The Avalon Chanter (41 page)

Maggie sat up. For a long moment she
peered into the bottom of the grave, the lines in her face
perceptibly lightening, the darkness in her eyes clearing. Then she
raised her gaze to her mother sitting cross-legged in front of the
inscription, leaning forward, running her forefinger along the
carvings. “
Uxor draconis
,” the
old woman crooned, as though she herself was cantarist.

“
Uxor domini
,”
said Michael. “Either the wife of a temporal lord, or a bride of
Christ, a nun.”

Rebecca said, “Surely this was Prioress
Hilda’s grave. But Christians don’t bury their dead with grave
goods.”

“
Maybe it was her grave once,” said
Maggie. “Maybe the reused coffin never had a bottom, so she could
lie directly in the earth. Maybe when the Viking raiders came the
nuns gathered up her bones, her sacred relics, and carried them to
a place of safety the way the monks on Lindisfarne carried away
Saint Cuthbert’s bones.”

“
Which are now in Durham Cathedral,”
said Jean. “He’s just about the only English saint still in his
shrine.”

Maggie nodded. “Where Saint Hilda is now, we
don’t know.”

Other than watching over her priory. Jean
took the opportunity to kneel down beside the hole and have a good
look at the emerging treasure.

She counted nine gold coins, all or partially
exposed. Some were turned up heads, showing the profile of a Roman
emperor. The inscriptions were too muddy for her to read, but she
thought one of them might be the name of Constantine, the emperor
who had legitimized Christianity in the Empire. The coins turned up
tails were embossed with statues of gods, including one that was a
dead ringer for the classic image of Britannia.

Next to them a scattering of lumps emerged
from the muck, gold edges holding insets of—garnet, Jean supposed—a
deep red gemstone, anyway. Items so delicate and fine that it
seemed impossible they could have been made without modern
magnifying glasses and lighting. “Anglo-Saxon rings and clasps and
sword decorations? You can make a good case the grave, if not the
chapel, dates back to the original Celtic foundation. Plus—wow!
It’s a real treasure trove!”

“
You’ll be notifying the authorities,”
stated Alasdair. “Beyond them, though, I’d be keeping this secret.
You’re not wanting the island overrun with metal detectorists and
amateur diggers.”

“
Good heavens, no. Rigorous excavation.
Everything by the book.” A grin lurked in Maggie’s lips and
cheeks.

Jean considered the vertical flagstones
lining the cavity behind the sheets of gray lead. “Was this an
ancient site once? A large prehistoric cist grave that was
converted, so to speak, when the Christians moved in?”

“
It’s possible.”

“
But why is there a treasure here if it
was once Saint Hilda’s grave?” Tara asked.

“
Sometimes churches served as banks,”
replied Maggie. “People would leave their precious items there to
protect them from the raiders, Angles perhaps—they first landed in
this area—or, later, when the Anglo-Saxons themselves became the
targets of Viking raids.”

“
You’re thinking folk carried away
Hilda’s remains and left the priory’s treasure in what had once
been her grave?” asked Michael. “Ah, poor sods, if they could
rescue only the one treasure, which one to choose? The spiritual
one or the temporal one?”

“
There’s their choice.” Jean pulled
back from the brink, her eyes still dazzled by the gold.
Incorruptible gold, like the bodies of saints. Unlike the body that
had lain here for forty years, in darkness and in secrecy. “There’s
a clue in the late attribution to Genevieve, who saved—well, Paris
is a treasure, I guess—from barbarians.”

“
It’s beautiful now,” said Rebecca.
“Imagine what it’ll look like when it’s cleaned and displayed and
studied. It’s a third kind of treasure: academic. It’ll make your
reputation, Maggie.”

“
What I was after all along.” Maggie’s
grin broke free, romped across her face, and then dulled when she
turned once again toward her mother.

Jean knew what she was thinking: If Elaine
had ever opened the grave, she’d have found, if not exact
confirmation of her theories, at least a spot in the history books.
But by hiding Athelstan’s body there, she’d deprived herself of any
such conclusion.

There had to be some sort of metaphor in
that.

Jean stood up, meeting Alasdair’s
slightly amused eyes. Treasure trove. Gold coins—or one gold coin,
at least. The case that had first brought them together.
Been there, done that, worn the matching T-shirts
for a year now.

A male voice spoke from behind the group and
they all spun around, even Elaine, who greeted Lance with a smile.
She bounded to her feet and walked toward him. “Get your bodhran,
lad. Let’s have us a sing-song!”

“
Later, Elaine,” he returned politely,
and kept on walking toward the altar end of the chapel.
Specifically to the spot where Tara lay. “I stopped by to see how
Tara’s—how all you ladies are getting on.”

Accepting his hand, Tara rose from her prone
position. “We’re getting along pretty good, considering. How’s that
hard head of yours doing?”

“
It’s not even cracked, though they’re
telling me my brain must have sloshed about a bit. I don’t remember
what happened, not directly, just you helping me,” he said to
Niamh.

“
It’s my job,” she told him, and ducked
aside to follow Elaine toward the door of the church before anyone
could point out the circumstances had been a lot more complex than
that.

“
They tell me I was a bit of a hero.
All I remember is thinking that Tara was in danger. I’m sorry I
missed the details.”

“
I wish we’d all missed the details,”
said Tara, with feeling. Lance raised his arm, hesitated, and
instead of placing it around her shoulders patted her arm. She
didn’t flinch.

Rebecca and Michael swapped looks, hers a
comment on developing relationships, his slightly puzzled. There’d
been a perturbation in the orbits of Mars and Venus, but he wasn’t
picking up quite what had caused it.

Men
, Jean
thought affectionately. Testosterone did have its points, driving
even a semi-conscious man to protect the female of the species.
“Lance, right before the ferry landed Friday afternoon, you
referred to Maggie as Loony Lauder. Where did you pick that
up?”

Lance shook his head and winced. “Did I?
Don’t remember. And I’m not saying that because I was concussed . .
. Oh, yeh, I do remember, it was someone coming back on the ferry
that day who called her that. Dad said it was Elaine’s nickname
once. I thought it was funny, I reckon, and passed it on.”

Maggie caught Jean’s eye. Alasdair nodded.
They knew who Lance had overheard. Donal McCarthy, yet to break out
of his Bill Parkinson chrysalis and reveal his true nature as a
reptile.

Tara elbowed Lance in the ribs. “Hey, I’m a
Lauder too, you know.”

His smile was brighter than the lights
shining down into the grave. “I shan’t be holding that against
you,” he told her, and then, as if afraid he’d presumed too much,
looked down into the pit. “What’s on here?”

Maggie, Tara, Michael, and Rebecca all
gathered around the grave, pointing and explaining. Niamh stopped
several paces behind Elaine, pulled out her phone, and started
texting. A heads-up to Darling that Farnaby was a place of treasure
as well as of death? Or no more than a casual comment?

Through the empty doorway into the church
Jean saw movement. A woman wearing a simple woolen shift and an
off-white veil glided among the column bases. A woman who appeared
thoroughly corporeal, except that she cast no shadow.

Elaine stepped forward to meet her. To meet
the ghost, Jean’s neck hairs informed her, of the enchanted
prioress. Who exchanged a gracious nod with the woman, saint
greeting sinner and back again.

Alasdair’s hands grasped Jean’s arms, just as
they had when they sensed the ghost going into the chapel on
Friday. Just as they had when they saw their first mutual ghost
almost a year ago. His voice whispered in her ear. “There you are.
Elaine’s seeing the dead.”

“
But whether the dead are communicating
with her . . .” Jean’s whisper died away on a breath. “It doesn’t
matter, not now.”

Elaine and Hilda turned as one. The living
woman held out a hand. The discarnate woman raised hers in a
gesture of blessing. And, as the chorus of nuns chanted the midday
service, the shambling shape of George Grinsell walked toward them.
Perhaps he would allow himself to be drawn from profane to sacred
time and beyond. Perhaps he would turn his back on the women
reaching out to him, and choose purgatory.

Elaine stood there all alone, her hand
outstretched. Niamh finished her message, tucked her phone into her
pocket, and took Elaine’s arm. “Let’s go home, shall we?”

Young woman and old walked away into the
mingled light and shadow of Farnaby Priory.

“
Home,” repeated Alasdair. “Time we
were packing ourselves up and getting on.”

“
Our work here is done,” Jean
replied.

As one, the
couple emerged from the shade of the chantry chapel into the
sunshine of an Avalon that was more than myth, if less than real,
and took the first steps of the journey back to the mainland of
their lives.

About the Author

The Avalon Chanter
is book seven of the Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron
cross-genre mystery series: America’s exile and Scotland’s finest
on the trail of all-too-living legends.

Of
The Secret
Portrait
,
Kirkus
says, “Mystery, history and sexual tension blend with a taste
of the wild beauty of the Highlands.” Of
The Burning Glass
,
Publishers Weekly
says, “Authentic dialect,
detailed descriptions of the castle and environs, and vivid
characters recreate an area rich in history and legend. The tightly
woven plot is certain to delight history fans with its dramatic
collision of past and present.”

Lillian Stewart Carl has wandered countless
British single-track roads, from Orkney to Dover and back again.
She has also excavated the Biblical city of Gezer in Israel, worn a
pink and mauve sari to a wedding in Hyderabad, India, searched for
Middle-earth in New Zealand, and sung “Waltzing Matilda” in a
haunted cottage in the Australian outback. No surprise her fiction
evokes a mythical past, even in contemporary settings.

After starting out in science fiction
and fantasy, Lillian Stewart Carl is now writing novels blending
mystery, romance, and fantasy, along with short mystery and fantasy
stories. Among her non-series novels is her
Shadows in Scarlet
: “Presenting a delicious mix
of romance and supernatural suspense, Carl (
Ashes to Ashes
) delivers yet another immensely
readable tale. She has created an engaging cast and a very
entertaining plot, spicing the mix with some interesting twists on
the ghostly romantic suspense novel.”
Publishers Weekly

Of
Lucifer's
Crown
,
Library Journal
says: “Blending historical mystery with a touch of the
supernatural, the author creates an intriguing exploration of faith
and redemption in a world that is at once both modern and
timeless.”

With John Helfers, Lillian
co-edited
The Vorkosigan
Companion
, a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold’s
science fiction work, which was nominated for a Hugo
award.

All but one of the twenty-five stories
in Lillian’s two short story collections,
Along the Rim of Time
, and
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and
Myth
, was originally published in a magazine or
anthology. The collections include three stories which were
reprinted in
Year's Best
mystery anthologies.

Here
is her website.
Here
is her Facebook Group Page.
Here
is a listing of more Smashwords books.

Copyright ©
2014
Lillian Stewart Carl

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