AHMM, October 2008 Read online

  She'd been attracted to the pamphlet's cover, a photograph of Sterling Castle on just the kind of sunny day they'd had. She opened now to the frontispiece and found a color reproduction of a portrait of Queen Mary I. Julia noticed how the subject's pale skin glowed against a dark blue dress and a darker background. Then her eye moved to the queen's hair. She felt she'd seen that hair recently and then remembered the young woman from the University of Delaware, also pale and beautiful. The stranger and the doomed queen shared the same striking shade of auburn.

  * * * *

  III

  The next day the Cadens’ itinerary, worked out weeks in advance and filed in duplicate at each of their offices, called for them to drive around Loch Lomond. They awoke to a low overcast and a promise of rain but set out anyway, against the advice of the hotel staff.

  "If we don't stick to the plan, we don't have a plan,” David said as the first raindrops fell on the windshield of their rented Renault. “Besides, a lake's always wet."

  On the drive to Balloch, Julia related some of what she'd read of Mary, Queen of Scots, further condensing the pamphlet's condensation.

  "She was born in 1542, crowned queen when she was only nine months old, and betrothed when she was five to the Dauphin of France. She became Queen of France when he succeeded to the throne as Francois II in 1559."

  "So she was also Mary, Queen of Frenchmen,” David said, glowering upward at the now steady rain. “This is what you want on a vacation, the chance to figure out how your car's high-speed wipers work."

  "When Francois died, she returned to Scotland. That was in 1560. Elizabeth I of England didn't like having her that close, since Mary's claim to the English throne was as good as hers. She liked it even less when Mary married Lord Darnley, an English nobleman with royal blood."

  "So Elizabeth had her head chopped off. I think I saw this part in a movie."

  "Not yet. First Darnley tried to take over. When he got himself blown up, she fell in with an adventurer named Bothwell, who locked her away and may have raped her."

  "Men are beasts,” David said. “Sorry."

  "Mary escaped to England, which was a mistake. Elizabeth arranged to have her held prisoner in a remote castle until she could think of an excuse to have her executed. That finally happened in 1587. So women can be beasts too."

  It was another of her olive branches. David failed to grasp it, having spotted familiar lights through what was now a downpour.

  "There's a McDonald's. Thank god for civilization. I'm stopping for coffee."

  They drank the last of that coffee on the pebbly shore of the famous loch. The patter of rain on the hood of her jacket had Julia flashing back to Girl Scout camping trips. The lake was a dull slate gray that merged in the distance with a mist that merged in turn with the lowering sky.

  "Believe it or not,” David said, “there's a mountain right over there. Ben Lomond. It's got snow on the top and everything."

  He held their guidebook, opened to a picture of the white peak, at arm's length before them.

  "Oooh,” Julia said. And, “Ahhh."

  Laughing, they retreated to the car.

  * * * *

  After a return to Callander for lunch and dry clothes, they set out again, still keeping to their itinerary, since their next goal was nearer to hand and well roofed. It was another castle, Doune, near the town of the same name.

  Julia's initial impression was that Doune Castle was as dark and forbidding as the sky. She warmed to the place when she learned in the ticket office that Mary, Queen of Scots, had stayed there, in an apartment that was open to the public.

  But the rooms disappointed her all over again, being bare stone with small windows and a crude fireplace. David took one quick look and descended again to photograph the great hall. Julia lingered, noticing belatedly the paneled ceiling, the apartment's only trace of elegance. Then, after examining a tiny sleeping compartment, she struck her head on the lintel of its low doorway. She saw stars and thought for a moment that she might faint. With difficulty, she reached the staircase beyond the apartment, intending to go down in search of sympathy. Before she could, a breath of cool air, coming to her from above, partially cleared her head. She climbed in search of more of that air and found herself on a stone walkway that followed the outline of the castle's roof.

  She also found that she was not alone. At one corner of the walk stood the young woman from Sterling. She had been up there for some little while to judge by her windbreaker, black with wet, and by her streaming hair.

  When the woman noticed Julia, her expression was instantly angry. Julia felt, as she had in the dining room the evening before, that she was intruding on someone else's experience. Still, she was unwilling to leave a person she considered troubled alone and so near to the edge of the tower. Smiling, she moved to the opposite corner of the roof, leaned against a tall stone, and pretended to admire a field of cows.

  Some time later, she heard David calling her name, and was surprised to find that she'd closed her eyes. She looked around for the auburn-haired woman, even checking the bright green lawn far below. The stranger was nowhere in sight.

  When David found her, she explained about her head, now cold and wet as well as sore, and he led her by the hand down the winding stairs.

  "Did you see her?” Julia asked as they descended, step by careful step.

  "Who?"

  "The woman from Sterling. She was there on the roof. You must have passed her on your way up."

  "Are you kidding? You couldn't pass a broomstick on this staircase."

  "Then she must have stopped somewhere on the way down.” Together they looked in at every room they passed but saw no one.

  * * * *

  IV

  "You don't really think she is Mary, Queen of Scots, do you? Reincarnated or something? You didn't hit your head that hard, I hope."

  The concerned questioner was a woman with an Irish name, Kay O'Brien, but dark, Mediterranean features. She and her husband Charley were having a late breakfast with Julia and David at the Cadens’ new hotel in Dunfermline, prior to a day of exploring in nearby Edinburgh, where the O'Briens lived.

  "Of course not,” Julia said, resisting the temptation to admit her wilder imaginings. “I think she's obsessed with Mary."

  "Because she's had some similar trouble in her own life,” Kay said to show she'd been paying attention. She dropped her voice before adding, “trouble with men."

  She needn't have bothered whispering. Though seated at the same table, the husbands were lost in a discussion of their mutual employer and the challenges of their respective sales territories, David's, which was growing, and Charley's, which was shrinking.

  "Yesterday, we were scheduled to visit the palace of Linlithgow,” Julia said. “That's where Mary was born. I was sure we'd see the woman there and I'd have a chance to talk with her."

  "Assuming she's hitting all the Mary sites in the same order you are,” Kay said doubtfully.

  "We'll never know. David threw out our itinerary. He said wet castles were too dangerous. I told him I hadn't slipped, I'd hit my head, and besides, Linlithgow was a palace, not a castle, but he'd made up his mind. He said a change of plan might change our weather luck."

  "Which it did,” Kay said.

  Julia was forced to agree. The drive north to Aberfeldy had been accompanied by the familiar beat of the Renault's windshield wipers. But when they'd emerged from their tour of the town's famous distillery, the sun was out. It had stayed out during their lunch in a remote inn, and the drive down to Dunfermline through hills covered with heather, its purple faded but still beautiful.

  Julia glanced toward the men's end of the breakfast table. The husbands were now discussing their upcoming round of golf at St. Andrews, Charley scratching his bald head with both hands in his excitement.

  She said, “I've got another chance today. In Edinburgh. Mary had a child at the castle there."

  "It's a big castle,” Kay said, doubtful
again. “And how do you know she wasn't there yesterday and in Linlithgow today? Or one of the other Mary landmarks? There's Holyrood Palace. That's also in Edinburgh. And Inchmahome Priory, over near where you were staying in Callander. They hid Mary there when she was little and Henry VIII was after her."

  Julia pushed her plate away. “How on earth do you know that?"

  "Since Charley talked me into moving over here from New Jersey, the kids and I have become professional tourists. If some old guy in a kilt left one stone on top of another, we've paid to see them.

  "All I'm saying is, even if everything you're thinking is true, even if this woman is obsessed with Mary, she could be in any one of a dozen different places on any given day. You could waste your whole vacation hunting for her."

  "If I'm meant to find her, I will,” Julia said. “And I feel like I'm meant to."

  * * * *

  The two couples took the train into the heart of Edinburgh, crossing the famous Firth of Forth Bridge, and climbed on foot to the Royal Mile, the ancient street that led upward to the castle. The street was lined with shops and restaurants that served the tourist trade, and their business was brisk.

  Stops at St. Giles to see the Thistle Chapel and at a tobacconist to buy Cuban cigars for the upcoming St. Andrews round delayed them. It was midday when they reached the castle's forecourt, where they were greeted by rows of idling tour buses. Julia saw then that Kay's description of the place had been accurate. Sterling Castle had been more of a complex than a single building. Edinburgh Castle was larger still, a walled town whose streets continued to climb the hill.

  Once past the choke-point gate, the foursome separated, the men going in search of the armory while the wives wandered in the direction of St. Margaret's Chapel, Julia scanning the crowd as they walked.

  "You can see now what I meant,” Kay said. “There are just too many people up here. I can't blame them either. I've never been here on a nicer day. Look at the sky. It's almost the same shade of blue as the estuary."

  She paused to photograph the meeting of that sea and sky on the horizon. Julia, a few steps ahead, felt her heart racing, even as she told herself that she hadn't a prayer of spotting one auburn head in that crush.

  But then she did spot it. The woman from Sterling and Doune was standing near an outcropping of rock at the base of the chapel, staring upward at the sky. Julia took a step toward her and stopped, suddenly remembering the woman's anger when her lonely vigil at Doune had been interrupted.

  The warning memory came too late. The stranger looked down from the sky and met Julia's gaze, as directly as though Julia had called to her. She reacted as she had at Doune, with sudden rage. She rushed across the cobblestones at Julia, causing startled tourists to jump left and right.

  Julia forgot her well-planned approach, her remarks about Delaware and touring that would lead in safe half-steps to more personal issues. She wanted to lose herself in the line waiting to enter the chapel, but found she couldn't move, couldn't raise a hand to protect herself when the woman stopped a foot from her.

  "Don't trust him!” the woman all but screamed.

  Julia felt someone take her arm. Kay. The wild woman noticed her too.

  "Don't trust any man!” the woman shouted and then hurried off.

  Kay called after her. “I don't trust Charley! Not after three kids!"

  * * * *

  V

  Kay was inclined to treat the encounter outside the chapel as a joke and could not be persuaded by Julia to refrain from telling the husbands all about it when they met for lunch. Charley saw the humor, too, but David, as Julia had foreseen, did not. She'd predicted that he would overreact, and that proved true as well.

  "This woman isn't a character from one of your movies or books, wandering around in the rain because her heart's broken. For all you know, she's a ticking bomb, one tick away from going off. And now she thinks you're following her around."

  "Julia is following her around,” Charley observed, “which is kind of amazing."

  "It's coincidence,” David said, “but this woman might think it's persecution."

  "It's fate,” Julia said, but only to herself.

  * * * *

  She was still thinking of fate the next morning as they caravanned up to St. Andrews, David and Charley squeezed in the Renault and Kay and Julia following behind in the O'Briens’ Audi. They'd taken the coast road for the scenery, and Kay played tour guide whenever they slowed for a village. Eventually, her lecture moved on to St. Andrews itself.

  "It's a college town. A university town, I should say. The school and the golf course keep the place humming. There's a beautiful beach, too, and a ruined cathedral. Actually, it's more like the outline of a cathedral. After it collapsed back in the Middle Ages, the townspeople recycled the stone into their shops and houses."

  "Is there a castle?” Julia asked.

  "Just the remains of one. There's no connection to Mary Stuart, though. At least, none that I've ever heard about. So we won't run into that friend of yours with the loud voice."

  "Unless we're fated to,” Julia thought.

  "I think the castle's history involves the old religious troubles, the Protestants versus the Catholics. Some Protestant leaders were imprisoned there and maybe executed. I can't quite remember. And then the head Catholic, a bishop or cardinal or something, was attacked in the castle and killed. After that they pulled the place down. Not very romantic, but most real life isn't."

  Julia recognized the gentle criticism but didn't resent it. She spent the remainder of the drive wondering whether her troubles with David had come about because she'd expected too much romance or had settled for too little.

  She was roused from those thoughts by her first sight of St. Andrews, whose rust-roofed houses and stone spires were nestled in a natural bowl between the hills and the sea. Their hotel was on the old market street, only a block from the famous golf course. At the hotel's paneled front desk, whose entire counter was a single window, as small and ornately screened as a confessional's, a message awaited them.

  "One of the kids is sick,” Kay, to whom the message was addressed, reported. “It's that bug that's been going around their school. I have to go back."

  Charley, who was given permission to stay and play his golf, took the news well. Better than David did. He sat down with Julia in their room as soon as they'd settled their bags.

  "I have a feeling I should stay with you,” he said.

  "That's silly. You've waited for years to play this golf course. You'll have to hurry or you'll miss your tee time."

  David didn't hurry or even rise from his seat. “I was counting on Kay looking after you. First you hit your head. And then that woman..."

  "My head is fine. And that woman isn't anywhere near here. I checked our guidebook. There's no mention of Mary Stuart in connection with the castle."

  David did not appear to be comforted by this reasoning. “I'd just as soon you didn't go near the castle. Promise me you won't. Stay here and rest. Or if you feel like exercise, you could walk the course with Charley and me."

  Julia laughed. “I'd rather hit my head again."

  * * * *

  VI

  Julia had been speaking the truth when she'd said that her head was fine, but as soon as she lay back on the bed to nap, it began to throb again. She told herself that it was just a headache and not a reawakening of the injury she'd suffered at Doune, but that diagnosis, though accurate, did not make the pain go away. At first it was a dull ache that allowed her a fitful sleep. Then it slowly grew worse.

  Finally, Julia dressed and walked down to the tiny front desk, intending to ask directions to the beach Kay had mentioned. In the lobby she found a rack of pamphlets for local attractions. She hesitated for a moment, then selected a brochure for the castle and began to read.

  She learned that, as Kay had told her, the castle's story was also a history of the country's religious strife. Protestant reformer John Knox had been impris
oned there, and a friend of Knox's, George Wishart, had been burned at the stake. When the tide of belief had turned, the local Catholic prelate, Cardinal Beaton, had been murdered in the castle.

  Julia paused, not to meditate on that sad history but because the Cardinal's name was somehow familiar. She dug in her shoulder bag, found the pamphlet on Mary, Queen of Scots, and read again the description of her coronation at Stirling Castle as a baby. The clergyman who'd presided and who'd held the crown on her tiny head was a Cardinal David Beaton.

  Was it the same man? If so, the castle had a connection to Mary after all, though a tenuous one. Still, Julia thought, if Mary were walking the earth again in the person of a wild-eyed woman from Delaware, she might well stop at the castle to say a prayer for the man who'd crowned her queen. Even a woman who was merely fascinated with Mary's life might do that.

  Julia asked at the front desk for directions to the castle and set out. Her route took her through the university, whose stone buildings blended seamlessly into the town's, and then along a quiet, tree-lined street. The castle lay just beyond the last of the trees. Its grounds were fronted by a low building that contained a ticket office, a souvenir shop, and a museum.

  After buying her ticket, Julia started to bypass the small museum. Then, on impulse, she stepped inside. As she wound her way through wax-figure displays of life at the castle at various periods, she was aware that she was stalling. If her Mary was there, she wouldn't be pretending to read placards in a museum. She'd be out on the ruined battlements, holding her lonely vigil. Unless she was leaving at that very moment, slipping away to the next stop in her peculiar tour.

  That thought made Julia master her nerves and hurry toward an exit. She was sure she was meant to help this suffering woman. Or almost sure. That had to be the explanation for their meeting again and again. Today would be the supreme test. If they met today, many miles from those other Mary landmarks, at a place with only the slightest connection to the unhappy queen, Julia would be certain.

  Instead of depositing visitors at the castle's main gate, the museum let them in through a gap in what remained of a side wall. Julia found herself on a sunny lawn that lay where the castle's keep should have been. The lawn ended abruptly at a cliff top that overlooked the cobalt sea, the edge guarded by a white railing. Along the railing were a series of benches, facing seaward. Julia saw only one other visitor, a person seated on the leftmost bench. This figure—Julia couldn't be sure if it was a man or a woman—was wearing a windbreaker of the right color, but the head above the jacket was covered by a brown, shapeless hat.