And the Hills Replied

By Sparhawk Hutchins

And the Hills Replied is a story of one man's strange encounter during a 2005 vacation in Scotland to pay homage to his ancestors, where he stumbles upon a missing link in his genealogy. Sparhawk Hutchins's historical fantasy is a whirlwind adventure into the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781960113207

Sparhawk Hutchins

Sparhawk Hutchins is an attorney who resides in Harbor City, California, with his wife and son. His name is taken from that of an ancestor on his mother’s side who published a family record of her descent from King Robert I of Scotland.

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Copyright © 2023 by Sparhawk Hutchins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-960113-21-4 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-960113-22-1 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-960113-20-7 (E-book Edition)

Some characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to the real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Printed in the United States of America

Prologue

Dunfermline Abbey, Scotland

October 22, 2005

A frivolous notion at best, I thought, of a place, they said, where hills could talk.

Where wildflowers and majestic pine shelter the fault line is where they be, she said to me.

Hearken to the woeful sound of the lost hunter’s horn, it was confided, wait a moment and be delighted.

She was persistent, but I was resistant and refused her object to seek, determined the hills would never speak.

Until a day of despair and in need of repair, I turned to stare at the hills there still and caught the blare of the horn so shrill.

If you must know it, I can best show it in a moment denied when the hills themselves, they actually replied.

I am a Los Angeles, California, based securities litigation attorney. My resume says that I’d earned my Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the Indiana University School of Law–Bloomington and that I’d been an assistant United States attorney, an elected prosecuting attorney, and special counsel to the Enforcement Division of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.

Over the years, I’ve read my name and seen my image in print and broadcast media blustering about the righteousness of my clients while condemning the scornful behavior of their adversaries. Sometimes I was wrong, and I do have regrets, but I have much to be thankful for, so I try not to complain. Besides, I’ve managed to put it all aside to enjoy a golf holiday to St. Andrews, Scotland, with my son, a Delta Airlines pilot, and a group of his fellow flyers and their fathers.

After loosening up and forgetting about work the past four days, my singular focus had been on my golf swing, but having played the iconic courses in and around the birthplace of golf in lashing winds and intermittent deluges, I was sore and beat-up. Yesterday afternoon, my son and I were at the bar of the Dunvegan Hotel, where we were staying, a block from the first tee of the Old Course. I told him of my urge to take a side trip, and he knew why. It wasn’t a planned visit; I’d just happened to see the road sign when we’d crossed the Forth Bridge into the Kingdom of Fife on our way to St. Andrews.

It was a brisk but sunny Saturday morning, and I was walking alone through the crumbling remains of the once-splendid palace next to the Abbey Church in the royal burgh the English call Dunfermline. The Gaels call it Fortress by the Crooked Stream. My mother had told me that it was a family burial ground, and I’d come to pay homage to my designated progenitor, King Robert I—the Bruce—at one of his two graves.

On the bus ride here, the clattering window I happened to sit next to rattled my teeth and hindered my introspection for a time, but it settled when the road smoothed, and the racket finally ceased. I was just getting comfortable when we shuddered to a halt before a roundabout, the United Kingdom’s version of a fork in the road. Lurching forward, we entered the circle and began spinning. Other than the way in, I saw two ways out: the low road that hugged the Golden Coast of Fife to Dunfermline and a high road over the Lomond Hills to the same destination.

The rotations made me question my wisdom in selecting my route until we spun out and onto the high road. That’s when I faced up to it, the reason for my pilgrimage. It went back to a silent night, when the moon had disappeared and I’d awakened screaming, about to die and in need of rescue.

I sat astride my valiant pony next to my father, an heroic king. The sky had darkened from the advent of a thousand arrows descending upon us. Battle drawn, blood began to flow as violent men savaged each other with sharp objects meant to kill. Our Black Knight led the charge, hacking his way through a forest of English infantry. I was emboldened beside my king when we’d collided with the enemy, and body parts had begun to pile up. I watched them bobble in crimson-saturated mud holes. His decapitated head would be the last one I saw to roll. The hammering gait of a gigantic Clydesdale kicked it out of a gory sludge and atop a slagheap of carnage, a single gold strand marking his rank. I held firm above the battlement, struggling to hoist his flag, the Rampant Blue Lion with the menacing red eyes, tongue, and claws, when I too fell.

I was seven years old then and a third-grader at the Sutton Elementary School. She’d raced to me and worked her magic. It was a bad dream, she’d assured me in her calming clutch, but before the light went off, I’d said something that made her face turn to stone.

I have to go to Scotland, Mother.

It was many years ago, but I’m still in awe over what my mother told me the next day. The scent of her perfume tantalized my senses, hastening the orange of a crisp autumn, Indiana morning to my crusty eyes. I found her, as I knew I would, perched above her gleaming Chestnut dressing table with its three-paneled mirror. I watched a trio of brushes scamper over six cheeks beneath a haze of scented powder. That’s what always drew me close to her when I was frightened, and I hoped she’d ask me to stay there forever as I tried to erase those horrific images of mayhem and doom.

When I looked up, they were glaring at me—three stone faces. Were they angry about some childish indiscretion I’d committed unawares? Worried and wide-eyed, I watched her dismay ease as the gold flecks in her eyes spiraled outward to the richest of blues and greens like pastel snowflakes aflutter.

There’s something you must see, she said on her way to the closet. I watched her reach above the shelf and haul down a weighty rosewood box adorned with ivory inlay depicting the wonders of ancient Egypt. While I wondered why, she placed the box next to us and invited me to open it. You’re descended from a king! she proclaimed. "And, he’s buried in two graves!"

Her words set my brain on fire, and the conflagration didn’t cool until the message had reached my secret vault of knowledge—unoccupied at the time except for a smattering of childish things. After gathering some semblance of mind, I exploded. Was it King Arthur? Was it King David? My references to royalty were limited in those days, and these were the two kings I’d heard of.

She smiled, and her blinking eyes waltzed with the sunbeams trapped inside the burnished window shades, telling me that I was on the right path.

Many believe he was King Arthur, she proposed, but there’s no doubt that he was a sixth-generation descendant of King David the First of Scotland, she explained with a twinkle in her eye.

How can he be buried in two graves? I fumbled.

She didn’t answer my question, but she did tell me about the box.

Your great-grandfather’s name was Montgomery Hutchins. He had a brother named Sparhawk, who’d passed on his given name to his own son. In 1924, the younger Sparhawk compiled a family record of documents that trace his descent from King Robert the Bruce of Scotland. My mother—your grandmother, Winifred Hutchins Andrews—is his first cousin, and she gave me the Egyptian box with the records inside. Don’t you see, son, that since King Robert was Sparhawk’s ancestor, then he’s yours too?

Her stern glare waiting for my answer offered up an unmistakable challenge, and she left me alone with the box. I took a deep breath and opened the lid.

Inside was a loosely bound stack of yellowed papers and a few letters, still in envelopes. I leafed through some of the papers but couldn’t grasp the meaning of much of it, so I put them back into the box and went out to find my friends.

Later, as the light faded, I wandered through the dead cornfields on my way home. I felt emboldened by the notion that I was of royal blood. How it could be? I wondered, since we didn’t live in a castle and we hadn’t beheaded any of our enemies . . . if we even had enemies. I was just a regular, small-town Indiana kid with a basketball in his hands most of the time. I trudged along with my head held high beneath the golden bursts of afterglow taunting the blackened tassels of those few husks that survived the mighty machines that had savaged this earth. It was an Indian summer day where I lived, and it was glorious.

I would peer into the Egyptian box from time to time over the years when some new burst of knowledge shed light on the issue. That’s when I discovered a sorrowful by-product of an advanced degree—cynicism. The sad fact is that the very first link in Sparhawk’s chain is of dubious ascription, causing me to doubt the reliability of his work. He’d written that one Robert Bruce is the first in line from the King, and he ascribed a year—1367—but hadn’t attributed it to a birth or a death. If a birth, its thirty-eight years after the King’s death, a biological impossibility. But if a death, the only Robert known to have been fathered by the King was his illegitimate son, the Lord of Liddesdale, who died in 1332. Despite my disbelief of the notion and lack of interest in looking further, I’d never told my mother that I wasn’t convinced, having chosen to leave undisturbed the mind-set of a true believer. It was later, after she’d died, much too young for any son, that I learned more.

The Bruce had engendered two legitimate lines, the first through his daughter, Marjorie, his only child from his first marriage to Isabella of Mar. The second involved his children from his second wife and queen, Elizabeth de Burgh. Their son, King David II, who’d succeeded to the throne of Scotland upon the father’s death in 1329, had died without an heir. Marjorie’s son by Sir Walter Stewart, King Robert II, thus sat on his grandfather’s throne and started the Stewart or Stuart dynasty. Their progeny, in diluted form, have ruled over Britain to this day.

I didn’t think about it again until recently, when I discovered promise in modern science. It had to do with one Sir Thomas Bruce, the Baron of Clackmannan and an heir of the king. I’d learned about him early on while searching for Sparhawk’s Robert, but I didn’t think he’d mattered, because nobody knew who he was. For over seven centuries, his proximity to the Bruce has been the subject of rampant conjecture and learned debate amongst family members, historians, genealogists, and an array of commentators. The suggestions have been many. Some say he’s a legitimate son of the king by his queen, Elizabeth de Burgh. Others argue that he’s the son of the aforementioned Lord of Liddesdale. Many insist that he’s the king’s nephew. A few family members proclaim him to be from a companion line engendered by the Bruce’s grandfather, the Competitor. As it is, no one is certain, yet hope springs eternal, and in that instance, my further study yielded blemished fruit.

According to the Bruce Family Y-DNA Project—Group C Results, Sir Thomas de Bruys was the grandson of the king’s brother of the same name. But I believe their timeline is askew, because Grandfather Thomas’s ascribed parents—those of the Bruce himself—predeceased his birth in 1307 by fifteen and three years respectively, another biological impossibility. I suspect that the flaw is attributable to a scrivener’s error, because a consensus of historians list 1307 as the year of the grandfather’s death, not his birth.

Despite my disbelief, however, there was something in the study that caught my attention: grandson Sir Thomas had married one Marjorie Charteris of Stenhouse, and they’d named their son Roberto de Bruys, hence, the Second Baron of Clackmannan. Roberto could’ve been Sparhawk’s Robert, since their timelines match and the surname Bruce shows up in epochal derivations—de Bruys, de Brus, and de Bruis—in both his study and the DNA results.

Upon exiting the Abbey Church by the palace, my mind raced with questions about the mangled remains of those buried in its medieval nave. The eclectic assemblage intrigued me considering they were supposed to be my family. There he was, beneath my feet—King Malcolm III, the Great Head. In the mid-eleventh century, he’d slain the usurper MacBeth and restored the Canmore throne. The dynasty he fathered held for almost three hundred years. An unrepentant killer at heart, he nonetheless shares his gravesite with his queen, Margaret, a saintly woman.

Their youngest son, David I, the beloved twelfth-century king, is interred with his queen consort, Maud, Countess of Huntingdon. The marriage of his great-granddaughter, Isobel, to Robert de Brus, Fourth Lord of Annandale, forever linked Family Bruce and Clan Canmore; David was the builder of the medieval nave.

Alexander III, the glorious last king of the dynasty in the late thirteenth century is also there. He’d ascended the throne when eight years old. I thought it curious that he shares eternity with his dour, first wife. One would think that he would have chosen to spend forever with his supple and willing second wife, Queen Yolande, for whom he’d given up his wandering ways.

I knew little of them since I’d never looked past the Bruce himself, thinking him the head of the line and believing his ancestors were irrelevant. I was wrong, I realized, after stumbling upon a treasure trove of genealogy in the nave—three more kings and a saint, all in the family.

Enlightened, I approached the polished brass plaque beneath the rich, carved Scottish oak pulpit of the new church. Under it rested the bones of my heroic king Robert I, whose title and name were carved from the massive sandstone blocks that adorn the rectangular summit of the central tower and proclaim it his house. While admiring the skilled craft revealed in the monumental brass, I took note of his queen consort, Elizabeth, at his side. Sad it seemed, that in all these years of mind games over the myth, I’d never once thought of her.

As I continued my languid journey through the remains, my thoughts returned to the enigma that had troubled me in the nave earlier—why it seemed to be of Egyptian influence! Inside, taking account of the design and structure of the room, I’d looked above the triforium and past the clerestory to the level ceiling, all supported by an odd number of columns—eleven. After studying the precise joinery at the summit, I’d lowered my focus to a colorful four-panel stained-glass window, the product of Sir Noel Paton in the late nineteenth century.

The first panel reveals the Bruce in a splendid red, white, and gold tunic with cape, glistening armor and shimmering crown. The second introduces a smiling and sensuous Saint Margaret, pristine in a white gown wearing ruby slippers. The third exposes her brutish husband, Malcolm III the Great Head, in drab tartan and sash. The final panel depicts the commoner hero-cum-knight, William Wallace, about to slit the throat of the man he straddled.

Bright light bled through the heroes of Scotland when the afternoon sun scorched them above the kirk’s gate entrance, unleashing a kaleidoscope of flames. When I’d turned, the vivid refractions of their figures, adornment, and trim traipsed over and around the columns in a dazzling display. Radiance from the triforium showcased the bright wisps climbing in rhythm with the solar cycle to bathe the entire room with the surreal light show. The sight brought to mind enumerable depictions of Pharaoh’s temple in Hollywood extravaganzas. The odd columns bulged in the middle; many were austere and none looked alike except for the pair framing the east window, before the great rood. They were uniform and carved to reveal spirals and zigzags. I discerned hieroglyphs in them. It wasn’t what I’d envisioned—it was supposed to be Romanesque!

I took one last look about, having seen enough, and headed back to the bus station. Reaching the steps, I was thinking I would make it back to St. Andrews for cocktails, but before I descended, the impulse to peer out over the crumbling wall into the gorge below drew me to the edge. I thought it to be the precise point where the Rampant Blue Lion of Flanders had fluttered above my ancestor king while his knights rained down heavy stones and boiling swill onto the screaming invaders and pretenders to the throne massed below.

The sun disappeared behind the first dark cloud of the day, and a sudden chill overtook me. I felt challenged, bracing against a sudden fear from being atop the very battlement from which I’d plunged in a childhood nightmare. Tingly sensations marked my retreat from the wall. This encounter was real!

My concern for self was further disturbed when a shriek from above shattered the silence. I searched the sky until I spotted the source of the ruckus. It was a hawk, wingtips outstretched and hovering motionless in an updraft. I had the uneasy feeling that the raptor’s eyes focused on me.

While concentrating on it, I’d moved forward a step toward the wall, and I’d looked down. It was a terrible mistake. A plume of stench rising from the bowel of the gorge, followed by a blast of the coldest air I’d ever felt, staggered me. Stumbling backward from the assault to my senses, I slipped on a moss-covered sandstone slab blackened over nine hundred years of trampling. To my horror, my imbalance propelled me forward. I gasped, realizing that I was over the edge. About to scream, I noticed the light had disappeared, when a mighty force blasted into my chest, hurling me backward again, and knocking me down. There I lay, dazed and battered, on the freezing cold sandstone walkway, clutching my back. Fearing I’d been struck, a searing pain stifled my breathing. I felt under my sweater and shirt but discerned no open wounds, giving me hope for another scenario, one that had saved my life.

My peril must have awakened one of my dead ancestors in the abbey, I thought who’d dispatched an angel the short distance to save me! Although I thought it improbable that I’d be worthy of such grace, what else might have generated the sound of giant, flapping wings I’d heard after impact? I searched the sky for the hawk, but it was gone. I wondered whether it had saved me, but it couldn’t have reached me from its elevation in time and, even if did, it would’ve been too small to have delivered that powerful of a punch.

My senses returned, and the pain subsided, but it took every ounce of my strength to rise. Once upright, I teetered back and forth, trying to get my balance. What had happened? I looked around expecting public condemnation as a drunkard, but no one was in sight. I was alone. Suddenly, I felt lonelier than ever before. I was shivering but couldn’t tell if from cold or fear.

It took forever to walk the short distance up to High Street. Exhausted midway, I stopped at a lacquered teal door below a creaking iron sign that had once proclaimed with pride, The Old Inn. Although it was painful, I managed to open the door. A rush of warm air carrying the stench of stale cigarettes blasted my senses. Realizing I’d walked into a pub, I found refuge on the closest barstool. Not that it was easy; the whistle of a high-speed train—so shrill it rattled the bottles in the well as much as my brain—blasted through the open door. I was definitely overloading.

A dark-haired young woman behind the bar turned and smiled while moving toward me. She had tawny-colored skin, and her eyes appeared colorless. I’d never seen the likes.

What’ll it be, lad? she asked in a hearty voice.

I took great comfort that she didn’t seem to notice I was in need of rescue. After stammering a moment, the words came out. I’ll have a pint of MacEwan’s eighty and two fingers of Speyside single malt.

My cheeks warmed when she turned to gather my order. I looked at my watch, finding affirmation of what I’d rejected as a habit many years ago—midday drinking. The thought occurred to me that I was backsliding, when she returned and plopped down two goblets of fire.

I took a gulp of the whiskey first. The flames seared my throat as the single malt descended to the pit. A warm and pleasing aftertaste arose, both sweet and earthy. The burn healed even more after I slurped my ale. I thought it fanciful that the Gaels call whiskey the water of life. Water of Death, I corrected, while ingesting the poison with delight.

Within minutes of repeating my previous order, I’d begun to thaw out. I was fast warming to the girl in the well. I told her that I thought the medieval nave was of marked Egyptian influence, but her response caught me off guard. Her colorless eyes exploded and turned bright gold, unleashing the swarm of pastel imps I’d watched race up the columns in the nave!

I’m Scythian and Egyptian, she proclaimed with pride. Where are you from?

Overcome by her luster, I forgot, but she didn’t press the point and instead told me more about her pedigree. She spoke of a brave daughter of Pharaoh who’d saved a Scythian prince of low self-esteem and had become the mother of Scotland after turning a wee lad, her Sentinel, to stone.

Wow! I exclaimed, impressed with her tall tale but not letting on that I didn’t know where Scythia was. But she’d confirmed my thoughts about the configuration of the nave, and my earlier fears that I was crazy faded. I felt a bond with her for that. Never mind the medicinal benefits of the brew kicking in. My concerns were eased. When she returned with freshened drinks, I changed the subject. I saw some rugged-looking crags north of here from the high road coming in. I thought them mysterious. Do they have a name?

Indeed they do, lad, she was quick to explain. The Ochils, they are, where three shires meet at the fault line. It’s where the Sentinel of Pharaoh’s daughter stood guard for millennia until carted off to London by Longshanks over seven hundred years ago. Her statement flabbergasted me and forced my ignorance, yet I was drawn in. There’s no more beautiful place in the world. You must go there. They sing of good things to come, you know, she promised. The hills are awakened by the plaintive wail of the lost hunter’s horn seeking direction. If they choose, they will reply with sweet strains, wafting from bright-colored hills where carpets of wildflowers and majestic pine rise in grandeur above the sleeping caldera. The shrill of the horn is dampened when returned—reverberating in wave after soothing wave and showing the way.

I was fast growing skeptical of her mystical place. I’d indulged her fantasy, but it defied logic and insulted reason. Still, I’d needed a boost, and she’d delivered it, elevating my sense of being, in a time of need.

Seeing my interest, she continued. Good things come to those who hear the reply of the hills, but only the lost hear them. The innocents and shy ones are the first, but we’ve all heard them for the simple reason that at one time or another, each of us is lost and cries out for direction.

I needed a time out to gather my wits.

While regaining some semblance of mind on my trek down the dark hallway to the lavatory, it occurred to me that my normal reaction to hearing fairy tales is to dismiss the speaker as a proselytizer. If ever I was falling to doubt, I would choose the safe harbor of cynicism and believe nothing without proof of it. In the washroom, I wondered how long ago I’d rejected idealism, identified it as the haven of swirling dreamers. When was the last time I’d let the romantic invigorate me? That, of course, brought her to mind, the one I’d kissed and missed. Funny, I thought, that the golden-eyed girl in the well reminds me of her.

I put them both out of my mind and dried my hands. The skeptic in me regained control, ever pointing to the safe route through a minefield of misinformation, posers, and pretenders of all stripes who stood in my way, denying the truth. Although I felt a glow for staying awhile, talk of a boy turned to stone and hills that sang was absurd. I scowled, lifting my shirt to confirm that I wasn’t wounded. I dusted myself off, sandstone powder still dotting my sweater, though I’d nearly forgotten it. One for the road, you know, I decided then, and drifted back to the rail.

When I’d settled, she started proselytizing in earnest.

Those sweet strains don’t uplift us much nowadays, what with the misery of a world gone mad hindering our every step. It seems that the hills have tired of our foolishness, and they offer little help to those who’ve lost their way these days. Cell phones have rendered the hunter’s horn obsolete, so none other than the shrill scream of the train whistle awakens them. Were you still on the battlement across the street when its blast startled you, the hills may have replied . . . Ah, but you wouldn’t have heard them, would you . . . since you’re not lost.

I felt myself falling for her provocative pout. In an anxious blush, I glanced at my watch. She sensed my impatience and moved closer, scorching me with her molten eyes framed in dark lashes. The scent of her luxurious hair thrilled me, and I fought the impulse to touch her flawless skin, the blush in her cheeks. Something about her posed a threat. Her very shadow shone luminescent in jade and onyx tones. I could find no light to cast that effect.

While I sought escape in a gulp of foam, the barmaid leaned forward, her blouse loosening to reveal a hint of a soft round breast. I bathed in the wondrous sight while the scent of sandalwood wafted from her neck, further arousing me.

Her face moved closer, and she struggled with a pout. My husband is on a golf holiday in Portugal, she sighed.

I sputtered and recoiled as a flare of doubt exploded in my face. Should I join him there? she pleaded, biting her lip.

Shaken, I quaked while straining for words.

She sensed my unease and stepped back, taking her sweet smells with her. I shouldn’t burden you with this, she murmured as our near clutch faded, vanishing in a cloud of smoke trapped beneath the coffee-stained ceiling.

I finished off my ale, smiled, and gave her a handsome tip, thanking her for her marvelous stories. On the way out, while pushing open the heavy teal door, I gazed back, unable to resist. Sadness overwhelmed me when our eyes met. Hers glimmered like dying embers. Was she calling out for me to save her? I feared leaving, but the thought of staying frightened me even more.

I arrived at the bus station after a brisk jaunt through the shopping mall. The pain in my chest was gone, and I was giddy over my encounter with the beautiful woman at The Old Inn. I thought her tales tantalizing and her intoxicating. She made me realize I’d been too critical of Sparhawk all these years. He deserved a break, because it didn’t matter anyway; both he and modern science had missed the salient point. One could not understand who Sir Thomas was unless they know when he was. A sudden shiver made me halt. An urge to return to The Old Inn followed. It was my sense