Interweaving contemporary mystery and political drama with fictional vignettes from ancient Scottish history, Legend of the Celtic Stone follows British parliamentarian Andrew Trentham on a quest to discover his Scottish roots in the midst of his turbulent life at the center of London’s political world.

The first such historical vignette opens on the eve of the legendary massacre of the MacDonald clan of Glencoe in 1692:

It was a rugged, mountainous glen through which tumbled the small river for which it was named, and to which the family called Donald had given its toil and blood from far back in times unknown. It lay in the debatable lands between the low western forests of Appin bordering Lochs Linnhe and Leven, and the high inland moor of Rannoch.

The narrow valley formed as it were, a doorway into the central Highlands and an impassable inland barrier between Strathclyde and the northwest Highlands. But though it ascended not many feet above the sea and nearby lochs, there could be no doubt that it was from the Highlands, rising on three sides around it, that Glencoe derived its soul. Its inhabitants spoke mostly Gaelic and a little Scots, and were almost entirely of Celtic blood.

The cultivated portions of the glen produced little other than oats, kale, barley, a few potatoes, and in some places sufficient grain ripened during the short summer for the distilling of whisky. Cattle gave milk, butter, and cheese. Scrawny sheep also yielded milk and some fleece, and chickens gave eggs and themselves for food. From the nearly lochs, an abundance of fish, mostly herring, saw the people through fierce and punishing winters.

Up the surrounding slopes there was much heather and moss, plentiful water and snow, and more rocks than anything. The glen ran east to west, gradually narrowing as it increased in elevation from the shores of Loch Levin, then straightening to no more than a steep passage, climbing up through jagged enclosing heights on each side some twelve miles to the high desolate watery flats of Rannoch Moor. To the south, five mountains connected to one another by various forbidding ridges. Their lower slopes and glens provided some grass for summer grazing, but further south they offered no way out of Glencoe.

The ridges and mountains rose higher and higher, either covered with snow or lost in mists most of the year. The glen of Coe was one of the pleasantest in the Highlands. But the sentinels overlooking it gave few routes of escape, especially in winter. It was a solitary region, sparsely peopled in later years, but in those days when Highland life was at its zenith a region whose fertile valleys were full of life. Summers were short, warm, and pleasant, winters long and terrible.

For the two or three hundred men, women, and children to whom Glencoe was home, clan and earth wove together the fabric of existence. Upon leaving one of the half dozen tiny villages in the glen, one could walk the hills and gaze about in all directions and discover but scant evidence of human abode. The faint perfume of peat fire drifting upward from some unseen chimney might give evidence of habitation. It would still be difficult to discover the cottage it came from, however, so entirely did the houses of that region blend in with the hillsides out of whose stones and turf they had been constructed. At the foot of the glen, a little more than a mile inland from the mouth of the Coe, in the cluster of ten or fifteen cottages of the village in the largest house of which the chief dwelt, twilight darkened the sky. Snow would not be far behind.

The girl struggling in the face of the wind was making her way to the warmth and safety of a small dwelling not far away. She wore a happy smile on her face. Notwithstanding the inclement weather and descending dusk, she skipped along merrily as if it were mid-summer. Guests were approaching the glen and she had particular reason to be hopeful. They were from a neighboring clan over the hills, and twenty-two year old Ginevra MacIain knew what that could mean.

She had not actually seen Brochan among the uniformed riders. But she felt his presence. For one like Ginevra, it was enough. What she knew came but partially from sight of her eyes. She depended mostly on unexplained sensations residing quiet and hidden within her soul. The cottage she approached was of two rooms, earthen floor, roof of timber and turf with hole in the center. Stone in this region was plentiful, wood scarce.

Thus the timber beams which supported the roof were the most valuable and important part of any home. If the roof went, destruction of the whole cottage was not far behind. The roofs themselves spread over these timbers, were of thick-cut turf or bound heather. Only the largest and most important homes of any community were covered with thatch, too needful a commodity as animal fodder to be used for roofing material.

The girl had seen the soldiers before anyone in Carnoch though none saw her shadowing their movements. Had she been noticed, none of her own kinsmen would have paid her heed. Everyone in the glen knew Ginevra. Most ignored her, though sometimes her peculiar ways unnerved them. She always seemed to sense what was happening, turning up in the most unexpected places at the oddest times.

Had any of the horsemen, who had been spotted approaching about thirty minutes before, denoted the wispy figure stalking them, they might have considered her a nymph of these dark fearsome mountains, or perhaps a spirit of some ancient Highland legend. Her wild flowing hair, however, would have given her away as related, and not distantly, to the chief. No ghost ever wore such a bright red mane.