The Avalon Chanter (3 page)

Beyond Lindisfarne, the smaller and yet
taller profile of Farnaby materialized from sun-shimmer on the sea,
little more than a mirage, a floating island momentarily tethered
near the shore of Northumbria. If not for the low rays of the
westering sun picking out a rocky headland above a frill of white
breakers, it would be invisible.

Like mythic Avalon, Jean thought, where
grieving queens carried the mortally wounded Arthur—Wat had been
mortally wounded when he came home to Farnaby . . .

An electronic deedle broke into Jean’s
reverie. A ringtone, but not hers or Alasdair’s.

At the far railing, Lance pulled a cell phone
from his pocket. “I’m working now, I can’t . . . Yeh, last run of
the day . . . Likely so, aye, not much else doing of an evening . .
. I’ll buy my own pints, thanks just the same . . . See you there,
then . . . Must run, bye.” He stabbed at the phone and jammed it
into his pocket with a scowl of frustration.

Hmm
, Jean
thought. What red-blooded young Brit would reject a mate’s offer of
a pint?

The breeze was salt-fresh, slightly fishy,
slightly oily, and chilly enough that Jean huddled both into her
coat and closer to Alasdair. “There’s a cabin,” he said, nodding
toward the superstructure.

“
Yeah, and I bet the diesel fumes are
even worse in there. I’ll make do with the open air,
thanks.”

White gulls spiraled overhead, their harsh
cries mingling with the softer, more poignant ones of
oystercatchers—Jean looked around to see several black-and-white
birds skimming the waves, probably heading toward the nearest
beach, bed, and board. She glanced at her watch. “Two minutes shy
of six.”

“
Going on for tea time,
then.”

“
No wonder I’m getting hungry. Our B
and B doesn’t do dinner. I bet the pub is open, though.”

“
I’m hoping they’re properly
provisioned. Musicians and reporters, they all march on their
stomachs.”

So do ferrymen, Jean thought, eyeing Lance’s
stiff back as he stood with arms braced on the railing. “With the
press conference and the concert at the music school Saturday
night, the village is probably jumping.”

The boat bucked and wallowed and Jean fell
silent, not because her stomach shimmied rather than marched, but
because Lance was right about getting five pounds’ worth of
scenery.

Behind the boat the sun melted ever nearer to
the green horizon. To their right Bamburgh Castle rose from its
crag, appearing more movie set than stones and mortar. But it was
no set, no castle in the air. Fortifications had risen from that
hillock for two thousand years and more. No surprise some
traditions named it as the home of Lancelot, knight of the Round
Table and Guinevere’s adulterous lover.

Bamburgh. The music school on Farnaby.
Weapons and musical instruments, both very early inventions of
mankind. So was adultery, but that could only have been invented—or
recognized—after the creation of marriage.

Alasdair cocked his head to the side, eyeing
the castle not as a tourist but as the head of Scotland’s Protect
and Survive. She wasn’t sure what his English opposite number would
be, not quite English Heritage—they were into conservation more
than security, whereas P and S had their priorities the other way
around. That’s why they’d hired a retired policeman to run their
show. “Is English Heritage in charge of Farnaby Priory? I mean,
they’re in charge of Lindisfarne Priory, right? What if Maggie
didn’t fill out some sort of form or get whatever permission she
needed to open a tomb?”

“
The priory’s listed as privately
owned, likely by Maggie herself. Still, it’s a listed building, so
she’s needing permissions before digging, aye. Not getting them
seems right careless for someone with that good academic
reputation.” Alasdair’s head swiveled, following the course of a
smallish boat cutting across the path of the ferry, the glassy sea
churned to froth in its wake.

Farnaby Island had resolved itself from the
glare and now appeared as a long, tapering wedge of charcoal-gray
rock topped with green fields. The small boat throttled back and
disappeared around the headland. Seabirds blossomed from the cliff
face like feathered fireworks, squawking and flapping. Some skimmed
past the ferry, others spiraled upward past a small tower that
could be anything from a Roman signal station to a World War II gun
emplacement.

Right now Jean pondered the boat. Simple
physics told her that a sleek, aerodynamic number like that would
be fast. Knowledge of the world told her that one painted dark blue
and marked with an insignia belonged to the authorities. “Police
boat?”

Lance hulked over them, briskly coiling a
rope. “That’s P.C. Crawford from Bamburgh village. Must’ve been in
a right hurry to come straight across instead of round by the road
and then the ferry.”

“
Likely he knew he’d missed the ferry,”
suggested Alasdair, “being a local lad and all, and his business
couldn’t wait till tomorrow.”

“
Not much call for police on Farnaby,”
Lance said half to himself. His features didn’t quite crease into a
frown, but the frown was imminent in its tightened lines. He added,
“Loony Lauder,” as though that explained everything, and headed for
the gangway.

Funny, even the local people called Maggie
loony. What was she up to? “Curiouser and curiouser,” Jean murmured
to Alasdair, who nodded in agreement.

Chapter Three

The ferry followed the police boat around the
headland and into a bay that was little more than a shallow scoop
lined with one curving street and its assorted buildings. Farnaby
St. Mary.

Like the ancient settlers of Bamburgh
building their fortress on a defensive promontory, the
seventh-century founders of Farnaby Priory had chosen their ground
wisely, setting their thatched huts into the concave south face of
the island where they would be protected by rising land on the
north and east. Not that Jean’s searching eye could see the priory
from the harbor. It must be concealed by the village, its broken
walls not as tall as those on Lindisfarne.

The police boat disappeared into a relatively
modern harbor, passing between slab-sided concrete and boulder
breakwaters that looked like the jaws of a huge pair of pliers. By
standing up, Jean could see the tops of several other boats tucked
away inside, of the fishing and sailing variety. Two bright red
kayaks rested atop the breakwater amid odds and ends of ropes,
nets, boxes, and mysterious items her landlubber eyes couldn’t
identify.

The ferry angled straight for the beach,
slowed, and with a bump that caused Jean to sit back down again,
Alasdair’s hand on her arm, came to a halt against a concrete ramp.
The gangplank screeched and landed with a thud. Lance galloped down
it and threw a coil of rope over a waiting post.

“
So what do the villagers do if they
need to get off the island while the tide is out?” Jean
asked.

“
Take a small boat to the back side of
Lindisfarne or some other place along the coast,” answered
Alasdair. “And you could be landing a small boat on one of its
beaches even at low tide.”

“
Ah.” Mysterious were the ways of
sea-going peoples. Jean and Alasdair gathered up their things and,
with a wave at Clyde in his command center, regained terra firma.
She threw a thank-you at Lance as they passed.

He made no response. He knotted the rope so
slowly his movements seemed almost sensual, his fingertips gliding
over the nylon coils. Jean followed the direction of his gaze to
see an elderly Land Rover coming to a halt at the top of the ramp.
From it stepped a young woman. On her slender, graceful body, the
muddy wellie boots, mud-splashed camouflage pants, and
mud-spattered denim jacket looked like Paris couture. What had
probably started the day as a sleek chin-length haircut was now a
russet tousle. She stood, legs apart, hands on her hips, head
thrown back, her delicate features turned toward a point far beyond
the island.

Jean glanced around and saw nothing more than
the sun continuing to sink, as the sun tended to do late in the
afternoon. It touched a layer of clouds, spilling a wash of pink
and peach over them. “Now there’s a five-pound view.”

Alasdair abandoned his scrutiny of the young
woman, glanced at the clouds as though inspecting them for Claude
Monet’s signature, said, “Aye, lovely that,” and, “Who’s the
girl?”

“
Not a clue. If she’s waiting for us,
we’re about to find out.”

Yep. The—well, let him call her a girl; she
could hardly be older than twenty—the vision looked down at them.
The words of a song of Wat Lauder’s era came to Jean, about roses
in a garden bowing and asking a young woman’s pardon. But no. This
young woman’s blooming complexion was dusted with gray, the lush
pink lips were braced tautly, and the startlingly blue eyes were
hooded with caution.

Her polite smile touched only her lips. In a
thankfully mild variation of the adenoidal screech young women used
for voices these days, she asked, “Ms. Fairbairn? Mr. Cameron? Ms.
Capaldi called and said you were running late.”

Good thing Jean had confessed to
Miranda, who captained the
Great
Scot
ship, that they’d wandered off-schedule. “Guilty
as charged,” she replied, and then winced, telling her unruly
subconscious to get off the matter of Maggie’s scandal,
already.

The smile acknowledged no double meanings.
“I’m Tara Hogg. I’ll run you to your B&B.”

“
Professor Lauder’s graduate student?”
Jean hazarded. “Research assistant?”

“
Her daughter.”

Daughter? Maggie Lauder had a daughter?
Jean’s glance at Alasdair noted the scrunch of his calculating eye.
So much for tiptoeing around Maggie’s past. Tara was the right age
to date from the episode of the murdered boyfriend. Lover, rather.
But for a last name she bore the screamingly inappropriate—to her
appearance, not the locale—Hogg.

Maggie’s daughter, blood-related to the
peculiar Lauder clan. No wonder she watched the sinking sun signal
the end of a stressful day.

A movement in the corner of Jean’s eye
resolved itself into Clyde stepping down the gangplank of the ferry
and regarding his son, who still lingered over the knotted rope,
with a look of something between impatience and disgust. Not that
Lance saw him. He was still focused on Tara. It was hardly the
first time a strapping young warrior had been reduced to jelly by a
beautiful woman.

Jean managed to shape her smile of amusement
into one that mirrored Tara’s courtesy. “Thank you. We were hoping
to go straight out to the priory and the excavation.”

“
Sorry,” said Tara, “but there’s a
problem with that.”

By this time Jean was almost dancing with
curiosity—not least because she detected an American accent in the
young woman’s voice. Beside her, Alasdair’s alert stance mimicked
that of a cat at a mouse hole. He asked, “A problem with the
excavation, or with us seeing it?”

“
We could give you a tour tomorrow.
It’s almost sunset . . .”

“
Sunset’s at half-past seven. It’s
hardly half-past six.”

“
Mags wants me to bring P.C. Crawford
out.”

Alasdair went inexorably on, “Miss Capaldi
wouldn’t have bothered making our excuses if Professor Lauder
weren’t expecting us for the entire weekend, as distinct from the
day-trippers who came only for the press conference.”

Tara opened her mouth and shut it again. She
turned away, presenting them with her shoulder.

An American accent, definitely. Had
Maggie given Tara up for adoption, way back when? And now . . .
Jean almost felt sorry for her. Still, she bumped Alasdair’s chest
with her own shoulder:
Thanks.
His bland expression was mitigated by the merest lift of a
brow-end and the slightest tuck of a mouth-corner:
Once a cop, always a cop.

The cop on active duty emerged from the
enclosure of the harbor, duly wearing a lime-yellow reflective
jacket over his uniform and a billed cap with a checkerboard band.
Tara beckoned and took a couple of steps toward him.

So did Alasdair, extending his hand in
the tall, lanky man’s direction. “Alasdair Cameron. Detective Chief
Inspector, Northern Constabulary, retired. Currently head of
Protect and Survive, Edinburgh. My wife, Jean Fairbairn of
Great Scot.
”

“
Ah.” Crawford stopped dead. His
narrow, nearly ascetic face, polished red by the wind from the
North Sea, reminded Jean of someone, but she couldn’t think of
whom. He shook Alasdair’s hand as cautiously as though he expected
to find a buzzer concealed in the palm. “P.C. Edwin Crawford.
Bamburgh. Sir.”

“
Now then, Constable.” Alasdair might
be four inches shorter and more or less the same age, but he was
definitely In Charge. “What is it about this problem with the grave
that’s requiring the police? Can I be of assistance, in either of
my capacities?”

Crawford said, “Ah.”

“
She’s a reporter,” murmured Tara,
ducking her head toward Jean.

“
I do history and travel articles, not
. . .” Go ahead, say it, she told herself. “. . . scandals and
gossip. I’m a former history professor myself, a colleague of
Professor Lauder’s.”

Crawford’s features seemed to narrow even
further, like the gap between a closing door and its frame.

“
Your luggage,” Tara said, her voice
positively deflated. “You need to take it to the B and
B.”