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 VACANCY BOOK TWO:
THE WAYWARD DEED

A. K. CAGGIANO
Copyright © 2021 A. K. Caggiano

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or

portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

ASIN: B093MKD5J3

The Wayward Deed is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,

and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental, and would, frankly,
be pretty damn wild, don’t you think?

Cover Art by Eerilyfair Design

First printing 2021 by A. K. Caggiano

For more, please visit:

http://www.akcaggiano.com
 ALSO BY A. K. CAGGIANO

Standalone Novels:
The Korinniad – An ancient Greek romantic comedy
She’s All Thaumaturgy – Is it a fantasy quest or a 90s teen comedy?
Trick question, it’s both!
The Association – A supernatural murder mystery

The Vacancy Trilogy:

Book One: The Weary Traveler
Book Two: The Wayward Deed
Book Three: The Willful Inheritor (coming 2021)
 For Andy (again),
for tolerating all these idiots
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 - TAMPERING
CHAPTER 2 - FOOLISH
CHAPTER 3 - VERY IMPROBABLE
CHAPTER 4 - UNDIGNIFIED
CHAPTER 5 - RECIPROCATE
CHAPTER 6 – SINCE, LIKE, FOREVER
CHAPTER 7 - SOURCE
CHAPTER 8 - NO BIGGIE
CHAPTER 9 - DUMB THING
CHAPTER 10- MODEL RESIDENT
CHAPTER 11 - THE RIGHT HANDS
CHAPTER 12 - BENT THE TRUTH
CHAPTER 13 - HONEY
CHAPTER 14 - CONGRATULATIONS OR CONDOLENCES
CHAPTER 15 - RESPONSIBILITY
CHAPTER 16 - CONTROL
CHAPTER 17 - JUST A POTION
CHAPTER 18 - A RELIEF AND A DELIGHT
CHAPTER 19 - PEACE OFFERING
CHAPTER 20 - TWO DRAGONS, ONE SWORD
CHAPTER 21 - CONTEXT CLUES
CHAPTER 22 - TRICKED
CHAPTER 23 - A BAD LOOK
CHAPTER 24 - SOMEBODY’S BEDROOM
CHAPTER 25 - CHARMED BLOOD
CHAPTER 26 - FAVOR
CHAPTER 27 - SHOW OFF
CHAPTER 28 - TINY
CHAPTER 29 - PEEK
CHAPTER 30 - NOTHING
CHAPTER 31 - NOWHERE
CHAPTER 32 - HIGH SCORE
CHAPTER 33 - A LITTLE WHILE
CHAPTER 34 - INTO THE BLIZZARD
CHAPTER 35 - GONE
CHAPTER 36 - SECOND BEST
CHAPTER 37 - REUNION
CHAPTER 38 - FRIEND
 CHAPTER 1
TAMPERING

Lorelei Fischer stood at the front desk of Moonlit Shores Manor

engrossed in a book. This book was magical, which is to say it was
exactly like every other book in existence, but also exactly unlike
most other books in existence in that it was actually, honest to the
gods, enchanted. Though a number of books are enchanted with
moving words and moving pictures and sometimes even moving
pages, this was something Lorelei wouldn’t have believed if she’d
been told two months prior. But she also wouldn’t have believed
being told she was about to run out on her own wedding up until
about an hour before she actually did exactly that, so really, she had
come quite a long way in the believing department.
But anyway, back to the book. Its pages depicted Lorelei’s place
of employment, its layout in delicately-lined detail from multiple
angles by floor, type of quarters, prevailing action, occupancy, and
then a fifth way that she hadn’t quite figured out yet. That last one
always seemed to show up when her hands weren’t quite as clean
as they ought to be when she touched the cover. Currently, the book
was open to a spread of the common chambers, the main floor’s
sitting room, the dining room, the conservatory, the foyer and
stairways up to private sleeping quarters, the kitchen, and even the
boring bleakness of the white room. The configuration of the
chambers, at least on this level, were familiar, but when she flipped
to a different page filled with bedrooms or another with the winding
corridors of the basement, the image was always just slightly
different. That was the problem when inhabiting living architecture:
the plans of the place moved as well, and committing the whole
thing to memory was only possible in that as soon as you learned it,
it was outdated.
 But Lorelei wasn’t committing it to memory just then. She instead
peered closely at two figures that were traversing the basement
corridors. The guest book to Moonlit Shores Manor showed the
reader where its occupants were at any given moment too, but the
details were obscured, and the forms were nothing more than little
hash marks with arms and legs and, when warranted, a tail. She was
so focused on the two as they crossed the threshold into a bedroom,
that she barely registered the creak of the oak front door, so similar
to the manor’s typical if enigmatic sighs and grunts. Lorelei’s
demeanor shifted from curiosity to a quiet yet intense annoyance as
she watched the figures in the book, and because of this she also
did not notice the heavy footfalls coming into the foyer right toward
her.
This was all exceptionally stupid considering how close Lorelei
had recently been to dead and that the someone who had almost
made her that way had equally heavy footfalls too. She did have a
certain amount of trust in the man who told her it would be weeks
before that threat could even deign to come back, though. And that
trust persisted even when her irritation with him spending all of his
damn time in the basement with somebody else was piquing.
It was only when a fat stack of mail was stuffed between her
nose and the guest book that Lorelei was startled back into the
realization that she was meant to be working which included
watching the front door and excluded spying. Usually.
Helena was right on time, as always, wearing half a grin out of
obligation and half a grimace out of compulsion. Lorelei was used to
her wild, grey hair and the fact she stood several feet taller than
average, but the wings impressed her each time, even when folded
gracefully behind the mail carrier’s back.
Lorelei attempted to exchange pleasantries as she did every
morning despite getting nowhere and handed off the outgoing mail.
Helena ignored her, but did offer the alalynx a treat from her satchel.
The two were kindred spirits of a sort, at least Lorelei liked to think
of it that way—each was one thing, a person and a cat, and each
had their own set of feathered wings.
 The alalynx chirped, pupils constricting as she munched the
kibble right from the mail carrier’s hand, the only thing that truly
made Helena grin, and then the woman left. Lorelei rubbed the
winged cat’s head, received a contented purr in return, and then the
alalynx curled herself back up on the counter. She was pretty
standard as far as cats went with a whitish coat and light grey points
to her paws, tail, snout, and ears, but the dappled grey wings were
getting much bigger and threatened to assist her with feline mischief
as she grew. Thankfully, the alalynx was also embracing a feline
sleep schedule and managed to stay mostly out of trouble for about
sixteen hours a day.
Lorelei flipped through the newly-delivered mail. Mr. Chebix had
yet another letter in a teal envelope that made her fingertips go
numb, the bill for water, sewage, and spent jinxes from the
municipality of Moonlit Shores was a tad thicker than usual, a giant
box that jingled had come for Ziah from someplace called YuleCo,
and the manor was already receiving pixie control advertisements for
next spring despite that the first snow had yet to fall.
Snow. The days were growing cold, and though Lorelei couldn’t
point out exactly where she stood on a map, if anywhere, she knew
Moonlit Shores would have snow—the almanac Ren had given her
was clear about that. There would be blizzards too, and during a
blizzard there would be an attempt on her life, another thing made
clear, if slightly less so, via a premonition given to her by a
clairvoyant witch and television host called Betsy Jo LaReaux. To be
entirely fair, she hadn’t said that attempt was coming this year, but
with the way things had been going…
Lorelei shivered, shaking the memory of Betsy Jo gripping her
hand and drawling into her ear about her future out of her head.
She quickly trashed the pixie removal advertisement before Bur or
any of the other faeries could accuse her of extermination and
picked up the last package to be sorted, a perfectly square box
wrapped in weighty, brown paper, and her anxiety was replaced with
curiosity which is, for all intents and purposes, quite a good
distraction.
 The last piece of mail had an emerald ribbon tied about it, under
which a card was secured. If it weren’t for the water staining the
card’s outside, it would have looked as if it belonged on the set of a
Christmas special. A gift, she supposed, but quite early.
The name and short note on the exterior of the card were
illegible, but inside she read:

Tampering by any other than the intended target will earn the
meddler grave disappointment and a gruesome curse.

Helena had already gone, but it would have been unlikely she
could, or even would, clarify for whom the box was meant. Lorelei
turned it over once in her hands and shrugged. They could figure
out the intended recipient later, and so she went to secure it in the
office behind the desk just as the door opened on its own and Ziah
emerged.
“Schedule’s kind of tight,” Ziah was saying, her phone just visible
up to her ear beneath her mass of black, wavy hair. She was dressed
in a pencil skirt and heels, her winged eyeliner sharp enough to cut
if you ended up in her way when she was trying to get things done.
“I may have an opening on a Sunday.”
Lorelei shifted to the side, but Ziah didn’t go for the guest book.
Instead, she laid out her fuchsia planner on the counter and flipped
through its color-coded, post-it note riddled pages.
“How about seven Sundays from this weekend?” She chuckled
then clicked her tongue. “Well, I did say a Sunday. I know it’s cutting
it close, but that’s the last available.” Her amber eyes found Lorelei,
and she made an incredulous face as if to say, Can you believe this
asshole? Then she injected hospitality-worthy cheeriness into her
voice. “Wonderful, I’ll see you then.”
She jotted a quick note on the pages for early January, drawing a
little heart with an arrow through it beside the name. Lorelei
assumed it was a private matter, and with Ziah’s heritage as a
succubus, it was probably doubly so.
“Never ends, huh?” Ziah snapped her planner closed, and her
eyes fell on the box in Lorelei’s hands. “What’s that?”
 Right, the box—she’d nearly forgotten as her mind ventured
awkwardly elsewhere. “A gift, I think. The to and from got ruined
though.” Lorelei handed it off.
“Oh, well, this is lovely.” Ziah’s voice, even when she was
shouting orders, was best described as a purr. It had a catlike,
arresting quality that made one listen, and another enchanted
quality that made one obey. But this time, as she turned the
package over in her hands, she sounded a little less like herself.
“I bet it’s for you.” Lorelei leaned on the counter, twirling the end
of her brunette ponytail around a finger. “Accidentally made another
one fall in love.”
Ziah didn’t respond despite that this usually made her laugh.
Instead, she examined the package a bit more carefully, lifting it to
her ear. She shook it, and there was a tiny rattle.
A guest passed through the foyer headed to breakfast, and
Lorelei offered him a greeting, but Ziah didn’t so much as glance at
him which was odd considering how handsome the warlock was and
the comments she made to Lorelei about where he could store his
wand after he’d checked in a few days prior. But when he was gone,
Lorelei realized it was perhaps the first time the two had been alone
in quite a while—Ziah had been very busy lately, studying, she often
said, and taking calls and appointments.
She leaned over the desk to glance up at the catwalk where the
staircases to the guest rooms met above them, but it was as empty
and quiet as the foyer. “Ziah, I have a sort of strange question for
you.”
Ziah gave the box another shake and hummed at her
inattentively.
Lorelei took a breath. She hadn’t told Ziah any of what had
happened with Conrad and Byron a week prior, the almost getting
stabbed in the throat thing, the brothers battling to near-death
thing, not even the seeing Arista’s hidden banshee powers thing,
and the truth was, she sort of didn’t want to. It seemed to make all
of it, even the continued looming threat of Byron out there,
somewhere, waiting, a little less real if it was all left unsaid. As time
ticked on and things remained peaceful around the manor, the whole
experience faded just enough to feel like something that was done
and over as opposed to something hanging above all of their heads
like a magicked-up chandelier in a poltergeist-filled manor.
Though not talking about it could be equally taxing especially
when the one person who really should have been talking to her
wasn’t. But Conrad was apparently too busy, locked away in his
stupid bedroom with his stupid girlfriend probably doing something
equally stupid. Lorelei didn’t know, of course, that keeping her
mouth shut could possibly be helpful since, according to the Big
Three Rules of Magic, speaking something aloud gave it more power,
but even if she did know, she would probably still be pissed off
about the whole thing.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Lorelei began, “let’s say there was a
human here, in this world, in danger of being killed by a warlock
who could, I don’t know, convince a piece of wood to stab that
human in the throat with his mind or something ridiculous like that.
What could that human learn to do to protect her—or him—self?”
Ziah tilted her head, eyes still on the box. “Learn?”
“Yeah, like could I—or whoever—learn to also make sharp
objects fly through the air?”
“Huh?” Ziah blinked as if seeing her for the first time. Her eyes,
glassy a second prior, sharpened. “It’s not really possible for humans
to learn magic, not without a spark. You could use a potion that
someone else made, or maybe some kind of conduit, but
organically? Well, you’ve either got the spark or you don’t.”
“What about, like, lycans and stuff?” She said the word carefully,
checking that Grier wasn’t about to come bounding through the
door. “They used to be human, and they learned to turn into dogs.”
“Dogs? Lycans are hexed to become wolf-human hybrid beasts.
That’s a curse, and trust me, you don’t want to be cursed. As far as
I know, humans born without a spark can’t ever really do magic.”
Ziah’s attention fell back on the box, turning it over in front of her
face, her words trailing off. “Except maybe through very dark
means.”
“Dark means?”
 “I’ve heard theories.” She was very quiet as she poked at the
velvety bow. “They talk about it sometimes in the nether. The other
daeva, the ones who like to make deals with humans, they have
ways. Gruesome, frightening, deadly—wait, why?” Her head snapped
back up, amber eyes narrowing on Lorelei. “You’re not afraid of us,
are you, Lore?”
“No!” Lorelei raised empty hands. “Not you guys, not at all. I
mean, this isn’t about me anyway, it’s just sort of a general
question.”
That had been at least half true, a way of speaking at which
Lorelei had gotten very good. She was the only human in Moonlit
Shores as far as she knew, a town full of and catering to
otherworldly beings, charmed folk they were often called. If it were
discovered a human had infiltrated their hidden world, the local
authorities would immediately throw her out—or worse—but fear of
Ziah or most of her other coworkers at the bed and breakfast wasn’t
a concern, especially not with the glamour the faery, Bur, had given
her to mask her “human stench” to the few who could sniff her out.
No, it was just the warlock called Byron Rognvaldson who had nearly
slit her throat last month she was concerned about, but she had
promised Conrad she would keep the fact his homicidal brother had
shown up after a fifteen-year absence a secret.
“Anyway,”—she smiled, gesturing again to the package—“who do
you think it’s for?”
It wasn’t usually so easy to redirect her, but Ziah’s eyes fell back
on the box immediately and glazed over.
When she said nothing, Lorelei waved a hand before Ziah’s face,
asking if she felt all right. When she did not respond again, Lorelei
reached out and plucked the box from her hands.
Ziah lunged for the parcel, and Lorelei threw herself back against
the counter. Gasping, Ziah covered her mouth, eyes wide. “That’s
not good,” she whispered.
When the manor’s front door creaked open this time, Lorelei was
much more perceptive, and she shifted a step away from Ziah. Grier,
Moonlit Shores Manor’s bellboy and resident surly teen, tugged off
his skullcap to reveal messy dark curls stuck to his brow with sweat
despite the chill that blew in behind him. He rested his axe against
the exterior and dragged himself inside, shrugging his coat off onto
the floor.
Ziah cleared her throat, and at that he picked the coat back up
and put it on the rack right beside where he’d dropped it. “Come
here, please.” She curled a finger at him, and with a frown, he
traipsed up to the other side of the counter, complaining about it
being lunchtime. He was starving, literally, he said, to death. She
ignored him and gestured to the box, instructing Lorelei to hand it
off, so she did.
Grier balanced the parcel in one hand and rolled his good eye.
Even though the other one didn’t have a pupil, all milky colored with
a scar running through it from forehead to cheek, it looked equally
annoyed. “Now what?”
Ziah touched a finger to her lips. “Strange. And you didn’t feel
anything when you held it either, Lore?” Before she could answer
that no, the box was just a box, Ziah snapped back at Grier, “Stop
that!”
A corner of the paper had been torn away as the boy held the
box up to his face, and he jerked back when Ziah reached over the
counter for it. The two stared at one another for a long moment
during which Lorelei felt just enough dread settle into her stomach
to know that she should have done something a second sooner, and
then Ziah hurdled right over the desk. Grier jumped back with a
quickness he certainly didn’t have seconds before, crushing the
package to him. The alalynx shot her head up and trilled.
Eyes wide, Lorelei darted around the edge of the front desk, but
Grier was already sprinting for the dining room where the breakfast
buffet was being picked at by tables full of guests. Ziah was flying
after, all sense of decorum dropped as she lost a heel in her clamor
over the desk. They burst through the room, Lorelei following and
muttering apologies to the dwarf that had been barreled over, and
continued on through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
Dishes crashed to the floor as Grier collided with the tiny form of
Hana, carrying a tray of food to refill the buffet. Ziah’s bare foot
landed in scrambled eggs, and she went skidding into the two,
knocking them all into a pile. Lorelei stopped short just inside the
doors, and they swung shut behind her.
Ando popped his head out from around hanging pans, both sets
of his arms crossed. He shot an angry look at Lorelei as if this were
somehow her fault, ignoring the apology she attempted to sputter
and instead insisted they all needed to clean that up and then get
the nether out of his kitchen. But the others were deaf to his
shouting, Grier and Ziah blaming one another for the mess and
slipping on slices of soggy toast as they tried to get to their feet.
Hana, though, was not scurrying about and cleaning up in her
typical way. She was instead sitting on the floor, a piece of bacon
draped over her shoulder, syrup streaking her pin-straight hair, and
her dark eyes trained on the package that had landed in her lap. She
held it up, marveling at the thing, crushed slightly but still intact.
Lorelei’s eyes widened, watching as the girl’s hand went for the
bow to pull the whole thing loose, grave curse running through her
mind. She tried to slip between Grier and Ziah to snatch it away, but
the two were right in each other’s faces, snarling and blocking her
in. There was a flicker of fire that alighted in one of Ziah’s hands,
and then Grier’s form shifted so that a massive beast that was not
wholly unlike a dog but much bigger was growling from the spot
where Grier had just been standing. “Hey!” she shouted, looking
from one of them to the other and throwing her arms out. “Calm
down!”
“Bad magic.” Ando said in a voice that boomed into the kitchen
ethereally, loud enough to make them all look. He stood behind
Hana, having plucked the box away with a set of tongs, holding it at
arm’s length. “You three,” he said with the authority of a chef whose
kitchen had been violated for the first and last time that morning,
“clean this up now. And you,”—he flicked the package over the
others, and Lorelei caught it—“keep that away from them. It’s calling
to the strongest being it can find. Hide it.”
She turned to leave, but Ando’s voice pierced the air once more.
“Not in your room,” he said as if knowing exactly what she was
about to do. “Somewhere none of them will find it.”
 Lorelei swept out the double doors, the package tight against her
chest and her head down as she hurried back through the dining
room. Half of the manor’s employees didn’t know she was human,
and Ando was on Team In The Dark; he believed she was a fae
being which was a bit different than being one of the charmed folk,
so his trust in her over the others with the box perhaps made a sort
of sense. She didn’t know what he truly was either, or Hana, his
niece, for that matter, but he seemed wise enough to know what he
was talking about and strong enough to keep the others at bay while
she absconded with the package.
Her sigh of relief caught in her throat when she realized the foyer
was no longer empty. Arista stood at the front desk, her tight frown
drawn even tighter and frownier than usual. Beside her, the alalynx
was now sitting and glaring at the woman contemptuously, ever
Lorelei’s faithful companion. “I just had to check someone in.” Each
word was like a cuff to the ear.
If there were someone at the manor Lorelei actually feared, it
was Arista, half witch, half banshee, all boss. She had no idea Lorelei
was human either and would have hated her for it. But Arista wasn’t
scary because she could bind you up with magic or drain you of your
blood—though those things were possible, and Lorelei had
experienced tangentially the horror she could bestow—Arista was
just sort of mean.
Lorelei stuffed the box up the front of her sweater while the
woman adjusted her glasses. “Sorry,” she mumbled and hurried back
behind the desk.
“I’d like to see you in my office after lunch, if you can find the
time.” Arista swept off into the sitting room, and Lorelei panicked,
but there wasn’t a long enough moment for her to consider what
that really meant before the front door opened again.
A tall figure entered with fair hair and a long coat. He pulled
sunglasses off and blinked into the foyer, taking in the space as most
did without noticing the person behind the counter right away. He
examined the massive iron chandelier hanging from the second story
ceiling, flickering with thick candles that never dripped, the matching
set of French doors inlaid with frosted glass on either side of the
foyer that opened into cozy spaces, the damask wallpaper, the
walnut wainscoting, and the twin staircases running up on either
side of the reception counter all before his steely eyes finally fell on
her. She grinned a little wider, and he made a beeline for the desk.
“Welcome to Moonlit Shores Manor, sir. Do you have a
reservation?”
His brow wrinkled, and she recognized that look immediately.
“No worries, you don’t need one; we always manage to find the
space for everyone. How long did you plan to stay with us?” She
shifted the box under her sweater and used her free hand to thumb
through the guest book to the sign-in page.
“Oh, well?” His eyes darted across the foyer at a noise in the
other room, then came back to settle on the alalynx who was
stretching and fluttering her dappled, grey wings. “I’m not actually
sure.”
“That’s fine, we have lots of indeterminates,” she chirped just as
the doors to the dining room swung open to reveal Grier and Ziah
looking irked and miffed in kind. Lorelei glared at them, and the two
froze. “If you could just fill this out for me, I can find you a room.”
She flipped the book toward him single-handed, and Grier made his
way across the foyer, offering to take his bags. The teen’s sweater
had a curious, bright red stain across it that looked not exactly like
the raspberry jam it was. The guest looked him up and down.
“There was a little mishap in the kitchen.” Lorelei waved Grier away.
“Maybe you should go clean up, and put the axe away while you’re
at it.”
The guest watched him go before carefully taking the pen and
filling out his information. Lorelei flipped the book back toward her,
read off his name, Jordan Carr, and thumbed through the pages to
find the room the manor had chosen for him while Ziah came to
stand behind the counter.
Before Ziah could get close, Lorelei snapped the book shut and
pushed it into her friend’s arms. “Thanks for watching the desk, I’ll
take our new arrival to his room.” She grabbed the key from where it
had materialized in the velvet-lined shadow box on the wall and
flitted off.
 The man’s bags were light, probably enchanted to be despite
being filled to the brim, and she hastened up the stairs with him
behind, eyeing the foyer to be sure no one followed. On the landing
at the second floor, she sighed. “Mr. Carr, is it?”
He nodded, his eyes wandering up the long, carpeted hall. Most
people in their early twenties like Lorelei insisted on being called by
their first names, but she could tell from the shine of this man’s
shoes and the designer tag on his bag that he was definitively going
to be a Mister. His eyes lingered on the candles in their sconces,
dripping wax that never reached the floor.
“Enchanted,” she said with a smile, as if he wouldn’t know, and
led him to his room. Just as she went to slip the key in, she paused
and glanced up to the number above the door: 210 and a half, the
same room she had been given when she’d first shown up on
Moonlit Shores Manor’s doorstep.
Well, they were quite full, so no wonder an extra room had to be
squeezed in. With a chuckle, she unlocked the door and placed his
bag on the rack just inside. The room was lined with paisley
wallpaper and metal, half-moon sconces, a modern, low-profile bed
in the center, and sleek, black side tables, starkly different from the
gentle blues and fuzzy blankets the room conjured up when Lorelei
occupied it for a few nights months earlier. “Here we are, Mr. Carr.
Lunch is at noon and dinner is between five and eight, and if you
need anything,”—she got up onto her toes to spy the slimline
telephone beside the bed—“There it is. You can reach us by phone.
No number, just ask for the front desk, and it’ll connect you. Enjoy
your stay.”
Lorelei went to wave as she stepped past him, but he awkwardly
grabbed her hand, sliding a folded bill into it, not something most
guests did. She was caught off guard and jerked back, dropping the
box from under her sweater, and it bounced along the floor right up
to his feet.
Mr. Carr bent down and picked it up before she could shout for
him to stop. He lifted it, eyes on the slightly crumpled brown paper,
torn at one corner, and the emerald bow that had gone askew.
Lorelei held her breath, waiting for the worst, and then he simply
held it out to her.
She watched him closely, his brown eyes neither glassy nor rabid,
then flicked her gaze down to the box, balanced on his hand. When
she took it, she saw he had an old wound across his palm, and when
she deposited the key there, he winced slightly but otherwise didn’t
lunge to get the package back from her. “Thank you, sir,” she said.
“It’s a gift for a friend, and apparently I haven’t found the best
hiding spot for it yet, but I definitely will.”
And just like that, Lorelei enacted all of The Big Three Rules of
Magic at once—she set her intentions, said them aloud, and there
would be a cost for it all.
 CHAPTER 2
FOOLISH

Hana’s egg salad was some of the best, but Lorelei was too
concerned with her looming meeting with Arista to finish the lunch
she’d brought to her room. The alalynx pawed at the leftover half of
a sandwich. “Don’t cause trouble, Aly,” said Lorelei as she brushed
through and tied up her wavy, brown hair into a neater ponytail.
The alalynx, who had naturally fallen into being called Aly for
short, collapsed in a huff on the bed and swished the darkened tip of
her tail, dappled wings flicking with disapproval.
Lorelei rubbed hazel eyes and slapped pale cheeks to prepare
herself for whatever was to come, and then hurried downstairs,
making a quick detour to the basement before heading outside.
It was cool and dark at the foot of the stairs, the gentle lapping
of water rising up to meet her. She paused only a second to take in
the pinks and blues of the phosphorescent mosses growing over the
rocky edges of the cavernous basement, then picked her way across
the boardwalk that ran over the underground pond. At its end, she
turned down the hall on the cavern’s far side where the basement
was laid out much more normally, like stepping into a different
dimension, but she’d done something like that a time or two already,
and this didn’t come with a queasiness in her belly or a feeling like
she’d stopped existing for a brief and horrifying moment.
There were many doors off this hall, the laundry, loads of
storage, and a bedroom which happened to be Conrad’s. His door
was predictably shut. She slowed as she passed it, hoping it might
open at just the right time, but like so many times before, it did not.
At the far end of the hall there was a last door, a red flame
carved into it, and she went through and down a second set of stairs
to the furnace room. She hadn’t been back since the night of the
seance with Betsy Jo LaReaux, there was never really a reason, but
despite the warm temperature, she shivered. Here had been where
the clairvoyant witch warned her about some future danger to occur
during a blizzard, and here too they had all come together, clasped
hands, and shared a vision of Byron running through the woods,
though no one knew who or what he was at the time.
Lorelei pulled the small box from under her sweater and
straightened the velvety, green bow. Looking over the card and its
warning one more time, she tried to feel what the others did, but no
overwhelming urge to tear into it took her. It was just a stupid, little
box.
She shrugged and stuffed it behind a crate that looked like it
hadn’t been moved in decades, just next to the furnace. No one
would find the thing down there, and she left the basement once
again being sure no one saw her. It was a quick walk down a hall
and out the manor’s back door after that to cross the grounds.
She tucked her hands into the crooks of her arms, unprepared
for the late November chill. She hustled down the path behind the
manor, well-worn and lined with evergreen bushes that harbored
buzzing creatures that sometimes glowed in a Morse-like code. The
wildflower garden that sprawled at the front of Arista and Seamus’s
cottage was fading with winter’s early arrival, but the orange
sneezeweed and star-shaped toad lilies were holding strong, pops of
color against the dull brown the encircling forest was falling into.
The front door to the cottage was painted teal with a cutesy flower
box attached, but it gave her only that much more anxiety knowing
what it held within as she took a breath, checked the time on her
phone, and knocked promptly at twelve thirty.
The cozy front room of the cottage served as an office, lined with
shelves and comfortable seating on either side of Arista’s desk.
Lorelei had never seen what was beyond the door into the rest of
the house, but she imagined it was more of the same, French
country-esque decor and low lighting, all things that were decidedly
un-Arista.
The woman was sitting behind her desk and didn’t bother to flick
her eyes up at Lorelei when she entered or even when she
cautiously took a seat across from her, but when she opened her
mouth to say hello, Arista immediately cut her off.
“I trust you’ve said nothing.”
It was not a question, but Lorelei answered anyway. “Not a
word.”
She was talking, of course, about the things that had happened
the week prior right over the hill down an old, forgotten path behind
the cottage. At the edge of the woods that surrounded Moonlit
Shores Manor sat the old Rognvaldson house—Conrad’s family home
—and it was there Lorelei had almost lost her life. But so had
Conrad, and, really, so had everybody if things had gone down a bit
differently.
Her stomach turned over as she glanced out the window, the
shadow of the house just visible through the bare trees.
“Thank you.” Arista looked up at her then and pulled off her
glasses, rubbing her eyes. Well, that was not what Lorelei had
expected.
But then seeing Arista’s banshee form, starkly white, ghostly, and
able to scream absolute despair into her soul was not what Lorelei
had expected either, and she’d certainly experienced that too.
“I know this is…this is hard,” the woman went on, a tinge of
something like sympathy in her voice. “I appreciate your discretion.”
Lorelei wasn’t doing it for her, she was keeping all of this in for
Conrad because he had asked, and, well, she wasn’t entirely sure
why else, but she would continue to do it even if he hadn’t found a
single moment to speak to her since. Even if he had found lots of
moments, instead, to have Bridgette over. Even if—she took a breath
and shook her head. “You’re welcome.”
“I do want to assure you, Ms. Fischer, that things here are safe.
That you are safe.” Arista rolled a pen between her fingers, staring
at it hard. “I’ve warded the grounds, everything from the station to
the house to the highway. They should hold now that I’ve…I’ve seen
him and know for certain what to ward against.”
Lorelei squeezed her knees together, more uncomfortable under
the woman’s weird melancholy than her typical haughty annoyance.
The him was Byron, someone neither Arista nor Conrad had seen for
a decade and a half until that night, and someone, presumably, they
had once cared for when he was a child. Lorelei swallowed. “Conrad
also said he sent him somewhere he can’t get back from for a while,
right?”
Arista nodded and pulled out her cards from the desk drawer to
shuffle as she spoke. “Those trow dens in the nether are like a
labyrinth. I’ve never known anyone to get out of them in less than a
month, and doing so will be arduous. Returning here right away
would be foolish as well, and Byron was never foolish.”
Lorelei watched the over-sized cards fly deftly from one of
Arista’s hands to the other, mesmerizing. “We’re going to tell the
others eventually, right?” She leaned forward. “For their protection.”
Arista’s sharp eyes fell on her over the rim of her glasses, and
she held out the stack. Without being told, Lorelei cut the cards, and
Arista flipped up the topmost one. “Temperance,” she said, revealing
a picture of an angel pouring water from one chalice into another.
“You must be patient and careful.”
Lorelei sighed a bit more heavily than she meant. She didn’t like
that at all.
Arista replaced the card and shuffled the deck again, then pulled
another herself. Her face changed, brows raising, and she leaned
back into her chair. With a simple shake of her head, she stuffed it
back in without showing Lorelei and shuffled again, then pulled.
This time she let out a single laugh though it was the least
amused laughter Lorelei had ever heard. She then slipped the whole
deck back inside the drawer and snapped it shut. “Your trial period is
over, Ms. Fischer, and it looks like we’ll be keeping you on at the
manor. Ziah is pleased with your work, and so are the rest of us,”
she said with a little roll of her eyes. “I’m approving a raise, some
additional time off, and a second floating holiday for…whatever it is
lorelei celebrate.”
She hoped the woman didn’t want her to fill in the blank—she
had about as much an idea as Arista did when it came to what fae
beings, including lorelei, the creature she pretended to be,
celebrated.
 “You’re not infallible, mind you, but you do have my seal of
approval, which is no small thing. Congratulations, you are officially
the longest-employed, assistant receptionist Moonlit Shores Manor
has had since Ziah was promoted.”
Wide-eyed, Lorelei stared back at her, a smile breaking on her
face.
“Well, don’t look at me like that.” Arista waved both her hands.
“Go on, you have plenty of work to do, and I can still fire you if I
really want.”
Lorelei jumped up and left before she changed her mind. Back
out in the blustery afternoon, she wrapped her arms around herself,
but grinned up at the manor. She had seen the records, in fact she’d
been the one to organize the damn things; Ziah had been at Moonlit
Shores Manor for five years and in her current position for three. If
she didn’t know better—and to be fair, she absolutely didn’t—it was
almost as if the manor had been waiting for the right person to fill
the long open and rotating position. But person was a relative term
in the charmed world, and while the manor was smart, timing
certainly had something to do with it, and the meddlesome nature of
magic in general was likely the biggest culprit.
She wanted to tell Ziah first, of course, and sprinted to the foyer,
but found the woman wasn’t alone. Ziah leaned against the front
counter, arms crossed under her breasts and squeezing them
together in that way she tended to when she wanted something.
Ren, the manor’s groundskeeper and creature caretaker, was
standing across from her and not noticing at all in that way he
tended to, the way Lorelei assumed most elves probably were:
constantly stoic and pragmatic and largely uninterested in anyone
else even if they did have really good boobs. The alalynx was
strutting across the counter between them, crying for attention.
“Again, Ziah, I do not understand the purpose.” Ren’s length of
silvery hair was tied back so that his long, pointed ears poked out on
either side.
“Well, neither do I, but it’s a big part of it, there are even songs
about it, so can you please just do it?” She leaned forward a bit
more. “For me?”
 The elf’s face was nearly always bereft of any emotion, but the
corner of his lip twitched at that. He stood stiffly, yet when he folded
his hands before his face the movement was graceful and effortless
and made all other hand folding look clumsy and impossible. “If I
must.”
Ziah reached out and touched the tip of her long finger to the tip
of his equally long nose. He did not move under it, but she
scrunched up her face and fluttered her lashes. “I’ll make it worth—
Lore!” She noticed her then, redirecting her hand to scoop up the
alalynx and cradle her like a baby. “I’m so glad you’re here, I have a
job for you!”
Ren left the desk then, nodding succinctly at Lorelei as he
passed. She watched him go, pursing her lips, then opening her
mouth, but Ziah was having none of the questions she was about to
ask.
“We need our business license renewed before the end of the
year.” She pulled a thick stack of papers from the inside of her
planner and waved Lorelei over with them, balancing the alalynx in
her other arm as it batted at one of her shimmering earrings. “I’ve
filled everything out, but they need to be filed with city hall. It has to
be done in person, but I’ve just,”—she sighed and every part of her
drooped—“I’ve had it up to here with warlockian bureaucracy for
one lifetime, so I’m bestowing the honor on you.”
Lorelei’s eyes widened. “You want me to go to city hall? In town?
Off the grounds?”
Ziah nodded, handing over the papers. The pages had a hundred
or so lines that Ziah had filled in meticulously with her steady script.
“I made you an appointment already, and I had Conrad fix up my old
bicycle, so it should be a really quick trip. You can ride a bike, right?”
She glanced around the foyer a moment to make sure no one else
would overhear. “That’s something humans can do?”
Lorelei chuckled. “Of course.” Then she frowned. So, Conrad had
time to work on that too, but he still couldn’t even say hello to her,
huh? Not even a how are you or a so, how about that near-death
experience we shared?
 “Great! So, you’ve got about two hours before you need to be
there, but you’re definitely going to want to arrive early because if
you’re even a minute late it’s a whole debacle to reschedule. I mean,
you have to make an appointment with the Rescheduling
Department just to make a new appointment for the original
appointment, and if your excuse isn’t good enough, they send you to
the Bad Excuses department first, and those witches just love to give
you disapproving looks like it’s their job. In fact, it might actually be.”
Lorelei folded up the papers. “Today? Do you think Grier could
come with me?”
Ziah pulled her phone out as it vibrated. “No, he’s got to run the
desk while I take a client. But don’t worry, it’s simple, just boring:
you wait around, hand the paperwork off, wait around some more,
then get a new, stamped license and bring it back here.”
Lorelei bit her lip. It sounded simple, but so did cleaning up
green goop from a hardwood floor, and she’d started a fire the last
time she tried that.
Ziah read the hesitation on her face and placed Aly back on the
counter. “Trust me, it’s fine. And listen, do this, and I’ll give you
whatever you want when you get back.” She put a hand on each of
her shoulders and set honey-colored eyes on her. “Seriously,
whatever you want.”
A warmth dripped down Lorelei’s arms and across her chest,
lovely things crossing her mind like warm chocolate chip cookies,
and bright, white canvases, and fresh, strong-smelling pine needles
and far-off spices. She blinked—wait, where’d that last one come
from?
Ziah pulled her hands back, looked at them with her lips twisted
up, then grinned. “Lore, is there something you’re not telling me?”
Well, that list was way too long to start if she was going to get to
her appointment on time. “No,” she lied, then scrunched up her
nose. “Hey, did you just try to enchant me?” It wasn’t that long ago
Ziah had promised to not use her talents in gentle manipulation on
her unless she really had to.
Ziah clapped her hands together and attempted to look innocent,
the one thing she could really never pull off. “I would never. And it
didn’t work anyway, your mind’s already clouded with thoughts of
something else good. So, spill it.”
“Arista took me off probation.”
Ziah squealed. “I can’t believe you were still on it! And look,
taking charge of the business license is the perfect way to
celebrate.” Her eyes flashed a friendly warm fire deep in their
honeyed amber. “Maybe you can do it every year.”
“So, this is what a promotion is like.” Her time as a barista hadn’t
prepared her at all.
“With great power comes great…” Ziah looked far off into the
foyer, struggling for something inspiring to say. “Well, great
paperwork. But also, a bicycle!”
Outside in the cold again, Lorelei hopped on the bicycle that had
been propped against the trellis, undoubtedly better transport than
walking or even riding in the back of a bumpy cart all the way into
town, but she hesitated before setting off. The manor grounds were
safe, Arista had just confirmed, and though she couldn’t know about
the world outside, she reminded herself that Byron was probably still
stuck in the trow’s labyrinth where Conrad had sent him. Really, her
only concern was that warlockian bureaucracy Ziah seemed so
desperate to avoid.
It can’t be that bad, she thought, starting off down the worn
path into the woods that separated the manor from Moonlit Shores
proper, They have magic for crying out loud—lines shouldn’t even
exist around here. Unfortunately, Lorelei underestimated the innate
ability of any creature, human or otherwise, to bung things up with
paperwork.
 CHAPTER 3
VERY IMPROBABLE

Moonlit Shores was a place of color even as winter crept in at its

edges. A seaside village, though Lorelei had yet to see the beach, it
smelled of salt and sounded of gulls and the occasional fishing boat
bell. The shops were sided with shiplap and painted in pastels with
the rare, dark and menacing nook here and there selling something
that the owner didn’t feel the need to put up a sign for. And the
whole place just felt of magic. Lorelei knew it now when it strummed
the air so thickly, and she liked it.
She took the main road straight into town, past the more
sprawling residential homes on the outskirts, through the closer-
placed buildings and narrower streets to avoid traffic, typically
slowed by a lumbering, stubborn diregoat pulling a cart or a poorly-
landed gryphon, and meandered back into the main square.
Winded and lungs burning from the cold, Lorelei locked up the
bicycle outside Moonlit Shores City Hall, a two-storied rectangle of a
building with a domed clock tower rising up out of its center. With
white, Roman columns out front and symmetrical, colonial windows
lining the facade, it would have looked marvelously average for any
municipality, but the statue of a winged horse that appeared to be
landing just outside but somehow not visibly touching the ground at
any point was a bit of a giveaway. That, and the clock had fifteen
hours marked with runes and four hands, none of which seemed to
be pointing in the right direction for the time on Lorelei’s phone.
In actuality, she had plenty left before her scheduled
appointment, and hoped it would somehow sync up with whatever
time the local politicians were on. Once up the stairs, the glass doors
swung out toward her nearly knocking her back. She gave them a
proper frown then hurried inside, hit with a blast of hot air that
made her shrug off her coat and pull at the neck of her sweater.
 The open space of the hall’s entry had a marbled floor, gold with
a green vein running all through it, and the glass ceiling above
allowed the late afternoon sunlight to filter in, sharp and bright. She
fanned at her face and looked about for anyone, but it seemed
deserted. Her footsteps echoed on the marble as if no one had been
there for centuries as she crossed the empty space.
In the middle of the grand room stood a tiny sign. The thing was
simple, cheap even, especially against the ornateness of the trim
running along the crown molding and baseboards. A serpent
wrapped around the banisters of the staircases leading upward,
flanked by candelabras lighting the middle of the room rather
uselessly under all that sun.
She leaned toward the board and squinted, but there wasn’t
much to see. It was perhaps two foot by two foot and had sad, little
plastic letters pushed into a ridged board that spelled out Directory
only the O was clearly a piece meant to be the number zero. There
were no other words, but a small tray holding a plethora of more
plastic pieces was attached at its base.
Lorelei stood back and cleared her throat, the sound echoing all
around her. Nothing else echoed back.
Then the letters on the board popped themselves off and
plunked into the tray, swapping around and lifting back out all on
their own to stick back into the board with a smattering of sharp
clicks.
What are you loo ing for?
Lorelei pursed her lips as a small, plastic K bounced off her shoe.
She picked it up and stuck it in the board where it belonged.
A few more letters picked themselves out of the stash and
popped onto the board below the question. Thx.
“Um…” She fished out the paperwork from her bag and held it
up. The board might not have eyes, but the possibility it could see
wasn’t out of the question. “Licensing office, I think?”
The letters hopped off the board again and started mixing
themselves up, this time in an even wilder frenzy. The words began
to form at the very top of the board.
Most Common Licenses by Type, Alphabetical:
 Alchemy, Commerce
Alchemy, Practicing
Alchemy, Teaching
Astral Travel, Construction
Astral Travel, Operation
Astral Travel, Destruction
Aviation, Animals, Charmed
Aviation, Animals, Nether
Aviation, Vehicles, Charmed, Domestic
Aviation, Vehicles, Charmed, Wild
The words scrolled up on the board, letters popping off as they
hit the top and catching onto one another, filling in where needed.
She nearly missed Business, Hospitality as she’d been so distracted
by Blood Craft, Theoretical Study, but announced to the board
before the right department disappeared, and it all came to a stop.
The letters fell into the tray, and they shuffled around until Office
1709, Seventeenth Floor plunked itself up onto the board.
Lorelei glanced up at the ceiling again and could see the balcony
of the floor above her at the head of the stairs. Where floor
seventeen was, she had no idea. She checked her phone again,
thanked the board which responded with a colon and a closed
parenthesis, then trudged up to the next floor.
On the landing, there was a hall and a long line of offices with
windows into each one, some with open blinds, others covered, and
all but one with the lights off. In the only lit, occupied office, there
were two people, a woman behind a desk, and an older man,
balding with only a single tuft of hair sticking up as if he had been
yanking at it. Lorelei walked up to the open door and knocked on the
frame. The sound of typing did not stop, but the woman did pull her
hands away from the keys. She looked at Lorelei pointedly over her
glasses, her thin face as sharp as her stare.
“Sorry.” Lorelei hesitated, glancing at the man whose face was
turning from pink to red. “I’m just looking for office 1709.”
“Seventeenth floor,” said the woman. “That’d be the seventeen
part.” She huffed and went back to typing, her fingers falling into
where the keys were already depressing themselves.
 Lorelei frowned—that’s not how the manor numbered rooms, but
then the manor was unique. And regardless, there was no floor
seventeen as far as she could see. “It’s just—”
“Upstairs.” She said, pointing vaguely to the left.
Lorelei glanced back down the way she’d come and was
surprised to see another staircase, only instead of headed down, this
one was headed up. She wandered over to it, every sign of the first
floor below and its massive, sprawling space now gone. Instead, she
was simply at the end of a corridor, the sunlight replaced with
fluorescents, one of which buzzed and another blinked in and out.
She shrugged and took the stairs up to an identical corridor. She
passed more identical offices with their lights off and most of the
shades drawn until she came to the end and another set of stairs
leading upward. When she looked back to the other end, her way
back down had gone once again. With a sigh, she continued to
ascend.
By the time she got to the seventeenth floor, she was out of
breath and had stripped off her sweater, yet she was still
uncomfortable in just her t-shirt. Her boots and flannel leggings
were nice against the freezing breezes outside, but in the blasting
heat of the municipal building and after her long climb, she was
beginning to understand Ziah’s hatred of the place.
Floor seventeen was just as deserted as the others save for one
office with its light on near the end of the now grossly familiar
corridor. She pulled out her phone and saw she still had four and a
half minutes before her appointment and hurried down to the open
door, but her mouth fell open. Inside sat the same woman typing
away across from the same man, the only difference being that his
face had progressed all the way to magenta.
“And here you are!” the woman said with a cheery clip as she
slapped her hand onto the screen of her computer, an ancient hunk
of beige machinery, and pulled off a long set of papers connected
with perforations between. She handed the newly-appeared pages
off to the man who took them with some violence. “Pop on over to
the Scheduling Department on floor thirty-eight, and they’ll get you
set up for some time next week for the overview.”
 He grumbled and swept past Lorelei. The number on the office
read 1709 which Lorelei was both pained and elated to see. “Um, is
this—”
“Business Licenses, Hospitality.” Her voice was pitched high and
produced almost exclusively through her nose. She tapped the
placard on her desk, and the letters scrolled around to rearrange
themselves to state just that. “Are you my three o’clock for Moonlit
Shores Manor?”
Lorelei nodded, stepping in and handing over the paperwork.
“Well, cutting it a little close, aren’t we?” She smirked toward the
calendar. It wasn’t even December yet, but Lorelei didn’t know the
cutoff date and just shrugged. “Thank you!” She plucked the
paperwork out of Lorelei’s hands and held it up, examining each
page up close before offering the stack to the computer screen.
There was a flash, and then the pages were gone. “Now, let’s see.”
She flicked a finger over the mouse, and it gave a little squeak. “Oh,
sorry, hon.” Then she clicked again more gently.
As the woman read off the fields in her nasally inflection, Lorelei
sat in silence, looking around at the almost-yellow-but-not walls.
There was one piece of artwork, an abandoned canoe on a grey
shore, hanging behind the woman’s head. Everything about it made
her sad, and she thought it looked a bit like it was melting, but not
even in that interesting, Dali way.
“Did I hear someone say Moonlit Shores Manor?” A weighty voice
came from the hall, and a hand grasped the door frame. The man
there smiled from under a light-colored brow, blond but peppered
with silver and ruddy strands. A thick mustache fell over his grin, but
it emanated all over his face in how his eyes and forehead crinkled.
His suit was sharp, navy blue with a golden tie, and while he could
have walked in a human’s world or here, he stood out in either
place, magnetic and arresting.
“Mayor Blackburn!” The woman practically popped out of her
chair, forgetting about the screen as she rested her chin on her
hands and elbows right on the keyboard.
“How’s my favorite department head doing this fine afternoon?
Almost quitting time,”—he pointed to his watch, then back to her
—“or are we already off the clock there, Cind?”
She tittered and put her hands back on the ever-moving
keyboard. “You silly, you know I got another hour, at least!”
The mayor came into the office, a hand extended toward Lorelei.
“Well, if it isn’t the new girl from my favorite little B&B in town.”
We’re the only B&B in town, she thought, taking his hand and
shaking. “Lorelei Fischer.”
“Right, the lorelei called Lorelei.” He was still shaking her hand as
he used his free one to point as if there were some confusion as to
whom they were discussing. “Of course, my daughter has told me all
about you.” He waggled his brows, every word longer than the last,
the conversation almost identical to the one they had when he’d
come to the manor to talk with Arista not so long ago. But it was no
surprise he had forgotten—Mayor Blackburn didn’t seem to commit
much to memory he didn’t deign important.
“Yup, I do know Bridgette.” Lorelei smiled, but she felt her brow
furrow. Bridgette Blackburn didn’t like her—not that she liked
anybody that much at the manor besides her boyfriend, Conrad, and
Lorelei wasn’t even sure about that—so there was no way whatever
she said to her father was complimentary.
“Wait, you mean your name’s Lorelei, and you’re a lorelei?” Cindy
peered dubiously over the rim of her glasses as if it couldn’t be true.
To be fair, it wasn’t.
“Come on now, Cind,”—he was still shaking her hand—“culture,
diversity, heritage, isn’t it all fascinating and wonderful?”
“Sure, sure, the seminar, all that. Well, Ms. Lorelei who’s a lorelei,
you got a little problem here.”
“Oh, no.” She slipped out of the mayor’s grasp and gripped the
edge of the desk. “Don’t tell me that.”
“You didn’t cross the first ‘t’ in accountant on this line, and we
can’t have any question about what this means.” She pushed the
screen so Lorelei could see, pointing out the place where Ziah had
gotten a little sloppy around line ninety or so.
Lorelei grit her teeth. “Really?”
“You’ll need to fill all these out again and then get them stamped
by Rudy and—”
 “Wait.” Lorelei pointed at the word. “That says canoe.”
“What?”
She pointed to the screen. “Canoe. See, if you just turn your
head at this angle—”
“That clearly says accountant,” said Cindy.
“Oh, does it?”
Cindy’s glare could have burned a hole through her, and for a
moment she did think she felt her forehead get very warm, but then
Mayor Blackburn reached around Lorelei, uncomfortably close, and
plucked the forms right out of the screen. “Shall I just take care of
these then, Cind?”
“Oh, no, no, it’s no bother, really!”
He was still smiling from under his mustache. “Actually, I’d love
to sign off on this personally. Think of it as a favor, perhaps? For one
of the town’s best money makers. We wouldn’t want a temporary
shutdown and have everyone staying in Foxglove Cove or some
wretched place like that. Not again.”
Mayor Blackburn was already walking away with the paperwork,
Cindy calling a nasally, saccharine goodbye as Lorelei hurried after.
He looked over the pages as he turned into the stairwell but passed
the stairs entirely and took a corner where, to Lorelei’s chagrin, an
elevator stood.
“Everything looks well enough in order,” he was saying as the
doors opened without the press of any call buttons which,
coincidentally, weren’t there.
“That’s great.” She tried to not sound out of breath as they
entered the elevator and the doors closed. He did not choose a floor,
but the box shot off smoothly and the numbers on the screen above
the door flew by at an alarming rate, finally stopping at fifty-one
where the doors opened once more.
Mayor Blackburn stepped out, and Lorelei was on his heels. This
corridor was nothing like the ones below, instead all golden and
green-veined marble like the grand entry with warm lighting and
tapestries hung on the walls. He turned down a narrower hall,
passing a green man with tusks that protruded up from his lower lip.
He was dressed in a typical security uniform with a hat perhaps a
size too small, but strapped to his back he wore an axe, the double-
ended blade wider across than Lorelei’s chest and suspiciously
rusted on its edges. She gave him a wide berth as he stared her
down.
The offices past the guard actually held people, or a variation on
the idea of what a person might be. Lorelei read the names as they
passed, slowing when she recognized Marian Saunders, Head of City
Council as who Ziah had remarked she would have voted for over
Mayor Blackburn had she had the chance. She glimpsed in through
the window to see the woman, but was distracted by the visitor in
her office, one Agnes Faulkner, clearly raising a stink behind the
closed door.
Lorelei hurried away from view. Mrs. Faulkner was a member of
the Charmed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Humans, but
contrary to the name, its members seemed to absolutely loathe
them. Mrs. Faulkner had accused Lorelei of being a human and cast
a jaw-locking spell on her at the harvest festival which Conrad had
rescued her from. She wanted to be upset about the intrusion of
Conrad on her thoughts yet again, but in the wake of that particular
memory she was only grateful someone had intervened at all.
Mayor Blackburn brought her to an office at the hall’s end with
glass doors, gilded in gold along their edges. Inside was a very
pretty, young woman typing gingerly on a tablet at an otherwise
empty, glass-topped desk. She looked up as they came in, her eyes
black and pupilless, but only nodded at the mayor. Behind her desk
was a smooth wall covered in framed black and white photos of the
town, the beach, city hall itself, and just when Lorelei thought the
mayor would walk straight into it, he put his hand out and dissolved
a door-sized section that allowed him to continue on inside.
Lorelei jumped over where the threshold would be, and when
she was on the other side the wall closed up, doorless, behind her.
She found herself in a spacious, sterile office, floor-to-ceiling
windows at its back. The desk in its center was curiously pointed
away from those windows, and Mayor Blackburn took a seat in the
high-backed, leather chair there. Flipping through the last page of
the forms, his grin was ever-present. “I don’t see any reason why I
wouldn’t sign off on these right now, Ms. Lorelei.”
And yet it felt like he was about to come up with one.
She couldn’t help but fidget under his gaze. “I would really
appreciate that.” Somehow, she knew that was the wrong thing to
say, yet she said it anyway.
Mayor Blackburn plucked a golden pen from its holder and
hovered his hand over the form. “Ms. Lorelei, might I pick your brain
for a moment?”
“Sure.” Then she gasped. “I mean, if you’d like to ask me a
question or two, I might have answers for you.” She’d accidentally
consented to having a sort of truth-telling spell cast on her in the
past and was only lucky in that its caster, Conrad, was admittedly
not skilled in cajolery, the school of manipulation magic. Mayor
Blackburn, however, was purportedly talented in the magic of
charming others.
He gestured to one of the chairs across from his desk, and she
sat, sliding on the taut leather, just too short for her feet to reach
the ground.
“Would you say,” he began conversationally, “that Moonlit Shores
Manor is prime grounds for human infiltration?”
Lorelei’s eyes went wide, and her throat instantly parched, barely
able to squeak out, “Huh?”
“I know, it’s very improbable, of course, but not impossible!” The
mayor chuckled, dark eyes twinkling in exactly the same way as
Bridgette’s when she was about to say something nasty. “Your place
of employ has one of the few avenues leading directly in from
beyond where our city’s enchantments reach, so I could see one or
two humans slipping in accidentally. How would you rank the safety
and security of your little bed and breakfast?”
Well, there had been the trow break in, and the fratricidal
warlock, and that one tiny instance of an actual human finding
herself employed there and sitting right in front of him, but really
two out of three security issues on Moonlit Shores Manor’s grounds
weren’t to do with humans at all. She felt a crooked smile forming
on her lips. “I think things are pretty good.” Surely Arista’s wards
were enough.
He nodded, his hand still poised over the signature line. “We had
a concerned citizen or two spouting off about humans at the harvest
festival. Nigh impossible really, and everyone knows those CSPCH
loonies are, well, indeed loonies, but if it would make my
constituents feel safer to think there were, say, a task force in place
to root out humans, then by all means, I should implement one,
shouldn’t I?”
She stared at him, thinking the question was rhetorical, but when
he waited for an answer, she shook her head. “I don’t—I mean—
you’ve already got someone to…what exactly would they do?”
“Not hurt them, of course,” he was suspiciously quick to say.
“Just a sort of capture and relocate program, placing humans back
where they belong if they show up. Plenty of the world is already
theirs anyway, I can’t imagine what they’d want with our little,
enchanted corner of it.” He laughed like she were in on some joke
with him. “There’s a process for these things, it’s all quite above
board and clean and the magistratus functions so well already, but I
think it makes the townsfolk nervous when they don’t see it in
action. They might have a better sense of security if they knew
Moonlit Shores had something more permanent to identify and
extract any humans from our happy little town. Don’t you agree?”
Lorelei swallowed but managed to nod.
“Save for the approved ones, of course.”
“Approved?”
“There are only a couple of them left since we took the form
away about twenty or so years ago. It was a real monster of a thing.
Two hundred and some odd pages!” He rattled the business license
application. “Makes this look like fun! New humans haven’t been
allowed here in Moonlit Shores since, though on occasion someone
brings the form back to the committee for reapproval. Marriages,
adoptions, things like that.”
Lorelei hadn’t heard of such a thing. In fact, she hadn’t realized
there already were humans living in town at all. She thought for a
moment to ask but reined the urge back in.
 “My task force could keep an eye out for more unsavory fellows
as well—undocumented, hexed riff raff and such. Though I’m sure
you’re checking papers when you have a vampire come to stay,
aren’t you?”
“I’ve never met a vampire,” she said hollowly.
“Well, we can never really be sure without papers, can we?” He
chuckled again, and her stomach turned. “And to be honest, we
didn’t make a big stink over it, but we did have to call in the
magistratus to pick up a couple lycans in the fall who didn’t have
papers on them. Troubling stuff, but mostly harmless—there wasn’t
evidence to suggest they’d done anything except not register
themselves, of course. It’ll be abyssally more expensive now,
though.”
Lorelei remembered the lycans who had come to the manor for
Grier that fall and been chased off, scattering through the woods
and presumably toward town. She couldn’t imagine any of them
bothering to register themselves.
“I’ve been thinking,” he went on, “If I do hire in a few specialists
for a task force, I could send one or two over to your place; they’ll
need somewhere to stay before they settle in permanently anyway.”
Lorelei touched her nose as if she could feel the trail of freckles
Bur had given her to hide her humanity. Faeries! Now that was an
idea. They loved contracts and they were the first to be able to
identify a human. “What, uh…who were you thinking of for this task
force?”
“I can’t give that away.” Mayor Blackburn burst into a hearty
laugh. “No, I’d need your lot just as unaware as the rest of us about
the specific individuals. But they’d be coming right from the ranks of
the magistratus.”
The magistratus. Wizard cops. Ziah had mentioned them once
and didn’t seem to care for them.
“So, why are you telling me all this?”
He leaned toward her so that his pen almost touched the form. “I
can’t have the actual sentinels’ faces plastered anywhere, no
uniforms either. It’s all an undercover type job, you see. But I do
need rumors, Ms. Lorelei, and isn’t that what your kind are best at?”
 She looked at him sidelong.
“No offense meant.” He snorted, and she didn’t believe him for a
second. “I’ve never met a lorelei myself, but fae beings, they love
their gossip, we all know that.”
“Right.” She didn’t know lorelei were supposed to be gossips. And
Ren, an elf and so also a fae being, was the least likely person to
gossip she’d ever met. But the mayor seemed resolute.
“Anyway!” He sat up straight and finally signed the form with a
flourish, his signature huge and overlapping half the page with large,
loopy letters in a thick, black ink. Then he pulled a small cylinder
from his inner pocket, metallic on the outside and fitting into his
hand like a wax seal stamp. He pressed the end of it to the space
beside his signature, and the page lit up with a green glow.
Then he plucked a blank piece of paper from a small stack, laid it
atop the newly signed last page of the form, and gave it a tap with
his pen. The letters of the bottom page were sucked up onto the
top, swirled around, and left behind an official-looking business
license, complete with his signature and stamp. “Here you are, my
dear! To another year of booming business which I am sure will go
off without a hitch.”
“Thank you.” She stood and took the copy, the page warm to the
touch as the green glow dissipated. “And, um, I’ll be on the lookout
for any new guests who might be warlock…police.”
Mayor Blackburn chuckled darkly. “Oh, now, who says I haven’t
already sent them?”
She blinked back at him for a long moment, and he stood. Then
she forced on a grin. “Right! I’ll be sure not to say a word.”
“Of course, of course, keep this just between you and me.” He
winked, and her head swam. Their conversation swirled around in
her brain, and she held very still—this wasn’t the first time someone
had tried to do this to her, and she wouldn’t let it happen again.
Lorelei turned to the solid wall they’d come through. Wavering
slightly, she went for the place where the door had been, a painting
of two colonial hunters standing beside a pile of pelts in its place.
“My apologies.” Mayor Blackburn waved a hand, and the wall
opened up.
 She sputtered out a thanks and scurried through the hole.
Mrs. Faulkner was gone from Marian Saunders’ office, but Lorelei
still hurried down the hall, finding the elevator and getting in. The
doors closed and blessedly took her back to the first floor where she
stepped out into the massive and empty entry. The interior lights
had brightened in the wake of the setting sun, the glow from inside
warm and the city through the windows shadowed and eerie.
She took a moment to run the conversation back in her mind, but
the pieces still fit together. In fact, they were even louder and
clearer than she expected them to be. Mayor Blackburn’s spell hadn’t
actually tried to muddy anything in her brain—he had instead
insisted she remember.
Resolutely headed for the door, she eyed the directory once more
and stopped beside it, looking about but still seeing no one. Lorelei
leaned down to it and whispered, “Hexed registration.”
The letters popped off and reorganized to read Residency,
Registration, Hexed, Office 3365, Thirty Third Floor. Lorelei frowned
and headed back out into the cold.
 CHAPTER 4
UNDIGNIFIED

Lorelei biked hard to get back to the manor, the new business
license tucked safely in her bag. It was getting late and the sun set
early as the year crept toward its close. The crowds were thicker in
town as charmed folk headed home, but once she reached the
residential area outside of the business district, it was easier to
maneuver. She passed under a ball hovering in the air in the middle
of the street, a group of children on each side attempting to push it
toward the other. It zipped over her head and landed with a hollow
smack directly onto one of the kid’s faces, and the other side
cheered.
Eventually the sidewalks fell away and the street rolled over hills,
lone homes with sprawling yards and wooded lots between here and
there, each tucked farther off the road than the last. She passed by
the mayor’s house, Blackburn Estate, where the lawn was being
tended to by a man with antlers who herded a group of fluffy,
sheep-like creatures in a clean line across the grass. She grimaced
even though Bridgette probably wasn’t even there.
When she made it to the edge of the woods, she slowed, the
path a little bumpier. The eyes of the town were far behind her now,
and even though no one had given her a second glance, she was
still relieved after what Mayor Blackburn said. He seemed more
concerned with the fears of the charmed folk than he was about any
actual humans, but even casual concern could upset what she’d
become comfortable with. And he’d mentioned the hexed too,
vampires, sirens, and lycans who were once humans but had been
cursed. Though everyone believed Grier was just a shapeshifter,
Lorelei knew his secret, that he was actually a lycan who had, as of
yet, not gone feral, and if he was supposed to be documented but
wasn’t? Well, she had no idea what those consequences would be.
 She took a few deep breaths and carried on over the trail
through the woods. Orange light filtered through the leafless trees
as the sun sunk lower. Maybe the mayor really was only trying to
start a rumor. Paying for an anti-human task force when all he cared
about was his constituents believing one existed seemed extreme.
That was a bit conspiratorial, but hadn’t that been exactly what he
was getting at in his office?
But then, if there ever was a human who popped up in town and
no one around to deal with it, that would prove the task force didn’t
exist. The CSPCH was at least tangentially skilled at sniffing out
humans, Mrs. Faulkner had been able to identify Lorelei. If Mayor
Blackburn wanted this thing to take, he’d likely need at least one
case: a human that was living amongst them, not dangerous really,
but just there. Someone they could capture and relocate, as he said,
to make an example of. She swallowed and glanced up at the
darkening sky through the naked branches above then sped up.
The forest fell into the deep blues of an early winter evening
quickly, and though it was a short trip back to the manor, it certainly
felt long. Who thought putting an inn in the middle of nowhere was
a good idea anyway? Charmed folk, that’s who. Then she blinked at
herself: that sort of thinking wouldn’t do her any good.
A scurrying in the trees beside her made her glance out into the
darkness. She didn’t see anything, but her mind flashed with the
image of Byron’s form, standing at the end of the trail, cloaked in
black, waiting. She listened hard over the sound of leaves under her
tires, able to just make out something, and whatever it was, it
certainly sounded like it was moving with her.
Lorelei came to a stop, the greys and blues darkening the deeper
into the woods she peered. The sound stopped with her. It could be
anything, a chipmunk probably, or even a talking raccoon. She’d
seen stranger things, and wouldn’t it be nice to just see something
strange at that moment and not a warlock—sent by the local
government or otherwise—out to get her.
She started off again, and of course she heard it again, that
sound that wasn’t the ticking of the bicycle chain or her own heavy
breathing. She pushed on, faster, challenging the wet earth and
hidden stones to knock her off and into the trees headlong. She
should have worn a damn helmet.
Then she came around a familiar bend in the trail close to the
manor where the pathway widened. Slowing, she took a final deep
and stinging breath of cold air and headed for the break in the trees
only fifty or so yards ahead. A shadowy form crossed the path, and
Lorelei screamed.
Low to the ground, small, and on all fours, a ruddy fox trotted
out onto the trail and twitched at her yelp. Its eyes caught the last
of the light, frozen, then it hesitantly lifted a paw and darted away
with a limp into the brush. Lorelei touched a hand to her chest and
blew out a breath. Only a forest creature, and it hadn’t even tried to
talk to her.
Then she felt a presence at her side, one that didn’t announce it
was coming but was just suddenly there. Even in the dark forest, it
was unmistakably white, the definition of the presence of light. She
could have reached out and touched its flank it was so close, and
she could feel the warmth off of it even in the chill of the evening. It
snorted, the air about its muzzle swirling. When she glanced up to
its head, she saw what she expected—one horn, glittering and gold.
The unicorn headed for the trees, but Lorelei called to it, “Wait.”
It stopped, a blue eye falling on her.
“Um, hey.” She swallowed, not knowing it would listen and
knowing even less what to say, but she did feel a rush of comfort at
its presence just like the time before. “Very cool of you to come
back,” she said. “Little less cool that no one else is here to see you
though.”
It continued to stare.
She brought a finger to her lips. “Would it be weird if I asked to
take a picture with you?”
The unicorn snorted again, this time a bit more aggressively.
“No, yeah, you’re right, that would be weird.”
The massive, horned horse shook its mane and started off again,
a silvery glow trailing behind it.
“Okay, thank you!” she called as the branches parted for the glow
that surrounded it, and then the beast was swallowed up by the
forest, and she was again alone.
Though the way ahead was dark and empty, she leisurely
pedaled on to the manor, a little more secure. Unicorns just did that
to a person, instilling them with a sense of bravery, or at least that
had been Lorelei’s experience, and it didn’t seem like too many other
people had met one to corroborate.
Back at the manor, Lorelei hung her coat on the rack in the foyer.
No one was about, not even at the desk, and the doors to the sitting
room were shut, uncharacteristic for dinnertime. She tried to open
one, but Ziah’s voice piped up from inside, telling her to wait.
Ziah popped her head out and asked her to watch the desk.
There was movement on the other side of the frosted glass, and
she’d just seen Ren looking uncharacteristically flustered standing by
the fire, but the door was snapped shut in her face.
She raised her knuckles to knock again and ask what the hell was
going on, but a voice came from behind her. “Hello!”
Lorelei spun to see a short, plump woman was now standing just
there in the entry. “Hi,” she managed, pushing loose strands of hair
behind her ears to compose herself from the long bike ride. “How
can I help you?”
The young woman’s face was almost entirely smile with thin lips
and massive teeth. Her eyes were big and blue and rimmed in thick
liner with bright pink cheeks and neatly arched brows. She was well
put together, if a little overdone, her hair piled on top of her head
giving her squat stature a few more inches, coif tied off with a pink
bow nestled into coal black curls. “I’m here to see Ziah.”
Lorelei blinked. “Oh, are you her…” She didn’t like to assume
everyone who came to the manor for Ziah was a date even though
they were about ninety percent of the time.
“A client,” she said, rummaging through her canvas satchel, tie-
dyed in all sorts of pinks and reds. “I called late last week, and, um,
well, I don’t have an appointment exactly, but,”—she pulled a
business card out of her bag and held it up—“she said to call back
and check if she had any cancellations. Am I in the right place?”
Lorelei took the card, burgundy so dark it was almost black and
soft to the touch. The woman had scrawled in loopy handwriting the
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
in theca Evangelii Fothet episcopus, maxime vir authoritatis, versus
istos—

‘Hanc Evangelii thecam construxit aviti

Fothet qui Scotis Summus Episcopus est.’

Bower altered the expression ‘Summus Episcopus’ to ‘Primus

Episcopus,’ and applied it to the first Fothad, whom he made first
bishop, though in the revised edition of the Scotichronicon in the
Cupar MS., he corrects his mistake. Wyntoun takes the same view,
but ‘Summus Episcopus’ is the exact equivalent in Latin of the Irish
Ard epscop, and there is no doubt that the last Fothad is the bishop
meant. The Gospel he so carefully protected may have been a gift
from Queen Margaret.
679. Regist. Prior. S. Andreæ, p. 115.
680. Chron. Picts and Scots, p. 188. See also Dr. Reeves’s British
Culdees, p. 106, and the very valuable commentary in the notes.
681. Dr. Reeves was the first to give the correct explanation of this
passage in the legend. See British Culdees, p. 107, note.
682. Dr. Reeves on the British Culdees, p. 75.
683. Dr. Reeves on the Ancient Churches of Armagh, p. 21.
684. See infra, p. 414, note 780, for original of this passage.
685. Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society, vol. i. p. 131.
686. Ib. p. 133.
687. Ib. p. 141.
688. Miscellany of the Irish Archæological Society, vol. i. p. 129.
689. Ib., p. 131.
690. Ib., p. 129.
Dr. Reeves has printed in the appendix to Bishop Colton’s
Visitation, edited for the Irish Archæological Society, p. 109, a rule of
Columcille taken from one of the Burgundian MSS. It is obviously the
same rule which Colgan describes as ‘aliam regulam eremiticam seu
præscriptum fratribus scripsit.’ It cannot be connected with St.
Columba himself, and it is probably a rule compiled for the Deoradh
De at the time the Disert Columcille was founded at Kells. It will be
found in the Appendix.
691. See antea, p. 342.
 692. These notices are taken from the Annals of the Four Masters,
where they will be found under their respective dates.
693. St. Ciaran, the founder of Clonmacnois, has left a trace of his
name in Iona; for a rising ground south of Martyr’s Bay is called
Cnoc Ciaran.
 CHAPTER IX.

EXTINCTION OF THE OLD CELTIC CHURCH IN

SCOTLAND.

Causes which The causes which combined to bring the old

brought the Celtic Celtic Church to an end may be classed under
Church to an end. two heads—internal decay and external change.
Under the first head the chief cause was the encroachment of the
secular element upon the ecclesiastic, and the gradual absorption of
the latter by the former. As long as the old monastic system
remained intact there was a vitality in its ecclesiastical organisation
which to a great extent preserved the essential character of these
monasteries as great ecclesiastical foundations; but this was to
some extent impaired by the assimilation of the church to that of
Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries, which introduced a
secular element among her clergy; and the Danish invasions, with all
their devastating and destructive consequences, completed the total
disorganisation of the Monastic Church. The monasteries were
repeatedly laid waste and destroyed, and her clergy had either to fly
or to take up arms in self-defence; her lands, with their ruined
buildings and reduced establishment, fell into the hands of laymen,
and became hereditary in their families; until at last nothing was left
but the mere name of abbacy applied to the lands, and of abbot
borne by the secular lord for the time. The external change produced
in the church was the result of the policy adopted towards it by the
kings of the race of Queen Margaret. It was in the main the same
policy as that adopted towards Ireland by the Norman kings of
England. It mainly consisted, first, in placing the church upon a
territorial in place of a tribal basis, and substituting the parochial
system and a diocesan episcopacy for the old tribal churches with
their monastic jurisdiction and functional episcopacy; secondly, in
introducing the religious orders of the Church of Rome, and founding
great monasteries as centres of counter influence to the native
church; and, thirdly, in absorbing the Culdees, now the only clerical
element left in the Celtic Church, into the Roman system, by
converting them from secular into regular canons, and merging them
in the latter order.
A.D. 1093-1107. During the war of succession which followed
See of St. the death of Malcolm the Third and ended in the
Andrews remains firm establishment of the sons of the Saxon
vacant and
Queen Margaret upon the throne of Scotland in
churches founded
in Lothian only. the person of Edgar, her eldest son, no successor
appears to have been appointed to Fothad, the
last native bishop of St. Andrews, and no attempt appears to have
been made to follow out the policy which had been inaugurated by
that queen of assimilating the native church to that of Rome. During
this interval Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was left
without a bishop, and the conflict between the Celtic and the Saxon
element in the population of the country, which was to determine
whether Scotland was to remain a Celtic or a Teutonic kingdom,
probably threw the northern portion of it into too great a confusion to
render any attempt to reorganise the church possible. The only
ecclesiastical foundations made during this period were confined to
the southern districts, where the sons of Malcolm, who owed to
English assistance the vindication of their right to the throne, showed
their gratitude by grants to the church of Durham. Duncan, the eldest
son of Malcolm, made over to the monks of Durham Tiningeham,
Aldeham, Scuchale, Cnolle, Hatherwich, and all right which Bishop
Fodan had in Broccesmuthe.[694] These lands are in East Lothian,
and formed part of the possessions of St. Balthere’s monastery of
Tyningham. The allusion to the rights of Bishop Fodan or Fothad
shows that this part of Lothian at least had by this time come under
the bishops of St. Andrews; and we find that these lands afterwards
reverted to that see.[695]
Edgar, the eldest son of Queen Margaret, had no sooner made
good his right to the throne by English assistance, than we find him
refounding the monastery of Coldingham, which had been destroyed
by the Danes. In his charter he says that he had come to the
dedication of the church of St. Mary at Coldingham, which dedication
had been honourably completed to the praise of God and to his
contentment, and that he had immolated on the altar to the same
church, in endowment, and granted, the whole town of Swintun, to
be held for ever free and quit from all claim, and to be disposed of at
the will of the monks of St. Cuthbert. He adds that he had ordained
to the men of Coldinghamshire, as they themselves have chosen
and confirmed in his hand, that they every year pay to the monks
half a mark of silver for each plough.[696] The mention of
Coldinghamshire, and the burden imposed upon the men of the
district to contribute to the support of the church, indicate something
like a parochial district attached to the church; and we find, in
another charter, the establishment of a parish church clearly
presented to us, as well as the process by which it was
accomplished. In this document, Thor informs his lord, Earl David,
that King Edgar had given him Ednaham, now Ednam, in
Berwickshire, waste; that he had inhabited it, and built from the
foundation the church which King Edgar caused to be dedicated to
Saint Cuthbert, and had endowed it with one plough; and he prays
his son to confirm the donation he had made of the church to St.
Cuthbert and the monks of Durham.[697] Here we have in fact a
formation of a manor with its parish church, and in a subsequent
document it is termed the mother church of Ednam.[698]
A.D. 1107. Edgar appears to have made no attempt to
Turgot appointed introduce a parochial church north of the Forth, or
bishop of St. even to fill up the vacancy in the see of St.
Andrews, and the
Andrews; but, on his death, when the territory
Sees of Moray and
Dunkeld created. which formed his kingdom, with its
heterogeneous population, was divided between
his two brothers—the districts north of the Forth and Clyde, with
Lothian as far as the Lammermoors, falling, under his will, to
Alexander as king, and the districts of the Cumbrian Britons, with the
rest of Lothian, to David as earl—the policy which had been
inaugurated by their Saxon mother, Queen Margaret, of assimilating
the native church to that of England, was at once resumed by both.
Alexander’s first step was to fill up the vacancy in the bishopric of St.
Andrews, by the appointment, in the first year of his reign, of Turgot,
prior of Durham, and at the same time to create two additional
bishoprics for the more remote and Celtic portion of his kingdom.
The first was that of Moray, to which he appointed a bishop named
Gregorius; and the second was that of Dunkeld, which he revived in
the person of Cormac.[699]
Establishment of The districts beyond the Spey were at this time
the bishopric of so little under the influence of the Crown, and
Moray. their connection with what formed the kingdom
proper so slender, that the position of a bishop of Moray appointed
by the king can have been little more than nominal. In fact, we know
very little of the state of the church in that great Celtic district at this
time, except what may be gathered from the dedications of the
churches. The low-lying portion of its territory, extending along the
south shore of the Moray Firth from the Spey westward, with its
fertile soil and temperate air, must always have formed an attractive
position for ecclesiastical establishments; and in that part of it which
lies between the Spey and the Findhorn three churches come now
rather prominently forward. These are the churches of Brennach, or
Birnie, Spyny and Kenedor; and we learn something of this last
church from the legend of Saint Gervadius or Gernadius, whose day
is the 8th of November. He was a native of Ireland, and leaving his
home to preach the Word of Life in Scotland, he came to the territory
of Moravia or Moray, in which place he associated with himself many
fellow-soldiers in Christ, and under angelic direction, as it is said,
built an oratory or cell in a place called Kenedor. Here he had a
stone bed, and led the life of an Anchorite.[700] A cave near Elgin and
a spring of water in the rock above bear his name. An allusion in his
legend to a war by the king of the Angles against the Scots, which
brought the Anglic soldiers to his neighbourhood, fixes his date to
the year 934, when Athelstane, king of Northumbria, invaded
Scotland both by sea and land; and his establishment has all the
features of a Culdee church. There was no trace, however, of the
name of Culdee in this district when Alexander founded his
bishopric, and it was not till the time of Bricius, the sixth bishop of
Moray, who filled that position from 1203 to 1222, that the bishops
had any fixed residence in the diocese. They are said before his time
to have had their episcopal seat in one or other of the three churches
of Birnie, Spyny and Kenedor. When Bricius became bishop in 1203
he fixed his cathedral at Spyny, and founded a chapter of eight
secular canons, giving to his cathedral a constitution founded on the
usage of Lincoln, which he ascertained by a mission to England.[701]
After his death the seat of the bishopric was removed to Elgin.
Establishment of The bishopric of Dunkeld was in a very
bishopric of different position, and its relations with the Crown
Dunkeld. were of the most intimate character. A church had
been built there by Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the Scottish
dynasty, and a part at least of the relics of St. Columba had been
transferred to it by him. The abbot, in his time, was the first bishop of
his Pictish kingdom. It had then, along with the great territory forming
the lay abbacy of Dull, passed into the possession of a line of lay
abbots, from whom the family on the throne were the male
descendants; and it had now, probably by the death of Ethelred the
young lay abbot, again reverted to the Crown, as we hear no more of
him after the reign of Edgar. Mylne, who was a canon of Dunkeld in
the fifteenth century, tells us in his Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld
‘that, when it seemed good to the Supreme Controller of all Christian
religion, and when devotion and piety had increased, St. David, the
sovereign, who was the younger son of King Malcolm Canmor and
the holy Queen Margaret, having changed the constitution of the
monastery, erected it into a cathedral church, and, having
superseded the Keledei, created, about the year 1127, a bishop and
canons, and ordained that there should in future be a secular
college. The first bishop on this foundation was for a time abbot of
that monastery, and subsequently a counsellor of the king.’[702] Mylne
is, however, wrong both in the date and in the name of the founder;
for, as we have seen, the bishopric was founded by Alexander, the
predecessor of King David, as early as the year 1107. The
possession of the ample territories belonging to the lay abbacy of
Dunkeld would enable him at once to refound the bishopric with its
cathedral and chapter in proper form. And here we find the remains
of the old Columban Church brought into sharp contact with the
Culdee foundations. The church which Kenneth had founded there
certainly inherited, along with a part of the relics of the great founder
of the Columban Church, to a certain extent also the primatial
jurisdiction of the monastery of Iona over the Columban monasteries
on the mainland. These monasteries had, with few exceptions,
become lay abbacies, and Mylne appears so far to have given a
correct representation of the revival of the episcopate, as we find
that the rights of the original monastery of Dunkeld over the
Columban foundations do appear to have been now exercised by the
bishop. Besides the two great lay abbacies of Dull and Glendochart,
founded respectively by St. Adamnan and St. Fillan in the seventh
century, whose united territory comprised the entire western districts
of Atholl, bounded by Drumalban on the west, and the districts
beyond this range, which afterwards formed the diocese of Argyll, we
find the new bishopric possessing within the limits of other dioceses
disconnected parishes which represented old Columban
foundations. In Stratherne it had the parishes of Madderty and Crieff,
the former dedicated to St. Ethernanus, whose death is recorded by
Tighernac in 669, and who therefore belonged to the Columban
Church; and here we find the bishop dealing with the rights of Can
and Conveth which the clerics of the church of Dunkeld had from ‘the
lands of Madderty, which in Scotch are termed Abthen.’[703] In
charters to the monastery of Dunfermline the rights of Dunkeld in
Fife and Fotherif are specially reserved;[704] and here the bishopric
possessed Incholm, dedicated to St. Columba, and adjacent lands
on the mainland. In Angus it possessed the parishes of Fearn and
Menmuir, dedicated to St. Aidan, the Columban bishop of
Lindisfarne; and it even penetrated beyond the Firth of Forth on the
south, where it possessed Cramond dedicated to St. Columba, and
on the north beyond the Mounth, when we find in a charter granted
by the Mormaer, or earl of Buchan, in the earlier years of the reign of
King David, of the lands of Pet-mec-Cobrig ‘for the consecration of a
church of Christ and Peter the apostle (at Deer) and to Columcille
and to Drostan,’ that is, for the reconsecration of the church of Deer
to St. Peter, which had previously been dedicated to St. Columba
and St. Drostan, and the lands are granted ‘free from all exactions
with their tie to Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld.’[705] This monastery of
Deer is one of the few Columban foundations which preserved its
clerical character intact down to this period, and here we find no
trace of the name of Culdee in connection with it.
Rights of Keledei On the other hand, and in contrast to these
pass to St. rights of Dunkeld, Turgot was no sooner elected
Andrews. bishop of St. Andrews than the fate and fortunes
of the Culdee establishments were committed into his hands; for we
are told that ‘in his days the whole rights of the Keledei over the
whole kingdom of Scotland passed to the bishopric of St.
Andrews.’[706] The appointment of Turgot, the prior of Durham, to the
bishopric of St. Andrews, in conformity with the policy adopted
towards the native church by the sons of Queen Margaret, had one
result which probably King Alexander did not anticipate when he
made it. It brought upon him the claim of the archbishop of York to
supremacy over the Scottish Church, whose bishops he regarded as
his suffragans. It is not necessary for our purpose to enter at length
on this intricate subject. His claim was, no doubt, founded upon the
original commission by Pope Gregory to Augustine in the end of the
sixth century, by which he placed all the churches north of the
Humber under the bishop of York, and to the convention between the
archbishops of Canterbury and York in 1072, by which it was
attempted to revive this arrangement, and to place all the churches
of the northern province, as far as the extreme limits of Scotland,
under the latter;[707] but such a right had never been either
recognised or exercised, and the only substantial ground upon which
it could be based was one very similar to that on which the
supremacy claimed by the king of England over Scotland could be
founded. It is certain that the province of York extended
ecclesiastically, as the kingdom of Northumbria did civilly, to the Firth
of Forth; and so far as concerned the churches of Lothian and
Teviotdale, the former of which were now under the rule of the
bishop of St. Andrews, while the latter were claimed by Glasgow,
there may have been some ground for the assertion of such a right,
similar to that which the annexation of Lothian to the kingdom of
Scotland gave for the civil claim; but beyond the Firths of Forth and
Clyde the claims of both were shadowy in the extreme, and
Alexander, in his jealousy for the independence of his kingdom, saw
the necessity of resisting the threatened encroachment of the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction of York. In the end Turgot was consecrated
at York on 1st August 1109, with reservation of the rights of either
see. He died on 31st August 1115, and during his tenure of office,
owing mainly to these disputes, he appears to have done nothing to
affect the rights of the Culdees. In order to avoid a recurrence of this
question, Alexander applied to the archbishop of Canterbury to
recommend him an English cleric as bishop, stating that the bishops
of St. Andrews had hitherto been consecrated either by the Pope or
by the archbishop of Canterbury. The former assertion was probably
true in so far as regards the later bishops; but the incautious
admission of the latter, which was totally inconsistent with fact, led
the king into a new and unprofitable dispute, which had an equally
awkward bearing upon the more important question of the
independence of the kingdom. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, was
sent, but was not elected till 1120; and in the following year he
returned to Canterbury,[708] and the bishopric remained unfilled up for
three years.
Canons regular During this time, however, while St. Andrews
introduced into was, practically speaking, without a bishop,
Scotland. Alexander commenced to carry out another part
of this policy, by introducing the canons-regular of St. Augustine, or
the black canons, as they were called, into Scotland; and for this
purpose he selected the most central and important position in his
kingdom, that of Scone, which was peculiarly associated with the
very heart of the monarchy, and had been the scene of previous
legislation regarding the church. Here he brought a colony of canons
regular from the church of St. Oswald at Nastlay, near Pontefract, in
Yorkshire, and founded a priory in the year 1115, which was
confirmed by the seven earls of his kingdom, and by Gregory and
Cormac, the bishops of the two additional bishoprics he had created,
who here term themselves bishops by the authority of God, and of
the holy apostles Peter and Paul and of Saint Andrew the apostle.
The church, which was previously dedicated to the Trinity, was
placed under the patronage of the Virgin, St. Michael, St. John, St.
Lawrence and St. Augustine.[709] Some years later Alexander
introduced the regular canons into the diocese of Dunkeld. In the
year 1122 he founded a priory of canons on an island near the east
end of Loch Tay, which became a cell of Scone, and here his queen,
Sibylla, died and was buried; and in 1123 he founded a monastery
for the same canons in the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth.[710]
In the following year Alexander heard of the death of Eadmer, and
filled up the bishopric of St. Andrews by appointing Robert, the
English prior of Scone; but, four months after this appointment, and
before Robert was consecrated, he died in the April of that year.
Probably the last act of his life was the right which he conferred upon
the church of the Holy Trinity of Scone, to hold a court, in a charter
which is addressed to the bishops and earls of Scotland, and is
witnessed by Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews, Cormac the
bishop, and Gregory, bishop of Moray.[711]
Diocese of During the whole period of Alexander’s reign,
Glasgow restored his younger brother David was carrying out the
by Earl David. same policy in the southern districts of Scotland,
over which he ruled as earl. In the year 1113 he founded a
monastery at Selkirk, in which he placed Benedictine monks of the
order of Tyron; but his great work there was the reconstitution of the
bishopric of Glasgow. This diocese he restored about the year 1115,
and caused an inquisition to be made by the elders and wise men of
Cumbria into the lands and churches which formerly belonged to the
see of Glasgow. In this document, which has been preserved, and
which may be placed in the year 1120 or 1121, its framers relate the
foundation of the church of Glasgow by St. Kentigern, and that he
was succeeded by several bishops in the see; but that the confusion
and revolutions of the country at length destroyed all traces of the
church, and almost of Christianity, till the restoration of the bishopric
by Earl David, and the election and consecration of John, who had
been his tutor, and is commonly called the first bishop of Glasgow.
The bishopric, as reconstituted after the information derived from this
inquisition, extended from the Clyde on the north to the Solway Firth
and the march with England on the south, and from the western
boundary of Lothian on the east to the river Urr on the west; and it
included Teviotdale, which had remained a part of the diocese of
Durham while the Lothian churches north of the Tweed were
transferred to St. Andrews, and which was now reclaimed as
properly belonging to Glasgow. Here we find no traces of the
Keledei, who had formerly formed the chapter of Glasgow; but in the
reign of Malcolm the Fourth the pope confirmed a constitution of the
dean and chapter, which had been introduced after the model of
Sarum by Herbert, elected bishop in 1147.[712] Here, too, the
foundation of the new bishopric of Glasgow brought upon him the
claims of the archbishop of York, which were equally resisted, and
the non-dependence of the diocese on any metropolitan bishop
established. The rights of York were, however, recognised in the
case of the bishopric of Candida Casa, likewise restored some years
later, when Gilda Aldan was appointed its first bishop, as this see
had been first established by the Anglic king of Northumbria in the
eighth century. Galloway, though civilly united to Scotland, was
considered ecclesiastically to belong to England, and its bishop
owed obedience as one of his suffragans to the archbishop of York,
by whom Gilda Aldan was consecrated soon after David’s accession
to the throne of Scotland.[713]
Bishoprics and Ailred of Rivaux, who was King David’s
monasteries contemporary, tells us of him that ‘he seemed not
founded by King undeservedly loved both by God and men. He
David.
was plainly beloved by God, for at the very outset
of his reign he diligently practised the things which belong to God in
erecting churches and founding monasteries, which he endowed
with possessions and covered with honours. For whereas he had
found in the whole kingdom of Scotland three or four bishops only,
the other churches, without a shepherd or bishop, going to wrack
and ruin in respect both of morals and substance; what with ancient
ones which he restored and new ones which he founded, he left nine
at his death. He left also monasteries of the Cluniac, Cistercian,
Tyronian orders (who were Benedictines), and the Arovensian,
Præmonstratensian, and Belvacensian (who were canons-regular
from Aroise, Prémontré, and Beauvais), not few in number or small
in size, but full of brethren.’[714] There is a catalogue of religious
houses at the end of Henry of Silgrave’s Chronicle, written about A.D.
1272, which belongs however to an earlier period, and does not
come down later than the reign of William the Lion; and from it alone
do we obtain any information as to the Keledean character of these
foundations.[715] The bishoprics which he found at his accession were
those of St. Andrews, Moray, and Dunkeld, to which Ailred, probably
with some hesitation, adds Glasgow. Galloway was not included, as
it properly belonged to England. We find no trace of Keledei in either
Glasgow or Moray; and the catalogue mentions only secular canons,
that is, the chapters established after their restoration. The greater
part of the new bishoprics which he added were founded in the first
few years of his reign; and he appears to have commenced his
proceedings by having Robert, bishop-elect of St. Andrews,
consecrated in 1128 by the archbishop of York, in the same manner
as Turgot had been consecrated, that is, reserving the rights of both
sees; and by completing the division of Scotland north of the great
range of the Mounth into separate sees.
Establishment of The first of these appears to have been the
bishopric of Ross. diocese of Rosemarky, or Ross. A charter
granted by King David to the monks of Dunfermline, between the
years 1128 and 1130, is witnessed by Robert bishop of St. Andrews,
who had now been consecrated, John bishop of Glasgow, Cormac
bishop of Dunkeld, and Gregory bishop of Moray—these are the four
bishoprics alluded to by Ailred—and there now appears as a witness
an additional bishop—Makbeth, bishop of Rosmarkyn, or
Rosemarky.[716] This church, as appears by its dedication, was
originally founded as a Columban monastery by Lugadius, or
Moluoc, abbot and bishop of Lismore, whose death is recorded in
577; but, as we have seen, Bonifacius refounded it in the eighth
century, and dedicated the church to St. Peter. Here he placed,
according to Wyntoun, secular canons, and we now find the canons
designated as Keledei in the catalogue of religious houses. The
chapter, however, was reconstituted early in the succeeding century,
when the term Keledei disappears, and instead there is a regular
cathedral body of canons under a dean.[717]
Establishment of The next bishopric established appears to have
bishopric of been that of Aberdeen, embracing the extensive
Aberdeen. districts between the Dee and the Spey, and
including the earldom of Mar and Buchan. The memorandum of the
charter by the Mormaer, or Earl, of Buchan, refounding the church of
Deer, which has been already referred to, in which Cormac, bishop
of Dunkeld, is mentioned, is witnessed by Nectan, bishop of
Aberdeen; and this is the earliest notice of that see. According to
Fordun, it succeeded an earlier see founded at Mortlach, on the
banks of the river Fiddich, which falls into the Spey, and therefore
not far from the western boundary of the diocese. Fordun gives the
following account of its foundation. After narrating a victory by King
Malcolm the Second over the Norwegian army in the north, he
proceeds:—‘In the seventh year of his reign Malcolm, thinking over
the manifold blessings continually bestowed upon him by God,
pondered anxiously in his mind what he should give Him in return. At
length, the grace of the Holy Ghost working within him, he set his
heart upon increasing the worship of God; so he established a new
episcopal see at Murthillach, not far from the spot where he had
overcome the Norwegians and gained the victory, and endowed it
with churches and the rents of many estates. He desired to extend
the territory of the diocese, so as to make it reach from the stream or
river called the Dee to the river Spey. To this see a holy man and one
worthy the office of bishop, named Beyn, was at the instance of the
king appointed, as first bishop, by our lord the Pope Benedict.’[718]
The church of Aberdeen appears, however, somewhat earlier to
have had a tradition that the see was originally founded at Mortlach,
and was transferred to Aberdeen by King David in the thirteenth year
of his reign; but the foundation of the church at Mortlach is ascribed
to Malcolm Canmore in the sixth year of his reign. This tradition is
contained in five charters, or memoranda of charters, prefixed to the
Chartulary of Aberdeen, and the interval between Beyn, the
supposed first bishop, and Nectan is filled up by Donercius, the
second bishop, and Cormauch, the third bishop.[719] That a bishopric
was founded there by Malcolm the Second is clearly at variance with
the undoubted fact that there was at that time but one bishop in
Scotland, whose seat was at St. Andrews, and who was termed the
Epscop Albain, or Episcopus Scottorum; and the five documents
which contain the Aberdeen tradition have been shown by the
learned editor of the Chartulary to be unquestionably spurious.[720]
The first authentic writ in that Chartulary is a bull by Pope Adrian IV.
in 1157, confirming to Edward, bishop of Aberdeen, the church of
Aberdeen, the church of St. Machar, with the town of Old Aberdeen
and other lands, in which are included the monastery of Cloveth and
the town and monastery of Murthillach, with five churches and the
lands belonging to them.[721] There is here no allusion to Murthillach
having been an episcopal see, the seat of which had been
transferred to Aberdeen. The designation of monastery points
unequivocally to these churches having been old Columban
monasteries; and accordingly we find that Murthillach was dedicated
to St. Moluoc, the founder of the churches of Lismore and
Rosemarky in the sixth century. Of the three bishops who are said to
have preceded Nectan, Beyn probably belongs to the Columban
period,[722] Donercius has all the appearance of a fictitious name, and
Cormauch is probably Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld, who, as we have
seen, appears in the charter in which Nectan is first mentioned as
having rights connected with the church of Deer, and who may have
possessed similar claims upon the monasteries of Cloveth and
Murthillach, as old Columban foundations, from which probably any
clerical element had by this time disappeared.
Monasteries of We fortunately now possess an invaluable
Deer and Turiff. record in the Book of Deer, which throws some
light upon two Columban foundations in the district of Buchan,
forming the north-eastern portion of the diocese of Aberdeen, as well
as upon the social organisation of the Celtic inhabitants of that
district. These are the monasteries of Deer and Turriff, the one
founded by St. Columba and placed under the care of his nephew
St. Drostan, the other founded by St. Comgan in the following
century; and the notices in the Book of Deer are peculiarly valuable,
as it shows these monasteries retaining their clerical element and
Celtic character unimpaired down to the reign of David I. It is here, if
anywhere, that we should expect to find, according to popular
notions, these Columban clergy bearing the name of Culdees; but
the term Cele De nowhere appears in this record in connection with
them. The peculiar value of this MS. consists in memoranda of grants
to the monastery of Deer, written in the Irish character and language
on blank pages or on the margins. These are in two handwritings.
The first contains notices of grants preceding the time of Gartnait,
Mormaer or Earl of Buchan, who lived in the earlier years of King
David’s reign. These are written on three blank pages at the end of
the MS. and on the margin of the first page. The second begins with
the grant by Gartnait refounding the church and dedicating it to St.
Peter, and is followed by a short notice of a grant, by the same earl,
which probably preceded it, as the grant is to Columcille and Drostan
alone, without mentioning St. Peter; and on the margin of the second
page, in the same handwriting, is a grant by Colban, the son-in-law
and successor of Gartnait. The scribe appears to have added to two
of the grants in the first handwriting the important statement that they
were made in freedom from Mormaer and Toisech to the day of
judgment, with ‘his blessing on every one who shall fulfil, and his
curse on every one who shall go against it.’ The second of the grants
by Earl Gartnait, which appears to have immediately preceded the
reconstitution of the church, is witnessed by ‘Gillecalline the sacart,
or priest, Feradach, son of Maelbhricin, and Maelgirc, son of Tralin,’
in whom we have probably the small society to which the clerics of
Deer had by this time been reduced, and which rendered a
refoundation necessary. As the grant refounding the church is
witnessed by the Ferleighinn, or man of learning, of Turbruad, or
Turriff, it is not a very violent supposition that he may have been the
scribe. The charter granted by King David towards the end of his
reign, declaring that the clerics of Deer shall be free from all lay
interference and exaction, as written in their book, shows that they
had become exposed to the encroachments of the laity and required
protection; and the foundation by William, earl of Buchan, of the
Cistercian abbey of Deer in the year 1219 seems to have brought to
a close its history as a Celtic monastery. The monastery of Turbruad,
or Turriff, appears also to have existed as a Celtic monastery at the
same time, and we have some incidental notices of it in the Book of
Deer. Domingart, Ferleighinn Turbruad, or ‘lector of Turriff,’
witnesses one of Earl Gartnait’s grants, and that by his successor
Colbain is witnessed by Cormac, Abb. Turbruad, or ‘abbot of Turriff;’
but it probably passed into lay hands before the end of David’s reign,
as his charter of confirmation is witnessed by ‘Cormac de Turbrud,’
or Cormac of Turriff, without any designation implying a clerical
character.[723] The charter by Cainnech, Mormaer or Earl of Buchan,
refounding the church of Deer, contains the last notice of Cormac
bishop of Dunkeld; and Gregorius, the bishop of Moray, appears to
have been translated to Dunkeld, as in a charter by David the First to
Dunfermline, granted before the death of his queen, Matilda, in 1130,
we find as witnesses Robert bishop of St. Andrews and Gregorius
bishop of Dunkeld; and along with them appears, for the first time,
Andreas bishop of Cataness, or Caithness.[724]
Establishment of This great district, which comprised both the
bishopric of modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland,
Caithness. and extended from the Dornoch to the Pentland
Firths, was at this time in the possession of the Norwegian earl of
Orkney; and, though he held the earldom of Caithness nominally
under the crown of Scotland, its connection with the Scottish
kingdom was as yet but a slight one. The erection of it into a diocese
and the appointment of a bishop by the king of Scotland could have
had little reality in them till they were accepted by the Norwegian
earl; and David appears to have provided his new bishop with the
means of supporting his position by conferring upon him the church
of the Holy Trinity at Dunkeld, with its possessions of Fordouin,
Dunmernoch, Bendacthin, or Bendochy, Cupermaccultin, Incheturfin
and Chethec, or Keithock. Towards the end of David’s reign Andrew
probably obtained a footing in Caithness, as he made over this
church to the monks of Dunfermline;[725] and we find his immediate
successors, John and Adam, living in Caithness, and claiming
certain subsidies from the people. The principal church of the
diocese was that of Dornoch, situated in the district of Sutherland, on
the north side of the Dornoch Firth. This church was dedicated to St.
Bar or Finbar, and his festival was held on the 25th of September.
This is the day of St. Bar or Finbar, bishop of Cork in the Irish
Calendar; but the legend given in the Aberdeen Breviary obviously
identifies him with St. Finbar of Maghbile, the preceptor and friend of
St. Columba, whose day in the Irish Calendar is the 10th of
September. There seems, therefore, to be some confusion between
the two, and it is more probable that it was, like Rosemarky, a
Columban foundation. The name of St. Duthac, to whom the church
of Tain on the opposite shore of the firth is dedicated, is connected
also with the church at Dornoch, where he is said to have performed
a miracle on St. Finbar’s day;[726] and in his time the Keledei may
have been introduced here, where we find them in the catalogue of
religious houses. In the year 1196 that portion of the earldom of
Caithness which lay between the Ord of Caithness and the Dornoch
Firth appears to have been taken from the Norwegian earl and
bestowed upon Hugh of Moray, of the then rising family of De
Moravia; and the appointment of another member of the family,
Gilbert de Moravia, soon after to the bishopric of Moray led to the
proper organisation of Dornoch as a cathedral. But the Culdees had
by this time disappeared, and the clerical element reduced, as was
usual, to a single priest; for his deed establishing a cathedral chapter
of ten canons, with the usual functionaries of dean, precentor,
chancellor, treasurer and archdeacon, proceeds on the narrative
‘that in the times of his predecessors there was but a single priest
ministering in the cathedral, both on account of the poverty of the
place and by reason of frequent hostilities; and that he desired to
extend the worship of God in that church, and resolved to build a
cathedral church at his own expense, to dedicate it to the Virgin
Mary, and, in proportion to his limited means, to make it
conventual.’[727]
The communities As far as we have gone, the Celtic Church
of Keledei appears mainly as dying out by internal decay,
superseded by and as being superseded by the bishoprics
regular canons.
founded in the earlier years of King David’s reign,
and the establishment of the ordinary cathedral staff of canons with
their dean and other functionaries. We have now arrived at that
period of David’s reign when an active war against the Culdee
establishments commenced, and every effort was made to suppress
them entirely, and when the process of internal decay was
accompanied by a course of external aggression which we must now
follow as it rolled from St. Andrews, into whose hands their fate was
committed, westward, till it finally reached the far shores of the island
of Iona.
Suppression of In the year 1144, Robert, bishop of St.
Keledei of St. Andrews, who had been prior of the monastery of
Andrews. regular canons of St. Augustine at Scone,
founded a priory for the same canons at St. Andrews, and, besides
various lands, granted to them two of the seven portions of the
altarage of St. Andrews, which then belonged to lay persons, and
likewise the hospital of St. Andrews, with the portion which belonged
to it; and this grant was confirmed in the same year by the pope
Lucius II. The object of this foundation evidently was that it should in
time supersede the Culdees. Accordingly, in the same year King
David grants a charter to the prior and canons of St. Andrews, in
which he provides that they shall receive the Keledei of Kilrimont into
the canonry, with all their possessions and revenues, if they are
willing to become canons-regular; but, if they refuse, those who are
now alive are to retain them during their lives, and, after their death,
as many canons-regular are to be instituted in the church of St.
Andrews as there are now Keledei, and all their possessions are to
be appropriated to the use of the canons. Three years later Pope
Eugenius III., by a bull directed to the prior of St. Andrews, deprived
the Keledei of their right to elect the bishop, and conferred it upon
the prior and canons of St. Andrews, and at the same time decreed
that, as the Keledei died out, their places were to be filled up by
canons-regular. The Keledei appear to have resisted these changes,
and to have continued to assert their right to participate in the
election of the bishop, as the decree depriving them of it was
renewed from time to time by subsequent popes down to the year
1248. About the year 1156, Robert, bishop of St. Andrews, granted
to the prior and brethren of St. Andrews the whole of the portions of
the altarage, with the exception of the seventh, which belongs to the
bishop, thus adding three more later to the three portions they
already possessed; and six years later Bishop Arnald gave the whole
of the altarage, which was divided into seven portions, and had been
held by seven persons not living a conventual life, to the canons
professing a regular life and living in community.[728] Of the two
bodies into which the community of St. Andrews had been divided,
that one which had passed, with the exception of the bishop’s share,
into the hands of secular persons, thus came to be represented by
the priory of regular canons. In 1220 we find a bull by Pope Honorius
III. requiring the legate of the apostolic see to inquire into a dispute
between the Prior and convent of St. Andrews on the one hand, and
the Bishop and those clerics of St. Andrews who are commonly
called Keledei on the other, in regard to their respective possessions.
The Keledean community at St. Andrews now appears under the
name of the Provost and Keledei of the Church of St. Mary; and they
are so designated in a document connected with the controversy
between the prior and convent of St. Andrews and the provost of the
church of St. Mary of St. Andrews and the Keledei living there as
canons and their vicars;[729] and in the same year there is a bull by
Pope Innocent the Fourth to the prior and canons, who are now
termed the Chapter of St. Andrews in Scotland of the order of St.
Augustine, which narrates that it had been ordained by his
predecessors that, on the decease of the Keledei, their place should
be filled up by canons-regular, and their prebends and possessions
made over for their use; but that, the prebend of Gilbert the Keledeus
having become vacant, the Keledei refused to give it up or to allow a
regular canon to be introduced in his place, contrary to these
statutes; and it directed the Keledei to be excommunicated if they did
not obey them. Master Richard Vermont, Keledeus, appears on
behalf of the Keledei, and resigns the prebend, which is made over
to the canons. Three years later we find in another bull ‘the provost
and chapter of the Caledei of the church of St. Mary in the city of St.
Andrews’ still claiming to participate in the election of the bishop, and
supported by the archdeacon. In a subsequent bull, two years after,
addressed to the prior and chapter of the cathedral church of St.
Andrews of the order of St. Augustine, on the narrative that ‘two of
the Keledei of the church of Saint Mary of Kilrimont, who term
themselves canons,’ had been allowed to take part in the election of
a previous bishop, it is decreed, with consent of the Keledei, that this
shall not operate to their prejudice.[730] In the year 1258 they are
finally deprived of their parochial status as vicars of the parish
church of the Holy Trinity of St. Andrews.[731] It is evident from these
deeds that the Keledei asserted their claim to be considered as
canons, and did not submit without a struggle to be deprived of the
right of participating in the election of bishop, from which they are
finally excluded in the year 1273. We again find them in a document
in 1309, and the position which they had now come to occupy is
clearly defined. It is a decision given by Sir Thomas Randulph, the
guardian of Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, in a controversy
between the Keledei and the bishop regarding territorial jurisdiction,
in which he finds that ‘within the bounds of the district termed the
Boar’s Chase there are only three baronies, viz., the barony of the
bishop of St. Andrews, the barony of the prior of St. Andrews, and
the barony of the Keledei, and that these baronies with their
inhabitants are under the immediate jurisdiction of the bishop of St.
Andrews and of the church, and of no one else.’[732] While, therefore,