“And always kept to ourselves,” Mick added, with a hint of resentment.
“Tragically,” said Pastor Ferguson, returning to the main drift of the story, “the monks’ plan back-fired. When the Vikings found nothing to plunder in the church, they vented their fury and frustration on the poor brethren.”
“It may be a romantic notion,” George Muggoch inserted, “but we believe it was Brother Cieran’s job to hide the treasure. After the last raid, when Brother Cieran realized that he was the sole survivor, he went back to his post and stood guard over the hoard until he died.”
“He was a bit mad,” Alasdair Murdoch observed, tilting his head sympathetically.
“He was barking mad,” Mick Ferguson said gruffly. “Not that anyone blames him, mind you. He’d had a bit of a shock.”
Since the understatement was spoken in all sincerity, I fought down a desire to smile and carefully avoided making eye contact with Sir Percy.
“We believe that Brother Cieran laid out the bodies in the cavern,” Pastor Ferguson went on. “One man could hardly be expected to carry so many mangled corpses up the stone staircase and go on to dig forty graves or more. He did what he could to show his respect for his brothers in Christ, then went back to the islet to do his duty.”
The elders paused to sip their drinks in silence, as if according Brother Cieran the same respect he’d shown his fellow monks, then brought the story forward to the day old Mr. Maconinch had discovered the hoard.
“In order to understand what my father did next,” said Cal, “you have to understand the state Erinskil was in at the time.”
“Erinskil was dying,” said Pastor Ferguson bluntly. “James Robert—the tenth earl—had been the most recent in a long line of lairds who’d been good men but bad managers. Death duties and personal debt had reduced his income to the point where he couldn’t afford to spend more than a pittance on Erinskil’s upkeep. By the time he died, we were in such desperate straits that many of us were discussing emigration.”
Alasdair Murdoch pursed his lips. “Everyone agreed that Erinskil would fare no better under James Robert’s son—he could barely pay his own bills, let alone invest in the island’s maintenance. Old Mr. Maconinch decided, therefore, that it would be daylight madness to turn the hoard over to the new laird, to whom it rightfully belonged.”
“He would have sold the treasure to pay his taxes,” Cal declared, “and our families would have been forced to leave the island forever. My father couldn’t let it happen.”
“He couldn’t leave the treasure where it was,” said Neil MacAllen, “because the old laird’s burial service was coming up, and he couldn’t dig another hole for it on the Chapel because everyone would wonder what had been buried there. So he moved the hoard from Cieran’s Chapel to the monks’ cave and said nothing about it until after the tenth earl had been laid to rest.”
“By then,” said Alasdair Murdoch, “word had come down from on high that the island was to be evacuated for the duration of the coming war.When Cal’s father convened a special meeting of the elders, to inform them of his find, they had many things to consider.”
“The elders agreed that the hoard should be used to benefit the islanders rather than the laird,” said George Muggoch, “but that nothing should be done hastily. They’d hide the treasure in the cavern behind the artificial rockfall until the war was over and the islanders returned from the mainland.”
“While in exile they’d learn everything they could about the antiquities trade,” Pastor Ferguson explained. “They’d identify a trustworthy dealer who would be willing to sell individual pieces over an extended period of time to private collectors worldwide. In this way they hoped to avoid drawing undue attention to their find.”
“They planned to sell the hoard off piece by piece,” said Cal Maconinch, “and keep the profits to rebuild Erinskil.”
Since it looked as though the profits would be considerable, the elders had to find a way to explain the island’s prosperity. Their solution was to study businesses while they were on the mainland and choose one that would work well on Erinskil. It didn’t take them long to conclude that a tweed mill would suit the island setting as well as the interests and abilities of the vast majority of islanders. Creative bookkeeping would allow them to disguise profits from the antiquities’ sales as earnings from the mill.