The Guardian by Diana Knightley

Fifteen - Hayley

We had to spend the night out again. We chose a nice secluded spot, leaving the sack covered with leaves a few hundred feet away. We were wary that it would come alive again, a storm right above us, that it might grab us and jump us, so we kept it as far away as possible.

I said, “Weird, huh, that the last person to touch this was your father? That it belonged to your mother?”

“Aye, and before that a man in the year 1557 perhaps, there is a deep history about the thing,” he said, totally missing the point.

I loved that he wasn’t sentimental about his ancestors but it also drove me crazy. I had been thinking about it on our ride — I thought, because we weren’t going to have children, that it made our ancestry more important, that the branches on our family tree were above us, shading us. We had decided to prune our family back, but didn’t that make the rest of the family doubly important?

But Fraoch had a whole other opinion — that we could be content in the now, not worrying about who came before us, a bunch of unimportant arseholes. But the fact that no one came after us, because I was still committed to this... didn’t that make us all alone?

Except for Katie and Magnus and Archie and Isla and Ben and...

I was being ridiculous.

Nothing happened with the vessel.

We put up the tent and I was exhausted and ready for sleep, but Fraoch felt the need to stay up and guard.

I never understood how he did that, stand guard after a long day. Possibly he slept in quick naps or something, but when I asked, he just shrugged, “Only the wee need tae sleep.”

The next morning we loaded up the tent and horses and then rode over to the sack, tied it to Fraoch’s horse again, and took off toward home. We barely spoke, our ride was lovely, horse hooves plodding on an easily passable terrain. We enjoyed the view.

* * *

Then, a couple of hours into the ride, Fraoch startled. “Och!” His horse pulled in a circle. “Tis hummin’!”

“Shit shit shit, get it off Fraoch, get it off!” He carved frantically at the rope with his dirk as a storm grew above us, sawing and sawing—

“Get it off!”

“I’m trying!”

“Hurry!” I tried to turn my horse toward him, to get close enough to put my arm on his shoulder, but I couldn’t get my horse to go towards his because by now there was a full blown storm happening and then the knife loosed the last strands of rope and the sack fell to the ground.

Fraoch turned his horse, I pulled my horse around and galloped away with Fraoch just behind.

We made it to the outer edge of the storm, dismounted our horses, and watched the bank of clouds towering over the hillside where the sack lay.

“Shit. Looks like we’ll have to wait it out.”

Fraoch said, “Aye, we will hae tae wait til the storm clouds clear again.” He tied our horses to a tree, while I tried to get Quentin on the walkie-talkie.

We weren’t close enough yet.

Fraoch pulled a gun from his satchel, and sat under a tree facing that direction. I remained standing. “That was so scary. My heart is racing.”

He said, “Sit down, we are safe now.”

“Are we? I mean, someone could come in the storm, someone might come up behind us... I’m going to watch behind us, like this...” I climbed onto his lap and sat down, straddling him. “Is this comfortable?”

“Aye, but tis nae the usual guarding position.”

My chin rested on his shoulder, my arms under his, chest to chest. I joked, “You and Quentin don’t sit like this on guard duty?”

He chuckled. “Nae, he is too large, but we tried somethin’ like it one night when we were usin’ the Trailblazer, because twas so cold.”

I kissed the side of his neck. “So what do we do now?”

“We guard and we wait.”

* * *

It took about six hours for the storm to clear. We were farther away from the loch, this storm was less wet, but more electrical, lightning sparked everywhere. It was more dangerous feeling and we were closer to it, more on edge.

We had moved the vessel — someone was looking for it right? Turning it on to locate it? If so, had we just brought it further out into the open?

I asked, my voice loud to be heard over the storm, “Will someone come for it now?”

Fraoch said, “I daena ken, but perhaps nae one is tracking it, maybe tis only turning on, or... I daena ken the word, ye ken the word... ye used it for the Xbox once.”

“I don’t know... what...? And I love that you’re in the eighteenth century thinking on the Xbox.”

“I miss it, twas braw tae play Mario Kart with Archie and Ben. But when the Xbox wouldna work — ye ken the word...”

“Glitch?”

“Aye, glitch, perhaps the vessel is glitchin’.”

“Will they do that?”

“I daena ken, we daena ken half of what we ought tae ken of them considerin’ we be ridin’ them.”

He passed me his gun. “Hold this.” He dug through his satchel.

“What are you looking for?”

“M’whet stone.” I held the gun while he sharpened his dirk. We waited for the storm to pass.

***

Fraoch had actually fallen asleep for a time, his mouth hanging open with a bit of a snore. So I took over watch. Then he woke back up and just returned to his sharpening. Then sheathed his dirk and watched the storm alongside me.

Until it abruptly stopped about three hours later.

My legs were so stiff I had to shake them out. We mounted our horses and rode back to the sack, lying lifeless in the middle of the trail, once a dry path now a wet puddle. He dismounted, and using another rope wrapped it around the top of the sack and tied it to his horse again.

“Now we head home,” he said.

Close to Kilchurn we were able tae make contact with Quentin who told us tae meet him directly at the cave on Ben Cruachan, so we rode our horses there. We arrived just as Quentin and Magnus rode up.

It took all three men to roll the stone away from the door, exposing the tunnel opening. It was small, having been a cave Magnus and Sean had found when they were young.

Magnus took off his sporran to begin the crawl into the cave when Quentin gestured with his head. “Hayley.”

My eyes went wide. “What?”

“You’re the smallest person here, why don’t you save Magnus the trouble?”

Magnus said, “Och, tis okay, Quentin, I can do it, I just hae tae stretch first.”

I asked, “You want me to go into the small cave? Dark and with spiders?”

Magnus said, “I daena think the spiders will bother ye, they daena come out in the day.”

“How will they know? It’s dark!”

Quentin, without waiting for a response, pulled a headlamp from a saddlebag and passed it to me.

I said, “Okay, fine, sure, I’m doing this.”

Quentin said, “All of us have done it more than once, it is your turn.” He switched on the lamp.

“What do I do?” I stared at the dark maw of the tunnel, trying to psyche myself into going in. “How long is the tunnel?”

Magnus said, “Nae long enough tae get wedged.”

“Wait, is there a chance of getting wedged?” I circled my neck and stretched my shoulders doing circles.

“You’re going to drag the sack into the cave, take the vessel out, note the markings on this notebook, here’s a pen, then put the vessel inside one of the lock boxes. The code is—”

Magnus said, “Och nae, daena tell her the code.”

“Why not? It’s Hayley.”

“I hae already told four people, each person makes the location less safe.” He put out his hand for the headlamp so I passed it to him.

Quentin said, “I’ll go then, Boss.”

“Nae, I got this Quentin. They’re my vessels, I ought tae be the one tae put them in the small, dark, spider-infested cave.”

He crouched down and dragged himself into the opening and then pulled his legs in with a grunt, the sack following behind. There was a shifting noise and then a thud as he dropped into the cave.

Quentin called in, “Don’t forget to note the markings!”

Magnus’s voice came from deep in the cave, “I winna!”

We waited a few moments then Quentin called in, “How ye doing, Boss?”

“Good!”

Quentin clutched his chest. “That’s a relief, I didn’t know what would happen, what if he didn’t answer?”

It took a while and then there were scuffling noises, and grunts as Magnus heaved himself back through the tunnel. He stood up and stretched his back. He passed the notebook to Quentin. “It’s in the fifth lockbox.”

Quentin asked, “Did you count the vessels?”

“Aye, with the ones we ken are out, we hae twenty-four now with the one from Glencoe it makes twenty-five, and there is the odd machine, we daena ken what it does—”

“I hate not knowing that, what if it’s a do over button, or like a… fix the world button?”

Fraoch said, “I daena think ye should work a machine when ye daena ken what it does. What if ye make the little men angry?”

Magnus asked, “What little men?”

“The wee men who work the magic within the machines, ye ken, ye must treat them well or they are full of mischief.”

Magnus chuckled, “We hae a strange machine chock full of mischievous wee men, and, we hae the metal chest we canna get the lock open, tis likely tae be full of wee men as well.”

“But the vessels, that’s the right amount, right?”

“I believe so.”

Then the three men shoved and rolled the giant boulder back in front of the door.

We all rode back down the mountainside. By this time the day had grown long, the sunlight was dimming. Magnus and Fraoch rode on ahead while I rode beside Quentin and told him more about the trip. Then I asked, “Why didn’t James come?”

“Kind of a crazy story, James is going to marry Madame Sophie on the Fourth of July.”

“Are you serious? Wait... what? Did no one try to talk him out of it?”

Quentin said, “Katie gave it a valiant effort, but I think he is following Sean’s advice on it.”

“I knew that meeting the men of the eighteenth century was going to mess with his head.”

“Well, if you think about it, he’s never had a stable long term relationship, maybe this is how he has to do it.”

“The high school quarterback has to marry an eighteenth century widow to be stable?” I added, “I guess it’s not the craziest thing we’ve seen lately.”

Quentin said, “And stranger things have worked. Look at you and Fraoch.”

“Fraoch and I have the most normal relationship of any of us, he’s literally a good ol’ Georgia boy. Freaking Katie married a king.”

Quentin laughed. “Good point.” We rode up to the gates of the castle.