Текст книги "An echo in the bone"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 75 страниц)
Grey felt of a sudden his own mortality, in the stiffening of a thumb, the twinge of a knee. Most of all, in the fear that he might not be there to protect William, while he was still needed.
“Eh?” said Harry, raising a brow at whatever showed on Grey’s face. “What?”
Grey smiled and shook his head, taking up his brandy glass once more.
“Timor mortis conturbat me,” he said.
“Ah,” said Quarry thoughtfully, and raised his own. “I’ll drink to that.”
THE PLOT THICKENS
28 February, A.D. 1777
London
Major General John Burgoyne,to Sir George Germain… I do not conceive any expedition from the sea can be so formidable to the enemy, or so effectual to close the war, as an invasion from Canada by Ticonderoga.April 4, 1777
on board HMS Tartar
HE’D TOLD DOTTIE that the Tartar was only a twenty-eight-gun frigate and that she must therefore be modest in her packing. Even so, he was surprised to see the single trunk—granted, a large one—two portmanteaux, and a bag of needlework that comprised her entire luggage.
“What, not a single flowered mantua?” he teased. “William won’t know you.”
“Bosh,” she replied with her father’s talent for succinct clarity. But she smiled a little—she was very pale, and he hoped it wasn’t incipient seasickness—and he squeezed her hand and went on holding it all the time until the last dark sliver of England sank into the sea.
He was still amazed that she’d managed it. Hal must be more frail than he’d let on, to be bamboozled into allowing his daughter to take ship for America, even under Grey’s protection and for the laudable purpose of nursing her wounded brother. Minnie, of course, would not be parted from Hal for a moment, though naturally worried sick for her son. But that she had uttered no word of protest at this adventure …
“Your mother’s in on it, is she?” he asked casually, provoking a startled look through a veil of windblown hair.
“On what?” Dottie pawed at the blond spiderweb of her hair, escaped en masse from the inconsequent snood in which she’d bound it and dancing over her head like flames. “Oh, help!”
He captured her hair, smoothing it tight to her head with both hands, then gathering it at her neck, where he plaited it expertly, to the admiration of a passing seaman, clubbed it, and tied it up with the velvet ribbon that was all that remained from the wreck of her snood.
“On what, forsooth,” he told the back of her head, as he finished the job. “On whatever the dreadful enterprise is on which you’ve embarked.”
She turned round and faced him, her stare direct.
“If you want to describe rescuing Henry as a dreadful enterprise, I agree entirely,” she said with dignity. “But my mother would naturally do anything she could to get him back. So would you, presumably, or you wouldn’t be here.” And without waiting for a reply, she turned smartly on her heel and made for the companionway, leaving him speechless.
One of the first ships of the spring had brought a letter with further word of Henry. He was still alive, thank God, but had been badly wounded: shot in the abdomen, and very ill in consequence through the brutal winter. He had survived, though, and been moved to Philadelphia with a number of other British prisoners. The letter had been written by a fellow officer there, another prisoner, but Henry had managed to scribble a few words of love to his family at the bottom and sign his name; the memory of that straggling scrawl ate at John’s heart.
He was encouraged somewhat by the fact that it was Philadelphia, though. He had met a prominent Philadelphian while he was in France and had formed an immediate liking for him that he thought was returned; there might be something of use in the acquaintance. He grinned involuntarily, recalling the instant of his meeting with the American gentleman.
He hadn’t paused long in Paris, only long enough to make inquiries after Percival Beauchamp, who was not there. Retired to his home in the country for the winter, he was told. The Beauchamp family’s main estate, a place called Trois Flèches, near Compiègne. And so he had bought a furlined hat and a pair of seaboots, wrapped himself in his warmest cloak, hired a horse, and set grimly off into the teeth of a howling gale.
Arriving mud-caked and frozen, he had been greeted with suspicion, but the quality of his accoutrements and his title had gained him entrance, and he had been shown to a well-appointed parlor—with, thank God, an excellent fire—to await the baron’s pleasure.
He’d formed an expectation of the Baron Amandine on the basis of Percy’s remarks, though he thought Percy had likely been practicing upon him. He also knew how futile it was to theorize in advance of observation, but it was inhuman not to imagine.
In terms of imagining, he’d done a good job of not thinking of Percy during the last… was it eighteen years, nineteen? But once it became obvious that thinking of him was now a professional as well as a personal necessity, he was both surprised and disconcerted to find just how much he remembered. He knew what Percy liked and therefore had evolved a mental picture of Amandine in accordance.
The reality was different. The baron was an older man, perhaps a few years Grey’s senior, short and rather plump, with an open, pleasant face. Well dressed, but without ostentation. He greeted Grey with great courtesy. But then he took Grey’s hand, and a small electric shock ran through the Englishman. The baron’s expression was civil, no more—but the eyes held a look of interest and avidity, and despite the baron’s unprepossessing appearance, Grey’s flesh answered the look.
Of course. Percy had told Amandine about him.
Surprised and wary, he gave the brief explanation he had prepared, only to be informed that, hélas, Monsieur Beauchamp was not at home but had gone with Monsieur Beaumarchais to hunt wolves in Alsace. Well, there was one supposition confirmed, Grey thought. But surely his lordship would condescend to accept the hospitality of Trois Flèches, for the night at least?
He accepted this invitation with many expressions of unworthy thanks, and having doffed his outer clothes and replaced his seaboots with Dottie’s garish carpet slippers—which made Amandine blink, though he at once praised them exceedingly—he was propelled down a long corridor lined with portraits.
“We will take some refreshment in the library,” Amandine was saying. “Plainly, you are perishing of cold and inanition. But if you do not mind, allow me to introduce you en route to my other guest; we will invite him to join us.”
Grey had murmured acquiescence, distracted by the light pressure of Amandine’s hand, which rested on his back—slightly lower than was usual.
“He is an American,” the baron was saying, as they reached a door toward the end of the corridor, and his voice conveyed considerable in the way of amusement in that word. He had a most unusual voice—soft, warm, and somehow smoky, like oolong tea with a lot of sugar.
“He enjoys to spend some time each day in the solar,” the baron went on, pushing open the door and gesturing Grey ahead of him. “He says it keeps him in a state of robust health.”
Grey had been looking politely at the baron during this introduction, but now turned to speak to the American guest and so was introduced to Dr. Franklin, reclining comfortably in a padded chair, lit by a flood of sunlight, stark naked.
In the subsequent conversation—conducted with the greatest aplomb on the part of all parties—he learned that it was Dr. Franklin’s invariant practice to bathe in air every day when possible, as skin breathed quite as much as did lungs, taking in air and releasing impurities; thus the ability of the body to defend itself from infection was substantially impaired if the skin were constantly suffocated in insanitary clothing.
Throughout the introductions and conversation, Grey was acutely aware of Amandine’s eyes upon him, full of speculation and amusement, and of the cumbersome feel of his own insanitary clothing upon his doubtless suffocating skin.
It was an odd feeling, to meet a stranger and know that said stranger was already privy to his deepest secret, that he in fact—if Percy were not altogether lying, and Grey didn’t think he had been—shared it. It gave him a feeling of danger and vertigo, as though he leaned out from some sharp precipice. It also bloody excited him, and that alarmed him very much.
The American (now speaking pleasantly about an unusual geological formation he had seen on his journey from Paris; had his lordship noticed it?) was an elderly man, and his body, while in fair condition aside from patches of some purplish eczema about the lower limbs, was not an object of sexual consideration. Nonetheless, Grey’s flesh was tight on his bones, and not enough of his blood was in his head. He could feel Amandine’s eyes on him, frankly evaluating him, and recalled all too clearly the exchange with Percy regarding Percy’s wife and his brother-in-law the baron: Both, on occasion. Together? Had the baron’s sister accompanied her husband, or was she perhaps at home? For one of the few times in his life, Grey wondered seriously whether he might be a pervert.
“Shall we join the good doctor in his beneficial practice, my lord?”
Grey jerked his eyes away from Franklin, to see the baron beginning to peel off his coat. Fortunately, before he could think of anything to say, Franklin rose, remarking that he felt he had had sufficient benefit for the day. “Though of course,” he said, meeting Grey’s eyes directly, with an expression of the deepest interest—and not a little amusement, too, “you must not allow my departure to prevent your own indulgence, messieurs.”
The baron, impeccably polite, at once resumed his coat, and saying he would join them for un aperitif in the library, disappeared into the corridor.
Franklin had a silk dressing gown; Grey held it for him, watching the white, slightly sagging—but remarkably firm and unwrinkled—buttocks disappear as the American slowly worked his arms into the sleeves, remarking as he did so upon a touch of arthritis in his shoulder joints.
Turning and tying the sash, he fixed an open gray gaze upon Grey.
“Thank you, my lord,” he said. “I take it you were not previously acquainted with Amandine?”
“No. I knew his… brother-in-law, Monsieur Beauchamp, some years ago. In England,” he added, for no particular reason.
Something flickered in Franklin’s eyes at the name “Beauchamp,” causing Grey to ask, “You know him?”
“I know the name,” Franklin replied equably. “Is Beauchamp an Englishman, then?”
A number of astonishing possibilities had flashed through Grey’s mind at that simple remark “I know the name,” but an equally rapid evaluation of them decided him upon the truth as safest, and he merely said, “Yes,” in a tone indicating that this was simple fact, no more.
Over the next few days, he and Franklin had had a number of interesting conversations, in which the name of Percy Beauchamp was conspicuous by its absence. When Franklin returned to Paris, though, Grey was left both with a genuine liking for the elderly gentleman—who upon learning that Grey was bound for the Colonies in the spring had insisted upon giving him letters of introduction to several friends there—and a conviction that Dr. Franklin knew precisely what Percy Beauchamp was and had been.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said one of the Tartar’s hands, elbowing Grey ungently out of the way and breaking his reverie. He blinked, coming back to find that his ungloved hands had turned to ice in the wind and his cheeks were numb. Leaving the sailors to their freezing task, he went below, feeling a peculiar small and shameful warmth at the memory of his visit to Trois Flèches.
3 May, 1777
New YorkDear Papa,
I have just received your Letter about Cousin Henry, and hope very much that you will be able to discover his Whereabouts and obtain his Release. If I can hear Anything of him, I will do my best to let you know. Is there anyone to whom I should address Letters to you in the Colonies? (If I hear of no Alternative, I shall send them in care of Mr. Sanders in Philadelphia, with a Copy for Safety to Judge O’Keefe in Richmond.)I hope you will excuse my own sad Delinquency in corresponding. It does not—alas—stem from any press of urgent Activity on my Part, but rather from ennui and lack of anything of Interest about which to write. After a tedious Winter immured in Quebec (though I did considerable Hunting, and shot a very vicious Thing called a Glutton), I finally received my new orders from General Howe’s Aide-de-camp in late March, when some of Sir Guy’s people came back to the Citadel, and I returned to New York in consequence of them.I never received any Word from Captain Randall-Isaacs, nor have I been able to hear anything of him since my Return. I fear very much that he may have been lost in the Blizzard. If you know his people, perhaps you would send them a Note with my Hopes for his Survival? I would do so myself, save that I am not sure where to find them, nor how to phrase my Sentiments delicately, in case they are also in Doubt of his Fate, or worse, are not in Doubt. You will know what to say, though; you always do.I was somewhat luckier in my own Travels, having suffered only minor Shipwreck on my way downriver (we came to Grief during the Portage at Ticonderoga, being fired upon by a Party of American Sharpshooters from the Fort. No one was harmed, but the Canoes were peppered with Shot and some Holes were unfortunately not discovered before we put back into the Water, whereupon two of them sank abruptly), this followed by waist-deep Mud and the reemergence of carnivorous Insects when I took to the Roads. Since my Return, though, we have done little of interest, though there are constant rumors of what we may do. Finding that Inactivity chafes more in what you may call a civilized Setting (though none of the Girls in New York can dance at all), I volunteered to ride Dispatches, and have found some Relief in that.Yesterday, however, I received Orders sending me back to Canada, there to join General Burgoyne’s Staff. Do I detect your fine Italian Hand in this, Papa? If so, thank you!Also, I have seen Captain Richardson again; he came to my Rooms last Night. I had not seen him for nearly a Year, and was much surprised. He did not ask for an Account of our Journey into Quebec (not surprising, as the Information would be sadly out-of-date by now), andwhen I asked after Randall-Isaacs, only shook his Head and said he did not know.He had heard I had an Errand to carry special Dispatches to Virginia, before going to Canada, and while of course Nothing must delay me in that Errand, had thought of asking me to do a small Service for him as I returned northward. Somewhat wary as a Result of my long Sojourn in the frozen North, I asked what this might be, and was told that it was no more than the Delivery of a cipher Message to a group of Loyalist gentlemen in Virginia, something that would be simple for me, owing to my Familiarity with the Terrain; the job would not delay me more than a Day or two, he assured me.I said I would do it, but more because I should like to see some Parts of Virginia that I remember with fondness than because I should like to oblige Captain Richardson. I am somewhat wary of him.Godspeed your travels, Papa, and please give my Love to my precious Dottie, whom I long to see. (Tell her I shot forty-two Ermine in Canada; she shall have a Cloak made of the Skins!)Your most affectionate Reprobate,
William
PSALMS, 30
October 6, 1980
Lallybroch
BRIANNA’S ARRANGEMENT with the Hydro Electric Board provided for her working three days a week doing site inspections, overseeing maintenance and repair operations as required, but allowed her to stay at home doing reports, forms, and other paperwork the other two days. She was trying to decipher Rob Cameron’s notes regarding the power feed from the second turbine at Loch Errochty, which appeared to have been written with grease pencil on the remains of the bag that had held his lunch, when she became aware of sounds in the laird’s study across the hall.
She’d been vaguely conscious of a low humming for some time, but insofar as she’d noticed the sound had put it down to a fly trapped by the window. The hum had now acquired words, though, and a fly would not have been singing “The King of Love my Shepherd is,” to the tune of “St. Columba.”
She froze, realizing that she’d recognized the tune. The voice was rough as coarse-grit sandpaper, and it cracked now and then … but it went up and it went down, and it was, it really was, a song.
The song stopped abruptly in a fit of coughing, but after some heavy-duty throat-clearing and cautious humming, the voice started up again, this time using an old Scottish tune she thought was called “Crimond.”“The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want.
He makes me down to lie.
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.”
“The quiet waters by” was repeated once or twice in different keys, and then, with increased vigor, the hymn went on:“My soul He doth restore again:
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
Even for His Name’s own sake.”
She sat at her desk, shaking, tears running down her cheeks and a handkerchief pressed to her mouth so he wouldn’t hear. “Thank you,” she whispered into its folds. “Oh, thank you!”
The singing stopped, but the humming resumed, deep and contented. She got herself back under control and wiped the tears hastily away; it was nearly noon—he’d be coming in any time to ask if she was ready for lunch.
Roger had had considerable doubt about the assistant choirmaster’s position—doubt he’d tried not to let her see, and doubt she’d shared until he came home to tell her he’d been given the Children’s Choir as his main responsibility. Her own doubt had flown then; children were at once totally uninhibited about voicing the sorts of remarks regarding social oddity that their elders never would, and entirely accepting of such oddity, once they got used to it.
“How long did it take them to ask about your scar?” she’d asked, when he’d come home smiling from his first solo practice with the kids.
“I didn’t time it, but maybe thirty seconds.” He rubbed two fingers lightly over the ragged mark across his throat, but didn’t stop smiling. “Please, Mr. MacKenzie, what’s happened to your neck? Was ye hangit?”
“And what did you tell them?”
“Told them aye, I was hangit in America, but I lived, praise God. And a couple of them had elder siblings who’d seen High Plains Drifter and told them about it, so that raised my stock a good bit. I think they expect me to wear my six-guns to the next practice, though, now the secret’s out.” He gave her a Clint Eastwood one-eyed squint, which had made her burst out laughing.
She laughed now, remembering it, and just in time, for Roger stuck his head in, saying, “How many different versions of the Twenty-third Psalm would ye say there are, set to music?”
“Twenty-three?” she guessed, rising.
“Only six in the Presbyterian hymnal,” he admitted, “but there are metrical settings for it—in English, I mean—that go back to 1546. There’s one in the Bay Psalm Book and another in the old Scottish Psalter, and any number of others here and there. I’ve seen the Hebrew version, too, but I think I’d best not try that one on the St. Stephen’s congregation. Do the Catholics have a musical setting?”
“Catholics have a musical setting for everything,” she told him, lifting her nose to sniff for indications of lunch from the kitchen. “But psalms we usually sing to a chant setting. I know four different Gregorian chant forms,” she informed him loftily, “but there are lots more.”
“Yeah? Chant it for me,” he demanded, and stopped dead in the corridor, while she hastily tried to recall the words to the Twenty-third Psalm. The simplest chant form came back automatically—she’d sung it so often in childhood that it was part of her bones.
“That’s really something,” he said, appreciative, when she’d finished. “Go through it a time or two with me later? I’d like to do it for the kids, just for them to hear. I think they could do Gregorian chant really well.”
The kitchen door burst open and Mandy scampered out, clutching Mr. Polly, a stuffed creature who had started out life as a bird of some kind, but now resembled a grubby terry-cloth bag with wings.
“Soup, Mama!” she shouted. “Come eat soup!”
And soup they ate, Campbell’s Chicken Noodle made from the can, and cheese sandwiches and pickles to fill the cracks. Annie MacDonald was not a fancy cook, but everything she made was edible, and that was saying a good deal, Brianna thought, with memories of other meals eaten around dying fires on soggy mountaintops or scraped as burnt offerings out of an ashy hearth. She cast a glance of deep affection at the gas-fired Aga cooker that kept the kitchen the coziest room in the house.
“Sing me, Daddy!” Mandy, teeth coated in cheese and mustard round her mouth, gave Roger an entreating grin.
Roger coughed on a crumb and cleared his throat.
“Oh, aye? Sing what?”
“ ‘Free Bly Mice’!”
“All right. Ye’ll need to sing with me, though—keep me from getting off.” He smiled at Mandy and beat time softly on the table with the handle of his spoon.
“Three blind mice…” he sang, and pointed the handle at Mandy, who drew a heroic breath and echoed, “Free, Bly, MICE!” at the top of her lungs—but with perfect rhythm. Roger raised his eyebrows at Bree and continued the song, in the same counterpoint fashion. After five or six rousing repetitions, Mandy tired of it, and, with a brief “M’scuse me,” rose from the table and took off like a lowflying bumblebee, caroming off the doorjamb on her way out.
“Well, she’s got a definite sense of rhythm,” Roger said, wincing as a loud thud echoed back from the corridor, “if not of coordination. Be a little while before we know if she’s got any pitch, though. Your da had a great sense of rhythm, but he couldn’t hit the same note twice.”
“That reminded me a bit of what you used to do on the Ridge,” she said, on impulse. “Singing a line of a psalm and having the people answer it back.”
His face changed a little at mention of that time. He’d come newly to his vocation then, and the certainty of it had transformed him. She’d never seen him so happy before—or since, and her heart turned over at the flash of longing she saw in his eyes.
He smiled, though, and, reaching out a napkin-covered finger, wiped a smear of mustard from beside her own mouth.
“Old-fashioned,” he said. “Though they still do it that way—the line-singing in kirk—on the Isles, and maybe in the remoter bits of the Gaeltacht. The American Presbyterians won’t have it, though.”
“They won’t?”
“It is proper to sing without parceling out the psalm line by line,” he quoted. “The practice of reading the psalm, line by line, was introduced in times of ignorance, when many in the congregation could not read; therefore, it is recommended that it be laid aside, so far as convenient. That’s from the Constitution of the American Presbyterian Church.”
Oh, so you did think about being ordained while we were in Boston, she thought but didn’t say aloud.
“Times of ignorance,” she repeated, instead. “I’d like to know what Hiram Crombie would have had to say to that!”
He laughed, but shook his head.
“Well, it’s true enough; most of the folk on the Ridge couldn’t read. But I’d disagree with the notion that ye’d only sing the psalms that way because of ignorance, or a lack of books.” He paused for thought, idly scraping up a stray noodle and eating it.
“Singing all together, that’s grand, no doubt about it. But to do it in that back-and-forth way—I think there’s maybe something about it that draws the people closer, makes them feel more involved in what they’re singing, what’s truly happening. Maybe it’s only because they’ve got to concentrate harder to remember each line.” He smiled briefly, and looked away.
Please! she thought passionately, whether to God, the Blessed Virgin, Roger’s guardian angel, or all three. You’ve got to let him find a way!
“I… meant to ask ye something,” he said, suddenly diffident.
“What’s that?”
“Well… Jemmy. He can sing. Would ye—of course he’d go to Mass with you still—but would ye mind if he was to come along with me, as well? Only if he liked,” he added hastily. “But I think he might enjoy being in the choir. And I’d… like him to see I have a job, too, I suppose,” he added, with a half-rueful smile.
“He’d love that,” Brianna said, remarking mentally to the heavenly host, Well, that was fast! Because she saw at once—and wondered whether Roger had, but she didn’t think so—that this offered a graceful way by which she and Mandy could attend the Presbyterian services, as well, without any overt conflict between their two faiths.
“Would you come with us to the early Mass at St. Mary’s?” she asked. “Because then we could all just go across to St. Stephen’s together and see you and Jem sing.”
“Yes, of course.”
He stopped, the sandwich halfway to his mouth, and smiled at her, his eyes green as moss.
“It’s better, isn’t it?” he said.
“Lots,” she said.
LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, Roger called her across to the study. There was a map of Scotland laid on his desk, next to the open notebook in which he was compiling the thing they had taken to calling—with a jokiness that barely covered the aversion they felt in even talking about it—“The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” after the BBC radio comedy.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I thought we’d best do it before Jem comes home. If ye’re going back to Loch Errochty tomorrow…” He put the point of his pencil on the blue blotch labeled L.Errochty. “You could maybe get an accurate bearing for the tunnel, if ye’re not quite sure where it is. Or are you?”
She swallowed, feeling the remains of her cheese sandwich stir uneasily at the memory of the dark tunnel, the rocking of the little train, of passing through… it.
“I don’t, but I have something better. Wait.” She stepped across to her own office and brought back the binder of Loch Errochty’s specs.
“Here are the drawings for the tunnel construction,” she said, flipping the binder open and laying it on the desk. “I have the blueprints, too, but they’re at the main office.”
“No, this is great,” he assured her, poring over the drawing. “All I really wanted is the compass orientation of the tunnel to the dam.” He glanced up at her. “Speaking of that—have ye been all across the dam itself?”
“Not all across,” she said slowly. “Just the east side of the servicing bay. But I don’t think—I mean, look.” She put a finger on the drawing. “I hit it somewhere in the middle of the tunnel, and the tunnel is nearly in a straight line with the dam. If it runs in a line—is that what you think it does?” she added, looking at him curiously. He shrugged.
“It’s a place to start. Though I suppose engineers would have a better-sounding word than ‘guess’?”
“Working hypothesis,” she said dryly. “Anyway, if it does run in a line, rather than just existing in random spots, I’d probably have felt it in the dam if it was there at all. But I could go back and check.” Even she could hear the reluctance in her voice; he certainly did, and ran a light hand down her back in reassurance.
“No. I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“I’ll do it,” he repeated mildly. “We’ll see if I feel it, too.”
“No!” She straightened up abruptly. “You can’t. You don’t—I mean, what if something… happens? You can’t take that kind of risk!”
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and nodded.
“Aye, I suppose there’s something of a risk. But small. I’ve been all over the Highlands, ken, in my younger years. And now and again I’ve felt something queer pass through me. So have most folk who live here,” he added with a smile. “Queerness is part of the place, aye?”
“Yes,” she said, with a brief shudder at thought of water horses, ban-sidhe, and Nuckelavees. “But you know what sort of queerness this is—and you know damned well it can kill you, Roger!”
“Didn’t kill you,” he pointed out. “Didn’t kill us on Ocracoke.” He spoke lightly, but she could see the shadow of that journey on his face with the speaking. It hadn’t killed them—but it had come close.
“No. But—” She looked at him and had a deep, wrenching instant in which she experienced at once the feel of his long, warm body next to hers in bed, the sound of his deep, corncrake voice—and the cold silence of his absence. “No,” she said, and made it apparent by her tone that she was prepared to be as stubborn as necessary about it. He heard that and gave a mild snort.
“All right,” he said. “Let me just put it down, then.” Comparing drawing and map, he chose a spot on the map that might correspond roughly with the center of the tunnel and raised one dark eyebrow in question. She nodded, and he made a light pencil mark in the shape of a star.
There was a large, definite star, made in black ink, over the site of the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. Smaller ones in light pencil at the sites of other stone circles. Someday, they might have to visit those circles. But not yet. Not now.
“Ever been to Lewis?” Roger asked—casually, but not as though it were an idle question.
“No, why?” she said warily.
“The Outer Hebrides are part of the Gaeltacht,” he said. “They do the line-singing in the Gàidhlig on Lewis, and on Harris, too. Don’t know about Uist and Barra—they’re mostly Catholic—but maybe. I’m thinking I’d like to go and see what it’s like these days.”
She could see the Isle of Lewis on the map, shaped like a pancreas, off the west coast of Scotland. It was a large map. Large enough for her to see the small legend Callanish Stones, on the Isle of Lewis.
She exhaled slowly.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”
“Ye’ve got work, haven’t you?”
“I’ll take time off.”
They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Brianna broke away first, glancing at the clock on the shelf.
“Jem’ll be home soon,” she said, the prosaic nature of daily life asserting itself. “I’d better start something for supper. Annie brought us a nice salmon that her husband took. Shall I marinate it and bake it, or would you like it grilled?”
