The Poe Baxter Books Series Box Set - volume 1

Chapter 2-1

2

High tea was amazing, and I decided that when I made my millions, I was going to give everyone I love a chance for high tea once a week, at my expense. I loved it so much that I decided I would even pay for the hours of work my people might lose if they came. It was that good.

However, as good as the scones and clotted cream were, they didn’t completely shake the shivery creepiness I’d felt when I saw that sea monster carving. I didn’t believe in the myth, per se, but the fact that someone’s hospitalization was linked, at least in their mind, to a book I was trying to acquire had me a bit nervous. Plus, that monster had been scary, like it was a 2D gargoyle and I was a demon it was meant to repel.

So between the creepy factor, the full belly, and the jet lag, I was more than ready to go to sleep at 6 p.m. when we made it back to our B&B. Unfortunately, Beattie swore that would mess up my system more and insisted we visit a local pub for a pint and some “crisps” before we went to bed. While I wasn’t sure what crisps were exactly, and I was totally sure I would fall asleep if I had more than one drink, I knew Beattie knew best and trudged behind her to a little pub up the block called The Jolly Codger.

As it turned out, the crisps were potato chips, and I was surprised to find that the bacon-flavored ones were particularly good. So good, in fact, that I had a second pint of cider to go with a second bag. It wasn’t just the good food and drinks that were great in the pub, though. I could not get enough of the dogs beneath all the tables. In particular, I was enamored with a Scottish terrier (of course) named Archie, who kept bumping his head against my knee so I’d drop him a chip, er, a crisp.

Even Butterball was welcome in what turned out to be the local taxi drivers’ hangout. A man named Henry saw him in his carrier, introduced himself to my hamster, and then proceeded to carry him around the pub and introduce him to all the fellows. Someone—probably multiple someones—slipped the little fluffball a bunch of cheese, and by the time he made his way back to me, he was passed out with all his feet in the air, like he had died from dairy delight.

But with all of us full and completely knackered, as the young guy at the bar had described the look on my face, both Beattie and I were ready to turn in for the night when a man in the corner began to tell a story about a sea creature called the stoor worm. Instinctively, I began to eavesdrop, and soon I found myself inching closer to hear more easily. When she realized we weren’t actually going to sleep yet, my best friend took my arm, pulled out a wooden chair from a nearby table, and set me right next to the storyteller before planting herself on a window ledge nearby.

The teller’s voice had as thick a brogue as I’d heard yet on our trip, and I kept having to pause my following of the story to figure out a few words from context. But he was a powerful storyteller. The gist of his tale was that this stoor worm was destroying villages and entire islands with its voracious appetite, so a clan leader offered the hand of his oldest daughter in marriage to the man who could kill the monster.

“A lad from me home, Orkney, volunteered for the job,” the storyteller said. “And don’t you know, he struck that worm down with a hoe.”

I quirked my eyebrow at Beattie, who mouthed, “a hoe?” I was just tipsy and exhausted enough to be unable to hold back a small laugh.

The storyteller turned to me. “Aye, lassie. You think that’s funny?” He scowled and then said, “Why do you think no one can find Nessie? Someone took her out with a rake.” He winked and then threw back his head in laughter.

I flushed what I knew must have been a deep red, but then I smiled and eventually started laughing, too, as the entire group around us began to chuckle. These men had suckered the two American women into a great joke, and I loved them for it.

When we all finished laughing, I said to the storyteller, “So the stoor worm, that legend is something people have told for a long time, isn’t it?” I’d come across the story in my research and knew the Icelandic version of the tale was included in the book I was trying to buy.

“Aye,” he said. “Lots of folks tell the tale. Just changes who did the killing and with what.” He winked at me again. “Most Orcadians tell the tale of the boy who carried a burning bit of peat into the beast’s belly and burned it from the inside out.”

“Sort of like Jonah and the whale but with monster hunting,” I said.

The man looked at me askance for a brief moment and then said, “Precisely, lass. Precisely.”

For the next hour, the fatigue was swept from my limbs as I listened to the men around us tell tales of selkies and dragons, ghosts and kelpies from their parts of Scotland. Each of the tale-tellers was different in brogue and style, but every one of them had such a natural flair for the telling that I began to wonder which demographic trait gave them the ability—their nationality or their profession. I expected it was some of both.

By the time Beattie and I dragged ourselves out the door, I was full of culture and story, cider and crisps, and I was certain my first trip to Scotland was not to be my last.

The beds at the B&B felt like clouds, given my level of exhaustion, and I slept hard all night, only waking when Beattie nudged me to say that if I wanted breakfast, I had fifteen minutes. She, of course, was up and dressed, makeup done and hair styled, and already fed. I stumbled downstairs with my hair in the messiest of buns and a sweatshirt thrown over my T-shirt and pj pants.

Our host came to the table in a kilt, knee socks, and a loose white shirt, and images of Jamie Fraser at age seventy came into my head. “Mornin’, lass,” he said in a far stronger accent than he’d had when we met him the day before. “On your first morn here, we always serve our most traditional fare.”

“In your most traditional wear,” I said with a smile.

“Indeed, lass.” He set a plate with sausage, tomatoes, toast, baked beans, and two eggs on it and said, “I suppose you will tell me you’d like coffee.”

I shrugged. “I am American, so yes. Thank you.”

He winked at me and turned back toward the kitchen with a flourish just as Beattie sat down opposite me. “Eat up,” she said with a wink.

The food looked amazing, even if I wasn’t quite used to having tomatoes or beans for breakfast. The crisps from the night before had worn off, however, and I was starving. So I ate every bite and three cups of coffee with heavy cream and sugar.

When I was done, my belly was perfectly full, and my excitement was growing. We were going to the Highlands today. Beattie had her UK driver’s license, and she’d already been out to pick up our rental car, a little Fiat that made my heart skip with even more enthusiasm. It was going to be a great day.

Our host bade us farewell and told us he looked forward to our return in a few days. “Don’t be expecting to see me kilt again, though,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s just to put you in a wee bit of the Scottish spirit. Nessie will do the rest.”

I laughed as we waved goodbye and stepped into our car for the drive north.

Once I got over the expectation that we were going to die every time we got to a roundabout and went to the left instead of to the right like we did in the States, I relaxed and let myself get lost in the gorgeous landscape. It was rugged and vast, but not like the plains of the US, not like anywhere in America that I’d seen anyway. In some ways, it felt like coming home, which was a feeling I couldn’t quite place since I’d never been here before. I figured it must have been some kind of epigenetic memory. My ancestors speaking to me through my cells.

About two hours into our trip, I started seeing signs for Loch Ness, and I begged Beattie to detour west and let us see the water—and hopefully the monster—before we finished our drive. She reminded me, however, that we had an appointment at two. “If you’d gotten out of bed earlier, we might have been able to stop there, but as it is, we’ll have to build that in after our work is done.”

I sighed. She was right, but it didn’t make me any less grumpy. And when, just outside Inverness, I saw signs for Culloden battlefield, my mood worsened. We weren’t going to have time to visit that famous site either, not now, at least, and I didn’t even ask my driver. She had her serious face on, and I wasn’t about to press my luck with her mood. I needed her upbeat attitude to help me through this first client meeting in my new profession as a book acquirer.

My mood began to lift as soon as we entered the older city center at Inverness. A river ran right through the center of town, and I couldn’t stop looking at the bridges that crossed back and forth across its span. It felt magical in a way I couldn’t quite name, but it felt ancient and old. In that place, I found myself quite ready to also believe in sea monsters.

After grabbing a quick sandwich at a takeaway deli—cheese and butter on some of the best bread I’d ever had—Beattie and I headed to our appointment at a local solicitor’s office. Beattie had reminded me that lawyers were called solicitors here. “Don’t get to snickering because of your association with all the crime shows that arrest people for ‘solicitation,’” she cautioned with a firm gaze.

I had watched enough British crime dramas to know this, of course, so Beattie’s caution only served to make me unable to think about anything else as we walked into the small house that served as the solicitor’s office. But then, when I saw the huge, red-headed man behind the desk, I lost all train of thought because he looked precisely how I imagined a Highlander would look, the old TV show with the guy and the sword notwithstanding.

When Seamus Stovall stood up, he towered over me by more than a foot. His shoulders were almost double the breadth of mine, and when he shook my hand, I felt like a child putting my fingers into my father’s meaty palm. He was gentle, though, when he greeted me, and while I now could see why the caber toss was not an impossible feat for some men, I found myself immediately liking the colossal man.

“Thank you for seeing us, Mr. Stovall,” I said, suddenly concerned that there was some form of proper address besides “mister” that I was fumbling.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Baxter,” he said. “Thank you for traveling all the way up here to meet with me about our beloved book.”

I smiled. Any man who called a book beloved was a friend to me. “My absolute pleasure. It’s my first time in Scotland, and I love it here. Feels like a homecoming.”

“Aye,” he said. “You have roots here, I expect.” His smile reached all the way to the edges of his crinkling eyes, but for just a moment, I saw the shrewdness that Adaire had been talking about at the Library. This man was kind but not gullible. That, I could already tell.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’m one of those American mutts that has ancestors everywhere, I think.” I was at a bit of a loss for how to carry the conversation forward from here, so I did what I’d learned in the classroom—I waited. Silence usually did a lot of work if you let it linger.

Unlike my students, however, Mr. Stovall didn’t fidget. He simply reached below the desk between us and brought out a collection of photographs of a blue book, the cover of which was by now quite familiar. As he lay the photos on the desk, I leaned forward, eager to see more of the beautiful volume.

I set the photos down on the table and took a deep breath. “It’s a beautiful book, Mr. Stovall. If all is in order, I see no reason why our client might not be inclined to procure it. Provided that we can come to terms on a price and that we are able to see the actual book, that is.” The one bit of clear advice Uncle Fitz had given me was that I should let the seller know immediately if the book met our standards and confirm that our interest was sincere, but under no circumstances was I to talk money until I had clear provenance.