Текст книги "An echo in the bone"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 75 страниц)
“Right, you. Down. Now.” Relief fought with annoyance but edged it out. He reached up, and Jem slid down the rock, landing heavily in his father’s arms.
Roger grunted and set him down, then leaned down to pick up the string bag, which had fallen to the ground. In addition to bread and lemon squash, he saw, it held several apples, a large chunk of cheese, and a packet of chocolate biscuits.
“Planning to stay for a while, were ye?” he asked. Jemmy flushed and looked away.
Roger turned and looked up the slope.
“Up there, is it? Your grandda’s cave?” He couldn’t see a thing; the slope was a jumble of rock and heather, liberally splotched with scrubby gorse bushes and the odd sprout of rowan and alder.
“Aye. Just there.” Jemmy pointed up the slope. “See, where that witch tree’s leaning?”
He saw the rowan—a full-grown tree, gnarled with age; surely it couldn’t have been there since Jamie’s time, could it?—but still saw no sign of the cave’s opening. The sounds of combat from below had ceased; he glanced round in case the loser should be coming back this way, but evidently not.
“Show me,” he said.
Jem, who had been looking deeply uneasy, relaxed a little at this and, turning, scrambled up the slope, Roger at his heels.
You could be right next to the cave’s opening and never see it. It was screened by an outcrop of rock and a heavy growth of gorse; you couldn’t see the narrow opening at all unless you were standing in front of it.
A cool breath came out of the cave, moist on his face. He knelt down to peer in; couldn’t see more than a few feet inside, but it wasn’t inviting.
“Be cold to sleep in there,” he said. He glanced at Jem, and motioned to a nearby rock.
“Want to sit down and tell me what happened at school?”
Jem swallowed and shifted from foot to foot.
“No.”
“Sit down.” He didn’t raise his voice, but made it evident he expected to be obeyed. Jem didn’t quite sit down but edged backward, leaning against the rocky outcrop that hid the cave mouth. He wouldn’t look up.
“I got the strap,” Jem muttered, chin buried in his chest.
“Oh?” Roger kept his voice casual. “Well, that’s a bugger. I got it once or twice, when I was at school. Didn’t like it.”
Jem’s head jerked up, eyes wide.
“Aye? What for, then?”
“Fighting, mostly,” Roger said. He supposed he oughtn’t to be telling the boy that—bad example—but it was the truth. And if fighting was Jem’s problem…
“That what happened today?” He’d looked Jem over briefly when he sat down, and gave him a closer look now. Jem seemed undamaged, but when he turned his head away, Roger could see that something had happened to his ear. It was a deep crimson, the lobe of it nearly purple. He suppressed an exclamation at sight of it and merely repeated, “What happened?”
“Jacky McEnroe said if ye heard I’d got the strap, ye’d give me another whipping when I got home.” Jem swallowed, but now looked at his father directly. “Will you?”
“I don’t know. I hope I won’t have to.”
He’d tawsed Jemmy once—he’d had to—and neither of them wanted to repeat the experience. He reached out and touched Jem’s flaming ear gently.
“Tell me what happened, son.”
Jem took a deep breath, blowing out his cheeks, then deflated into resignation.
“Aye. Well, it started when Jimmy Glasscock said Mam and me and Mandy were all goin’ to burn in hell.”
“Yeah?” Roger wasn’t all that surprised; Scottish Presbyterians weren’t known for their religious flexibility, and the breed hadn’t altered all that much in two hundred years. Manners might keep most of them from telling their papist acquaintance they were going straight to hell—but most of them likely thought it.
“Well, ye know what to do about that, though, don’t you?” Jem had heard similar sentiments expressed on the Ridge—though generally more quietly, Jamie Fraser being who he was. Still, they’d talked about it, and Jem was well prepared to answer that particular conversational gambit.
“Oh, aye.” Jem shrugged, looking down at his shoes again. “Just say, ‘Aye, fine, I’ll see ye there, then.’ I did.”
“And?”
Deep sigh.
“I said it in the Gàidhlig.”
Roger scratched behind his ear, puzzled. Gaelic was disappearing in the Highlands, but was still common enough that you heard it once in a while in the pub or the post office. No doubt a few of Jem’s classmates had heard it from their grans, but even if they didn’t understand what he’d said… ?
“And?” he repeated.
“And Miss Glendenning grabbed me by the ear and like to tore it off.” A flush was rising in Jemmy’s cheeks at the memory. “She shook me, Da!”
“By the ear?” Roger felt an answering flush in his own cheeks.
“Yes!” Tears of humiliation and anger were welling in Jem’s eyes, but he dashed them away with a sleeve and pounded his fist on his leg. “She said, ‘We—do—not—speak—like—THAT! We—speak—ENGLISH!’ ” His voice was some octaves higher than the redoubtable Miss Glendenning’s, but his mimicry made the ferocity of her attack more than evident.
“And then she took a strap to you?” Roger asked incredulously.
Jem shook his head, and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
“No,” he said. “That was Mr. Menzies.”
“What? Why? Here.” He handed Jem a crumpled paper handkerchief from his pocket, and waited while the boy blew his nose.
“Well… I was already fussed wi’ Jimmy, and when she grabbed me like that, it hurt bad. And… well, my dander got up,” he said, giving Roger a blue-eyed look of burning righteousness that was so much his grandfather that Roger nearly smiled, despite the situation.
“And ye said something else to her, did ye?”
“Aye.” Jem dropped his eyes, rubbing the toe of his sneaker in the dirt. “Miss Glendenning doesna like the Gàidhlig, but she doesn’t know any, either. Mr. Menzies does.”
“Oh, God.”
Drawn by the shouting, Mr. Menzies had emerged onto the play yard just in time to hear Jem giving Miss Glendenning the benefit of some of his grandfather’s best Gaelic curses, at the top of his lungs.
“So he made me bend over a chair and gave me three good ones, then sent me to the cloakroom to stay ’til school was out.”
“Only you didn’t stay there.”
Jem shook his head, bright hair flying.
Roger bent and picked up the string bag, fighting back outrage, dismay, laughter, and a throat-clutching sympathy. On second thought, he let a bit of the sympathy show.
“Running away from home, were ye?”
“No.” Jem looked up at him, surprised. “I didna want to go to school tomorrow, though. Not and have Jimmy laugh at me. So I thought to stay up here ’til the weekend, and maybe by Monday, things would get sorted. Miss Glendenning might die,” he added hopefully.
“And maybe your mam and I would be so worried by the time ye came down, ye’d get off without a second whipping?”
Jem’s deep-blue eyes widened in surprise.
“Och, no. Mam would give me laldy if I just went off wi’ no word. I put a note on my bed. Said I was living rough a day or two.” He said this with perfect matter-of-factness. Then he wiggled his shoulders and stood up, sighing.
“Can we get it over and go home?” he asked, his voice trembling only a little. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m not going to whip you,” Roger assured him. He reached out an arm and gathered Jemmy to him. “Come here, pal.”
Jemmy’s brave facade gave way at that, and he melted into Roger’s arms, crying a little in relief but letting himself be comforted, cuddling like a puppy against his father’s shoulder, trusting Da to make it all right. And his da bloody would, Roger promised silently. No matter if he had to strangle Miss Glendenning with his bare hands.
“Why is it bad to speak Gàidhlig, Da?” he murmured, worn out by so much emotion. “I didna mean to do anything bad.”
“It’s not,” Roger whispered, smoothing the silky hair behind Jem’s ear. “Dinna fash yourself. Mam and I will get it sorted. I promise. And ye haven’t got to go to school tomorrow.”
Jem sighed at that, going inert as a bag of grain. Then he lifted his head and gave a small giggle.
“D’ye think Mam will give Mr. Menzies laldy?”
TUNNEL TIGERS
BRIANNA’S FIRST INTIMATION of disaster was the slice of light on the track, shrinking to nothing in the split second it took for the enormous doors to swing shut, echoing behind her with a boom that seemed to shiver the air in the tunnel.
She said something that she would have washed Jem’s mouth out for saying, and said it with heartfelt fury—but said it also under her breath, having realized in the instant that it took the doors to close what was happening.
She couldn’t see a thing save the swirls of color that were her retinas’ response to sudden dark, but she was only ten feet or so inside the tunnel and could still hear the sound of the bolts sliding home; they were worked by big wheels on the outside of the steel doors and made a grinding sound like bones being chewed. She turned carefully, took five steps, and put out her hands. Yes, there were the doors; big, solid, made of steel, and now solidly locked. She could hear the sound of laughter outside.
Giggling, she thought with furious contempt. Like little boys!
Little boys, indeed. She took a few deep breaths, fighting off both anger and panic. Now that the dazzle of the darkness had faded, she could see the thin line of light that bisected the fifteen-foot doors. A man-height shadow interrupted the light but was jerked away, to the accompaniment of whispers and more giggling. Someone trying to peek in, the idiot. Good luck to him, seeing anything in here. Aside from the hair of light between the doors, the hydroelectric tunnel under Loch Errochty was dark as the pits of hell.
At least she could use that hair of light for orientation. Still breathing with deliberation, she made her way—stepping carefully; she didn’t want to amuse the baboons outside any more than necessary by stumbling and falling noisily—to the metal box on the left wall where the power switches that controlled the tunnel lighting were located.
She found the box and was momentarily panicked to find it locked, before recalling that she had the key; it was on the big jangle of grubby keys that Mr. Campbell had given her, each one dangling a worn paper tag with its function written on. Of course, she couldn’t read the bloody tags—and frigging Andy Davies had casually borrowed the flashlight that should have been in her belt, on the pretext of looking under the truck for an oil leak.
They’d planned it pretty well, she thought grimly, trying one key, then the next, fumbling and scratching to insert the tip in the tiny invisible slot. All three of them were clearly in on it: Andy, Craig McCarty, and Rob Cameron.
She was of an orderly mind, and when she’d tried each key in careful turn with no result, didn’t try them again. She knew they’d thought of that one, too; Craig had taken the keys from her to unlock the toolbox in the panel truck, and returned them with a bow of exaggerated gallantry.
They’d stared at her—naturally—when she was introduced to them as the new safety inspector, though she supposed they’d already been informed she was that shocking thing, a woman. Rob Cameron, a handsome young man who clearly fancied himself, had looked her frankly up and down before extending his hand with a smile. She’d returned the slow up-and-down before taking it, and the other two had laughed. So had Rob, to his credit.
She hadn’t sensed any hostility from them on the drive to Loch Errochty, and she thought she’d have seen it if it had been there. This was just a stupid joke. Probably.
In all honesty, the doors closing behind her had not been her first intimation that something was up, she thought grimly. She’d been a mother much too long to miss the looks of secretive delight or preternatural innocence that marked the face of a male up to mischief, and such looks had been all over the faces of her maintenance and repair team, if she’d spared the attention to look at them. Her mind had been only half on her job, though; the other half had been in the eighteenth century, worried for Fergus and Marsali, but encouraged by the vision of her parents and Ian safely bound at last for Scotland.
But whatever was going on—had gone on, she corrected herself firmly—in the past, she had other things to worry about in the here and now.
What did they expect her to do? she wondered. Scream? Cry? Beat on the doors and beg to be let out?
She walked quietly back to the door and pressed her ear to the crack, in time to hear the roar of the truck’s engine starting up and the spurt of gravel from its wheels as it turned up the service road.
“You bloody bastards!” she said out loud. What did they mean by this? Since she hadn’t satisfied them by shrieking and crying, they’d decided simply to leave her entombed for a while? Come back later in hopes of finding her in shards—or, better yet, red-faced with fury? Or—more-sinister thought—did they mean to go back to the Hydro Electric Board office, innocent looks on their faces, and tell Mr. Campbell that his new inspector simply hadn’t shown up for work this morning?
She breathed out through her nose, slow, deliberate.
Right. She’d eviscerate them when the opportunity offered. But what to do just now?
She turned away from the power box, looking into the utter black. She hadn’t been in this particular tunnel before, though she’d seen one like it during her tour with Mr. Campbell. It was one of the original tunnels of the hydroelectric project, dug by hand with pick and shovel by the “hydro boys” back in the 1950s. It ran nearly a mile through the mountain and under part of the flooded valley that now held the greatly expanded Loch Errochty, and a toylike electric train ran on its track down the center of the tunnel.
Originally, the train had carried the workmen, the “tunnel tigers,” to the work face and back; now reduced to only an engine, it served the occasional hydroelectric workers checking the huge cables that ran along the tunnel’s walls or servicing the tremendous turbines at the foot of the dam, far off at the other end of the tunnel.
Which was, it occurred to her, what Rob, Andy, and Craig were meant to be doing. Lifting one of the massive turbines and replacing its damaged blade.
She pressed her back against the tunnel wall, hands flat on the rough rock, and thought. That’s where they’d gone, then. It made no difference, but she closed her eyes to improve her concentration and summoned up the pages of the massive binder—presently on the seat of the vanished truck—that contained the structural and engineering details of all the hydroelectric stations under her purview.
She’d looked at the diagrams for this one last night and again, hastily, while brushing her teeth this morning. The tunnel led to the dam, and had obviously been used in the construction of the lower levels of that dam. How low? If the tunnel joined at the level of the turbine chamber itself, it would have been walled off. But if it joined at the level of the servicing chamber above—a huge room equipped with the multi-ton ceiling cranes needed to lift the turbines from their nests—then there would still be a door; there would have been no need to seal it off, with no water on the other side.
Try as she might, she couldn’t bring the diagrams to mind in sufficient detail to be sure there was an opening into the dam at the far end of the tunnel—but it would be simple enough to find out.
SHE’D SEEN THE TRAIN, in that brief moment before the doors closed; it didn’t take much fumbling round to get into the open cab of the tiny engine. Now, had those clowns taken the key to the engine, too? Ha. There was no key; it worked by a switch on the console. She flipped it, and a red button glowed with sudden triumph as she felt the hum of electricity run through the track beneath.
The train couldn’t have been simpler to run. It had a single lever, which you pushed forward or back, depending on which direction you meant to go. She shoved it gently forward, and felt air move past her face as the train moved silently off into the bowels of the earth.
She had to go slowly. The tiny red button shed a comforting glow over her hands, but did nothing to pierce the darkness ahead, and she had no idea where or how much the track curved. Neither did she want to hit the end of the track at a high rate of speed and derail the engine. It felt as though she was inching through the dark, but it was much better than walking, feeling her way over a mile of tunnel lined with high-voltage cables.
It hit her in the dark. For a split second, she thought someone had laid a live cable on the track. In the next instant, a sound that wasn’t a sound thrummed through her, plucking every nerve in her body, making her vision go white. And then her hand brushed rock and she realized that she had fallen across the console, was hanging halfway out of the tiny, trundling engine, was about to fall out into darkness.
Head spinning, she managed to grab the edge of the console and pull herself back into the cab. Flipped the switch with one shaking hand and half-fell to the floor, where she curled up, gripping her knees, her breath a whimpering in the dark.
“Holy God,” she whispered. “Oh, Blessed Mother. Oh, Jesus.”
She could feel it out there. Still feel it. It didn’t make a sound now, but she felt its nearness and couldn’t stop trembling.
She sat still for a long time, head on her knees, until rational thought began to come back.
She couldn’t be mistaken. She’d passed through time twice, and knew the feeling. But this hadn’t been nearly so shocking. Her skin still prickled and her nerves jumped and her inner ears rang as though she’d thrust her head into a hive of hornets—but she felt solid. She felt as though a red-hot wire had sliced her in two, but she hadn’t had the horrible sense of being disassembled, turned physically inside out.
A terrible thought sent her surging to her feet, clinging to the console. Had she jumped? Was she somewhere—somewhen—else? But the metal console was cool and solid under her hands, the smell of damp rock and cable insulation unchanged.
“No,” she whispered, and flicked the power light for reassurance. It came on, and the train, still in gear, gave a sudden lurch. Hastily, she throttled back the speed to less than a crawl.
She couldn’t have jumped into the past. Small objects in direct contact with a traveler’s person seemed to move with them, but an entire train and its track was surely pushing it. “Besides,” she said out loud, “if you’d gone more than twenty-five years or so into the past, the tunnel wouldn’t be here. You’d be inside… solid rock.” Her gorge rose suddenly, and she threw up.
The sense of… it… was receding, though. It—whatever it was—was behind her. Well, that settled it, she thought, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. There bloody well had to be a door at the far end, because there was no way she was going back the way she’d come.
There was a door. A plain, ordinary, industrial metal door. And a padlock, unlocked, hanging from an open hasp. She could smell WD-40; someone had oiled the hinges, very recently, and the door swung open easily when she turned the knob. She felt suddenly like Alice, after falling down the White Rabbit’s hole. A really mad Alice.
A steep flight of steps lay on the other side of the door, dimly lit—and at the top was another metal door, edged with light. She could hear the rumble and the metallic whine of a ceiling crane in operation.
Her breath was coming fast, and not from the effort of climbing the stairs. What would she find on the other side? It was the servicing chamber inside the dam; she knew that much. But would she find Thursday on the other side? The same Thursday she’d had when the tunnel doors had closed behind her?
She gritted her teeth and opened the door. Rob Cameron was waiting, lounging back against the wall, lit cigarette in hand. He broke into an enormous grin at sight of her, dropped the butt, and stepped on it.
“Knew ye’d make it, hen,” he said. Across the room, Andy and Craig turned from their work and applauded.
“Buy ye a pint after work, then, lass,” Andy called.
“Two!” shouted Craig.
She could still taste bile at the back of her throat. She gave Rob Cameron the sort of look she’d given Mr. Campbell.
“Don’t,” she said evenly, “call me hen.”
His good-looking face twitched and he tugged at his forelock with mock subservience.
“Anything you say, boss,” he said.
HILLTOPS
IT WAS NEARLY SEVEN by the time he heard Brianna’s car in the drive. The kids had had their supper, but came swarming out to her, clinging to her legs as though she’d just come back from darkest Africa or the North Pole.
It was some time before the kids were settled for the night and Bree had time to give her undivided attention to him. He didn’t mind. “Are you starving?” she said. “I can fix—”
He interrupted her, taking her by the hand and drawing her into his office, where he carefully closed and locked the door. She was standing there, hair half matted from her hard hat, grimy from spending the day in the bowels of the earth. She smelled of earth. Also engine grease, cigarette smoke, sweat, and… beer?
“I’ve a lot to tell you,” he said. “And I know ye’ve a lot to tell me. But first… could ye just slip off your jeans, maybe, sit on the desk, and spread your legs?”
Her eyes went perfectly round.
“Yes,” she said mildly. “I could do that.”
ROGER HAD OFTEN WONDERED whether it was true what they said about redheaded people being more volatile than the usual—or whether it was just that their emotions showed so suddenly and alarmingly on their skins. Both, he thought.
Maybe he should have waited ’til she’d got her clothes on before telling her about Miss Glendenning. If he had, though, he’d have missed the remarkable sight of his wife, naked and flushed with fury from the navel upward.
“That bloody old besom! If she thinks she can get away with—”
“She can’t,” he interrupted firmly. “Of course she can’t.”
“You bet she can’t! I’ll go down there first thing tomorrow and—”
“Well, maybe not.”
She stopped and looked at him, one eye narrowed.
“Maybe not what?”
“Maybe not you.” He fastened his own jeans, and picked hers up. “I was thinking it might be best if I go.”
She frowned, turning that one over.
“Not that I think ye’d lose your temper and set about the old bitch,” he added, smiling, “but you have got your job to go to, aye?”
“Hmmm,” she said, seeming skeptical of his ability to adequately impress Miss Glendenning with the magnitude of her crime.
“And if ye did lose the heid and nut the woman, I’d hate to have to explain to the kids why we were visiting Mummy in jail.”
That made her laugh, and he relaxed a little. He really didn’t think she’d resort to physical violence, but then, she hadn’t seen Jemmy’s ear right after he’d come home. He’d had a strong urge himself to go straight down to the school and show the woman what it felt like, but he was in better command of himself now.
“So what do you mean to say to her?” She fished her brassiere out from under the desk, giving him a succulent view of her rear aspect, as she hadn’t put the jeans on yet.
“Nothing. I’ll speak to the principal. He can have a word with her.”
“Well, that might be better,” she said slowly. “We don’t want Miss Glendenning to take it out on Jemmy.”
“Right.” The beautiful flush was fading. Her hard hat had rolled off under the chair; he picked it up and set it on her head again. “So—how was work today? And why don’t ye wear knickers to work?” he asked, suddenly remembering.
To his startlement, the flush roared back like a brushfire.
“I got out of the habit in the eighteenth century,” she snapped, plainly taking the huff. “I only wear knickers for ceremonial purposes anymore. What did you think, I was planning to seduce Mr. Campbell?”
“Well, not if he’s anything like you described him, no,” he said mildly. “I just noticed when ye left this morning, and wondered.”
“Oh.” She was still ruffled, he could see that and wondered why. He was about to ask again about her day when she took the hat off and eyed him speculatively.
“You said if I wore the hat, you’d tell me what you were doing with that champagne bottle. Other than giving it to Mandy to throw through the window,” she added, with a tinge of wifely censoriousness. “What were you thinking, Roger?”
“Well, in all honesty, I was thinking about your arse,” he said. “But it never occurred to me that she’d throw the thing. Or that she could throw it like that.”
“Did you ask her why she did it?”
He stopped, nonplused.
“It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d have a reason,” he confessed. “I snatched her off the table as she was about to pitch face-first into the broken window, and I was so frightened that I just picked her up and smacked her bum.”
“I don’t think she’d do something like that for no reason,” Bree said meditatively. She’d put aside the hard hat and was scooping herself into her brassiere, a spectacle Roger found diverting under just about any circumstances.
It wasn’t until they’d gone back to the kitchen for their own late supper that he remembered to ask again how her workday had gone.
“Not bad,” she said, with a good assumption of casualness. Not so good as to convince him, but good enough that he thought better of prodding, and instead asked, “Ceremonial purposes?”
A broad grin spread across her face.
“You know. For you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you and your fetish for women’s lacy underthings.”
“What—you mean you only wear knickers for—”
“For you to take off, of course.”
There was no telling where the conversation might have gone from this point, but it was interrupted by a loud wail from above, and Bree disappeared hastily in the direction of the stairs, leaving Roger to contemplate this latest revelation.
He’d got the bacon fried and the tinned beans simmering by the time she reappeared, a small frown between her brows.
“Bad dream,” she said, in answer to his lifted brow. “The same one.”
“The bad thing trying to get in her window again?”
She nodded and took the saucepan of beans he handed her, though she didn’t move immediately to serve out the food.
“I asked her why she threw the bottle.”
“Aye?”
Brianna took the bean spoon, holding it like a weapon.
“She said she saw him outside the window.”
“Him? The—”
“The Nuckelavee.”
IN THE MORNING, the broch was just as it had been the last time he’d looked. Dark. Quiet, save for the rustling of the doves overhead. He’d taken away the rubbish; no new fish papers had come. Swept and garnished, he thought. Waiting for the occupation of whatever roaming spirit might happen by?
He shook that thought off and closed the door firmly. He’d get new hinges and a padlock for it, next time he passed by the Farm and Household Stores.
Had Mandy really seen someone? And if she had, was it the same tramp who had frightened Jem? The idea of someone hanging round, spying on his family, made something hard and black curl through his chest, like a sharp-pointed iron spring. He stood for a moment, narrowly surveying the house, the grounds, for any trace of an intruder. Anywhere a man might hide. He’d already searched the barn and the other outbuildings.
The Dunbonnet’s cave? The thought—with his memory of Jem standing right by the mouth of the cave—chilled him. Well, he’d soon find out, he thought grimly, and with a last glance at Annie MacDonald and Mandy, peacefully hanging out the family washing in the yard below, he set off.
He kept a sharp ear out today. He heard the echo of the red stags belling, still hard at it, and once saw a small herd of hinds in the distance, but luckily met no lust-crazed males. No lurking tramps, either.
It took him some time of casting about to find the cave’s entrance, even though he’d been there only the day before. He made a good bit of noise, approaching, but stood outside and called, “Hallo, the cave!” just in case. No answer.
He approached the entrance from the side, pressing back the covering gorse with a forearm, ready in case the tramp might be lurking inside—but he could tell as soon as the damp breath of the place touched his face that it was unoccupied.
Nonetheless, he poked his head in, then swung himself down into the cave itself. It was dry, for a cave in the Highlands, which was not saying all that much. Cold as a tomb, though. It was no wonder Highlanders had a reputation for toughness; anyone who wasn’t would have succumbed to starvation or pneumonia in short order.
Despite the chill of the place, he stood for a minute, imagining his father-in-law here. It was empty and cold, but oddly peaceful, he thought. No sense of foreboding. In fact, he felt… welcomed, and the notion made the hairs prickle on his arms.
“Grant, Lord, that they may be safe,” he said quietly, his hand resting on the stone at the entrance. Then he climbed out, into the sun’s warm benediction.
That strange sense of welcome, of having been somehow acknowledged, remained with him.
“Well, what now, athair-céile?” he said aloud, half joking. “Anyplace else I should look?”
Even as he said it, he realized that he was looking. On the top of the next small hill was the heap of stones Brianna had told him about. Human-made, she’d said, and thought it might be an Iron Age fort. There didn’t look to be enough of whatever it was standing to offer shelter to anyone, but out of sheer restlessness, he made his way down through the tumble of rock and heather, splashed through a tiny burn that gurgled through the rock at the foot of the hill, and toiled his way up to the heap of ancient rubble.
It was ancient—but not as old as the Iron Age. What he found looked like the ruins of a small chapel; a stone on the ground had a cross chiseled crudely into it, and he saw what looked like the weathered fragments of a stone statue, scattered by the entrance. There was more of it than he’d thought from a distance; one wall still reached as high as his waist, and there were parts of two more. The roof had long since fallen in and disappeared, but a length of the rooftree was still there, the wood gone hard as metal.
Wiping sweat from the back of his neck, he stooped and picked up the statue’s head. Very old. Celtic, Pictish? Not enough left to tell even the statue’s intended gender.
