Charm Stone

by Carl, Lillian Stewart

  Beside her, Alasdair’s teeth caught the dim light. “I reckon it’s right uncanny come three a.m.”

  Jean glanced toward the Courthouse, a square dark shape to her right, and stopped dead. Alasdair jerked back toward her. And went full alert beside her.

  Between the tavern and the Courthouse stood the stocks, the pillory, and the whipping post. How many modern reconstructions of those traditional instruments of punishment had been used up over the years, the wood worn away by children and adults alike playing in places where people had once suffered public retribution? If there had been a reconstructed ducking stool, intended for “scolds” or overly assertive women, visitors would have played with it, too.

  Now the low ankle-trapping board of the stocks lay empty, and the post stood solitary, but the pillory that gripped a miscreant’s head and hands, that was occupied by a slumped figure trailing limp arms and legs, head hanging. Either a man or a woman in antique man’s clothing, white stockings below bent knees catching the light like an inverted V-for-victory.

  Jean squinted through the gloom. A dummy. A demonstration set up for some school group expected tomorrow or as a joke for Halloween.

  The imprisoned figure twitched and emitted a low moan. Her heart lurched. Alasdair dropped her arm and ran, his own tall socks flashing. She hurried behind him—okay, so this time behind him was good—he heaved at the upper slab of wood, so that it creaked and groaned.

  Jean reached out toward the tall, lanky male body unfolding itself from its entrapped crouch—long coattails, white neckcloth, hair tied at the nape, a long face—he was choking.

  No, he was laughing. Dylan Dingwall spun away from Jean’s hands. “Thanks. She’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen, but her sense of humor isn’t. Rache! Very funny, ha ha ha, let’s just try it on for fit, sure, no problem. Rache! Where did you go?”

  Scarlet glinted in the lights of the St. George Tucker House, a block behind the Courthouse. A female laugh echoed. A lissome shape, like that of a wood nymph, glided into and then out of the dense shadow beneath a tree so large it concealed the intersection of Nicholson Street and the Palace Green.

  Dylan galloped off across the deserted stretch of grass. “Hey, Rachel!” And the two shapes vanished into the dark alley that was North England Street.

  “Good grief,” said Jean on an aggravated breath. “The Dingwalls just love false alarms, don’t they? He’s bound to catch her. She’s either wearing those spike heels or she’s barefoot.”

  “She means for him to catch her up.” Alasdair levered the upper block of wood back down again and brushed off his hands. “Bugger. I’ve got a splinter.”

  “I’ll get it when we get back to the house. Don’t bleed on your jacket.”

  “My ancestors marched through here wearing red jackets that would not show the blood.”

  And went on to defeat at Yorktown, but Jean didn’t mention that. Sharing silent disgruntlement—Jean’s magnified by Dylan calling Rachel a “thing”—they started back across the street.

  Another group following a leader with a flickering lantern came toward them. Behind them, what had to be car lights quivered in the wavy windows of the Geddy House, looking like a candle flame carried along inside—in a skeletal hand, no doubt. Across Palace Green rose Bruton Parish Church, going on for three hundred years of hymn, and sermon, and mortal shells laid to rest.

  A thin beam of light swept the brick facade and round-headed windows of the church and vanished behind the surrounding wall. “That’s not a car’s headlamps,” said Alasdair. “That’s a torch.”

  “No surprise someone’s carrying a flashlight.”

  “That’s a torch,” Alasdair repeated, “inside the churchyard. I’m thinking it’s likely locked up tight this late, eh?”

  “They’re sure not holding a concert inside, all the lights would be on.” She didn’t ask Alasdair if he wanted to go investigate. When he stepped out toward the church she was already heading in that direction.

  Chapter Seven

  They tried to walk softly, their steps blending with the voices of the ghost-hunting groups, the sigh of the wind in the trees, the hum of automobile traffic and a train whistle from the twenty-first century, and they paused at the end of Palace Green.

  The cold wind fluttered Jean’s skirt and teased her legs but barely disturbed the wool of Alasdair’s kilt. Now it was her turn to shiver—from the cold, she told herself with a critical assessment of her own nervous system. She wasn’t shivering from the chill weight of the paranormal on the back of her neck and her shoulders, even if her shoulders were up around her ears, trying to retain the last warmth of the food and wine and its subtle sensuality. “That’s a flashlight all right,” she murmured in Alasdair’s ear. “Not a ghost.”

  “Not a bit of it,” he agreed, shoulders level, head cocked.

  To their right, at the far end of the Green, rose the Palace itself, its tall, stately cupola outlined against the glow of the modern town behind it. Invisible to their left, beside and behind the Lumber House ticket office, a swathe of grass led down to the hollow on Francis Street where Jean had been startled by something going bump in the underbrush.

  Ahead, she saw the flashlight beam sweep around the east end of the church and over the graves of two of Martha Custis Washington’s children, then draw crimson winks from the leaves lingering on the trees in the churchyard to the north.

  “You’ve got your mobile,” Alasdair said. “We should be ringing security.”

  “You don’t happen to know the number off the top of your head, do you? Although the church isn’t run by historic Williamsburg, so security would just pass the call on to the town police.”

  “I’ve written the telephone numbers of my contacts at security, the hotel, the airlines, and the like, on a wee bittie paper.” He opened his sporran, then closed it again. “One I cannot see in the dark.”

  “We could call 911, but until we hear glass breaking or whatever, the situation’s not dire enough to turn out the emergency people. And we’d turn out Stephanie Venegas, too.”

  “Right.” Alasdair’s teeth snapped on the “t”. “The church itself is likely alarmed. Where’s the gate?”

  “There’s one on this end, see?” Jean pointed past a pool of light cast by a tree-mounted lamp to a gap in the brick wall, closed by a rust-red wooden gate. The flashlight flickered between the vertical boards, moving in slow sweeps, then stopping.

  They picked their way across the street edging the Green. Jean peered around one gatepost, the brick gritty beneath her hand but holding a furtive warmth. Alasdair peered around the other.

  Several gravestones and tombs punctuated the paved area next to the church. It was separated from the churchyard proper by a low railing that, like the velvet rope “protecting” the artifacts at Blair Castle, was no more than a symbolic boundary. The flashlight beam glowed from the top of a grave monument beyond it. Nothing supernatural about that—the intruder had simply set the flashlight atop the stone.

  Intruders, plural. Jean saw two shadow-shapes, one large, one small, huddled together in the space between two headstones. In the dim light the human figures were less distinct than the stones themselves, which sparkled with points of light like the multiple eyes of tiny insects.

  The taller shape, who was wearing what looked like a tricorn hat, lifted a long pole high in the air and brought it down so hard Jean heard the thunk of—metal, she assumed—hitting the ground. Both people then leaned on the pole, pushing. “That’s creepy,” she whispered. “I’d say they were digging in someone’s grave, except that’s not a shovel.”

  “They’re not Burke and Hare, are they now? These buried bodies have long gone to dust. Or mud, come to that. They look like taking a core sample.”

  “Yes, that’s it, driving a hollow pipe into the occupation layers. But archaeologists wouldn’t be sneaking around after hours, in the dark.”

  The two figures began pulling. The rod rose up above their heads, g
linting damply. Grasping it like a vaulting pole, the taller of the two said in a harsh mutter, “Get the light. Let’s make tracks.”

  The smaller person moved in a dark cloud of fabric. The flashlight beam swung, painting a streak of light across the flank of the church, then pooling around the intruders’ own feet. And with a cascade of firing neurons sending a bolt of electricity from top to toe, Jean recognized them both.

  Tim Dingwall looked as though he was stuffed inside his own skin, his cheeks smooth and round as sausages, while Sharon was so bony she seemed to be assembled from razor blades. So much for the theory that couples eventually started to resemble each other.

  “Them,” Alasdair said.

  “The Dingbats are out tonight.” Jean retreated from the gate, down the fence toward the Wythe House, intending to step into the shadow where the fence angled away from the street. But once again she realized Alasdair wasn’t behind her. She looked around to see him standing a few paces outside the gate. The wind tossed the leaves surrounding the nearby tree-lamp, so that light and shadow flowed over him like running water, picking glints from his buttons.

  “What are you going to do, make a citizen’s arrest?” she hissed. “You’re not even a citizen of this country. Call your police contact when we get back to the hotel.”

  Either he didn’t hear her, or like Admiral Nelson putting his telescope to his blind eye, was determined to stand his ground.

  Okay, Jean told herself, trying not to remember what had happened to Nelson. Surely the Dingwalls weren’t packing weapons. She stopped next to the wall just as Tim boosted Sharon over the gate, her skirts billowing. Then he tipped the pole over and swarmed over himself, landing with a thud and a spatter of gravel.

  The beam of the flashlight swung around and caught Alasdair full in its glare. With a squeak of surprise, Sharon switched it off, but he didn’t vanish. In fact, he seemed to loom larger in the darkness.

  “What are you after there, the pair of you?” Alasdair demanded.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Tim demanded in return.

  “Here’s me, having a dauner along a public thoroughfare. And here’s you, trespassing.”

  Tim and Sharon looked at each other. Jean couldn’t see their faces, but she guessed they were uniting their fronts. Sure enough, they stepped closer together and stood shoulder to chest.

  “The church won’t let us dig a test trench,” Sharon told Alasdair, her voice brittle as broken glass.

  “So you’re helping yourselves, is that it?”

  “Core samples will prove the existence of the secret vault in the churchyard,” Tim explained, so patient, so reasonable, that his voice was not just flat but prostrate. “Our work here is for the public benefit. Once the truth is out, the number of visitors to Williamsburg and the church will increase exponentially.”

  “Will they, now,” said Alasdair.

  Tim held the pole, the bore, the sample tube, horizontally in both hands. He could have swung it around like a quarterstaff, knocking Alasdair off his feet. Resorting to violence would hardly be logical, but then, Jean told herself, logic wasn’t the Dingwalls’ strong suit.

  They didn’t know she was behind them. She took a slow step forward. If Tim did threaten Alasdair, what was she going to do, hit him with her sequined bag? Alasdair had had self-defense training. Tim might be six inches taller, but she didn’t need to intervene unless it was to save Tim himself.

  Besides, she thought with a pang of shame, she didn’t want to give the Dingwalls an excuse to cancel the interview.

  “Once we’ve explained the situation to your, ah, friend Ms. Fairbairn,” said Sharon, “you and she can intervene with the church to let us dig.”

  “And I do not believe you have been afforded any jurisdiction here, have you?” Tim actually hit a valid point.

  Alasdair stepped aside, gesturing toward the main street. “No. But I know who does.”

  “Tattling, Mr. Cameron?” Sharon wagged her finger in his face.

  “Making a report, Mrs. Dingwall.”

  “Let us be on our way, Sharon. There are none so blind as those who cannot see.” Tim started off across the Green. Jean took a hasty step back into denser shadow, but he didn’t look around. Stumbling over some hidden obstacle, he dropped the pole with a clang, picked it up, settled his hat on his head and marched on. Sharon gathered her skirts and trotted along at his side.

  Alasdair watched as the Dingwalls crossed the Green, passed the Brush-Everard House, and disappeared into the shadows past the Palace wall. In their antique clothing they looked like eighteenth-century ghosts. Or not, Jean thought. Judging by the cut of eighteenth-century garments, people carried themselves differently then, especially women confined by the bars of whalebone stays. Tim and Sharon ambled, perhaps even shambled, in twenty-first-century fashion.

  She told herself that even if they stumbled over Rachel and Dylan tucked up in a haystack or the equivalent, it was none of her business. And they might not even care anyway, seeing Dylan as a spy in the enemy’s camp. Engaging in an undercover operation, maybe.

  Groaning at herself, she made her way across brick, grass, gravel, and asphalt to Alasdair’s side.

  “Good thinking,” he said, “keeping yourself hidden.”

  “Do you mean that, or are you being sarcastic?”

  His eyes flashed in the dim light. “You’re after interviewing them, are you? You and Miranda, you’re after printing up their havering? Secret vault? What’s that in aid of?”

  “It must be connected to the whole Francis Bacon thing. Supposedly his secret papers are buried here. You know, the ones proving that he was really Queen Elizabeth’s son, or that he was Francis Drake’s son—could be both, I guess, just for a really juicy scandal—or that he’s the author of Shakespeare’s plays or all of the above.”

  Alasdair didn’t blink.

  “I bet the Dingwalls have tied all that into the Witch Box and charm stone stuff.” She folded her arms across her chest. Adrenaline drained, alcohol evaporated, chicken fat turned to sludge, she was chilled to the bone.

  “Come along.” Wrapping her shoulders in his right arm, Alasdair guided her down the street, at his side, not at his heels. Another couple, this time in contemporary clothing, strolled past the church. Someone hidden in the shadows whistled “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Lights swelled behind them—a car, allowed onto Duke of Gloucester Street after hours, its headlights casting their attenuated shadows before them. As they turned onto the white broken-shell path running alongside the Magazine, a police car rolled past.

  “Now they decide to do a drive-by,” Jean said between chattering teeth.

  Looking neither right nor left, Alasdair walked her across Francis Street, his free hand digging in his sporran for the key to their house. Which, of course, was dark—they hadn’t thought to turn on the porch light or leave a lamp burning. At least the low picket fence surrounding it was white, and caught the lights of the tree-lamp across the street and the Lodge further on.

  The gate in the fence slammed shut behind them. Releasing Jean, Alasdair bounded up the steps and applied the key to the door—just as something soft and warm caressed her frozen ankles. With a sharp intake of icy air she jerked aside. Alasdair hit the light switch inside the door. Yellow light flooded the porch, the path, the grass, each blade suddenly leaping into green. “What is it?”

  A black-and-white cat stood at Jean’s feet, looking up at her with bright, golden eyes. A second cat, this one white-and-black, sat on the grassy margin and looked up at Alasdair. And your problem is? each level gaze asked.

  Jean exhaled, her breath congealing into fog. “A welcoming committee. Hi there! Are you interpreting colonial mouse-catchers?” With a cat’s usual disdain for whimsy—no wonder she’d always thought Alasdair had feline tendencies—both animals roused themselves and faded into the surrounding darkness. “They ought to be inside on a cold night like this. Shame on the owners, letting them out.”

/>   “No one really owns a cat,” Alasdair counseled. “Or have you not been paying attention to Dougie?”

  “How can you not pay attention to Dougie? I wonder how he’s doing?” Jean stepped into the faint potpourri scent of the living room and turned on a table lamp.

  Alasdair shut and locked the door, then walked around the room closing the drapes. “Reposing himself on silk cushions and noshing on caviar, judging by the cost of his keep at the cattery.”

  “And feeling he deserves every bit of it, for being abandoned. A shame Hugh’s on tour right now, he loves looking after Dougie, but then, since Hugh’s on tour, he’ll be here tomorrow and we can have some good music to clean the taste of paranoia from our mouths. I’m taking a hot shower to warm up a bit. I think I may have left my feet back by the church.”

  Alasdair had removed his sporran from his belt and was digging through it.

  “What have you lost? You have your credit card, don’t you?”

  “Oh aye, and the receipt from the tavern, but the wee bittie paper with the telephone numbers is not here. It fell out, I reckon. No loss.” He started for the bedroom. “There’s a telephone directory in the nightstand.”

  By the time Jean had removed her shoes and clothing and was standing in the shower trying to remember Tolkien’s verse about hot water poured down the back, Alasdair had reported the Dingwalls and their impromptu survey in the churchyard to Williamsburg police, Venegas or no Venegas. By the time she had toweled herself off and huddled into her nightgown—okay, it was flannel printed with little sheep, so she wasn’t a steady customer of Victoria’s Secret—he was inspecting the palm of his left hand in the light of the bedside lamp.

  Equipping herself with a needle from her sewing kit and a pair of tweezers and a bottle of antiseptic from her cosmetics bag, Jean sat Alasdair down and balanced his large hand in her small one. “That’s a pretty good splinter, but it doesn’t look as though it drew much blood, red coat or no red coat. What did the police dispatcher say?”