“Really, darling,” Robert said. “I believe you are making this up.”
“If you ever consider selling the Mackintosh, I hope you’ll think of me,” I said. “I’m interested in anything by Mackintosh, but I’m particularly keen on locating one of his writing cabinets.”
“Most certainly,” Robert said, “if Lester doesn’t object.”
“You can have it only if I don’t want it,” Lester said, laughing. “I suppose you’ve noticed she drinks a bit,” he added when they were gone. “But really she’s terrific when she’s sober, and as you can see, he adores her. If you get a chance, you really should take her up on her offer to visit in Orkney. They own an equally fabulous place there. No weekend cottage, you understand. It’s practically a palace. It’s on Hoxa.”
“Hoxa?”
“Near St. Margaret’s Hope. Lovely little town.”
This was just too good to be true. I was zeroing in on a revelation of great proportions, I was certain of it. “So have you ever heard of Trevor Wylie, an antique dealer from Toronto? He’s originally from Scotland.”
“I don’t think so. Wait, he wasn’t the one killed with an axe, was he? You said stabbed. Were you trying to be delicate? I read about it in the paper.”
“One and the same.”
“My, my! Hard to think Maya Alexander would know someone who ended up like that. It was over a piece of furniture or something, wasn’t it?”
“Something like that.”
“Come to think of it, I’m sure that explains all. She read it in the paper, just as I did, and in her present state, by which I mean a little tipsy, recalled the name, and decided she must have met him. The name obviously means nothing to Robert.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, but I really didn’t think so. My heart soared. Maybe at last I was on the right track. Maybe this whole obsession of mine was not just me being silly. Forget that ridiculous conversation with Percy. Percy didn’t matter. Who cared if he was looking for the same writing cabinet I was? Surely this could be win/win for both of us. So I hadn’t been able to find an antique dealer by the name of Macdonald. That was too bad, but it was no longer a real problem. What mattered was that I had found a connection with Trevor Wylie in both Glasgow and Orkney, a connection, furthermore, which owned some Mackintosh furniture. Real Mackintosh! The following day I would be on a plane heading for Orkney. I decided I just might take Maya Alexander up on her lovely offer.
Chapter 5
And so Bjarni sailed for the Hebrides, or what he would have known as Suoreyar, the Southern Isles. There was always loot to be had there, especially in the churches and monasteries, and being a pagan, Bjarni had no qualms about helping himself to what he could find. To reach the Hebrides from Orkney and indeed Caithness, however, required rounding the aptly named Cape Wrath, something the Vikings did only when good weather permitted. But Bjarni did not have the luxury of waiting for that, and confident in his abilities as a sailor, he set sail. It was then that Bjarni’s troubles began. It has to be said that neither Bjarni nor Oddi, who was captain of the second ship, lacked confidence in their skills as seamen. In Bjarni’s case that confidence was not misplaced, but in Oddi’s, perhaps it was. They hoped to outrun a storm that was brewing over the Atlantic, dark ominous clouds low on the horizon, but they didn’t make it. Bjarni made landfall, but Oddi didn’t, and his ship was thrown up on to the rocks near Cape Wrath. Several of Oddi’s men perished, but Oddi himself was saved.
There were many Norsemen in northern Scotland, although never as numerous as the Picts and Scots, but Oddi was fortunate at least that he was found on the shore by fellow Norsemen, who took him in. It took several days, but Bjarni and Oddi were at last reunited. Chastened by the storm and the loss of some of their comrades, several of the men opted to stay where they were, and take their chances with Einar, but Bjarni and Oddi sailed on. Now with only one ship, Bjarni and Oddi sailed for the Hebrides.
The Hebrides were well known to the Vikings. Some say the Viking Age began in 793 with the raid of the monastery on the English island of Lindesfarne. But it was at lona in the Hebrides in 795 that the Vikings and the Scots first made contact, with the terrible sacking of the Irish monastery there. Many have written since of it, the ferociousness of the attack, the heartlessness of the marauders, the fear that struck every Scottish heart. It was on the crucible of Lindesfarne and lona that the reputation of the Vikings as terrifying and destructive heathens was forged. And those raids were just the beginning. The monastery at lona was sacked four times by Vikings between 795 and 826 alone, and it would continue to be a target for three centuries more. Even though a few years before Bjarni arrived, Olaf Sihtricsson, the Norse King of Dublin, had retired there as a penitent after his defeat at Tara in Ireland, the raids continued. For some, old traditions die hard. So Bjarni did what he had always done: alone under cover of darkness he slipped ashore. But this time the monks were waiting for him, and he barely escaped with his life.
His reception in Ireland wasn’t any better. Sigurd had been defeated at Clontarf by the Irish King Brian Boru. The King died when Sigurd did, but there was no haven for Bjarni’s type of Viking anymore. Bjarni, of course, had no idea that the Vikings in England would be defeated by their cousins the Normans within a few years, that essentially their glory days were over. It is interesting to speculate whether he felt the occasional twinge of awareness that things were not as he would have them. He would surely be surprised to find that Vikings and Celts were living peaceably together in what he considered to be Viking Dublin. So Bjarni and his remaining men kept going, and from here on it was, at least for Bjarni, uncharted territory.
In the COLD hard light of dawn, my optimism evaporated. Gone was the lovely buzz of the champagne, the good cheer generated by pleasant company and exceptional surroundings. Gone, too, was the pale sunshine of the day before, to be replaced by a dismal drizzle. I was back to replaying my conversation with Percy. What had that conversation with Percy actually meant? I kept trying to recall his exact words and the possible interpretation of them. He could have been lying about his knowledge or the lack thereof of the writing cabinet’s value, but he’d have to be a pretty good actor to look as surprised as he had. This did not bode well for this ridiculous trip to Orkney.
Then there was the small matter of John A. Macdonald Antiques. It didn’t exist. I was sure there was something hugely important in this, beyond the obvious fact that it put the actual transaction into grave doubt. But this bogus transaction had to be part of something much bigger, something involving not one but two writing cabinets. I just could not fathom what this big something might be. After all, Trevor could have imported two writing cabinets from two different places with perfectly genuine paperwork for each piece. Did that mean that he’d stolen one of them? I’d checked all international databases that listed stolen items such as this, Interpol, for example, before I left. If it had turned up, then the fake invoice made sense. But it hadn’t, so I was right back where I started.
These ruminations made me exceptionally irritable, and I stayed that way when the rain stopped somewhere between Glasgow and Inverness and even when the sun came out just as the aircraft crossed the coastline. Below were lines of oil rigs, a blight on the landscape, but interesting nonetheless, and farther out, visible through wisps of white clouds, a chain of the greenest islands I had ever seen. Given our flying time, I could only assume those islands were my destination.