The Mysteries (12 page)

“I have not agreed to give you my wife!” Echu hotly objected. “I said only that you might put your arm around her and have a kiss from her lips. And
that
you may have only if she is willing.”

Mider looked at Etain. “Will you?”

“I will not go with you unless Echu sells me,” she said. “But you may take me, if Echu sells me.”

“I will not sell you,” Echu said. “But, as I promised, he may put his arms around you here in the center of my house.”

“I will do that,” said Mider. As Etain stepped forward to meet him, he put one arm lightly around her, and they immediately rose up into the air together, and out of the skylight. Echu and his men rushed outside but all they could see was a pair of swans flying away to the north.

Recognizing now where Mider had come from, Echu gathered his men and headed north to the
sidh
of Bri Leith, where they began to dig. But after a year and three months they were no closer to finding the people who lived there, for whatever they dug up one day was filled back overnight. They took advice from their druids and certain spells were cast and men set to dig day and night until eventually, after nine years of digging, Mider appeared before them and demanded to know why they attacked his home.

“I want my wife back,” said Echu.

“I won her from you fairly.”

“That you did not.”

“Very well. I will send her out.”

Fifty women, each one the very image of Etain, came out of the hill. And no matter how hard he looked at them, Echu could see no difference between them, nothing to tell him that one was his own long-lost wife.

“Choose one to stay with you and let that satisfy your grievance,” said Mider.

Echu set the women a task of serving wine, for he considered his wife to be the best server in all Ireland. After that, he was able to whittle the contestants down to two, but between them he could not decide: “This is Etain, but she is not herself.” Pressed again to choose, he consulted with his men and finally took one of the two identical women home with him.

Some months later, Mider appeared again, to make Echu promise that he was content with the woman he had taken and would never seek revenge on Mider or his people. Echu promised, and Mider then revealed how he'd tricked the mortal king: “Your wife was pregnant when I took her from you, and she bore a daughter, and it is your daughter who is with you now.”

Echu was horrified to learn he had slept with his own daughter, especially as she was now pregnant. When she in turn bore a daughter, he instructed his men to cast the baby into a pit with wild animals. However, the baby didn't die, but was rescued by a herdsman and his wife, who reared the girl as their own. When grown, her beauty aroused the passion of the warrior-king Eterscelae, who took her by force, and also that of an unknown immortal, who came to her in the guise of a bird and impregnated her. Her son Conare would become a legendary king of Ireland, but was fated to meet a violent end: his story was told in “The Destruction of Da Derga's Fort,” to which “The Wooing of Etain” was an introduction.

I found it a strange and disturbing story, even more so now than the first time I had read it. I wondered what about it had spoken so strongly to Peri that she had adopted it as her own myth.

Of course, it was more than a mere fairy tale: At its heart was a myth about regeneration, about the eternal mystery of life itself. Ordinary human motivations scarcely entered into it.

The most “complete” version had not been discovered and translated until the twentieth century. Most popular retellings, not feeling required to link Etain to the later King Conare, left off the sour little payback entirely. Some preferred to end it with the two swans flying away: the immortal Etain reclaimed by her immortal lover. For those who detailed Echu's determined assault on Mider's stronghold (described by one writer as “the earliest recorded war with Fairyland”) the story was complete when the mortal side of Etain won out and she gave her mortal husband a sign by which he might know her.

I supposed Peri had read the story as a romance and identified herself with Etain because she was a magical, immortal beauty. Nobody wanted to be merely human these days. Kids imagined being Harry Potter or Buffy or Sabrina the teenage witch, with magical powers their birthright. But Etain wasn't a person at all, certainly not a role model. Unlike a modern girl, she was merely a possession. She could be bought or sold, won back or stolen. She seemed to have no emotions about her fate and no desires of her own. She would do as her husband-owner bid, and even her daughter lacked the simple ability to tell her father that he'd made a terrible mistake.

I remembered what Hugh had said about how unlike her usual self Peri had been in Mider's presence, how meek and quiet and lacking in will. But was that true? Could I believe anything he said? He might have gotten the story of Mider from Peri, and while I couldn't think of a good reason for anyone, guilty or innocent, to tell such an unlikely tale to the police, to come to me with that fairy tale was very different. I'd been assuming that to Hugh—and even to Laura Lensky—I was just another private investigator. But what if I was wrong. What if they knew something about my first case? What if they knew quite a lot about the missing person case that had first sent me to Scotland and led to my whole subsequent career in this country?

Anyone who knew that much would also know that I'd find the hints of Celtic mythology in this disappearance impossible to resist.

12. Amy

My whole life changed when I was thirty. The same month that Jenny left me, my grandmother Pauluk died. She'd been old and ill and I'd never known her very well, so this news would not have caused a ripple except for the fact that she'd left all that she owned to my sister and me. Even more surprising was the fact that she had anything to leave.

I'd always thought of her as poor; at least as poor as we were after my dad left. She would sometimes try to help us out, but my mother always refused those wads of ten- and twenty-dollar bills with a firm, “You need this more than we do, Anna!”

But it turned out that she'd been frugal and thrifty all her life, long after there was any need to be. When Grandpa died, his insurance policy left her a tidy fund, which she plowed back into careful investments. She didn't need much to live on, and she never touched her capital.

By most standards, I suppose, what she left wasn't a fortune. But it was more than enough to set me free.

Without Jenny, there seemed no point to staying in Dallas. I quit my job and moved back to Milwaukee. I figured I'd just stay with my mom while waiting for the will to go through probate, before deciding what I wanted to do next.

It was my mother's idea that I should travel. I'd never been that crazy to go to Europe, especially not by myself, but she had these wonderful memories of bumming around France and Italy and Spain when she was young, and she thought I was missing out. She urged me not to settle down right away but to travel and enjoy myself while I had the chance. I didn't say I would, but I didn't say I wouldn't, either. I was finding it hard to get focused. I slept late every day, watched a lot of TV, sometimes went out for a beer or three with some guys I'd known in high school. There was nothing I had to do, no urgency about anything. With so many choices before me, it was somehow impossible to fix on just one.

Maybe Mom was afraid that I never would decide on my own, and never move out of her house again. At any rate, she started bringing home brochures from a travel agency, and canvassed her friends for suggestions, telling them that I was planning a trip, but couldn't decide where to go first. So word got around, and one day at the beginning of September Nell Schneider turned up at the house to offer me a new role in life.

I recognized the tall, rather imposing woman with close-cropped, greying hair as Mrs. Schneider who lived down the block. She and her husband had three or four kids, all much younger than I, and I recalled that my sister used to do some babysitting for them.

I was a little surprised that she should drop in while my mother was out at work, but she said she wanted to talk to me, so of course I invited her in. She got down to business right away.

“Mary tells me you're thinking of going to Europe. I wonder if you would do a favor for me, if you'd go to Scotland. I'd be happy to pay, at least to cover all your expenses while you're there, and your airfare, too.”

“What sort of a favor?” I asked, surprised.

“It's my daughter, Amy. I don't know if you remember her?”

“Not really,” I confessed.

She was digging around inside her handbag. “Here's a recent picture; you can keep it.”

She gave me a studio photograph of a young woman wearing a black gown and a tasseled mortarboard perched atop her thick blond hair. The girl had a long, plain, Scandinavian-looking face whose essential seriousness was unmoved by the rather pained half smile she'd put on for the occasion.

“She's twenty-one,” Mrs. Schneider told me. “She graduated from college in May and went to Scotland as a volunteer on an archaeological dig. It was for six weeks. Then she was going to spend a week in Glasgow. She should have been home ten days ago.”

“You haven't heard from her?”

“Just a postcard, saying she had decided to stay for a while. No explanation and no address. It wasn't like her at all. So I called the university that had sponsored the dig, and talked to Dr. Deere, Dr. Martin Deere, the head archaeologist. As far as he was aware, Amy had left with the other volunteers. He gave me the number of the girl who had been her roommate. An English girl, Jasmine Beccles. So I called her. I didn't get much out of her. Amy hadn't left on the bus with the others, but she didn't know why she'd stayed behind.” She wrinkled her nose. “I had the feeling that maybe she would have said more to somebody who wasn't Amy's mother. I'll give you her number.”

She reached into her handbag for a piece of paper, and for all her dry, composed delivery, I saw that her fingers were trembling.

“I'd go there myself, if I could. But the boys need me, and my mother's just had a stroke, and Don can't take any more time off work. And maybe it wouldn't do any good, if I went.” She stopped, pressing her lips tightly together. “Maybe that Jasmine girl knows something. If Amy went off with some boy . . . well, she's twenty-one, she's a free agent, she can do as she likes. But something's not right. That postcard . . . If she'd fallen in love, why not just tell me? I'm not a monster.” She clasped her hands tightly in her lap and looked at me hard.

“You're closer to her age. She might talk to you. If not, well, you can still scout the territory. Let me know the situation. I'm afraid there's something wrong. I'd like to be reassured. But if—if she
is
in trouble, I want to know that, too. You could let her know that we love her, we'll always love her, and we're here for her, if she needs anything.” She stopped, biting her lip.

I thought I'd learned my lesson; I thought I'd given up all my fantasies of playing detective, but past disappointments were wiped out in a second by Nell Schneider's unexpected request. She needed me. Until that moment I hadn't realized how important that was, and how much I missed having a job to do.

“I'm going to Scotland,” I said. “I'll find your daughter for you, Mrs. Schneider.”

Before leaving I made a couple of phone calls. The first was to Jasmine Beccles, the girl who had been Amy's roommate. Talking to her was my first experience of hearing
real
British English. It was like nothing I'd heard in the movies. The strange accent was bad enough, but her intonation was the real killer. I understood about one word in five.

She must have thought I was a moron, as well as being incredibly deaf. She had no trouble understanding
me
and after I'd asked her the same question four or five times, her patience became understandably worn.

Fortunately, she was eager to help. Unfortunately, she knew nothing of any consequence. What I managed to interpret of her replies was all opinion and suspicion.

Amy Schneider was not a very friendly girl, not outgoing like most Americans. She'd kept her thoughts to herself and preferred to go for walks on her own to having a drink and a laugh with the others in the pub after the day's work was done. Toward the end, she was even getting up early in the morning for her walks and not turning up at the dig until late, which made Jasmine suspect there was something fishy going on. She must have met someone. And, since she was so secretive about it, her lover was probably a married man.

My other long-distance phone call was to Dr. Martin Deere at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. His voice was low and musically Scottish and completely comprehensible. He regretted there was nothing he could tell me: He hadn't known Amy well; in fact, she'd remained more of a stranger to him than some of the others. “Not a very social animal” was his verdict. Toward the end he had noticed that she didn't always turn up for work until quite late in the morning, but she would not be the first volunteer to lose interest: Fieldwork could be tedious and unrewarding. When I asked if I could come to see him in Glasgow, he warned me again that he had no idea where Amy might be, but agreed to try to help in any way he could.

I flew out of Chicago and into Glasgow on a beautiful September day. In Chicago it had been hot and humid, the tail end of a brutal summer, but in Glasgow the air was cool and crisp, hinting at autumn. I picked up my rental car and plunged into the nightmare that is the British motorway, forced to drive on the wrong side of the road at ridiculous speed.

Once in the city, movement became slower. This was a relief: I didn't care if it took half an hour to travel three miles. Martin Deere had given me directions for finding the university; he'd even faxed me a map with the likeliest parking lot marked with an X. I hadn't liked to push my luck by specifying an exact time, and he'd assured me he'd be in his office all day.

Martin Deere was a tall, lanky man with a short grey beard and curly reddish grey hair. He showed a friendly smile as he shook my hand.

“Ian? I'm Martin.” He had sharp blue eyes behind scholarly-looking bifocals. “Welcome to Scotland. Your first time? Good trip?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Can I get you something to drink? Tea?”

“That would be great,” I said, realizing how dry my mouth was.

“Sugar?”

“Yeah.”

“I'll just be a minute,” he said, moving toward the door. “Please, sit down, make yourself comfortable.”

I sat in a chair made of leather and tubular steel and looked around the office. It was a small cubicle in a big modern building, but it was comfortably cluttered and had the friendly aroma of old books and paper. On one wall was a large map of Scotland; on another, a blown-up photograph of a misty landscape: in the foreground, a low, lichen-covered stone wall, and what might have been part of a gravestone; in the background, dominating the grey skyline, a rounded, tree-covered hill.

“Here you go.” Martin thrust a steaming styrofoam cup into my hand.

I took it, bewildered. In the first place, I'd been expecting a cold drink, and in the second, this opaque, tan-colored liquid didn't look or smell like the Lipton's Jenny sometimes brewed on a winter afternoon. Then I noticed that a woman had come into the room behind him, so I stood up.

“Ian Kennedy, Margaret Campbell,” Martin said.

She was a slim, fair-haired woman about my own age. “Sit, sit,” she said, fluttering a hand at me, before perching on the desk.

“Margaret is a colleague, a lecturer in history,” Martin explained, slouching back against the wall. “She wasn't involved in the Kirkton dig, but she has a house only a few miles away. She was there last weekend, and she thinks she might have seen Amy.”

“Actually, it's my parents' house,” she corrected, leaning toward me. “I have a flat in Glasgow, but I go up to Aberfoyle most weekends. I was there last weekend, and I went up Doon Hill.” She gestured at the misty photograph on the wall. “Now, I can't say that the girl I saw was your friend, because I never met her, and I didn't even talk to this one—she ran off as soon as she saw me.”

“Ran off? What was she doing?”

I took a cautious sip of my drink. It seemed to be some sort of sweetened, flavored milk.

“Well—I think she was camping out on the hillside. I found a bender.”

“What's a bender?”

“You know, a makeshift tent. Like the women of Greenham Common?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Anyway, from the way she acted, I thought maybe she wasn't supposed to be there. I wouldn't have thought twice about it if I hadn't overheard Martin here talking about an American girl who went missing.” She looked at Martin in a flirtatious way, then back to me. “She was blond, the girl I saw—long blond hair, and quite young.”

While she was talking, I drank some more of my drink. The taste didn't improve with familiarity, but I was thirsty and it was wet.

“It could be Amy,” Martin Deere said. “Doon Hill seems to have been her favorite place for walking. From what I gather, she went up there most evenings.”

“That's Doon Hill?” I pointed at the photograph on the wall, and they both nodded. “How near is it to the dig?”

“Lowering over it. I took that picture from Kirkton,” Martin explained. “From the churchyard itself. It's an easy walk, maybe half a mile, with a well-marked path right to the top.”

“I don't know why she'd be camping out,” I said.

“How's she fixed for money?” Martin asked.

I shrugged. “She has a credit card. But her mother said she hasn't used it.”

“Maybe she doesn't want to be found,” Margaret offered.

“Then why stick around Aberfoyle? Jasmine Beccles thinks she was having an affair with someone.”

“Yes,” said Martin dryly. “I was treated to Jasmine's romantic theorizing at some length.”

“So you don't think it's true.”

He shrugged. “It's possible, of course. But there's absolutely no evidence. Jasmine had to admit Amy never even hinted at a romance, and that she'd never seen Amy with anyone. She just liked the thought of a love affair.”

“She couldn't imagine any other reason for a sane person to want to stay in Aberfoyle,” said Margaret. “But why, if she's got a lover, isn't she with him? Why's she sleeping out on the hillside by herself?”

“He's married?”

“And he doesn't have a car? Or the means to put her up in a warm, dry room somewhere? No, I don't believe it. I don't think it's her heart she's lost—more like her mind.”