* * *
“Let the Frayley adventure begin!” We crouched as we ran across the back yard headed tae the ground-level basement window. He put his finger to his lips and mouthed, wheesht.
He tried to slide open the window. It was locked, of course. He cut a hole in the screen, peeling it away from the frame. I jammed my knife into the wood between the windowpane frames and jimmied it, sliding the knife back and forth while he pulled on the bottom. Finally I got the latch flipped and he slid open the window.
We stilled and listened with our backs against the house.
Fraoch said, “All right, I am goin’ in.” He climbed through the window, carefully dropped down to the table, dislodging some things, and perched balancing on the edge, trying to keep stuff from sliding off in every direction. When it was quiet and clear, he dropped from the table to the floor. He took one step, immediately tripped over something, and stumbled against the desk with an “oof.”
From somewhere in the house a dog barked.
I couldn’t bear to look, muttering, “Please please please…” It was very quiet in the house. A pile of papers slid to the floor. I stuck my head in the window to see in the moonlight, Fraoch up against the desk, totally still, with the dog in front of him, wagging its tail.
When the dog saw me it cocked its head.
Fraoch whispered, “Good boy,” fished a treat from his pocket, fed it to the dog, and patted it on the head. Without taking his eyes off the dog, he felt behind him for the chest, pulling it slowly into his arms.
The dog whimpered. Fraoch tossed it another treat.
Sideways walking, he slowly brought the chest over and passed it through the window. He fed another treat to the dog.
He whispered, “Should I take the vessel too?”
A light went on upstairs.
I said, “Shhh.”
I dug in the messenger bag for the stack of things Lady Mairead gave us to leave for Joe Munro. I passed it through the window with shaking hands. In it were a small bundle of very old letters, wrapped in an ancient faded-crimson ribbon, an old journal that once belonged to the Earl of Breadalbane, and a newer letter, sealed with Lady Mairead’s wax seal. She wouldn’t tell me what the bundle of old letters were, just that they were the most important, formerly missing, priceless letters in the history of the world.
I had asked her what her letter said, and she said she had explained that Finch and Magnus and Fraoch were brothers, because she had been thinkin’ on it and there was more tae gain from the connection than tae lose. The rest of it she said was none of my business, except that she said her letter explained everything.
I would have broken the seal and read it on the drive over, but without a way to steam a seal open, or reseal it, there would have been a broken seal. And I was already breaking about ten laws. I felt pretty sure that if tampering with the mail was an offense, breaking a wax seal on Lady Mairead’s private correspondence was probably deserving of the death penalty.
Fraoch tiptoed over and placed the pile on the desk.
The light in the outer-room’s stairwell went on. A young woman’s voice from up the steps called down in a whisper, “Howard! Stop barking!”
Howard whimpered, looking from Fraoch, who was up against the wall just inside the door, and then at the stairs. I hid, praying, peeking, as Fraoch tossed the dog another treat. Then the dog trotted out of the office to go meet the voice.
The light clicked off.
Fraoch waited a minute longer, crept to the window, climbed up on the table, and dislodged a pile of books. They slid across the table and down to the floor.
He jumped-leapt onto the windowsill, so his front-half was in the yard, his back-half, dangling in Joe Munro’s office. I grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled, he whispered, “Tis nae helpin’.”
He grasped the side of the window, heaved himself through, sat up, pulled his shirt down, and slid the window closed.
I glanced in and saw that damn dog sitting in the doorway, his head cocked to the side, his tail wagging slowly.
Fraoch leaned the screen up against the window, picked up the chest, whispered, “Go!” and we raced across the lawn to the woods. We barreled through the trees, crashing through the underbrush, until we got to the spot where our Jeep was parked.
I said, as I dropped into the seat, “Och!”
“Och aye, twas a frightenin’ thing, but we hae what we went for, except… we dinna get the sword, I had my eye on the sword.”
I laughed. “You’re jealous that Finch Mac got a sword from Donnan and you didn’t?”
“Aye. I am so jealous, so so so verra jealous.”
