Ashes to Ashes (8 page)

“Thanks,” said Rebecca, and made tracks to the castle. She stood on the threshold catching her breath. A breath of fresh air would steady her nerves. Sure.

The front door, the only door, stood open before her. A coat of arms carved in the stone above, three ships, was the arms of Danzig Willie of Craigievar. Somehow she was surprised John Forbes hadn’t had his own arms carved there, three locomotives, maybe, on a field of stock certificates. Above the coat of arms, at the base of the turrets, the small gargoyles concealing the shot holes leered down at her. The holes themselves had been filled with glass, so that each bizarre creature seemed to be holding in its mouth a diamond chip like that in her late, unlamented engagement ring.

Odd how she wasn’t cold anymore. Nothing like fear to get the circulation going. Even if the fear was only partly based in reality. For years she’d tried to deny her imagination— perception hurt. But all it took was a spooky old house and her fancies returned to haunt her. No pun intended, she assured herself.

Her thoughts cycled into their usual rhythm. All right then. Time to start earning her keep. With a wry smile Rebecca walked back into Dun Iain.

Rebecca paused inside the door to inhale the already familiar must and dust scent of the castle. Compared with the reek of mold behind the tomb the odor was not unpleasant at all. The enclosing walls seemed snug and almost peaceful. Dun Iain, she decided, had its moments of
Alice in Wonderland
, but a version that had been annotated by Edgar Allan Poe.

Dorothy came out of the kitchen door, coat buttoned, head swathed in a scarf, handbag securely under her arm. “Are you all right?”

What do I look like? Rebecca wondered, and smoothed her hair. “That humongous dog of Steve’s startled me. I’m not a dog person, I’m afraid.”

“That dog was the cutest little pup you’ve ever seen. Skippy, Steve called it then. That’s before he dropped out of school and started hanging out with those punkies and their loud music— if you can call it music. The company you keep tells a lot about you, you know.”

Ray, Rebecca thought. Dover’s all-star couch potato. “I know.”

“I keep telling Steve that animal will end up in the pound,” Dorothy persisted. “He lets it run loose and it tears open garbage sacks waiting on the curb. But kids! You try to help them and their ears fold up on you.”

“Steve’s mother,” said Rebecca, leaping into Dorothy’s inhalation, “must be very patient to put up with the dog.”

“Oh, she ran off with an auto parts salesman from Cleveland six or seven years ago. Right after Chuck died— my husband, that is. Went into the hospital for gallbladder surgery and the next thing you know, pffft!”

Rebecca’s head swam. “Steve’s mother’s gallbladder… ?”

“No, no, my husband. Would’ve done better to have lived with the gallstones.” The lines in Dorothy’s face deepened, her expression settling like a house on uncertain foundations.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” said Rebecca. And after an awkward pause, “Steve has no mother. I see.” The two women briefly met on common ground.

Dorothy’s expression lightened from grim back to merely dissatisfied. “Have to run. I promised my son Chuck I’d help them get settled in their new house. Just between us, Margie’s a dear, but no housekeeper. I hope she’ll improve now they’ve got the nicest new place in the development out toward Dayton. Savoy of Nob Hill Ranch. Real brick veneer fireplace in the family room.” She swept the stone walls, the huge wooden door, the queen’s effigy, with a withering glance. “This place makes you appreciate a real house.”

“Yes, it does,” replied Rebecca, but she meant the opposite. She’d grown up in a series of tract houses and apartments so similar she couldn’t remember which was in Denver and which in Atlanta. Dun Iain had character— if maybe a little too much character.

“I told Dr. Campbell about the tuna casserole I left you for dinner.”

“Why thank you. I didn’t realize your duties included cooking.”

“They don’t, but I thought you might be too busy to eat properly.” Her glance started at the crown of Rebecca’s head, traced a path to her toes, and moved back up. “Some women believe those fashion magazines with the models who look like they’ll blow away in a strong wind.”

“I never read fashion magazines,” Rebecca replied, and added to herself, I’m not that far gone. She found her keys in the pocket of her jeans but had no memory of having put them there. That was Eric’s blinding effect. “Actually I won’t be here tonight. I’m going out to dinner with Mr. Adler.”

“Oh?” Dorothy’s pale, drained eyes lit with a conspiratorial smile. “He’d be a great catch, wouldn’t he? Such manners. The kids today think manners are old-fashioned— they just honk their horns at each other. Good luck to you. Just remember not to act too smart. Men like their women decorative.”

Rebecca knew for a fact that she and Dorothy were from different planets. She picked up her typewriter. “Thank you,” she said with finality.

“See you next week.” Dorothy at last left.

It took Rebecca a moment to remember that today was Friday. She set the typewriter down again, went into the kitchen, and washed her hands.

That casserole had better go into the refrigerator; already there were punctures along the rim of the foil, made, most likely, by cat incisors. In the refrigerator Rebecca found additional odds and ends of food provided by Dorothy’s culinary altruism. She took enough pressed ham for a quick sandwich and completed her lunch with vile instant coffee and a stale Oreo she found in the pantry. One of the wooden shelves, she noted, was rickety.

Judging by the dishes in the sink, Michael had been in here calmly eating crackers, cheese, and tea while she’d been outside running an emotional gauntlet from elation to terror. Fine. She didn’t need a champion.

Out of habit she started to wash Michael’s dishes, too, then caught herself and washed only her own. She hauled her typewriter upstairs. Again the cloying reek of lavender hung on the air of her room. She looked again for an air freshener, still couldn’t find one, and opened the window.

Michael was in the Hall, down on his knees scrounging in a sideboard. Bits of crystal and cutlery were scattered on the floor around him. At her step he said to the depths of the cabinet, “Good of you to come back.”

If he was implying she hadn’t been working, she’d concede the point. By way of explanation she asked, “Have you looked at that bizarre mausoleum/ dovecote combination out there?”

“Technically it’s only a tomb, not posh enough for a mausoleum. Only a miser like Forbes would’ve thought of addin’ a doocot. Like feastin’ on his own dead.” Michael sat back on his heels and inspected a decanter.

“Yeah.” Even here in the brightly lit Hall Rebecca’s nape crawled.

“Gave me a cold grue.” He shivered, suiting action to word. “So austere. When I go I want to be planted in Tomnahurich, the firth gleamin’ beyond the yew trees and fairies pipin’ beneath the sod.”

“The big cemetery in Inverness built on a fairy mound? That’s an awfully romantic image for a skeptic like you.” Caught him, but his quick glance and dismissive gesture wouldn’t admit it. He didn’t have to. It was a relief to know she wasn’t the only one affected by the atmosphere of the tomb. She eyed the stack of black notebooks on the table. “Do you have any preference where I start?”

Michael stood up, dusted his hands, and started to stack his booty on the table. “I did the kitchen, the lobby, and the sittin’ room when I first got here. No much there. Been spendin’ most of my time here. Startin’ at the bottom and workin’ up seems as good a plan as any. There’s no order to this rat’s nest.”

“I noticed. What about the store— er, lumber room?” She wondered if he was dragging matters out just to irritate Eric, or if he was more meticulous in his working habits than in keeping his room tidy.

“Take more than one pair of hands to fetch and carry around that lot. I was thinkin’ of savin’ it for last.”

Rebecca wouldn’t have minded saving the cold, quiet upper room for last, but it wouldn’t seem so daunting after she’d grown used to the place. “Because the lumber room might have the most valuable things?”

“No.” He tossed a yellowed linen tablecloth onto a paper and twine package that might have contained anything from a Tupperware canister to the Holy Grail. “I doot it has the least value. Wouldn’t John have put his dearest things out where he could show them off?”

“But you said this morning he probably didn’t know what he had.”

“We’ll never ken what he had if we dinna look at it!” he retorted, a little louder than was necessary. Rebecca felt a prickle of shame; she’d been baiting him. Odd, she never acted like this normally, she was always Miss Meek and Mild, the harmless drudge. With a sudden laugh that made Michael’s brows knit, nonplussed, she chose a notebook labeled “Prophet’s Chamber” and asked, “There?”

“Be my guest,” he said, bowing her out the door.

In a chair in the study Rebecca found Dun Iain’s presiding genius, Darnley, curled up in the feline version of the fetal position. He acknowledged her entrance with his usual salute, a blink of the eyes and a stiffening of the whiskers. She paused a moment to stroke his sleek, warm head. Give me, she thought, an animal smaller than a bread box.

Just inside the door to the prophet’s chamber were two snuffboxes and a miniature portrait of a Tudor lady. Hilliard? Rebecca flipped open the notebook. Hilliard it was. That was a valuable piece the museum would want. She found a pencil on the desk and checked it off.

A faint gurgling and rumbling must be water pipes. Above the desk a brown stain spread like a Rorschach blot across the plain plaster ceiling. A pipe had leaked, or else someone had let the tub in what was now her bathroom overflow. Rebecca found a sheet of paper and made a list of repairs: shelf in pantry, stain on ceiling.

The armchair in front of the desk was a dilapidated affair of heavy varnished wood, the kind of chair Rebecca associated with bank presidents in prewar movies. It was not only not an antique, it probably wouldn’t even make a decent pile of firewood. She perched on its edge, opened the roll top of the desk, and winced. The jumbled contents threatened to spew into her lap. Sparring with Michael and flirting with Eric were all well and good, but now it was time to prove herself. She dug in.

Three hours later she sat back with a sigh. She had scrounged through the desk and the filing cabinets, searched the walls and the floors, and uncovered two other alcoves. No, Michael wasn’t dragging the inventory out just to irritate Eric. He was being remarkably efficient. It would take at least a forty-hour week just to catalog the papers in this room, let alone decide what was valuable, what was useful, and what could be used to wrap the garbage. And she had envisioned herself spending quiet evenings typing away at her dissertation. As usual, reality fell far short of fantasy.

So far Rebecca had found three snuffboxes and the Hilliard miniature that were mentioned in the notebook, and a yellowed letter written in the spidery script of the eighteenth century that was not. Of the two small daggers, the one the notebook labeled an 18th century sgian dubh looked promising. The other, a 19th century fish-cleaner, didn’t. A sheaf of letters and military orders signed by various historical personages was also duly listed, although several, including James of Monmouth and Robert Louis Stevenson, were missing. But it wasn’t surprising that some things would have been moved around in the forty years since James typed up the inventory.

She’d even found the typewriter itself, in its case in the corner. Its age and decrepitude made Rebecca’s tired machine look positively opulent.

What she hadn’t found was the Erskine letter. She’d have to search the inventories for it. The records of its sale to John in 1900 had percolated into academia; it had existed then. Fortuitous that Arabella Erskine, Countess of Mar, had defied discretion and written her sister about trading her newborn child for Mary Stuart’s suddenly and shockingly dead one.

Well, Rebecca thought, if I were giving up my child to be king of Scotland, and later England as well, I’d want someone to know it.

The file drawer of the desk was crammed with more black notebooks, James’s diaries, apparently. These were handwritten in faded sepia ink and shed newspaper clippings like a maple sheds autumn leaves. She’d have to go over those some other time.

As she struggled to wedge the one notebook she’d removed back into the drawer, she glimpsed a bit of white at the far back corner. She pulled it out. It was a scrap of James’s handwriting, maybe an abandoned draft of a letter: “— ever problem you are having you have brought upon yourself. I cannot help you any more than I already have. Your threats are… ”

Useless? Rebecca concluded. Interesting. Maybe James’s life hadn’t been quite as dull as she’d thought. She put the scrap inside one of the diaries, shut the drawer, and looked up.

Above the desk was the most striking item in the room, a four foot long claymore dated to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s final defeat at the battle of Culloden in 1746. The sword looked lethally heavy, if far from sharp.

Rebecca cleared a spot on the desk, propped her feet on it, and unfolded the 18th century letter. Inside was a curl of hair almost the color of her own, a light tawny brown. She held the paper to the light. Oh— another lock of Prince Charlie’s hair. So much of his hair was in the stately homes of Scotland that the Young Pretender must’ve worn a powdered wig for more than fashion. Unless, like modern Hollywood stars, his flunkies handed out hair only purporting to be his.

It would be easy enough to check the handwriting on the paper against proven samples of Charles Edward’s. He was— Rebecca counted back— Mary’s grandson’s grandson’s grandson, heir to her feckless grace. If Charles really were Mary’s descendant. If James VI and I had been her son, not an Erskine… .

Rebecca yawned. In this warm, snug room counting crowned heads seemed only slightly more stimulating than counting sheep. A beam of afternoon sun shone in the window, faded, and shone again, teasing gleams from the sword on the wall. The sound of the wind was muted into a gentle lullaby. The subtle gurgle of water was as soothing as the rush of a mountain stream. The lock of hair was soft in her hand.