Song for a Lost Kingdom, Book I Read online

  “It was easier to blame them,” Adeena responded, lost in thought for a moment. “I should probably call them, or send them a note about the audition. My dad’s in Scotland right now and my mom is on her way there tonight. My grandmother’s not doing too well.”

  “Oh, sorry to hear that,” Tara said, her tone softening.

  The two women sat in silence, admiring the magnificent late August weather, the sun radiating pure joy from an impossibly blue cloudless sky. Summer was a time to savour to the fullest for everyone who had survived a long Ottawa winter. It was easily one of the world’s coldest capital cities, and once the icy grip of the dark winter months receded, bicycles appeared from hibernation and cafés overflowed with pale sun-starved patrons who relished every second of a bright, sunny afternoon.

  Although Tara was Adeena’s boss, the two behaved more like sisters, neither of them having any female siblings. Adeena knew that Tara, now the assistant curator at the Gallery, had given her a research position to help her out while she struggled with her on-again, off-again music career. Adeena’s minor in art history had been a handy way for Tara to justify Adeena’s appointment to the National Gallery’s HR department. In fact though, Adeena was an excellent researcher, thanks in part to growing up as the daughter of a widely published history professor.

  Tara pursed her lips in thought, and Adeena knew more probing was on the way.

  “Dee – you’ve got to commit to this, or you have to let it go,” Tara said, lingering on the word commit. “Anyone can see that you’ll never be satisfied doing anything else. What does Philippe think about the whole thing?”

  “That I’m nuts. Can’t understand why I spend so much time practicing when there’s so little chance of making it.”

  “I understand why he is saying that. He thinks you’re going to get hurt,” Tara said, reaching for Adeena’s hand. “Well if you’re not sure about music, are you at least ready to commit to him?”

  “Oh sure. I commit sins with him every weekend,” Adeena joked with a goofy smile. Then her smile turned as she bit her lip and brushed her long hair back from her face. “Damn! I forgot. He’s taking me out to Le Café tonight for dinner. Not sure I want to go back to the NAC so soon.”

  “Le Café?” Tara sighed. “Ooh-la-la!” She looked at her watch. “Oh my, we’ve got to get back to work. The pieces for the new exhibit are in, and I need you to get started on them. Today!”

  WHEN ADEENA FINALLY arrived back at work, she felt like this day had already lasted a week. The audition had ground her down, and while yoga had provided a rebound of sorts, she was still exhausted. That all changed when she went to the receiving room in the basement of the gallery to get the curator’s binder and research notes for the new exhibit Tara wanted her to begin documentation and research.

  There were twelve crates in the basement of the gallery that had just arrived from the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh. They comprised a touring exhibit Tara was advertising as the Art of Rebellion. It featured paintings, journals, prints and artifacts. The star attraction however, was The Duncan Cello, the oldest surviving cello made in the United Kingdom.

  Adeena read the packing slip, as well as the summary notes on the exhibit. She stared transfixed at the large sticker on the wooden crate:

  EXTREMELY FRAGILE – # 3212-11

  MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

  “Please take that up to my office,” she told the young clerk after signing the forms.

  He looked down at his sign-out sheets. “That piece is supposed to stay down here in the secure storage area,” he said hesitantly.

  Adeena thought for a moment, before addressing the boy who wore a loose fitting T-shirt and baggy jeans. She knew she was breaching protocol, but a private look at the cello? Rules or no, she had to see it. “You’re new here, right?”

  “Yup. Started this week,” the young man replied. “It’s a summer job, working the graveyard shift most nights, at least until school starts again. Then I’ll be here part-time.”

  “Oh, very nice. Welcome to the Gallery uh… ” she said looking closely at the ID badge around his neck, “. . . Michael. Listen, you’re doing a great job, but I really need to have that crate sent to my office. I’ll bring it back myself, later tonight.”

  He looked at Adeena in confusion. She smiled at him and raised her pencil-thin eyebrows in friendly fire. Her piercing green eyes and long coppery hair came in handy at times like this, as Michael took in all 5 foot 9 inches of her shapely outline and inviting face.

  “Let me sign for it, and I’ll get it back to you before your shift is over,” she cooed.

  He hesitated for a moment. “Well . . . okay!” he replied with a wide grin, looking down to find a pen. Adeena noticed her ID badge had been flipped over the whole time.

  “Thanks Michael,” she said as he handed her the forms and a pen. She printed her name, signed with a flourish, and handed the form back to him.

  He studied it for a second, and then looked back up at her eagerly.

  “I’ll have it sent it up right away Tara!”

  2

  WILLIAM STUART SHOULD not have been lost.

  With his new GPS steadily blinking at him, his oversized Ordance map of Dundee and Montrose spread out on his lap, and SIRI on his iPhone offering suggestions, he had every possible aid to find his mother’s cottage at the eastern edge of the North Sea.

  Yet he sat grumbling to himself in his little red VW electric car, hopelessly lost. And totally confused. He wished that his wife was here with her natural gift for direction. Jackie was landing in Scotland tomorrow, but that didn’t help him today.

  William was parked on the side of a country lane that struggled valiantly to accommodate the width of two cars as it wandered through the hillside pastures. He was a few scant miles from the coastal town of Arbroath. A frizzy-haired, bubble-gum blowing teen-aged girl from the information centre there had explained how “totally easy” it was to find Usan – the closest village to William’s mother’s place between Black Craig and Silo Craig somewhere on the jagged coast of the North Sea.

  ‘Easy for her,’ he muttered, getting out of the car so he could flatten the map on the hood, fighting against a stiffening breeze. The archaic place-names and ancient landmarks filled the colourful map with an almost mythical imagery that the historian in William would normally relish. But this afternoon it just added to his growing web of confusion.

  Was it Usan? Or the Maine of Usan? Maybe the Scotson of Usan?

  William was so engrossed that he did not notice the flock of Soay sheep slowly surrounding his car. In their meandering curiosity, they inched nearer and nearer, seemingly unmoved by his dilemma in their search for the tastiest bits of heather.

  “Could I offer ye some assistance, sir?”

  William looked up startled. He now saw the sheep and a rugged young man in denim overalls and knee-high black rubber boots standing beside them.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” William exclaimed, feeling somewhat embarrassed. He studied the grazing sheep that appeared to have adopted him as their new shepherd. “I’m not much good at herding,” he said, looking over the animals for a moment. “But they do seem a lot like my first-year students!”

  One of the larger ewes eyed him with a blank stare. William smiled before turning back towards the young man. “Hello. I’m William. I had no idea I drove into your pasture.”

  “Donnae worry about that,” the man said, stepping closer and offering his hand. “I’m Murdo,” he said warmly. “And I see yoo’ve met my flock!”

  The sheep continued to gather from all directions and seemed determined to find something particularly appetizing growing just under the hood of William’s automobile. He smiled at their single-minded determination.

  “I didn’t even notice them! I’m so lost and can’t figure out how to get to my mother’s place.” he said. “My mother says ‘I’m near the sea, close by Usan. But there is no road that I can find to get to her cottage from here, a
nd I’m not sure which ‘Usan’ she even means.”

  William studied the wrinkled note he’d received from her last week, made damp by hours of frustration and the humid sea air. Murdo took a few steps closer to try and help make sense of it. “Who’s yer mother?”

  “Margaret Rose,” William replied, “Margaret Rose Stuart.”

  “Maggie?” Murdo chuckled.

  “Yes! You know her?”

  “Course I do! Her place is next tae ma farm!” Then he grew serious. “She’s ain’t well though. Yer her son?”

  “Yes, from Canada.” William replied. “I knew she was sick. I was coming in October. But when I got this note last week, I changed my ticket and flew here right away.”

  Murdo frowned. “What did she say?”

  William read over his mother’s words again. There was as odd sense of urgency in them. Margaret Rose always had a flair for the dramatic, but something in the tone of this letter was different from anything he’d heard before. And he had heard a lot before.

  He looked up at the tall blue-eyed Scot in mud-caked boots staring at him intently. Murdo was about the same age as Adeena and seemed to know Margaret Rose. For some reason William had a good feeling about him. He decided to read directly from the letter.

  “Come at once William, I am not well. We need to go to Kinnaird for Adeena.”

  “Adeena?” Murdo asked.

  “My daughter, back in Canada. She and Mum are close,” William explained. “They’re a two-some, always playing games with each other.”

  “If she’s anything like Maggie,” Murdo grinned, “I have to tae meet her!”

  “Actually, Adeena’s quite normal.”

  Murdo chuckled like he had spent some time with Margaret Rose. He thought for a moment and then turned serious. “And Maggie wants ye to tae her to Kinnaird Castle?”

  “Castle?”

  “If that’s the Kinnaird she means in ‘er letter,” Murdo answered. “It’s close to here, quite near Montrose.”

  IT WAS ONLY after William followed the back lane – a well-travelled sheep path really, directly through Murdo’s farm, that he was able to finally locate the tiny cottage where Margaret Rose had decided to live out her life. He was curious why there was no actual road to the cottage.

  Murdo was puzzled by the inquiry. “A road? We’ve a perfectly guid lane through ma farm!” he explained “All property in our bonnie land is open. There’s nay such thing as trespassin’ thro a field.”

  William was still smiling as he parked near the cottage and took in the spectacular view. It was a breathtaking panorama of sea and sky, palettes of translucent blues contrasting with dark earthy browns. A pasture of tall grass extended all the way to the water where crashing waves pounded against boulders that had challenged the surf for aeons.

  William was awed by the horizon that appeared stacked with mile-high swirls of cotton-candy clouds. Pity he had not found the opportunity to travel here before. He really should have visited his mother after she had returned to Scotland from her four-year sojourn to Canada. His relationship with her was decidedly difficult and he still wrestled with being “abandoned” as a child.

  His entire life he’d rationalized his mother’s actions. He knew he could never fully appreciate the suffering she endured after the loss of his father in a fatal car accident when he was two years old. She had been left to raise William on her own as a penniless, unemployed, single mother in Perth. He knew she was battling depression when she finally sent him to Canada in 1961 to live with his Uncle John, who became the closest thing to a father he would ever know. Her motives clearly stemmed from a desire to protect him from her own crushing poverty and debilitating personal demons.

  Although he understood all this as a university professor approaching sixty, William still wrestled with childhood wounds. No matter how legitimate her reasons may have been, deep down inside, he still felt like she abandoned him.

  As he climbed onto the porch he saw his mother through the front screen door. When she saw him, her eyes lit up and she waved him inside.

  “Hey Mum! I may have a new career tending sheep,” he joked as he entered the tiny cottage, and then added tenderly. “I’ve missed you. How are you doing?”

  “William, thank God ye made it,” she replied, rising slowly from her chair.

  William embraced her warmly but was alarmed at how frail her thin frame felt. He noticed a pile of pills on a plate sitting next to her tea cup, and then somewhat startled, saw a plump middle-aged woman smiling at him from the corner of the kitchen.

  She wore a silk bonnet that struggled to contain her greying curls, and a pale blue apron wrapped tightly under her bosom. Together with white suede pumps that appeared two sizes too small for her feet, she gave the appearance of a poorly cased sausage. But she moved towards him with the grace and lightness of a Highland dancer.

  “I’m Fay, Mum’s nurse,” she offered cheerfully.

  She turned to Maggie and addressed his mother as one might a rebellious toddler. “He’s ‘ere now, Maggie. Go and tae your meds, like a guid girl,” the nurse said firmly, and then turning to William added in a softer voice, “Bin trying for the last hour.”

  “Piss off and die!” Margaret Rose volleyed back to her nurse. William was afraid how Fay would react, but her smile only widened.

  “Aye, soon enough,” Fay grinned, coming closer and pushing the pills toward Margaret Rose and then commanded firmly: “Tae these now, please.”

  This seemed like a game both were used to playing. His mother finally took the pills with a glass of water that Fay handed to her.

  Satisfied that her patient was okay for the time being, Fay gave his mother a hug and gathered her bag to leave.

  “Good luck, William. She’s a pistol today!”

  THE WORN FLOORBOARDS of the old cottage creaked as Fay saw herself out. The room was still until the slam of the screen door startled both William and his mother.

  Margaret Rose reached for a dark wool cardigan as she rose from her chair. Although frail, she was a strong, wiry woman always ready for battle. She had been born at the start of the Great Depression, grown up during World War II and lost her husband as a young bride in the fifties. Now as William helped her with her sweater, he couldn’t help but admire her fighting spirit. Her hair was completely white, but she wore glasses only for reading and preferred corduroy slacks and leather boots to pajamas and slippers.

  William offered his assistance to support her when she announced she wanted to go outside for a walk.

  “Aam dyin’ but I’m no a cripple,” she rebuffed as they made their way down the steps of the porch.

  He looked over at the long grasses that mixed with the purple thyme and red clover in the pasture that extended all the way to the green sea. Along with the layered shades of a blue sky, the view seemed like it had been lifted right off the canvas of an impressionist masterpiece. William understood why his mother would choose to live here. And at eighty-five, she had earned the right to select any place she wanted to spend her last days on earth.

  “Ye got my letter, then?” his mother asked, as she walked beside him on the worn path that led to the rocky seashore, now exposed by the receding tide.

  “Yes Mum, but I don’t understand,” he countered. “You’re not well, you should be resting. Maybe we can find another doctor?”

  “Nothin’ can save me now, Will.”

  She stopped walking and looked directly into his blue eyes. “But ye can help save our family.”

  William weighed his response carefully.

  His mother had struggled for years with depression and mental illness. Doctors and specialists had never agreed on a diagnosis. Her insistence that a dead relative talked to her on a regular basis was something every psychologist interpreted differently. They all agreed however, that his mother was ‘troubled’.

  “Mum, let’s not go there again. Why don’t we just enjoy the time we’ve got together?”

  “William Stu
art! Why do ye still fight me? I’ve so little time left!” she snorted, and then turned to walk again toward the shore with William in tow. She said nothing as they marched. The crashing waves punctuated the silence, as crescendos of salt spray shot high above the granite boulders.

  “Jackie dinnae come then?” Margaret Rose finally said without slowing down on her relentless journey to the sea.

  “She’s on her way. Landing in Edinburgh tomorrow,” William responded. He thought about his wife, a psychiatrist at the Ottawa Hospital, and how Jackie always advised him to handle his mother's delusions.

  Don’t argue. Let her talk.

  “An’ how’s my Adeena?” Margaret Rose asked as they neared the coast and the grass gave way to exposed slates of black rock. The breeze lifted a soaring gull, it’s white wings contrasting with the sapphire sky as it glided over the beach. “She still wants to be a musician?”

  “Actually, she has an audition with the National Arts Centre Orchestra,” William responded, looking at his watch. “It was supposed to be today. My friend Walter, you know the one who plays cello with the orchestra? He helped her rehearse.”

  “Ye think she’ll make it?” she asked with an unusual doubt in her voice.

  Her tone surprised him. His mother adored Adeena. Actually ‘adored’ wasn’t quite the right way to describe it. Margaret Rose and Adeena had an understanding to which no one else was privy. Particularly William.

  Their connection developed during the time his mum had come to live with them when Adeena was about nine years old. Margaret Rose and Adeena would talk together in ways that William could never fathom. He knew that much of what they discussed involved the dreams that his mum had been having since his father died. She claimed the same woman was in always in her dreams, a distant relative who needed help.

  Adeena was completely enthralled and insisted on knowing everything about the woman in her grandmother’s dreams. He and Jackie had tried to put a stop to these conversations, for fear they were making Adeena’s own struggles worse. But there seemed to be no way to curtail the two.