The Orkney Scroll (11 page)

“We are relatively new to this community,” Alexander continued. “Ten years, I think. And you’ve been most welcoming, considering I’m English and my wife’s American— not at all what I heard about Scottish reserve.” People applauded a bit more. “Well, perhaps at bit reserved, at least at first, but not nearly as bad as we expected.” Everyone laughed. “And there is no question Scotland has been good to us. Who would have thought a boy from Liverpool, a former army captain, a kid who joined the army just to get a cheap education and see the world, would end up with a house like this, and a spectacular wife like Maya!”

“You’re a captain of industry now, Robert,” someone called out, as Robert kissed Maya’s hand and everyone applauded.

“We wanted to repay the community in some way. We are so glad to have been able to make even a small contribution to helping make our streets a little safer. We thought about it a great deal before making a decision as to how we could best help. Dorothy is very persuasive, believe me.” Everybody laughed and clapped, and Dorothy blushed. “Seriously now, it’s the least we could do, and really, the thanks go to each of you,” Alexander continued. “Maya and I are perfectly aware that you can find champagne and Scottish salmon for less at other establishments.” More laughter greeted that comment. “Please enjoy the evening. Our home is at your disposal, although we do hope you won’t stay the night.”

“Pleasant fellow,” I said, turning to Lester. “Nice sense of humor.”

“Yes, but don’t get on his bad side,” Lester replied. “You don’t go from army captain to millionaire many times over by being nice to everybody.”

“I suppose not.”

“Have you had the beautiful homes tour?”

“I was just starting to have a look around when the speeches started.”

“I’ll escort you, shall I? An antique dealer’s guided tour? Let’s get some more of that vastly overpriced champagne to take with us.”

Lester was very amusing and also very knowledgeable. It was fun, really, seeing the place through his eyes, and he seemed to enjoy it, too. I knew enough about the stuff he’d sold to the Alexanders to make the appropriate appreciative noises, and so he was happy as a clam. They had clearly spent millions on the place, but all in very good taste, and Lester had helped him do it. It made me think of my former relationship with Blair. I wished I could be as proud of that as Lester seemed to be.

The house really was open for everyone to see. I was in heaven. I love open houses. I drop in at real estate open houses all the time, just to see how other people live. I insisted upon looking in every corner, every bathroom, any room that wasn’t locked, and there really weren’t any that I could find. Yes, there were people who were obviously making sure we guests didn’t abscond with the Meissen porcelain, but it was all very tastefully done. You’d hardly guess the gorgeous young people in artistic black were security guards.

Upstairs there were many bedrooms. The master bedroom was all Art Deco, and really spectacular with a huge balcony that ran the length of the room. There was also an upstairs den, and in it a couple of Charles Rennie Mackintosh chairs, both with neat little signs on them asking us to please refrain from sitting on them and a bookcase, also Mackintosh.
Bingo,
I thought.

“I see you do know your Mackintosh,” Lester said, as I walked right over to them.

“I’ve become something of an expert in the last few weeks,” I said. “Did you sell them these?”

“I regret to say I didn’t. In fact, this is the first time I’ve seen them.” He peered at them carefully. “Undoubtedly authentic.”

“Authentic, I’m sure, but I must say those chairs look uncomfortable. What do you bet even their owner doesn’t sit in them?”

“They were designed to be uncomfortable. Miss Cranston, for whose tearooms Mackintosh designed these chairs, thought her staff sat around too much, so she asked him to design uncomfortable furniture for the staff room.”

I laughed. “You obviously know a lot about this.”

“I’m Glaswegian,” he said. “I love the way he has these doors on the bookcase. Every detail is perfect. All that hand work. You just never see something like this these days. Look at these hinges and the lock.”

“Oh, believe me, I have,” I said. “I wish I had a photograph of the writing cabinet,” I added half to myself.

“What writing cabinet?”

“Umm, I mean the kind of writing cabinet my client would be interested in. Maybe Alexander has one in his basement or something.”

“Why don’t you get a book on Mackintosh and copy a photo of something similar so you’ll have something to show?” Lester said. “I’d be happy to take it to Alexander for you, for only a small commission if he sells it to you.”

“I’ll do that. Have we seen the whole place?”

“Just about,” he replied. “Now, come and meet a few people.”

Lester knew everybody. He introduced me to various people whose names I would never remember, and finally, in the dying minutes of the soiree, he introduced me to the Alexanders themselves. We were admiring what Lester referred to as the garden room, furnished with lovely old rattan with lots of orchids everywhere, when the Alexanders walked in.

“Lester!” Robert said. “Good of you to come.”

“Entirely my pleasure. May I present Lara McClintoch,” Lester said. “Ms. McClintoch is an antique dealer from Toronto.”

“Welcome to our home,” the great man said.

“Ms. McClintoch is interested in Charles Rennie Mackintosh. She’s looking for a writing cabinet for a client.”

“We know an antique dealer from Toronto,” Maya said. “Don’t we?”

“I’m not sure whom you mean,” Robert said. “We have some Mackintosh upstairs. I hope you saw it: a couple of supremely uncomfortable chairs and a bookcase in my office cum den.”

“You know,” she said. “That cute young man who came to see us.”

“Maybe I wasn’t here at the time,” Robert said, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “There are always cute young men around my wife, I have to tell you.”

“Not really,” she said in my general direction.

“Have you seen upstairs?” Alexander said. “And the kitchen? The kitchen is Maya’s domain. I think it’s officially off-limits, but given you’ve come so far, we’ll make an exception, won’t we, darling?”

“Trevor somebody or other,” Maya said. “He was admiring our stuff. He liked Mackintosh, too.” She slurred her words very slightly and was leaning against her husband. It occurred to me that this party, like Blair’s, came complete with a dipsomaniacal spouse. Like Leanna the Lush, Maya must have started into the champagne before the rest of us got there.

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Robert said. “You, Lester?”

“Not to me,” Lester said.

“You’ll be making Lester jealous, darling. He’ll think we’re fickle, dealing with other antiquarians.”

“Heaven forbid,” Lester said.

“I must say this one is much better looking than you, Lester,” Robert said. “Toronto, did you say? Do you have a card, Ms…”

“McClintoch,” I said. “And yes, I do.”

“You traitor,” Lester said, but I could tell he was kidding.

“Wylie,” Maya said. “Trevor Wylie. Do you know him?”

“Actually, I do. At least I did.”

“Did?” Maya said vaguely.

“Unfortunately he’s dead.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Wasn’t he awfully young? He can’t have been much more than forty, could he?”

“An accident, I expect,” Lester said.

“Mmm,” I said.

“I don’t recall the name at all,” Robert said. “Would you like some more champagne?”

“I thought he was really cute,” Maya said. “What happened to him?”

“Aren’t you being a little ghoulish, darling?” Robert said.

“Urn, he was murdered,” I said.

“No!” Maya gasped. “That can’t be possible. How? Was he shot?”

“My word!” her husband said.

“He was, er, sort of stabbed,” I said.

“I had no idea Toronto was such a dangerous place,” Lester said.

“Did they catch the person who did it?” Maya said.

“They have charged someone, yes. How do you know Trevor?”

“I can’t really recall, but I’m sure he was here.”

“Perhaps he’s an old boyfriend,” Robert said. “Maya and I are still in the honeymoon phase of our life together. I’m afraid there were other men before me, Ms. McClintoch.”

“I’m certain we met him together,” she said. “Didn’t we? I suppose I’m a little under the weather right now.”

“These evenings are so difficult for my wife. She really prefers to just putter in the garden. Come, darling, we must say our good-byes. The buses are scheduled to arrive about now to take everyone back into the city. Lovely to meet you, Ms. McClintoch. If we’re ever in Toronto, we’ll look you up, and do give us a call if you’re back in Glasgow.”

“Or maybe he came to our place in Orkney,” she said, as her husband lead her away.

“The buses are here,” someone called out in the next room.

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it. Orkney. We have a place there,” she called over her shoulder. “We’ll be there this weekend. Come and visit, and you can tell me about Trevor.”

“Really, darling,” Robert said. “I believe you are making this up.”

“If you ever consider selling the Mackintosh, I hope you’ll think of me,” I said. “I’m interested in anything by Mackintosh, but I’m particularly keen on locating one of his writing cabinets.”

“Most certainly,” Robert said, “if Lester doesn’t object.”

“You can have it only if I don’t want it,” Lester said, laughing. “I suppose you’ve noticed she drinks a bit,” he added when they were gone. “But really she’s terrific when she’s sober, and as you can see, he adores her. If you get a chance, you really should take her up on her offer to visit in Orkney. They own an equally fabulous place there. No weekend cottage, you understand. It’s practically a palace. It’s on Hoxa.”

“Hoxa?”

“Near St. Margaret’s Hope. Lovely little town.”

This was just too good to be true. I was zeroing in on a revelation of great proportions, I was certain of it. “So have you ever heard of Trevor Wylie, an antique dealer from Toronto? He’s originally from Scotland.”

“I don’t think so. Wait, he wasn’t the one killed with an axe, was he? You said stabbed. Were you trying to be delicate? I read about it in the paper.”

“One and the same.”

“My, my! Hard to think Maya Alexander would know someone who ended up like that. It was over a piece of furniture or something, wasn’t it?”

“Something like that.”

“Come to think of it, I’m sure that explains all. She read it in the paper, just as I did, and in her present state, by which I mean a little tipsy, recalled the name, and decided she must have met him. The name obviously means nothing to Robert.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, but I really didn’t think so. My heart soared. Maybe at last I was on the right track. Maybe this whole obsession of mine was not just me being silly. Forget that ridiculous conversation with Percy. Percy didn’t matter. Who cared if he was looking for the same writing cabinet I was? Surely this could be win/win for both of us. So I hadn’t been able to find an antique dealer by the name of Macdonald. That was too bad, but it was no longer a real problem. What mattered was that I had found a connection with Trevor Wylie in both Glasgow and Orkney, a connection, furthermore, which owned some Mackintosh furniture. Real Mackintosh! The following day I would be on a plane heading for Orkney. I decided I just might take Maya Alexander up on her lovely offer.

Chapter 5

And so Bjarni sailed for the Hebrides, or what he would have known as Suoreyar, the Southern Isles. There was always loot to be had there, especially in the churches and monasteries, and being a pagan, Bjarni had no qualms about helping himself to what he could find. To reach the Hebrides from Orkney and indeed Caithness, however, required rounding the aptly named Cape Wrath, something the Vikings did only when good weather permitted. But Bjarni did not have the luxury of waiting for that, and confident in his abilities as a sailor, he set sail. It was then that Bjarni’s troubles began. It has to be said that neither Bjarni nor Oddi, who was captain of the second ship, lacked confidence in their skills as seamen. In Bjarni’s case that confidence was not misplaced, but in Oddi’s, perhaps it was. They hoped to outrun a storm that was brewing over the Atlantic, dark ominous clouds low on the horizon, but they didn’t make it. Bjarni made landfall, but Oddi didn’t, and his ship was thrown up on to the rocks near Cape Wrath. Several of Oddi’s men perished, but Oddi himself was saved.

There were many Norsemen in northern Scotland, although never as numerous as the Picts and Scots, but Oddi was fortunate at least that he was found on the shore by fellow Norsemen, who took him in. It took several days, but Bjarni and Oddi were at last reunited. Chastened by the storm and the loss of some of their comrades, several of the men opted to stay where they were, and take their chances with Einar, but Bjarni and Oddi sailed on. Now with only one ship, Bjarni and Oddi sailed for the Hebrides.

The Hebrides were well known to the Vikings. Some say the Viking Age began in 793 with the raid of the monastery on the English island of Lindesfarne. But it was at lona in the Hebrides in 795 that the Vikings and the Scots first made contact, with the terrible sacking of the Irish monastery there. Many have written since of it, the ferociousness of the attack, the heartlessness of the marauders, the fear that struck every Scottish heart. It was on the crucible of Lindesfarne and lona that the reputation of the Vikings as terrifying and destructive heathens was forged. And those raids were just the beginning. The monastery at lona was sacked four times by Vikings between 795 and 826 alone, and it would continue to be a target for three centuries more. Even though a few years before Bjarni arrived, Olaf Sihtricsson, the Norse King of Dublin, had retired there as a penitent after his defeat at Tara in Ireland, the raids continued. For some, old traditions die hard. So Bjarni did what he had always done: alone under cover of darkness he slipped ashore. But this time the monks were waiting for him, and he barely escaped with his life.

His reception in Ireland wasn’t any better. Sigurd had been defeated at Clontarf by the Irish King Brian Boru. The King died when Sigurd did, but there was no haven for Bjarni’s type of Viking anymore. Bjarni, of course, had no idea that the Vikings in England would be defeated by their cousins the Normans within a few years, that essentially their glory days were over. It is interesting to speculate whether he felt the occasional twinge of awareness that things were not as he would have them. He would surely be surprised to find that Vikings and Celts were living peaceably together in what he considered to be Viking Dublin. So Bjarni and his remaining men kept going, and from here on it was, at least for Bjarni, uncharted territory.