The Orkney Scroll

The Orkney Scrolls

Lyn Hamilton

Prologue

Before he went mad, Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs. It’s an intriguing declaration to be sure, one that requires more than a little explication, and in some ways an irritating way to put finis to a story. For some, though, it is a beginning rather than an end, a statement of such promise that hopes and dreams are pinned on it, as if believing would make it so. To decide whether you come down on the side of the dreamers or the skeptics or rather somewhere in between, you will have to go back to the beginning, and that means more than nine hundred years.

I do not know if Bjarni’s saga is true. My grandfather used to say that it was not inconsistent with the facts. You will perhaps not see this as a ringing endorsement, but then you didn’t know my grandfather. I can tell you that the tale has been passed down through my family for longer than anyone can remember. My grandfather believed that at first the story would have been transmitted orally, the structure and cadence of the poem being an aid to the memory, so that it would always be accurately told. At some time, no one knows when, it was written down, possibly in Norn, but more likely first in Latin, stories of this sort appealing to twelfth-century clerics it seems, then passed from one generation to the next. It was my grandfather who translated it from Latin. That was how I learned my letters, by copying the story in a notebook, actually several of them, my grandfather watching to make sure that I made no error, left nothing out. And that, I suppose, is why we have the story still, copied over and over again by successive generations. I think for some of us, the preservation of Bjarni’s saga became a sacred trust.

I suppose over all that time liberties were taken with it, errors of omission and commission both, so much so that its true meaning may well be lost. Then again, perhaps not. It is possible I am the last to treasure it. My sons have no interest in it. One doesn’t understand it. The other believes it to be of no worth. Still, I have hopes for one of my granddaughters. She’s a restless spirit, but she comes by that honestly, a true descendant of Bjarni the Wanderer. She used to like me to tell her the story, and demanded that I recite it with her. I will leave the notebooks to her when I die.

So now that you’ve heard the requisite disclaimers, the attempt, however feeble to encourage you to view everything I say with some suspicion, do you still want to hear the story of Bjarni Haraldsson? Of course you do. Who could resist a tale that ends with the words, before he went mad Bjarni the Wanderer hid the cauldron in the tomb of the orcs?

Chapter l

Of Trevor Wylie it was often said that he was a rogue and you should keep your hand firmly on your wallet when he was in the vicinity, but that you couldn’t be upset with him for long. Somebody, though, stayed angry long enough to kill him.

Trevor lost his life over a piece of furniture, at least that’s the way it looked, although it didn’t take long for any of us to figure out there was a lot to Trevor that wasn’t the way it appeared. The object in question was a desk, or rather more correctly a writing cabinet, and for a short time it belonged to a lawyer by the name of Blair Baldwin. Trevor was the antique dealer who sold it to him. In contrast to the charming Trevor, Baldwin was a difficult man to like. That was because he was arrogant and had a hellish temper which he unleashed at the slightest provocation, usually in front of a TV camera. At one point in time though, I think Blair considered me a friend.

I first met Blair in my early days as an antique dealer when he turned up in the doorway of McClintoch & Swain with a piece of cameo glass carefully wrapped in tissue, a vase he’d spent a lot of money to acquire because he believed it to be by the master of Art Nouveau glass, Emile Galle. Blair’s law offices were down the street from my shop, and I expect he dropped by in part to show his acquisition off to someone who would appreciate it, but also looking to me to corroborate his find. Baldwin’s difficult reputation had preceded him, and so it was with some reluctance that I had to point out to him that somewhere between the factory in Romania where the vase had been manufactured and his hands, someone had managed to grind off the letters TIP which would have indicated that the piece was done in the style of Galle, but not by Galle.

It was a tense moment, but Baldwin took it with amazingly good grace. He paid close attention as I showed him what to watch for, had a careful look through the magnifying glass I offered, and asked if there were books on the subject I could recommend. At the end of his visit, it was no longer Mr. Baldwin and Ms. McClintoch, but rather Blair and Lara, and later, it became Blair and “babe.” Not that I was happy about the “babe,” mind you, but Blair was a really good customer. He’d suggested that first day that if I saw anything I thought he might like, I should give him a call. Baldwin was absolutely addicted to Art Nouveau, and for many years I was fortunate to feed his habit. I say fortunate because he had the wherewithal to buy pretty much whatever he fancied, having been hugely successful defending some pretty unsavory characters. He lived in a spectacular house, big enough to accommodate whatever he bought, and paid whatever he had to for something he fancied. Blair Bazillionaire, we called him at McClintoch & Swain.

I’ve had mixed feelings over the years about Baldwin. I’d seen him way too often strutting his stuff for the cameras outside a courthouse, fingers hooked under his suspenders so that he looked as if he were about to take flight, and crowing about how he’d got some scum off on a technicality. Not that he called them scum, of course. That would be editorializing on my part. I believe “my wronged client” was the term he used.

Still, when business was slow at McClintoch & Swain, slow here being used as a euphemism for on the verge of bankruptcy, Baldwin seemed to know it, and he always purchased something spectacular close to month end, whether he needed it or not. He recommended me to his wealthy pals, many of whom became regulars at the shop. When his wife Betsy left him, being the lawyer he was, he could have tied her up in knots forever, legally speaking, but he didn’t, and they seem to have parted reasonably amicably, at least from my perspective, she with what I’d call a small fortune to see her through. There was obviously more than one side to Blair Bazillionaire.

As for antiques, over the years he developed a pretty good eye. After that first unfortunate episode, he wasn’t often fooled. He’d expressed his displeasure over the Galle by tossing it into my wastebasket, which fortunately was full, allowing me to retrieve it in one piece after he’d left. I have it still. It’s lovely, really, no matter who made it, but then I didn’t pay a fortune for it as Baldwin had. He still relied on me for a second opinion on the big ticket items, and that is why I was called to Scot Free, Trevor Wylie’s antique shop to have a look at something special Blair was thinking of buying.

I was late, having spent an unexpected hour or two with the local police force. It turned out I was merely the latest victim of a rash of robberies of antique shops in my neighborhood, something the constable attributed to the opening of a Goth bar just down the street. I wasn’t so sure. For one thing, my sort-of stepdaughter Jennifer patronized the bar, and she said it was just a bunch of people who liked to wear black and talk about themselves. For another, this looked like theft to order to me: someone wanted a pair of eighteenth-century candlesticks and sent a rather professional crew to get it. The thieves had used glass cutters at the back door, bypassed all sorts of expensive merchandise and had taken only the candlesticks. They got out before the security company was able to respond. I was not in a good mood.

The appointment with Blair and Trevor did not start out well. First, I had to push my way past a very large Dober-man in Trevor’s doorway: by large I mean we were almost eyeball to eyeball, a somewhat intimidating way to start. The dog’s owner, who was about as wide as he was high and would have looked more at home keeping the riffraff at bay at the door of the aforementioned Goth bar than in an antique shop, was admiring a not particularly appealing bronze lamppost, and obviously eavesdropping at the same time.

Blair was impatiently tapping his fingers on Trevor’s front counter and looked as if he were about to tear my face off for my tardiness. Trevor, on the other hand, resembled the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary, and I just knew he was going to lord his find, whatever it was, over me.

“You’re late, babe,” Baldwin said, through clenched teeth, as a rather scruffy looking individual in a rumpled beige suit with bicycle clips holding his pant legs edged past the Doberman and into the shop. The new visitor didn’t look as if he belonged there any more than the bouncer did. Given the time I’d just spent with the police on the subject of robberies, I viewed him with some suspicion.

“This is going to blow you away, hen,” Trevor said, kissing me on both cheeks. Trevor was from Scotland and looked and sounded a little like a young Sean Connery, which is probably why I tolerated him. “Hen” is, I believe, Glasgow slang for any female. All this hen and babe stuff was making me nauseous. “This way,” he said, indicating the back room. The man with the bicycle clips, trying to look nonchalant, tripped over a pair of flatirons and almost fell down.

“Are we ready to be impressed?” Trevor asked, hand on a sheet that covered a fairly substantial object of some kind, maybe four feet high and three wide. Baldwin swallowed hard and nodded.

“Lara?” Trevor said.

All this drama was getting on my nerves. “Get on with it, Trevor,” I said. “Although maybe you want to close the door?” I could see both Mr. Doberman and Mr. Bicycle Clips edging toward the office. When Trevor went to the doorway, Bicycle Clips clomped up the stairs to the shop’s second floor.

“No one to guard the merchandise, I’m afraid. So… lights,” he said, flicking a switch that turned a little spotlight on the object. “Gloves,” he added handing both Blair and me a pair.

“Ta dah!” Trevor exclaimed, as he swept the covering away.

After all this, I didn’t expect to be impressed, but this piece just blew me away. Standing under the spotlight was a single piece of furniture, a writing desk, or rather a writing cabinet. It was exquisite, ebonized wood, mahogany, and when you opened the doors, which Trevor did with a flourish, there was a lovely leaded glass panel, and some perfect inlaid woodwork. There were slots, pigeonholes for papers, and drawers that opened beautifully. Beside me, Baldwin made little squeaking sounds.

“It can’t be, can it?” I said, turning to Trevor.

“I wasn’t sure when I found it,” he replied. “I took a chance, but I’m convinced it is.”

“Babe?” Baldwin managed to say.

“It looks to be the right age,” I said carefully. “The style is definitely Glasgow School. I’d have to do some research.”

“I’ve done it already,” Trevor said, handing me a file. “Be my guest.” Baldwin impatiently leaned over my shoulder as I opened it.

There was only one sheet of paper in the file. It was a drawing of the desk in question, complete with exact specifications. And it was initialed: CRM/MMM.

“Good lord,” Baldwin gasped and sank into a chair.

“Charles Rennie Mackintosh,” Trevor said. “Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.”

“Are you all right, Blair?” I said. “You aren’t going into shock or anything, are you?”

“I’ll make tea,” Trevor said. “And perk it up a bit with this.” This was a bottle of rather fine single malt scotch. Trevor was feeling pretty cocky.

“I know this looks convincing,” I said. “But it isn’t definitive.”

“There’s more,” Trevor said, bringing a book down from a shelf above his desk and opening it. “Here’s something similar. Take your time.”

“How much?” Baldwin said.

“Blair!” I cautioned. The book in question was a very good text on Art Nouveau, an international style that emerged about 1890 and was highly popular until it burned itself out in about 1904, but which had names associated with it—like Tiffany and Lalique—that remain famous today. Several brilliant individuals were part of this movement, of which Glasgow’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one. Mackintosh, while not terribly favored in Britain at the time, was a huge influence on European designers like Josef Hoffman and the Weiner Werkstatte. His work, like the Art Nouveau movement itself, was something of a flash in the pan, but after some decades of neglect is now much sought-after. Very occasionally a piece comes on the market. Trevor had marked a page in the book with a yellow sticky and there was a photograph of a writing cabinet similar, but not absolutely identical to the one in front of me, in the book.

“I think Mackintosh made two to this design,” Trevor said. “That is not, after all, unprecedented. He sometimes made a second piece for himself when he’d been commissioned to design something for a client.”

“Where did you find it?” I said, nodding toward the cabinet.

“I was on my regular trip in Scotland,” Trevor said. “One of my pickers told me that an old lady was holding a contents sale on the weekend and might have some interesting stuff. I went over early, and had a look, and charmed her into selling the piece to me, a couple of pieces, actually. The other one didn’t pan out. This one did. Lucky for me. If it hadn’t, I’d have been royally screwed. I paid a lot for it, way too much if my hunch wasn’t right. But that’s the business we’re in, eh, hen?”