The Silver Bough

by Lisa Tuttle

  She frowned. “Miss McClusky? I thought you came to Appleton fifteen years ago.”

  “Yeah, that’d be about right.”

  “Mr. Dean was in charge by then.” She thought of Miss Ina McClusky—a spry old bird, certainly, and still an enthusiastic talker and reader, but now well into her eighties. “Miss McClusky was long past retirement age.”

  “Oh, aye,” he said, nodding vigorously. “She was, but she came back to work part-time—retirement didn’t suit her, and she missed this place. So she used to help out. Mr. Dean was in charge. Mr. Dean-from-Aberdeen. I never got on with that man. He was such an old stick-in-the-mud, and he took all the most interesting things out of the museum, because, according to him, they ‘weren’t appropriate’—he meant, not connected with his view of Appleton’s history—or they weren’t ‘educational’—meaning they didn’t teach the lessons he wanted taught.” He leaned confidingly toward her. “So he put all that stuff away in storage, where it’s just waiting to be rediscovered. There’s forgotten treasures in there that really ought to be on view. He ruined a unique, small museum, made it bland and ordinary. It’s a shame.”

  She nodded sympathetically. Although she couldn’t judge whether Mr. Dean’s long-ago changes had been toward improvement or ruin, she knew nothing else had been done in twenty years, and thought it a crying shame that such a potentially important resource was so neglected. “The museum should have a curator,” she said. “Even if I had the right professional qualifications, I don’t have time to do anything about it. There’s no budget for it.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve tried to nobble my local representative, but he’s just not interested. Funny thing, but he thinks money for education and health care is that much more important! Ah, well.” He sighed and pulled over the biggest book on the table. “May I take this one out? Or is it still for reference only?”

  She picked it up. The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain, Vol. 2, published in 1897, and seemingly never issued. “Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t take it home with you. I don’t suppose anyone else will come in needing to use it. But how is this part of your research? Surely there aren’t any volcanoes around here?”

  “Under the sea there are. Did you know that the geology of the Appleton peninsula is completely different from the rest of Scotland’s? There’s nothing else like it anywhere in Britain, or the European mainland.”

  “Really?”

  “Closest match is the other side of the world—the New World, where you came from. And I’m thinking there could have been some volcanic action under the sea that gave rise to a new island, long after the rest of Scotland was formed.”

  “But Appleton isn’t an island.”

  “It almost is. We’re only linked to the mainland by a narrow little strip—barely half a mile wide. You know those rocks there by the side of the road?”

  She remembered the final tight, high bend in the road between the sea and the rocky hills just before the descent into the gentler farmland around the town, and she didn’t have to ask what rocks he meant. They inevitably snagged the eye, rising like weird, jagged towers at the edge of the sea.

  “Don’t they look like fallout from some major geological event? Land erupting out of the sea, or sheared off one landmass and sent crashing against another?”

  “They are pretty dramatic,” she said noncommittally, glancing at her watch.

  “And another thing: The Gaelic name for Appleton is Innis Ubhall. That doesn’t mean Apple Town, it means Apple Island, and by all accounts it’s what the folks from round about all called this area well before the Earl of Argyll got his Royal Charter and imported a load of Lowland farmers to bring civilization, aka loyalty to the crown, to these wild parts.”

  As soon as he paused for breath she jumped in. “Why don’t I stamp this out for you. Did you want anything else?”

  “That’ll do for now.” He followed her as far as the fire exit, where an old map of Scotland had been hung, before he stopped and called her back. “Here, look at this, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.”

  She looked with him at the pink-and-blue patchwork of land and sea that made up the west coast. Appleton had been built on a plumply rounded spur of land at the very end of a long, skinny peninsula; the frequent description of it as an apple hanging from a branch was as apt as it was inevitable.

  Appleton was old enough by American standards, but relatively new in European terms. It was one of several new towns founded in the seventeenth century in Scotland, settled by incomers—mostly English-speaking Lowland Scots who brought their loyalty to the British throne with them into the wild and troublesome Highlands. Before then, although the area must certainly have been occupied by someone, there had been not so much as a named village.

  “What’s the date of this map?” Graeme asked.

  “Eighteen sixty-five, I think.”

  “There are older maps of Scotland. Do you know about Timothy Pont?”

  “Oh, yes.” She’d boned up on Scottish history at the same time as she’d applied for this job. “His maps are wonderful. Amazingly accurate for the time—the 1590s, wasn’t it?—and he was the first to map all of Scotland. He traveled absolutely everywhere.” She stopped and frowned at the map in front of her, recalling her disappointment when she’d checked out the brilliant, searchable Web site where she’d first seen Pont’s maps and discovered he’d missed out the Appleton peninsula. “At least, that was the general idea. Obviously, he missed a few places.”

  “No. He came to this part of the coast, and he mapped it in his usual accurate way—but Appleton wasn’t there.”

  “Well, but Appleton wasn’t here. Not for a few more decades yet.”

  “I don’t mean the town. I mean the apple itself is missing. Innis Ubhall. This whole chunk of land.” Graeme traced the distinctive curve of coastland with his fingertip. “It’s just not there on his map. Not in the Joan Blaeu atlas of 1654, either.”

  It was not hard, looking at the small “stem” of land that connected the apple to the mainland, to imagine an earthquake or underwater eruption that might cause it to break away, turning Appleton into an island, but it was harder to conceive of it happening the other way around, to imagine an island forcibly pushed against the mainland and made to grow there, like a grafted branch. Did such things even happen? Mistakes made by a couple of early mapmakers were far more likely.

  “Interesting,” she said neutrally, turning away from the map. It was not her job to attempt to debunk anybody’s pet theory, no matter how wild. She accompanied Graeme to the circulation desk, feeling, as she sometimes did, like a keeper at a very genteel loony bin.

  “You found the secret room yet?” he asked, pausing in the foyer to look back at her.

  She saw the mischief in his eyes. “I guess Miss McClusky showed it to you?”

  He laughed. “No, she didn’t include it on the tour. But if it exists, I’ll bet you she’s seen it! Shona says the story is that the architect designed this building with a hidden room, a room without a door, to keep his daughter safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “She was crazy. She ran off, came back with an illegitimate son, then a few years later she killed herself—or else it was an accident—or maybe she was rescued at the brink of death, her mind gone. Some said she ended her days in a hidden room in the library—maybe inside the dome.”

  “The dome is purely decorative; there’s no way to get inside it.” She knew she sounded pedantic, because she’d said it so often. It was amazing how many times she’d heard the question.

  “I know that. But there must be a space underneath: the original room without a door. Of course, if Alexander Wall did create a special, hidden room for his daughter, he must have been psychic, to know she’d grow up crazy, because she’d only just been born when he designed it.”

  His eyes were glittering now, making Kathleen think of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner. “I’d give a lot to read his journal—it ought t
o be in the local collection. It’s listed in the card catalogue, but I can’t find it. I think that Mr. Dean took it off the open shelves and hid it away. It’s not right, you know; it was left to the public library, and it belongs to the people.” He gave her an affronted glare, and had the air of a man winding himself up for a good, long rant.

  Unhand me, grey-beard loon, she thought, glancing at her watch. “I don’t want to rush you, Graeme, but it’s four minutes to five. If you’re meeting someone off the bus…”

  He let out a comical yelp and slapped himself on the forehead. “Late again! Thanks. Look, I’d really like to have a word with you about Wall’s journal…”

  “Of course. Anytime.”

  She watched him pull up his hood, tuck his briefcase securely under one arm, then dash, shoulders hunched and head down, through the front door, out into the pouring rain. Then she went back to the counter, where Miranda was counting up the day’s issue and entering the total in the big red ledger.

  “Why is it that nothing at all happens for hours and hours, then, in the last fifteen minutes, you get enough to keep you thinking all day?”

  “Sod’s Law,” said Miranda, shutting the ledger and putting it back beneath the counter. “Which five rare and valuable books did he want you to order for him today?”

  Kathleen smiled and shook her head. “He’s all right, though—isn’t he?”

  “Oh, sure. He’s a joker, and he gets awfully intense sometimes, but he means well. Never stolen a book—not from us, anyway. His kids are great readers, which I call a good sign. His wife’s a lovely girl. He and Mr. Dean didn’t get along, but I wouldn’t call that Mr. Walker’s fault.”

  “Do you know anything about Alexander Wall’s journal?”

  “I know he’d like to read it.”

  “Is there some reason why he can’t?”

  She held up empty hands. “I don’t know where it is. Arnold Dean hid it somewhere and took the secret to his grave.” She smiled to show she wasn’t serious. “It’s probably in that locked bookcase upstairs. It’s just a matter of looking—but Connie and I haven’t had time to do anything but keep this place ticking over. Those three months before you were hired were awfully difficult. Of course, it didn’t help that Mr. Dean had been unwell for a while before he died. There were too many things he’d always done himself, in his own way, and he just wouldn’t let go. I’m not sure you’re caught up yet—are you?”

  “Just about.”

  Miranda gave her a motherly look. “Unpaid overtime. You shouldn’t do it, you know.”

  “We’d be closed another day a week if I didn’t. Anyway, it won’t be like this forever. And speaking of overtime…Isn’t that Mark waiting for you out front?”

  They both looked through the window at the car idling in the rain.

  “Bless,” said Miranda fondly.

  After she’d gone, Kathleen locked up the front, turning off the lights in the reading room and main library, and went back to the office to do whatever it was she’d forgotten earlier. It wasn’t important and could certainly have waited until the morning, but she would feel more comfortable with her desk cleared. Half an hour later she reminded herself that she was working on her own time and should go home. But with home only a few steps away—the Library House, built onto the side end of the museum—and no one waiting for her there, she couldn’t work up any urgency. She stood hesitating in the empty reference room, listening to the relentless downpour and the faint, eerie whistle of the wind in the eaves. She liked having the library to herself, felt both stimulated and at peace in the company of all the silent books. She loved the look, the heft, the weight, the smell, and the fact of books—all those miniature embodiments of other lives, other times. Thoughts and dreams preserved for posterity, to be summoned back to life through the act of reading. The buzz these days was all about the Internet, the world of online, digital knowledge, the necessity of being connected. But even though she accepted that the Net was not merely the wave of the future but the fact of present-day life, and did miss the access to it that she’d taken for granted in her old job, on an emotional level it could not compare, for her, with the magic of an old-fashioned, printed, real book. It was that, and a childhood fantasy of being able to live in a library, which had really decided her choice of career, no matter what sensible reasons she might tell other people.

  She walked among the shelves that housed the local collection, touching the backs of old books, occasionally taking one down. Some remnant of childhood animism made her feel sorry for those which were overlooked, left too long untouched. She’d been pleased to see The Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain taken out at last. Now, like a determined matchmaker, she browsed for something else to tempt Graeme. There were some volumes of the Scottish Journal of Geology and Transactions of the Geological Society of Glasgow with essays about this area, but nothing looked as exciting as underwater volcanoes.

  A sudden howl startled her. It might have been a banshee wailing upstairs, but looking through the street-side window she saw the fronds of the palm trees along the Esplanade shaking wildly in a sudden, fierce gust of wind. It had grown dark; the line of yellowish lights strung along the harbor front shuddered and bounced. She was lucky she didn’t have to go far in this weather. But this reminder that it was past time for going home did not move her. She was home, standing right at the heart of it.

  The job had not been appealing by objective standards, and her friends and former colleagues all thought she was mad to take it. The salary was considerably lower than what she’d been earning in London, and although the title of Area Librarian implied a grander job than her old one (where she had been just one of six librarians), and seemed to give her more authority, she actually had only three part-time assistants, none with qualifications in library science, and all the really important decisions were made at headquarters, and handed down to her. According to the advertisement, the new Area Librarian would “preside over the modernization of the system and help to bring Appleton Library up to modern COSLA standards; a demanding and rewarding task.”

  “Translation: you will be overworked and underpaid, and we expect you to be grateful for the opportunity,” said Louise, a children’s librarian and her friend for the past four years.

  She sent off her CV with the application anyway, and despite all the well-meaning advice from her friends, held her breath and wished on a star and felt enormously grateful when she was called for an interview.

  The bleak truth was that she didn’t have a lot of choice. She couldn’t stay in the job she had. Even with the “London weighting” on her salary, she could not afford to live in the greater London area without a husband to share the mortgage. It hadn’t been easy even when she and Geoff were together, and now that they’d split up it was impossible. She’d thought about moving back to America, but the economic situation, or employers’ attitudes, had changed a lot in the decade since she’d left. Out of forty applications, she received only one offer, and that was for a one-year contract in Indiana. She got the message. Like Thomas Wolfe said, You Can’t Go Home Again.

  Driving in the rental car from Glasgow to Appleton, her first time in Scotland, she was immediately seduced by the scenery, but it was when she set eyes on the library building that she fell in love. It was a weird, architectural fantasy, with its golden dome, carved stone, and the sort of imposing, pillared front that had been popular on early “Picture Palaces,” suggesting that through these portals all your fantasies would be met. It would have been completely unremarkable in Las Vegas, but in a small Scottish seaside town it was an astonishment and a perpetual wonder. She understood perfectly why a local mythology would have grown up around it, stories of ghosts and secret rooms and madwomen in the attic. She wanted to work here; she wanted to make the library her own.

  Replacing Megalithic Enquiries in the West of Britain on the shelf, she decided to do just one more task before going home. She would look for Alexander Wall’s journal. Overtime wa
s only onerous when you were forced into it, and personally there were few things she loved more than treasure-hunting among shelves of old books.

  So, through the door with the map on it into a chilly stone antechamber, past the fire door (painted red, with the sign THIS DOOR IS ALARMED—EMERGENCY USE ONLY) and up the high, wide, sturdy staircase to another locked room she went.

  The smell of lavender beeswax and old books welcomed her in. Officially, this was the “meeting room,” with a large, highly polished wooden table and matching chairs in the center ready to accommodate any passing committee. In practice, it had not been used in many years for anything but storage. Cardboard boxes had been stacked as neatly as possible beneath and on top of almost a third of the table. Much of their contents was withdrawn stock, either waiting for its turn on the sales table in the foyer or put aside as “reserve,” by Mr. Dean—reserve stock without reserve stock shelving. At some point it would be her job to go through them all with a ruthless hand. She didn’t expect to find any treasures there; it would be a lot of once-popular fiction long past its sell-by date. And yet, although the books had to be removed to make space for new acquisitions, and book culls were a necessary part of a librarian’s life, she had been putting the task off. Libraries should be about conserving and preserving books; selling them off cheaply went against the grain. She guessed the late Mr. Dean had felt the same, and felt a little more kindly toward her predecessor, even if he had left her with a mountainous backlog to sort out.

  Far more interesting than the boxed books were the glass-fronted cases that covered one wall from floor to ceiling. They contained the Wall collection, and other books, which had been donated years ago. Some appropriate volumes had been integrated into the local collection downstairs, but the rest had been left here to languish out of sight. That would soon change. Kathleen’s boss had told her that there was a plan to sell the collection and use the money to fund improvements to the library. Most of the books were probably of little value—there were an awful lot of collected sermons and memoirs of long-forgotten worthies—but there were bound to be a few treasures among the dross. The first step, now that the sale had been agreed to by the local authorities, was to bring in an expert to assess the value of the books. But, as usual when Appleton needed something from outside, the expert was taking his time about getting here.