The chapel had always been a matter of great pride to the Douglases.
And staring at the historic crucifix, the windows, darkened now by night, the ancient walls, David was grateful to see that the MacGinnises had maintained it as carefully and lovingly as any family member might have done.
But he hadn’t come to savor the beauty of the chapel that night.
Toward the far left of the altar was the iron gateway to the crypts.
The gate slid cleanly open to his touch—the hinges well oiled. The last burial here would have been his own, since his father, by choice, had been buried on his property in America.
Once inside the gate, David set down the steel bar he carried and struck a match, lighting the lantern he’d taken from the chapel. He lifted it high. A second curving stairway with thirty-six steps led down to the crypts below. He descended into the pitch-blackness.
Upon reaching the landing far below, he lifted the lantern once again, looking at the stone corridors that ran in a number of directions from a main hallway. The straight corridor led to steps—twenty-eight of them—at the top of which was a door that opened into the cemetery. But down here, the Douglases themselves were buried, along with priests and servants who had been close to the family. Tombs lined the walls, one for an ancestor who had fought with Montrose against the English, another for an ancestor who had fallen to preserve the life of Mary, Queen of Scots. He paused at the first gateway, where,deep within, the oldest tombs lay, ancestors rotted to bone in their gauzy shrouds. Chilly temperature had preserved what might have been lost, and the insects were kept from their tasks of breaking down the dead by that same cold as well. Services here in the crypt often reminded the living of what was to come.
David paused only a moment, then moved farther down the hallway, seeking his own name upon a vault.
He paused at length. He’d been given quite an extraordinary memorial. Winged angels and serpents guarded the doorway to the crypt where he’d been buried, Latin phrases abounded. Again, an iron gate barred his way to the tomb itself, but like the gate above, it was well oiled.
And unlocked.
He slipped inside.
His tomb sat alone at the rear of the small room, purple drapery over a fine, hardwood coffin. He realized that to the left and right of the room, numerous other coffins and shrouds had been placed as well. Very old burials, some in coffins, some in shrouds, plaques in the artistry of many different centuries proclaiming which Douglas lay upon each shelf. Mary Douglas with five of her children lay to his right, none of them having obtained an age greater than six. They had died by the beginning of the fourteenth century. Laird Fergus Douglas, Mary’s husband, lay to his left, alone with Eugenia, his second wife, and four of their children. A second Laird Fergus, son of Fergus and Mary, lay with his lady, Helena of York, below his father’s shelf. The script chiseled into the stone stated that Fergus the First had fought with William Wallace, while his son, Fergus, had gone on to fight with Robert the Bruce. Despite the age of the corpses, they were frighteningly well preserved, their features still painfully apparent beneath the gauze of their shrouds.
He had assumed he might have been buried near his mother’s tomb, but she was farther down the hallway, nearer thestairs, and there had been two memorials built to her memory, one above ground, and one below.
Despite the fact he lay with ancestors who had been noble warriors, this tomb was now dedicated to him.
And he did not lie within it.
“So, my dear kin, who does lie with you here?” he asked aloud.
He walked forward then, removing the purple sheet from the coffin. He studied the closure of the coffin, then took his bar and began to wedge it beneath the lid. The coffin had been well sealed, and it was difficult to find a wedge, but he kept at his work, beads of perspiration breaking out upon his forehead. Eventually, the lid creaked and groaned, giving way to his efforts.
The noise was loud in the night, in the silence of the crypts.
He was quite certain that it would have sounded like a human moan, reverberating throughout the castle.
He needed to hurry. He set the bar down and lifted the lid of the coffin, wrenching free what remained of the nails. He set the lid aside.
And he stared down in horror at what lay within the coffin.
At his own corpse.
Then he heard the noise.
Footsteps.
He paused. Listened.
Aye, someone was coming. Slowly. Very slowly. Moving down the steps that led to the main corridor of the crypts.
He swiftly doused his lantern.
Shawna broughta single candle from her room, sheltering the flame from the drafts within the castle by cupping her hands around it.
She sped down the stairs silently on her slippered feet, pausing on the second floor to be certain that she heard nothing.
She hurried on down to the great hall then, searching it out with her candle held above her head, trying to be quite certain that she wouldn’t run into another of her kin.