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The rectangular fire pit chiseled into the thick slate floor had witnessed decades of bartering, arguments settled, betrothals, rents paid, and fines levied; all of it happened here in this room.  The Laird’s bench was the tallest and longest in the room, and if you weren’t there to see the Laird you waited by the fire until you were needed by someone. Always competing with the dogs, babies, or arguing neighbors, it was impossible to ever get close enough to actually feel the warmth of the fire in the stone floor, but you knew it was there. It always had done. This was the way they and theirs had done since anyone could remember. Covering this pit felt like a blaspheme of sorts. 

Regardless, the construction of the great double-sided brick monstrosity silently labored on; there was no great commotion, no fanfare. Dodd tipped a layer of the dun-colored mortar onto the bottom brick, laid down the next heavy brown brick, and scraped off the excess mortar in one fluid motion. He had carefully followed the instructions his cousin from the south gave him last spring, and spent months making the bricks to specification all summer. Having a fireplace with a chimney to draw out the smoke in the croft would improve their future much more than another milk cow. He was sure of it, even if Alfred was not. 

The Laird, Dodd Kinchley, pulled a mud smeared rag from his belt and wiped his brow, leaving a trace of mortar on his cheek. He leaned back for a minute to evaluate his work. Putting in this walk-through fireplace would change their lives in so many unknowable ways, but he was willing to risk the ways of the old for this new instrument. With this process, the fire will be safe from draughts and spills and will warm the croft in it’s coldest corners, so that not even the smallest page boy in the village will be able work up a shiver here once he’d finished. His children would be healthy; the babes would not grow ill and die from the cold again. His brother’s children would forget the few truly cold nights of their youth, and will consider it necessary for every home to have a fireplace like this as they grow older.  

He pulled his dark-coppered hair back into a braid and retied the leather thong, thinking of the few hours sleep he’d have once he’d finished here for the night. He’d need to have this finished by tomorrow so the mortar could have time to thoroughly cure before his wife’s Saturday bread baking. The anticipation of a Saturday was only tempered by the Sunday sermons chastising a man for gluttony, especially if the vicar didn’t get at least a muffin. She outshone them all with her breads, rolls, and cakes she and Albert’s wife put up on a Saturday. Dodd smiled in his entire being, his chest swelling with love for her once again. With a grunt, Dodd stood up straight, ran his broad knuckles over his mustache wiping away beads of sweat before bringing a mug of warm, frothy lager to his lips. Three hearty pulls later, Dodd holds the empty crockery out to his youngest child, Emmaline, to bring back to her mother for a refill. His shirtsleeves were sweat-soaked at the neck and stuck to his back, despite the croft’s only two glass windows raging with bitter cold through the late September night, and he would need another cider or two to keep his blood warm before he finished yet.

Alfred was Wee Alfie when his parents died; his father in battle on another continent, and not long after, his mother and the babe inside her died in childbed. The midwife was from their village, and knew Dodd to be an honest, gentle, respectable young man, and she brought Wee Alfie to him to raise, as the villages numbers had recently been devastated by illness. There simply had been no one else. Dodd’s own parents had passed from this life long before, when he was a young man not yet twenty, but he had had the benefit of his mother’s embrace for most of those years and knew what it was to love a boy. Dodd was a thoughtful, considerate, good man every day of his life, but more so back then. There had been many a time when Wee Alfie tried his patience with argument, simply for the argument’s sake, or worse yet, take off fishing without telling him, leaving Dodd worried that he was in a ditch somewhere bleeding to death. Dodd loved Alfred, that was true enough; and Alfred loved Dodd. They may not have been born brothers, but were created as brothers by the Divine, and there was no arguing that.  

Dodd considered that while his hands may have built the croft and it’s cookhouse, halls, stables, and gardens; it has been his younger brother Alfred’s love of love, life, and friendship that has made this croft truly their home. Because of Alfred’s natural enthusiasm for life which dragged Dodd out to the occasional dance, both men courted the woman they loved, married, and started families. Now it’s been almost twenty years since he drove his first corner post on this land, and Dodd believed that it was only right to make this first concession to the passage of time. They needed a cistern, but he’d go slow with the changes for Alfred’s sake. 

Dodd had been careful to place the new firebox directly over the old one, although no one would ever know unless he told them. The thick slabbed oak mantel waited to be hung, and he’d hoped his brother would reconsider inscribing a bit of something wise for their families, for his carving skills were truly the best in the county. Dodd knew in his heart that this very fireplace, built with his two hands, would have far more impact on their lives than either brother could imagine, and he wanted his brother’s wisdom on display for all to see as well. 

“Grub!” bellowed the old man to the younger; both covered in plaster dust. The new owner wanted the walls rendered in a bright, reflective white plaster that would unite the “old croft” and the “Big House,” as they had invariably added on to the house over the years. 

“Grub!” He called again. 

“What’s got yer back up, Da?” Grub answered as he joined his father by the fireplace and saw what Pounds had discovered under the fireplace mantel. 

“I want you to witness a thing of beauty before it is filled in and covered up, son.” Pounds said. 

“Oh Da, you don’t think they’d cover that up, do you really now? No, not a thing such as that. No.” Grub whispered in silent disbelief. 

“I have been given clear instructions, boyo. I’m to sand this all down and paint it over with that white paint. The whole house is to be whitewashed inside and out, all the wood, in every room.” Pounds read from the sheet of paper in his hands. “This is the job that we were hired to do.”  

“So,  what we have here is a superb example of a Victorian drawing room, with the croft’s original fireplace and mantel, which have been in continuous use for almost four hundred years. We’ve never let the fire go out of this old workhorse.” Tori used her very serious voice while explaining this to Dabney. “When the walk-through fireplace was built, the brothers were not in agreement, but Dodd persisted, and what you are leaning against at this very moment, was put there by his very hands. 

“There was no denying that this single fireplace turned an empty room with a few benches into two distinct spaces; the Hall and the kitchen. On top of those rooms, a new second floor boasted two bedrooms. There, Scotland’s Kinchley brothers and their descendants raised their families until the turn of the last century; in the simple croft with the huge fireplace. 

“An American branch of the family invested in the Kinchley estates through a tidy marriage in the nineteen-aughts, and made a few ghastly changes. Like whitewashing everything to make it appear austere and germ-free for my germ-phobic great, great, great grands.” Tori finished with an eye roll and a smile.

“You really know your ancestral home’s history, sweetheart.” Dabney said.

“Well, there are a few more things I’d like to know about this place.” Tori said, as she traced her fingertips lightly over the mantel’s whitewashed soft oak. 

“Like, hello, what is this?” Tori exclaimed as she bent over, her tiny flashlight exposing an inscription on the underside of the mantel: 

“Seasaidh fear eile leat gu bràth. Chan eil thu nad aonar.”

The quote was carved into a long, narrow wooden relief of stags, birds, trees, some buildings, and a river running the length of the mantel. It was beautiful. It was the estate, carved as it remains, but centuries before.

They both went for their cellphones to find a translation for what they were both certain was an old gaellic inscription. As she began to read the translation, the youngest surviving heir of the Kinchley family’s eyes welled with tears. “Another Will Always Stand By You. You are Not Alone.” 

“Is this an ominous thing, do you think Dabney? I mean, what exactly does that mean?”

“Tori, quick question: is this place haunted?” Dabney asked. His eyebrows were up in his hairline and his eyes were as wide as a dinner plate. 

“What? No. Never once in all the history of this house has there ever been a haunting. Not once. Definitely not, I would have heard about it as a child!” Tori found her voice rising higher in pitch until she all but shrieked the last part. 

“And I’ve never seen this inscription before, either. Whoever put it there never told a soul it was there.”