Four Times the Trouble, Four Times the Charm

Inside the castle: strange discoveries pt 1

          Diana had set up her video camera and had recorded the entire great hall then took out her camera and took shots of all the walls. She took out her notebook and wrote down notes on the murals on the walls above the entrance to the great hall. Diana saw that they weren't one painting but a series of them. The first one was in very poor condition. All she could make out was two stone circles, one inside the other and it was located in a village close to the manor house. Four people were facing the center. Where the player had fallen away, she saw scratches on the stone. 'The workers must have done it, damn it!' she thought. She moved over to the next one and found it in slightly better shape. It depicted the four figures stepping out of a stone circle in a forested area. They had their swords in their hands and below it were the runes for 'arrival'. Diana couldn't believe it. She moved on to the next painting and found it in very good shape. It depicted the four people had been captured and the writing below it confirmed it. The next one was in very poor shape. The plaster had chipped off in several key places. Diana moved on to the next one and it was in good shape. It was showing the four people in a fierce battle with others wearing plaids and they were fighting soldiers in armor. It appeared that they were helping the local people and some one in particular. The figure had a symbol above his head. She went back to the one with the captured figures and one of the captors had the same symbol above his head. She went back to the last one and saw below it was written 'the great battle' in runes. The next one was all but obliterated except the word 'victory'. She moved to the next one and saw the four figures stepping into the village circles and the whole village was standing around the circle. There was no writing below this one. The last painting was as her cousin had said, creepy. It was done in dark colors and depicted the castle with no lights shining from the windows and the village looked abandoned. There were no people or animals. It gave her the feeling that the people had just vanished into thin air. It made her shiver at the thought. A breeze blew through the room at that moment and she thought she heard a voice, a male voice. The voice seemed to be saying, "Come to me and save my people." Diana looked over to where her cousins were working, inventorying the items in the great hall and making notes on what needed repairs. "Did you guys hear that?" she asked them and they looked over at her and shook their heads no at her. "Maybe it was just the wind in the chimney" she said. Her cousins nodded in agreement. Diana grabbed a stepladder that Willie had left behind. She took it over to where the plaster had cracked off, the one that had the scratches on it. Diana climbed the ladder and looked at the scratches closely. She realized that they weren't scratches at all but lines carved into the stone below the plaster. The underlying carved lines matched up with the images in the painting. She then understood that the painting had been a way to bring color to the images created by the carved lines, to make them more visible. As Diana looked up at the painting, she came to another realization, the four people in the painting were four identical women carrying four remarkably familiar swords. Startled, she almost fell off the ladder. "Holy Shit! What the hell is going on!?" she yelled. Devon had just returned and ran over to where her sister was. Their cousins came running over as well. Diana climbed down off the ladder. You're not going to believe what I just found. We need more lights in here" she said, grabbing the portable generator and hooking up the floodlights. They stood there dumbfounded as the lights revealed what Diana had found. There before them were four very familiar faces looking down at them. "Ancestors of ours perhaps?" Maris inquired meekly. Diana couldn't move or breathe for several moments as she stared at the one face that was in a slight profile. The woman had a scar running downright side of her face from her right ear down along her jaw to her chin and a glimpse of one on the left side of her neck. This couldn't be happening as she put her hand up to the scar on her face. She felt dizzy and grabbed onto the table in front of her. "I have to get out of here, this is just too bizarre for me to think about right now" she said. She was still feeling the dizziness but it wasn't as strong anymore. She grabbed her cameras and packed them up and was about to pack up her video camera but decided to leave it for the moment. "Devon could you please take some video footage of the murals with the floor lights on?" she asked her sister. Devon nodded. Diana picked up her camera by and headed for the entrance but stopped as she came abreast of a stairway that ran up the left use of the wall. She climbed the stairs and once at the top she saw three hallways. One went to the left, one to the right, and one that ran down the center of the landing. Curious as to why there was a center hallway, she went down it. She came to two massive doors at the end of the long hall, passing four other doors along the corridor. She pushed the massive doors open. Diana stepped inside the room. It seemed to be a study of some sorts but she had an eerie feeling of having been here before. She walked to the back of the study, behind a massive desk, to another door. She opened it to reveal a bed chamber behind it. Inside the chamber was a massive wooden bed that took up the center of the room. The bed curtains rotted and fallen down. Diana walked over to the bed and examined it. There were bits of fur, velvet and linen on it. She brushed them off to expose the mattress. It too was rotted in several places and full of holes, probably from mice. Diana pulled the mattress off the bed and sure enough some nice scampered away. She smiled. Some of the leather support straps were broken, chewed on by rodents or worn out to the point of being useless. 'They would have to be replaced and a new mattress made before I could sleep in here and a few cats as well' she thought to herself. She turned around in a slow circle to view the rest of the room. Off to one side was a massive fireplace and hanging above it was a painting. The painting was blackened from dust and soot from countless fires in the fireplace and age. She decided to give it to Maris to work on as she was the art historian of the family and had the knowledge to clean it, restore it and preserve it. "I wonder who or what we will find under all that grime" she said quietly to herself. She turned in another directionand saw a table with two chairs on opposite sides. She went over to the table and saw that the chairs were missing their cushions. She ran her fingers over the top to clear off some of the dust and felt raised ridges in the top. They were squares. Diana grabbed one of the pieces of the bedding and wiped the top down, clearing as much of the grime off as possible. Under it she found a chess board inlaid into the top. The squares were made of ivory and dark green jade and separated by braided gold wire. This table by itself was worth a fortune. Diana located the drawer containing the chess pieces and opened it.  Laying in velvet lined compartments were all the pieces. They too were made of ivory and that unusual dark green jade. She picked one up to examine it and found that they were hand carved. She placed the piece back with the others and knelt down to study the table legs very carefully. The table was had carved too. The whole thing was worth probably worth fifty thousand dollars  minimum. This was a treasure in itself and she loved to play. She was surprised that it hadn't been stolen long ago. She closed the drawer and continued looking around the room. There was a bookcase built into the wall by the bed. "How unusual to see you in here instead of in the study" she said to the bookcase as she approached it. Diana felt a draft coming from behind it and smiled. It was a secret door. She looked it over, trying to locate the mechanism to open it and noticed the moulding on the left side was shorter than on the right. She pushed up on it and heard a distinctive click. The door sprang forward and she pulled it open the rest of the way. She couldn't see too far into the opening because it was too dark and the space was full of cobwebs. On her left she saw a hook with a leather pouch hanging from it. She reached in and took the pouch off the hook and shook it. The pouch had been well oiled to protect its contents. She heard the sound of several metal items clinking together. She closed the door and opened the pouch, dumping its contents into her hand. There were at least a dozen keys in her hand. All but one appeared to be door keys. The one key was too small for a normal lock and figured it might belong to the desk in the other room. She went to the bed chamber door and tried all the keys until she found the right one. She closed and locked the door. She noticed the door had a symbol on it and the key had a matching symbol on it. 'Well that will make it easier to figure out' she thought as she looked over the other keys and saw they all had different symbols on them. She held the small key in her hand and went over to the desk and found no key holes in it so she put it in her pocket with the bed chamber key. She did find a drawer just under the top of the desk and opened it. There were folded parchments in it. Several bore wax seals on them. She recognized several as belonging to a then so called king, a Pendragon, claiming that Scotia belonged to him. The others she recognized as belonging to several different clans of Scotland. But there was one very different one and the only way she recognized it was because she had seen it on the murals downstairs. These parchments were old, very old indeed. Diana decided that this is were she will start her research from and closed the drawer. She went to the door and located the key for the study door and locked it. She felt a sense of peace and warmth settle over her and she smiled. She walked downstairs and didn't see anyone around so she went outside. Her family was sitting around and eating their lunch. Devon saw her and asked," Where the hell were you? One minute you were in the great hall and the next you were gone. We had been looking all over for you after you asked me to record video feed of the murals. Diana took a plate of food that had been served her by Marian and sat down. " I went upstairs and found two rooms up there. One was some sort of study-sitting room and behind it was a bed chamber with a hidden room behind a bookcase" she replied and at her sister's pointed look, she added, "No, I didn't go into the hidden chamber. It was too dark and full of cobwebs. I figured it could wait until we bring the rest of the equipment up her and do it safely so I locked the doors. I did find this hanging just inside the door to the secret room and grabbed it" she said holding up the pouch and tossed the pouch to her sister. Devon opened it and saw the keys inside.  "There are symbols on them and apparently they correspond to the different doors in there" Diana responded as Devon took out the keys to study them. Devon smiled and passed the keys around for their cousins to look at. "Maris there's a painting hanging up in the bed chamber that I had been in. I want you to see if you can clean it up and find out what lies under all the soot and grime" Diana said turning her attention to Maris. Maris smiled and nodded. "I'll have to get my supplies here to do it. I don't want to take a chance of damaging it by bringing it down to the manor house, but I can't wait to see it" Maris replied. "There are some very old items up there and are very valuable, so I locked the doors with these two keys. I don't want the workers in there destroying or removing anything. I'm going to supervise the work done in there myself" Diana stated and the others nodded in agreement. "Hey, why don't we spend the night here and explore the rest of the upstairs today? We can always go to the stone circles another time" Marian suggested. Diana nodded around a mouthful of food. "I can go back down and bring all of our gear back up here in a cart. What else would you suggest I get while I'm down there?" Maris asked. "Food, sleeping bags, flashlights and bring up some firewood as well for the kitchen and the fireplace in the great hall. Also bring up the generators and cables so we can have electric for the equipment and your art stuff. And make sure all our safety gear is on the cart as well" Diana said. Devon had written the list down and gave it to Maris so that she wouldn't forget anything. Maris hiked back down to the manor house. The others waited for her  return and discussed the images on the murals. Diana still got chills from seeing her image up there but knew that was impossible because those murals were at least a couple of hundred years old at the minimum. It took Maris two hours to return with the cart loaded with all their gear. "The housekeeper and the cook will be up here in the morning but we have to check out the kitchen for the cook. I found out that Willie is the housekeeper's husband and the cook is their daughter too. The men will be back up here in the morning to help out with anything we need done. Joshie told me that the woman who was here before Great Auntie Matilda, had tried to stay up here in the castle but couldn't. It was something to do with the ghost that supposedly haunts this place. She wound up living down in the manor house until she passed away. Great Auntie Matilda moved back in to the manor house until her lawyer located us and then she passed on with a smile on her face. Her last words were, "It is as it should be."  Then the lawyer contacted us and handed the whole estate over to us" Maris said grinning. They brought all the gear into the great hall. Then they grabbed flashlights and headed through an archway and down a hallway that those long ago servants would bring the food in through. It was a very short walk as they came into a very large kitchen. The four women were astounded by this as most ancient castles had the kitchen in a separate building. This one was inside the castle proper. They looked around and saw some unusual findings in there. There was a massive fire pit for roasting that could hold a whole cow and at the other end was a large steel plate for grilling. The plate that was there on the top was rusted out and laying off to the side was a replacement steel plate. The was also a stack of firewood next to it as well. Another unusual feature was the chimneys that were over the pit and grill areas for venting the smoke out of the kitchen. Diana shone her flashlight up the chimneys and saw that they were clear of any debris or animal nests that would clog it. "Willie and his boy must have been using it until it burned out and brought another to replace it" Marian said about the steel plate on the floor. They all agreed and together they removed the old plate and put the new one in place. They then turned to the preparation area and found another unusual fact, instead of it being made of wood, it was made of stone and the top had been smoothed and highly polished so it gleamed. They could tell that the workers had been using it as evidenced by the folding chairs around it. They made a list of what they would need in the kitchen. Pots, pans, utensils, plates, bowls and cups and they would be set. Joshie walked in carrying a large basket. "Me mum sent me over to put the kitchen to rights fer me sister, Maggie. I have all the necessities. Now let me see, Da said to put  the new pla..." he started to say and saw that the plate was already in place. He scratched his head and saw the rust on the women's hands. "Ye dinna have to be doing that as you being ladies and all" he said smiling sheepishly. "You don't have to worry about that. Were used to working hard, not hardly working" Devon said. Joshie relaxed. "Ye ladies are so different than the one afore yer Great Auntie. She were such a demanding old prig and she had to have everything done her way or not at all" he said remembering back to when he was a small boy and she had arrived. She had been a nasty one and understood why she had never married. She was not going to stay in the manor house, she stated that the castle was hers and that was where she was going to live. She had spent all of two hours up here, giving out orders like a queen. Then she came flying back down to the manor house as fast as her pudgy legs could carry her, screaming about evil ghosts. These lassies have been here most of the day and not one problem so far. Joshie felt the change in the air since they have been here. The castle seems to be happy to have them here and that was when he realized that they belonged here. He grinned broadly as the castle felt warm and inviting for once. As Joshie cleaned and stocked the kitchen, the four women went back into the great hall and up the stairs to the second floor. Diana unlocked the  doors to the study and the bed chamber to show the others her finds. She pointed to the picture above the fireplace and Maris used a sturdy chair to get a closer look at it. "Yeah, this should be no problem to clean up as long as I take it slowly and get the right solution mixed up for the job. I'd say about two to three days minimum to a week at the most" Maris said getting back down, "The oily soot may have preserved it from most of the damage that would occur with something this old." Diana nodded and showed  them the secret chamber. Even their combined high beamed flashlights couldn't cut through the gloomy darkness and the cobwebs. "We're going to need torches and fire extinguishers to clear these webs out and then string up some battery operated lights"Devon stated and Diana agreed. They had gone exploring passages like these before and had come to  a very deep pit at the end once before. It wouldn't be very pleasant to have gone in only to have fallen into like the last one they explored. They closed the door and went out of the bed chamber. Diana relocked the doors as they exited the rooms.