The Orkney Scroll

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.

The truth of the matter was that if it hadn’t been for my rather quixotic quest, to use Percy’s word, for a second writing cabinet, I wouldn’t know where Orkney was. Oh, I knew what we call the Orkney Islands, and Rendall the publican called Orkney, were somewhere off the coast of Scotland, but where, exactly, I wasn’t sure, and until now I hadn’t had cause to ask. There were all those islands, some of them apparently quite beautiful, the Hebrides, Skye, the Shetlands, the Isles of Man and Arran, different, or at least I thought so, from the Irish Aran Islands where I’d actually been. Really, I didn’t have a clue which was which. I think I had labored under the illusion that I would go to Glasgow, civilized place that it was, would find the antique dealer, and all would be made right. Instead I was reduced to consulting the route map in the magazine in the seat pocket in front of me, to find out that Orkney lay north and east of Scotland. Even with that, I still had no idea what the climate was like, had not booked a hotel, and just hoped that transportation would be available, whatever transportation, that is, that was required. From the air, I could see there were several islands, and I could only hope and pray that my destination was the one with the airport.

This is an embarrassing admission for someone who plans her buying trips with military precision, and who makes a point of knowing as much as possible about her destination before she arrives, but there you are. I was entering uncharted territory, and this fact alone left me feeling anxious and out of sorts.

The trouble was, all efforts to the contrary, I couldn’t hold on to my vile mood. The airport was a dear little thing, and I had my suitcase within five minutes of entering it. Or maybe it was only three minutes. I was so nonplussed by this unseemly haste in unloading the baggage from the aircraft and getting it into the passengers’ hands that I was about to say to the staff person who called out to ask if this was my luggage, now spinning all by itself on a miniature carousel, that it might look like mine but it couldn’t possibly be mine, given I’d only just arrived. I hadn’t even bothered to go look for it right away. I figured I had at least a half hour before the luggage carousel beeped loudly and turned on, only to circle empty for an eternity, and had gone to the gift shop to buy a map.

Ten minutes after that shock to my system, I had a car. The car rental agency was a counter in what would be a closet at home. The woman staffing it took my credit card imprint, and then, stuffing it into a drawer, told me it was a bank holiday of some sort, and she wouldn’t be putting the charges through on my credit card for a couple of days or three. She didn’t have one of those machines that charge you in a nanosecond, nor did she phone the credit card company to verify that I could actually pay for this vehicle of hers. She just handed me the keys, told me to enjoy my stay, and advised that if she wasn’t there when I departed, I could just throw the keys in a box.

I eyed her suspiciously. In those three days, was she going on a buying spree with my credit card documentation, or even, heaven forbid, stealing my identity? Even if she had no such plans, was there sufficient security on this closet of hers, that my credit card documents wouldn’t be stolen in the night? Those of us who live in big cities, especially those of us in a place of business that has recently suffered not one but two robberies in short order, know we have to be eternally vigilant. I decided I was just going to have to risk it. I asked for directions for St. Margaret’s Hope, and rather than whipping some unreadable map off a desk pad, she painstakingly wrote out the directions by hand, explaining everything carefully as she did so.

But that was not the end of the startling events. Even more disconcerting, if not downright alarming, was the fact that actually getting to the rental car did not require a bus or train to transport me to the real car rental office a hundred miles or so from the airport. Indeed it was only a few steps from the terminal door to my car.

I was transfixed. I felt as if I had fallen off the edge of the civilized world, or more accurately, that I had fallen off the edge of an uncivilized world into paradise. There was one small problem in paradise ahead of me, though, and that was the right-hand drive, and the consequent necessity to shift gears with my left hand. I was a tiny bit apprehensive about pulling my little gray Ford into traffic, so I decided to circle the airport parking lot once before I headed out, just to get the feel of the car. That took approximately twenty seconds, thirty if you count the time it took me to find reverse and back out of the parking place. I crept up to the road in first gear, foot resting on the clutch the whole way so I’d be ready for anything, then stopped and carefully looked both ways. You have to do that when you start to drive on the left. It’s hard to know until you get used to it, from which direction they’ll be coming at you. Astonishingly, there was no car in sight, in either direction. “Good grief, where am I?” I said to the windshield, as I pulled out on to what my map said was a numbered highway. In what outpost, far from the aggravations of life as I knew it, was I exactly?

I had a rather jolly time of it, coasting along in third gear, no other vehicles in sight, and admiring the scenery, heading, at least I hoped that was what I was doing, for St Margaret’s Hope, home to one of the writing cabinets, if Trevor’s documentation could be believed, which obviously it couldn’t, given the business about John A. Macdonald Antiques. Somehow, despite the directions, I made the wrong turn, and found myself heading, not for St. Margaret’s Hope, but rather into the capital city of Kirkwall. By and large I try to avoid driving in foreign capitals, especially on my first visit. They are large, aggressive, and scary if you don’t know your way about. I can even get lost in Washington, or rather not lost exactly: I know where I am. I’m just always in the wrong lane for where I want to go. I’ve driven in London, Rome, and Paris and therefore don’t think I need to prove anything anymore. So Kirkwall was to be avoided.

In a few minutes, however, the highway—I use the term reluctantly—turned into a street lined with houses, a handful of cars appeared to share the road with me, and shortly after that I found myself on a very narrow street, what I’d call a lane at home, with a tree in the middle of it, a tree that required some maneuvering to get around, I might add. Just ahead was a soaring cathedral in rather beautiful red stone that dominated the entire town. Kirk, “church,” I thought. This really is Kirkwall. It was, well, small. It was also a bit complicated, at least for me. In my efforts to get out of town again, I did the unforgivable: I turned on to a one-way street from the wrong direction right in front of a policeman. Needless to say I was pulled over.

“I am so sorry,” I said, putting on my very best contrite face. “I’m terribly lost. I was trying to get to St. Margaret’s Hope.”

“I’m afraid you’re a long way from there,” the policeman said. “I’m sorry about our street signage. We all know where we’re going, you see, and sometimes the street signs are not as clear as they might be. You’ll find that, especially outside of Kirkwall. You’ll be following signs for places and then all of a sudden they’ll disappear.”

A couple of pedestrians came up at this point. “She’s trying to get to St. Margaret’s Hope,” the policeman told them.

“That’s a peedie bit of a drive,” one of the women said.

“Aye. At least twenty minutes, maybe more,” the other added. I didn’t ask what peedie meant, although I was to later learn it meant small. Apparently they intended the opposite at that moment. I declined to mention that I have a twenty-minute drive to my local dry cleaners.

“I know I made an illegal turn,” I said. “And I’m going the wrong way.”

“Sorry. It’s not easy to find your way here,” the other woman said. What followed was a polite disagreement on the subject of whose fault it was I found myself in this particular spot. I couldn’t believe my ears, and I’m a Canadian: Step on my toe and I’ll apologize to you. These people were arguing it was their fault I was going the wrong way on a one-way street. Not only that, when they’d given me new directions, the policeman made two drivers who had the legal right of way back out of the street so I could proceed! In some places in the world, I’d have been in handcuffs by then. There was something seriously the matter with these people.

In about two minutes, I was out of the bustling metropolis of Kirkwall, and on my way again. So unnerved was I by the display of the milk of human kindness I had just witnessed, however, that even with the new set of directions, I got lost a second time, and found myself on a road signed not for St. Margaret’s Hope, but for Ophir. For some reason, I didn’t care anymore. I rather liked the sound of someplace called Ophir; it had a rather exotic ring to it. Exotic it wasn’t, although it was very pleasant, just a few houses on the side of the road. I barely had time to gear down before it was time to pick up the pace again.

Just outside of Ophir, there was a sign for something called a Bu, and the Orkneyinga Saga Centre, and having no idea what either might be, but curious, I turned off and had a look. I found the ruins of an old church and dining hall, called the Earl’s Bu, once the haunt of Vikings and the site of a rather gruesome murder, if the film in an empty visitor center was anything to go by. In the film, which obviously was linked to some kind of motion detector because I didn’t see another soul anywhere and it turned itself on the minute I sat down, they told some of the stories in something called the Orkneyinga Saga, the history of the Viking earls of Orkney. These Viking earls lived in what were obviously rather violent times. Still, I thought it was all very nice, except for the murder part, particularly alarming given axes were a weapon of choice. I was, however, surprised to learn that Orkney had been an important part of the Viking world, and indeed remained more Scandinavian than Scottish for a very long time. I gathered that the people here were rather proud of their Scandinavian heritage. I’m not sure what entitled me to be surprised, given that until a few hours ago I had had no clear idea of Orkney at all, but I was.

Soon, much better informed, I was back on the road. The sea was to my left, beautiful, really, and to my right, some hills. Across the water even higher hills were shrouded in mist. It was spectacularly beautiful, really, in a sedate, well-managed sort of way. But still, no people. I was beginning to wonder if this particular bank holiday was one in which everyone left the island, or indeed, if the world had come to end since I’d left Kirkwall and somehow I’d missed it. One car overtook and passed me, but that was all. Then I found myself heading downhill in the direction of a little town, its name, according to the sign, Stromness.

Stromness is built on a steep hill sloping down to a harbor. There is a ferry terminal, and indeed a large white ferry was just pulling away. The houses are mostly stone, and the streets the same, even narrower, if anything, than Kirkwall. I edged my way through the town in first gear. I had to keep my eye on the road ahead, as in several places the main street went down to one lane because of the corners of buildings that jutted out into the road. At the far edge of town I decided I had enough driving for one day, and was going to stay in Stromness, to regroup and get my bearings, but also to see if it really was as nice as it looked. After all, what was the rush?

I abandoned my car in a parking area that appeared to be free, as unlikely as that might be. I couldn’t find any way to pay, but perhaps this was what they did to foreigners: they hid the meters and then towed our cars. After several passes up and down the main street on foot, admiring the lovely gray stone houses, the cobbled streets and charming steep laneways with amusing names like Khyber Pass, and the last flowers of the season still blooming in window boxes, and actually having been smiled at by several people, I chose a bed-and-breakfast run by one Mrs. Olive Brown. She wasn’t much for conversation, our Mrs. Brown, but she was pleasant enough and the place was spotless. She even had a place for my car, although the place I’d left my car was okay, too, and no, of course I didn’t have to pay to park there. I told her I’d be staying a day or two. She didn’t ask for a deposit, but I insisted on paying for two nights on the spot. I mean, certain people must be protected from themselves, and Mrs. Brown was one of them.

I went out again late in the afternoon. There was a very fine little art gallery in a converted warehouse or two down on the pier, with some rather splendid twentieth-century British artists, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, for example. I also found a pleasant bistro down by the ferry docks for dinner, and stuffed my face with local seafood. As I climbed up to the third floor to my little attic room overlooking the harbor, I decided Orkney couldn’t be the cultural backwater that Trevor had always implied his birthplace was, not with art and food like that. I thought the place was splendid. Even my little room was lovely, in pink and purple and white, and best of all, I had a rather fine view. I could see the street, the harbor, the ferry docks and the sky, clear now and filled with stars. I curled up on the window seat in my bathrobe, the shot of lovely single malt scotch Mrs. Brown had offered in hand, and watched as a ferry sailed in. The street was almost deserted except for the odd person or two, probably leaving the pub down the street.

For a while I sat and thought about Blair and the Mackintosh, and all concrete evidence to the contrary, I decided once again that everything was going to be all right. I suppose it was the place that made me feel this way, Mrs. Brown’s quiet hospitality, the view, the sheer beauty that lay before me. It was one of the nicest places I had ever been, and therefore I was going to find the source of the writing cabinet, my reputation would be restored, to say nothing of my sense of personal worth, and somehow I was going to get Blair Bazillionaire, who really was a nice guy despite his temper, out of jail. I could almost hear him apologize for yelling at me both at his home and the police station.

I spread out the map I’d purchased at the airport and found St. Margaret’s Hope. It was a town on an island called South Ronaldsay, but it looked to me as if I didn’t need to sail or swim to get there. It was attached to the island on which I found myself, called rather quaintly the Mainland, by a series of causeways called the Churchill Barriers. The town itself was much smaller than Stromness and therefore entirely manageable. I also found Hoxa where the Alexanders holidayed. I would go there in the morning, visit any antique dealers there might be, inquire if need be in the local pub for a furniture maker, and presto I would find the source of the fake Mackintosh. Either that or I would make inquiries and find the former owner of the real Mackintosh. Doubtless either or both of these people would, like everyone else here, be terribly polite, honest as the day is long, and even possibly glad to see me in their quiet, reserved way.

It was once again, I’m afraid, a feeling I was unable to maintain for long, because as I sat there feeling positively mellow, passengers began to disembark from a ferry and make their way coward the town. One moment the spot under a streetlight between me and the ferry docks was empty. The next moment, a woman I could have sworn was Willow stood there. She was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, almost identical to what she’d been wearing when I had found her snooping about Trevor’s store. I did not know what Willow would be doing standing under that particular light in that particular place. I’d told her I would go to Glasgow and if necessary on to Orkney, and she had seemed content with that. I had been completely open about my plans. If this really was Willow, she had not shared my candor.

I pulled on my jeans and a sweater, intent on getting a closer view and to berate her if it indeed was Willow. I made it down to the street just in time to see a motorcycle ridden by a man in snappy red and blue gear and helmet pull up beside her and the two of them speed off. I was to spend the next forty-eight hours trying to convince myself I was mistaken, that it wasn’t Willow. If it wasn’t she, though, then Willow had a double in Scotland.

I had no such doubts about the second sighting. As I stood there completely frustrated, someone else came off the ferry. This time I knew who I was looking at. It was Percy Bicycle Clips. He was walking his bike toward the street when I intercepted him.

“You!” he said. “Stop following me.”

“I’ve been here for several hours, Percy,” I said. “You just got off the boat. That means you are following me!”

“I live here,” he said.

“Does your grandmother live here, too, because I’d really like to talk to her. What is your name, anyway?”

“Go away!” he said, leaping on to his bicycle. I tried to stop him, but he eluded me and before I knew it was pedaling furiously away from me. It was a scenario that was becoming a tad repetitious, because once again the outcome was the same. I chased after him for a minute or so, but I knew I wouldn’t catch him. I watched his back disappear over the top of the hill from whence I’d entered the town. He appeared to know his way around the place rather better than I did. I still didn’t know his name.

As I mounted the stairs to my dear little attic room, it occurred to me than while twenty-four hours ago I barely knew where Orkney was, I was acquainted with a lot more people on this island than I would ever have dreamed. Orkney was getting just a little crowded for my taste.

The next morning it was kind of hard to know where to begin. Should I look for Willow, ask her why she’d come to Orkney without telling me? Should I try to find Percy and shake him until he told me who he was and what he was doing? Should I go to this town with the lovely name of St. Margaret’s Hope (what did St. Margaret hope for, I wondered) and try to locate the dealer who sold Trevor the other cabinet, or should I seek out Hoxa and the Alexanders’ palace?

What I really wanted to do was wander the lovely streets of Stromness and gaze out at the water, and indeed I did permit myself a short walk along the pier. The morning was clear and the town was perfectly reflected in the absolutely still waters of the harbor. I could have stood there forever, but finally I told myself to get moving. I made a half-hearted attempt to consult the local phone directory for Wylie, but there were a lot of them, and Willow had said Trevor had never mentioned any relatives, and he’d left Orkney a long time ago if one were inclined to believe what he said.

I decided to take a more direct route back to Kirkwall, reasoning that the capital city with its hotels and shops would be a likely place to find Willow and possibly Percy. It would also take me back to a place where I could pick up my missed route to St. Margaret’s Hope. The highway, again loosely defined, was much busier than the Ophir road. I swear I saw at least five other cars. The island had a rather gentle typography, rolling farmland more than anything else, although I could see dark cliffs off in the distance. As I was whipping along at a stately forty miles per hour, I noticed, at the side of the road, a rather pathetic-looking creature, thumb out, a decidedly damaged bicycle at his feet. It was my pal Percy again. I pulled over and got out.

He was a mess, shirt sleeve badly torn, hair definitely askew, has hands cut up, and his pants were covered in mud. I don’t think he recognized me at first, because he was trying to keep broken glasses on his nose and not particularly successfully. When he did realize who it was, though, he did the predictable. “Go away,” he said.

“Have you noticed how few cars there are on this road?” I asked. “I wouldn’t be so hasty. What happened?”

“I fell,” he replied sadly. “Straight into a ditch and then into a barbed wire fence.”

“I’ll give you a lift,” I said. “If you’ll tell me your real name.”

“It’s Percy,” he replied. “Just Percy.”

“Then why does Rendall Sinclair, the publican at the Stane think that it’s Arthur? I’ve never known Rendall to get a name wrong.”

“Arthur Percival,” he said after a long pause, as another car sped by. “Everybody calls me Percy.”

“Put your bike in the back and get in,” I said.

He hesitated. “How do I know you won’t kill me? Maybe you killed that antique dealer.”

“Do I look like an axe murderer to you?” I said.

“I don’t know what an axe murderer looks like.” I glared at him. “Perhaps not,” he agreed.

“You could be the axe murderer,” I said. “You were there when Trevor was showing the writing cabinet, and you were there again when I arrived the time that, well, you know, that unpleasant business with the axe.”

“Do I look like an axe murderer to you?” he said, looking morosely down at his stained and rumpled pants and his torn shirt sleeve.

“Perhaps not,” I said. “Anyway, we’ve had this conversation before. Put your bike in the back, and let’s go.” I watched him fumble around a bit peering at the back of the car for the latch, and realized he could hardly see a thing. I got my bag out and found a safety pin. “Here,” I said. “Give me your glasses.” I managed to attach the arm to the rest of the frame, and I cleaned them up a bit. “These will do until you get home.” He put them on. If anything he looked more comical than ever, but I tried very hard not to laugh.

“Thank you,” he said. “This is good.”

“Where to?”

“Kirkwall, I suppose. I will have to try to find somebody who can fix my bicycle right away or maybe rent me one in the meantime. Just please don’t ask me questions.”

“I don’t think that’s fair. I’ve told you everything I know or suspect in this matter. In fact, I’ve poured out my heart to you, and you have told me nothing.”

“I can’t,” he said. “For one thing you would think I’m crazy.”

“Try me,” I said, but he wouldn’t.

“Your first trip to Orkney?” he asked in a conversational tone after a few minutes of silence.

“Yes. It’s wonderful.”

“It is. Have you seen that?” he said, pointing to a small hill a few hundred yards from the road.

“What is it?”

“Maze how,” he said.

“Maze who?”

“M-A-E-S-H-O-W-E,” he spelled. “Maeshowe. You don’t know what it is, do you?”

“Obviously not,” I said. “As we’ve already ascertained, I’ve never been to Orkney before.”

“You still should know what it is,” he replied.

“But I don’t, so why don’t you enlighten me? I can tell you’re dying to.”

“Pull over,” he said pointing. “There, beside that building. You buy two tickets, and I’ll go clean myself up a bit,” he said. I did what I was told. Before I knew it we were across the highway and walking toward a hill. Percy definitely looked better with the blood washed off, and his hair slicked down. We were greeted by a perky tour guide at the entrance of what looked to be a big hill of grass.

“Welcome to Maeshowe,” she said. “One of the world’s greatest Neolithic chamber tombs.”

“Wow,” I said. Percy looked smug.

“You are in what UNESCO calls Orkney’s Neolithic Heartland,” she went on. “It’s a World Heritage Site, actually a combination of sites, most of a ceremonial nature. Over there in the distance you can see the Ring of Brodgar, and the Standing Stones of Stenness, and, of course, farther north, you can visit the ancient town of Skara Brae.”

“You mean a ring like Stonehenge?” I said peering off into the distance in the direction of the guide’s pointing finger. Percy gave me a “Don’t you know anything?” look.

“Not identical, but yes, a henge ring of standing stones,” she said.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” I said to Percy. “I love this kind of thing.”

“Shush,” he said, so I did. I soon found myself bent over and entering a long passageway, the walls of which were made out of the most amazingly large stone slabs, and thence standing in a large, somewhat beehive-shaped stone chamber. It was extraordinary, very sophisticated in design and construction, and dating apparently to almost five thousand years ago! It must have been one of the greatest architectural achievements of those times. First Vikings and now this! Who knew?

Maeshowe might date to Neolithic times, the most important but not the only chamber tomb to dot these islands, but apparently it had been reused by Vikings, possibly as the tomb of some important person in the ninth century, then looted three centuries later. There were inscriptions on the walls, Viking runes that had been translated, and if you judged the Vikings by these runes, they were a lusty lot. There seemed to be several claims to sexual exploits. There was also a reference to well-hidden treasure, but apparently none had been found there.

“You mean to tell me that Orkney is just covered with Neolithic tombs?” I said to Percy when we’d finished our tour.

“There are lots of them,” he said. “They’re still finding them on a reasonably regular basis. They just look like hills or mounds of earth, and they’re often found by accident. Mine Howe in Tankerness, for example, was found because a cow fell through the roof of it. Others are found when somebody’s sitting out admiring the scenery and the leg of the stool breaks through or something like that. There are lots here as yet undiscovered, I’m convinced of it.”

“And you want to find one?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“I got the impression you knew how to read those runic inscriptions.”

“Sort of. I can’t do it without a textbook in front of me, but yes, with some effort I can.”

“That’s amazing. Can we go see these standing stones, seeing as we’re in the neighborhood?”

“I guess,” Percy said. He sounded a bit resigned, but when we got there he proved to be an able and enthusiastic tour guide.

The Ring of Brodgar is simply astonishing, a perfect circle of megaliths or stone slabs that measures something over three hundred feet in diameter, the slabs themselves up to about fourteen feet high. It is surrounded by a ditch, and has as its backdrop the lovely water of a loch. Purple heather blooms in and around it. There are thirty-six stones now, but apparently there were sixty, and this monument, too, dates back to the Neolithic Age. The Stones of Stenness, part of another stone circle that was in use beginning about five thousand years ago, are very tall stone slabs, a little under twenty feet. Sheep graze amongst the stones, the circle empty except for them and Percy and me. I was absolutely enchanted. What ancient ceremonies would have taken place there? What deities did these people believe in? When had the Vikings arrived? I wanted to know.

Percy insisted we drive farther north to a place on the coast called Skara Brae, site of a Neolithic village. It was an extraordinary place. You could actually see how people lived thousands of years ago, with their built-in box beds and their hearths. There were several layers of homes built over time, covering many, many centuries of habitation. I had thought, I suppose, that Stone Age peoples lived in ghastly huts, and was surprised by how sophisticated these houses were. Skara Brae was another of those serendipitous finds, having been revealed in 1850 when a terrible storm stripped the surface away.

Percy eventually tired of my endless questions and exclamations of delight, and he was limping more obviously the farther afield we went. “Kirkwall,” I said, taking pity on him. “I’ll come back and see these again later. Thank you for showing them to me.”

“That’s okay,” he said.

“I don’t suppose you would tell me why you were in Glasgow,” I said.

“Same reason you were, I expect,” he said.

“And what would you say that was?”

“I don’t know. The startling revelation, perhaps. The easy solution.”

“I didn’t find either of those.”

“Nor I. Wishful thinking, then,” he said. “For both of us.”

“We could join forces. To find the source of the second writing cabinet.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Fundamentally we’re looking for different things,” he said. “Yes, we are both looking for a piece of furniture on one level, but you are really seeking vindication.”

“When you put it like that, I suppose you’re right, but I am also looking for justice, and I remain unconvinced that justice is being served in the arrest and trial of Blair Baldwin.”

“Okay, justice, too,” he said. “I suppose.”

“Thank you for that concession.” He almost smiled. “And what is it you are looking for?”

He paused for a moment. “I’m not sure. Salvation, maybe?”

“And what form will this salvation take?”

“The Wasteland,” he said. “Since you won’t stop asking until I tell you.”

“I see. Are we talking a wasteland, or The Wasteland with capital T, capital W?”

“So many questions. The Wasteland,” he said, with the emphasis on ‘the’. “The Wasteland, the maze, the wounded king.” He laughed then, but it was a humorless sound, more bark than anything else.

“The Wasteland,” I repeated. “As in T S. Eliot. It doesn’t look very wastelandish here. In fact, it’s one of the greenest places I’ve ever been.”

“I’ll find it,” he said. “I hope we will both find what we’re looking for.”

“But we can’t do this together?”

“No, I don’t think so. It is a solitary quest, after all. We have to choose our own paths. It is simply a matter of asking the right question, and each of us in our own way will have to do that.”

Great, I thought. It’s possible I’m in a car on a relatively untraveled road with a delusional and possibly seriously disturbed person. I wanted to ask more, to tell him to stop being so obscure, but in the end I didn’t press him. Perhaps the native niceness was wearing off on me, or maybe I wasn’t in the mood for riddles. I could tell his injuries were really starting to hurt him now, and he looked very discouraged. I parked on the edge of town where he directed me, and I watched him limp away, his bent and twisted bicycle in his arms. As he reached the first corner he turned back for a moment, and I had the impression he was coming back, that there was something more he wanted to say. But he only inclined his head toward me. At the time I took that to be a silent thank-you, but since I’ve wondered if it was an acknowledgement that we were two of kind, kindred spirits, both of us unable to rest until our questions, both temporal and spiritual in the broadest sense of the word, had been answered. It is a picture of him that will stay with me a very long time.