Treasure of the Celtic Triangle (33 page)

It was the prior-arranged responsibility of Litchfield’s assistant, Palmer Sutcliffe, to engage Courtenay sufficiently in conversation, drawing him away from the rest, that Litchfield and his “consultants” might confer more easily with the scruffy man beside him, most of whose teeth were gone and who had apparently made no acquaintance with a razor or a bar of soap in a good while. As they went, Litchfield made pretext of looking about as though with nostalgic thoughts of his boyhood while considering the best potential location for a home in the Snowdonian mountains. He was not, however, thinking of the scenery but rather about the fortune that lay beneath it.

As yet, young Westbrooke had no idea of the exact location where his surveyors had been seen several months before. He preferred to keep it that way. The less the young fool knew, the better.

Coming into the grassy valley that lay in the hollows of the ridge adjacent to the lake, which was his object of interest, Litchfield reined in and dismounted. The others of the party followed his lead.

“Ah, yes,” he exclaimed, “it is just as I remember it!” He began walking about, to all appearances considering the most suitable options for a building site.

In the distance, the sudden sound of many hooves interrupted the tranquility of the scene. They turned to see a dozen or fifteen horses galloping up the far ridge and out of sight.

“What are those?” exclaimed Litchfield.

“There are wild horses all throughout Snowdonia,” replied Courtenay.

“Who do they belong to? They were magnificent!”

“Don’t get any ideas,” rejoined Courtenay. “The horses on any of this land are mine. They roam everywhere, but that gives you no rights if they come onto your thousand acres.”

“Whatever you say,” laughed Litchfield. “Horses are not my business.”

“Mr. Westbrooke,” said Sutcliffe, walking up to Courtenay’s side, “I realize you were interested in seeing the proposed site for Lord Litchfield’s mountain retreat. However, might I propose that you and I now return to the hotel and go over the final documents together?”

“I thought the documents were finalized,” said Courtenay.

“To be sure … yes, mostly they are. There remain just one or two details to be ironed out.”

“Can’t they wait until the final transfer is to take effect?”

“I fear not, Mr. Westbrooke,” said Sutcliffe. “Everything must be in perfect order so that the transfer occurs the day after your assumption of the title. There is also,” he added, “the matter of an additional payment.”

“What additional payment?” asked Courtenay.

“Since we are so close to the final date of closing the transaction, Lord Litchfield thought that he might advance you an additional payment toward the agreed-upon sum. I have a check for one thousand pounds made out to you at the hotel.”

“I see … Well, in that case,” said Courtenay enthusiastically, “I suggest we get back and iron out those details you mentioned … and perhaps add a clause that excludes rights of horseflesh.”

Litchfield smiled to himself as the two returned to their mounts. There were times, he mused, when Palmer Sutcliffe was worth every penny he paid him!

The moment they were out of sight, he walked back to his own horse. “All right,” he shouted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Twenty minutes later, the party of four men arrived at the high overlook. Below them the waters of a small green mountain lake glistened in the sunlight.

“All right, Bagge,” said Litchfield, inching his mount beside his scruffy crony, “it’s time for you to keep up your half of the bargain. I want to know exactly where that gold came from that you showed us in Cardiff.”

“There was some mention in our recent negotiations,” said Bagge in a gravelly voice, “of two hundred pounds.”

Litchfield smiled. “You are a sly one, Bagge. What? Don’t you trust me?”

“I trust nobody.
Would
you pay me if you knew what I know without needing me no more?”

“Of course, Bagge. I am a man of my word.”

“That may be, or not—I don’t really care. But you get nothing more from me until I see the two hundred pounds.”

Litchfield nodded, smiled again with condescending humor, then reached inside his coat. He pulled out ten crisp new twenty-pound notes—more money than Foulis Bagge had ever laid eyes on in one place in his life. He handed it to him.

With wide, greedy eyes, Bagge clutched the notes in his fist then held them to his leathery, hairy lips and kissed them. “You’ll get what you paid for all right,” he said. “It’s down there, under the lake.”

“What do you mean
under
it?”

“There’s a cave. Nobody knows the entrance but me. It’s where the gold came from. It was the year of the big draught, in ‘57. I used to know these hills like the back of my own hand. I found the cave when the water was low and the lake was nearly empty. That’s when I found the gold. When I came back for more, the rains had begun again, and the lake had filled the cave. I’ve been coming back for years. But it’s no use for the likes of me—I’m no fish. The gold’s there, but the lower parts of the cave are filled with water.”

Litchfield nodded and glanced at the two men who had been listening behind him.

“It’s plausible enough,” said one of them to his expression of question. “Of course it means we’ll have to drain the lake or stop up its entry into the cave. But it’s possible.”

“All right then, Bagge,” said Litchfield. “Lead the way. I want to see the entrance to this cave of gold. Once I am satisfied, you can keep the two hundred pounds and go to the devil for all I care.”

F
IFTY
-F
IVE

End of the Quest … or Perhaps Not

P
ercy stared back dumbstruck at the sister of his uncle’s first wife.
“Dead?”
he repeated, hoping he had not heard her correctly.

Mrs. Maloney nodded.

Slowly Percy shook his head dejectedly. “I guess that’s it then,” he said. He let out a long sigh then glanced at the two priests. “I suppose my search has suddenly come to an end,” he said. “I had hoped that I was about to find my uncle’s daughter. At least now I know … and I can put my uncle’s past to rest once and for all.”

Again he turned to Mrs. Maloney. “I hope you won’t mind telling me what happened,” he said. “After that I promise I will pester you with no more questions. You have been most kind, but I would like to know what happened.”

“I see no reason not to tell you,” she replied. “You have come a long way. Even if we had no use for your uncle, that is not your fault. I suppose you deserve to know.”

She took a breath, again remembering the past, and resumed her story. “As I told you, we never saw Morvern’s father, your uncle, again. Morvern grew up. Eventually I married my husband Daibheid. My father died, but my mother continued to keep Morvern with her, though we lived nearby and I helped with her on most days when she was young. But my Daibheid, you see, he wanted children of his own. He said it was no business of ours to take her in. So she remained with my mum. We had a son. He was born when Morvern was five. Then the famine hit, and my husband was out of work. My papa was gone by then, and my mother had nothing. Daibheid had worked in the shipyards for a time, before we were married, you see. So we all left Laragh, Mum and Morvern and Daibheid and me and our little Nigel, and we came here to Arklow. We had to do something to keep from starving. Daibheid found good work again, and we’ve been here ever since.”

Again she paused. “It wasn’t until Morvern was eighteen that the trouble started again.”

“Trouble? How do you mean …
again
?”

“She seemed fated to go the same way as her own mother. She was beautiful, you see, just like her mother, only tall and with the same bright red hair. But then she met a Welshman just like Avonmara. He was a good man, I suppose, and a hard worker, but we all hated to see our Morvern involved with a man when she was still so young. Morvern was all my mother had by then, you see, and she was just like Mum’s own daughter. Mum never let her use your uncle’s name. She was just Morvern O’Sullivan. My poor mum, God rest her soul, she cursed your uncle for deserting his daughter, though maybe that wasn’t right now that you tell me he tried to find her. But she died hating him, which is a sad thing to say about any two people in this world.”

She glanced again at the letters she still held in her hand, again smiling sadly to see her name and her mother’s name on the envelopes. “We never knew, you see—never knew he was trying to find us … that he wanted to be a good father to her after all. How could we know? We were gone by then, you see. It might have been different had we known. But we didn’t know. Then Morvern met the other Welshman, you see, come over for the work in the shipyards, just like my Daibheid. They met at work, you see, and were friends for a time. But when he took a fancy to young Morvern, my mum said it boded no good. But young Morvern was determined to marry him, just like her mother had been to marry your uncle. The mother and daughter were just alike, you see, young and beautiful and swept off their feet, you might say. So Morvern married the man, and my mum was terrified for what would happen. My mum was always one for premonitions, you might say. By then Mum’s red hair had turned as white as snow, as mine’s doing now, you see. And when Morvern came to be with child just like her own mother, Mum was dreadfully afraid the same fate would befall her as had poor Avonmara. There was a midwife in Arklow at that time. She was a strange woman, too acquainted with evil some said. Mrs. Faoiltiarna was her name. Whether that was her real name or not, no one knew, but it could not have suited her more perfectly.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Percy.

“The name means Wolf Lady, and that’s what she was. She made it her business to know other people’s secrets, and she parlayed them into power over them, and she listened to such folk that other people would have nothing to do with. My mum was one, as she got older, who was too much taken with the peculiarities of life, you might say. My Daibheid said no good would come of it, but Mum insisted that the midwife attend the birth of Morvern’s baby. She thought maybe the woman’s strange powers would be able to fight off the power of death she was convinced was hovering over our family, trying to destroy us. My Daibheid and Mum argued fiercely over it and yelled at one another like mortal enemies, though one was my own mother and the other was my husband. Daibheid insisted the woman was evil. He said that to bring her into the house would portend no good. And Morvern’s young husband, he agreed with Daibheid. But in the end, Morvern let her grandmother decide the matter, for she was the only mother she had ever known, you see, and she could do no other than to trust her. So the midwife was called in, and Morvern gave birth to a daughter.”

“A daughter!” exclaimed Percy, his hopes suddenly revived.

“Aye, but not one you’ll be wanting to find, I’m thinking.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The instant Daibheid laid eyes on her, the first words out of his mouth were that the curse of the Wolf Lady’s evil had come to the family. He was more furious at my mother than ever. After that he wouldn’t let me or our Nigel see Morvern or her baby or her husband or my mother. He was a devout man, you see, my Daibheid. He was certain there was evil afoot. He wanted nothing to do with the little girl or any of them anymore. As the weeks passed, then months, his words seemed to be confirmed.”

“In what way?” asked Percy.

“The baby was strange from the start. In her eyes was a look from another world. Daibheid didn’t want me to have anything to do with any of them. He called the midwife a witch. He said she had passed her evil into the family. But when he was at work, I couldn’t help myself, you see, for I am a woman, and they were my family, you see—my mum and Morvern and her child. But Daibheid told people about her otherworldly look and her strange ways, and before long, you see, there was talk and dreadful things began being said about us. All at once Morvern’s husband told my mum he was taking his wife and child and they were leaving Arklow. My mum was both heartbroken and furious at once, but she had brought it on herself with all the talk of evil forebodings and bringing in the midwife to the birth. The little man was a good man, you see, and he knew the evil such rumors about his child could work. He didn’t want our family hurt by them either. So he took Morvern and the child away, and we never saw Morvern again. A year later, my mum received a letter from him telling her that Morvern was dead. Mum never recovered. It was a family curse, Daibheid said. Mum lived no more than a year after that. It was the midwife, Daibheid said. She was the cause of it. She was an evil that would mean the death of us all.”

“Why did people call on her services?”

“She knew every birthing that was coming and wormed her way into their homes. People were afraid of her, that she would put a curse on them or work some other devilry. But eventually her evil ways caught up with her.”

“What happened?”

“There was a man whose wife was about to give birth—you remember, Father,” she said, glancing toward Father Abban, “Mr. Keefe, from the shipyards.”

The priest nodded.

“When the woman came oiling around, he would have none of it,” Mrs. Maloney went on. “He told her never to show her face around his house. There were threats and high words. She was enraged. No one had dared refuse her so publicly. He was an important man, you see, and everyone knew that he had rebuked her to her face. She shouted some incantation back at him then said that a gruesome and premature death would come to him. He laughed back in her face. No fat purple witch could tell the future, he said.”

“She claimed to be able to see into the future?”

“It was one of the ways she made people fear her.”

“Why did he call her a
purple
witch?”

“She always wore purple, and with horrid earrings of snakes and ugly creatures. But their argument, you see, took place outside the man’s home. She shrieked terrible curses at him as she stormed off. The whole neighborhood heard her. Within days, what had happened was all over town, that he had called her a witch. Rumors began to circulate that her strange ways had all along been rooted in close connections to the dark forces of the underworld. And when poor Mr. Keefe died suddenly a year later, the charge of witch confirmed for all to see, some of the men of the community began devising a way to get rid of her.”