“What is it?” she said.
“It’s a cauldron,” I said. “A very old cauldron.”
“You mean for soup, or something? It’s very big.”
“I’m almost certain it’s silver, and just by feel I think there is a raised pattern of some kind on it. More likely it was for some ritual purpose, a very long time ago. It will need a lot of work before anyone could be sure.”
“A hundred years? Two hundred?”
“Maybe a whole lot older than that.”
“Oh, my,” she said again. “Would the Antiques Roadshow be interested in it, do you think? I love that show. To think I almost threw it out.”
“It doesn’t look like much,” I said. “Anybody could make that mistake.”
“It doesn’t,” she agreed.
“I wonder where he found it. Do you have any idea?”
“He was always out on his bicycle,” she said. “I never knew where Magnus went. He wasn’t happy with my move to Kirkwall. What could I do? I couldn’t look after the property when Magnus’s father died. He loved South Ronaldsay, you know. That’s where he lived all his life up until we moved here. We were just south of St. Margaret’s Hope. Once he quit his job, he… You know I haven’t said anything to anybody about this, but you are so nice. I have wondered if Magnus was fired. One day he was working, the next day he wasn’t. He said he resigned. He said he wanted to travel, and he did, you know. He took his savings and went to America. It could be, though, that he wasn’t telling his mother everything.”
Percy wasn’t for telling anybody everything in my experience, but I didn’t say as much. “I’m sure he did go to America. What did your son do for a living?”
“He worked for a moving company. He was strong you know. He looked slight, but with all the cycling and everything he was very strong.” I knew for a fact he had a strong grip, but I didn’t say that either.
“By moving company, you mean he moved furniture?”
“Aye.”
“He didn’t say where he’d been the day he found this?”
“He was always talking in riddles. He had some strange notions. I loved him dearly but he wasn’t one to share his ideas and activities. I think he said something about The Wasteland not being what he thought. I don’t expect that will help you much.”
“Maybe it does. Would you mind lending me a blanket or something to wrap this in and a piece of paper for the receipt? I think it’s time you went back to your other guests. Please don’t say anything to anyone about this. I’m going to see what I can find out about it.”
“You’re a lovely girl,” she said. “I would have liked a daughter-in-law like you. Magnus had girlfriends from time to time, but they didn’t last. He was a little too eccentric, maybe.”
“Hmm,” I said.
All of a sudden, Emily just sort of crumpled. She fell back on the bed, half of the pile of stuff sliding on to the floor as she did so. Then she started to cry. “I don’t know who would do such a terrible thing to my boy. He was stabbed many times, you know. I suppose you do, seeing as how you were with him. The police say he wasn’t stabbed in that bunker, but they have no idea where. It could be anywhere. I can’t sleep, you know. I’m frightened, and I don’t understand any of this. This doesn’t happen here. I don’t lock my door when I go out, at least I didn’t before this happened. The police say it may have been someone who came in on the ferry and left, and we’ll never know. How can this be? Why my Magnus?”
“I’m going to get Sally,” I said, going out to the living room and signaling to the woman in the bright pink sweater. In a few minutes Emily had composed herself, and we were back eating sandwiches and drinking tea as if nothing had happened. Her friends were curious about the large object wrapped in a blanket, but Emily told them I was finding a good home for something of her son’s at her request. A half hour later, feeling absolutely dreadful, I took my leave, but not without one more question. “Do you know that man standing down the road there? The one in army fatigues?”
“I’ve never seen him before,” Emily said. “I wonder what he’s doing just hanging about like that.”
I knew what he was doing. He was watching me. “Is there another way out of here?” I asked. “I know who it is. I just don’t want him to see me with this.” Fortunately there was not only a backdoor, but a gate and a lane that took me back to the church and my car. Emily hugged me several times as I left. “You’ll be hearing from me very soon,” I told her. “I promise.” A few minutes later, I hit the road with what I was certain was a treasure in the trunk. I sincerely hoped Drever the Intimidating, who was rapidly working his way up the scale to Drever the Scary, got very wet waiting for me to come out the front door.
I was making a lot of promises these days, both to myself and other people, even if it seemed way beyond my power to do anything at all, let alone fix it. And she was right. This kind of thing should not happen anywhere, but somehow it particularly shouldn’t happen in Orkney, where the people were decent and law-abiding and really nice in a reserved way. While I was looking for a piece of furniture, or not even that, the source of a piece of furniture to resurrect my tattered reputation, a rather superficial goal to be sure, Percy, who was looking for the Holy Grail was stabbed several times some place unknown, then dumped in a bunker. It was just too awful. I knew I was getting close on the furniture. The germ of an idea of what this was all about was growing in my mind. But it didn’t seem that important anymore. It would have to wait. I was going to do what little I could for some people in Orkney: Percy and Sigurd Haraldsson and Thor.
The question was where to start. The Haraldssons and Percy seemed to me to be inextricably linked by one Bjarni the Wanderer, fictional character or real historical person it mattered not. The Haraldssons were the keepers of Bjarni’s saga, just as the wounded king was guardian of the Grail. The saga told the story of a cauldron of obviously great beauty, and at the time much significance, and part of that saga was a scroll that might or might not point in the direction of the hiding place of that cauldron, something called the tomb of the orcs.
Percy was not looking for a Viking cauldron. He was looking for the Holy Grail. Somehow the cauldron and the Grail were one and the same in Percy’s mind. It was possible, too, I suppose. I knew just enough about the Grail legends to know that people believed the Grail existed, and that the quest for it was tied to Arthurian legend. The Grail was supposed to be somewhere in the British Isles, and at one time had no association with what we now know as The Holy Grail. It was a magic cauldron pure and simple. It didn’t matter if Percy was confusing two different objects or even mythologies. Percy had shown me a photograph that I thought was of a piece of furniture, but was really a photograph of the scroll. He had come all the way to Canada to try to find it, so clearly it was important. Airfare wasn’t cheap, and Percy wasn’t rich.
Trevor Wylie had somehow come into possession of that scroll. Willow had found it amongst his belongings when he died. He got it legally or otherwise, when he purchased the furniture. Had the nice woman in the photograph, the one with dementia, simply given it to him not realizing what she was doing? Did he just take it off the wall at the same time he talked her out of the furniture? I wouldn’t put it past him. It didn’t matter really. Both Trevor and Sigurd’s wife were dead. The important questions right now were why would Trevor take it? Was it just because it looked a little bit old and was there to be taken or was Willow correct in saying that Trevor was off to hunt for treasure? If the latter, what would make him think it was a treasure map? Was he a Viking expert, too? And how had Percy known about the scroll?