Looking at the spot now with the realism of years, he found it a wonder his mother had ever let him come here alone.
The lake below was not deep, nor was it large. Most natives of this region would scoff at calling the little thing below known as the Tarn Water a lake at all. Scarcely two hundred yards from end to end, and only perhaps fifty wide, the tiny expanse rated not even a mention in the tourist guides alongside the likes of Bassenthwaite, Ullswater, and the Derwent Water. All the more reason for him to love it, Andrew thought. He had always considered the tiny lake his very own.
But the Tarn Water was unusual in this—that when approached from the direction he had come, by the trail leading to the peak of Bewaldeth Crag another quarter mile up the hill, it lay glittering beneath a steep drop-off. The path seemed to end with astonishing abruptness. One found oneself suddenly looking down at the surface of the Tarn from a height of a hundred or more feet. The water could be reached easily from below by other paths. But from this one spot, the first glimpse over the sudden precipice was enough to bring a momentary quiver to anyone’s knees. It was no place for carelessness.
Andrew crept out onto the stone promontory overlooking the peaceful and protected lake, then sat down on the rough foot-high stone next to the path and drew in a deep breath of the unseasonably warm air. The few gulls visiting the inland lake from the seashore swirled about along the steep cliff face with an occasional shrill cry, just as he remembered them.
Of course, there were other memories too.
How could he not think of his sister here? They had both loved coming here . . . until that fateful day. For a while he had revisited the spot every so often, as if hoping to exorcise the haunting ghosts of the incident. But it had been no use. He had not been back in years.
And now he found his mind drifting toward yet another of MacRanald’s tales . . . not of the Wanderer this time, but rather the story of the two brothers who loved each other.
Now he remembered . . . they had had a lake with a high-cliff overlook too, just like this.
Their adventures had always been among his favorites.
What were their names . . . odd and ancient tribal names . . . ?
Try as he might, however, Andrew could not now recall them.
He turned, walked slowly back to his horse, remounted and rode on.
Memory of his two recent visits rushed back upon him. The smoke . . . the smell of peat . . . thoughts of old Duncan . . . the tales of the Maiden and the Wanderer . . . then Horace’s appearance and the call from London that seemed destined to change his life.
Time to visit old Duncan again, thought Andrew. This time he would not leave until he knew more about his own past!
Andrew wheeled his mount around, and the next instant was cantering over the uneven terrain as rapidly as was safe, upward and yet deeper into the hilly region of the Scawthwaite Fells.
Twelve
In the dimly lit nave of the ancient church named for St. Bartholomew the Great in northeast central London, two men walked slowly toward a deserted corner where they would not be disturbed.
They did not sit down. The interview would not be a lengthy one.
The robed member of the duo felt a pleasing sense of dark affinity with the atmosphere here in one of London’s oldest churches. He had chosen the place for its mystical symbolism and imagery—though his own religious inclinations were in the opposite direction altogether, and with roots far more ancient than the good St. Bartholomew.
His suit-and-tie-clad colleague had agreed to come here, not because of the church’s mystical vibes, but because he could not afford to be noticed. Should the two be seen together, each could have much to lose. Both were well known in their respective fields—disciplines as far removed from each other as it would have been possible to imagine. Circumstances, however, had brought them together for a common purpose, of which it was in the best interest of both that the public remain unaware.
“The people I brought into this thing are not the sort who are known for their patience,” now said the suit. “They will expect payment upon delivery.”
“All will be completed in due course,” replied the robe. “They needn’t worry.”
“Soothing words will do little to placate their anxiety. They are eager to get out of the country.”
“They must be patient.”
“Look, Dwyer, I don’t—”
“Keep your voice down,” interrupted the mystic. “You of all people should know that the powers can be trusted. Where is the . . . object now?”
“It is safe—here in London.”
“London!”
“Of course—the last place they will look for it.”
“Has transport been arranged?”
“When the time is right. But I shall require assistance with customs.”
“It will be done. You will carefully supervise the movement? It must be intact or power will be lost.”
“It will be well crated, I assure you.”
“Then when the time comes, I will meet you at the Green.”
Thirteen
As Andrew rode up the wet moorland toward the farthest boundaries of the Derwenthwaite estate, a gust of chill wind met his face. His eyes squinted against it, but just as quickly it died back down.
Andrew glanced northward.
Black clouds seemed to be massing at the horizon. How quickly the sky could change in this region! When he left the house, it had been clear as far as the eye could see.
Andrew knew what the clouds contained. The temperature had already dropped several degrees since he had set out an hour ago.
He drew in a deep breath. He recognized the fragrance. There was snow in the air.
Andrew’s first impulse was to turn back for home.
No, he thought. Let the weather come and do its worst. He would not leave this errand uncompleted a second time.
Within ten minutes he was reining in his mare in front of the familiar old stone cottage set in its protected dell. Duncan MacRanald had just walked outside to gather a supply of fuel for his fire. He too had detected the change in the weather.
Andrew hailed him, then leapt from his horse.
Their greeting was filled with that rich affection true men extend toward one another. Truly did this old Scots shepherd and this young English politician love each other.
“See to that fine cratur o’ yers. Git her brushed and under cover wi’ some oats, then help me with these peats an’ wood,” said Duncan. “I was jist aboot t’ light a fire. There’s a cauld wind blawin’ in.”
Within half an hour both men were settling themselves inside. Again Andrew made his way slowly about the cottage, once more eying the books.
Meanwhile, Duncan crouched on the floor, first laying, then lighting the fire in the hearth. With breath from between his two wrinkled lips, he gently encouraged the newly lit flame underneath paper and wood scraps into greater robustness of life.
Such was the only use he ever made of newspaper. Old editions were brought to him by the same woman in the village who supplied him with bread, for the sole purpose of furnishing flame beneath his chunks of peat. He scarcely looked at a word printed upon them, and though he knew that the son of the man who had been his childhood friend was a member of Parliament, he possessed not the slightest notion of the new prominence into which Andrew had risen. Nor did he realize that for the previous week he had been using to ignite his fire the very photographs and articles about the young man who now stood watching him that the rest of the country had been reading over its morning tea and toast.
Once the fire was well lit, he rose to his feet with a sigh of satisfaction.
“An’ hoo has it been since the last time I saw ye?” the Scotsman asked, now setting about to the boiling of water and the making of tea—a necessity of equal importance to the fire for the drawing out of happy conversation between companions of the heart.
“Hectic and sometimes busier than I would like,” replied Andrew. �
�Which is why I rode out to see you again,” he added after a brief pause, “—to try to get in touch with some things that I’m wondering if I haven’t paid enough attention to.”
He paused thoughtfully. “I’ve found myself remembering another time, years ago,” he went on after a moment. “I couldn’t have been more than eight or ten. You took me up to the top of Bewaldeth—I’m sure you remember.”
Duncan nodded.
“You pointed out over the moor, to the sea, and beyond to the hills. You said to me—and suddenly I remember it so clearly!—you said, ‘There’s the land o’ yer ancestors, laddie. Someday ye’ll ken . . . someday.’”
Duncan smiled at Andrew’s use of the old Scots tongue, as poor as was the attempt. His heart warmed to hear that Andrew remembered the day.
“I guess the time has come,” Andrew resumed “that I want to know all I can about the land north of those hills. The real land, the real story. You know, it’s strange. I never paid much heed to the place except as a setting of storybook adventure, in those tales you told. Or as something we learned in history lectures. Or as a place I go for meetings. But suddenly it has become important to me to know everything I can.”
“Why, laddie?” said Duncan. “Why has it become so important?”
“I suppose it’s become more personal now?”
“More personal,” repeated Duncan. “How . . . why?”
“Because of what you said. Don’t you see? If Scots blood is in my own veins, then Scotland’s past is not mere stories. It’s not mere history. I’ve been drawn up into it now myself, drawn in a new way, drawn into the story as if I am part of it . . . because it is my story too.”
“Ye’re aye knockin’ away at trowth in the matter, laddie, when ye speik aboot bein’ drawn up intil the story like it’s yer ain. I kenned such a day would come when ye was a wee bairn an’ I held ye in my ain two hands.”
“What—you held me as a baby?” laughed Andrew. “I’ve never been told that.”
“Yer father was prood t’ have a new son. He invited me doon t’ the hoose fer a wee peep.”
The words pierced Andrew with a strange fondness for his father.
“The moment I held ye, somethin’ inside me kenned that the Lord had great things fer ye, lad,” Duncan went on. “An’ I believe it still.”
Andrew took in the words deeply, and as the conversation went on asked many questions, and told the old Scotsman much of what he had been thinking. Duncan listened more than he spoke. Everything would be known . . . but he would rather his young friend make the important discoveries for himself.
The fire burned. Logs and peat were added. The cottage warmed. Neither was aware of the continued drop in the temperature outside.
Slowly afternoon gave way to evening. Tea was consumed, oatcakes eaten, followed later by boiled potatoes with butter and cream. Steadily night drew down over the fells.
Still the tea flowed and the peat burned . . . while they spoke of many old and pleasant things.
Fourteen
As the dusk turned black, the young man and old man, as of a single mind, found themselves reflecting together on eras that once had been . . . and of the men and women who made of them times to remember.
After some time Duncan rose and ambled to the door and slowly opened it. Large silent white flakes were falling thickly in the blackness, illuminated by the faint glow from the fire inside.
“We’ll be buried in a blanket o’ white afore mornin,’ laddie,” he said, staring out. “Gien ye’re goin’ t’ mak it t’ Derwenthwaite, ye’d best be on yer way afore it’s too thick underfoot. It’ll be a hard enough ride fer the mare noo, even wi’ a bright torch shinin’ in front o’ her hooves.”
Behind him he heard no reply. Andrew’s thoughts were far away. Parliament, parties and majorities and coalitions, the Stone of Scone, and Eagon Hamilton’s murder, all of which had recently been at the center of his thoughts—they had now grown hazy and distant.
“I think I would just like to sit here awhile longer, Duncan,” said Andrew.
But even as he spoke, he unconsciously stood. Without forethought his steps found themselves moving slowly toward Duncan’s bookshelf. A moment later his favorite old volume was in his hands. He clutched it almost reverently, then eased back into his chair. Already he was flipping through it for the story he had remembered while looking down upon the Tarn Water.
“Suit yersel,’ laddie,” Duncan said in response to Andrew’s previous words. “When ye canna stay awake, jist make yersel’ a bed there on the couch like ye did when ye was a bairn. There’s two o’ three tartan blankets t’ heap o’er ye gien ye’re cauld.”
But already Andrew was lost between the pages of the well-worn book of legends. He did not see his host fill the fire with peats, give them a few stoking jabs with the poker—all peats, no wood this time. He would make circumstances as favorable as possible for the mystique of Scotland’s past to envelop his young friend. Within another three or four minutes, Duncan left for his own bed.
Meanwhile, Andrew had located the story.
The book opened just as he remembered it as a boy. As he began to read, he could recall Duncan’s voice intoning the ancient ballad of the people who lived in the remote northern region of Caldohnuill.
A chill of adventure swept through him.
If he let the vision of his imagination stretch further toward the north, in his mind’s eye he could just barely make out the two spear-carrying descendants of Hunter, Son of Wanderer’s Son in the distance. . . .
7
Father of the Caledonii
237 BC
One
The hunting was not good that year.
A young man, bare chested, wearing skins below his waist, crouched in readiness behind a large boulder. He held an eight-foot iron-tipped spear firmly in both hands.
He had come that morning to the edge of Muirenthryth Wood hoping to locate a wild boar. He had found one, but for an hour it had eluded him. Now, angry and nearing exhaustion, the vicious beast was all the more dangerous and his tusks the more lethal. Surely the buzzards above knew death was close at hand. But would it be the enraged swine’s . . . or the man’s?
A few minutes more the young man waited. The forest was silent.
Suddenly a wild screaming rent the air from amongst the trees some fifty yards distant. A seeming madman, also clad in skins, sprinted with frenzied motion on bare feet across the scraggly grass that bordered the wood. His arms flailed wildly, and ear-splitting skirls poured out of his mouth. Before him, at full speed on his stocky legs, scudded the boar, directly toward the giant rock.
Judging the proximity of the brute from the approaching squeals, the first young warrior crouched and continued to wait. He must not spring until the precise moment or they would lose their quarry.
He would have one chance. If he failed, the deadly tusks would gore him to a hideous death. More than one in his tribe had thus met his end.
A moment more . . .
At last he leapt from his hiding place and spun to face the beast as it pounded toward him. Sensing its peril, and knowing it was too late to alter its course, the animal shrieked in a delirium of fury, lowered its tusks, and charged straight toward him.
The huntsman planted his feet firmly. Stretching upward and back, he held his huge spear aloft with both hands. Just as the hulk was upon him, he jumped deftly aside and thrust the spear forward and downward with all his might.
A bloodcurdling screech told him he had found his mark. The sharp iron tip plunged deeply into the boar’s left shoulder just behind the stout neck, spewing out dark red blood. Clutching the shaft of his weapon, the young man drove it in yet further before the beast could turn on him.
But the wounded creature was suddenly empowered by desperate strength. Writhing in the agony of death, it wrenched the spear from its assailant and ran berserk, still howling and shrieking, off across the heath. The tiny legs tore along with surprising speed, but the ani
mal could only sustain the effort for a short distance. At last one of its front hooves caught on the turf. The other foreleg gave way, and the beast stumbled and fell. Its long snout crashed into a fallen log, and one of the tusks glanced into it sideways, wrenching its head backward. At last the boar was still.
“You did it, my friend!” cried the approaching comrade who had flushed the boar from the wood. “What a masterful stroke!”
“You chased him straight toward me, Fidach,” replied the victorious killer, beaming. “I must either kill or be maimed.”
“Our father will be pleased.”
“Yes, fresh boar meat will not only satisfy his tongue, but will do his body much good,” added the young man known as Cruithne.
“You are right. For too long he has had only fish and barley cakes.”
He threw his arm around his companion as they walked toward their dead prey. Thirty minutes later the two young men had begun the four-mile trudge back to their home, the heavy boar, its hooves tied with leather thongs to the spear that had ended its life, hoisted between their shoulders.
It was a long way to come for a kill. But no boar had been located all season west of Loch Laoigh or south of the river known as Aethbran nan Bronait. Fish had been plentiful in the small freshwater lochs that dotted the region, as well as in the inlets from the sea—the Aethbran Frith to the north and Durcellach Bay to the south. And they had their cattle and sheep, of course—the tribe had possessed small domesticated herds of tame beasts for many generations. But flesh of the kind the chief preferred had been scarce.
Taran, chieftain of the Pritenae tribe occupying the region of Caldohnuill, had always walked with one of his two large feet out of step with the march of advancing times. He was of the old times, and desired his meat wild.
Two
Taran remembered well the construction of the broch. The undertaking had been envisioned and carried out when he was a boy, during the chieftainships of his two uncles Pendwallon and Eanwinall.
But when his own elders had urged the expansion of the dry stone wall to encompass living and livestock quarters, bake ovens, and the smaller tower, creating a hill-fort to protect them from all threats, he had resisted.
Legend of the Celtic Stone Page 23