Scottish Rite by Stephen Penner

Author:Stephen Penner [Penner, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-12-21T23:00:00+00:00

24. Du Café

The following Tuesday found Maggie at work diligently yet comfortably in an Aberdeen coffee shop rather far from the university. She had spotted it on one of her bike rides and had chosen it for her study location that day precisely because of its distance from the campus. Although it was populated with a steady stream of business people who regarded her entrenched presence in one of the café's corners with a mixture of curiosity and irritation, the café allowed Maggie to toil away in relative anonymity without locking herself away from all human contact.

The visit to Clava Cairns had rejuvenated her desire to proceed with her studies and translate the Dark Book. She had arrived home Sunday afternoon and visited pleasantly enough with her aunt and uncle, telling them all about her trip, before spending the remainder of the evening working on the translation of the dialect into standard Old Gaelic. But she had stayed up too late, and found herself genuinely disappointed when she woke up late and had missed breakfast. Monday morning breakfast with Iain.

In her disappointment, she had worked even harder that day on her translation and by Tuesday morning had almost completed the last of it. Although not quite finished, she had decided to heed the adage 'A change is as good as a rest,' and proceeded to the second stage of her project: translating from Old Gaelic to Modern Gaelic. She probably could have skipped this step on her way to an English translation, but she felt it would help deepen her understanding of the text, and she would end up doing it anyway, the Old Gaelic words evoking their Gaelic descendants in Maggie's mind well before the English counterparts could be located in her synapses. Another advantage of this subsequent stage was that she could work with the notebook full of the standard Old Gaelic translation on one side, a fresh notebook for the Modern Gaelic on the other, dictionaries in the middle—and the Dark Book tucked safely out of sight in her backpack.

This enabled her to pursue her work in more public settings such as the café, without risking the book being seen by anyone. She still did not want Macintyre to know of its existence. She had not yet divulged its existence to Ellen or Kelly. Even her aunt and uncle were ignorant of the treasure she kept hidden in their upstairs bedroom. And then there was that bookseller.

"Devan Sinclair."

Maggie looked up with a start at the dapper bookshop owner who had suddenly appeared over her table. As usual, he was dressed head and shoulders above his contemporaries in the coffee shop, not a blond hair out of place and mustache-less goatee perfectly trimmed. A regular Scottish GQ.

"Do you remember me, Miss Devereaux?"

His smile pulled pleasantly at his face, but also drew attention to the scar running down the length of the left cheek. Maggie had forgotten about the scar and peered at it with detached interest, noting that its broad, mottled path suggested a burn rather than a clean slice.

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