The Lost Treasure of Lorne

Chapter Nine

With no idea what they were looking for, the going was slow even after they roped into the task any halfway literate servant, but three days later the document mountain was significantly reduced, and Caitlin had half-filled a notebook of her own with snippets of text, observations, and ideas.

She was reading some of the quotes to the two men, as they took their dinner on a cleared corner of the table.

"This one was in a diary from one hundred years ago. 'Today, my aunt showed me the hidden way to where the two stand guard. I must practice to be able to open it by myself, in case I am the one to meet the key.'

"And this from another. 'My daughter will turn twenty next week. Is she old enough to understand that the secret must never be shared with a Lorimer man, for the curse drives them mad?'

"This was in the margin of a recipe book, beside a recipe for ox-foot soup. 'Four to open, Two to guard, Two to unlock, and One to waken.' I wrote it down because of 'two stand guard', which is also in this poem.

"I practice the four to open the door

The way is hard to where two stand guard

When the time is through, then come the two

The first to be last, redressing the past."

Michael tore his bread roll apart with a focused savagery. "'I practice the four'. The four what? Why could they not be plain?"

"Because the curse drives the Lorimer men mad," John suggested. "They needed to hide the secret from the Lorimer men."

Caitlin waved her notes. "I have more. The same messages in different words over and over. Four to open, two to guard, two to unlock, and one to be woken, or sometimes one to be last. A few of them say three to find the way. But mostly, they agree on two."

John waved his bread roll at Caitlin. "The two to unlock are you and me, but what is it that we awaken?"

"Only one of us, if we are the unlockers and if the unlockers are the same as the awakeners," Caitlin corrected. "The note says 'one to awaken'."

"I practice the four." Michael repeated. "I practice the four. Do the paintings help? What comes in groups of four?"

"The ghosts in the corners," John said, dryly, then sat forward in his chair and repeated it. "The ghosts in the corners, Caitlin. What are they doing?"

Caitlin grasped the candelabra that had been lighting her way as she read and led the way to the nearest corner, where one ghost sat, her hands busy, while three others watched. They looked up as the live people approached, and then the seated ghost bent back over her hands and the other three lowered themselves into ghostly chairs that suddenly appeared to receive them, and began to feverishly copy her movements.

"They are sewing," Michael decided.

"Yes, but what?" John was leaning so close to the original ghostly sewer that her shoulder disappeared into his upper arm. She ignored him, continuing to move her hands above the shadowy cloth in her embroidery hoop as if plying her needle, but try as they might, they could see neither the needle nor the image she was creating.

Of the other three, one appeared to be mending, one working on a large tapestry frame, and one sewing down the long seam of a pieced shirt, her movements so evocative they could almost see the needle flying in and out.

"I think I have it." Caitlin spun around to stride down the length of the hall to the next corner, the men hurrying to catch up. "If I am right, these ghosts will be writing or drawing or painting."

They were. Five of them this time, all women. One painted with an invisible brush on a miniature canvas held in her hand, another worked at an easel. A third held a sketch book open on her knee, while the fourth bent over a lap desk and a fifth over a ghostly table, both writing feverishly.

Caitlin led the way again, saying, "Stillroom work." It was. Three ghosts this time: one tying bundles of herbs; one stirring something in a pot over a fire they could not see; one carefully measuring ingredients from an array of bottles, jars, and pouches that appeared in her hands as she took them up and disappeared as she put them back down again.

"So what is the fourth?" Michael asked on their way back down the other long side of the hall, "and how do you know?"

Caitlin diverted to the tables where the paintings and drawings lay in stacks. "I've seen the four groups of activity, but did not make the connection." She began sorting, searching, and soon had four paintings that were clearly done by the same artist and meant as a group. Same size, same illustrative techniques, and the same woman in each. In the first, she sat mending a shirt. In the second, she was painting, four small canvases lined up before her. The third showed her in the still room, pouring liquid from a small kettle through a funnel into a bottle. And in the fourth, she smoothed a cloth over the forehead of a child who was tucked up in bed.

Caitlin found another frame, this one with four miniature paintings side by side. Four sets of hands. The first holding a needle, the second a quill pen, the third a still room jar, and the fourth a spoon.

Getting the idea, John and Michael began re-sorting the paintings. "The fourth is sick-room care," Michael announced.

"Any type of care, maybe," John corrected. "If these are part of it." He had found several images of women carrying babies, and presenting food or drink to children or men.

"Let's see what the ghosts have to tell us." Caitlin approached the fourth corner, where one ghostly lady walked to and fro with a sleeping baby cradled on her shoulder, and another kept watch by a sickbed. The third ghost in this corner was Fiona, who approached Michael and offered him a goblet. "Care," he murmured, putting out his hands for the goblet, which evaporated at his touch. Fiona smiled, and turned to John, presenting him with a ghostly plate of his favourite oat biscuits.

The hall was full of ghosts now, the sounds of their celebration so loud that it almost breached whatever barrier prevented the living from understanding the dead.

And if that were not enough to confirm the ghosts believed they had solved the puzzle, Caitlin's grandfather clinched it. He scowled at her from behind the celebrating wraiths and she grinned back. He might be happy to roast in hell for the sake of his feud, but clearly the remaining ghosts saw her and John as their salvation.