Treasure of the Celtic Triangle (22 page)

Now rose before his mind’s eye
another
face. Even as he stood staring at the wall, a voice sounded from the first-floor landing above him.

“What are you staring so intently at?”

He nearly jumped out of his skin and spun around.

“Percy … what!” laughed Florilyn. “You’re face is white as a sheet. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I … just—you startled me!” said Percy, joining her laughter. “Maybe it was a little like seeing a ghost. I had just realized how much you look like all these women.”

“Those women!” exclaimed Florilyn. “Ugh—they’re all ancient and dour!”

“You know what I mean—I noticed the family resemblance. Of course
you
are far more beautiful than any of them.”

“That’s better,” smiled Florilyn gaily. She walked down to join him. “Why shouldn’t I look like them? They
are
my ancestors, after all.”

“I just hadn’t seen it before. I was seeing your face, then suddenly you spoke, and there you were—not a ghost exactly … but you know what I mean.”

“So have you finished your sleuthing in my father’s study?” asked Florilyn as they continued down the stairs together.

“Finished!” laughed Percy. “I only started fifteen minutes ago.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No. I don’t even know what I expect to find.”

“What are you doing now?”

“I’m looking for your mother. Then I’ll probably ride in toward town.”

“Would you like company?”

An awkward expression crossed Percy’s face. “Actually … this is something I have to do alone, Florilyn,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.” “No, that’s fine. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Percy nodded and smiled, and Florilyn left him. He found Katherine in the kitchen with Mrs. Drenwydd.

“Aunt Katherine,” he said, “when I was here last summer there was an Australian in the cottage where the Barries used to live—an unfriendly chap! Is he still there?”

“No, he didn’t last long at the mine from what I understand. He’s been gone for months. The place is vacant now.”

“Would you mind if I went down there?”

“Not at all.”

“I would like to see the place again. I spent some happy times there. Will I need a key?”

Katherine laughed. “I doubt if there are a half dozen cottages in all Llanfryniog that even have locks on the doors! No, you won’t need a key.”

T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

The Cottage

I
t was with a strange feeling almost of reverence an hour later that Percy opened the door and crept into the cottage that had once been filled with such life. It was so still and quiet. Even in Gwyneth’s absence, the sense of her presence remained. Slowly Percy walked about through the two rooms of the cottage. He recognized a few pieces of furniture that were left. What clue he hoped to find here about his uncle, he could not imagine. Nor to answer the mystery of why Codnor Barrie, his daughter Gwyneth, and his great-aunt had disappeared from Llanfryniog without a trace, or where they might have gone.

As he walked about, Percy reflected further on the small family’s strange disappearance. He gazed at the stone walls, the fireplace, the great beams overhead, the floor of thick wood planks. He stood in front of the hearth, now cold and lifeless. The mantle was embedded in the stonework, a massive beam of oak of obvious ancient date, gnarled and pitted.

At length Percy turned away and walked outside, closing the door behind him. He wandered behind the house where Gwyneth had kept her animals. The lifelessness here was even more profound than in the cottage. Most of the large enclosing fence where her menagerie of animals had made their home was still visible, though in poor repair. But the pens and animals were gone. Only one small enclosure was left, mostly in ruins, its thin roof partially collapsed upon the decaying boards of a wall. Percy walked toward it.

On the other side of the fence, a movement caught his eye. He turned and saw a small gray rabbit hopping slowly toward him across the grass. It slowed as it came closer. It did not seem afraid.

Percy knelt down and gently extended his hand through the fence.

Tentatively the small creature took a few more steps toward him and sniffed at his fingers.

“Is that you, Bunny White Tail?” said Percy, gently stroking the furry gray back.

Still the bunny did not shy away.

“I believe it is you. You miss your mistress, too, don’t you? Have you been here all this time waiting for her?”

For some moments, the young man and the bunny held a magical communion, bound together by the one who was the reason they were both there but who was now gone. At length Bunny White Tail bounced away, and again Percy stood.

Turning from the fence, he ducked low and walked under the partially collapsed roof of the dilapidated pen where once hungry animals knew to come along with those who were injured. With a fond smile, he looked about.

What was that hanging from an end of rusted wire? It looked like a clump of dried flowers!

He took two quick steps toward it and gently took hold of it. It was one of Gwyneth’s friendship bouquets!

Images and memories flooded him from that first day when he had been the recipient of a fresh bouquet of wildflowers not so very different from this.

“Grannie says always greet a stranger with flowers,”
he recalled her saying at their first meeting.

Full of the cockiness of youth, he had replied with the air of one more pleased with himself than he had a right to be.
“So you consider me a stranger, do you?”
he had said.

“I’ve never seen your face before.”

“Then what do you intend to do about it?”

“Give you the flowers I picked for you, of course.”

Even now, so much later, Percy recalled how his sixteen-year-old rebel’s heart had been suddenly touched by the kindness of the child-stranger.

“Surely you meant these for someone else?”
he said.

“I picked them for you,”
Gwyneth had answered simply, gazing into his face with wide, innocent eyes.
“Now that I have given you flowers, I must know who you are. What is your name, so I shall know whom to ask for when I go to Glasgow?”

Percy had laughed with delight. She was charming beyond words!

“My name is Percival … Percival Drummond, at your service,”
he had answered.
“My friends call me Percy.”

“What would you like me to call you, Mr. Drummond?”

“You must call me Percy. What is your name?”

“Gwyneth Barrie.”

“Then, Gwyneth Barrie, I am happy to make your acquaintance. But why did you pick these for me?”
Percy had asked about Gwyneth’s simple gift of flowers on that day.

“I saw you coming,”
she replied.

“You didn’t know me when you picked them. Surely you don’t give flowers to every stranger you pass.”

“Only those who are going to become my friends.”

“You knew that about me?”

“Of course.”

“How did you know?”

“I saw on your face the look of a friend.”

Percy’s thoughts returned to the present. The quietness around him deepened. It was too quiet—the stillness of desolation.

He glanced down at the flowers in his hand, held together by a small piece of yellowed paper and tied around with a bit of blue ribbon.

The blue ribbon! Of course—he remembered now … the very ribbon he had given her!

Slowly he untied the ribbon, so as not to damage the fragile flowers, then unfolded the crinkled paper that had held them together. There was writing inside!

A stab stung Percy’s heart. He remembered the day he had waited for her so long on the edge of the bluff at Mochras Head. He had never seen her again.

“Oh, Gwyneth,” he whispered, “where have you gone?”

T
HIRTY
-F
OUR

The Inn

A
s he left the cottage and rode toward Llanfryniog, his mind and heart quiet and full of many things, Percy recalled his return to Wales a year ago when he had stopped in at Mistress Chattan’s pub before continuing on to the manor. She had dropped several cryptic comments he had hardly understood, things about his uncle along with hints that she knew more than she was saying. Maybe it was time he paid the good Mistress Chattan another visit.

Percy walked into the thin light of Mistress Chattan’s establishment. It was midafternoon. He was glad to find the place empty of patrons. Mistress Chattan was nowhere to be seen. Percy sat down at one of the tables and waited.

Presently the proprietress appeared from her quarters, walking out from behind the long wooden bar. Still large, still clad in the familiar white apron spread about with stains and splotches evidencing the day’s work, she appeared to have shed a few pounds since he had last seen her. She still glided across the floor with the soft, stealthy step of a cat. Her hair was nearly entirely gray now, the wrinkles in her face and neck more pronounced.

For the first time since he had made her acquaintance, a fleeting tinge of sadness swept through Percy at the sight. She was aging and alone. What did her future hold?

“Well, young Drummond,” she said as she saw her lone customer, “you’re back, are you?”

“Hello, Mistress Chattan,” said Percy, greeting her with a smile. “You probably already knew I was here.”

“I did indeed.”

“You know everything that goes on in this village.”

“It pays for one like me to keep abreast of happenings.”

“Is your ale still the best?”

“I’ve no cause to think otherwise. But you shall be the judge of that yourself.”

“Then pour me a pint and we shall see!” laughed Percy. “Come join me, Mistress Chattan,” he added.

She returned a moment later, set a tall glass in front of Percy, then eased into a chair opposite him. “So you’re not going to marry the lass after all?” she said.

“You do know everything!” laughed Percy. “Are we so much the subject of the town’s talk?”

“There’s nothing quite like a broken engagement to set tongues wagging.”

“It’s not so much a broken engagement but a
postponed
one. We are simply waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“To see if it is right.”

Whether Percy’s answer conveyed in any sense of the word an
accurate
view of the situation was doubtful. But she did not press her inquiry further. A student of the human condition in her own way, which she exploited through her position, aided by the liquid inventory of her stock-in-trade, Mistress Chattan was not by any stretch of the imagination a spiritual woman. What insight she possessed into human nature had been gleaned for one purpose alone—that she might gain power over those who came her way. She had come into more than her share of secrets. By subtle art, attentive ear, and skillfully placed sympathetic comment, she had through the years obtained much information that might be useful to possess. But to understand the spiritual movements within the heart of one like Percy Drummond lay completely outside her ken.

“So what do you know of Lord Snowdon’s past, then?” asked Percy abruptly.

Mistress Chattan’s eyes narrowed. If the question took her by surprise, she did not reveal it. “What makes you think I know anything?” she said.

“You dropped many hints when I was here a year ago. You told me there had been another woman before my Aunt Katherine.”

“I only told you what I have heard. But no one around here knows of it, for it all took place across the sea.”

“You said there was a child?”

“There’s children and there’s children. That’s why I asked you if you knew about your uncle’s past.”

“I may know more than I once did,” said Percy with an enigmatic tone of his own.

It was not lost on Mistress Chattan. One of her dark eyebrows curled up in question.

“But it’s my opinion that you know more than you’ve said as well,” Percy added. “Now it is time for me to know what you know.”

It was silent for twenty or thirty seconds. Mistress Chattan was thinking. “So the young man’s about to become the new viscount, is he?” she said at length.

“You seem well up on the affairs of the manor.”

“I know things, young Drummond. I know when his twenty-fifth birthday is and what might make him rue the fact that it didn’t come earlier.”

“What do you mean?” asked Percy.

“Just that there may be others to consider.”

Percy took in the whispered words without revealing anything. Now he was thinking hard, wondering how much to reveal. He knew one like Mistress Chattan
might
be dangerous. He had to walk with care. “Others?” he repeated. “Who are you talking about?”

“I will say no more than that. There were rumors.”

“What kind of rumors?”

“About what drew your uncle to Ireland in the first place.”

“What was it then?”

“The lure, what else? What seduces all young men—and the lure of riches … the lust for gold.”

T
HIRTY
-F
IVE

The Library

P
ercy left Mistress Chattan’s with much to think about. From the inn he went to the Lorimer home, visited with Rhawn for an hour, then began the ride back up the plateau to Westbrooke Manor. When he arrived it was nearly time for dinner.

He took his mount to the stables, unsaddled it, and then made his way around to the side entrance of the manor. He hurried up to his room with the bouquet tied with the blue ribbon in his hand, clutching it as if it were a tiny baby bird, careful over every stem and petal, but strangely shy lest Florilyn see it. Depositing it in his room, he descended by the main stairway to the dining room where his aunt and Florilyn were about to begin the evening meal without him.

Later that evening, Percy went upstairs. Instead of returning to his room, he went to the library. He had not wanted to tell Florilyn that he had not even brought the MacDonald book she had been reading with him.