Treasure of the Celtic Triangle (46 page)

As for Katherine’s new house on Mochras Head, due to be completed within a year, it was obvious that Courtenay would not be displacing her from the manor, at least anytime soon. After wondering briefly if she had been too hasty in constructing a new home, Katherine realized that Gwyneth and Percy, as Master and Mistress of Westbrooke Manor, would one day want to have a family of their own and occupy the manor’s family quarters on the second floor. Therefore, she would herself take up residence in her new home whenever it suited Gwyneth for her to do so. Notwithstanding that she herself would be legal trustee of the estate until Gwyneth herself turned twenty-five, Katherine quickly began to defer to Gwyneth regarding future plans.

The glaring uncertainty about the future remained to be Courtenay. He returned from London after a month, clearly aware that the prospects of his legal contestation of Gwyneth’s position were not favorable. He was rarely seen. What his future held was anyone’s guess. Thus far, only Katherine knew of the financial dilemma facing him. Whether she would have bailed him out and cleared off his debt to Litchfield had she been able, she could not have said. But as her every available pound had been sunk into the construction of the new house, it would be two or three years before her resources would sufficiently accumulate to keep Courtenay from serious legal problems. If Litchfield pressed the matter to the extreme and brought charges of fraud against Courtenay, the specter of jail was not out of the question. But she did not see what she could do. She had no intention of asking for Edward’s help.

In late May, a month after Percy’s and Gwyneth’s return from Ireland, a tremendous storm blew in off the North Atlantic, consuming Ireland in wind and hurricane tides. The battering spread through the Irish Sea to the west coast of Scotland and Wales, threatening to flood their low-lying coastal villages. The fishermen of Llanfryniog secured their boats in the harbor as best they could and prepared to ride out the siege, hoping they would not find their boats in splinters when it was over.

The worst of the storm hit between three and five o’clock in the morning. Whether anyone in north Wales was still asleep was doubtful. Most lay awake in their beds, listening to the dreadful tempest doing its best to blow the roofs from their houses. Thankfully those roofs were of heavy Welsh slates!

Percy finally rose about six thirty, thinking himself likely the first in the great mansion to venture from his room. Instead, he found Florilyn and Katherine already in the breakfast room with tea. Mrs. Drynwydd had just put out a pot of fresh coffee.

Steven joined them a few minutes later. “Is the roof still on?” he laughed.

“I thought my window would burst,” said Florilyn. “I kept thinking the glass was about to shatter and the rain come splashing in all over my bed!”

“When it is light, Steven,” said Katherine, “we will have to check all the upper floors and the garret for leaks.”

“I will see to it, as well as the windows on the west and north of the building.”

“Where’s Gwyneth?” asked Percy, glancing about at the others. “I would expect her to be up at the crack of dawn. She loves tempestuous weather!”

“I think I heard her door close and footsteps in the hall,” said Florilyn.

“When?”

“Earlier … an hour or more ago.”

“Oh, no—then she’s out in it!” laughed Percy.

“Do you think she’s in any danger?” said Katherine.

“Not for a second,” answered Percy. “She could no more be in danger from the weather than Steven could from a sheep. She loves whatever face nature puts on and fears none of them, except snow in the mountains. She does have a healthy regard for the perils of winter.”

Percy went to the window and gazed out. The dawn was still dark and gray. Fierce winds whipped at the trees as if it would uproot them with a single blast. In spite of his words to Katherine, the sight sent a momentary shudder up his spine. This wind was stronger than he had ever seen. It could sweep Gwyneth off her feet in an instant. If she stood too near the cliff edge or too close to the sea at the harbor … He shuddered to think what might be the result.

After a cup of coffee and a few minutes more conversation, he excused himself, hurried back to his room, bundled himself in what protection from the elements he could, grabbed a second rain slicker, and then left the house by the back stairs and side door.

A great blast of wind nearly knocked him over as he came round the side wall of the house and into the seaward brunt of the storm. Recovering himself, he set off down the drive toward the plateau, bending hard into the face of the tumult. There were only two places where he expected to find Gwyneth. This time he would check
both
.

The rain had let up since the worst of its drenching onslaught between midnight and three. Percy trudged across the spongy, soaked turf toward Katherine’s new house. As he passed the house, he could see clearly to the point of the promontory of Mochras Head. It was obvious that Gwyneth was not there or had been blown into the sea!

Percy turned toward town but then paused. He glanced back up at the newly constructed stone walls of Katherine’s proposed home. A dozen or more openings where the windows would be installed seemed to look out upon the coastline as if from dead, hollow eye sockets. One day this house would be full of life, Percy thought. Those window-eyes would gaze out upon the countryside with light from within. As yet, however, the edifice was an empty shell awaiting the life of human touch, in the same way that the human animal had been an empty shell until implanted with the soul-life of God’s divine touch.

Moved by some impulse, he turned and walked toward the house. He entered through one of several openings where doors, like the windows, would eventually be installed. He had been inside the house with Steven a time or two since his arrival back in Wales but had paid little attention to the details of its interior. Now he stood gazing about in the darkness of a stormy morning. All around him were the signs of construction—piles of boards, half-finished walls and ceilings, and bare floors. The wind whistled and sang through its many openings, up and down staircases, around corners, and through vacant rooms.

Slowly Percy made his way to the stone staircase at the center of the ground floor and up to the landing above the first floor. Something seemed to guide his steps. Ahead of him, the centerpiece of the entire house, envisioned in Katherine’s mind’s eye from the beginning, was what would be the large central sitting room, facing due west toward the promontory, its seaward wall comprised nearly in its entirety of three enormous windows, giving the entire room a spectacular vantage point of the promontory. The coastline stretched away north and south as far as the eye could see. The view straight ahead looked out westward toward Ireland, whose own coastline, Katherine hoped, on a clear day, might faintly be seen.

As Percy entered, across the great room, he saw a figure seated on the bare stone floor six or eight feet away from the opening of the largest central window.

The early riser knew whose footsteps were approaching behind her without turning.

Percy sat down beside her and took her hand in his.

“There could not be a house with a more beautiful view than this,” said Gwyneth quietly.

“How long have you been here?” asked Percy.

“I don’t know,” replied Gwyneth. “The storm drew me. I think I have changed my mind about Lady Katherine’s new house. It is the perfect place to have built it. How did you know where to find me?”

“I didn’t. This time, if you weren’t here, I was planning to check the harbor next!”

They sat for a few minutes in silence, gazing out at the wild, windy, gray sky and sea blended in turbulent motion. The sea appeared angry, but Gwyneth found it no less mesmerizing than on a day when its radiant blues and greens stretched westward to the land of her birth.

“As I was looking up at the house, with the empty windows,” said Percy, “it reminded me of the empty eyes of the skull you saw in the cave.”

“Don’t remind me. It frightened me to death!”

“If ever a storm were going to wash the sand away from that old pirate again, this would be the time.”

“Do you really think what I saw was the skull of the old pirate from Grannie’s tale, the same man who gave her the coin?”

“I thought she said they found the man dead on the beach the next morning.”

“Oh, that’s right. Then who did the skull belong to?”

“Maybe there were two pirates. What if one of them made it to the cave, but the man Grannie saw didn’t? We’ll go look at low tide as soon as the storm passes!”

“Not me, Percy!”

“Then I will go myself.”

“Well … maybe I will go with you.”

S
EVENTY
-S
IX

The Cave

T
he idea of exploring the cave again did not leave Percy all day. By late afternoon the storm showed signs of easing. When night fell, the moon was making sporadic appearances between the clouds, and the wind had nearly ceased. By then Gwyneth’s enthusiasm for the project had mounted as well.

When Percy appeared in the breakfast room the next morning, she was eagerly waiting for him. “The tide is rising, Percy,” she said excitedly. “It will be high sometime before noon.”

“What—you’ve already been out!”

“Of course,” she laughed.

“Don’t we need a low tide?” he asked.

“Yes, and low tide will be late in the afternoon when the sun is going down. It will be perfect—the sun will shine off the water straight into the cave!”

“This afternoon it is, then. We have a date with a pirate’s skull!”

They were at the beach by three, walking leisurely hand in hand along the shoreline at the water’s edge of the outgoing tide. It was obvious to Gwyneth’s eyes that the storm had wreaked havoc with the coastline she knew so well. She scampered about looking at everything excitedly.

By four o’clock, the water had retreated most of the way out of the cave’s mouth, and they crept inside.

“The cave floor is lower,” said Gwyneth as they made their way into the darkness. “I can tell that the roof is higher above me. The outgoing tide must have removed at least six inches of sand.”

“Can you remember where you saw the skull?”

“I don’t know—about halfway back to the end, I think.”

As their eyes accustomed to the darkness, Percy went to his knees and began to crawl about on all fours, his eyes probing and his hands feeling the sand. Back and forth he crawled, feeling about, digging with his fingers all around the area where Gwyneth thought the skull might have been.

“Wait … there, I felt something hard,” he said at length. He brushed his hands about the spot again. “Yes, there it is—look,” he said, removing bit of wet sand from the spot.

“Look, yes … I think it’s a bit of bone!”

Percy continued to rub away the sand then scooped more away with his hand until the rounded top of a human cranium was clearly visible. “It’s the pirate!”

“Oh Percy, let’s leave him where he is. I don’t think I can bear to see those horrid empty eyes again.”

“We’ve got to solve the mystery. What was he doing here? I’ll go get a spade from Chandos.”

“Wait for me. I don’t want to be left alone … with
him
!”

They ran out of the cave. In the distance, in the direction of the harbor, they saw two horses. As Percy ran toward them, he saw Steven and Florilyn.

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?” laughed Steven. “I think we found the old pirate in the cave!” he replied. “I’m going to find a spade.”

“Pirate!” exclaimed Steven, but already Percy was running toward the village.

A minute later Gwyneth came hurrying up. They dismounted and tied their horses at the harbor.

“What’s this about a pirate, Gwyneth?” asked Florilyn.

“Haven’t I ever told you about the pirate’s skull I found?”

“No … ugh—that sounds horrid!”

“It was in the cave back there, after a terrific storm when the tide was low—just like today. You know the cave, Steven. All the children played in it. I never saw it after that. It was covered over with sand. Percy thinks we’ve found it again. He wants to dig it up.”

“But why?”

“Because when Grannie was a girl, she saw a pirate who had washed up on the beach from a shipwreck. He gave her a gold coin.”

“Gold!”

“The pirate said there was more. But by the next morning he was dead. Look—I’ve got the coin right here. Grannie gave it to me.” She dug in her pocket and pulled out the coin.

Steven and Florilyn looked at it with wide eyes. “I want to see this pirate!” said Steven.

He ran on ahead. By the time Gwyneth and Florilyn followed him into the darkness of the cave, Steven was on his hands and knees where he saw evidence of Percy’s clawing about the cave floor, digging in the hard-packed sand with his fingers.

When Percy returned five minutes later with a spade, Steven had uncovered the eye sockets that had struck such fear into thirteen-year-old Gwyneth Barrie. Immediately, Percy set in with the spade.

“Careful … careful,” said Steven. “If the old fellow’s head is still attached to the rest of him, you don’t want to behead him.”

“Steven … ugh!” exclaimed Florilyn.

Slowly as they dug down, the skull came more into view. Percy gently loosened the sand while Steven scooped it away with his hands. The two girls gradually moved back out of the cave into the sunlight. This was man’s work. They had seen enough!

By now the day was reaching its end. Most of the village men were either on their way to Mistress Chattan’s inn for a pint of ale or were walking home from their day’s labors for evening tea.

The sun continued to settle toward the western horizon. As it did, it sent longer and longer shafts of light into the mouth of the cave where Percy and Steven continued with what seemed to Gwyneth and Florilyn a gruesome task.

It did not take much more excavation before the excited young men were convinced that it was no mere skull Gwyneth had discovered seven years before but the entire skeleton of a man laying his full length toward the mouth of the cave, buried a foot beneath the surface. A few shards of clothing remained, preserved in the salty, sandy grave.