Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  Now boldly he walked past the guards and toward the doors of the great modern Palace of Westminster, and a great hush descended upon the city in anticipation of what would happen. But gradually the images faded, and dreamless sleep followed. . . .

  It was thus that Duncan MacRanald found his young friend five hours later, head slumped back, open book still in his lap under the colorful wrap, sound asleep and dreaming of the ancient beginnings of a people he was already beginning to call his own.

  Two

  Andrew awoke a little before eight to a blazing fire. To one side hung the small black cast-iron kettle with steam pouring out its top in anticipation of its coming duty in the matter of the tea.

  “Weel, laddie!” exclaimed the old Scotsman, approaching him from behind the moment he saw his young guest rousing, “’Tis plain t’ see ye slept sound enouch!”

  “Very well indeed, I am happy to say,” laughed Andrew. “After I finally fell asleep sometime in the middle of the night!”

  “Ye’ll be thirsty fer a drap o’ tea, nae doobt,” said Duncan, swinging the kettle toward him out of the fire. “I’ve already seen t’ yer mare in my wee barn. She was a mite hungry, but none the worse fer her night away frae hame. She’s breakfasting on oats.”

  “Thank you,” said Andrew.

  He threw the blanket from his chest and discovered there the book still open where he had left it. Setting it aside, he stood and stretched to shake off the remnants of drowsiness and make himself ready for the day.

  Snow had indeed fallen that night, to a thickness of about six inches. When Andrew opened the door and took a few steps out, the sight greeting him was of a winter fairyland. The clouds had journeyed south with the storm, and a brilliant cold sun was just beginning its climb up the sky in the east. The first arrows of its light shot across the glimmering surface as if igniting a million frozen water-jewels into tiny crystals of light that shot in every direction.

  The dazzling white blanket spread out silently in all directions, broken only by wintry trees whose thin branches did their best to retain their thin white treasures as long as possible, and by the stone dikes, white-topped but gray-edged, that meandered throughout the countryside. All nature save the sun seemed dead under the white sheet. Yet how could it be dead, for the life contained deep inside the earth cannot be killed, any more than can the inner life of the men and women who inhabit it. In truth, even now, frozen though it was, life was in that earth—awaiting fresh opportunity for resurrection.

  Andrew took in the sight with relish.

  As he stood at Duncan’s door, the keen air sent the warm blood to his cheeks. Immediately his heart began to beat more rapidly. But he would have to get back home before long, he told himself. There were things to attend to.

  Alas, his duties in London beckoned. He must be back on Monday morning.

  Three

  The darkened atmosphere of the Knightsbridge pub was noticeably more subdued than it had been upon the evening when the same six men had gathered some weeks earlier.

  The intent of this gathering was ostensibly to mourn a fellow parliamentarian. Beneath the somber tones and lugubrious comments, however, a discerning eye might have detected here and there a twinkle of repressed gaiety. Their sympathy was genuine. Yet it could hardly be denied that the honorable gentleman’s death, shocking though it was, could have the effect of advancing their cause.

  The Glenfiddich tonight flowed somewhat freely from its slender green neck into the crystal tumblers throughout the room, and from the latter into the mouths of the assembled Scots politicians, gradually igniting the orbal fires and loosening the tongues of those thus gathered.

  “To Hamilton!” toasted Glaswegian Lachan Ross for probably the fourth time. It was the simplest and quickest method to justify sending repeated swallows of his favorite evening fare down his throat, and thirst was not lacking for the barley brew.

  “Hear, hear!” came two or three sober rejoinders, followed by the sound of chinking glass.

  It was silent a moment. At length the stillness was broken by the beginnings of a muted chuckle. Then, as if that had been a spark set to dormant flame, several more deep-throated murmurs of humorous response began to sound softly. When they gathered just after the election, their elation over its outcome had been tempered by the knowledge that their true goal was far from realized. Now suddenly the opportunity they had long dreamed of seemed at hand—the chance to push forward their agenda with a reasonable promise of success.

  “I told you all before,” said their leader, “that if we awaited events, a critical moment would come. Not that I would have wished for it to arrive in such a manner. But as it has happened, we would be foolish not to make the best of it.”

  “Your gambit has obviously succeeded, Dugald,” Gregor Buchanan said to MacKinnon. “I didn’t believe it would, but the campaigning of our people for their candidates in the election five years ago certainly played a role in Labour’s strong victory and got devolution on their manifesto. And they know well that, had it not been for our support, they may have lost this recent contest.”

  “I didn’t think it would help,” said one Archibald Macphersen. “I was certain the prime minister included it merely to get Scotland’s vote and our support.”

  “Oh, I have not the slightest doubt, Macphersen, that you precisely represent the good Mr. Barraclough’s intent,” laughed MacKinnon. “Both parties have been playing that game since Mr. Major’s passionate speech about returning the Stone in July of ’96. But we will not let the prime minister forget our role in his coalition. And now perhaps the time has arrived to remind him that we are a constituency whose needs he must continue to address.”

  “Twenty-one seats in six hundred fifty-nine hardly gives ground for us to remove our offices to Edinburgh along with our Scots’ parliamentary colleagues just yet,” commented William Campbell, bringing a note of dubious realism to the discussion.

  “True enough,” rejoined MacKinnon. “But I would not have gone to Barraclough before the elections with, shall we say, my proposed bargain, if I did not think it a gamble unquestionably worth taking. I would assume that you, Campbell, with the dark history surrounding your name, would not be one to flinch in the face of great odds.”

  “It is not the odds that worry me,” responded Campbell, ignoring the sly dig at his heritage, “but the practicality of our efforts. So I ask you, MacKinnon, what do you actually propose to do now?”

  “As I promised him, we have been faithful on every issue. We have been, for all intents and purposes, Socialists ourselves. We have given Richard Barraclough our complete support.”

  “Well and good, Dugald,” pressed Campbell again. “But what now?”

  “I believe Hamilton’s death gives us the opportunity to press him further.”

  “Press him?” repeated Campbell.

  “By threatening to withdraw our support.”

  “He could carry the coalition without us by keeping the alliance.”

  “LibDem support may change—don’t forget that. The prime minister may not be able to count on it so automatically now, with Reardon at the helm of the Liberal Democrats. I have the feeling the threat of a No vote from us may make Barraclough consider bringing full home rule onto the agenda. He will not be at all eager to lose us right now.”

  “As much as he has tried to curry Scotland’s favor, he still views Scottish issues as fringe matters,” remarked Buchanan.

  “And he is mistaken,” rejoined the Scottish Nationalist leader. “He will underestimate the power of yet greater sovereignty to capture the imagination of our people. As I have said, devolution is but the tip of an iceberg that neither Labour nor the Tories fully see. Wales may be satisfied with a regional parliament. But I for one am not satisfied with such for Scotland’s future. And neither, I suspect, are most of us.”

  “Sounds to me as if you like to attempt the impossible,” remarked Archibald Macphersen.

  “Our cause has been vie
wed as impossible since the National Party was formed in 1928,” replied MacKinnon. “Yet look how far the movement has come in that time. We had one MP in Parliament in 1970, and by 1983 only two. The referenda of 1979 and 1997 had their effect, each in its own way. Now there are twenty-one of us, devolution has come about, Scotland has her parliament. Many of us would have termed that impossible even ten years ago.

  “I tell you,” he went on, “what we have seen is only the beginning. These are but the first steps in the complete eventual reversal of 1707.”

  A long pause followed as his colleagues reflected on MacKinnon’s stirring words.

  “By the by,” said Macphersen, “do we know any more on the cause of Eagon’s death? I worry about a backlash in our direction, especially if we move too soon.”

  “I wouldn’t concern yourself,” replied MacKinnon. “Nothing about the affair can point toward us.”

  “I’m not so certain. The way the Yard still suspects us in the Abbey theft . . . I don’t know, I think they’ll see a connection. Especially in that if we move too quickly we may be seen to benefit from his death.”

  “We haven’t had the slightest connection with Hamilton,” remarked Buchanan. “Our hands are clean.”

  A brief discussion ran round the room.

  “I said an opportunity would come,” said MacKinnon at length. “It would appear that moment is now at hand, though it has arrived much differently than anticipated. It now appears that our best chance for influence may lie not so much with the prime minister, but with whomever the Liberal Democrats choose as the new leader of their party.”

  The only man who had not spoken, and who indeed had remained uncharacteristically silent throughout the exchange, was the Deputy Leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, Baen Ferguson.

  Four

  It was midmorning by the time Andrew finished breakfast, saddled Hertha, and swung into the saddle for the ride back from Duncan’s cottage.

  The sun had risen high by then and actually felt warm beating down on his bundled shoulders. It had not even begun to thaw the snow from last night’s fall—that would take a week or two, if more did not descend in the meantime. But it was a spectacularly gorgeous day, notwithstanding cold hands and feet, to ride across the virgin blanket of white and to let his thoughts wander where they would.

  It didn’t take long for the story he had read the night before to float to the top of his mind—and with it, the recent death of his party’s leader. He could not avoid seeing a parallel between the two. As he considered it, he found his own opinion gradually tilting toward some unknown political motivation in the unsolved case. What else could it be? he thought as he rode. It wasn’t just the ancients who could go to such lengths to further a cause.

  Neither had he forgotten the dream that had haunted him in the middle of the night. And now, as the mare picked her way across the rocky fell, he realized he needed to stop at the overlook again—to attempt once more to come to some kind of terms with what had happened there.

  It was strange how snow could change the look of a place, he thought when he finally stood again at the spot where the path dropped off over the lake. The covering of white seemed to soften the edges of the landscape, transforming it into something both familiar and strange. He brushed the cold powder from the rock he had used as a seat countless times, then sat down and stared out over the expanse of cold water below. He could almost hear Cruithne, Fidach, and the bard’s son Domnall laughing and crying out in glee as they dove into the pool from high above the Falls of Bruid.

  But then other cries intruded into the ears of his memory, replacing the cries of happy adventure with sounds of terror. He knew well enough that the silent sounds in his mind came from his own mouth, for he had relived the incident over and over since that fateful morning.

  It had been warm, a magnificent day of high summer. The sun had shone as brightly as today, but the hillsides had been green with the fragrance of moist and vibrant growth.

  He and Lindsay had tethered their horses some way down the slope and had run and laughed their way up to the overlook. His sixteen-year-old sister had been in a gay mood, full of frolic and fun and spirited teasing.

  She was always good to him in ways that many an older sister would not have been to one so young in her eyes. When they rode and romped together, though she was six years his senior, she treated him as an equal and a friend. She taught him to ride, to swim, to recognize plants and flowers, and let him accompany her on many youthful adventures in the hills around their home.

  They had visited the overlook many times before. Though steep, it was actually not as dangerous as it appeared, for after the first drop-off the ground gave way in a succession of naturally terraced ridges rather than a single sheer plunge. But two days of rain had drenched the district, and on that particular day the earth was soft and soggy, the footing not the best.

  They reached the favorite spot and plopped down to enjoy the view of gulls and water. But the sun and warmth and ride made Lindsay giddy and carefree. Too carefree. The next instant she was scrambling over the edge, stretching her legs down to the ledge about four feet below the top.

  “Lindsay, don’t go down there!” cried Andrew in his high ten-year-old voice as he ran up a few seconds after her and saw what she was doing.

  “But look—there’s a wild lily. They smell just lovely, and I haven’t seen one all year.”

  “But it’s too close to the edge.”

  “Look, I’m down already,” she said gaily, turning to stoop toward her prize.

  “Be careful!”

  But now Andrew’s sister was down on her knee, reaching past the ledge amongst a loose collection of stones for the little yellow-and-white bloom as her brother watched in terror.

  She tried to draw close to it. But her toe shoved through a soggy bit of sod near the edge of the supporting ledge.

  It gave way. She gave a little scream and slipped. One of her legs dangled over the side.

  “Lindsay!” cried Andrew.

  All thought of the blossom was immediately gone. His sister finally realized her danger. Frantically she clutched at the thick grass and tried to pull herself back onto solid ground. But it was wet and loose. If she pulled too hard, it too would give way.

  “Help me, Andrew,” she said. Her voice was quiet and full of controlled fear. “See if you can reach down and get hold of my hand.”

  On his knees now Andrew stretched down over the top edge as far as he dared. She reached up. Just as their hands met, Lindsay shifted her weight for one more upward thrust. The clump of grass in her left hand pulled loose.

  She tumbled from the ledge with a scream.

  “A-n-d-r-e-w!” sounded the wail of her voice in his boyish ears.

  He watched in horror as she bumped and fell, crashing and twisting helplessly against the rocky face of the steepening slope. At last came a splash in the black water below.

  Andrew looked down where she had fallen. But the shoreline was obscured from his sight. No more sounds came from below.

  Already he was running back for the horses as fast as he could. He leapt onto his mount and in seconds was galloping at full speed along the trail that led the long way around down to the lake. Miraculously the horse didn’t stumble as he urged it down the slope. Three minutes later he dismounted. The water of the surface was slowly calming from the disturbance. He found himself praying it had been caused by some rock her fall had set to tumbling.

  “Lindsay!” he screamed. “Lindsay . . . where are you?”

  Nothing but silence met his ears.

  Frantically he ran about the water’s edge. He came to the spot of impact. From the disturbed bank and traces of mud in the water, he knew that more than a mere stone had fallen into the lake.

  He didn’t think to tear off his clothes but dived in. He struggled below the surface and felt about. His hands reached the bottom. But he felt only mud. Kicking and thrashing violently, he struggled to search and probe ab
out.

  He surfaced, took a gulp of air, and went down again, widening his frantic swim. But the lake was deep and its water, even at the best of times, murky. He could not see more than six inches in front of his face.

  Again Andrew surfaced . . . and dived again—again and again, until exhaustion threatened his own safety. Panting desperately, lungs aching, he saw nothing, he felt nothing.

  Up he came for a final time, gasping desperately for breath, then scrambled onto the shore, glancing about desperately in the hope she might have appeared in the meantime. But there was no sign of Lindsay anywhere.

  Genuine panic now set in. His eyes reddened and filled with tears.

  He flew to his horse and galloped back to the Hall faster and more recklessly than he had ever ridden in his life, crying shamelessly and freely.

  “Mother . . . Mother!” he cried while a long way off. “Mother!” he screamed, “ . . . it’s Lindsay—she’s fallen!”

  By the time he reached the door his mother was already outside.

  “She fell . . . she fell in the Tarn Water!” he blurted out hysterically. “I couldn’t find her . . . I tried . . . she wouldn’t come up . . . I looked and looked . . .”

  Already Lady Trentham was calling for Horace and some of the other men. Within minutes they were on their way with horses, a wagon, ropes, and blankets.

  But all the afternoon’s rescue efforts proved of no avail.

  Lindsay’s body did not surface until late that afternoon, with a tremendous gash on the side of her head where she had been knocked unconscious during the fall.