From Across the Ancient Waters (6 page)

“How do I find her?”

The stranger to Llanfryniog left Mistress Chattan’s inn a few minutes later and sought the dark lane. Through quiet hinges no one heard, he was led into a secluded parlor. There a candle and incense burned in the gathering darkness.

The low conversation that followed between the stranger and the clairvoyant proved satisfactory to both parties of the exchange.

Drastic Measures

A
Glaswegian man and his wife sat silently at a well-appointed supper table. A third place setting had been prepared. The chair before it was empty. They had waited until dark but had finally gone ahead with the meal. Every swallow, however, was made difficult by the concern visible in their eyes and by the ache eating at both their hearts.

It was not the first time the two had eaten late and alone. Yet upon every successive occasion of their son’s absence, deeper anxieties arose concerning what might be the cause.

The house in whose dining room they sat was of obvious culture and refinement. The man’s study upstairs, though lined with bookshelves, was sufficient to contain but half the volumes in his possession. Books spilled into most of the other rooms of the house, including this. On an ornate sideboard sat a handsome silver tea service. Furnishings everywhere bespoke wealth.

All such comforts, however, this man and woman of God would have traded in a heartbeat in exchange for the opening of the eyes of him for whom both now silently prayed.

Their affluence had been sought by neither. It was the mere result of the circumstances in which they found themselves.

The man’s father was an earl. Though the title would not pass down at his death, he had already split most of what remained of his fortune, after what he had given away, between his son and daughter, keeping only enough for him and his wife to continue the missionary endeavors to which they had devoted their latter years.

In truth, the earl’s son and his wife possessed a healthy fear of the balance of their account in the Clydesdale Bank. Unlike most couples of means, they took no pride in it nor based a moment’s security upon it. The unusual man and woman regarded their wealth as a holy possession, not theirs at all but rather a stewardship that had been placed in their hands. It was not theirs to spend but rather to
administer
by prudence, prayer, and wisdom. They were of that exceptional breed in the spiritual realm, rare but thankfully not extinct any more in their own time than such were in the Lord’s, though as infrequently found in society at large as in its churches—a humble and unpretentious man and woman of wealth.

“Where
can
he be, Edward?” said the woman finally. The question came from her mouth in scarcely more than a whisper. Either words or tears
must
at last burst from her mother’s heart. For the moment she preferred the former.

Her husband shook his head. The only possible response was a pregnant sigh born of anguish too deep to find expression.

Nothing more was said. They continued to eat sparingly.

Their silence was interrupted fifteen minutes later by a knock on the parsonage door.

At the sound, the woman’s hand unconsciously clutched at her heart.

The man rose quickly and strode from the dining room to the front door. He opened it and saw a policeman standing on the porch.

“I’m sorry tae be disturbin’ ye, reverend, sir,” said the transplanted native of Inverness who had come south years before and now wore the blue of a Glasgow bobby. “I’m afraid I found yer laddie up tae nae good again.”

Beside him, with the large highlander’s grasp firmly around the boy’s bicep like a vise, stood the young thief. The expression of profound vexation on his face could not have been less indicative of repentance.

The vicar glanced at his son. His expression betrayed nothing. But his heart ached within him.

Behind him his wife approached. It was all she could do to avoid tears. She knew they would only make her son despise her the more.

“Thank you, Constable Forbes,” said the vicar. “We are greatly indebted to you.”

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Drummond,” added the policeman in an apologetic tone, “this will be the last time I’ll be able tae bring the lad home tae ye this way. The next time, sir, it will be the tollbooth for him, even if he is but a lad.”

“I understand.”

“And there will be a bill comin’ for tonight’s damage.”

“I understand, constable. Thank you very much. We will take him now.” The vicar stepped forward, took his son by the arm, led him inside, and closed the door.

“Percy,
why
do you do these things?” said the vicar’s wife once they were inside. Her voice was soft, though urgent. At last she could hold in her emotion no longer. She looked away and began to weep.

The boy struggled to free himself from his father’s grip, but the man’s quiet wrath was smoldering. He had finally had enough of his son’s foolish antics. All fathers, no matter how long-suffering, how loving, how patient, have their limits. Vicar Edward Drummond’s had finally been crossed. “Answer your mother!” he said angrily. He shoved the boy down in a chair and stood towering above him.

His son shrugged his shoulders. “I like to,” he said insolently. “I enjoy outwitting the stupid policemen. I would have gotten away tonight if I hadn’t stumbled, and if there hadn’t been two of them.”

“It’s a game to you, is that it?”

“Of course it’s a game. What else would it be?”

“How can you ask that after all we’ve taught you … all we’ve given you?” said Mrs. Drummond, bursting into sobs as she collapsed in a couch across the room.

“It is pointless to argue,” said the vicar. “I don’t know what evil spirit has overtaken you, or why. I do know this,” he added in a tone of greater finality and resolution than his son had ever heard, “we
will
have no more incidents like this evening’s.”

The youth glanced up briefly then away. His father’s words jolted him out of his testy nonchalance. They sounded eerily like a threat.

“I will
not
rescue you from your own folly again,” the vicar went on. “If you persist, you
shall
find yourself in jail like Constable Forbes said. If it comes to that, I will not bail you out. Is that understood?”

The sixteen-year-old son sat sulking. He realized he had pushed his father too far. He had never heard such a voice of command. His father rarely became angry. It was obvious he had aroused something more dangerous than mere anger. That was righteous indignation.

One of his father’s favorite sayings from the Bible was, “Let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay.” His father was not merely a man of his word. He made no idle promises—or threats. What he said he would do, he would do.

The minister’s son realized he had best lie low for a while.

“Go upstairs to your room,” said the vicar after a moment. His voice had calmed but rang with no less authority.

Percy rose and went. To say that he
obeyed
would hardly be accurate. Mother and Father wondered if he had ever truly laid down his own will for the chosen purpose of doing what another commanded him. In the present case, however, the boy recognized the expediency to himself of departing his parents’ presence at the earliest possible opportunity. This he therefore did.

To be banished to his room at sixteen, like a child, was a profound humiliation. But young Percival Drummond, though he may have been a rebel, was no fool. He was enough of a realist to know that his room at home was better than any of Glasgow’s jail cells.

The parlor fell silent. Supper was by now long forgotten. Mrs. Drummond’s breathing occasionally caught on a lingering sob.

At length her husband turned from where he had been standing still as a statue. He walked slowly to the couch. He sat down beside his wife and placed an arm gently around her shoulders.

“What did we do wrong, Edward?” she said in a broken voice.

The vicar sighed deeply. How many times had they asked that question of themselves during the past year? “I don’t know, Mary,” he replied softly. “If it continues, I don’t see that I shall have any other option but to resign my vicarage.”

“Surely that cannot be God’s will.”

“Nor can it be His intent that the son of the parish minister is running through the streets of Glasgow as a common burglar. Sadly that seems exactly our situation.”

They remained silent a few minutes more.

“What would you think of our sending him to my sister?” said Drummond at length.

“In Wales—you mean … to stay?”

“I don’t know—perhaps for an extended visit. The country might do him good. School will be out in a few weeks. At the very least, we could try it for the summer. When fall comes, we can see what the situation is then. School is doing him no good anyway.”

“Do we really want to send him away from home, Edward? What if he doesn’t return? I don’t think my heart could take losing him at sixteen.”

“We have as good as lost him as it is,” rejoined her husband. “The city is trying its best to corrupt him. I fear for his soul if
something
is not done. The country has been known in some cases to exercise a therapeutic influence. Whether it can exorcise his spirit of foolishness and rebellion,” he added with another long sigh, “I do not know.”

His wife nodded. Her heart was breaking for her son. She was willing to consent to anything that might help. “He would never agree to it,” she said.

“I shall give him no alternative,” rejoined the father. “He is young enough that he is still dependent upon us for everything. I often wonder if he would have been better off had we been paupers. If his salvation requires it, I will cut him off without a farthing.”

“Knowing that he stands to inherit all we possess, he would bitterly resent it.”

“He is possessed with a spirit of resentment anyway. I doubt we can make it much worse. Character is the only inheritance worth giving. At present our son is in fearfully short supply. I would sooner give away my entire half of my father’s fortune than allow Percy to squander it to his own demise. Hopefully time will not make such extreme measures necessary.”

“I am in favor of anything that might help,” his wife replied. “What do you think your sister’s husband will say?”

The vicar smiled. “My brother-in-law is a man I can never predict,” he said. “Roderick might refuse our request. On the other hand, it would not surprise me if he took a liking to Percy. That Roderick makes no claim to being a man of religion and has always looked down on me for my profession, would give him and our son something in common. They might find themselves forming a friendship on the basis of their mutual antipathy toward me!” he added, chuckling at the thought. “In fact,” Drummond said, rising from the couch, “I like the idea so much, I think I will go up to my study and write Katherine straightaway.”

Evil Night

T
he night in Llanfryniog grew late.

Wispy elongated fingers eerily bisected a near full moon only recently risen above the silhouette of the mountains to the east. The ethereal thin horizontal clouds did not substantially reduce the light from its pale glow but did portend this night’s omens of sinister intent.

A powerful man, whose appearance might have indicated him one of the region’s slate miners but whose hands and mannerisms indicated other means of gaining his daily bread, had let the evening pass until an hour when respectable persons had taken to their beds. Leaving Madame Fleming’s, he now slunk through the deserted streets of the coastal Welsh village. The occasional lone bark of a dog was the only sound that divulged life.

He was careful that his steps were not heard. None saw him sneaking among the shadows of their abodes on his nefarious errand. It may have been unwise to talk so freely to the woman he had just left. But unless he was a poorer judge of character than he thought, she would not talk. If that changed, she could easily be bought off—or eliminated.

His own connection to the man he had come to Llanfryniog to find had come about years ago by one of those chance encounters destined to alter the course of life forever after. While most of the others in the Dolgellau pub that night dismissed the drunken man’s stories of pirate treasure with the laughter of their own whiskey-soaked brains, he had been sober enough for his ears to perk up.

For the next hour, he had listened attentively across the dingy tavern. An hour after that, he followed the man out and struck up what conversation was possible in his wobbly state.

It was enough to convince him that there existed more than a grain of truth to the man’s story.

He had carefully arranged to meet Drindod again … and again, professing friendship and standing him drinks—the surest way to an alcoholic’s heart. Gradually he learned more. He had not learned enough, however, to lay his hands on what the man claimed was the key to the location of the booty, a certain gold coin of exceedingly ancient date.

He had patiently waited all these years without success. He had tried every means of persuasion possible to loosen the old fool’s tongue. He had craftily spoken with every septuagenarian and what few octogenarians remained within fifty miles, carefully and without betraying his intent.

But years continued to pass.

One by one they went the way of all flesh. Whatever knowledge they possessed passed with them. Fewer and fewer remained from that fateful century when fortunes were made—and hidden.

He had finally discovered where the man was from. After Drindod’s retirement from the seafaring life, he had followed the old salt back to the home of his childhood.

Then came a day when he realized the time could be delayed no longer. If he did not act soon, it would be too late. He would be left with nothing. He did not intend to let this night pass without discovering more about the mysterious coin.

Pausing momentarily beside a wall of stone, the figure now hurried across a wide dirt street then along it another hundred yards. Though a conglomeration of cottages were scattered about inland, the buildings thinned northward along the shoreline beyond the harbor. With stealth he approached the seaward side of the street. Light from the moon was shielded by the low building in front of him.