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She cleared her throat. “Marriages. It—it’s meant to hold artifacts. Records of Sinclair unions, stories in the female lineage, primarily.”
He lifted the plaid and held it up to the light. “Knowing Sinclair females as I do, I’d wager their tales are rather extraordinary.”
“Mmm. Let’s have a look.”
Beneath the tray of jewelry, they found several smaller boxes containing items ranging from a woman’s hair combs to a man’ssgian-dubh. Inside a linen pouch, they even found a knot of hair and a handful of teeth.
But at the bottom of the chest lay the real treasure. Euphemia gasped when she saw it. Dark in the way of old things, the leather was worn bright along the edges. “Oh, Andrew,” she cried, her heart leaping. “It’s a book!”
He chuckled as he sorted through a tangle of chains and brooches. “I do love a woman whose heart is so easily won.”
She clicked her tongue and gingerly lifted the large, weighty tome from its cradle. “You’re not wrong. Look! It even bears the same design as the chest.” Indeed, the cover featured an intricate gold medallion with two swans intertwined.
For the following two hours, they divided their tasks according to long habit—he examined the artifacts while she deciphered the text. Most of the older stories were written in Gaelic, a language with which she had only rudimentary skill. Andrew handed her the Gaelic dictionary without her having to ask.
“Thank you,” she murmured, blinking up at him. “Shall I make more tea, or…”
“Just read. I’ll have a nip of whisky and sort the teeth from the treasure.”
Reading was easier said than done. She spent an hour deciphering the first seven stories, another hour untangling timelines. At one point, Andrew brought her a blanket for her lap and a glass of wine. She smiled up at him, grateful he knew her well enough not to offer whisky.
He’d teased her once about being a Scotswoman who didn’t care for the stuff, and she’d reminded him she’d been born of an English mother and raised entirely in Wiltshire. “Whisky burns,” she’d explained archly. “Wine seduces.”
He’d looked thunderstruck for a moment; then, he’d burst out laughing. “Wine it is, Miss Sinclair. Wine it is.” That had been in Bergamo. Since then, he’d offered her nothing stronger than a rich Marsala.
Now, he returned from washing up in the kitchen to inquire, “Anything interesting so far?”
She shifted to reach for the dictionary on the opposite end of the settee. “It’s all a bit…” She waggled her fingers. “Incomprehensible.”
He handed her the dictionary before sinking into the chair opposite her. “How so?”
“The oldest accounts are rife with mystical folklore. Faeries. Selkies.” She shook her head. “I cannot sort the facts from the nonsense.”
“Are you certain of your translations?”
She nibbled her lip and nodded. “The language is right. Perhaps I’m missing context.”
“Some tales are more symbolic than literal, particularly the oldest ones. Why don’t you read me what you have so far, and we’ll see if we can make sense of it?”
She began with the oldest account, a story about a fisherman lost at sea who rescued a naked woman drowning in a storm. According to the legend, the storm calmed for a brief hour, during which the skies lit with the eerie green fire of the “merry dancers”, allowing the fisherman to spy the woman floating near a small island. The beauty claimed to have no memory of her home or clan, but somehow, she was able to guide him back to the shore of his homeland. The fisherman fell madly in love, and they married not long afterward. She bore him many sons, yet one by one, all the sons died in their eighteenth year. In a tempest of grief, the fisherman leapt from the cliffs near Girnigoe and perished. Upon his death, his wife’s wailing cries could be heard far and wide over the land. She followed after him and, tearing her gown from her body, dived naked into the waves, transforming into a seal as soon as her skin touched water. The merry dancers caused the skies to glow green once again, and she carried her husband away to her homeland, never to be seen again.
“Well?” Euphemia asked when she finished the telling. “What do you think?”
He frowned. “I’m still trying to picture it. Naked, you say. Completely?”
She clicked her tongue. “Be serious. The green skies of the merry dancers are the aurora borealis, of course. And she’s obviously a selkie. But mermaid seal women don’t exist. So, what does it signify in a practical sense?”
“Beautiful, naked women will be the death of all men?”
“Andrew.”
He grinned. “Serious. Right.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and tugged at his lower lip. “He’s a fisherman. Found a woman nearly drowned who either didn’t recall who she was or didn’t want to say. Someone from a rival clan, perhaps.”
“Mmm. A good reason to keep quiet. Might explain how she knew where his home was.”
“She returns to Sinclair lands with him, becomes his wife, bears him sons. But the sons die as soon as they reach manhood. No mention of daughters. Could be a malady passed down through the blood. Could be they were killed in battle. Or it could be simply ill fortune.” He shrugged. “Regardless, he loses himself in grief, hurls himself to his death, and somehow, her true origins are revealed. She is exiled from Sinclair lands—or chooses to leave—but takes her husband’s body with her. The end.”
Deeply dissatisfied with his interpretation, she huffed, “That is absurdly tragic. Why keep an account of such a melancholy story?”
