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Winning Entry: "John Napier and the Treasure of Fast Castle"

by Jerome Stueart

"In 1594, Logan contracted with the famed mathematician (and supposed wizard) John Napier to search Fast Castle for treasure. He was to '...do his utmost diligence to search and seek out, and by all craft and ingine to find out the same, and by the grace of God either find out the same, or make it sure that no such thing has been there.'[5] For this, he was to be awarded a third of any treasure found. There is no record of any discovery he may have made." —from Wikipedia entry, "Fast Castle."

In fact, while there is no record of a discovery, it does not mean that Napier did not find the treasure. Left in the memoirs of Napier were clues to what he found in that "dreary" castle.

Though many believed Napier intended to use the black arts to find the "treasure," he intended to use instead his powerful skills as an observer and his mathematical prowess. Sir Robert Logan was known, himself, as a dabbler in witchcraft and the occult-but Napier believed the treasure to be monetary, or at least, a valuable commodity they could share. His rivalry with Sir Robert was well known, but his methodology differed in that Napier relied more on "science" than on the occult, though certainly crafting a reputation as a "wizard."

Napier assumed, at the beginning (and this from his notes) that the treasure must be hidden-since he was contracted to "search" the castle. Upon coming to the castle he asked for a complete tour, both the inside of the castle and all castle grounds. While Logan himself did not conduct the tour, his sons Alexander and James gave Napier a full tour. "I asked them to tell me stories of the castle itself, whereby I would know its character and history. Whereupon I was recounted many dark and harrowing stories of Fast Castle, few of which I believed in the whole, but in the part, where spoke the castle as participant, I listened intently. And in this way, I learned of the very stones I passed-not of what they did, but of how they fit themselves into history."

Over the course of three days, Napier reconstructed his own map of the castle and grounds solely from recollections of his walks and tours. He hoped to construct both a legend to the physical structure and a legend to the legendary structure of the castle, compare the drawings, and find the hidden corridors he knew must exist in the castle. He accounted for every square foot of land and castle. Roaming the castle both on his own and with the sons, and Logan's daughters Jonet and Anne, he was unable to find or calculate anything more than the corridor connecting Jonet and Anne's bedrooms together [a secret tearoom, hardly a treasure.]

He remarked that his days at Fast Castle were pleasant, though he was rarely in touch with his contractor, Sir Robert Logan, who remained for the most part tied up in business affairs in the South. Logan did have supper on two occasions with Napier, recorded in Napier's memoirs, where he quizzed the mathematician on matters related to the dark arts, the King of Scotland, and the treasure. "What treasure I find here is seated around this table," Napier recalls he said, much to the delight of his host.

Napier commented frequently upon how pleasant his conversations were with Logan's children. He found all of them intelligent, but was particularly "intrigued" by James. Of the children, James had fewest physical features of the Logan family. In fact, James resembled none other than the young king of Scotland himself, James VI. "By curve of the face, by holding of the mouth, by expression, by carriage, by intonation of his very words, by vocabulary, I partook in the illusion that I was in the presence of the King of Scotland!"

It was this revelation that turned his focus away from the castle itself, to the children of the Baron. He turned to the library of Fast Castle. "A treasure is what is held by the stronghold; it is not a part of the stronghold, nor is it the stronghold itself. And the greatest treasure is knowledge; the greatest knowledge is ingenuity; the greatest ingenuity leads to power; and the greatest power is deception."

Napier would not find what he was looking for in the library, though he memorized the titles of Sir Robert's books and wrote them in his journals. He does make a discovery in August of 1595, "For in my heart I knew that James was the key to the deception, so I followed him." For three days, the mathematician shadowed James and discovered a path of symbols, "a route of signs, like an incantation, one must pass to find—what?-a door, a room?" But every night he followed James, the young man would "vanish like a wisp of smoke, as if he were a candle snuffed into darkness." Napier wrote down the symbols that he passed in the hallway, noting that many of them were also used in necromancy, specifically "animation," but also seemed oddly "mathematical" in their construction in the manner of equations.

Despite James' illusive night wanderings, Napier continued conversation with the young man, noting "a dark soul behind a polished surface." The young man could converse about his own history in the castle with great detail, but also knew of memories and experiences that only James VI might be able to recall firsthand. The boy could not "reconcile conflicting dates where James, son of the Baron, experienced a voyage, and dates affecting the other James, recalled with alarming detail, of visits from passing royalty on the same dates."

Seven nights after he arrived at Fast Castle, Napier stopped writing in his journal, after recording this particularly ominous entry, "Hideous! Hideous shape! Monstrous numbers, foolish equations! With them comes power, but to what end?"

Logan's son, James, was never listed among the children that inherited the castle after their father's death. It is said that James, the son who looked so much like the King, died in a fire that consumed the southhall. His father, Sir Robert Logan, was embroiled in the Gowrie conspiracy, a plot to kidnap the King of Scotland in 1600. Two of the sons of the Earl of Gowrie were killed in the attempt, as well as the Earl himself. There was a fourth body, never identified, so wholly burned that only ashes remained. Napier remarks on this fact, "there are integers, wholly unidentified-but that still exist, small symbols in longer equations. This body, I fear, is one of the most important integers to an equation that relies now on substitution—an e for a number, an i for an I."

When Logan himself died, his body was exhumed and put on trial for his "involvement" in the conspiracy. Logan's property, Fast Castle, was taken from his children, but surprisingly restored by James I, King of England, that former James VI, with the note that this also restored the reputation of the family, since the children were all minors at the time of their father's involvement in the conspiracy.

Napier's memoirs include curious passages upon his visits to the King of England and to the throne, as noting the still "dark visage, the wink of the unholy in the King's eye."

And on another occasion, of his visit to the King, "He sometimes asks me too much in the public arena. At dinner, the King seated three seats from me, 'Did you ever find the treasure of Fast Castle?' he says with a wink. And I answer, full bereft of my appetite, 'What treasure is there in all of England and Scotland that is not yours already found?' The King smiles, looks around a crowded table, says to us all, 'If the treasure is peace, does it matter who finds it?'"