not come close to reaching the book of Exodus. Beside her on the couch, Catharine’s eyes shot open wide as she turned back the cover and the first few pages.

  “Wait!” she exclaimed. “I just saw something . . . a name.”

  Maggie turned back to the presentation page.

  “There—that’s it,” said Catharine, pointing down. “Kyrkwode, I was right. I knew I’d seen it somewhere!”

  “What do you mean, dear,” said Maggie in surprise, “that you were right?”

  “George and I just ran across it earlier today, in some old records at home. I thought I recognized it.”

  “You know the name?”

  “I’ve heard it,” replied Catharine. “But I know nothing about it. I must have seen this page sometime when I was here. Your Bible’s always out, and I’ve looked through it many times. That must be why I knew I’d seen it. So who is Orelia Kyrkwode?”

  “You know, dear,” answered Maggie, “I must have told you more times than you can remember—this was my grandmother’s Bible.”

  “I don’t remember hearing her name before.”

  “That is my grandmother, Orelia Kyrkwode. She was a midwife—an honorable profession, despite what some people said back in those days. This Bible was given to her when she was confirmed. That was in 1797, as it says here. That was her name, of course, before she married. Then she became Orelia Moylan. The Bible passed to my mother, Grace Moylan, who became Grace Crawford, and then to me.”

  “That’s . . . you, written there?” said
Catharine, pointing farther down the page.

  “That’s my maiden name,” answered Maggie, “—before I met Bobby.—There’s my name written by my mother’s hand—Margaret Crawford, 1837. Of course now everyone just knows me as Maggie. You see all the names here that have been added as the Bible’s been passed down.”

  “And the Bible was given first to Orelia—”

  “By her parents Mary and Webley Kyrkwode on her confirmation.”

  “Webley Kyrkwode,” repeated Catharine.

  “He’s the same man I was telling you about before, my great-grandfather that made the two secretaries—the one I still have, and the one that’s in the library at the Hall.”

  Webley Kyrkwode . . . W. Kyrkwode—the name in the ledger! What could it all mean?

  The rest of the afternoon was taken up with halfhearted experimental attempts to copy old Mrs. McFee’s tatting pattern. But Catharine’s thoughts were far more taken up with the inscriptions in Orelia Kyrkwode’s old Bible. She therefore continued to ply Maggie with questions about the history of her family’s past and the cottage.

  That evening she asked her father about the Bible she had noticed in the portraits.

  “You know, that is a mystery, Catharine, my dear,” replied Charles. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that Bible in my life. But now that you bring it up, it seems I recall my cousin Gifford expressing an interest in the same thing some years back.”

  “Didn’t he say that his grandfather misplaced it?” asked Jocelyn.

  “That’s right, I remember now,” added Charles. “I do begin to recall a vague rumor along such lines myself. It was also said by some that the London Rutherfords had stolen it.”

  “That could hardly be, Father,” said George, “if Gifford knows nothing about it.”

  “I suppose you’re right. But none of the conjectures get us any closer to knowing how so prominent an object could have disappeared without a trace.”

  40

  Curious Gathering

  As Charles greeted the other eight or ten individuals present at the Cambridge home of Hartwell Barclay, the man to whom he had been introduced at Green Park, the unmistakable impression came over him that this was not a government-sponsored gathering.

  They were friendly enough. The food and drink and hospitality were lavish. He could not have asked for a warmer, more congenial environment. But Charles had been part of politics long enough to recognize parliamentarians and diplomatic types. And there weren’t any here.

  Charles’ dealings with the secret service—Barclay’s supposed background—had been minimal. He realized the intelligence community made use of individuals who weren’t exactly your run-of-the-mill Whitehall crowd. That sometimes included foreigners. He supposed this could be some kind of preliminary recruiting attempt by an obscure branch of the foreign office, although that still wouldn’t explain what they would want with him. There seemed to be three others here, too, who likewise didn’t know the purpose of the meeting, and who had been invited, like him, under a certain cloud of mystery. Whatever was going on, it was an odd mix of unlikely individuals.

  Many introductions were made all around as wine and hors d’oeuvres flowed freely.

  “You remember Lord Burton’s widow,” said Redmond, greeting the tall, stately woman.

  “Yes, of course,” replied Charles. “I am sorry about your husband, Lady Halifax.”

  “Thank you, Sir Charles,” replied the lady in measured tone. “Fortunately the shock of his passing is now over.”

  The woman held Charles’ eye an instant or two longer than normal small talk would account for, though nothing in her placid countenance divulged so much as a hint of additional expression. Charles moved off with Redmond and was soon shaking hands with another of the newcomers, unaware that her eyes followed him for several moments more.

  After having been served a sumptuous tea, and now with fresh cups of tea and coffee in their hands, all the participants took seats in the comfortable lounge.

  “You several whom we have invited here this evening,” Charles’ naval associate Redmond began, speaking primarily toward Charles, but glancing at each of their other guests in turn, “have been chosen for very specific reasons. You are all men of impeccable reputation, experts in your various fields of endeavor, intelligent and skilled. You represent, as it were, our nation’s finest, everything, indeed, that has made us great through the years. It is our sincere hope that you will want to dedicate the high level of your personal talents and resources to the future, to help us insure that the future is as bright, brighter, in fact, than has been the past.”

  As Redmond paused, a few Here, heres! and raisings of cups and glasses on the part of his colleagues affirmed their concurrence with his opening remarks.

  “We are concerned for England, of course,” he went on, “but even more for the entire future of Europe. . . .”

  As Charles listened, he almost found himself wondering if someone had drugged his tea. The whole atmosphere was sleepily mesmerizing, yet try as he might he could not isolate a single point of specificity or substance in anything Redmond said. After ten or fifteen minutes he concluded, turning toward their host, who now began in much the same manner. Gradually, however, he became sufficiently specific as to finally attach a name to their organization, if organization it could be called.

  “We represent an association,” he said, “not known widely at present, but with adherents in all the nations of Europe. Our affiliates are devoted to a new order which we believe will emerge one day very soon out of, and even in the midst of many countries, nationalities, and races. It is called the Fountain of Light.”

  He paused to allow his words to sink in.

  “Light and truth are our goals during these perilous times when most seek only their own ends,” he went on. “As Morley has said, you whom we have invited are each influential in your own way and in your own circles. We believe you all will be very effective in helping us bring light and truth as the masses prepare for this new order which is to come.”

  “Are you talking about a new governmental order?” asked one of the guests. “What is it exactly—a United Europe, is that what you mean . . . something like the United States?”

  “I think I can truthfully say that you are thinking along lines that are generally correct,” replied Barclay. “Yet it will also transcend governmental systems altogether. It will not primarily be political in nature.”

  “What then? All governments are political.”

  “But the new order will be new,” said Barclay softly but with intensity. “All will be clear as you know more.”

  As Barclay spoke, he gazed straight into the eyes of his questioner. Though his words conveyed nothing, his expression somehow seemed to alleviate any thought of further inquiry. The man slowly nodded his head in apparent understanding, though almost as a reflex action.

  “I . . . I see,” he mumbled, then sat back with a nearly glazed expression and said no more.

  One by one the other newcomers raised various questions, each with the same eventual result. Barclay’s voice was mesmerizing. A spell of acceptance was woven about his listeners by his very words, such that in the end everything made perfect sense. He spoke a while longer, then turned to Charles.

  “You haven’t spoken yet, Sir Charles,” he said.

  “I am listening,” Charles replied.

  “Do you have any questions you would like to raise?”

  “I did find myself curious a few moments ago,” said Charles, “whether you have any written literature, anything I might study that would shed more light on your organization.”

  “We prefer to discuss our precepts by word of mouth.”

  “But is anything written?”

  “There are our Annals.”

  “Might I see a copy? I think it would help a great deal toward an understanding of your beliefs, motives, and goals.”

  Barclay glanced around. A few heads shook on the part of his colleagues.<
br />
  “I’m afraid copies are scarce,” he said, turning again toward Charles. “We do not seem to have one readily available.”

  Charles nodded. He had almost expected it.

  As the exchange had proceeded, he was aware that Barclay was attempting to catch his eyes and hold them. Having seen the result on the part of the other guests, however, Charles prevented it by continuing to address his remarks about the entire room. He was now aware of a silent frustration beginning to set in on Barclay’s part.

  “Light and truth can be vague terms,” said Charles. “Everyone believes in truth. I am all for light. But I cannot get involved in something without knowing specifics. Frankly, Mr. Barclay, I’ve heard nothing here—nothing of substance at all. Can you just tell me plainly, what does ‘Fountain of Light’ really mean?”

  “Simply this, Sir Charles,” replied Barclay, with great effort keeping his voice calm, “that one day very soon, a new order will spring up, will appear as a fountain bursting forth. Its characteristic feature will be light—pure light . . . light itself, and truth.”

  “But all that means nothing. It’s more nebulous than air. Where did the name originate?”

  “All these questions will be answered in time, Mr. Rutherford,” answered Barclay in the smoothest tone possible. Again, with great determination he sought to lock on to Charles’ eyes, but still was not successful. “I am sure you can understand that all revelations must come in their proper order, that precept must be built upon precept, as it were. If you choose to help your nation and join us as we spread light into the lives of our fellowman, I can assure you that you will be satisfied at all the points you have raised.”

  “I’m sorry to be importune about it, Mr. Barclay,” said Charles, now at last summoning the strength to return the man’s stare. Now he locked on to Hartwell Barclay’s eyes and held them, “but it still sounds vague and nebulous. If you will forgive me, I have heard nothing here of substantive foundation. Therefore, I must tell you very clearly, my allegiance is not something that can be divided. I am looking for no cause, nor can I commit to any nebulous new order with man at its center. I am not merely a Christian, I hope I am a disciple as well—a follower. I have but one Master, and that is Jesus Christ. You talk about truth . . . what you call a fountain of light. I believe in truth. I have committed my life to the one who is Truth. But at this point, I simply do not know what you mean by the term. I will have to have very direct answers to these questions,” said Charles, “or I am afraid I will not be able to participate further.”