Iona Portal (5 page)

Roger looked puzzled.  “Lys, the police report said you were alone.  No one else was found at the scene, and there’s no chance anyone could have walked away.”

 “No, Roger… Kareina was
with me,” Lys objected, trying to sort out her memories.  ”She was the one who invited me to that god-awful party in the first place.  I never would have been on that road if not for her.”

 “What can you tell me about her?”

 “Not much, really.  I’ve only known her for a few weeks.  Her last name is Procel.  She’s about twenty-three, thin, with long black hair.  She said she works down the hall at another office.  I’m not even sure which one.  She said she’s new in town and I looked like a friendly face.  She always dropped by on her break to talk.”

 “Lys, you’re still pretty shaken up.” Roger sighed. “I’ll check with your office about Kareina, but believe me, you don’t need to worry about her.  There’s no way anyone was with you in the car.”

PART TWO:  PILGRIMAGE

Chapter Five:  Patrick

THE PORT OF OBAN, WESTERN COAST OF SCOTLAND

The deck plates shuddered with a deep rumble as the 4800 ton
Isle of Mull
eased from her moorings and began churning across the placid waters of Oban harbor.  The
Isle of Mull
was a handsome vessel, over 90 meters in length, one of the largest in the Calmac fleet.  Her gleaming white superstructure was accentuated by a distinctive red and black funnel towering above her decks, but her most notable feature was the company name proudly emblazoned across her black hull in huge white letters:  
Caledonian MacBrayne.

The MacBrayne fleet is the lifeblood of the Western Isles.  There’s a saying in the west of Scotland, “The earth belongs to the Lord, and all it contains, except the Western Isles, for they belong to the MacBraynes.”   That statement is not far from truth.  The tiny, windswept isles of the Inner and Outer Hebrides have but one real lifeline to the rest of the world: the intrepid fleet of ferries operated by Caledonian MacBrayne, Inc.

Patrick O’Neill stood wearily in line at the ship’s bar.  It had been a long journey but he was nearing its end.  Two years ago Patrick was a twenty-nine year-old investment counselor with a corner office in one of the gleaming glass towers of Dallas.   He thought he had it all—until his marriage disintegrated in a messy divorce in which his wife got the house, the kids, and everything else important to him.  After six more months of pointless activity, he walked away from his job, cashed in what remained of his investments, and bought a ticket to Ireland.

Through the year-long trauma of the divorce, Patrick had been tantalized by a recurring dream.  In the dream he sat on a green hill with the sea in the distance.  Huge slabs of rock protruded from the ground around him.  The countryside was rugged with few trees, mostly moss and grass.  What he remembered most was the green.  It was a shade of green he’d never seen in Texas.  He assumed it was his ancestral homeland, Ireland.  

There’d been a
presence
with him on that hill.  He had no name for it, but it was very real.  Every night as he approached the top of the hill, the presence enveloped him.  It penetrated his pores and filled him with an overwhelming sense of peace and well-being.  Nothing else seemed to matter as long as he was in that presence.  He always awoke from the dream feeling strengthened and refreshed.

The dream-hill became his sanctuary, a refuge of healing amidst the turmoil of his shattered life.  Month after month it was the same.  At the end of long days filled with frustration, anger, and loss, Patrick would yearn for sleep and hope the dream would return.  And it always did. 

After the divorce was finalized the dream stopped coming, yet the Hill still called to him.  When he set out for Ireland he told his friends he was searching for his roots.  But he was really looking for the Hill.

Ireland had been as green as the pictures in the travel books, but he never found the Hill.  His itinerary had retraced the life of Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.  He wasn’t sure why Patrick was important to him.  He’d grown up Catholic but rarely attended Mass.  In college he dabbled briefly in Buddhism, had a two-year fascination with “New Age,” and ended up a mildly convinced agnostic. 

Yet he somehow felt a connection to his namesake, Patrick.  Guidebook in hand, he walked the Hill of Slemish where Patrick tended sheep as a teenager.  He visited the Hill of Slane, where Patrick defied the High King of Tara.  He finished his tour on Cathedral Hill in Downpatrick standing over Patrick’s grave.  He had no words to describe it, but being in Ireland was somehow a healing experience.  Yet he knew his quest was not over.

There was still one place calling to him:  a tiny, storm-swept isle off the western coast of Scotland.  Though seemingly nothing more than a treeless sliver of rock and earth, historians consider the island to be one of the most significant places on earth.  It’s been given many names over the millennia, but in recent centuries, it’s simply been called
Iona
.

Yet Iona is not easily reached.  Patrick’s cramped coach flight from Dublin to Glasgow had been followed by an hours-long rail journey to the city of Oban on the Scottish coast—a trip made infinitely longer by the screaming child in the seat behind him.  After an overnight stay in Oban (which included visits to several of the local pubs), he awoke just in time to catch the MacBrayne ferry to Mull. 

Yet his journey was still not over.  Disembarking at Craignure on Mull’s eastern shore, Patrick would next board a tourist bus for a long trek westward—traveling a winding one-lane road the length of the island—to the village of Fionnphort on Mull’s western tip.  At Fionnphort he’d catch yet another ferry for the crossing to Iona.

The summer he graduated from college, Patrick signed-up for an adventure tour and spent ten days backpacking the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.  At the time, Patrick thought Mongolia was the remotest place on earth.  It now struck him that Mongolia had been much more easily accessed than this little Scottish Isle.

Patrick slapped a five-pound note on the bar and ordered a pint of Velvet, the thick, foamy Scottish ale he’d discovered the night before in a crowded Oban pub.  Pint in hand, he retreated to the rear observation deck to watch the port of Oban and the western shore of Scotland fade into the distance.

Driven by its eight-cylinder, 3100 horsepower Mirlees Blackstone diesel, the
Isle of Mull
was already making fifteen knots across the smooth water of the sound.  The ship was designed to carry a full complement of 80 cars and 972 passengers but the summer crowds were still weeks away.  Lightly loaded today, she carried barely half her maximum capacity.  

Patrick took a seat next to an older man who looked like a college professor enjoying an early summer vacation.

The morning was bright and clear, and unusually warm for this early in the year.  Patrick leaned back in the deck chair, stretched out his legs, and enjoyed the sensation of the warm breeze gently ruffling his hair.  He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 
This sure beats flying in a jumbo jet.

Taking a sip of the ice-cold Velvet, Patrick savored its rich smoothness while surveying a scene of almost surreal beauty.  Receding behind him was the port of Oban, “gateway to the Western Isles.”  Tucked at the foot of massive wooded hills, the port was laid out in a natural amphitheatre with the harbor as the stage. At the end of the 19
^th
century, Oban flourished as a Victorian seaside resort and many of the buildings still had that feel.  Gingerbread villas clung to the hillside while majestic old hotels lined the Esplanade.  Along George Street, busy shops and restaurants provided a quaint backdrop for the fishing boats crowded against the quay.   Further to the south stood the historic Caledonian
Hotel
with its ornate façade of towers and gables rising above the harbor.

As Patrick studied the scene his attention was captured by an unusual structure on the hill above the town.  Looming high above the picturesque Victorian village was a structure that looked for all the world like the coliseum of Rome.

Patrick’s mouth opened, and without thinking, he said aloud, “What the hell is
that!
”

“Ah,” the man next to him responded, “sounds like you’ve noticed McCaig's Tower.”

Patrick glanced at the man.  He appeared to be in his early-fifties with an untrimmed beard, horn-rimmed glasses, and a floppy white hat pulled down over a tangle of graying hair.  Yet he carried a quiet air of confidence and intelligence.

“What
is
that thing?” Patrick asked.  “It looks like the Roman coliseum.”

“That’s exactly what it’s supposed to look like.”  The stranger laughed.  “It was built by a wealthy banker named John Stuart McCaig back in 1897.  Folks around here call it McCaig's Folly.  Old man McCaig wanted to build a replica of the Roman coliseum here in the Scottish highlands and fill it with statues of himself and his family.  It was supposedly a philanthropic project to provide work for the unemployed stonemasons of Scotland.  McCaig only got the outer wall completed before his death, when his sister went to court to stop the project.  It’s a public park now.  Really quite lovely.”

Patrick offered his hand.  “Patrick O’Neill… Dallas, Texas.  You sound like an American, but you seem to know the countryside here pretty well.”

The man shook his hand and laughed again, “Call me Michael.  Michael Fletcher.  I’m actually Canadian, though I’ve spent some time in the states.  But I’ve spent many
more
years studying this part of the world.  Sort of an amateur historian.  Tell me, what brings an Irish cowboy to the Western Isles?”

“That’s a long story,” Patrick replied, sipping his pint.  “I grew up in the states, but had an Irish grandmother who loved to tell me stories of the old country; so I’ve set out to explore my roots.  I’ve spent the last four weeks in Ireland and have one more place to visit.”

“And that would be…
Iona?”

“How did you know?”

“You’ve the look of a pilgrim about you,” Michael observed, “and pilgrims come from all over the world to Iona.” 

“I don’t know about the pilgrim part… ” Patrick responded, laughing.  “I grew up Catholic but ditched religion in college.  I’m an agnostic now, which doesn’t make me very good ‘pilgrim’ material.

“My interest in Iona is sheer curiosity.  My grandmother’s stories of the old country included one puzzling detail.  She said our ancestors left Ireland and for almost two hundred years lived on the Island of
Hy
—what’s now called Iona.  She described
Hy
as a mystical place.  ‘An isle of lights and faeries’ she used to call it.  She said our ancestors built a school there, attended by kings and princes from all over the world… and faeries would come down and teach them.”  Patrick laughed and shook his head, glancing at Michael to gauge his reaction.  “I guess that’s one part of our family history I may never understand, but I had to come here and see the place for myself.”

“That sounds like Iona, all right,”  Michael said with a straight face and stared out across the water as though focusing on something Patrick couldn’t see. 

Michael excused himself and returned a few minutes later with his own pint. 

The
Isle of Mull
had passed out of the Bay of Oban into the broad estuary known as the Firth of Lorne.  To the right they were passing the
Island of Lismore
, marked by the picturesque Lismore Lighthouse at its southern tip.

  Visible ahead, off the port bow, was their destination, the ship’s namesake, the Island of Mull.  The hulking form of an old castle was perched on the cliffs above the shore.

“Michael, do you know what that castle is?”

“That’s called
Duart
castle,” Michael answered, pausing to take a sip of his ale.  “It’s the ancestral home of the Clan Maclean… dates back to the thirteenth century. 
Duart
means ‘Black Point’ in Gaelic, and that is where it sits—on the point—standing guard over the Sound of Mull.  Quite a history this place has.”

Michael stood and scanned the water on the port side of the ship, finally pointing to a jagged rock just breaking the surface of the water.  “Do you see that rock over there?  It’s called
Lady’s Rock
.  It’s only visible at low tide.

“They say that in 1523, Lachlan Cattenach, the ruler in residence over at Duart, tied up his wife Margaret and marooned her on that rock, hoping she’d be drowned by the incoming tide.

“When the rock reappeared above the waves the following morning, Lachlan sadly reported her death to her brother, the Earl of Argyll.” 

Michael eased back into his seat, “Unfortunately for Lachlan, that wasn’t the end of the story.  A few weeks later the Earl invited Lachlan to dinner at his castle, supposedly to console him on the death of his wife.  As he entered the hall, Lachlan was shocked to discover Margaret sitting next to her brother at the head table.