Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Scottie
“I don’t understand. We’re back to this Emmanuel character.” Scottie sipped from her pint, roaming her attention from Ernst to Michael, who seemed as close to her as their kiss in the secret doorway.
She could still feel his arms around her. Still taste the sweetness of his lips.
Ernst patted Michael’s shoulder. “Chapel. Find. Maybe?” Off he went toward the kitchen, stopping at every table along the way, delivering one-word greetings.
“Okay, Mick, interpretation please,” Scottie said. “What’s he talking about? What’s this Hand of God? What chapel?”
“You know Lauchtenland has three unique phenomena, right? Surely the queen has informed you. One is the eight cathedrals in Port Fressa that, when lit, form a very distinct shape of a heart.”
“Yeah, the Heart of God,” Scottie said. “I’ve seen it. Gemma showed me from the top of the palace my first Christmas. She experienced the lights firsthand when she married John. It really moved her.”
“People make pilgrimages to Port Fressa to stand in the light of the Heart of God. There’s also the Hand of God, which is here, in County Northton, at the Northton Cliffs.
Centuries ago, shipwrecked sailors climbed to a carved-out hand in the sheer rock when their vessel shattered on the channel rocks during a storm.
Miraculously, they survived the sea, scaled the rough rock face, and found shelter.
‘The Hand of God saved us,’ they claimed.
When you’re out in the channel, you can see a large, distinct hand with four fingers and a thumb. ”
“Have you seen it? Can you climb up to it?”
“I have seen it though I’ve not climbed up. I believe Prince Gus and Princess Daffodil climbed the step pathway to the cleft in the rock. But does the Hand of God actually rescue people? I cannot say. Ernst believes the real Emmanuel’s hands held onto you that night.”
“How does he know? Did he see Him?”
“Ernst knows. He and Emmanuel are connected. He referenced the chapel, in the Highcrest Mountains. Maybe we’ll find Him there.”
“What chapel? Can we go?”
“The Wenthelen Chapel was built almost five hundred years ago by King Magnus the Third for his illegitimate daughter Wenthelen. It holds our third phenomenon. A filigree and glass spire called the Eye of God.”
“Am I to seek Emmanuel at this chapel named for an illegitimate daughter like me?”
“You’re not illegitimate, Scottie.”
“Only that my parents weren’t married and my mother, an unwed crown princess, could not recognize me.”
“You’re recognized now. Wenthelen has all but faded from our history.
We know she was born in 1530 to Magnus and a woman named Crystobell,” Michael said.
“History tells us Magnus loved her, but for political reasons, had to marry a Danish princess. Wenthelen was excluded from Family and Crown succession. Magnus had three sons and secured the House of Blue throne.”
Scottie felt a sudden warmth toward this woman from centuries past. “How has she faded from history? You don’t know what happened to her?”
“Only that she married in 1549 and had a passel of children.”
“How can you not know more about the child of a Blue king?”
“No records. If there were any, they might have been destroyed or burned in a fire. Fires were not uncommon in days of open fireplaces, thatched roofs, and wood shingle siding. Fickle’s claim that they lost records in a fire is very plausible.”
“Kate told me how the Midlands fire started.”
“Lauchtenland experienced quite a few blazes over the centuries. Hadsby’s had a couple of fires. Even Perrigwynn, but none that affected the fireproof Archive Room.”
“So she had no title? No royal life?”
“None that we know.”
“Like me?”
“Like you, well, until now.”
“Why is the spire called the Eye of God?”
“Legend says that at some moment known only to Emmanuel, the spire will light up and beam down onto a simple altar where fresh bread and wine are set out daily. The beam will illuminate the Highcrest Mountains all the way down to Hadsby. After a spire lighting, the churches and cathedrals overflow on Sunday mornings for months, even years. The Eye of God has not appeared in decades. Possibly no one alive in Lauchtenland has seen the Eye of God.”
Scottie sat back to absorb it all. “So, let’s visit this chapel.” She reached for a chip, but she was hungrier for Michael’s answer.
“Not sure how. There’s no road to the chapel anymore, only a climb up the mountain.
The legend is real enough, but my father reminds me that Ernst is always full of crazy Emmanuel stories.
He’d have everyone in Lauchtenland seeking Him if he had his way.
” He leaned toward her. “We can go, call it one last fun adventure before you go home. But Scottie, all this to discover who held your legs?”
“Someone held onto me, or Mrs. Johansdotter, her daughter, and I would be dead.”
“Don’t get your hopes up, lass, for finding this mystery chap, please.” He reached for her hand. “Sometimes mysteries are just that…mysteries.”
“I know, but when you started telling me about Wenthelen, I felt it here.” She patted her middle.
“Like she’s my sister. Five hundred years older, but still…
She was a love child like me. And now she has a chapel where God’s eye beams down.
Fable or not, I have to see this place.” Scottie glanced at her platter, the fish and chips barely touched.
She was too full of curiosity about this ancestor the House of Blue also rejected.
“Then we’ll go. Maybe we’ll discover she confronted the number one nemesis of her time as well.” He laughed, but Scottie considered his point.
“MP Fickle’s great-times-seven-grandfather. Or grandmother.”
“Wouldn’t that be a tale to tell. Now eat your fish and chips,” Michael said, tossing her a playful, albeit sexy, wink.
So much of her time in Lauchtenland with Kate was as expected, minus the mobs.
However, meeting Michael Cross was not expected and, despite her promise to Dad to return home the girl who left, she changed every time she was in the presence of this Cross man.
The conversation settled over fish and chips, with Scottie asking Michael for a date to hike to the chapel. Michael promised to do research then add it to her diary first chance.
Afterward, they chatted about nothing and everything—favorite songs and movies—and not refusing two large slices of Stella’s chocolate cake.
It was during her final bite of cake that Scottie realized when she went home, Michael would go back to Port Fressa for another HMSD assignment, perhaps falling in love with another Purnell. He’d kiss her like he’d kissed Scottie in the doorway.
She swallowed a taste of jealousy. She didn’t want him to kiss anyone else like he kissed her. To hold anyone like he’d held her. To make her feel as wanted as Scottie felt.
Pushing her cake plate away, she observed him as he answered a text on his phone.
He was handsome but not in a way that put a girl off.
Cap was good-looking and rugged with an interesting, expressive face.
Michael’s features approached perfect, if one could use the term for any human, yet he was so strikingly imperfect.
“Mum,” he said, tossing his phone to the table. “She can’t let go that I’m more a Cross than a Pratt. Once again, she’s appealing to my age and any possible vanity about my future—” He stopped, making a face. “Why am I bringing you down with my venting?”
“Did she text at Fickle’s office?”
“Am I becoming so obvious?” He grinned. “Yes, again, that’s not why we left. Fickle was digging in. Mum’s text proved a fortuitous tool to pretend something pressing was on your diary.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said, sighing. “I’d hoped to get something actionable out of him.” She looked in his eyes. “By the way, you look like you stepped in poo when your mom sends a text. At least when I think it’s her.”
“Poo? Really?” He laughed softly, exhaling, relaxing his shoulders. “I’ll work on that then. Now, what were we talking about?”
“I can’t remember. Isn’t that nice? Shug used to say there’s nothing better than frivolous chitchat among friends. It frees the soul.”
“I’d like to meet this Shug one day. She sounds enchanting.”
“Enchanting?” Scottie laughed, missing Shug a bit. “Hardly. She’s the quintessential strong southern woman who takes no flak from anyone yet loves her family and friends with the fire of the sun.”
“How lucky to have been raised by her,” Michael said, his comment undergirded by the sound of a small band warming up. Michael waved the proprietor over. “Is this new? Live music?”
“Yes. You.” He pointed to Scottie then Michael. “Dance. Ildlys.” He clapped his hands, and patrons at the center tables began to shove them aside and stack the chairs on top.
The band’s dissonant sound of the guitar and fiddle warming up turned the Belly of the Beast into a Hearts Bend barn or backyard where the melodies of Appalachia met the whine of western music. An upright bass and a bodhran joined the set, along with an accordion.
Suddenly the notes came together, and the Beast’s patrons began to stomp and clap. Couples migrated to the floor, hands clasped as they danced side by side in skilled, specific steps.
“What is this?” Scottie said. “Ildys dance?”
“Ildys is an old Danish word for firelight. It’s a dance for the out of doors, under the stars and around a fire, but Ernst’s big fireplace will do.”
Michael took her by the hand to the dance floor. The lights dimmed and thousands of bluish bulbs glowed from the heavy timber beams holding up the Belly of the Beast.
“The stars,” Scottie whispered.
Michael tucked Scottie by his side, his left hand around her waist. “Take my right hand with yours. Put your left hand on mine resting on your waist. Now, step forward with your right foot, rock back on your left, then we turn to the right. Step forward and rock back.”