* * *
In the event, it was Brianna alone who came to the manse the next day.
“Mama’s at the public library,” she explained. “Looking up old phone directories. She’s trying to find someone she used to know.”
Roger’s heart skipped a beat at that. He had checked the Reverend’s phonebook the night before. There were three local listings under the name “James Fraser,” and two more with different first names, but the middle initial “J.”
“Well, I hope she finds him,” he said, still trying for casualness. “You’re really sure you want to help? It’s boring, filthy work.” Roger looked at Brianna dubiously, but she nodded, not at all discomposed at the prospect.
“I know. I used to help my father sometimes, dredging through old records and finding footnotes. Besides, it’s Mama’s project; the least I can do is help you with it.”
“All right.” Roger glanced down at his white shirt. “Let me change, and we’ll go have a look.”
The garage door creaked, groaned, then surrendered to the inevitable and surged suddenly upward, amid the twanging of springs and clouds of dust.
Brianna waved her hands back and forth in front of her face, coughing. “Gack!” she said. “How long since anyone’s been in this place?”
“Eons, I expect.” Roger replied absently. He shone his torch around the inside of the garage, briefly lighting stacks of cardboard cartons and wooden crates, old steamer trunks smeared with peeling labels, and amorphous tarpaulin-draped shapes. Here and there, the upturned legs of furniture poked through the gloom like the skeletons of small dinosaurs, protruding from their native rock formations.
There was a sort of fissure in the junk; Roger edged into this and promptly disappeared into a tunnel bounded by dust and shadows, his progress marked by the pale spot of his torch as it shone intermittently on the ceiling. At last, with a cry of triumph, he seized the dangling tail of a string hanging from above, and the garage was suddenly illuminated in the glare of an oversized bulb.
“This way,” Roger said, reappearing abruptly and taking Brianna by the hand. “There’s sort of a clear space in back.”
An ancient table stood against the back wall. Perhaps originally the centerpiece of the Reverend Wakefield’s dining room, it had evidently gone through several successive incarnations as kitchen block, toolbench, sawhorse, and painting table, before coming to rest in this dusty sanctuary. A heavily cobwebbed window overlooked it, through which a dim light shone on the nicked, paint-splattered surface.
“We can work here,” Roger said, yanking a stool out of the mess and dusting it perfunctorily with a large handkerchief. “Have a seat, and I’ll see if I can pry the window open; otherwise, we’ll suffocate.”
Brianna nodded, but instead of sitting down, began to poke curiously through the nearer piles of junk, as Roger heaved at the warped window frame. He could hear her behind him, reading the labels on some of the boxes. “Here’s 1930–33,” she said, “And here’s 1942–46. What are these?”
“Journals,” said Roger, grunting as he braced his elbows on the grimy sill. “My father—the Reverend, I mean—he always kept a journal. Wrote it up every night after supper.”
“Looks like he found plenty to write about.” Brianna hoisted down several of the boxes, and stacked them to the side, in order to inspect the next layer. “Here’s a bunch of boxes with names on them—‘Kerse,’ ‘Livingston,’ ‘Balnain.’ Parishioners?”
“No. Villages.” Roger paused in his labors for a moment, panting. He wiped his brow, leaving a streak of dirt down the sleeve of his shirt. Luckily both of them were dressed in old clothes, suitable for rootling in filth. “Those will be notes on the history of various Highland villages. Some of those boxes ended up as books, in fact; you’ll see them in some of the local tourist shops through the Highlands.”
He turned to a pegboard from which hung a selection of dilapidated tools, and selected a large screwdriver to aid his assault on the window.
“Look for the ones that say ‘Parish Registers,’ he advised. “Or for village names in the area of Broch Tuarach.”
“I don’t know any of the villages in the area,” Brianna pointed out.
“Oh, aye, I was forgetting.” Roger inserted the point of the screwdriver between the edges of the window frame, grimly chiseling through layers of ancient paint. “Look for the names Broch Mordha…um, Mariannan, and…oh, St. Kilda. There’s others, but those are ones I know had fair-sized churches that have been closed or knocked down.”
“Okay.” Pushing aside a hanging flap of tarpaulin, Brianna suddenly leaped backward with a sharp cry.
“What? What is it?” Roger whirled from the window, screwdriver at the ready.
“I don’t know. Something skittered away when I touched that tarp.” Brianna pointed, and Roger lowered his weapon, relieved.
“Oh, that all? Mouse, most like. Maybe a rat.”
“A rat! You have rats in here?” Brianna’s agitation was noticeable.
“Well, I hope not, because if so, they’ll have been chewing up the records we’re looking for,” Roger replied. He handed her the torch. “Here, shine this in any dark places; at least you won’t be taken by surprise.”
“Thanks a lot.” Brianna accepted the torch, but still eyed the stacks of cartons with some reluctance.
“Well, go on then,” Roger said. “Or did you want me to do you a rat satire on the spot?”
Brianna’s face split in a wide grin. “A rat satire? What’s that?”
Roger delayed his answer, long enough for another try at the window. He pushed until he could feel his biceps straining against the fabric of his shirt, but at last, with a rending screech, the window gave way, and a reviving draft of cool air whooshed in through the six-inch gap he’d created.
“God, that’s better.” He fanned himself exaggeratedly, grinning at Brianna. “Now, shall we get on with it?”
She handed him the torch, and stepped back. “How about you find the boxes, and I’ll sort through them? And what’s a rat satire?”
“Coward,” he said, bending to rummage beneath the tarpaulin. “A rat satire is an old Scottish custom; if you had rats or mice in your house or your barn, you could make them go away by composing a poem—or you could sing it—telling the rats how poor the eating was where they were, and how good it was elsewhere. You told them where to go, and how to get there, and presumably, if the satire was good enough—they’d go.”
He pulled out a carton labeled JACOBITES, MISCELLANEOUS, and carried it to the table, singing,
“Ye rats, ye are too many,
If ye would dine in plenty,
Ye mun go, ye mun go.”
Lowering the box with a thump, he bowed in response to Brianna’s giggling and turned back to the stacks, continuing in stentorian voice.
“Go to Campbell’s garden,
Where nae cat stands warden,
And the kale, it grows green.
Go and fill your bellies,
Dinna stay and gnaw my wellies—
Go, ye rats, go!”
Brianna snorted appreciatively. “Did you just make that up?”
“Of course.” Roger deposited another box on the table with a flourish. “A good rat satire must always be original.” He cast a glance at the serried ranks of cartons. “After that performance, there shouldn’t be a rat within miles of this place.”
“Good.” Brianna pulled a jackknife from her pocket and slit the tape that sealed the topmost carton. “You should come do one at the bed-and-breakfast place; Mama says she’s sure there’s mice in the bathroom. Something chewed on her soap case.”
“God knows what it would take to dislodge a mouse capable of eating bars of soap; far beyond my feeble powers, I expect.” He rolled a tattered round hassock out from behind a teetering stack of obsolete encyclopedias, and plumped down next to Brianna. “Here, you take the parish registers, they’re a bit easier to read.”
They worked through the morning in amiable companionship, turning up occasional interesting passages, the odd silverfish, and recurrent clouds of dust, but little of value to the project at hand.
“We’d better stop for lunch soon,” Roger said at last. He felt a strong reluctance to go back into the house, where he would once more be at Fiona’s mercy, but Brianna’s stomach had begun to growl almost as loudly as his own.
“Okay. We can do some more after we eat, if you’re not worn out.” Brianna stood and stretched herself, her curled fists almost reaching the rafters of the old garage. She wiped her hands on the legs of her jeans, and ducked between the stacks of boxes.
“Hey!” She stopped short, near the door. Roger, following her, was brought up sharp, his nose almost touching, the back of her head.
“What is it?” he asked. “Not another rat?” He noted with approval that the sun lit her thick single braid with glints of copper and gold. With a small golden nimbus of dust surrounding her, and the light of noon silhouetting her long-nosed profile, he thought she looked quite medieval; Our Lady of the Archives.
“No. Look at this, Roger!” She pointed at a cardboard carton near the middle of a stack. On the side, in the Reverend’s strong black hand, was a label with the single word “Randall.”
Roger felt a stab of mingled excitement and apprehension. Brianna’s excitement was unalloyed.
“Maybe that’s got the stuff we’re looking for!” she exclaimed. “Mama said it was something my father was interested in; maybe he’d already asked the Reverend about it.”
“Could be.” Roger forced down the sudden feeling of dread that had struck him at sight of the name. He knelt to extract the box from its resting place. “Let’s take it in the house; we can look in it after lunch.”