Chapter 15 #2
He paused at length. He’d been given quite an extraordinary memorial. Winged angels and serpents guarded the doorway to the crypt where he’d been buried, Latin phrases abounded. Again, an iron gate barred his way to the tomb itself, but like the gate above, it was well oiled.
And unlocked.
He slipped inside.
His tomb sat alone at the rear of the small room, purple drapery over a fine, hardwood coffin.
He realized that to the left and right of the room, numerous other coffins and shrouds had been placed as well.
Very old burials, some in coffins, some in shrouds, plaques in the artistry of many different centuries proclaiming which Douglas lay upon each shelf.
Mary Douglas with five of her children lay to his right, none of them having obtained an age greater than six.
They had died by the beginning of the fourteenth century.
Laird Fergus Douglas, Mary’s husband, lay to his left, alone with Eugenia, his second wife, and four of their children.
A second Laird Fergus, son of Fergus and Mary, lay with his lady, Helena of York, below his father’s shelf.
The script chiseled into the stone stated that Fergus the First had fought with William Wallace, while his son, Fergus, had gone on to fight with Robert the Bruce.
Despite the age of the corpses, they were frighteningly well preserved, their features still painfully apparent beneath the gauze of their shrouds.
He had assumed he might have been buried near his mother’s tomb, but she was farther down the hallway, nearer the stairs, and there had been two memorials built to her memory, one above ground, and one below.
Despite the fact he lay with ancestors who had been noble warriors, this tomb was now dedicated to him.
And he did not lie within it.
“So, my dear kin, who does lie with you here?” he asked aloud.
He walked forward then, removing the purple sheet from the coffin.
He studied the closure of the coffin, then took his bar and began to wedge it beneath the lid.
The coffin had been well sealed, and it was difficult to find a wedge, but he kept at his work, beads of perspiration breaking out upon his forehead.
Eventually, the lid creaked and groaned, giving way to his efforts.
The noise was loud in the night, in the silence of the crypts.
He was quite certain that it would have sounded like a human moan, reverberating throughout the castle.
He needed to hurry. He set the bar down and lifted the lid of the coffin, wrenching free what remained of the nails. He set the lid aside.
And he stared down in horror at what lay within the coffin.
At his own corpse.
Then he heard the noise.
Footsteps.
He paused. Listened.
Aye, someone was coming. Slowly. Very slowly. Moving down the steps that led to the main corridor of the crypts.
He swiftly doused his lantern.
Shawna brought a single candle from her room, sheltering the flame from the drafts within the castle by cupping her hands around it.
She sped down the stairs silently on her slippered feet, pausing on the second floor to be certain that she heard nothing.
She hurried on down to the great hall then, searching it out with her candle held above her head, trying to be quite certain that she wouldn’t run into another of her kin.
The great hall was quiet.
She couldn’t bear just remaining in her room any longer. And Alistair had heard something from the chapel. And now, she was certain, she heard noises coming from the crypts as well. Moaning sounds, as if the ancient Douglases cried out in protest of the events occurring now.
The chapel led to the crypts.
She shivered.
Well, she wasn’t going to be afraid of the dead. Not when they might hold some secret to aid the living.
She hurried down the steps to the chapel, pausing within. The light from her candle was dim, but it slightly illuminated the windows, casting off soft, ethereal colors within the chapel. She circled around, looking for anyone who might sit quietly in the chapel.
Or for anyone who might stand behind the columns in the nave, watching. Waiting.
No one was in the chapel. Of that she was certain.
She found herself walking to the iron gate to the crypts below. It was closed.
But it opened easily.
She hesitated. There was a heavy brass candle snuffer, at least six feet long, for use on the towering altar candles, lying against the far wall. She grabbed it with her left hand and opened the iron gate with the same hand while balancing the candle in her right.
Slowly, she started down the stairs. She was certain that her footfalls were silent as she went down, step by step by step.
She had been in the Douglas crypts dozens of times. She had come often to bring flowers to set upon David’s coffin.
But she had come by day.
She had never seen such Stygian darkness as she walked deeper and deeper into the bowels of…
Death.
She should turn she told herself. Turn and flee back up the steps.
The dead would not hurt her, she reminded herself.
Step by step…
She reached the landing. Iron gates walled in the ancient dead, sleeping with hands folded in prayer throughout the centuries.
She tried not to look. She couldn’t help but let her imagination fly, for the candlelight was so very tricky.
She could swear that she saw movement, a soft fluttering of shrouds.
She could imagine a corpse sitting up, staring at her, accusing her of complicity in murder…
Shawna…
Then, she suddenly heard the sound. An awful groaning. As if a dead man had been struck anew, as if he screamed with pain from the agony of hell.
She nearly screamed herself.
She forced herself to breathe. To look straight ahead. Determined not to see the corpses in their shrouds through the iron gates of the various crypts.
She held her brass snuffer tightly in her hand, moving very slowly, using her free hand to keep herself flat against the wall. Her candle didn’t shed much light. The corridor seemed filled with shapes and shadows.
She knew where David’s supposed tomb lay within the crypts.
Ten more steps perhaps.
One at a time. She reached the tomb.
Just outside of it, she stood very, very still.
Waiting. Listening.
Then she stepped within the tomb.
She held very still. In the dim flicker of light her candle provided, she saw that the lid of David’s coffin had been removed!
She swallowed back a scream, then turned to flee, dropping the brass candle snuffer. But a hand clamped firmly over her mouth and a powerful arm pulled her back to the dead.
Shawna’s heart pounded with relief when she heard a familiar voice ask in astonishment, “What in God’s name are you doing down here? I’ve warned you of the danger you face time and time again. Sabrina has been kidnapped, and still, here you are!”
David, she thought dizzily. Thank God, it was David! He released her, and still holding her candle, she turned to face him.
“I was downstairs earlier. And Alistair had heard something—”
“Alistair heard something—and sent you down here?”
“No—”
“That damned Alistair—again!”
“It wasn’t Alistair’s fault!”
“It never is.”
Shawna sighed. “He has no idea that I’m here. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You missed me.”
“Don’t be absurd. You plague me to madness, appearing and disappearing into the walls, showing up, not showing up, being there, vanishing into the morning mist.”
“Ghosts are supposed to do such things,” he said, looking into the coffin again and adding angrily, “You shouldn’t be here!”
“Alistair and I both heard noises—”
“So, you felt you had to find out what the noises were?” he queried softly.
“You do seem to hold me responsible for anything that happens here,” she said coolly.
He shook his head. “I can’t leave you alone for a bloody second, so it seems. You heard noises, so you just walked down into the crypt, completely unarmed.”
“I am not unarmed. I brought the candle snuffer—there. I dropped it when you nearly scared me to death.”
“Fine weapon!” he mocked.
“It is solid brass and very heavy, and I promise, if I were to whack you on the head with it, you would feel it!”
“It didn’t occur to you to stay safely locked in your room where you belonged—especially considering everything that is going on here? You’re an idiot.”
“How kind, Laird Douglas, how genteel! I pray you, m’laird, do bear in mind! There was nothing going on here—until you returned from the dead!”
“Well, I am returned from the dead, and unfortunately, there are things that I have to do here.”
David walked around the coffin. He used her candle to light the lantern he had apparently brought down with him, blew out the candle, and used the lanternlight to study what remained of the man in his coffin.
Her stomach turned in knots.
“Oh god, David, what are you doing?” she whispered.
He glanced her way. “Trying to discover just who this bloke might be. I’m assuming he’s the convict whose place I took doing hard labor.”
The knots in her stomach twisted more tightly. “You were a convict all that time? Doing hard labor.”
David glanced at her, realizing that he’d never even given her that much information before.
“Yes,” he said simply. “I’d like to try to figure out a way to make sure that this is the body of Collum MacDonald. Then, maybe I can figure out how and why he and I were exchanged for one another.”
“David, this man is burned beyond recognition.”
“I’d hoped for a ring, a pendant of some kind.”
Shawna shivered. Most of the corpses, so long dead, smelled musty and nothing more. But it seemed that the charred inhabitant of this coffin still carried the horrible smell of being burned to death.
“David, please, there’s nothing to be learned from this man,” Shawna whispered.
“Charming,” he muttered bitterly. “He’s been kilted in my best tartan.”
“We thought he was you!” she said, her voice trembling with emotion.