The Recollections of an Eighteenth-Century Gentleman of the Craft June 7th 1795 Feast Day of St. Robert of Newminster Weather: changeable From the heath covered mountains of Scotia I come…

St. Robert of Newminster, I read, was accused of "excessive familiarity with a pious woman." A perfect example of ecclesiastical hypocrisy if ever there was one: either he wasn’t that familiar or she wasn’t that pious but one simply cannot, as the actress said to the bishop, have it both ways.
    I regret the recent lacuna in the hitherto uninterrupted flow of this journal. It is due to my taking a tour of the north country from which I am newly returned. Scotland proved to be most stimulating, perhaps a little too stimulating, and I refer not only to the effect of the local produce. It was however, a night of debauchery that led to a day of discovery. As to whether what I witnessed is historical fact or hysterical fantasy I confess I am still unclear; perhaps setting the facts down in writing will help.
    I was enjoying a fine dinner at a fine inn in the fine city of Edinburgh in the company of a fine gentleman by the name of MacDonald, a local burgher who raised what he claimed to be the best beef in the land. "Mark well my words, Lightfoote," quoth he, "One day MacDonald’s will known throughout the world!" I drank his health and told him that I hoped it would be, and he drank my health and assured me that it would and we drank each other’s health to settle the matter and then sat wondering what next we might drink to. Imagine my surprise when he raised his glass to "The craft and vocation of Massonerie." I downed my goblet of Glen Hoddle and offered him my hand and found, to my delight, that I was in the company of a master of the mystic art – and the long night wore on. At some stage I assume that I must have agreed to accompany him on some sort of expedition on the following day but my memory at this point becomes, like the highland landscape, shrouded in mist.
    I was informed, subsequently, by a number of witnesses, that I was helped up the stairs pledging undying loyalty to the Jacobite cause. Whatever the cause, I spent a most uncomfortable night, haunted by strange and terrible dreams, full of dreadful images culled from the penalties of my obligations and awoke, fully believing that I had suffered that of first at least, to a furious knocking, as though a regiment of tylers were practising their art. I rose from my bed, then rose from the floor, twice, before crawling to the door to be confronted by a pair of naked knees.
    These belonged, I was informed, in an accent that would have been incomprehensible had I not been awash with whisky, to Willie, who was a ghillie, and had come to take me to Rossilly.
    I am informed that the journey is but a few miles; perhaps we went via Penzance, using only the old, green roads, for in the ancient tumbrel that MacDonald had provided, it seemed to take days. The laird himself, Willie told me, was unable to be present due to some pressing emergency with the bullocks, at least I think that’s what he said.
    Rossilly, when we got there, was a ruin, as indeed was I, though my guide informed me that it had been extensively restored some forty years previously. It is an ancient chapel wrought in the most hubristic style, like a gothic cathedral shrunk in the wash. Willie recited a lengthy history of the place, painfully committed to memory and delivered in the style of a drunken deacon dictating the doings at the wardens’ pedestals. I missed much of it as I was busy puking into the sparkling burn that flows merrily beside the road, but from what I could gather it is believed that a descendant of Joseph of Arimathea had brought Excalibur here after the battle of Bannockburn and that this was the basis of Freemasonry: something along those lines, anyway.
    I was in no condition to argue and weakly agreed to overlook the premises according to his master’s wishes, fully expecting Willie to give me a guided tour. He, however, was unwilling to go within fifty paces of the place, muttering something about the curse of the pharaohs. He handed me a pistol and said he’d await my return, but not beyond sunset.
    Anxious to complete my penance, and in the certain knowledge that MacDonald was laughing his tartan socks off at the thought, I stumbled towards the forbidding pile. I had to put my shoulder to the door to gain admission and fell through it to find myself on my arse, on a damp floor, staring at a rotting roof that threatened to join me at any moment. The place was encrusted with crude carvings, decayed to the point at which their content could be construed as anything that an over-fertile imagination might conceive. I stumbled about in the gloom, searching for meaning and busting for a piss. At the far end of the place were three pillars; I relieved myself, copiously, against what must have been wisdom as I had no strength and there was little beauty involved in the act. As I concluded my libation, I received such a fright that, had I not just emptied my bladder, I’d have wet myself. A dark shape swooped down at me: was it a bat?, was it a ball?, was it a heavy maul? I will never know, but I tumbled backwards, a cocked piece in both hands. Inevitably, one of them went off.
    The report was tremendous, the noise echoing around the vaulted chamber. The ball rebounded off the stonework and flew back past my head: I’d damn’ near shot myself in the sacristy. Shards of shattered statuary showered down on me. At this point I must have lost my presence of mind.
    I came to in the carriage, with a petrified Willie looming over me. I told him that there was something unspeakable in that place, a veritable pool of horror. The man’s eyes widened, a myth was materialising. The rest, as they say, is history… Or is it?