“The Lady or the Tiger?” Isla said.
“Exactly,” Douglas agreed. “Even if someone found the treasure, they’d have to be certain which vault they were opening, or else all could be lost. Assuming one believes the legend is true, that is.”
“Has anyone ever searched for the treasure?” Maddock asked.
Douglas shook his head. “Not as far as I know. As I told you, it’s not very well-known, and the few who know about it take it none too serious.”
“Any chambers underneath the ruins?” Maddock pressed
“Not that anyone’s found. Given that, in its long history, the castle has been raided, pillaged, and even blown up, if there are vaults down there, they’re buried deep. Of course, the water level of the Loch has risen quite a bit since the construction of the Caledonian Canal back in the 1800s. Perhaps there’s a way in from under the water.”
“Any idea who put the treasure there? The Tuatha de Dannan perhaps?” Isla asked.
Douglas’ smile melted. “No idea. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be getting back to my group now.”
“That was odd,” Isla whispered.
“Yeah. Considering the guys who tried to kidnap you are Tuatha, you should probably keep mention of them on the down-low.”
“All right.” She sighed, stared down at her hands. “It’s certainly not the Tuatha I imagined when mum and dad used to tell me stories as a child.”
Maddock looked at Isla. Something had been bothering him since they’d first met.
“Isla, you mentioned your parents. You said they ‘believed’ in the treasure. What did you mean by that?”
“They’re dead,” she said flatly. The expression on her face said no further questions would be welcome.
Maddock considered pressing the issue, but then his phone vibrated. He checked it to find a message from Jimmy.
Check your email. Found the key in a scan of an old journal. I’m not saying where I had to hack into in order to find it. You owe me bigger than ever.
Maddock smiled and texted back. You live for this stuff. He laughed aloud when Jimmy immediately replied with a photo of Johnny Cash giving the finger to the camera.
“Good news?” Isla asked.
“I think so.” He opened his email and gave it a quick read. “Looks like our guy wins.”
“Seriously?”
He handed her the phone and she read Jimmy’s email with interest. “Mind if I pass this along to Meikle? Perhaps he could reverse engineer it for confirmation.”
Maddock shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Two heads are better than one.”
While they headed off in search of Bones and Grizzly, Isla called Meikle and shared with him the message Jimmy had decoded. He expressed surprise that someone had decoded the message so quickly, but promised to do what he could to confirm it.
They found Bones and Grizzly down by the waterfront. Grizzly was loudly speculating about the possibilities of a dive in this area.
“I think we should scour it thoroughly. No one with my level of experience has ever…” He halted in midsentence when he saw Maddock.
Maddock figured he’d hold off on mentioning the legend of the treasure since they now had a new lead to follow. He didn’t need to fuel Grizzly’s desire to make another dive. Any more underwater exploits would be himself and Bones.
“We totally struck out. No signs of the Tuatha anywhere,” Bones said. “How about you? Did you get lucky?”
Maddock didn’t miss the double-entendre, but he chose to ignore it. “We might have. Jimmy thinks he’s deciphered the clue from Dunstaffnage.”
“Hell, yes!” Bones pumped his fist. “What is it?”
“We need to find a place called the Well of the Dead.”
Chapter 22
The sign up ahead read Culloden Battlefield. Maddock looked out across the rolling, green landscape, heart racing as it always did when he was hot on the trail of a treasure. The historic battlefield, the site of the final battle of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, stood only a short distance east of Inverness, very close to Loch Ness.
“Tell me again exactly how the message reads,” Isla said.
“Beneath the Well of the Dead, Saint Columba’s beastie guards the treasure from the unworthy.” Maddock had memorized it by now.
“The only Well of the Dead I’ve ever heard of is here at the battlefield,” she said. “Internet searches didn’t come up with anything else, so fingers crossed.”
“The Saint Columba bit is a home run,” Grizzly said.
Isla glanced at him through the rearview mirror. “You guys mentioned that name earlier. What’s the story, again?”
Bones cleared his throat loudly and affected a lecturing tone. “Saint Columba was a traveling monk. Back in the sixth century…”
“565 AD,” Grizzly interjected.
“Not important to the story, but okay. Back in 565, he was traveling in the area of Loch Ness when he came across some locals…”
“Picts,” Grizzly said.
“Maybe you could have him tell the story. He seems to know it better than you do,” Maddock jibed.
“He doesn’t know it at all. He’s got an article open on his phone and he’s injecting superfluous details.”
Grizzly smiled. “The women say I make everything super.”
Bones gave him a long, blank stare. “Dude, I have no freaking idea if you’re joking or not. Anyway, Saint Columba came across a group of Picts on the shore of the River Ness who were burying one of their own. They told him the man had been bitten by a water monster that terrorized them from time to time. They were able to catch him with hooks and lines and pull him to shore before he was devoured, but they didn’t manage to save him.” He paused and looked at Grizzly, as if daring him to interrupt, before continuing his story. “Saint Columba needed to get across the river, and there was a boat on the other side. Either he didn’t believe the story about the monster or he was kind of a tool, because he made one of his men swim across to retrieve the boat.”
“Big mistake,” Grizzly said.
This time, Bones ignored him. “So, the dude gets out into the water and, big surprise, here comes the monster. Saint Columba raises his staff, calls up some Jesus mojo, and tells the monster to walk, which he does.”
“Some stories also say he used his staff to raise the dead man,” Grizzly added, “but they aren’t considered reliable.”
“But the monster story is considered reliable?” Isla asked, eyebrows raised.
“We’re not going to go through this all over again, are we?” Bones said.
“I suppose not,” Isla said. “So it does seem to connect with the tooth and the Loch Ness legend. And if there truly are underwater channels leading from the loch to the sea, it’s not unreasonable to think one might run beneath Culloden.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” Bones said. “It doesn’t hurt to put your skepticism on the back burner every once in a while. About a lot of things,” he added with a sly wink.
“If you say so,” Isla said. “Understand, the only reason I’m even entertaining this notion is the fact that you guys recovered that tooth. And even that I’m taking on faith, since all I’ve seen are photos.”
“Just to be clear,” Bones said, “I found the tooth. Maddock just came along for the swim.”