Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  “I don’t know . . . that you were willing to launch out into uncharted waters.”

  “American accent and all!”

  “Exactly. I found myself envying your being in a position different than would be expected of you.”

  “Certainly none of London’s journalists expect it of me.”

  “I look at what you’re doing and I see a freedom I’m not sure I’ve ever known.”

  A brief silence fell.

  “And then a visit to an old Scotsman who lives on our estate up north added to my reevaluation,” Andrew said, as if picking up the previous thread of conversation. “That did it most of all.”

  “So all this does have to do with Scotland?”

  “Suddenly this has a sound very much like an interview.”

  “No, I promise. I’m just interested.”

  “To answer your question—no, I don’t think it is the home-rule issue so much as my own personal role in it. Roots, as I said before.”

  “That statement has very much the ring of an eldest son trying to forge an identity as his generation rises to prominence in a well-known family.”

  “Did you study psychoanalysis as well as journalism?” laughed Andrew. “That statement has very much the ring of someone trying to get inside my psyche!”

  “As I said, I’m just interested. Are you the eldest in your family?”

  Now it was Andrew’s turn, as she had done a few moments before, to draw down over his thoughts the protective cloak of silence. It was obvious from the expression that briefly crossed his face that there was more pain to the answer than he wanted to divulge. Neither was he ready to open his box of private memories just now.

  “No,” he answered softly after a moment. “I had an older sister—”

  He paused, then added, “—she died when I was ten.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Paddy, nodding thoughtfully.

  It was clear there was more to MP Andrew Trentham than even she had realized.

  When she arrived back to her office after lunch, Paddy took out the list of individuals and questions she had drawn up earlier. To the bottom of the paper she added the words:

  Also keep track of for related interest: . . . Fred Hensley, Scotland Yard . . . as well as Andrew’s former friend—blond . . .

  Paddy’s hand paused momentarily as she briefly replayed the incident in her mind. Then she added—

  . . . shifty eyes . . . a user.

  She put the paper away, smiling to herself. Were her instincts accurate? she wondered. Or had a hint of female rivalry risen up to cloud her perspective?

  Eleven

  The early spring’s snow still lay thick on the hills when Andrew arrived again in Cumbria.

  After Saturday’s breakfast, as Andrew passed through the entryway, his eyes fell upon the four family portraits that hung symmetrically on the wall to his left—his mother and father, Lindsay at fifteen, a year before her death, and he upon his graduation from Eton.

  He gazed into his sister’s eyes and upon her smile longer than was his custom, then wandered into the expansive drawing room, where a cheery fire burned in the large hearth. He stood a minute or two glancing around the room, so familiar since his boyhood. Antique furnishings, thick red carpet, two massive sideboards, three couches, and six or eight overstuffed leather chairs were spread about the room. On the wall over the enormous fireplace hung a huge and ancient fading tapestry. On each side were mounted heads of a red mountain stag and a great horned ram. On the opposite wall hung a large mirror framed in ornate carved oak.

  Andrew took in each item in its turn. Suddenly, as if beholding them all for the first time, he found himself wondering where the antiques and mirrors and stuffed heads and tapestries had come from. Till this moment, it seemed, he had taken everything in this house for granted.

  Who had brought them all here, he now pondered. And when?

  He ambled toward the wide and expansive staircase that rose majestically from one corner of the drawing room toward the upper floors of the house.

  Methodically he took the great stairs one slow step after another, gazing now to the right, then to the left at the gallery of paintings hanging on the walls—men and women, scenes, houses, castles, landscapes as familiar to him as his own hand. The sight of every one sent stabs of nostalgic longing through him—but for what he did not know.

  He recognized each face distinctly. Yet now he realized he knew them not at all.

  Who were these people, whose silent expressions had gazed down from these walls upon him during all the years of his life, never offering comment, never passing judgment, never changing expression through the years? Whose were these eyes that now seemed to stare so intently into his consciousness with their concealed messages of antiquity, as if waiting for him to discover the secret that they knew . . . but that he had yet to uncover?

  What were they trying to tell him? What were their secrets?

  On he climbed, turning round one landing, then another—up to the first floor now, where a length of gallery leading to his right opened as a loft above the room he had just left, while in the other direction the staircase bent round again and continued its upward ascent. He was at the level of the goat and stag heads now, opposite him, flanking the fireplace below.

  Up he continued. More faces adorned the walls. Relics from the past sat on shelves and upon benches that were formed into the stone walls under the windows at each outside turn of the staircase. A giant bell . . . a bronze statue of a horse and rider he remembered loving to touch as a child . . . a handsomely painted miniature ship . . . more portraits of what he could only take as representations of his own ancestors. . . .

  His eyes fell on the portrait of an ancient warrior in green-and-black kilt and full accompanying Highland dress. It hung in a heavy gilded frame among the others. Funny, Andrew thought to himself, he didn’t remember noticing that painting before.

  Andrew stared up, gazing deeply into the ancient Celtic eyes, trying to apprehend what the man would tell him if he could but speak.

  Who are you? thought Andrew. Why are you here, old Highlander, watching silently over this English estate?

  Was this old portrait of a Gordon . . . could the fellow be a Trentham ancestor?

  Slowly Andrew continued upward, still turning the matter over in his mind, and arrived at the second floor. He left the staircase and approached the Derwenthwaite library two doors down the wide corridor. He opened the large double doors and stepped inside.

  As with everything he had seen this day, a wave of melancholic nostalgia swept through him at the sight and smell of this familiar yet all at once unknown place. Everywhere sat more silent reminders of the past. Though there was a large contingent of newer volumes, the bindings and the dusty aromas of the older books drew him with sudden sensations of long-past mystery.

  Here were stories and tales and legends innumerable! They had been right in front of him all his life.

  Standing before the bookshelves of the Derwenthwaite library, pale light coming in from the tall window behind him, he recalled the tales of the Maiden, the Wanderer, and Cruithne. With the remembrance came a realization that had escaped him before—that the Wanderer had no doubt settled very near here, just south of Scotland’s border.

  He turned and left the room, returning down the stairs in a tenth the time it had taken to ascend them.

  He found his father seated in the private sitting room on the ground floor.

  “What is it, Andrew?” Mr. Trentham asked in some alarm, seeing the expression of urgency on his son’s face.

  “I’ve got to know a few things, Dad,” Andrew replied.

  “About what?”

  “About the family. For instance, who is that old Highlander upstairs?”

  “Old Highlander?” repeated Trentham.

  “The portrait up on the second floor.”

  “Oh . . . right. Now that you mention it, I do seem to recall some strangely attired fellow up there. Rather i
mposing-looking, if I recall.”

  “But why is his portrait hanging in Derwenthwaite? Is he in the family?”

  “He’s been there since before I can remember, to tell you the truth. No doubt he is an ancestor of some kind, now that I think of it. There were some Scots in the family, you know, back in the last century.”

  “What about the other portraits?”

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” said Trentham, “I just can’t help you. I don’t think one of those paintings has gone up or come down since I was a boy. I’m afraid I don’t know a thing about most of them.”

  “What about my name? How did you and Mum choose it?”

  “Andrew—that was your grandfather’s name.”

  “And my middle name?”

  “Gordon—that is a family name too.”

  “Where did it originate?”

  “I can’t actually remember—let’s see . . . somewhere way back, one of my . . . hmm, it would have been my great-grandfather—maybe my great-great-grandfather—married a woman named Gordon.”

  “Who was she?” asked Andrew with continued importunity.

  “I can’t recall—we’ll have to get out the old family records. But why the sudden interest? What’s the matter with you, son? Till now you’ve never paid any more attention to them than I have.”

  “Just curious, I suppose, Dad.”

  “Why now?”

  “Somehow it just suddenly seems to matter a great deal.”

  “Without going into the records,” sighed Mr. Trentham, “I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. It’s all there in some book in the library. But tell me,” he went on, attempting to turn the conversation toward politics, “how are you and the PM getting on? Is everything I read in the paper about Barraclough true?”

  “More or less,” answered Andrew distractedly. “I’m sorry, Dad—I’m not in a political frame of mind right now.”

  He turned and left the room, leaving his father puzzling over the strange swing of his son’s mood since the morning.

  Much of the remainder of the day Andrew spent upstairs in the library, digging out several books from its shelves that he hoped would be able to shed more light on the next period of Scottish history which had begun to fascinate him.

  Twelve

  The scene in Edward Pilkington’s London office late that same day was much different from the last time Patricia Rawlings sat here nervously wondering if she would still have a job at day’s end. Her American newshound’s personality had surfaced and she paced about the small room with obvious agitation.

  “I tell you, Mr. Pilkington,” she said, “there is more going on in the mind of the Honorable Andrew Trentham than anyone realizes.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Nothing I can put my finger on exactly,” replied Paddy. “But this Scottish thing goes deep with him—deeper, I’m convinced, than anyone in this city realizes.”

  “Nearly every MP backs devolution and the recent changes. It’s the wave of the future. It’s not news that Andrew Trentham’s for it too.”

  “It’s more than that. It’s personal with him.”

  “Personal—how do you mean? Are you on to some skeleton in the closet of the, quote, Honorable gentleman?”

  Paddy shrugged. “I doubt that—I’m not even sure what I mean. It’s just a sense. Isn’t that what reporters do—rely on instinct and intuition?”

  “In books and movies,” replied Pilkington sarcastically. “In real life, it’s facts that count. What about the real news—say, for instance, the murder of Hamilton and the theft of the Stone? You get me some hard news on those items, Rawlings, and you can write your own ticket.”

  “I’m working on it,” rejoined Paddy.

  “Yeah—how?” asked Pilkington, obviously intrigued.

  “I’m going to talk to some people. I’ve got some theories.”

  “Anything you care to share with a seasoned veteran?”

  “When I’m ready,” smiled Paddy. “But did you mean what you said? If I get you facts, as you say, on either—”

  The door opened behind her. In walked an impeccably tailored Kirkham Luddington.

  “I understood there was some discussion concerning possible new information on Andrew Trentham,” he said. He sat down and eyed the two.

  “How did you hear that?” snapped Paddy. She turned toward the newcomer with a look of anything but welcome on her face.

  “I know what goes on around here,” replied Luddington with an unmistakable superior air. “Tell me, what’s up?”

  “You keep out of this, Kirk—this is my story!”

  “Everything around here is my business, Miss Rawlings—tell her, Edward. Doesn’t she know how seniority works?”

  “Not if I get something you don’t have,” Paddy retorted. “Then where is your seniority?”

  “If you’ll pardon my saying so, a respected member of Parliament is not about to divulge any tidbits of news or inside scoops to a novice American whose knowledge of British politics is almost as inept as her use of the English tongue.”

  The smile that followed the words of the veteran television personality aroused the fury of her sex and the independent blood of her nationality.

  “We shall see, Mister Luddington!” said Paddy, making no attempt to hide her ire.

  Face red, she now turned to Pilkington, who sat behind his desk, rather enjoying the heated exchange to liven up an otherwise dull news day.

  “You told me not long ago,” she said, “that if I found you a story no one else had, we’d talk again about my getting a shot to go on camera. Well, I’m ready to talk.”

  “Do you have such a story?”

  “I may . . . before long.”

  “Bring it to me and we’ll see.”

  “No deal, Mr. Pilkington. If I’m going to stake my career on something, I want to know you won’t just hand it over to Kirk.”

  She glanced toward Luddington, who sat listening with that infuriating smile on his face, amused at the notion that this upstart American could ever land a story he wouldn’t know about first.

  “Do you have an angle?” asked Pilkington.

  “I’ll get one.”

  “Not so easy with parliamentary leaders. They guard their flanks.”

  “Trentham’s different.”

  “None of them are different,” put in Luddington with derision in his tone. “They’re all the same.”

  Paddy kept her eyes focused toward her boss.

  Again Pilkington leaned back in his chair, thinking.

  “You bring me something really good,” he said at length, “something no one else has and something with some news value and punch—all right, I’ll give an American a chance on the BBC. You bring me such a story, and I’ll put a camera in front of you and see what you can do.”

  “And Kirk’s seniority?” she added, eyeing her boss, and this time not even glancing in the direction of her competitor.

  “I’ll let you go with whatever you uncover,” replied Pilkington. “Seniority will not apply.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pilkington.” She turned to go.

  “But if you slip up again, Rawlings,” Pilkington’s voice sounded behind her, “it will be the end of what little seniority even you have.”

  Paddy nodded.

  She turned and exited the office. As the door closed behind her, she heard the sound of Kirkham Luddington’s voice in mumbled comment, followed by the sounds of both men chuckling.

  Let them laugh, she thought. For once it didn’t annoy her. She would show them what kind of reporter she was.

  When the camera zoomed in on her face to report her findings to the country . . . they could see who was laughing then!

  Thirteen

  He was next on her list anyway, Paddy thought as she left the building. She had been trying to set up an interview through official channels without success. She would try the direct approach. It had worked with Trentham.

  She caught a cab and headed
straight for the Norman Shaw building, where the office of MP Larne Reardon was located. It was forty minutes before Commons convened. If she was lucky, she might be able to nab him as he left his office.

  Conning her way past the guard and into the building with a fake ID, Paddy took the stairs to the third floor, then slowed her pace. She kept her eyes on the busy corridor, trying to monitor the traffic without being too conspicuous.

  She drew nearer to Reardon’s office. The double doors were closed. She sauntered past, continued on for some distance, then casually turned. Someone was bound to notice her if she hung around too long.

  But wait—the door to Reardon’s office was opening!

  A figure emerged and strode down the corridor in the opposite direction. Paddy glanced at the newspaper photograph in her hand and took note of the narrow face, the thinning hair.

  It was Larne Reardon. She was sure of it! She hastened after him.

  “Mr. Reardon,” she said as she drew alongside, “I hoped I might have a moment of your time.”

  “If you don’t mind walking—I’m on a tight schedule.”

  “No, not at all,” replied Paddy, doing her best to keep up. “I wondered if you might be able to tell me why you withdrew from the election for your party’s leadership.”

  “Personal reasons,” replied Reardon. “Why?”

  He paused slightly and glanced toward Paddy. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Patricia Rawlings, BBC2.”

  “Ah, a reporter . . . I should have known. I think I’ve already given the only statement I care to make to the press. How did you get into the building?”

  “Would you sit down with me sometime and discuss the matter in more detail?” persisted Paddy, thinking it best not to answer him.

  “I really doubt I would be interested in—”

  Reardon hesitated. Paddy glanced toward him in time to detect a slight flush of apparent anger in his neck. Her eyes followed his down the hall to a tall man near the elevator. Though they appeared not to know each other, the eyes of the two men had clearly met.

  The next instant Reardon recovered himself. He glanced with a smile toward Paddy.

  “—I really don’t think that would work at all,” he said. “I am interested in no more public dialogue on the matter. Good day, Miss Rawlings.”