With a delicate touch, she opened the page, folded twice, to study it.
“When I saw that page,” he said, “it made me think of the roster in the folio. Can you read it?”
“Not a roster,” she said. “It looks like a genealogy. Perhaps of your family.” She smoothed the page, and gasped. “Aye, here—Aedan mac Brudei, see the name? And—oh!” She gasped, reading. “Her name is here too. Liadan, Daughter of the Bear. And—oh, dear heavens,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Aedan leaned to look.
“Listen to this. ‘Liadan, Daughter of the Bear, wife of Aedan mac Brudei, mother of Cunedda, Niall, Diarmid, Aengus, Ivor, Brithnic, Eiric, and Ealga the Beautiful.”
“Does that mean—she had eight children with Aedan mac Brudei?”
Christina nodded slowly. “If so, then she did not die as a young bride.”
“Unless she fell into that deep sleep when she was already a mother.”
Christina shook her head as if bewildered. When she looked up at him next, he saw the shine of tears in her eyes. “Aedan, look.”
“My love, I cannot read Old Irish,” he reminded her.
“It says, ‘Liadan, natural daughter of the Bear, thedux bellorumArtorius.’”
“Arthur was her father?” Stunned, he peered at the elegant, tiny Celtic lettering.
“It certainly seems so. Natural daughter—she would not be legitimate, but that would not matter much in that era. Oh, Aedan!” A tear slid down her cheek. “There is more—’Aedan mac Brudei of Dundrennan and his wife, Liadan, natural daughter of the Bear, dux bellorum Artorius, sit as elders in our council.’ She sat among warriors—she would have the right. Women sometimes trained as warriors in Celtic societies.”
“So she lived to be an elder. She did not languish and die young after all.” He frowned, thinking. “If she had the blood of Arthur in her veins, then that means—”
“That your ancestors carried that blood through to you.” She took his hand.
“It also means—that the legend of Dundrennan is wrong.” Aedan felt his throat tighten. “Liadan did not die tragically, as the stories claim. She lived a full life.”
“If the legend is right about her illness, she must have recovered,” Christina said.
“My God. So all this time, over generations, we only knew part of that story.”
She smiled through tears. “His magic worked. He brought her back.”
“Magic?” Aedan tilted his head, puzzled.
“The lines he wrote in the margin of the folio pages were a charm spell to bring back her wandering soul. I realized it as I read it.” Her lip trembled, her voice caught. “It worked—somehow it worked. She lived. He loved her so much,” she added, sniffling. “I just feel it is so.”
“He loved her more than life,” he said. “Nothing could separate them.” He drew her into his arms to hold her close, then kissed her again, quickly, gently, and helped her lie back on the wedged pillows.
“We’d best put this away,” he said, taking the book and silver box to rewrap them.
“Aedan,” she said slowly, “you know about the treasure trove law that governs historical finds on Scottish soil.”
“Aye,” he said. “What we have found will go to the museum. I only hope we can keep the house and estate.”
“I think in cases of heritable goods, treasure trove does not fully apply.”
He raised his brows in surprise. “Heritable goods?”
“The book contains a record of your ancestors, and helps to establish that the treasure belonged at least in part to Aedan mac Brudei—and you are his direct heir through generations. So the treasure belongs to you, and to the estate of Dundrennan. The government will not claim all of it in that case. We will need lawyers to confirm it, but I think it is so.”
“Dear Lord.” He glanced at the reliquary, then at her again. “But the gold of Dundrennan should belong to Scotland, and the whole of Britain if it involves Arthur.”
“No matter what is decided, your troubles are over, I think.”
