“Tell me about it.” She steadied her voice. “Isn’t Juno having any trouble?”
“No. She’s fine.” She paused. “As I said, she knows where she’s going.”
“Do you?”
“No, I’m getting little wisps of what Juno knows, but I can’t put it together. It doesn’t make sense to me.” She was silent a moment. “Okay, Juno will be coming back and forth now. We’ll be able to move faster.”
A few minutes later, the barking was closer and Jane could see the gleam of Juno’s white coat in the darkness. Then the retriever turned and started back in the direction she had come, but not going too fast for them not to catch glimpses of her in the mist.
It was still difficult, but not nearly as bad as before.
So familiar … this perilous narrow path where Cira had walked.
Galo leading Cira and Antonio to her son …
Not a pure white retriever, but a pale tan hound. But the love was the same, and so was the service rendered.
Darkness.
Mist.
A dog barking, warning, protecting, leading them …
Where?
She rounded a curve in the path.
Juno was sitting on the path in front of her. She was seven or eight feet away, but Jane could make her out in the mist.
She was not moving, but whimpering that excited, joyous sound deep in her throat.
“You did well, Juno.” Margaret had come even with Jane and was looking down at the retriever. “Here?”
Juno ran to the huge boulder to the north of the path and sat down in front of it. As Marcus’s dog, Galo, had done as he had waited for Cira and Antonio.
“Here,” Margaret repeated. She turned to Jane. “She’s done her job. It’s up to you now.” She smiled. “Are you ready?”
All the dreams.
All the years.
All the wondering why.
All the reaching out but never finding.
“I’m ready.” She turned to MacDuff and Jock as they came toward them down the path. “Just in time. That big boulder rolls back, but I don’t have the strength. It takes muscle.” She smiled. “Antonio did it by himself, but the centuries and dampness probably made it bury itself deeper in the earth. It might take two.”
MacDuff was standing stiff, frozen, his eyes on the huge boulder. “My God.” Then he shook his head to clear it. “It’s just a rock. Probably nothing behind it.”
“There’s something behind it,” Jane said. “There is, MacDuff. I know you’re scared to think it’s true. So am I. But I know there’s something there.” She swallowed. “So flex those muscles and prove me right. Okay?”
Jock stepped forward. “Come on, MacDuff. I could probably do it alone, like Antonio, but then I’d have to rub it in for the rest of your life. You wouldn’t like that. Hop to it.”
MacDuff stood looking at the boulder. “You think I’d allow that to happen?” He came forward and braced himself beside Jock. “On the count of three.”
It took five counts of three to even budge the deeply embedded rock and then seven more before they managed to roll the boulder to one side.
Jane went slowly forward to stand beside them, staring into the darkness.
“Now I’m truly terrified,” MacDuff murmured.
“Me, too.”
Afraid of being disappointed, of losing that extraordinary feeling of eternity and continuity that Cira had given her.
A whimpering, a brushing against Jane’s legs, and then Juno pushed past them and ran into the darkness.
Jane drew a deep breath. “It appears that Juno isn’t scared.” She lifted her flashlight. “I suggest we follow her example.” She stepped inside the cave. “Juno, where are you?”
A low whimper.
“She’s over there against the far wall,” Margaret said as she came to stand beside Jane. “Something about a Galo.”
“Galo?” Jane leveled the beam of her flashlight across the cave.
Then she forgot everything else as she saw the ledge built into the cave wall. She was transfixed, in shock. On the ledge was a ruin of bronze and granite and beautifully carved wood. A ruin, but the size was right, and so was Jane’s memory of it.
Cira looking down at the carved casket with tears in her eyes. “And now I believe we’d better go take him into that mist…”
“Marcus,” she whispered. “This is where they laid him to rest.”
MacDuff’s beam pierced the darkness next to where Jane’s light was pointing. “It’s hard to tell what—”
“It’s him,” she said. “You can verify it to your heart’s content later, but it’s Marcus.” Her beam moved down to where Juno was huddled on the floor beside another, smaller heap of bronze and wood. “And I’d bet that’s the coffin where they placed Galo, Marcus’s dog, when he died.” She could feel the tears sting her eyes. “So they’d always be together.” She moved her beam around the cave, which was not clean and neat as it had been in her dream. Fallen rocks, wet earth, even the walls of the cave seemed to have shifted from what she remembered. “And Cira’s treasure should be in that wall over there, MacDuff. Go and see if it’s in a cavity behind those rocks jammed against the wall.”
“I can look later.” His beam was still on Marcus’s casket.
“No, look now. I have to be sure. Cira wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble if she hadn’t wanted you to find that treasure.” She smiled. “She knows you’ll give her son all due respect. After all, she set him to watch over it. Now go see how well she preserved her fortune for you and the family.”
MacDuff hesitated and then slowly crossed the cave to the rock she’d indicated. “If you’re sure she won’t throw a thunderbolt at me.”
“No guarantees. She always hated to be predictable. You’ll have to take your chances.”
She stood and watched as MacDuff and Jock began to try to pry the boulder away from the cavity in the wall.
I’ve brought them here, Cira. It will make your family safe for a long time to come. Are you pleased? Is this what it was all about?
*
Cira’s bronze treasure chest was in bad shape but, incredibly, still intact. Its enclosure in the cave wall must have helped to keep it tight and dry. The coins inside it were in various degrees of discoloration, but there appeared to be hundreds, possibly thousands of them almost overflowing the chest.
“Cira’s gold,” MacDuff whispered as he lifted a handful of coins from the chest and let them flow through his fingers. “Do you know that sometimes I doubted that it ever existed.”
“You knew it did,” Jane said. “You searched and nagged and made everyone miserable, because you knew it was out here somewhere.”
“I guess I did.” MacDuff looked at her and smiled. “And evidently I wasn’t the only one nagging. I had someone on my side helping out.”
“Cira’s always been very demanding.” She gazed at the huge heap of coins. “They appear to be in decent shape and the gold coins might not even be the most valuable. History and rarity count more in today’s market. It will probably take a number of experts and a good amount of time to do the appraisals. What’s your next step, MacDuff?”
“The safest, best-protected bank in Edinburgh. Which in my opinion is the Royal Bank of Scotland. Then arranging for all the appraisals to take place in a secure room at that fine establishment.”
She smiled. “What a canny Scot you are, MacDuff.”
“But first we’ve got to get it out of here and on its way to that bank,” Jock said. “And I’m not toting all of this treasure in my backpack. Too many trips. We’ll go back to the poles and get the utility wagon.”
Antonio unloading the treasure from a crude wooden wagon and carrying it into the cave.
“I think that’s a great idea.” She turned to Margaret. “But that’s a round-trip to the boulders where the poles are set up. Then another trip when we load the treasure to take it back to camp. Will Juno have any trouble leading us all that way?”
Margaret shook her head. “Not if I stay with her and remind her that it’s important she concentrate on the lead and not what she’s leaving behind here. She wants to stay. She … likes it here.”