Ashes to Ashes (2 page)

Michael’s eyes glazed. That bit of slang was apparently beyond him, and he wasn’t about to ask what it meant. “Of course there’re no better collections. Forbes was a glorified thief, preyin’ on the poverty of the old families and plunderin’ the birthright of Scotland.”

Typical man— when in doubt, attack. “The laws on the exportation of antiquities weren’t as strict seventy or eighty years ago. If some of the old families had to sell the contents of their attics to feed, clothe and educate their children, maybe they thought they got the better end of the deal.”

“Thirty pieces of silver for the history of Scotland?”

“Which has been dirtied by a bunch of bloody Yanks?” Rebecca asked. “That history belongs to us, too, you know. My great-grandfather Reid left Ayrshire a hundred years ago because he couldn’t support his family in Scotland the Brave.” She cut herself off with a swallow and inspected the dusty toes of her shoes. Hard to believe that was her own voice being so rude to a foreigner, even a contentious one.

She glanced back up to see those brave Scottish eyes sparking not with anger but with a humor as sharp and dry as single-malt whiskey. “And today the old families can’t even sell their birthright. They have to make Disneylands out of their homes. People who a hundred years ago would never have been allowed in the back gate now stand gawpin’ over the Countess of Strathmore’s knickers. You have to be independently wealthy to live in Scotland the now— all the jobs are in soddin’ great factories in Birmingham and Manchester.”

Rebecca, having enjoyed the Countess of Strathmore’s antique underpants, couldn’t resist adding, “In England.”

“Among the Sassenachs,” he returned. “Chance would be a fine thing.”

She assumed that remark was meant as sarcasm, something along the line of “that’ll be the day”, and offered him a grin of complicity. “Sassenach”, huh? The word was more or less Gaelic for “southerner”, but had come to be a derogatory epithet for “English”. No wonder Michael had flared at her when she’d inadvertently assigned him to an English museum; he was a patriot, working for a pittance for his country. Such idealism was refreshing.

The angle of his chin repelled her grin. He scooped impatiently at the strands of hair falling across his forehead. His hair was also brown, shorter on the top and sides than in the back, where it reached the neckband of his shirt. The style was part intellectual, part rock star, part uncivilized Highland chieftain. Rebecca wondered whether he’d had it cut that way on purpose or whether he’d been the victim of a schizophrenic barber.

“Well then,” Michael said, “I’ll help you wi’ your cases. It’s time for tea.” He strolled to the door and clicked off the chandelier.

Twilight surged into the room. The windows, although large, admitted only a thin brassy gleam. The chairs and table, the fireplace and gallery, became only quick sketches of objects, without substance, like shapes in a dream. “Thank you,” Rebecca said to her erstwhile colleague, but he was already out of the room. With a shrug, she followed.

From a solitary bulb in the ceiling of the landing a few watts of light trickled down the steps, causing the oblong shape in the shadowed pit of the entrance hall to phosphoresce. Michael started down two steps at a time. Rebecca walked more slowly, asking, “What is that?”

“What?” He turned at the foot of the stair.

“That… ” She couldn’t say coffin, it couldn’t be that. “That box there,” she ended lamely.

“This?” He found another switch. The shape coalesced into a white marble sarcophagus topped by the effigy of a woman, her cap, gown, and steepled hands finely detailed. Michael bowed, his hands sketching an elaborate flourish. “May I present Her Majesty, Mary, Queen of Scots? Poor, lovely, romantic, stupid Mary. I thought you said you’d studied Forbes and Dun Iain.”

“I have,” Rebecca returned. She knew that the elder Forbes had been besotted by the tragic story of Mary Stuart, and that he’d had a half-size replica of her tomb in Westminster Abbey carved of white marble. “I just didn’t know he kept his toy sarcophagus in his front hall.”

Another quick glint of humor, and Michael went striding across the parking area. Stupid Mary? A fine sentiment for a patriot. Rebecca spared a quick look at the marble face. Supposedly it had been modeled on Mary’s death mask; its serene half-smile suggested the queen had welcomed death, however gruesome. Off with her head indeed!

Rebecca hurried out the door and almost collided with Michael coming back in. “Get your pokes,” he said.

She rescued her sacks of groceries. The bronze evening sunlight, filtered through the maples, swam with russet dust-motes. The farm road was out of sight beyond the trees. Next to the house was a clapboard and shingle shed, and across the dark green lawn, not far from the driveway, was a dovecote, a low rounded structure perforated by stone lattices.

“I need to be lockin’ up the now,” Michael called.

“All right, I’m coming.” Rebecca checked to make sure her car was locked. She barely made it back inside before he swung the door shut with a crash and brandished a ridiculously large iron key. “I suppose,” she said, swept against a set of flags furled at Mary’s regal feet, “the really valuable things in Dun Iain don’t look valuable. You know, all that glitters isn’t gold.”

He shot her a sharp and suspicious glance. She raised her brows indignantly; come on, that remark hardly expressed criminal intentions! “Kitchen’s in there,” he said, jerking his head toward a door to the left of the staircase, and he rammed the key into a massive lock.

Rebecca bit her tongue before she said, “Yes, your grace,” and dropped him a curtsey. Who did he think he was, the Duke of Argyll? Probably whatever scion of the Campbell family was the duke, he was more polite than this, his poor relation. She couldn’t imagine anyone looking— and being— less of a threat than she was.

She found the light switch inside the kitchen door. A wonderfully bright bank of fluorescents illuminated a kitchen much younger than the house. Range, refrigerator, telephone— more incongruities, but she wasn’t about to complain. She laid the sacks on a vinyl-topped work island and put up the perishables: low-fat milk, skinned chicken breasts, and broccoli. She hadn’t been far wrong about Michael’s eating habits. The refrigerator contained only a package of processed cheese, two tomatoes, and an open can of frozen orange juice protruding a spoon like a sneering tongue. A couple of cans of Canadian beer sat on the counter. Efficiently she stowed them away, too, and turned to look for a bread box.

Michael’s Reeboks were padding up the staircase from the entry. “Your room’s on the second floor. The char aired it out yesterday.”

Rebecca abandoned the rest of the groceries, hurried out of the kitchen and up the stairs behind him. She squinted into the room across the landing from the Hall. This was her room?

“This is the study,” Michael announced. A shaft of sunlight picked out a Chippendale secretary piled with papers and trinkets. Beyond the boundary of the light, the shadows, even darker by contrast, swarmed with opaque shapes that might be cabinets and bookcases. A human form stood with preternatural stillness against the far wall. Rebecca’s eyes narrowed. “Suit of armor,” said Michael, and started up the next flight of stairs.

Rebecca rolled her eyes, as much at herself as at him, and followed. What he called the second floor Americans called the third; in British the first floor was the ground floor. Some people had the knack of making her feel dumb. And she’d thought Ray was exasperating.

This staircase was a circular one, so steep and narrow the only banister was a rope wound around the central pillar. The stone treads spiraled upward into shadow. The two sets of footsteps, magnified by the thick walls, wafted faintly up the stairwell and died away in the dark recesses of the upper stories. The shaft was a giant chimney flue, stirring with a chill draft like the breath of the house itself. Rebecca tasted acrid dust, musty leather, and furniture polish.

Michael led the way into a corridor. A solitary light bulb revealed three doors, one in each wall. Michael threw open the one across from the stairwell. “Bathroom and toilet.” The porcelain fixtures were of 1920’s vintage, forty years after the house was built. Fortunately the Forbeses’ taste for authenticity hadn’t extended to chamberpots under the bed.

“Bedroom.” Michael dropped the suitcases inside the left-hand door. One last ray of sunshine illuminated a canopied bed, a huge carved armoire like something out of
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
, a dressing table, and an inappropriate but welcome space heater installed in the fireplace. It looked clean and comfortable; Rebecca hadn’t expected a luxury hotel.

Something oozed suddenly around her ankles. She jerked, imitating Michael’s electric jolt of startlement. The butterscotch and white cat crouched at her feet, the fur on his neck bristling, yellow eyes focused on some infinite point beyond the confines of the landing or of the castle itself. How did he— that’s right, she’d left the front door open when she’d rushed in.

“Well,” said Michael, nudging the animal with his toe and getting a disdainful glance in response. “Greyfriars Bobby watchin’ for old James?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Didn’t you know, then, the man was found dead by the caretaker at the foot of yon staircase?”

Rebecca’s hair bristled like the cat’s. “Here? I— I thought he died in the hospital, I guess.” She cleared her throat. No, there was no chalk mark outlining a body on the broad planks of the floor, just the cat crouching and looking at— at something. “Not surprising a 96-year-old would fall down a spiral staircase. The cat was James’s? What’s his name?” She bent to stroke him. He hollowed his back evasively and glided up the stairs.

Michael actually emitted a chuckle. “James had more of a sense of humor than his dad. He named the cat Darnley.”

“For Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, Mary’s second husband?”

“Always thought old Harry was a bit of a tomcat, myself.”

“He probably fathered more than James I, you’re right.”

“James VI of Scotland, James I of England,” Michael corrected. “If you don’t question that James was really Mary’s bairn.”

Rebecca stared. That was an uncanny shot, coming so close to the subject of her dissertation. If the Erskine letter was really here at Dun Iain, it might answer that exact question. His comment was a good omen, she told herself, and stepped into the bedroom.

The sunlight brightened a magnificent Sargent portrait, a woman in 1890s Gibson Girl garb, hair piled lavishly on her head, bosom upthrust, jewels at her throat. But her face was thin and pale, her eyes too big, hinting of anguish. The jewels seemed to choke her. The artist had skillfully shown the discrepancy between luxury of dress and poverty of emotion. “Mrs. John Forbes?” Rebecca asked, looking up at the painted face. “The candidate for martyrdom? No wonder she died young; it must’ve been quite a burden putting up with the old crock.”

“She could’ve flitted anytime.”

“No, she couldn’t. Back then a woman’s place was with her husband and son. Especially a wealthy woman, with no skills beyond piano-playing and embroidery. Where could she have gone, what could she have done?”

“If you choose to suffer fools gladly, there’s no excuse for you,” Michael prounounced.

And that, Rebecca responded mutely, is certainly something you’ll never be accused of. She pointed to the doorway opposite the bedroom. “What’s in there? More skeletons in closets?”

If Michael heard her teeth grinding he ignored them. “That’s the piper’s gallery. Naething there but a set of ill-tempered pipes. No bogles to leap out and scare you.”

“And you?” she replied with a laugh. “You almost cartwheeled when I spoke to you.” Through the door she glimpsed an elaborate plaster ceiling half erased by twilight, the vault of the two-story Hall.

“You crept up on me,” he repeated indignantly.

Her laugh evaporated for lack of nourishment. Rebecca realized she was exhausted; she’d gotten up before dawn to drive here. She threw her purse onto the bed and flicked open the closest suitcase. “I’d better unpack now.”

Michael thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans and with disgruntled courtesy asked, “Would you like a cuppa?”

“Sure, thanks.”

The soft pad of his footsteps faded away. Somewhere wood creaked and something, a hot water pipe, probably, sighed. Somewhere the cat glided through the shadows searching for its master, James Forbes, the bachelor, the miser. He’d mised enough to keep this place, with its compelling, disturbing discrepancies, going. And his heart was in the right place, to have willed the fruits of his father’s rapacity back to Scotland.

Rebecca laid her makeup case on the dressing table. In the frame of the slightly tarnished mirror was a postcard picture of Dun Iain. Or was it? She pulled the card out and turned it over. The legend declared the structure to be Craigievar, the Aberdeenshire castle which was Dun Iain’s prototype.

If Rebecca had known last summer she’d be working at Craigievar’s bastard child in America, she’d have rented a car in Perth and gone there. But then, Ray would have pointed out that the tour bus was already paid for, the countryside was the equivalent of the wilds of Africa, and the natives drove on the wrong side of the road. “That’s just the way things are, Kitten,” he’d have said patiently, and emitted another cloud of smoke from his pipe.

Prying Ray from his routine for that trip had been quite a feat, even though once there he’d followed her in bemused pleasure from site to site. But then, back home, it’d been back to the schedule. Tuesdays they’d eat pizza, half black olives for him, half green peppers for her. Sundays they’d attend the concert at Clemens Auditorium. Fridays he’d bring his overnight bag to her apartment and turn another page in
The Joy of Sex
.

Three years ago his calm, quiet, predictability had been endearing, evidence of his conscientious effort to do right by her. Rebecca wasn’t sure when it’d become stultifying. She’d told him she’d eat olives if he’d eat peppers, that she’d buy tickets to a football game if he’d go with her, that some Friday she’d like to wing it without the book.