He Said, Sidhe Said

"It's not a friend, it's food."

"So you can't talk to it."

Whiskers bristled indignantly. "I didn't say that!"

"I need you to ask it to get a school together, get the serpent's attention, lure it back here, and peel away at the last minute so that the serpent goes through the hole rather than hitting the rock."

Sam stared at her. "You want me to convince fish to be bait? Why don't I just convince them to roll in breadcrumbs and lie down under a broiler?" The darker orange markings on his forehead formed a 'w' as he frowned. "Actually, that's not a bad idea."

"If they do this, the serpent will be gone, and they'll be a lot safer."

"Provided he doesn't catch them and eat them."

"I'm not saying there isn't a risk. Just try."

As Sam swam over to the herring, Diana slid her backpack around onto her lap and undid the zipper. She needed something that would write under water on slippery, algae-covered rock. Pens, pencils, markers, bag of biodegradable kitty litter, litter box, six cans of cat food, two cat dishes, box of crackers, peanut butter, pyjamas, clean jeans, socks, underwear, laptop; nothing that would work. The outside pockets held her cellphone, a bottle of slightly redundant water, and... a nail file. Possibly...

"She wants you to sweeten the deal."

"She does?" Diana glanced over at the herring. "How?"

"She wants you to get rid of the fish that suck the life out of other fish."

"There's vampire fish in this lake?" All at once, the dark corners under the rocks looked a little darker.

"Get real. They're called sea lampreys. They came into the lake after World War II and decimated the native populations. TVO special on the Great Lakes," he added when Diana blinked at him.

"Decimated?"

"It means ate most of."

"I know what it means."

"Hey, you asked," he snorted. "What do you say? They're not supposed to be here, no one would miss them, and you can't lure the serpent without herring co-operation. She just wants her fry to be safe." He paused and licked his lips.

"You're thinking about fried fish, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, stop." If she gave the herring what she wanted, Diana knew there'd be consequences. More healthy, native species of fish in the lake, for one thing. Actually, more healthy, native species of fish in the lake was about the only thing. She couldn't see a down side – which was always vaguely unsettling.

"You can't do it, can you?"

"Of course I can do it." It was disconcerting that her cat was using the same argument on her that she'd used on him. "Technically, as a Keeper, if I'm asked for help to right a wrong, I can't refuse. Sea lampreys in the lake seem to be definitely a wrong."

"So what's the problem?"

"I'm not sure fish were included under that rule."

"Very anti-ichthyoid of you."

"Anti what? Never mind." She waved off his explanation. "You're watching way too much television. Okay, tell her I'll do it, but it has to be after the hole is closed, I can't access the Possibilities until then."

"She wants to know why she should trust you."

Diana glanced over at the herring. "Because I'm one of the good guys."

"She only has your word for that."

"Sam!"

"Okay, okay, she didn't say that. You get to work; I'll convince her you're trustworthy."

"Thank you." Setting the jaw bone carefully aside, Diana began to scratch the definitions of the accident site onto the rocks around the hole with the point of her nail file, the algae just thick enough for it to leave a legible impression.

"Incoming!"

"I'm almost done."

"Maybe you don't quite understand what incoming means," Sam shouted as the first herring whacked into her shoulder.

Diana scrambled to get the last definition drawn in the midst of a silver swirl of fish and dove out of the way in the instant of clear water that followed.

Given a choice between diving face first into rock or returning back where it had come from, the serpent chose the second, less painful, option.

The instant the tip of its wedge-shaped tail disappeared, Diana grabbed the definitions and slammed the hole closed. When she looked up, three dozen silver faces stared back at her, all wearing the same expectant expression. Well, probably expectant; it was surprisingly hard to judge expression on a fish.

"Okay, okay, give me a minute to catch my breath." She tested the seal on the hole and reached into the Possibilities. Turned out there were a lot of sea lamprey in the lake, and over half of them had to be removed from living prey.

"Where'd you put them?" Sam spun around in a slow circle, lazily sculling with his tail.

"I dropped them in the Mid-Atlantic."

"There are sharks in the Mid-Atlantic."

"So?"

"Sharks eat lampreys."

"Sharks eat Volkswagens. What's your point?"

"We've been down here for hours, we missed lunch, and I'm hungry. Can we go now?"

"In a minute, I have one more thing to do."

It was only a part of a jaw bone, but once it had been a part of a man who'd sailed the lakes.

Diana set the bone down beside the wreck and waited.

He hadn't been very old. Under his knit cap, his hair was brown, long enough to wisp out over his ears, and there was a glint of red in his bad teenage moustache. He wore faded blue pants with a patch on one knee. His heavy sweater looked a little too big for him, but that may have been because he was wearing it over at least one other sweater, maybe two. At some point, not long before he'd died, he'd whacked the index finger on his left hand, leaving the nail black and blue.

Pulling the two copper coins from her pocket, Diana bent and laid one on each closed eye. "To pay the ferryman," she said, feeling Sam's unasked question. "He's been in the water long enough, I think he'd like to be back on it."

A heartbeat later, there was only the wreck and the rocks.

The coins and the jaw bone were gone.

"Now, can we go?"

Diana slung her backpack over one shoulder and picked up the cat with her other hand. "Yes. Now we can go."

* * * *

Carol Diamond was standing on the shore when she came out of the water. Her eyes were wide and her mouth worked for a moment before any sound emerged. "You went... you were... in the..."

"I went wading."

"Wading?"

"Yes. You saw me wading. Then I came out of the water..." Diana stepped over the ridge of zebra mussel shells and set Sam down on the gravel. "...and I rolled down my jeans and put my shoes and socks back on."

White curls bounced as she shook her head. "You were under the water!"

"Couldn't have been. I'm completely dry."

"But you..."

"But I what?" Diana held the older woman's gaze.

"You went wading?"

"Yes, I did."

"But that water must be freezing!"

"I hardly felt it."

"Well," Carol laughed a little uncertainly, "it must be nice to be young. Doesn't that rock look just like an orange cat?"

"You think? I don't see it."

Sam sighed and headed for the dock.

* * * *

Ryan sat between the two girls on the way back to the mainland. There was a fair bit of giggling from all concerned.

The lake was calm, the silvered blue broken only by the wake of the boat and a small school of herring rising to feed on the water bugs dimpling the surface.

Sam had eaten, then curled up and gone to sleep in her backpack. Dangling a bottle of water from one hand, Diana leaned back against the gunnels and listened to Gary Straum list just some of the more than fifty ships that had gone down between Point Petre and Main Duck Island. She didn't know which ship her sailor had been from, but it didn't really matter.

He was home now.

"The Metcalfe, the Maggie Hunter, the Gazelle, the Norway, the Atlas, the Annie Falconer, the Olive Branch, the Sheboygan, the Ida Walker, the Maple Glenn, the Lady Washington..."

When asked to write a story for Katherine Kurtz and The Tales of the Knights Templar, I devoured every bit of information on the Knights Templar I could find. And still missed a bit, having to add jewels to the medallion in later versions of the story to fit the new information Katherine had included in her afterword. In that afterword, she also mentioned that the splinter was believed to be one of the hallows that fell into the hands of Philip of France. Given the demands of the story, I chose not to believe it and Katherine kindly allowed my version to stand.

This story makes me cry every time I read it. I don't think anything else I've written has that strong an effect.

WORD OF HONOUR

The prayer became a background drone without words, without meaning, holding no relevance to her life even had she bothered to listen.

Pat Tarrill shoved her hands deep in her jacket pockets and wondered why she'd come. The moment she'd read about it in the paper, attending the Culloden Memorial Ceremony had become an itch she had to scratch – although it wasn't the sort of thing she'd normally waste her time at. And that's exactly what I'm doing. Wasting time. Sometimes, she felt like that was all she'd been doing the entire twenty-five years of her life. Wasting time.

The prayer ended. Pat looked up, squinted against the wind blowing in off Northumberland Strait, and locked eyes with a wizened old man in a wheelchair. She scowled and stepped forward, but lost sight of him as the bodies around the cairn shifted position. Probably just another dirty old man, she thought, closed her eyes and lost herself in the wail of the pipes.

Later, while everyone else hurried off to the banquet laid out in St. Mary's Church hall, Pat walked slowly to the cairn and lightly touched the damp stain. Raising her fingers to her face, she sniffed the residue and smiled, once again hearing her grandfather grumble that, "No true Scot would waste whiskey on a rock." But her grandfather had been dead for years and the family had left old Scotland for Nova Scotia in 1770.

Wiping her fingers on her jeans, Pat headed for her car. She hadn't been able to afford a ticket to the banquet and wouldn't have gone even if she could have. All that Scots wha hae stuff made her nauseous.

"Especially," she muttered, digging for her keys, "since most of this lot has been no closer to Scotland than Glace Bay."

With one hand on the pitted handle of her car door, she froze, then slowly turned, pulled around by the certain knowledge she was being observed. It was the old man again, sitting in his chair at the edge of the church yard, staring in her direction. This time, a tall, pale man in a tan overcoat stood behind him – also staring. Staring down his nose, Pat corrected. Even at that distance the younger man's attitude was blatantly obvious. Flipping the two of them the finger, she slid into her car.

She caught one last glimpse of them in the rear view mirror as she peeled out of the gravel parking lot. Tall and pale appeared to be arguing with the old man.

* * * *

"Patricia Tarrill?"

"Pat Tarrill. Yeah."

"I'm Harris MacClery, Mr. Hardie's solicitor."

Tucking the receiver between ear and shoulder, Pat forced her right foot into a cowboy boot. "So, should I know you?"

"I'm Mr. Chalmer Hardie's solicitor."

"Oh." Everyone in Atlantic Canada knew of Chalmer Hardie. He owned... well, he owned a good chunk of Atlantic Canada.

"Mr. Hardie would like to speak with you."

"With me?" Her voice rose to an undignified squeak. "What about?"

"A job."

Pat's gaze pivoted toward the stack of unpaid bills threatening to bury the phone. She'd been unemployed for a month and the last job hadn't lasted long enough for her to qualify for Unemployment Insurance. "I'll take it."

"Don't you want to know what it's about?"

She could hear his disapproval and, frankly, she didn't give two shits. Anything would be better than yet another visit to the welfare office. "No," she told him, "I don't."

As she scribbled directions on the back of an envelope, she wondered if her luck had finally changed.

* * * *

Chalmer Hardie lived in Dunmaglass, a hamlet tucked between Baileys Brook and Lismore, the village where the Culloden Memorial had taken place. More specifically, Chalmer Hardie was Dunmaglass. Tucked up against the road was a gas station/general store/post office and up a long lane was the biggest house Pat had ever seen.

She swore softly in awe as she parked the car then swore again as a tall, pale man came out of the house to meet her.

"Ms. Tarrill." It wasn't a question, but then, he knew what she looked like. "Mr. Hardie is waiting."

* * * *

"Ms. Tarrill." The old man in the wheelchair held out his hand. "I'm very happy to meet you."

"Um, me too. That is, I'm happy to meet you." His hand felt dry and soft, and although his fingers curved around hers, they didn't grip. Up close, his skin was pale yellow and it hung off his skull in loose folds, falling into accordion pleats around his neck.

"Please forgive me if we go directly to business." He waved her toward a brocade wing chair. "I dislike wasting the little time I have left."

Pat lowered herself into the chair feeling as if she should've worn a skirt and resenting the feeling.

"I have a commission I wish you to fulfil for me, Ms. Tarrill." Eyes locked on hers, Chalmer Hardie folded his hands over a small wooden box resting on his lap. "In return, you will receive ten thousand dollars and a position in one of my companies."

"A position?"

"A job, Ms. Tarrill."

"And ten thousand dollars?"

"That is correct."

"So, who do you want me to kill?" She regretted it almost instantly, but the richest man in the Maritimes merely shook his head.

"I'm afraid he's already dead." The old man's fingers tightened around the box. "I want you to return something to him."

"Him who?"

"Alexander MacGillivray. He lead Clan Chattan at Culloden as the chief was, at the time, a member of the Black Watch and thus not in a position to support the prince."

"I know."

Sparse white eyebrows rose. "You know?"

Pat shrugged. "My grandfather was big into all that..." She paused and searched for an alternative to Scottish history crap. "...heritage stuff."

"I see. Would it be too much to ask that he ever mentioned the Knights Templar?"

He'd once gotten into a drunken fight with a Knight of Columbus... "Yeah, it would."

"Then I'm afraid we'll have to include a short history lesson or none of this will make sense."

For ten thousand bucks and job, Pat could care less if it made sense, but she arranged her face into what she hoped was an interested expression and waited.

Frowning slightly, Hardie thought for a moment. When he began to speak, his voice took on the cadences of a lecture hall. "The Knights Templar were a brotherhood of fighting monks sworn to defend the holy land of the Bible from the infidel. In 1132, the patriarch of Jerusalem gave Hugh de Payens, the first Master of the Knights, a relic, a splinter of the True Cross sealed into a small crystal orb that could be worn like a medallion. This medallion was to protect the master and through his leadership, the holy knights.

"In 1307, King Philip of France, for reasons we haven't time to go into, decided to destroy the Templars. He convinced the current Grand Master, Philip de Molay, to come to France, planning to arrest him and all the Templars in the country in one fell swoop. Which he did. They were tortured, and many of them, including their Master, were burned alive as heretics."

"Wait a minute," Pat protested, leaning forward. "I thought the medallion thing was supposed to protect them?"

Hardie grimaced. "Yes, well, a very short time before they were arrested, de Molay was warned. He sent a messenger with the medallion to the Templar Fleet with orders for them to put out to sea."

"If he was warned, why didn't he run himself?"

"Because that would not have been the honourable thing to do."

"Like dying's so honourable." She bit her lip and wished that just once her brain would work before her mouth.

The old man stared at her for a long moment then continued as though she hadn't expressed an opinion. "While de Molay believed that nothing would happen to him personally, he had a strong and accurate suspicion that King Philip was after the Templars' not inconsiderable treasure. Much of that treasure had already been loaded onto the ships of the fleet.

"The fleet landed in Scotland. Maintaining their tradition of service, the Knights became a secular organization and married into the existing Scottish nobility. The treasure the fleet carried was divided amongst the Knights for safekeeping and, as the centuries passed, many pieces became family heirlooms and were passed from father to son.

"Now then, Culloden... In 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie returned from exile to Scotland and, a year later, suffered a final defeat at Culloden. The clans supporting him were slaughtered. Among the dead were many men of the old Templar families." He opened the box on his lap and beckoned Pat closer.

Resting on a padded red velvet lining was probably the ugliest piece of jewelry she'd ever seen – and as a fan of the home shopping network, she'd seen some ugly jewelry. In the centre of a gold disc about two inches across, patterned with what looked like little specks of gold and inset with coloured stones, was a yellowish and uneven crystal sphere about the size of a marble. A modern gold chain filled the rest of the box.

"An ancestor of mine stole that before the battle from Alexander MacGillivray. You, Ms. Tarrill are looking at an actual sliver of the True Cross."

Squinting, Pat could just barely make out a black speck in the centre of the crystal. Sliver of the True Cross my aunt fanny. "This is what..." She searched her memory for the name and couldn't find it. "...that Templar guy sent out of France?"

"Yes."

"How do you know?"

"Trust me, Ms. Tarrill. I know. I want you to take this holy relic, and place it in the grave of Alexander MacGillivray."

"In Scotland?"

"That is correct. Mr. MacClery will give you the details. I will, of course, pay all expenses."

Pat studied the medallion, lips pursed. "I have another question."

"Perfectly understandable."

"Why me?"

"Because I am too sick to make the journey, and because I had a dream." His lips twitched into a half smile as though he realized how ridiculous he sounded but didn't care. "I dreamt about a young woman beside the cairn at the Culloden Memorial Ceremony – you, Ms. Tarrill."

"You're going to trust me with this, give me ten thousand bucks and a job based on a dream?"

"You don't understand." One finger lightly touched the crystal. "But you will."

As crazy as it sounded, he seemed to believe it. "Did the dream give you my name?"

"No. Mr. MacClery had your license plate traced."

Her eyes narrowed. Lawyers! "So, why do you want this thing returned? I mean, if it was supposed to protect MacGillivray and Clan Chattan at Culloden giving it back isn't going to change the fact that the Duke of Cumberland kicked butt."

"I don't want to change things, Ms. Tarrill. I want to do what's right." His chin lifted and she saw the effort that small movement needed. "I have been dying for a long time; time enough to develop a conscience, if you will. I want the cross of Christ back where it belongs and I want you to take it there." His shoulders slumped. "I would rather go myself, but I left it too long."