This emerald veil, p.13
This Emerald Veil, page 13
‘I’ll get in line. Personally, I hope she speaks to the Americans and Chinese first.’
‘Ouch!’ said Garth. ‘Didn’t I mention my mum came from New Hampshire?’
‘Rats,’ said Gill, rising to Garth’s gentle humour. ‘Am I messing up our second date?’
Garth lifted a hand and proceeded to get back to work. ‘When men like us find each other, we don’t waste our lives talking about football! It’s been good to see you again.’
Gill lifted his hand. ‘You too.’
As he walked away, he realised he’d been lifted by meeting Garth. Brimming with intelligence. Unflappably calm. Never judging during an honest exchange of views. And suddenly a thought occurred to Gill. Could Garth be one of the Armour Group’s two remaining members still waiting to be discovered? There’d be a few philosophical debates to be had, but that might not be a bad thing. And while he doubted Garth’s beliefs would align to the others, the man’s energy would be a tonic at a time when the wider group still didn’t grasp its purpose. Pushing back into his run for the return leg, Gill chewed on this and hoped he'd have the chance to talk with this man again.
Chapter 19
Back in the office two days later, Gill was last to arrive. He’d planned to be in early, but Salina had sabotaged his resolve and then beat him to the shower. The atmosphere in the team pen was … businesslike, but it was obvious to Gill that no one had smiles on their faces. Cassy’s absence was putting them all under pressure and he was duty-bound to do something about it.
‘Tony wants to see you,’ said Mhairi without looking up. ‘Next steps on Iona, apparently.’
‘Excellent. Can you tag along? I’d like your input.’
Mhairi carried on typing. ‘You sure? I thought I was relegated to proofreading and handling subscriber complaints?’
Gill kept his calm voice. ‘If Cassy heard you say that you’d walk with a limp for a week.’
Mhairi snorted a laugh and gathered up her laptop. ‘Yeah. I miss her too.’
Gill led the way and after a tap on the door, they strode into Tony’s cramped office. For a few seconds, they both struggled to find space to stand without touching. ‘Is this hoarding addiction something you could get help with, boss?’ Gill said, looking around.
Tony was flicking through his freshly delivered copy of Mys.Scot, issue 32. ‘Fifteen magazines, each producing an issue a month for the past four years. It adds up to a lot of paper.’
‘You know it’s all online,’ said Mhairi. ‘If you need to reference an old copy, you could get it quicker via our subscriber portal.’
‘It’s more than that,’ said Tony. ‘I keep a copy of everything we print to remind myself how far we’ve come. How much we’ve produced. And how much we’ve contributed to human knowledge.’
Gill and Mhairi glanced at each other. ‘You could always chuck out the cat mags.’
Tony finished what he was writing and gesticulated they should both take a seat. ‘How’d things go out west?’
Gill sat forward in his chair. ‘We’ve had an invitation to manage a land survey on Iona.’
Tony looked up. ‘To what end?’
‘They’ve had two significant gold discoveries in the last few months. As a consequence, they're attracting a lot of wildcatters with metal detectors. The manager there wants us to do a survey to demonstrate there won’t be any more.’
‘What? The whole island?’
‘Theoretically, yes. But in practise we’d only concentrate on areas with suitable topography. Plus, beaches and bays where ships would have landed in days gone by.’
‘Still, that would be massive.’
‘A back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests it would be ten acres.’
‘That’s five times what you covered at Killiecrankie, and you thought that one was large.’
‘Ah, but we’re very unlikely to be doing much digging. Most of the ground would get a quick going over with ground-penetrating radar. We might not sink a spade.’
‘And manpower, Gill? That far west, the universities aren’t going to be interested. Especially this time of year.’
‘I’d hire a couple of supervisors, and apart from that the abbey has a strong volunteer base on Iona and Mull.’
‘Still … the logistics.’
‘I was wondering about that,’ said Mhairi quietly. ‘And before anybody asks, I’m not going near the place.’
Tony sat back in his chair and clasped his hands. ‘So, you want to run a difficult survey, and your goal for all this effort … is to find nothing?’
‘Well, my contact on the island hopes we won’t find any more gold,’ said Gill defensively. ‘But it’s Iona, Tony. There are dozens of kings buried there and probably the same number again we don’t know about.’
‘So, your logic is, something will just show up?’
‘Unfortunately,’ muttered Mhairi. ‘Something generally does.’
Gill nodded emphatically and tried to pretend this was an endorsement.
‘Can you even speculate?’ Tony pleaded.
‘There’s probably lots to find,’ said Gill. ‘Early settlements. Evidence for pre-Christian Druidry. Interesting incidental finds.’
‘Or … perhaps,’ said Mhairi, twirling a finger in her hair. ‘A big, fat nothing.’
Gill pressed his hands flat in front of him. He’d walked into this meeting utterly unprepared, and Mhairi wasn’t exactly helping.
‘It’s what Cassy would say,’ she protested.
‘Iona is potentially the most historical site in Scotland,’ Gill began. ‘It would give us a single unifying theme to build a whole magazine around. The life and times of Columba. A new faith sweeping in from Ireland. Vikings and druids, and a culture that attracted a boatload of kings to end up buried there.’ He nodded with more confidence than he felt. ‘This issue will be a cracker. And our gateway to all that is to help Leone with the land survey.’
Tony had leaned back in his chair during Gill’s little speech and now he rested one arm on the table as he tapped the cover of issue 32. ‘Tell you what, Gill. Something needs to change. All your big talk before Christmas doesn’t seem to have crystallised in the latest mag.’
Gill tried not to look stung. ‘Wintertime, boss. Hard to get to a decent story.’
‘Which means I’m prepared to look favourably on this jaunt to Iona. Tell you what. Prepare a budget for me. Cost everything out, and I mean everything. Then put half of that cost on my desk and I’ll have a think about it.’
‘Half of it?’
‘The other half can go on Leone Miller’s desk. If she’s out-sourcing to us, then she should expect to pay her share.’
‘That’s fair,’ said Mhairi, reaching out her forefinger and drawing it down Gill’s upper arm.
Distracted, Gill lifted his shoulders up and down. ‘I can certainly ask.’
‘Great,’ said Tony. ‘Mhairi, would you mind giving us a minute? There’s something I need to discuss with Gill.’
Mhairi stood up, throwing them both a businesslike smile before stooping to gather her laptop from the top of a pile of magazines. Gill noticed Tony studying Mhairi’s face while he waited for her to leave. ‘Do you think Mhairi will stick with us?’ he asked once she’d closed the office door.
‘Hopefully,’ said Gill. ‘Kinda depends on how quickly we recruit for Cassy’s job.’
‘Well, I’ve interviewed the best candidates the agencies have on offer, and I’ll be honest, they’re well below par.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘We’d get better applicants if we were offering the job as full-time, but as I’ve explained, we are where we are.’
‘Do you wanna just hire the best of the bunch and we’ll do what we can?’
‘Before we resort to that, we’ve had one internal applicant. You’ll know her. Judy, on the cat magazine.’
Gill found he’d flinched before he could stop himself. ‘The layout artist? Why would she want to move from a full-time job into a temp position?’
‘Och, she says she’s not enjoying her current job. Says the atmosphere in the team is … abrasive.’
‘I see.’
‘She says she’s always admired the Mys.Scot group and she’d like to transfer across.’
Gill rubbed the bristles on his face with the back of his left hand. He could imagine Larry’s reaction to having someone from the cat mag switch into their team. He decided to play for time. ‘Okay, that might work. Do I get to have a chat with her or are you handing me a fait accompli?’
‘Your call, Gill. How long do you need to think about it?’
Gill sighed. ‘I’ll interview her this week, then I’ll let you know my thoughts on Friday.’
‘Friday?’
‘Yes. I thought for once, I might break with tradition and turn up to the Publisher’s Meeting.’
---
‘There’s this guy,’ said Gill a little later as he and Solomon walked along together. With one trip to the Western Isles behind him and another looming, he’d decided to grab a few minutes with his mentor. ‘A volunteer on Iona. Someone I work with.’
‘What about him?’
‘Everybody thinks he’s so wise and open. He’s a druid, whatever that means. And to be fair, he seems to rub along okay with the Christian community on Iona.’
‘What’s your interest in him?’
‘He has this philosophy, and I’m struggling to get my head around it. He believes there are many gods. And all spiritual roads lead to a table where these gods sit and work together in harmony.’
‘Sounds like a lovely idea,’ said Solomon curtly. ‘I almost wish it were true.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. I mean, let’s make spiritual enlightenment as inclusive as possible.’
Gill peered at her. ‘Sometimes I don’t know when you’re being serious and when you’re being sarcastic.’
‘Let’s worry less about what I think and talk more about your new friend’s ideas. Are you comfortable with them?’
Gill shrugged. ‘My lived experience argues against him. Garth’s benevolent reading of the spiritual realm doesn’t make room for a single God who loves us and created us. Instead, in his eyes, the spiritual realm is run by a committee, and wouldn’t that be terrifying.’
Solomon laughed. ‘Why?’
‘Try working for an institution like a university,’ he said in his grumpiest voice. ‘You’ll understand what I mean.’
‘You fear your druid friend is somehow deluded?’
Gill touched her arm. ‘Don’t hear me wrong. I think it’s completely valid for this guy to seek spiritual enlightenment in whatever way he sees fit.’ He stopped to shake his head. ‘It’s this idea of all-roads-leading-to-god, thing. What if nearly all the roads turn out to be a dead end?’
‘Or worse,’ Solomon added.
‘A good many of them could have a dirty great demon lurking at the end,’ Gill shot back. ‘I took a glance down that particular path. Didn’t like the look of it at all.’
Solomon gathered his arm in hers and steered him along without speaking. ‘Gill. Tell me why you personally are so sure there’s only one God?’
‘Good question,’ he murmured, gathering his thoughts. ‘I suppose, I only hear one guiding voice. The other voices in my life; those of Raphael, and yourself, and others I’ve met, all acknowledge the guiding voice as the ultimate source.’
‘Aura?’
‘Yes, and I understand her to be the physical earthly representation of the one God.’
Solomon patted his arm. ‘I’d agree.’
‘Are we arrogant?’ said Gill. ‘To have the audacity to think that we have found the one true way?’
Solomon groaned. ‘The history of the church is a tapestry of arrogance. And all of humanity paid a high price for that conceit. These days, my experience suggests that those of us who are left are pitied and despised. I don’t know about you, but I find that quite humbling.’
‘And that’s part of the reason I don’t do church.’
‘You say that, Gill. And in a conventional sense, you’re right. But Aura has placed you in a diverse group of people whose life goals are increasingly built around a unified calling. Forgive my boldness, but maybe the Armour Group is what church looks like for you?’
Gill snorted. ‘Or are we a self-serving bunch of people who have stumbled across an ideology on which we all agree?’
‘Not, stumbled, Gill. You’ve all been led. And as for self-serving? I suspect that part of the story isn’t over.’
‘In what sense?’
‘Your friend the druid. And others you meet along all these separate so-called paths to the same God. Maybe they’ll catch the logic in your reasoning.’
‘You’re not asking me to try to convert them?’
‘Proselytise?’ Solomon laughed. ‘No, that’s very old-fashioned. And patently ineffectual. I suspect Aura has thought of something else.’
Chapter 20
Chatted to my boss,’ said Leone without offering a greeting.
‘Good morning to you too.’
‘She stonewalled me at first,’ Leone continued. ‘Said there was no budget for this kind of thing. So, I asked her - where was she planning to find the budget to fence off large parts of the island or compensate local businesses if the trust decides to close it to visitors?’
‘I daresay that wouldn’t be cheap.’
‘In the end, she came round quite meekly. You’ll have our share of the budget transferred to your account on the day the survey starts. And you’ll have a free run of our facilities here if it helps to defray the costs.’
Gill shook his fist in a burst of glee. ‘Excellent. And how do you feel about the other aspect we discussed?’
‘Volunteers?’ said Leone. ‘Oh, that won’t be a problem. I’ve got a staunch group of folks who help out in the abbey or take a tiny salary from us for some part of our upkeep. They’re all yours for two weeks.’
‘You sure? We ran a volunteer dig in Killiecrankie last year and we were down to less than thirty per cent at the end.’
‘If you give them some of the old Gill McArdle patter, I’m sure you’ll keep smiles on their faces, but at the end of the day, Iona is their island. They’ll do it proudly as a matter of civic duty.’
‘Great. And I’ve spoken to some folk I’ve worked with before. They’re young but experienced. They’ll work alongside you and me as supervisors.’
‘People you trust?’
‘These guys helped me find the waterhorses, Leone. They’re the best.’
‘Okay then. I’ll see you in a few days.’
Gill put the phone down and smiled. Leone wanted him to “prove” there was no more gold buried on Iona, but he wasn’t bothered by that. He’d just been handed free rein over the most hallowed island in Scotland, and his mind spun away into personal fantasies about what he might find there.
---
Later that evening, under the glow of streetlights, Gill passed the Broughty Ferry lifeboat station on the last leg of his evening run. Beside him, his running partner eased her speed higher and started to pull away from him. He responded by kicking into a sprint, but she saw him over her shoulder and accelerated again. Certain he didn’t want to be shown up, he pulled out all the stops and painfully began running at full pelt. As the finish line approached, he was gaining on her again. But impossibly, she managed to squeeze out a final burst of speed and ran past their front door so fast she overshot by twenty metres.
‘What’s wrong, McArdle?’ she panted as she ambled back to where he stood, doubled over, struggling for breath. ‘Spending too much time in the office?’
‘I think … Doctor Ahmed … you have the advantage of … spending so much time working in a low oxygen environment … you’ve developed superior lungs.’
Salina wiped her nose with the back of her arm. ‘Superior legs more like. Come on. A bet’s a bet. You get to cook while I get first shout at the shower.’
‘I was kinda hoping we could cook together. You know, you could tell me about your day.’
‘Oh, aye. And does that mean you're sneaking first shot in the shower?’
‘Actually. I think I have an equitable solution to that little problem.’
