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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Serie: Tam Eildor
- Sprache: Englisch
'Alanna Knight could hardly be better' Ian Rankin When Tam Eildor arrives unexpectedly on a remote Scottish island in the year 1587 after his time machine develops a fault, he quickly finds himself embroiled in the lives of the colourful locals. Many are trying to escape the tyranny of the power-hungry Earl Robert Stewart as, having imprisoned the beautiful Princess Marie for many years, he now plans to force her into a distasteful marriage with his eldest son, Patrick, to further his own ambitions. Aided by a motley crew including a stowaway, a pirate and one of the earl's own sons, Eildor attempts a daring rescue of the princess. Together they will travel the oceans in search of Spanish gold, lost loves and new futures.
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Seitenzahl: 338
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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MYSTERY AT THE WORLD’S EDGE
Alanna Knight
Contents
PROLOGUE
In the beginning of time, when the Master Builder had come to the end of his labours of creating the world, he found he had a few fragments of earth still clinging to his hands. He looked down upon the Seven Seas he had just created; then, brushing his fingers lightly together, he sprinkled the fragments through the translucent air so that they fell into the waters of a northern sea. We know them today as Orkney and Shetland; a galaxy of precious stones of rare beauty, as various in their size and outlines as they are in tone and hue.
CHAPTER ONE
‘No! No!’ His arm was painful, in the grip of something large and hairy.
A weird monster.
Tam Eildor closed his eyes hastily. Apart from the sore arm he must be dreaming. This was a nightmare. Sound, sea nearby. Water, oceans of it, great lapping waves. Seabirds everywhere, wheeling in the sky above with their screeches.
Other screeches, no, screams. Human screams.
Where was he? This bleak, inhospitable land. He knew then. A dreadful mistake had been made; the time machine had developed a digital error. He had to get back again and in that last hope of survival, he reached for the panic button on his wrist.
It was covered by a mouth, the mouth of a huge animal. He was not only in the wrong time, he was to be eaten by a sea monster. This was his last travel through time. Had he belonged to the world long lost he would have believed in prayers, God the Master Builder. His instinct was still for survival as he struggled against dying, but he found it painless. He was not being eaten, at least not yet, but being dragged along the shoreline by an overgrown wolf with a dog-like head.
Now his first nervous thought was that he had fallen into some prehistoric period and that such creatures were now extinct in his own time. He opened his eyes again with difficulty, dreading dinosaurs, and found himself the target of two quite extraordinary humanoids. Certainly not from his own time. This must be the Dark Ages, centuries away from the Victorian Edinburgh he had planned to visit.
About a yard distant and looking more predatory than the wolf-dog was the ugliest woman he had ever set eyes on. She was tiny, just as tall as the animal and covered with black hair, most of it on her head. Her huge feet at the end of her short legs were out of all proportion.
‘Zor! Leave him!’ The command belonged to an old man with a white beard, the longest Tam had ever seen.
The wolf-dog had now released his arm and was being restrained from licking his face. That was what had wakened him lying on a stony beach. He tried to rise, push the animal aside. Was this a preliminary sniff, a prelude to its intended lunch? But almost reproachfully its regard was not predatory. Its head on its side it had a friendly, oddly human expression identical to the man who supported him, an illustration escaped from a fairy tale about an ancient wizard.
Tam made a determined effort and sat up, eager hands assisting him.
‘We tried to take that thing off your neck,’ said the woman.
‘We thought you’d be strangled,’ added the man.
Thankful for words he could understand, Tam touched the charm stone, passport to all that connected him with his own world.
‘We couldna move it.’
Nothing on this earth at this time would do so and he silently thanked the Master Builder, the scientific creator, for the progress discovered after Planet Earth’s partial collapse in the twenty-second century. Drowned by melting ice caps in the climate change unheeded by nations for over a hundred years and overpopulated, its resources for survival, for crops growing each year, failed and it had never recovered. That was three hundred years ago before the escape to Planet B and the emergence of a new scientific civilisation with the subsequent discovery of travel through time as well as space that had proved a boon to those interested in ancient history.
For scholars like himself it provided a delightful chance to explore lost worlds and the continued progress of scientific experiments. And for those keen to travel, the inconvenience of grappling with foreign languages had been surpassed by the discovery of a universal automatic understanding.
Tam Eildor particularly enjoyed criminology and reading about true crimes. He was rather proud that he shared an interest in unsolved mysteries with detectives, both fictional and real, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sherlock Holmes was of special interest as were many other crime writers’ detectives. Tam felt an affinity with those who, like himself, claimed Scottish descent from the ancient world and enjoyed dabbling in the Victorian era.
He had dialled 1857, his chosen year for this adventure, with his particular interest in the sensational trial of Madeleine Smith. She was believed to have murdered her lover, a Frenchman and socially far beneath her. She had escaped hanging by the Scottish ‘not proven’ verdict, after raising considerable doubts. Heads were shaken, whispers remained that the jury had been influenced by the fact that this was a beautiful twenty-two-year-old, her wealthy family well-connected and high in Glasgow society.
Tam was fascinated and a little in love with the notorious murderess. He had decided he would like to meet Madeleine Smith and investigate for himself, on the reported evidence given in the old documents, whether she was innocent or a skilful killer.
He groaned. What a disaster that impulse had been. By no stretch of the imagination could this bleak, cold seashore with these two humanoids and their dog-like companion be the place of a civilised assignation.
‘Where am I, and what year is this?’
Looks were exchanged by the weird pair. The question obviously amused them, and they chose to ignore it. Perhaps they thought he had temporarily lost his wits.
The old man said politely, ‘You would have been carried out to the sea by the ebb tide had Zor not seized you.’
Tam looked at the wolf-dog, who regarded him fixedly and nodded, as if rather proud of his efforts.
‘You would have drowned,’ the man continued. ‘Are you hurt?’ he added anxiously. ‘Perhaps you hit your head when you fell.’
‘Did I? What is this place?’ Tam asked, in the hope that he was in England or Scotland and not in some foreign land.
The man stroked his long white beard and said, ‘Orkney, young sir. Surely you know the date, the summer of 1587.’ He laughed at the question which seemed absurd and asked, ‘And who might you be?’
‘Tam Eildor. And you are?’
‘I am Doctor Erasmus Linmer,’ the wizard-like man bowed and, pointing to the tiny woman, said, ‘This is Baubie Finn, a skilful islander. We will take good care of you.’
‘1587, did you say?’ Tam repeated, wondering if his hearing had been affected by the fall and rapidly sorting through disorganised thoughts and somewhat limited observation.
By all accounts and the efficiency of the time machine’s workings, he should be in one of those splendid Georgian houses in Edinburgh’s New Town enjoying a glass of excellent brandy or in Glasgow with Madeleine Smith and a glass of excellent wine. On second thoughts, maybe wine would be inadvisable, but anything remotely linked to that lost civilised society and popular, like a cup of tea, would be preferable to lying on a stony beach in Orkney, in damp clothes.
He groaned again, his mind managing a quick calculation.
1587. The year before the Spanish Armada.
He made an effort to get to his feet, hampered by the huge wolf-dog that hovered over him in a determined fashion. His yelp of surprise as he took in his surroundings could have issued from the animal itself.
‘It can’t be 1587. Are you sure?’
Three heads, including wolf-dog Zor, nodded solemnly.
Tam thought quickly. ‘Orkney. That would be in the reign of Earl Robert Stewart?’
There were more solemn and now distressed noddings and sighings.
Tam straightened his shoulders and gazed around helplessly, rubbing his sore arm, thankful that Zor had not taken a bite on the chip he wore on his left wrist. It was bruised but not broken; the panic button remained intact.
And now he knew what had happened. That damned time mechanism, usually so reliable, had misplaced the digits: 1857, the year he had dialled, had become 1587.
That was unheard of. Had the fault been his own? They would certainly claim so. They would say he had been careless. There would be witnesses that on the night before his booked-in departure, a little overindulgence in wine and sociability, and by careless fingering, the digits of the two dates had been reversed.
He swore silently. That was bad enough, but worst of all he had landed in the wrong reign. Another quick calculation. James the Sixth would now be on the Scottish throne, impatiently biding his time for the ailing Queen Elizabeth of England to die, when he would become James I of England.
He knew his history and Earl Robert Stewart was the illegitimate half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots, who had given him Orkney and a tyrannous reign that Tam had not the slightest desire to experience. It was a mysterious land to be avoided, feared by long-ago mariners as ‘one of the islands at the world’s edge’.
‘I heard cries, people screaming. Was there some er … disturbance? I thought I was on a battlefield.’ As he said the words, an additional, graver reason for discomfort presented itself: the Orcadians were known, if not as cannibals, than most certainly as wreckers, their very existence dependent on luring ships ashore, stripping them of all cargo and grimly leaving no survivors, with more than enough starving men, women and bairns of their own to feed and clothe.
The old man shook his head. ‘Not a battlefield. That was a wreck.’ His frown into the middle distance confirmed Tam’s suspicions. ‘Further down the coast.’
‘Did the passengers survive?’
Uncomfortable looks were exchanged between the man and woman, so Tam guessed what the answer would be.
The old man said hastily: ‘It was too far off for us to be certain. Nothing to do with us.’
‘The Earl—’ the woman began and received a gentle warning nudge.
But Tam was getting his bearings. In Orkney at that time wreckers took no prisoners.
The grim picture that was emerging offered scant consolation. James the Sixth was King of Scotland and, on a previous time quest, in 1567, he had encountered the then unborn baby James’s mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, in the mysterious affair at Kirk O’Field in Edinburgh and the murder of her dreadful husband Lord Darnley.
He groaned as he recalled time travelling again in 1600. He had the misfortune to become one of the young king’s amorous pursuits, as James determinedly eliminated all those connected with the truth of the Gowrie Conspiracy and the sinister matter of who had forged many of the Casket Letters that proved to be Mary’s death sentence, in 1587 of this very year.
Tam shuddered. He had had more than enough of this particular period of history.
He looked round desperately. A dreadful mistake had been made. He had to get back to his own time again and, in that last hope of survival, he reached for the panic button at his wrist. If he didn’t escape, he was marked down as lunch for the monster Zor and cannibals too, for that was what the wreckers probably were.
But this was his last travel through time.
Both Zor and the humans were eyeing him sternly, and it occurred to him as none made a predatory move that they were as startled by his appearance as he was by theirs.
He tried a friendly, hopeful smile.
The woman responded by asking him a question requiring an answer, but at that moment her accent was beyond him.
She shook her head, oddly echoed by Zor.
He had an idea: the animal was one of those robotic creatures used in past centuries. But then he remembered the one who pulled him out of the sea had distinct breath, warm and smelly, as any of those kept as pets where he came from.
‘You have come a long way,’ said the old man. ‘You must be tired and should rest a while.’ Pointing to what looked like a deep cave at the headland, he continued, ‘Come, young sir, and Baubie will give you some of her excellent soup and a bed for the night.’
Tam stood up and found that he was shaken but unhurt, apart from a bruised arm, thanks to the efforts of his rescuer’s jaws. His clothes had dried remarkably quickly and there in the sky above, the sun was a comforting reminder of his own planet, shining benignly down as he followed the trio across the wind-beaten, uninhabited beach towards the base of a steep cliff where, above the rocky shore, the mouth of a dark, forbidding cave yawned.
He trembled at the thought of going inside.
Should he make a run for it?
CHAPTER TWO
Where to run to? That was the question. While he was trapped by this weird couple, it was difficult to run anywhere. The woman, who was remarkably strong considering her size, had his arm firmly in her grip. It was as though she could snap it off as easily as a butterfly wing, without the slightest difficulty or emotion if occasion demanded. He was also supported, or rather hustled along towards the cave, on his other side by the old man, his strong arms undiminished by age.
Tam sighed, suddenly glad of their help. His legs felt weak, and he had never felt this tired and hungry before. Time travel had taken a lot out of him, and that was a new experience.
As the cave loomed nearer, it looked singularly barbaric and primitive. Tam wanted to sit down on the boulder outside, gather his scattered wits and consider what to do next.
Tam Eildor was no coward and enjoyed adventures in time, but only those with a guaranteed happy ending. He was fully aware of the dangers looming ahead with this particular era of the sixteenth century and regrettably accepted the truth that he was not the stuff that heroes are made of.
There seemed to be no escape. He was being dragged inside, which suggested that he was a prisoner, although his captors murmured encouragingly and the cave’s interior was surprisingly large and airy, more like a civilised house cut into a cliffside.
The woman, Baubie, beckoned him to a seat. She smiled at him and suddenly he was pleased and reassured by his surroundings. He started to accept that his companions’ intentions were well-meaning and they meant him no harm.
The huge Zor had returned, giving Tam a mite of uneasiness as it continued to regard him with the inscrutable intensity of a diner considering an interesting menu. As significant looks were exchanged between the wolf-dog and the old man, Tam’s fears returned and for one dreadful moment he believed these islanders were cannibals after all.
However, as he tried to dismiss his fearful anxiety that he had fallen among flesh-eaters, the woman went briskly to a stove and, after a noisy ritual of stirring liquid, produced a bowl of something which she handed to Tam. He was hungry and to his astonishment found himself enjoying a large bowl of soup and a chunk of coarse bread.
The darkness of the cave no longer overwhelmed him. With sconces on the walls, it was lighter inside than he had expected, and somehow felt warm and safe. Suddenly aware that the second bowl of soup had made him thirsty, he gulped down the contents of the goblet Baubie Finn held out.
Thanking her, he closed his eyes briefly.
The doctor watched Tam peacefully sleeping thanks to his overindulgence with one of Baubie’s liquid restoratives. Linmer realised gloomily that he needed, and with haste, to know more about this intriguing young man who cast no shadow. According to the ancient Greeks, the shadow was the soul and one should avoid looking at one’s reflection in water; its absence was an omen of death. If a man dreamt of seeing himself so mirrored, the water spirits – in the case of Orkney, selkies – would drag his reflection underwater, leaving him to perish soulless.
Eye contact was also to be avoided. Narrowly regarding Tam, Linmer recalled that when they had met, the young man’s eyes had reminded him less of other humans’ and more of Zor’s, whose existence on this peninsula had never been explained, nor could it be, since the dog lacked a human voice to further expand on the matter.
Linmer frowned. He did not like mysteries and both creatures had strangely luminous eyes. He considered how they were going to deal with Tam and keep him out of Earl Robert Stewart’s way. No one was safe from the Earl, especially newcomers, for that wily man had eyes and spies everywhere. Many who had landed unannounced found their way blocked by an executioner’s sword without time or hope of explaining, or giving a valid reason for their arrival.
Although Tam slept without dreaming, he thought he awoke and Baubie Finn was watching over him, except that she was no longer a wizened woman but a very beautiful girl. How extraordinary.
As for Baubie Finn, she sighed. Here was the handsomest man she had ever seen, even better than her husband, Halcro, who all the girls in Orkney had chased once long ago. She enjoyed just looking at this Tam Eildor. He seemed so young and vulnerable.
Halcro had arrived home from fishing and joined the watchers over the sleeping man. He wanted something to eat, only vaguely interested in the scene before him and the lengthy explanations regarding a young man who had just dropped in from the skies. Long used to arriving home to unusual situations or visitors with explanations he could not and did not wish to comprehend, he asked no questions. He loved a peaceful home life and Baubie’s excellent cooking above all things, was used to being ignored and happy to remain so.
The next thing Tam knew, he was waking up with the sun shining in through the cave mouth and being told by Doctor Linmer that he had slept for twenty-four hours. When Tam was introduced to Halcro and learnt that Baubie was his wife, he could hardly credit that any normal man could have married her, before he succumbed to sleep once more. But Halcro could have told him something about that.
Baubie Finn was second only in power to the Earl himself, the most feared as well as the most sought-after woman on the island. To the less romantically inclined she was also the ugliest woman most of them had ever seen.
Her black and luxuriant hair, which many women would have envied as a crowning glory, grew low on her forehead to well below her non-existent waist. It refused to be confined to her head and wandered to less attractive regions of her face, with its large nose and fearsome squint, while huge hands and feet would have been excessive in persons thrice her height.
The Orcadians had a bad reputation as wreckers and Baubie had stumbled on a particularly potent spell for luring distressed ships to the rocks, used sparingly and only in desperate times, for she was a healer, not a destroyer. A dark wooden barrel on her kitchen shelf in the cave contained a yellowish liquid, nauseous to smell and loathsome to taste, dispensed in tiny bottles hastily corked, the main ingredients salt, asafoetida and other pungent herbs to purge the bowels and purify the blood. A sweeter medicine would have been equally effective, but Baubie pandered to her customers’ belief: the nastier the taste the speedier the cure.
No trouble was too great for Baubie. She would patiently search out seven mothers whose firstborn were sons, to provide milk for a sick child at the gates of death. She wove black underwear for rheumatism sufferers and nursed a highly private recipe for locating buried treasure – alas, still unfulfilled.
Love thy neighbour might have been written especially for her, since she cherished the islanders fiercely, but shipwrecked foreign mariners fell into another category. She regarded their violent deaths with as little emotion as the annual seal cull or the occasional stranded whale. Foreigners and their welfare were God’s business, not hers. Compassion for the island only extended to its birds and animals who would come right up to her large feet and sit waiting patiently for titbits.
Halcro viewed Baubie’s activities with apprehension and trembled at the power wielded by his tiny wife. One never knew what she might conjure up. He had in his time produced for her pot many revolting but not unusual specimens. For her cures the excreta of both animal and human were in constant demand: fresh pig dung for nose bleeds, cow dung poultices for bruised limbs, sweetened urine for jaundice and milk in which sheep’s droppings had been boiled for smallpox. Besides mice roasted for whooping cough and snails dissolved in vinegar for rickets, there were many others, the memory of which Halcro preferred not to dwell upon.
Baubie could with considerable ease change into a shrew when thwarted, a transformation he did not care to witness. By giving her her own way, life was not only harmonious but occasionally even sweet. She was rare company and could make him laugh. After some of her herbal remedies she was no longer old and ugly as she danced towards him, but the slim and beautiful girl he had wooed and won long ago.
Then there was the business of the Book of Black Arts, the source of some of her favourite recipes. He had never known a moment’s peace while it was under their roof. This manual of magic printed in white characters on black paper gave to its owner unlimited power. However, as with all the Devil’s gifts, there was a snag. This particular snag was that the book could only be resold for a smaller coin than it was paid for. Baubie, young and inexperienced at the time, had thought that the man at the Kirkwall Fair was giving her a great bargain until she knew the ultimate price.
However, recently, the rapacious Earl Robert had eagerly accepted it as a gift. Halcro shuddered, still remembering its opening page: ‘Cursed be he that peruseth me’. He wondered if the greedy Earl realised the potential destruction he had in his possession, since Baubie had already placed him under St Ringan’s Curse, used only by those who had suffered intolerable wrongs without other means of punishing their oppressors.
Baubie felt the Earl and his sons richly deserved the fate St Ringan offered: a family cursed to the second and third generation – at which juncture they died out.
CHAPTER THREE
Tam was horrified to find, on next opening his eyes and blinking rapidly, that he was not back in his own time, in the world centuries ahead of these primitive humans. Voices surrounded him and he sat up confused as Linmer and Baubie started to ask him questions without waiting for sensible answers, if such were even possible. At last, the woman paused for breath and, seizing opportunity, the old man said:
‘I am glad you are alive, young man, and have taken no ill from your dramatic arrival. When I saw you suddenly appear, descending from the sky, I thought my mind was playing tricks and this was the Second Coming we had been told to daily expect from the Bible.’ He regarded Tam sternly. ‘You don’t look like Jesus Christ, however, not as I have imagined him.’ Sounding disappointed he added, ‘What brings you to the islands at the world’s end?’
Tam groaned and, for the first time, he took an interest in what he was wearing. No one had removed his clothes as he slept: a wide-sleeved white shirt, full thigh boots and tight breeches. Surely a little updated for Orkney and these surroundings as he considered the area outside the cave where he had landed.
His audience were waiting. ‘My name is Tam Eildor,’ he announced and inclined his head.
Linmer smiled knowingly, then frowned and gave a clever chuckle. ‘An anagram. So, you are a time lord, are you? At least that explains how you came to be travelling through space. For a moment I was quite alarmed. Unprepared, you know.’ He gave Tam a hard look and sighed.
Watching the man as he slept, Linmer had made other interesting observations besides the fact that he cast no shadow. His clothes were made of some unknown material, an immaculate white shirt that didn’t show creases where he’d slept, nor any evidence of being dragged across the shore by Zor, but most of all how after two days on the island this young man showed no signs of needing a shave. There was no trace of beard, his face still quite smooth, although he was to all appearances a perfectly normal fellow in his mid-thirties.
Tam was watching the doctor, now guessing that Linmer was most probably a fellow time traveller who had gone off-course and been forced to remain in the time he had chosen. This conclusion filled Tam with horror as Linmer went on: ‘This is a pleasant surprise, young sir. You are the first time lord I have ever met. What brought you to Orkney at this dire period of our history?’
And here at last was an intelligent being, someone he could get information from. ‘It’s a mistake, I’m afraid. I was hoping for – for a later date in Edinburgh—,’ he added, knowing it was unlikely that Linmer would know about the sensational trial of Madeleine Smith centuries on.
He realised the urgency the days he had lost and the danger that he was in. He had better get on with it, complete his visit to this lacklustre beach as soon as possible. It was not possible to switch missions or places. Much as he would have relished heading on to Edinburgh, it would mean abandoning this particular mission and returning to the year 2300 to start over again. What a nuisance. But first, he had better find his exact location. He could not afford any more digital errors with the time machine.‘Where am I, er, exactly?’ Tam asked.
‘Exactly is hard to say. You are on one of the more obscure of our tiny peninsulas, the broch, only accessible to Kirkwall at low tide. This is the home of Lady Marie Hepburn. Come with me.’
Tam followed him out of the cave and they walked a short distance uphill, where Linmer pointed to a large, ungainly building and said, ‘That is a broch, one of our prehistoric ruins. Some have identified it as Neolithic for convenience, but its exact history is unknown. No one can say exactly, merely offer theories about when or who had built it. The archaeologists gave up long ago.’
‘Someone actually lives in it?’ Tam asked in amazement.
‘Indeed, as I told you. The Earl’s ward, Lady Marie Hepburn, daughter of Lord Bothwell and Mary, Queen of Scots.’
Tam seemed to remembered that Mary had been executed in February 1587 by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, as Linmer continued bitterly,
‘She is more prisoner than ward, I fear, locked away in this cold place since the Earl rescued her and took her captive. The ship she believed was taking her to her father was taken by wreckers.’ He shook his head. ‘She was eight years old at the time and has lived in captivity for the last twelve years. The Earl, we understand, has plans to marry her off to one of his sons, seeing the possibly of a path to the throne of Scotland by his own blood.’
Even at that distance and without a meeting, Tam felt a surge of indignation for a young woman kept in such dreary seclusion.
‘Why didn’t the Earl keep her in his castle in Kirkwall?’
Linmer laughed. ‘You might well ask, but you wouldn’t need to if you knew his six sons. She had to be kept safe from them. He has his heir, Patrick, in mind, but all of them are notorious for their dealings with the young women there. They will not take no for an answer. It is whispered they have peopled half the island.’ He frowned sadly. ‘So, it was more for her own safety than a tender-hearted gesture. However, she is under the care and protection of Baubie Finn, a formidable target for any intruder—’
Linmer stopped suddenly. ‘Listen!’
Tam had also heard the sound of approaching horses.
‘That is the Earl’s men come to inspect what was left of the wreck before it is too late,’ Linmer said urgently. ‘Remember the noise you heard when you arrived, young sir, a boat from Edinburgh washed ashore. No accident,’ he added wryly. ‘Wrecking is an occupation and our ministers are known to pray for one when times are hard. The islanders are not to be blamed, for they are starving thanks to the Earl and they take no prisoners,’ he added grimly. ‘They cannot afford to feed their own people so you were lucky not to fall into their hands. It was the wreck that alerted me or I would not have seen you descend from the skies, young man.’
He paused and took Tam’s arm. ‘But you are no longer safe. We must hide you and, all things considered, the broch would be the best place until we decide what to do with you. Poor Marie, she was told to expect a tutor, a Hepburn cousin, arranged by the Earl, of course, for her spiritual well-being.’
He shook his head. ‘I regard any such proposition with suspicion, for one learns to always look for a purpose behind any kindly gesture of the Earl. He is a crafty man, though for what purpose this tutor was sent for I can only regard that he was a spy, although the motive, I was given to understand, is that as his alchemist I had enough to deal with.’
Tam smiled. An alchemist. Well, that fitted well enough.
Linmer continued, ‘The Earl loves gold and somewhat naively believes blood can be got from a stone. He is sure there is gold in Orkney and that an alchemist should be able to find it. He also pointed out what I already knew that I was not getting older.’ Then with a laugh, ‘He is not very observant, since I have been this age for longer than I care to remember.’
‘When did you arrive?’
Tam was interested and keen to know more, but as they had reached their destination and walked towards the gate of the broch, Zor ran out to greet them.
There was some tail-wagging as if he was pleased to welcome this new visitor, and again its expression was almost human. Tam had never seen an animal behave in such a way and Linmer said, ‘Zor lives here with Lady Marie. An excellent guard; no one can get past him. Fortunate that he had come down to the beach when you arrived so unexpectedly.’
‘Fortunate indeed,’ Tam agreed.
‘He’s a remarkable creature and has an extra sense of perception and danger – perhaps we all had that at one time – but he knows what is imminent and was aware of the wreck before it happened.’
As Zor led the way like a guide taking visitors through the ancient stone portals, Tam looked around. The broch defied any knowledge he had of prehistoric building. When he said so, Linmer contributed his own theory that the original broch builders were probably missionaries anxious to spread Christianity over as wide an area as possible.
‘It most resembles an enormous lighthouse in shape,’ Tam observed, pausing to look upwards.
Linmer continued knowledgeably, ‘Indeed, it does. You are seeing a fortress surrounded by a stone wall. There was no roof in the original, only a circular penthouse running round the inside,’ he added, leading the way.
Following him, Tam saw that it was double-walled and between them a series of stone galleries were linked by a stairway curving upwards towards the top. The flagstone floor of each gallery formed the ceiling of the one below, with daylight provided by small window gaps on the inner wall only.
The effect seemed singularly formidable, too enormous for hospitality, and Tam wondered how it would be possible for comfort surrounded by such a vast area of stone.
Certainly not for a young woman on her own with few servants. Its purpose seemed more barrack-like, with the hint of armed men preparing for battle. When he said so, Linmer replied, ‘What purpose the galleries served was perhaps as scaffolding in the original building. That stairway certainly would let defenders climb to the top when it was attacked by invaders. You probably did not have time to notice as we came up from the beach some ruins of crude stone huts that once surrounded it, perhaps used to delay attackers when the broch’s owners retired within.’
Tam considered this and said, ‘That would certainly have been an advantage as there would have been few weapons in ancient times to make any impression on such thick walls which could not be burnt down.’
Linmer nodded. ‘And it would be almost impossible to force an entrance through the narrow doorway.’
From what he had seen so far, Tam was impressed. The broch dwellers had been well equipped to withstand a siege.
Linmer went on, ‘Like many buildings of ancient times, this one has a well inside, and provisions could be stored in the stone galleries.’
Looking round, Tam observed that spears could have been thrust down from the galleries above through gaps left between the roofing stones of the passage. While he was still considering their surroundings in awe and amazement, Linmer added thoughtfully, ‘I think if Lady Marie agrees, you will be safe here until we decide what is to be done before you encounter Earl Robert.’
Seeing from Tam’s doubtful expression that this was not a prospect that pleased him nor was the encounter to be anticipated with any jubilation, Linmer said, ‘Lady Marie lives in one part where the ruined galleries have been turned into liveable and even attractive quarters, almost like a small castle..’
He pointed to a stone bench. ‘Let us take a seat and wait for her.’
As they talked, Zor had stood alongside them, in an attitude of listening eagerly. It seemed to take a human interest in the conversation, understanding all that was being said, looking from one to the other and occasionally nodding, as if in agreement with the discussion.
A weird creature indeed, Tam decided, and this seemed an opportune moment to discover the rest of Linmer’s story of how he came to be in Orkney. As a scholar, he could hardly have chosen this bleak peninsula and when Tam asked him, he shook his head wearily.
‘It was so long ago I can barely remember, a survivor before even the disaster that overtook Planet Earth. As a scientist working on time experiments, it seemed that I got trapped and could not get my way back to the place I had left.’ He paused. ‘The Earl knew nothing of time experiments, but presumed that I was an alchemist and as such welcomed the possibility of finding gold, his favourite pastime.’ He smiled wryly. ‘How much of the history of Orkney do you know?’
‘Not a great deal, but enough not to wish to get stranded here.’ Tam shuddered. ‘It was not my intention to come here – my intention was to come to mainland Scotland in the nineteenth century.’
Footsteps on the long staircase announced a new arrival. Not Marie, but a servant, who Linmer greeted as Ina. In reply she nodded eagerly, but clearly had no voice.
As she hurried back up the stairs, Linmer explained, ‘She can’t speak, has no tongue. It was cleft by the Earl’s command when she had the temerity to speak ill of the amorous intentions of one of his sons.’
At Tam’s shocked exclamation, he sighed bitterly. ‘That is one of the lesser punishments, often it is death. So be careful that your comments are never overheard. One criticism or bad word about the Earl’s sons could be your last.’
He smiled. ‘Lady Marie will be with us in a moment. Ina has just washed her hair and she will see us once it dries.’
That was such a common reason, a ready excuse in days long past for females to make excuses for non-appearance and it made Tam smile.
‘She will be with us soon and, alas, I will have to impart the sad news about the death of her expected tutor, Edward Hepburn.’ Linmer frowned and, stroking his beard thoughtfully, he regarded Tam. ‘But what are we to do with you? Do you want to return to your own time now? No doubt your presence here has been registered. The Earl has spies everywhere and he will have received news of a stranger at the broch. If you wish to quit you must do so now.’
But regardless of the dangers as yet unheralded, Tam was sufficiently intrigued by the strange trio of time lord turned alchemist, the small woman and a dog-like creature with human intelligence, all the ingredients of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale, including a princess, the prisoner of a tyrant lord. What a splendid opportunity! Having never pictured himself in the role of a knight errant, there was plenty at this moment to make the time machine’s digital error an irresistible challenge.
‘I will stay for a while.’ Even as he said the words, he thought of the consequences of being taken before the Earl and explaining that he had come from the future. What lay ahead would be complete disbelief and doubtless torture until he could find some acceptable version of the truth. Tam shuddered, but Linmer was watching him, smiling.
‘I have just thought of a plan, Tam Eildor, one that will fit you perfectly. Here I was wondering how on earth to fit you in with some creditable story and now I realise that your arrival, your unexpected descent from the sky, could not have come more opportunely. You are sufficiently educated and well-bred to present yourself in the role as Lady Marie’s new tutor, her distant uncle from the Bothwells at Crichton Castle. I trust you are a good actor for the part will suit you incredibly well.’
Linmer paused, for even as he said the words, he realised the possibilities of presenting Lady Marie with an unusually attractive young man and the consequences for both of them of a sudden infatuation. He added hastily, ‘Think of yourself as Edward Hepburn as soon as you can, God rest his soul.’
He had another reason for passing Tam off successfully as the tutor, a plan for how to smuggle Lady Marie back to Scotland. Each passing day brought her closer to broch marriage to the Earl’s disreputable eldest son, Patrick. He had been recently widowed in a childless marriage and his well-earned bad reputation had already labelled him among the islanders as Black Pate, for good reason.
Linmer rubbed his hands in satisfaction as he studied Tam, who could not have been better suited for the deceased tutor’s role. He chuckled gleefully. ‘An excellent plan, if you agree.’
Ina reappeared on the stairway and indicated to the two men that her mistress was ready and waiting to receive them.
Zor accompanied them as they followed her along a short corridor, where she opened the door into a well-lit room considerably more comfortable than Tam’s first expectations. Along with tapestried walls and a rug-covered floor, further adornments included portraits and silver.
