Midsummer Glen - chapter 2

Continuing the supernatural mystery ...

Midsummer Glen

Chapter 2

by Pam Kelt

A supernatural adventure

Part three of a seasonal quartet


***

‘Do get up, Alistair!’

‘Aw, Petie. Just five more minutes.’ He tried to turn over in his bed but it was rock hard. Confused, he reached for his pillow, but his fingers touched on a cold, dank surface. Pain pulsed between his temples, draining his strength. So much for getting rid of that headache, he thought. Worse than ever. Stay in bed today.

‘No, no, Ali. Time for school. Mam’ll be mad if you don’t shake a leg.’

He sighed. ‘All right.’ Wincing, he managed to sit up. Lord, he ached all over and his clothes were sodden. He forced himself to open his eyes. Confused, he gazed at the quiet wood above, leaves shimmering in the suffused early light of morning. A few yards away lay the shattered pieces of the branch in a dislocated trail of bark.

A blue flash flared in his brain and his thoughts whirled. The tall trees reminded him of a strange dream he’d had. Tall giants, he remembered, lumbering in the darkness. Thick ropes, snaking round a tall stone. A violent storm. And something else... a moving mountain, bearing down upon him. Then blackness. He put it down to the experience of the noise of the earth tremor and then the tree branch landing on him. Just as well it was rotten, or he wouldn’t have woken up at all. No wonder his poor head hurt. Supporting himself on the stone wall, he sat up, feeling queasy.

There was no sign of the sinister siblings or their equipment. The stone they had been working on was still upright.

‘You all right, now?’

‘Thanks, Petie. I’ll be fine.’

A doubtful smile. ‘Only if you’re sure.’

Wiping dirt and dried blood from his brow, Alistair forced himself to think. He needed to clean up and change. Some aspirin wouldn’t go amiss, and he ought to try and get some breakfast.

As far as he knew, it was the morning of Wednesday, the twenty-first of June. The day before the official solstice which was on the twenty-second that year—and he wanted some answers.

Alistair made his way back to his tent, pitched in a small field near the burn, and washed in the burn. An hour later, in a fresh set of clothes, he felt sufficiently restored to head into the village café opposite the memorial. Pondering his strange experience, he ordered the morning special and was soon mopping up the egg with the last bit of fried bread.

‘Ah, there you are. Shouldn’t you be working?’ Fiona slid into the seat across the table.

‘Day off.’

She reached into her pocket and put a book on the table. ‘I found you this.’

He put down his cutlery, cleaned his fingers on a napkin and picked up a tome, bound in bottle-green leather, edges softened with use. ‘Midsummer Glen and the Secrets of its Stones, by James Kilmartin.’

‘A seminal work, if a little whimsical in its nineteenth-century fashion.’

‘Thanks.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘Would you look at that. A whole chapter on the Ivy Cross. With diagrams. I like diagrams. That’s great.’

‘Just don’t tell my father. It’s his personal copy.’

He pocketed the book with a grin. ‘Right you are.’ He regarded her levelly, making a decision. ‘Want to hear something weird?’

‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’ She folded her arms and leaned on the table. ‘You first.’

‘All right.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Guess who I saw last night, trying the move the standing stones?’

‘Not our fancy academics?’

‘Indeed. Charles and Polly. Although those aren’t their real names.’ He related the overheard conversation. ‘And Gran was right. The weather turned a tad apocalyptic when they did.’ She blinked as he described the eerie scene and how he’d been hit by the branch.

He lifted his fringe and she winced at the red gash. ‘Ouch.’

‘It’s all a bit odd, but it is true.’

‘I believe you. You’re not the fanciful sort.’

He couldn’t bring himself to describe his dream, which was still so clear in his mind, it felt more like a vision. ‘Was there another earth tremor last night?’

‘I don’t think so.’ She eyed him. ‘Not in the village, at any rate. So, what do you think they’re up to?’

He shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re planning an experiment for the Summer Solstice, checking on a theory.’

Fiona grinned. ‘A Druidic orgy, perhaps? I don’t think the Reverend would approve.’

An elderly lady at the table next to them tutted and they both straightened their faces.

‘It’s suspicious that they want to keep people away by pretending the bridge is out.’

‘And why straighten the stones?’

‘Authenticity?’

He hunched his shoulders, unconvinced.

‘Anyway, if you’ll forgive the expression, you’ve rather stolen my thunder.’ Fiona laughed. ‘I was rather proud of the little mystery I’d solved.’

‘Oh?’

She leaned towards him. ‘I’ve worked out where all the library books have gone.’

‘Smuggled into the pockets of our sinister pair of foreigners with seemingly perfect English?’

‘Yes. They came back this morning. I found a rather boring booklet on the old monastery—we have several duplicates—so I placed it in an obvious position. I kept my eye on them and he stood there, blocking his sister from view for a few minutes. When they’d gone, the booklet had vanished.’

‘Well, well. Listen. I’ve an idea. Can you take some time off?’

‘Of course. I only have to ask. I’m just helping out at the library for the summer for a bit of extra cash. I’m heading back to Glasgow in the autumn.’

‘To do what?’

‘Well, I’ve just finished my degree—like you. Except that I did German and French. They’ve offered me a scholarship to do a doctorate. In early medieval botanical manuscripts, before you ask.’

Alistair stared. ‘Gosh. Good for you. No, I mean it. I- I should have asked before.’

‘That seems to have surprised you more than everything else.’

He laughed. ‘I don’t know why. You were always smarter than the rest of us, and I can see the appeal of seeking solace from these uncertain times by delving into the past.’ He threw some coins on the table and stood up. ‘Shall we?’

***

‘The bridge is impassable.’ Fiona shielded her eyes and stared at the single remaining plank that hung loose above the sorry, damp debris among the rocks below.

He pointed at the freshly hacked timbers. ‘It is now. And what a nasty little bit of sabotage it is. Come on.’

‘Gran will be furious,’ said Fiona as they scrambled down the boulder-strewn bank towards the treacle-brown water to the sound of frenzied early summer birdsong. ‘She sees herself as a protector of the stones.’

‘An interesting lady.’ He began to clamber across the stream.

‘She’s a little forgetful about day-to-day things, but she’s an expert in local lore. That’s what got father interested. And me too, I suppose.’

They made it across without getting too wet and climbed back up the other side, hauling themselves up by grabbing at the tough ferns and tree roots.

‘Speaking of your Gran. She said something strange the other day at her cottage...’

‘Oh?’

‘Well, I was feeling a bit thick-headed with that strange tea, but I swore she said I had the “gift of a few”. Does that mean anything to you?’

Fiona paused and looked at him. ‘A few what?’

‘I don’t know. She was talking about rocks and stones, and I wondered if she was talking about my family’s past or something.’

‘Sounds peculiar. Gran doesn’t ramble. But, sorry. It doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ll ask her when I next see her.’

He felt cheered, realising the odd phrase had been gnawing away at his mind. ‘Thanks.’ He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘So, let’s sneak up to the wall and listen in on our continental pals.’

‘What were their real names again?’

‘Károly and Piroska.’

‘Hmm. Hungarian, I reckon. I recall some chap called Károly something who wrote about Slavic herbals.’

‘If so, they’re no friends of Mr Churchill.’

‘Haven’t the leaders been consorting with some dubious Fascist bedfellows?’

‘Oh, aye. They’re just as territorial, too, quietly seizing lands near their own borders. Last year Slovakia... next it’ll be parts of Ukraine and Transylvania.’

She gave him a look.

‘Geologists can read, you know.’

She punched his shoulder.

Alistair heard something and raised his hand. Her expression switched and in silence, they edged up to the wall and peered over.

A stout woman in tweeds was standing in the centre of the stones, eyes dreamy. ‘Of course, Hermione, one can feel the spiritual energy simply surge through one’s very sinews.’

Hermione was a plain young girl of about twelve, too thin for the bunchy skirt and blouse. She scowled and sat on the ground cross-legged and scratched at her arms covered in red raw patches. ‘If you say so, mother.’

‘Oh, dear,’ whispered Fiona. ‘I do feel for her, but oh-oh. Here come “Charles” and “Polly”, all smiles, sweetness and light. Perfect twins.’

‘Twins?’

She nodded. ‘I overheard them talking to Mrs Robertson at the library about the horoscopes in the paper. They’re Gemini.’

Feeling uncomfortable, Alistair watched the siblings saunter past the stones, making polite comments and taking photographs of each other. Twins?

Eventually, mother and daughter headed off in the direction of Dunadd Marsh. ‘Do we have to?’ came the plaintive cry as they left. ‘The mosquitoes are almost as bad as they were in Cannes.’

‘They’re midges, dear. And you’re quite mistaken. They are much worse. Brace yourself.’ She marched off, with her daughter trailing behind.

The second the twins were on their own, their body language transformed. Instantly, they produced more of their measuring equipment and checked the distances between the stones and the perpendicular angles of each, making furious notes and nodding at each other.

Alistair turned to Fiona, thinking how her short hair smelt of spring flowers.

In his head, he heard Petie giggle.

‘Stop it. She’s nice, that’s all.’

‘Ali’s got a girlfriend. Ali’s got a girlfriend. ’

‘Hush.’

Alistair shook his head to clear his mind and mentally sent his brother off to play by the stream. ‘Where are they staying?’

‘Ardfern Cottage, about a five-minute walk from here. It belongs to Gran’s neighbour. Why?’

‘I need to get inside to see what they’re working on.’

‘And see how many of our library books they’ve snaffled. The fines should pay for a new tea urn in the staff kitchen. Ah-ha. That gives me an idea. Wait here.’

‘But-’

Fiona squeezed past him and scuttled behind the wall in the direction of the Dunadd path. He held his breath. Whatever was she up to? Smart but impetuous—a charming mix. He watched, and then there she was, in full view, seemingly approaching from the marsh, humming to herself. Her jacket was knotted around her waist as though she’d been walking for some time.

He saw that she allowed time for the siblings to slide their equipment into their backs, adjust their expressions and assume their roles as avid tourists of prehistory. All the while, still humming, she regarded the scenery and looked the picture of innocence. Fiona reached the stone circle, nodded in acknowledgement and began to walk around, peering at the rough lichen-encrusted surfaces. Quite the cool customer, Alistair thought.

‘Hellooo,’ she called out as she neared the siblings and soon the three were talking. He strained to listen but they were too far away to make it out.

After a few minutes, she called out ‘Thank you!’ and waved, heading back the way she had ostensibly come.

Alistair watched as brother and sister spoke in low voices, nodding to each other. Suddenly realising they might head back across the stream in his direction, he dived behind a tree, pressing himself against the rough bark of a large oak. A few minutes later, they passed by just a few steps from him then their brisk footsteps faded.

A moment later, Fiona plonked herself beside him, making him jump. ‘So?’

‘What did you say in your cheery voice?’

She put on a cool expression. ‘Only that I’m giving a talk on the mysteries of the Summer Solstice and they’d be more than welcome to attend.’

‘What! You’re mad.’

‘I can borrow father’s new overhead projector, so it’ll look convincing. I said it would be at four o’clock in the library, with tea and biscuits afterwards. We often do talks then. That should give you enough time. We’ll meet up afterwards. Say, ten o’clock tonight at your tent. You’re in Lammas Field, aren’t you? Near the stones?’

He burst out laughing. ‘Why do I feel like this is one of your dares?’

‘I suppose it is.’ She turned to him, kissed him on the cheek and sprinted off.

***

‘You’re smiling like an eejit.’

He lied cheerfully. ‘Am not.’ Whistling, he made his way back to his tent. He opened a tin of beans and heated them through, marvelling at how his life had changed in just a few short hours.

Wee Fiona. Fancy that.

Then the thought of war and politics dissolved his euphoria and his normal mood returned. What was the point? When Hitler tried to invade, that would be the end of that. Sometimes life was just too cruel. He should just pack up and leave.

He washed up, scraping at the pot. Still a couple of hours to go. Restless, he reached for the book Fiona had given him and settled down to read.

James Kilmartin Esquire was something of an enthusiast and wrote much purple prose on each of ancient monuments in the glen. The dedication appealed. “To the memory of my dear departed brother, without whom I would never have trod the path to prehistory.” Alistair wondered what had happened to him.

But there was wit to be had. “There might be some grounds for hesitation on obtruding on the public a work of this nature, but the fact that no other catalogue of the eight hundred remarkable stones in Midsummer Glen exists to my knowledge is excuse enough.”

Astonished, Alistair discovered they ranged from standing stones to burial cairns, by way of rock carvings and, of course, the Dunadd fortress, home of ancient Scottish kings. He flipped through to the chapter Ivy Cross stone circle.

Mr Kilmartin discussed the stones and their strange carved cup marks, and included hand-drawn diagrams of how each stone appeared to have one particular indentation that was noticeably deeper than all the others.

Some scholars seemed eager to suggest the stones had links to early Christianity, the number twelve linking them to the apostles and hinted that the cup marks were filled with ‘purifying’ water. Others reckoned the circular patterns were primitive attempts to explain the movements of stars in the heavens.

As for Mr Kilmartin, he theorised that the ancients placed the stones in certain positions to tap into the energy of the ley lines to assist in healing rituals. Alistair reckoned he’d made that up to counter the other macabre theories, which he violently pooh-poohed, which suggested that the cup marks were filled with fresh blood as part of a sacrifice.

But despite his scientific stance, Mr Kilmartin was a romantic through and through, with a rich biblical tone. He waxed lyrical on the story of the traveller from afar.

“The mystic, so the old folks will tell you when plied with sufficient liquor, using his powers, whatever they were, shielded the glen from harm, saving it from the ravages of the giants and their monsters. And so the danger was gone. But as men do, he fell in love with a local girl, a wild, dark-haired faun of the woods. She had the spirit of the hazel, a divining spirit, and he was lost to her charms.”

Hmph. Emotional extrapolation, thought Alistair, but read on, desperately trying not to equate his own journey with that of the so-called mystic from the east. It seemed unlikely, he grinned to himself, as he’d only come from Stirling.

“She bore him two sons. Twins. Both had the same hazel-flecked eyes. Even total strangers would look into the boys’ eyes and gaze in awe, for the flecks were like dazzling constellations... glowing from far, far away in a nebula-like miniature universe of green, brown and infinite grey.”

‘Damned nonsense,’ he muttered, and he was about to cast down the book but a passage caught his eye. It was the same verse that Fiona had written out. He reread it:

     “The glittering stars above are but precious gems set in the dark shield of the night sky.
     They stir in the shifting rays of the Sun and the Moon and light our way in the dark.
     Giants, monsters, masters and slaves all walk across the land, but in the end of days, they all fade as shadows.
     Earth itself is a mere speck of dust that will vanish when eternity turns and blinks it away at the close of time.”

It seemed that a priest had found the words carved into a wooden post at St Margaret’s, an ancient monastery just a few miles away. The man confided in the abbot, but in those early days when the church was eager to win over the populace to the new religion, the abbot disapproved, claiming the text was ungodly and instructed the priest to throw the wood onto a fire and burn it to ashes.

Kilmartin continued: “Having spoken to an elderly great-grandmother with the prodigious memory of a life frugally spent in the village of Muircraig, I elicited this tale of how the text had been saved for posterity. The priest, nervous of disobeying the abbot, but fascinated by the words, memorised the lines and taught them to his Common Law wife. It might come as a shock, dear reader, to hear that priests in the early Scottish church were not necessarily celibate, and she passed it down to their children, and they to theirs and so forth, through the generations. For all I know, it will still be passed on by the wise women in that vicinity to ‘the close of time’.”

Alistair glanced at his watch. Half-past three. If the twins were going to Fiona’s talk, they would be leaving now.

Time to go.

***

Four o’clock. He decided to take another look at the stone circle on his way to the cottage. The warmth of the afternoon sun was intense. He touched the nearest standing stone and it warmed his fingers, as if heated from within.

Alistair stood and considered, remembering his father’s conversation about surveying. ‘Measure all you like, son, but trust your eyes. They are always the first to give a clue to something being, well, just “off”’.’

The twelve stones stood silently in their unseeing state, blending into the scenery. He went closer, marvelling at the mysterious spherical indentations and grooves that ancient craftsmen had carved with their primitive tools.

He shook his head. Something was off, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Was it that the stones were all now neatly perpendicular? Not just that. He thought he could hear whispering, but it was probably just the trees in the encircling woods, stirring in the breeze.

There was definitely a sense of something strange about the place, not sinister as such, but otherworldly. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He had the sense he was being watched.

Beyond, the outline of Cnoc Samhanach glowered, purple and slate grey against the china blue sky. He thought he heard a cuckoo call. It was a beautiful, idyllic setting, so why did he sense there was evil afoot?

It was time to head out towards the cottage and five minutes later, he spotted it, a stone gabled affair set into a rocky outcrop in splendid isolation. He spotted a half-open window in the back and scrambled into the cool interior. His pulse thumped at the risk he was taking. Even as a summer tearaway, he’d never done anything illegal.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he let out a long breath. The larder was full of ropes, lamps, torches, chains, an axe, knives and hacksaws. All gleaming, German-made and of high quality. He moved on, vindicated.

A quick check of the upper storey revealed that it had two bedrooms. The first was full of leather suitcases in untidy piles. He pushed open a second door and found himself staring at the large unmade bed, while shoes, trousers, shirts and items of silk underwear were strewn on the floor.

Trying not to let his imagination run away with him, he went back downstairs and into the study. It was a room that harked back to the nineteenth-century, with flocked wallpaper, oil lamps, two large mahogany desks and two leather chairs tilted towards the fireplace. Books and papers were stacked high on both.

He felt more comfortable with evidence of this kind and began to sift through the notes. They weren’t in English, of course. Nor German or French, with which he was familiar, or Russian, as far as he could tell. A small well-thumbed dictionary caught his eye. An English/Hungarian dictionary. Fiona was right.

A paperweight caught his gaze. A fine sample of coarse-grained pink granite ... Lewisian Gneiss Complex, he reckoned, weighing it in his hand. Underneath it was a wad of charts. He rustled through them. There appeared to be a dozen—one for each sign of the zodiac.

So, astrology enthusiasts into the bargain. He found himself staring at the last one. Gemini. Celestial twins. Castor and Pollux. Great Scott. As he gazed at the drawing of the constellation, his mind jolted. Károly and Piroska. Charles and Polly. Of course. Their names were inspired by the twins of Greek mythology.

He glanced through the charts again. Wait, he’d miscounted. There were thirteen, not twelve. How odd. A second later, he had found the extra one. The picture was compelling. A young well-muscled man strained with the effort of containing a serpent, one hand on its head, the other on its tail, as it writhed around him in a never-ending struggle against the force of evil. Alistair was rather vague about Greek mythology and was unable to recognise man or beast.

A clock chimed five. Deciding he could risk a little longer, he turned his attention to the desk drawer. It contained a folder, full of sketches and a map. He scanned the latter, tracing a line from southern Greece, across Eastern Europe, to northern France, then through England, heading northeast to Aberdeenshire, then wending its way to the west coast—ending in Midsummer Glen.

He leafed through the sketches. The first was the most complex: a diagram of the positioning of the twelve standing stones, but it was overlaid with a complex matrix of lines, drawn in different-coloured inks, zigzagging from one stone to the next, then radiating out in a starburst pattern across the fields beyond. Underneath the drawing were earlier attempts, some of the lines crossed out so violently that the paper had ripped. Glancing over his shoulder, Alistair chose the latest version and slipped it into his pocket along with the thirteenth zodiac chart for good measure. Perhaps Fiona could make sense of it.

He closed the drawer, but something caught at the back. He groped inside, his fingers touching on a single sheet of paper that had got wedged at the back. Using a slide rule, he teased it out. It was in German, handwritten in a clear yet spikily aggressive style with an accentuated forward slope, as if the author were in a hurry to be ahead of himself.

After some general comments, the next paragraph caught his eye. “Ich habe Ihre Notizen auf einem mystischen Reiseswallfahrt in ganz Europa aus dem alten Griechenland als...”

Alistair’s German was sound enough to get the gist of the letter. “I have considered your notes on a mystic traveller’s pilgrimage across Europe from Ancient Greece and they are most interesting. Such stories are powerful and I was particularly intrigued by the references to giants and the monsters they conjured up from the Earth. Indeed, I agree with you that such power is not merely allegorical. If, as you suggest, there is some ancient artefact with military potential, I am willing to supply further funding for you to conduct your experiments in Scotland, although you must keep your activities secret as before. Make a full report to me after the ‘Sommersonnenwende’ and if you are successful and can provide incontrovertible proofs, I shall arrange an audience with the Führer.”

It was signed ‘H. Himmler’.

Despite the warmth of the room, Alistair’s blood seemed to turn to ice. He reread the words to make sure he had understood them correctly.

Sommersonnenwende. The Summer Solstice, he assumed.

So, the Hungarian couple had sought finance from Hitler’s sinister chief of police about a potentially powerful weapon. He pocketed the letter to be used as evidence (in case anyone thought he had completely lost his marbles) and continued to search the room.

A large, wooden box stood on the coffee table. He slid off the lid. Inside lay a dozen spherical glass spheres, set in neat rows by a series of inked symbols on paper labels. He recognised them as the twelve astrological signs. So, it seemed that the twins were of the opinion that the twelve stones were linked to the twelve signs of the zodiac.

One sphere for each sign—and by extension, perhaps one for each key cup mark, he guessed. He wondered where the Hungarians had sourced the spheres. If one were missing, that might stop them in their tracks for now, whatever they were up to...

A blackbird squawked in the garden, shooting in a feathery flap across the lawn into the shrubbery.

The Gemini sphere glittered enticingly and he couldn’t resist the temptation to put it into his pocket. Then, pulse racing at such unaccustomed impetuousness, he slipped out of the cottage the way he had come.

***

Despite the heat, he more or less sprinted back to his tent and threw himself on his sleeping bag. But the air was torrid and perspiration soon coated his skin. He needed to get somewhere cooler or he’d pass out.

And then he began to worry, cursing his stupidity. He shouldn’t have taken anything, especially not the sphere, for the Hungarian pair would realise someone had been searching the cottage. Fiona might be in danger, for they might connect her with him, given that the twins had seen them together at the library. Damn. Too late now.

Furious with himself, he decided to pack up and stow his tent out of sight behind a thick bramble. It would be cooler in the woods by the standing stones. He’d wait until nearly ten then head back to Lammas Field so Fiona wouldn’t worry.

Feeling slightly better, he picked up the Kilmartin book that Fiona had given him and stuffed it into a rucksack with the other items he’d lifted from the cottage, adding a torch, spare battery, a bar of chocolate and a bottle of water before heading off. A quarter of an hour later, he was ensconced in the base of a hollow tree in the woods just a few yards to the east of the wall that surrounded the stone circle. It was well out of sight, for the entrance was obscured by a thick crop of cool, green ferns. His good intentions faded within minutes for his head still hurt, so he curled up and sank into a grateful sleep.

Hours later, something ran over his ankle and made him jump. He hoped it wasn’t a spider. Most things he could abide, but spiders—no. He shivered, recalling when as schoolboys they were told the famous story of Robert the Bruce in the cave, seeing a spider persevere with spinning his web, which inspired him to rise up again to thwart the English. Well, it wouldn’t have worked for Alistair. He would have just frozen in fear. It was the only thing Petie and he disagreed about. Petie’s pet hate was snakes, but Alistair found them fascinating.

He sat up. The air was cooler now, and pleasant. Rubbing his eyes, he checked his watch, tilting it to the fading light. Nearly ten o’clock. Fiona would be arriving soon. He switched on his torch and peered at the diagram of the twelve stones and the coloured geometrical lines.

The pattern seemed overly complicated, with different colours going in different directions for no apparent reason and then doubling back on themselves. Some distance away, another batch of lines splayed outwards across the countryside—ley lines, he guessed—but they didn’t seem to connect with the stone circle pattern.

What if ... He found a pencil stub and drew one line, starting at the most westerly stone, zigzagging across the circle to the next stone, across again, without overlapping, as if he were darning a hole in a sock.

He drew a line from the last stone and then paused... if he continued in the same fashion, it would go right through the stone wall about twenty-five yards away.

Twenty-five yards.

Aware of his heart beating, he added a cross where he had found the strange stone in the wall. The pattern suddenly became coherent. The sunlight from the east would strike the first stone, then its reflection would bounce off each of the other stones before hitting the separate boulder, positioned a little further away, like some sort of marker. A thirteenth stone. Then what? Perhaps the light would shatter, exploding into a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree starburst.

For a few seconds, he stared at the paper, wondering what it could mean, but at the same time feeling almost afraid to contemplate it.

Get a grip, Alistair, he chided himself and turned to the thirteenth astrological chart which featured the man and the snake. He turned it over and saw a name written in neat capitals. Ophiuchus. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the Kilmartin text and browsed the index. There it was.

“A carving on a small slab on the edge of the St Margaret’s monastery has caused much conjecture. This author is of the opinion that the depiction of the strong man staring at a coiled serpent under a dazzling sun represents Ophiuchus, the so-called thirteenth constellation, and an astrological anomaly.”

Mr Kilmartin noted that the Greeks identified him as Asclepius, the son of Apollo and the god of medicine. In fact, he became so skilled that not only could he save lives, he could also raise the dead, using concoctions of herbs and snake venom.

Intrigued, Alistair read on. There was a depiction of Hades, god of the Underworld. It seemed he finally became worried that the flow of dead souls into his domain would soon dry up. He complained to Zeus, who struck down Asclepius with a thunderbolt. There was a murky drawing of a large Greek pot, showing two, black figures, one with an arm raised and the other falling at his feet. Apollo was outraged, and finally Zeus immortalised Asclepius and set him among the stars as the constellation Ophiuchus, in an eternal struggle with a serpent.

Alistair stared at the outline of Ophiuchus intertwined with the constellation Serpens, a writhing snake. The caption added rather pithily that some experts could not resist a moral interpretation, believing the story was an allegory of the unending battle of good against evil.

The final paragraph made him sit up. “At the risk of befuddling readers with another legend, for myths themselves are like the very heads of hydra that keep on growing if one attempts to remove them, yet another story originates from a series of carvings in a Scythian cave. They depict Asclepius and an almost identical figure, said to be a twin brother. One scene shows the two young men grappling at the edge of a cliff in mortal rivalry. In the next, Asclepius is alone, a nomad in a snake-filled desert, presumably condemned by guilt to roam the world. This is the only reference to the fact that Asclepius had an identical sibling. As one who has lost a twin oneself, it is a powerful, tragic and poignant scene.”

A footnote caught his eye. “There is some dissent over the pronunciation of Ophiuchus, given that it is Latin based on the Greek Ὀφιοῦχος, meaning ‘serpent-bearer’. This author subscribes to ‘O-few-kuss’, with a stress on the ‘few’, despite what certain less traditional scholars will tell you, for knowledge of classical pronunciation in the New World can be erratic, to say the least.”

He chuckled at Mr Kilmartin’s pedagogic tone and continued. “A fragment of text in the University of Glasgow’s Historia Virorum Fabularumque describes that the gods took pity on the accursed wanderer, and gave the world-weary traveller a magic shield, its power deriving from a mystic carving of a serpent at its centre...”

Mr Kilmartin had attempted a modest sketch of the armour in question. As Alistair peered at the pattern, something stirred in his mind, life a leaf in a breeze. Mrs Largie and her odd statement. ‘You have the gift of a few, of course.’

Except that he had misheard. What she had actually said was: ‘You have the Gift of Ophiuchus ...’

Thoughts roiled in his head as he contemplated the possibilities. The mystic traveller of Mrs Largie’s story was the young Asclepius himself, later immortalised as Ophiuchus. But how was he, Alistair McCompton, connected? He certainly did not possess a shield, powerful or otherwise.

He stared at the drawing and wondered what power it had. Putting two and together, this must be the ancient artefact that had captured the attention of the Hungarians and their Teutonic sponsors. Perhaps they thought it had ended up in Midsummer Glen. That would explain why they had been so eager to dig around the base of the standing stones.

Fascinated, he read on. “It is not hard to imagine the solitary traveller, racked with guilt, striding across our rugged hills, resolved to do battle with any monsters that he might find. Standing atop a rocky outcrop, like some Old Testament prophet, his shield gripped in his hand, he would gaze upon them, his eyes bright as if reflecting all the stars in the firmament.”

Alistair leant back, beginning to make some sense of it all. Of course, it was just a tale, but it was easy to imagine how an earlier civilisation had come up with it to explain the clear fault line that ran across the glen.

‘Ophiuchus’ had shielded the village from harm. Literally. But how exactly?

The shield was a gift to Ophiuchus, but what if Mrs Largie had meant something different. Perhaps it was all about the gift of Ophiuchus... some skill, possessed by the wanderer.

According to legend, Ophiuchus had fathered two sons, according to legend. What if he had passed on this ‘gift’?

For some reason, Alistair rummaged in his pocket and brought out the Gemini sphere in his fingers. He turned it over in his fingers. Outside, the ferns rustled in a light breeze and his head spun, just as it did when he was at Mrs Largie’s cottage, and he felt as if he were about to faint. Ferns again. Once again, he could sense the strange tea numbing his tongue.

Turning back to the sphere, he saw glittering lights sparkling in the glass and he peered inside, wondering if he were seeing things. As he shifted his gaze, the patterns moved at the same time and turned from green to an iridescent blue. Horrified, he dropped the sphere onto the mossy ground. The lights weren’t inside the sphere—they were a reflection of his own eyes.

He fought the urge to panic and tried to think things through.

Had Mrs Largie seen the same effect in his eyes? Alistair’s family was from the area, so could it be possible that he might actually be a descendant of the traveller? Mrs Largie evidently thought so, but the idea that he’d inherited supernatural powers from an ancient super-being seemed fantastic.

But what if it were true? And what kind of power was it? He forced himself to stare at the sphere and a spiral of lights coiled and uncoiled in the glassy orb.

Feeling odd, he put the sphere back in his pocket, but found himself staring once again at the picture of the snake. It was so realistic, Petie wouldn’t have been able to look at it.

Something shifted in his brain. He’d once seen Petie faced with a small grass snake. He’d gone stock still, then backed away numbly. ‘Stop or you’ll trip,’ he’d shouted, but Petie was so overcome with terror, he hadn’t even heard, and fallen backwards over a rock.

Alistair pictured the old fort. It had been a stiflingly hot day. What if a snake had been on the top, basking in the sun? Petie had nearly stepped on it ... and backed away in mortal dread. Two twin brothers, the only thing separating them was a primitive fear. Spiders and snakes ... Blood rushed in his ears. His brother’s death was just a ghastly accident. Not his fault. A fluke.

Suddenly, the guilt he’d carried with him for years simply dissolved and his mind was clear.

Outside, it was deathly silent.

Where was Fiona?

He tucked the Himmler letter and other papers into Kilmartin’s book and hid it under a rock. The map of the stones he kept, thinking to show it to Fiona, and slipped it into his pocket before pushing his way through the ferns.



[End of Chapter 2]


Chapter 3 tomorrow.



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