Ashes to Ashes (51 page)

“You need a cat,” Michael replied, “just tae keep you in your place.”

Rebecca opened the inventory and peered into a crate. “An old bell. The tag is labeled ‘Iona’.” It was surprisingly heavy, cold and rusty in her hands, but the clapper was still attached. When she gave it a push with her forefinger the bell rang with a muted resonance. Green lawns, gray stones, and the murmur of the sea. Rebecca smiled again.

“It sounds like an abbey bell,” said Michael, “callin’ you tae vespers, quiet and peace.”

Rebecca laid it carefully down. “What’ve you got?”

“Carved oak roundels from Stirling Castle,” he announced, lifting a circular piece of wood cut with the bas-relief of a woman in a Renaissance headdress. “They’ll fill the gaps in the collection quite nicely.”

Rebecca added them to the list. “How many more crates to go?”

“No too many. We’ll be rushed gettin’ it a’ packed, though. You’ve booked the removal lorry for next week?”

“Yes.” She sipped at her tea. Next week. Michael would be leaving for Scotland in less than two weeks, taking the artifacts back home to the Museum, to assorted collectors, to his own satisfaction. Although his satisfaction, she thought, needed more than artifacts.

They’d spent the past three evenings close together in the sitting room, listening to music ranging from Mozart to Silly Wizard. Sharing an occasional non-invasive kiss had seemed like reckless bravado to sensibilities as raw as tenderized meat. They were tired, Rebecca told herself. They were frightened. Two out of the last three nights she’d waked up screaming, wracked by nightmares of fire and darkness and bodies falling into snow. Two out of the last three nights Michael had come to her and held her, lying circumspectly outside the covers, until she’d gone back to sleep. His own dreams, he’d admitted, were just as bad.

For someone who’d once been a thunderstorm on her horizon, being with Michael now was like sitting before a glowing hearth, the kettle bubbling on the stove, the kittens of her wits purring in his lap, and the rain falling softly, gently, harmlessly outside.

“Right,” said Michael from the depths of another crate. “Here’s a grand paintin’. Landseer, ‘Queen Victoria on Horseback.’ And her ghillie Brown holdin’ the reins. I’ve seen photos o’ this one— thought it’d been lost. And look here. ‘The Entry of George the Fourth at Holyroodhouse’. Dinna he look a treat, kilt and a’.”

Rebecca peered over his shoulder as he pulled the painting half out of its box. “You’re going to have a choice collection to take back.”

“Aye,” he said, but with a frown rather than a smile. Darnley’s padded paws on the stone were suddenly loud.

“Why,” Rebecca asked, “did you tell me that night to sod off? Trying to protect me from implication in your scheme?”

“Like I’d warn you away from toxic waste, lass. Serves me right, takin’ a notion tae you.” Michael’s expression implied he’d turned around in a dark alley and found her behind him, knife upraised. “And meddlin’ aboot in other folks’ bluidy plots,” he added.

“It’s over now, Michael. Can’t you come down off the guilt trip?”

“When the trip ends, I’ll be comin’ doon.” He cupped her face, his thumb teasing her cheek. “I also left you that night because— well, wi’ you, hen, it’ll no be cheap, or casual, or anything but honest.”

Rebecca felt herself blush against his hand. But he wasn’t making any assumptions she hadn’t. “So I’ve gone from being a kitten, fuzzy and helpless, to being a squawking, scratching hen. That’s an improvement.”

He grinned that heart-stoppingly candid grin. “Aye, that it is.”

She kissed his hand. “There’re more boxes to open, love.”

“Then let’s be gettin’ on wi’ it.”

In amiable companionship, they got on with it. That evening and all day Thursday they worked and talked. Thursday evening Rebecca reluctantly poured the last drops of the Laphroaig down the kitchen drain and threw the bottle away. That night she climbed to the top of the house and sat on the shadowed steps where Eric had died. She remembered it happening, and yet it was like a play she’d seen years ago, images but no sensations. The portrait of John Forbes stared into oblivion, personality erased by time and passion. Nothing of him lingered. Nothing of Elspeth or James. Nothing of Eric.

The sound of the pipes coiled sensuously up the stairwell and with a sigh of acceptance Rebecca went down to listen.

Neither Wednesday nor Thursday nights did she have nightmares. Neither night did Michael come to her bed. And she didn’t approach his, even as the kisses in the sitting room grew less cautious.

By Friday afternoon they’d worked their way to the last items in the inventories, the regimental flags in the entry. Michael unfurled a tattered cloth, saying, “My middle name’s Ian— quite appropriate.”

“Mine’s even better,” replied Rebecca. “Marie.” She took the end of the flag. “Oh, nice. Cameronian Rifles, World War I.”

“Last night there were four Maries,” sang Michael, his tenor vibrating in the small room. “Tonight there’ll be but three. There was Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton, and Mary Carmichael, and me.” He shook out another flag. “Black Watch. I’ll be takin’ these.”

Rebecca closed her notebook and regarded the serene marble face of the Queen of Scots. “And the death mask.”

“Dr Graham, my boss, he’d no let me back in the country if I left that behind.”

Rebecca yawned. “Then there’s the sarcophagus. I guess the State’ll just have to leave it here. A solid chunk of marble must weigh tons… .”

They turned and looked at each other, eyes lit by wild surmise. “Why should it be solid?” Michael demanded.

“How fast can you get that crowbar?” Rebecca dropped the notebook with a thud and fell to her knees beside the carved marble of the tomb. A dark line ran beneath the lid where it overhung the sides by two inches. Shadow? She cursed the dim ceiling light, scrambled up, ran into the kitchen, grabbed the flashlight and ran back.

No, by Mary’s garters, that wasn’t a shadow, that was a hairline crack.

Michael galloped through the storeroom door, crowbar held like a knight errant’s lance. “Stand aside,” he ordered.

With a tooth-grating squeal the effigy shuddered and the lid slid aside. Rebecca shone the light into the dark interior of the sarcophagus. But there wasn’t much to see, only a thin leather portfolio gray and dismal at the bottom of the hole. Michael reached, strained, and hauled it out. Dust eddied and he sneezed.

“Bless you.” Rebecca snatched the portfolio from his hands. Art deco tooling. 1920’s. The papers inside were from the same era, receipts, a list of the items in the storeroom— thanks a lot, they’d had to make their own— and a letter from an art dealer in San Francisco. Amid the papers was a thick piece of parchment, yellowed with age. The ink on it was faded, the writing absurdly spiky. She squinted, turning it this way and that, Michael’s breath hot on the back of her neck.

It was written in 16th century Scots. “… being departit from the place quhair I left my hart… remember zow of the purpois of the Lady Reres… remember how gif it wer not to obey zow, I had rether be deid or I did it; my hart bleidis at it… . “At the bottom was a scrawling signature, “Zour gude sister, Arabella.”

Rebecca whooped, “This is it! This is it! The Erskine Letter!”

“I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Michael. “The first place and the last in the whole blasted house!” He swept her up and danced her across the entry and into the kitchen, where he plucked the parchment from her hand and spread it out on the table. “You’ll have a’ the copies you want, I promise you that. And I’ll translate it for you before I go.”

“I can handle a translation,” Rebecca said, recovering her breath.

She bent over the table, her head colliding with Michael’s, mouthing the words. Ten minutes later she sighed. “Well, so much for that.”

“It’s nae good, is it? James was Mary’s right and proper?”

“Arabella here did have a baby, but it died. That’s why she’s talking about her heart bleeding. Lady Reres— Margaret Forbes— hired someone else to be James’s wet nurse but took the credit herself.”

“Too little scandal there,” Michael commented, “tae wake a good gray historian from his afternoon snooze in the library.”

“I didn’t have any stake in the answer one way or the other.” Rebecca shook her head. “No scandal. That figures. I can’t decide if that makes it an anticlimax or a relief.”

“It’s a’ in the writin’ up. If anyone can make it into a— what do you call it, a dog and pony show— you can.”

“Thanks.” She tickled him affectionately, and went to find a cardboard box for the precious parchment.

That night she sat up late translating the letter, Michael dutifully keeping her pencils sharp. It was only when she was making coffee the next morning she realized it was Christmas Eve. In honor of the occasion Michael laid a fire in the Hall, and went into town to get wine, fruit, cheese and crackers for a picnic on the hearth. While he was gone Rebecca wrapped up the present she and Jan had found in the mall, a sweatshirt version of a soup can label reading “Campbell’s Cream of the Crop.” Then she set her typewriter on the Hall table and began typing packing lists. The end was altogether too near. But Mary Stuart herself had said, “In my end is my beginning.”

When Michael returned with the food he also had the mail. A box from L.L. Bean he whisked away before Rebecca could see it, leaving her to deduce it was her present— a tartan flannel nightgown, probably. A box from Rebecca’s mother turned out to be a care package of cookies and fruitcake, the enclosed card admonishing Rebecca to share the goodies with “that English guy.”

It was the nicest Christmas Eve she could remember. In some celestial alchemy the hazy day alloyed itself into clear night, moon and stars hanging in the almost invisible branches of the maples like ornaments on a Christmas tree. In the glow of the fire the Hall was pleasantly cool, not cold, and the light of the chandelier was soft and subtle. The wine was smooth and fruity, the crackers crisp, and the cookies melted on the tongue.

Later, Michael played the pipes while Rebecca filled boxes with books, her mind doing an effortless backstroke through the music—”The Sound of Sleat”, “Finley McRae”, “The Cowal Gathering,”, “Bonnie Dundee”, “The Sweet Maid of Mull”. And, again, he played “No Nighean Donn, Gradh Mo Chridhe”, slowly, lyrically, like the touch of a kiss upon a lover’s skin.

She’d just packed a book of Gaelic songs. She pulled it out again and checked the index. There it was, translated as “My brown-haired maiden, love of my heart.” Suppressing a grin, she put the book back in the box.

Michael started playing his own transcription of Runrig’s “Going Home”. He was getting to go home. He had a home to go to. When the melody ended the hum of the drones lingered on, stroking her senses. Michael laid down the pipes and pulled Rebecca to her feet, his hands squeezing her arms, his face set with resolution. Say it, she thought. I’m ready to hear it.

“Rebecca, come home wi’ me.”

Home. A place to settle down. Someone to settle down with. The hearth, the kettle and the kittens, enough to withstand any thunderstorm… . Something in her chest punctured and deflated. “I can’t.”

“I had a bed-sitter in William Street,” he went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “but I could get something larger for us. What I’d like is a flat off the Royal Mile. The old wynds are bein’ tarted up by the MacYuppies. But I canna afford one o’ those. Yet.”

She echoed his manic grin, spread her hands across his shirt and felt the rhythm of his breath. His strong and gentle arms slipped around her waist. “I couldn’t get a job there. An American professor of British history looking for a position in Edinburgh? Talk about coals to Newcastle!”

“We’d find something for you, love.”

“I have to write my dissertation,” she insisted, as much for herself as for him. “If I don’t get that PhD, Michael, I don’t want to be able to blame it on you.”

“Ah,” he said, as though she’d just hit him in the stomach. His brows were clouds over the clarity of his eyes. “But I have tae go back, I have tae tend tae the artifacts.”

Rebecca pressed herself against his chest. Medieval executioners had ripped the living hearts out of their victims. When he left she’d find out just how that felt. “I’ll come next summer. Even though we’d be as poor as Burns’s church mouse.”

“Poor, but hardly timid.” He released her and picked up the wine. The cork was attached to a metal cap— one flick of his thumbs and it popped out of the bottle. The broken seal left a metal ring around the bottle neck. He pulled that off, lifted Rebecca’s left hand, settled the thin strip of metal around her fourth finger. “There. We’re engaged. To have substantive talks as soon as possible, at the least.”

He gave no quarter, and expected none. “You lunatic,” Rebecca said. “I love you.” She pulled his head down and kissed him, savoring wine and the elusive tang of peat on his tongue.

“It’s high time,” he said against her mouth, “we were makin’ love.”

Yes it was, time ripened to inevitability. “My place or yours? Mine’s closer.”

An expression of gratified relief swept his face. Rebecca laughed. He took her firmly by the shoulders and steered her toward the door. She couldn’t resist saying after two steps, “Of course you have to rush out to the chemist’s shop now, don’t you?”

He retorted, “I’ve already done my shoppin’ the day.”

“Confident, weren’t you? But I’m teasing you. Matters are— well, taken care of.”

“Aye, I saw the packet of pills in your room.”

“Who didn’t?” Rebecca moaned, and started up the stairs.

With perfect timing, the phone rang. They shared exasperated grins. “Go answer it,” Michael said with a kiss and a tickle. “I’ll tidy the Hall.”

It was Jan. “Hi!” she said to Rebecca’s slightly jaundiced hello. “Just called to wish you a happy Christmas Eve. If you don’t have any plans, we were mulling some wine… ”

“Thank you, Jan, but we have plans.”

“Don’t forget your plans for New Year’s Eve are our party. For which I’m asking a favor. Can Michael play the pipes for us? Does he know ‘Auld Lang Syne’?”

Michael came into the kitchen to throw the wrappings of their picnic into the trash. Rebecca said, “Jan’s asking if you know ‘Auld Lang Syne’?”