Treasure of the Celtic Triangle
Read Treasure of the Celtic Triangle Online
Authors: Michael Phillips
© 2012 by Michael Phillips
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-586-1 (Paperback)
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-715-5 (Hardback)
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-60742-041-5
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-60742-031-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
Cover photography by Brandon Hill Photos
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683,
www.barbourbooks.com
Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses
.
Printed in the United States of America.
Table of Contents
D
EDICATION
To the memory and legacy of
George MacDonald,
whose books and characters and spiritual vision still contain a power undiminished by the passage of more than a century to inspire hearts, change lives, and fill the soul with the wonders of God’s expansive fatherhood.
[My purpose in my novels is] to make them true to the real and not the spoilt humanity. Why should I spend my labor on what one can have too much of without any labor! I will try to show what we might be, may be, must be, shall be—and something of the struggle to gain it
.
—George MacDonald, in a letter to William Mount-Temple, January 23, 1879, The National Library of Scotland
A little attention … to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written, every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility, asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored? I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix us in the principles and practice of virtue. When any single act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also
.
—Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771, explaining his inclusion of works of fiction in a list of books compiled for purchase from England after his library of books and papers was destroyed by fire
The Region of Gwynedd, North Wales at the Northern Expanse of the Cambrian Mountains
P
ART
O
NE
Changes at Westbrooke Manor
Late 1872
O
NE
Factor and Heir
A
clock of ancient date overlooking a stone-paved stable yard—originally rimmed with gold, fitted with brass ornamentation and shiny black hands, all now tarnished with the passage not merely of its circling minutes and hours but of centuries—had just struck the hour of one o’clock.
It was a chilly day in the second week of October. The sun was bravely doing its best to counter the effects of a biting wind blowing down through the Celtic triangle onto the coast of north Wales. Alas, it rose a little lower in the sky every day. Thus, with every successive revolution of the earth into darkness and back again into its light, the great glowing orb had less warmth to shed abroad in the land. Those offshore winds pierced to the bone. They originated far to the north in regions where glaciers and icebergs made their homes, birthplace of the winter, which even now had begun its inexorable yearly march southward into the lands of men.
Whatever happy memories remained of July and August had gone briefly into hiding. The sunlight seemed thin and not altogether up for the task. There would yet appear more exquisite reminders of the splendorous summer recently past. Autumn’s delicious warmth and the fragrances of earth’s slow, pleasant death into its yearly recreative slumber would return by tomorrow, perhaps the day after. It would hold winter at bay as long as it could.
But as today’s chill breeze portended, it would eventually be forced to lay down the struggle and die a peaceful and quiet death. Beneath the ground its life must lie, while winter roared and blustered above, until such time as cousin spring rescued earth’s life again from the grave.
A young man of twenty-two, stocky, strong, of medium height, shoulders broad and muscular, with light hair and a chiseled face, skin tough, leathery, and tan from exposure to the weather from the time he could walk emerged from the building. He was leading a gorgeous white stallion of three years, whose coat was gracefully highlighted by a few lines of gray, from its stall and through the back door of the stables. There a flat, grassy area suited his purpose more than the hard stones in front between stables and house. He was used to weather of any kind and laughed at cold and wind and rain. What were they to him when there was a world to enjoy?
The beautiful creature following him had only been wearing the bridle a week. The young man thought him ready for a saddle today. He planned to move slowly, however, and continue to wait if he displayed the slightest resistance.
He was one who knew animals
almost
as well as his diminutive cousin, who had mysteriously disappeared from Snowdonia with her father a year before.
No one
could communicate with the creatures of the animal kingdom like she did. But after a life with sheep in the nearby hills where he had made his home until recently, he found the intuitive connection between man and horse a wonder and joy. In the month since his mistress had purchased this Anglo-Arabian from Padrig Gwlwlwyd in the village, he had been talking to him and walking him daily, allowing the animal to know him and trust him before attempting to ride him.
Within a few weeks of her husband’s funeral, Lady Snowdon had asked him to be on the lookout for a horse of equal or greater potential than the one they had recently lost. It would, she explained, be a way to remember her husband and perhaps in some small way mitigate her son’s inevitable disappointment at finding the wild black gone. Nor could it be denied that Lady Snowdon herself loved horses no less than the two men of the family. During these recent months of loss, the solitary green hills of Snowdonia had been her frequent solace in companionship with one or another of the mounts in her well-stocked stables.
One look at the Anglo-Arabian and she had fallen in love instantly. There was no haggling about the price. She had settled the financial arrangements, and he was in his new home in the manor’s stables the day after that. Surely there would be no lamenting the loss of the black now. Perhaps she would make the Anglo a homecoming gift for her son … whenever that might be.
Meanwhile, in spite of the brightness of the day, an autumn chill had begun. Fires had been lit throughout Westbrooke Manor, the proud and ancient house that stood at the center of the estate of the late Viscount Lord Snowdon some two miles inland from Cardigan Bay. Hours later, they were still doing their best to warm the living quarters of Lady Snowdon, Katherine Westbrooke, widowed three and a half months earlier by the sudden death of her husband, and her twenty-year-old daughter, Florilyn.
Lord and Lady Snowdon’s eldest son and presumptive heir to title and property, twenty-three-year-old Courtenay, had unexpectedly returned without notice the night before, about dusk, from three months abroad. He had not appeared at breakfast and had made a mere token luncheon, with surprisingly little to say to either mother or sister after so long away.