Dragonfly In Amber

Hindsight

47 LOOSE ENDS

“He was right, of course. Bloody man, he was almost always right.” Claire sounded half-cross as she spoke. A rueful smile crossed her face, then she looked at Brianna, who sat on the hearthrug, gripping her knees, her face completely blank. Only the faint stir of her hair, lifting and moving in the rising heat of the fire, showed any motion at all.

“It was a dangerous pregnancy – again – and a hazardous birth. Had I risked it there, it would almost certainly have killed us both.” She spoke directly to her daughter, as though they were alone in the room. Roger, waking slowly from the spell of the past, felt like an intruder.

“The truth, then, all of it. I couldn’t bear to leave him,” Claire said softly. “Even for you… I hated you for a bit, before you were born, because it was for you that he’d made me go. I didn’t mind dying – not with him. But to have to go on, to live without him – he was right, I had the worst of the bargain. But I kept it, because I loved him. And we lived, you and I, because he loved you.”

Brianna didn’t move; didn’t take her eyes from her mother’s face. Only her lips moved, stiffly, as though unaccustomed to talking.

“How long… did you hate me?”

Gold eyes met blue ones, innocent and ruthless as the eyes of a falcon.

“Until you were born. When I held you and nursed you and saw you look up at me with your father’s eyes.”

Brianna made a faint, strangled sound, but her mother went on, voice softening a little as she looked at the girl at her feet.

“And then I began to know you, something separate from myself or from Jamie. And I loved you for yourself, and not only for the man who fathered you.”

There was a blur of motion on the hearthrug, and Brianna shot erect. Her hair bristled out like a lion’s mane, and the blue eyes blazed like the heart of the flames behind her.

“Frank Randall was my father!” she said. “He was! I know it!” Fists clenched, she glared at her mother. Her voice trembled with rage.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this. Maybe you did hate me, maybe you still do!” Tears were beginning to make their way down her cheeks, unbidden, and she dashed them angrily away with the back of one hand.

“Daddy… Daddy loved me – he couldn’t have, if I weren’t his! Why are you trying to make me believe he wasn’t my father? Were you jealous of me? Is that it? Did you mind so much that he loved me? He didn’t love you, I know that!” The blue eyes narrowed, cat-like, blazing in a face gone dead-white.

Roger felt a strong desire to ease behind the door before she noticed his presence and turned that molten wrath on him. But beyond his own discomfort he was conscious of a sense of growing awe. The girl that stood on the hearthrug, hissing and spitting in defense of her paternity, flamed with the wild strength that had brought the Highland warriors down on their enemies like shrieking banshees. Her long, straight nose lengthened still further by the shadows, eyes slitted like a snarling cat’s, she was the image of her father – and her father was patently not the dark, quiet scholar whose photo adorned the jacket of the book on the table.

Claire opened her mouth once, but then closed it again, watching her daughter with absorbed fascination. That powerful tension of the body, the flexing arch of the broad, flat cheekbones; Roger thought that she had seen that many times before – but not in Brianna.

With a suddenness that made them both flinch, Brianna spun on her heel, grabbed the yellowed news-clippings from the desk, and thrust them into the fire. She snatched the poker and jabbed it viciously into the tindery mass, heedless of the shower of sparks that flew from the hearth and hissed about her booted feet.

Whirling from the rapidly blackening mass of glowing paper, she stamped one foot on the hearth.

“Bitch!” she shouted at her mother. “You hated me? Well, I hate you!” She drew back the arm with the poker, and Roger’s muscles tensed instinctively, ready to lunge for her. But she turned, arm drawn back like a javelin thrower, and hurled the poker through the full-length window, where the panes of night-dark glass reflected the image of a burning woman for one last instant before the crash and shiver into empty black.

The silence in the study was shattering. Roger, who had leaped to his feet in pursuit of Brianna, was left standing in the middle of the room, awkwardly frozen. He looked down at his hands as if not quite sure what to do with them, then at Claire. She sat perfectly still in the sanctuary of the wing chair, like an animal frozen by the passing shadow of a raptor.

After several moments, Roger moved across to the desk and leaned against it.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said.

Claire’s mouth twitched faintly. “Neither do I.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. The old house creaked, settling around them, and a faint noise of banging pots came down the hallway from the kitchen, where Fiona was doing something about dinner. Roger’s feeling of shock and constrained embarrassment gradually gave way to something else, he wasn’t sure what. His hands felt icy, and he rubbed them on his legs, feeling the warm rasp of the corduroy on his palms.

“I…” He started to speak, then stopped and shook his head.

Claire drew a deep breath, and he realized that it was the first movement he had seen her make since Brianna had left. Her gaze was clear and direct.

“Do you believe me?” she asked.

Roger looked thoughtfully at her. “I’ll be damned if I know,” he said at last.

That provoked a slightly wavering smile. “That’s what Jamie said,” she said, “when I asked him at the first where he thought I’d come from.”

“I can’t say I blame him.” Roger hesitated, then, making up his mind, got off the desk and came across the room to her. “May I?” He knelt and took her unresisting hand in his, turning it to the light. You can tell real ivory from the synthetic, he remembered suddenly, because the real kind feels warm to the touch. The palm of her hand was a soft pink, but the faint line of the “J” at the base of her thumb was white as bone.

“It doesn’t prove anything,” she said, watching his face. “It could have been an accident; I could have done it myself.”

“But you didn’t, did you?” He laid the hand back in her lap very gently, as though it were a fragile artifact.

“No. But I can’t prove it. The pearls” – her hand went to the shimmer of the necklace at her throat – “they’re authentic; that can be verified. But can I prove where I got them? No.”

“And the portrait of Ellen MacKenzie-” he began.

“The same. A coincidence. Something to base my delusion upon. My lies.” There was a faintly bitter note in her voice, though she spoke calmly enough. There was a patch of color in each cheek now, and she was losing that utter stillness. It was like watching a statue come to life, he thought.

Roger got to his feet. He paced slowly back and forth, rubbing a hand through his hair.

“But it’s important to you, isn’t it? It’s very important.”

“Yes.” She rose herself and went to the desk, where the folder of his research sat. She laid a hand on the manila sheeting with reverence, as though it were a gravestone; he supposed to her it was.

“I had to know.” There was a faint quaver in her voice, but he saw her chin firm instantly, suppressing it. “I had to know if he’d done it – if he’d saved his men – or if he’d sacrificed himself for nothing. And I had to tell Brianna. Even if she doesn’t believe it – if she never believes it. Jamie was her father. I had to tell her.”

“Yes, I see that. And you couldn’t do it while Dr. Randall – your hus – I mean, Frank,” he corrected himself, flushing, “was alive.”

She smiled faintly. “It’s all right; you can call Frank my husband. He was, after all, for a good many years. And Bree’s right, in a way – he was her father, as well as Jamie.” She glanced down at her hands, and spread the fingers of both, so the light gleamed from the two rings she wore, silver and gold. Roger was struck by a thought.

“Your ring,” he said, coming to stand close by her again. “The silver one. Is there a maker’s mark in it? Some of the eighteenth-century Scottish silversmiths used them. It might not be proof positive, but it’s something.”

Claire looked startled. Her left hand covered the right protectively, fingers rubbing the wide silver band with its pattern of Highland interlace and thistle blooms.

“I don’t know,” she said. A faint blush rose in her cheeks. “I haven’t seen inside it. I’ve never taken it off.” She twisted the ring slowly over the joint of the knuckle; her fingers were slender, but from long wearing, the ring had left a groove in her flesh.

She squinted at the inside of the ring, then rose and brought it to the table, where she stood next to Roger, tilting the silver circle to catch the light from the table lamp.

“There are words in it,” she said wonderingly. “I never realized that he’d… Oh, dear God.” Her voice broke, and the ring slipped from her fingers, rattling on the table with a tiny metal chime. Roger hurriedly scooped it up, but she had turned away, fists held tight against her middle. He knew she didn’t want him to see her face; the control she had kept through the long hours of the day and the scene with Brianna had deserted her now.

He stood for a minute, feeling unbearably awkward and out of place. With a terrible feeling that he was violating a privacy that ran deeper than anything he had ever known, but not knowing what else to do, he lifted the tiny metal circle to the light and read the words inside.

“Da mi basia mille…” But it was Claire’s voice that spoke the words, not his. Her voice was shaky, and he could tell that she was crying, but it was coming back under her control. She couldn’t let go for long; the power of what she held leashed could so easily destroy her.

“It’s Catullus. A bit of a love poem. Hugh… Hugh Munro – he gave me the poem for a wedding present, wrapped around a bit of amber with a dragonfly inside it.” Her hands, still curled into fists, had now dropped to her sides. “I couldn’t say it all, still, but the one bit – I know that much.” Her voice was growing steadier as she spoke, but she kept her back turned to Roger. The small silver circle glowed in his palm, still warm with the heat of the finger it had left.

“…da mi basia mille…”

Still turned away, she went on, translating,

“Then let amorous kisses dwell

On our lips, begin and tell

A Thousand and a Hundred score

A Hundred, and a Thousand more.”

When she had finished, she stood still a moment, then slowly turned to face him again. Her cheeks were flushed and wet, and her lashes clumped together, but she was superficially calm.

“A hundred, and a thousand more,” she said, with a feeble attempt at a smile. “But no maker’s mark. So that isn’t proof, either.”

“Yes, it is.” Roger found there seemed to be something sticking in his own throat, and hastily cleared it. “It’s absolute proof. To me.”

Something lit in the depths of her eyes, and the smile grew real. Then the tears welled up and overflowed as she lost her grip once and for all.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. She was sitting on the sofa, elbows on her knees, face half-buried in one of the Reverend Mr. Wakefield’s huge white handkerchiefs. Roger sat close beside her, almost touching. She seemed very small and vulnerable. He wanted to pat the ash-brown curls, but felt too shy to do it.

“I never thought… it never occurred to me,” she said, blowing her nose again. “I didn’t know how much it would mean, to have someone believe me.”

“Even if it isn’t Brianna?”

She grimaced slightly at his words, brushing back her hair with one hand as she straightened.

“It was a shock,” she defended her daughter. “Naturally, she couldn’t – she was so fond of her father – of Frank, I mean,” she amended hastily. “I knew she might not be able to take it all in at first. But… surely when she’s had time to think about it, ask questions…” Her voice faded, and the shoulders of her white linen suit slumped under the weight of the words.

As though to distract herself, she glanced at the table, where the stack of shiny-covered books still sat, undisturbed.

“It’s odd, isn’t it? To live twenty years with a Jacobite scholar, and to be so afraid of what I might learn that I could never bear to open one of his books?” She shook her head, still staring at the books. “I don’t know what happened to many of them – I couldn’t stand to find out. All the men I knew; I couldn’t forget them. But I could bury them, keep their memory at bay. For a time.”

And that time now was ended, and another begun. Roger picked up the book from the top of the stack, weighing it in his hands, as if it were a responsibility. Perhaps it would take her mind off Brianna, at least.

“Do you want me to tell you?” he asked quietly.

She hesitated for a long moment, but then nodded quickly, as though afraid she would regret the action if she paused to think about it longer.

He licked dry lips, and began to talk. He didn’t need to refer to the book; these were facts known to any scholar of the period. Still, he held Frank Randall’s book against his chest, solid as a shield.

“Francis Townsend,” he began. “The man who held Carlisle for Charles. He was captured. Tried for treason, hanged and disemboweled.”

He paused, but the white face was drained of blood already, no further change was possible. She sat across the table from him, motionless as a pillar of salt.

“MacDonald of Keppoch charged the field at Culloden on foot, with his brother Donald. Both of them were cut down by English cannon fire. Lord Kilmarnock fell on the field of battle, but Lord Ancrum, scouting the fallen, recognized him and saved his life from Cumberland’s men. No great favor; he was beheaded the next August on Tower Hill, together with Balmerino.” He hesitated. “Kilmarnock’s young son was lost on the field; his body was never recovered.”

“I always liked Balmerino,” she murmured. “And the Old Fox? Lord Lovat?” Her voice was little more than a whisper. “The shadow of an ax…”

“Yes.” Roger’s fingers stroked the slick jacket of the book unconsciously, as though reading the words within by Braille. “He was tried for treason, and condemned to be beheaded. He made a good end. All the accounts say that he met his death with great dignity.”

A scene flashed through Roger’s mind; an anecdote from Hogarth. He recited from memory, as closely as he could. “ ‘Carried through the shouts and jeers of an English mob on his way to the Tower, the old chieftain of clan Fraser appeared nonchalant, indifferent to the missiles that sailed past his head, and almost good-humored. In reply to a shout from one elderly woman – “You’re going to get your head chopped off, you old Scotch cur!” – he leaned from his carriage window and shouted jovially back, “I expect I shall, you ugly old English bitch!” ’ ”

She was smiling, but the sound she made was a cross between a laugh and a sob.

“I’ll bet he did, the bloody old bastard.”

“When he was led to the block,” Roger went on cautiously, “he asked to inspect the blade, and instructed the executioner to do a good job. He told the man, ‘Do it right, for I shall be very angry indeed if you don’t.’ ”

Tears were running down beneath her closed lids, glittering like jewels in the firelight. He made a motion toward her, but she sensed it and shook her head, eyes still closed.

“I’m all right. Go on.”

“There isn’t much more. Some of them survived, you know. Lochiel escaped to France.” He carefully refrained from mention of the chieftain’s brother, Archibald Cameron. The doctor had been hanged, disemboweled, and beheaded at Tyburn, his heart torn out and given to the flames. She did not seem to notice the omission.

He finished the list rapidly, watching her. Her tears had stopped, but she sat with her head hung forward, the thick curly hair hiding all expression.

He paused for a moment when he had finished speaking, then got up and took her firmly by the arm.

“Come on,” he said. “You need a little air. It’s stopped raining; we’ll go outside.”

The air outside was fresh and cool, almost intoxicating after the stuffiness of the Reverend’s study. The heavy rain had ceased about sunset, and now, in the early evening, only the pit-a-pat dripping of trees and shrubs echoed the earlier downpour.

I felt an almost overwhelming relief at being released from the house. I had feared this for so long, and now it was done. Even if Bree never… but no, she would. Even if it took a long time, surely she would recognize the truth. She must; it looked her in the face every morning in the mirror; it ran in the very blood of her veins. For now, I had told her everything, and I felt the lightness of a shriven soul, leaving the confessional, unburdened as yet by thought of the penance ahead.

Rather like giving birth, I thought. A short period of great difficulty and rending pain, and the certain knowledge of sleepless nights and nerve-racking days in future. But for now, for a blessed, peaceful moment, there was nothing but a quiet euphoria that filled the soul and left no room for misgivings. Even the fresh-felt grief for the men I had known was muted out here, softened by the stars that shone through rifts in the shredding cloud.

The night was damp with early spring, and the tires of cars passing on the main road nearby hissed on the wet pavement. Roger led me without speaking down the slope behind the house, up another past a small, mossy glade, and down again, where there was a path that led to the river. A black iron railroad bridge spanned the river here; there was an iron ladder from the path’s edge, attached to one of the girders. Someone armed with a can of white spray-paint had inscribed FREE SCOTLAND on the span with random boldness.

In spite of the sadness of memory, I felt at peace, or nearly so. I’d done the hardest part. Bree knew now who she was. I hoped fervently that she would come to believe it in time – not only for her own sake, I knew, but also for mine. More than I could ever have admitted, even to myself, I wanted to have someone with whom to remember Jamie; someone I could talk to about him.

I felt an overwhelming tiredness, one that touched both mind and body. But I straightened my spine just once more, forcing my body past its limits, as I had done so many times before. Soon, I promised my aching joints, my tender mind, my freshly riven heart. Soon, I could rest. I could sit alone in the small, cozy parlor of the bed-and-breakfast, alone by the fire with my ghosts. I could mourn them in peace, letting the weariness slip away with my tears, and go at last to seek the temporary oblivion of sleep, in which I might meet them alive once more.

But not yet. There was one thing more to be done before I slept.

They walked in silence for some time, with no sound but the passing of distant traffic, and the closer lapping of the river at its banks. Roger felt reluctant to start any conversation, lest he risk reminding her of things she wished to forget. But the floodgates had been opened, and there was no way of holding back.

She began to ask him small questions, hesitant and halting. He answered them as best he could, and hesitant in return, asked a few questions of his own. The freedom of talking, suddenly, after so many years of pent-up secrecy, seemed to act on her like a drug, and Roger, listening in fascination, drew her out despite herself. By the time they reached the railroad bridge, she had recovered the vigor and strength of character he had first seen in her.

“He was a fool, and a drunkard, and a weak, silly man,” she declared passionately. “They were all fools – Lochiel, Glengarry, and the rest. They drank too much together, and filled themselves with Charlie’s foolish dreams. Talk is cheap, and Dougal was right – it’s easy to be brave, sitting over a glass of ale in a warm room. Stupid with drink, they were, and then too proud of their bloody honor to back down. They whipped their men and threatened them, bribed them and lured them – took them all to bloody ruin… for the sake of honor and glory.”

She snorted through her nose, and was silent for a moment. Then, surprisingly, she laughed.

“But do you know what’s really funny? That poor, silly sot and his greedy, stupid helpers; and the foolish, honorable men who couldn’t bring themselves to turn back… they had the one tiny virtue among them; they believed. And the odd thing is, that that’s all that’s endured of them – all the silliness, the incompetence, the cowardice and drunken vainglory; that’s all gone. All that’s left now of Charles Stuart and his men is the glory that they sought for and never found.

“Perhaps Raymond was right,” she added in a softer tone; “it’s only the essence of a thing that counts. When time strips everything else away, it’s only the hardness of the bone that’s left.”

“I suppose you must feel some bitterness against the historians,” Roger ventured. “All the writers who got it wrong – made him out a hero. I mean, you can’t go anywhere in the Highlands without seeing the Bonnie Prince on toffee tins and souvenir tourist mugs.”

Claire shook her head, gazing off in the distance. The evening mist was growing heavier, the bushes beginning to drip again from the tips of their leaves.

“Not the historians. No, not them. Their greatest crime is that they presume to know what happened, how things come about, when they have only what the past chose to leave behind – for the most part, they think what they were meant to think, and it’s a rare one that sees what really happened, behind the smokescreen of artifacts and paper.”

There was a faint rumble in the distance. The evening passenger train from London, Roger knew. You could hear the whistle from the manse on clear nights.

“No, the fault lies with the artists,” Claire went on. “The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It’s them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king.”

“Are they all liars, then?” Roger asked. Claire shrugged. In spite of the chilly air, she had taken off the jacket to her suit; the damp molded the cotton shirt to show the fineness of collarbone and shoulder blades.

“Liars?” she asked, “or sorcerers? Do they see the bones in the dust of the earth, see the essence of a thing that was, and clothe it in new flesh, so the plodding beast reemerges as a fabulous monster?”

“And are they wrong to do it, then?” Roger asked. The rail bridge trembled as the Flying Scotsman hit the switch below. The wavering white letters shook with vibration – FREE SCOTLAND.

Claire stared upward at the letters, her face lit by fugitive starlight.

“You still don’t understand, do you?” she said. She was irritated, but the husky voice didn’t rise above its normal level.

“You don’t know why,” she said. “You don’t know, and I don’t know, and we never will know. Can’t you see? You don’t know, because you can’t say what the end is – there isn’t any end. You can’t say, ‘This particular event’ was ‘destined’ to happen, and therefore all these other things happened. What Charles did to the people of Scotland – was that the ‘thing’ that had to happen? Or was it ‘meant’ to happen as it did, and Charles’s real purpose was to be what he is now – a figurehead, an icon? Without him, would Scotland have endured two hundred years of union with England, and still – still” – she waved a hand at the sprawling letters overhead – “have kept its own identity?”

“I don’t know!” said Roger, having to shout as the swinging searchlight lit the trees and track, and the train roared over the bridge above them.

There was a solid minute of clash and roar, earthshaking noise that held them rooted to the spot. Then at last it was past, and the clatter died to a lonely crying wail as the red light of the end car swept out of sight beyond them.

“Well, that’s the hell of it, isn’t it?” she said, turning away. “You never know, but you have to act anyway, don’t you?”

She spread her hands suddenly, flexing the strong fingers so her rings flashed in the light.

“You learn it when you become a doctor. Not in school – that isn’t where you learn, in any case – but when you lay your hands on people and presume to heal them. There are so many there, beyond your reach. So many you can never touch, so many whose essence you can’t find, so many who slip through your fingers. But you can’t think about them. The only thing you can do – the only thing – is to try for the one who’s in front of you. Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world – because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that’s all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can’t help, but only to do what you can.”

She turned back to him, face haggard with fatigue, but eyes glowing with the rain-light, spangles of water caught in the tangles of her hair. Her hand rested on Roger’s arm, compelling as the wind that fills a boat’s sail and drives it on.

“Let’s go back to the manse, Roger,” she said. “I have something particular to tell you.”

Claire was quiet on the walk back to the manse, avoiding Roger’s tentative queries. She refused his proffered arm, walking alone, head down in thought. Not as though she were making up her mind, Roger thought; she had already done that. She was deciding what to say.

Roger himself was wondering. The quiet gave him respite from the turmoil of the day’s revelations – enough to wonder precisely why Claire had chosen to include him in them. She could easily have told Brianna alone, had she wished to. Was it only that she had feared what Brianna’s reaction to the story might be, and been reluctant to meet it alone? Or had she gambled that he would – as he had – believe her, and thus sought to enlist him as an ally in the cause of truth – her truth, and Brianna’s?

His curiosity had reached near boiling point by the time they reached the manse. Still, there was work to do first; together, they unloaded one of the tallest bookshelves, and pushed it in front of the shattered window, shutting out the cold night air.

Flushed from the exertion, Claire sat down on the sofa while he went to pour a pair of whiskies from the small drinks-table in the corner. When Mrs. Graham had been alive, she had always brought drinks on a tray, properly napkined, doilied, and adorned with accompanying biscuits. Fiona, if allowed, would willingly have done the same, but Roger much preferred the simplicity of pouring his own drink in solitude.

Claire thanked him, sipped from the glass, then set it down and looked up at him, tired but composed.

“You’ll likely be wondering why I wanted you to hear the whole story,” she said, with that unnerving ability to see into his thoughts.

“There were two reasons. I’ll tell you the second presently, but as for the first, I thought you had some right to hear it.”

“Me? What right?”

The golden eyes were direct, unsettling as a leopard’s guileless stare. “The same as Brianna. The right to know who you are.” She moved across the room to the far wall. It was cork-lined from floor to ceiling, encrusted with layers of photographs, charts, notes, stray visiting cards, old parish schedules, spare keys, and other bits of rubbish pinned to the cork.

“I remember this wall.” Claire smiled, touching a picture of Prize Day at the local grammar school. “Did your father ever take anything off it?”

Roger shook his head, bewildered. “No, I don’t believe he did. He always said he could never find things put away in drawers; if it was anything important, he wanted it in plain sight.”

“Then it’s likely still here. He thought it was important.”

Reaching up, she began to thumb lightly through the overlapping layers, gently separating the yellowed papers.

“This one, I think,” she murmured, after some riffling back and forth. Reaching far up under the detritus of sermon notes and car-wash tickets, she detached a single sheet of paper and laid it on the desk.

“Why, it’s my family tree,” Roger said in surprise. “I haven’t seen that old thing in years. And never paid any attention to it when I did see it, either,” he added. “If you’re going to tell me I’m adopted, I already know that.”

Claire nodded, intent on the chart. “Oh, yes. That’s why your father – Mr. Wakefield, I mean – drew up this chart. He wanted to be sure that you would know your real family, even though he gave you his own name.”

Roger sighed, thinking of the Reverend, and the small silver-framed picture on his bureau, with the smiling likeness of an unknown young man, darkhaired in World War II RAF uniform.

“Yes, I know that, too. My family name was MacKenzie. Are you going to tell me I’m connected to some of the MacKenzies you… er, knew? I don’t see any of those names on this chart.”

Claire acted as though she hadn’t heard him, tracing a finger down the spidery hand-drawn lines of the genealogy.

“Mr. Wakefield was a terrible stickler for accuracy,” she murmured, as though to herself. “He wouldn’t want any mistakes.” Her finger came to a halt on the page.

“Here,” she said. “This is where it happened. Below this point” – her finger swept down the page – “everything is right. These were your parents, and your grandparents, and your great-grandparents, and so on. But not above.” The finger swept upward.

Roger bent over the chart, then looked up, moss-green eyes thoughtful.

“This one? William Buccleigh MacKenzie, born 1744, of William John MacKenzie and Sarah Innes. Died 1782.”

Claire shook her head. “Died 1744, aged two months, of smallpox.” She looked up, and the golden eyes met his with a force that sent a shiver down his spine. “Yours wasn’t the first adoption in that family, you know,” she said. Her finger tapped the entry. “He needed a wet nurse,” she said. “His own mother was dead – so he was given to a family that had lost a baby. They called him by the name of the child they had lost – that was common – and I don’t suppose anyone wanted to call attention to his ancestry by recording the new child in the parish register. He would have been baptized at birth, after all; it wasn’t necessary to do it again. Colum told me where they placed him.”

“Geillis Duncan’s son,” he said slowly. “The witch’s child.”

“That’s right.” She gazed at him appraisingly, head cocked to one side. “I knew it must be, when I saw you. The eyes, you know. They’re hers.”

Roger sat down, feeling suddenly quite cold, in spite of the bookshelf blocking the draft, and the newly kindled fire on the hearth.

“You’re sure of this?” he said, but of course she was sure. Assuming that the whole story was not a fabrication, the elaborate construction of a diseased mind. He glanced up at her, sitting unruffled with her whisky, composed as though about to order cheese straws.

Diseased mind? Dr. Claire Beauchamp-Randall, chief of staff at a large, important hospital? Raving insanity, rampant delusions? Easier to believe himself insane. In fact, he was beginning to believe just that.

He took a deep breath and placed both hands flat on the chart, blotting out the entry for William Buccleigh MacKenzie.

“Well, it’s interesting all right, and I suppose I’m glad you told me. But it doesn’t really change anything, does it? Except that I suppose I can tear off the top half of this genealogy and throw it away. After all, we don’t know where Geillis Duncan came from, nor the man who fathered her child; you seem sure it wasn’t poor old Arthur.”

Claire shook her head, a distant look in her eyes.

“Oh, no, it wasn’t Arthur Duncan. It was Dougal MacKenzie who fathered Geilie’s child. That was the real reason she was killed. Not witchcraft. But Colum MacKenzie couldn’t let it be known that his brother had had an adulterous affair with the fiscal’s wife. And she wanted to marry Dougal; I think perhaps she threatened the MacKenzies with the truth about Hamish.”

“Hamish? Oh, Colum’s son. Yes, I remember.” Roger rubbed his forehead. His head was starting to spin.

“Not Colum’s son,” Claire corrected. “Dougal’s. Colum couldn’t sire children, but Dougal could – and did. Hamish was the heir to the chieftainship of clan MacKenzie; Colum would have killed anyone who threatened Hamish – and did.”

She drew a deep breath. “And that,” she said, “leads to the second reason why I told you the story.”

Roger buried both hands in his hair, staring down at the table, where the lines of the genealogical chart seemed to writhe like mocking snakes, forked tongues flickering between the names.

“Geillis Duncan,” he said hoarsely. “She had a vaccination scar.”

“Yes. It was that, finally, that made me come back to Scotland. When I left with Frank, I swore I would never come back. I knew I could never forget, but I could bury what I knew; I could stay away, and never seek to know what happened after I left. It seemed the least I could do, for both of them, for Frank and Jamie. And for the baby coming.” Her lips pressed tightly together for a moment.

“But Geilie saved my life, at the trial in Cranesmuir. Perhaps she was doomed herself in any case; I think she believed so. But she threw away any chance she might have had, in order to save me. And she left me a message. Dougal gave it to me, in a cave in the Highlands, when he brought me the news that Jamie was in prison. There were two pieces to the message. A sentence, ‘I do not know if it is possible, but I think so,’ and a sequence of four numbers – one, nine, six, and eight.”

“Nineteen sixty-eight,” Roger said, with the feeling that this was a dream. Surely he would be waking soon. “This year. What did she mean, she thought it was possible?”

“To go back. Through the stones. She hadn’t tried, but she thought I could. And she was right, of course.” Claire turned and picked up her whisky from the table. She stared at Roger across the rim of the glass, eyes the same color as the contents. “This is 1968; the year she went back herself. Except that I think she hasn’t yet gone.”

The glass slipped in Roger’s hand, and he barely caught it in time.

“What… here? But she… why not… you can’t tell…” He was sputtering, thoughts jarred into incoherency.

“I don’t know,” Claire pointed out. “But I think so. I’m fairly sure she was Scots, and the odds are good that she came through somewhere in the Highlands. Granted that there are any number of standing stones, we know that Craigh na Dun is a passage – for those that can use it. Besides,” she added, with the air of one presenting the final argument, “Fiona’s seen her.”

“Fiona?” This, Roger felt, was simply too much. The crowning absurdity. Anything else he could manage to believe – time passages, clan treachery, historical revelations – but bringing Fiona into it was more than his reason could be expected to stand. He looked pleadingly at Claire. “Tell me you don’t mean that,” he begged. “Not Fiona.”

Claire’s mouth twitched at one corner. “I’m afraid so,” she said, not without sympathy. “I asked her – about the Druid group that her grandmother belonged to, you know. She’s been sworn to secrecy, of course, but I knew quite a bit about them already, and well…” She shrugged, mildly apologetic. “It wasn’t too difficult to get her to talk. She told me that there’d been another woman asking questions – a tall, fair-haired woman, with very striking green eyes. Fiona said the woman reminded her of someone,” she added delicately, carefully not looking at him, “but she couldn’t think who.”

Roger merely groaned, and bending at the waist, collapsed slowly forward until his forehead rested on the table. He closed his eyes, feeling the cool hardness of the wood under his head.

“Did Fiona know who she was?” he asked, eyes still closed.

“Her name is Gillian Edgars,” Claire replied. He heard her rising, crossing the room, adding another tot of whisky to her glass. She came back and stood by the table. He could feel her gaze on the back of his neck.

“I’ll leave it to you.” Claire said quietly. “It’s your right to say. Shall I look for her?”

Roger lifted his head off the table and blinked at her incredulously. “Shall you look for her?” he said. “If this – if it’s all true – then we have to find her, don’t we? If she’s going back to be burned alive? Of course you have to find her!” he burst out. “How could you consider anything else?”

“And if I do find her?” she replied. She placed a slender hand on the grubby chart and raised her eyes to his. “What happens to you?” she asked softly.

He looked around helplessly, at the bright, cluttered study, with the wall of miscellanea, the chipped old teapot on the ancient oak table. Solid as… He gripped his thighs, clutching the rough corduroy as though for reassurance that he was as solid as the chair on which he sat.

“But… I’m real!” he burst out. “I can’t just… evaporate!”

Claire raised her brows consideringly. “I don’t know that you would. I have no idea what would happen. Perhaps you would never have existed? In which case, you oughtn’t to be too agitated now. Perhaps the part of you that makes you unique, your soul or whatever you want to call it – perhaps that’s fated to exist in any case, and you would still be you, though born of a slightly different lineage. After all, how much of your physical makeup can be due to ancestors six generations back? Half? Ten percent?” She shrugged, and pursed her lips, looking him over carefully.

“Your eyes come from Geilie, as I told you. But I see Dougal in you, too. No specific feature, though you have the MacKenzie cheekbones; Bree has them, too. No, it’s something more subtle, something in the way you move; a grace, a suddenness – no…” She shook her head. “I can’t describe it. But it’s there. Is it something you need, to be who you are? Could you do without that bit from Dougal?”

She rose heavily, looking her age for the first time since he had met her.

“I’ve spent more than twenty years looking for answers, Roger, and I can tell you only one thing: There aren’t any answers, only choices. I’ve made a number of them myself, and no one can tell me whether they were right or wrong. Master Raymond perhaps, though I don’t suppose he would; he was a man who believed in mysteries.

“I can see the right of it only far enough to know that I must tell you – and leave the choice to you.”

He picked up the glass and drained the rest of the whisky.

The Year of our Lord 1968. The year when Geillis Duncan stepped into the circle of standing stones. The year she went to meet her fate beneath the rowan trees in the hills near Leoch. An illegitimate child – and death by fire.

He rose and wandered up and down the rows of books that lined the study. Books filled with history, that mocking and mutable subject.

No answers, only choices.

Restless, he fingered the books on the top shelf. These were the histories of the Jacobite movement, the stories of the Rebellions, the ’15 and the ’45. Claire had known a number of the men and women described in these books. Had fought and suffered with them, to save a people strange to her. Had lost all she held dear in the effort. And in the end, had failed. But the choice had been hers, as now it was his.

Was there a chance that this was a dream, a delusion of some kind? He stole a glance at Claire. She lay back in her chair, eyes closed, motionless but for the beating of her pulse, barely visible in the hollow of her throat. No. He could, for a moment, convince himself that it was make-believe, but only while he looked away from her. However much he wanted to believe otherwise, he could not look at her and doubt a word of what she said.

He spread his hands flat on the table, then turned them over, seeing the maze of lines that crossed his palms. Was it only his own fate that lay here in his cupped hands, or did he hold an unknown woman’s life as well?

No answers. He closed his hands gently, as though holding something small trapped inside his fists, and made his choice.

“Let’s find her,” he said.

There was no sound from the still figure in the wing chair, and no movement save the rise and fall of the rounded breast. Claire was asleep.

48 WITCH-HUNT

The old-fashioned buzzer whirred somewhere in the depths of the flat. It wasn’t the best part of town, nor was it the worst. Working-class houses, for the most part, some, like this one, divided into two or three flats. A hand-lettered notice under the buzzer read MCHENRY UPSTAIRS – RING TWICE. Roger carefully pressed the buzzer once more, then wiped his hand on his trousers. His palms were sweating, which annoyed him considerably.

There was a trough of yellow jonquils by the doorstep, half-dead for lack of water. The tips of the blade-shaped leaves were brown and curling, and the frilly yellow heads drooped disconsolately near his shoe.

Claire saw them, too. “Perhaps no one’s home,” she said, stooping to touch the dry soil in the trough. “These haven’t been watered in over a week.”

Roger felt a mild wave of relief at the thought; whether he believed Geillis Duncan was Gillian Edgars or not, he hadn’t been looking forward to this visit. He was turning to go when the door suddenly opened behind him, with a screech of sticking wood that brought his heart into his mouth.

“Aye?” The man who answered the door squinted at them, eyes swollen in a flushed, heavy face shadowed with unshaven beard.

“Er… We’re sorry to disturb your sleep, sir,” said Roger, making an effort to calm himself. His stomach felt slightly hollow. “We’re looking for a Miss Gillian Edgars. Is this her residence?”

The man rubbed a stubby, black-furred hand over his head, making the hair stick up in belligerent spikes.

“That’s Mrs. Edgars to you, jimmy. And what’s it you want wi’ my wife?” The alcoholic fumes from the man’s breath made Roger want to step backward, but he stood his ground.

“We only want to talk with her,” he said, as conciliatingly as he could. “Is she at home, please?”

“Is she at home, please?” said the man who must be Mr. Edgars, squinching his mouth in a savage, high-pitched mockery of Roger’s Oxford accent. “No, she’s not home. Bugger off,” he advised, and swung the door to with a crash that left the lace curtain shivering with the vibration.

“I can see why she isn’t home,” Claire observed, standing on tiptoe to peer through the window. “I wouldn’t be, either, if that’s what was waiting for me.”

“Quite,” said Roger shortly. “And that would appear to be that. Have you any other suggestions for finding this woman?”

Claire let go of the windowsill.

“He’s settled in front of the telly,” she reported. “Let’s leave him, at least until after the pub’s opened. Meanwhile, we can go try this Institute. Fiona said Gillian Edgars took courses there.”

The Institute for the Study of Highland Folklore and Antiquities was housed on the top floor of a narrow house just outside the business district. The receptionist, a small, plump woman in a brown cardigan and print dress, seemed delighted to see them; she mustn’t get much company up here, Roger reflected.

“Oh, Mrs. Edgars,” she said, upon hearing their business. Roger thought that a sudden note of doubt had crept into Mrs. Andrews’s voice, but she remained bright and cheerful. “Yes,” she said, “she’s a regular member of the Institute, all paid up for her classes. She’s around here quite a bit, is Mrs. Edgars.” A lot more than Mrs. Andrews really cared for, from the sound of it.

“She isn’t here now, by chance, is she?” Claire asked.

Mrs. Andrews shook her head, making the dozens of gray-streaked pincurls dance on her head.

“Oh, no,” she said. “It’s a Monday. Only me and Dr. McEwan are here on the Monday. He’s the Director, you know.” She looked reproachfully at Roger, as though he ought really to have known that. Then, apparently reassured by their evident respectability, she relented slightly.

“If you want to ask about Mrs. Edgars, you should see Dr. McEwan. I’ll just go and tell him you’re here, shall I?”

As she began to ease out from behind her desk, Claire stopped her, leaning forward.

“Have you perhaps got a photograph of Mrs. Edgars?” she asked bluntly. At Mrs. Andrews’s stare of surprise, Claire smiled charmingly, explaining, “We wouldn’t want to waste the Director’s time, if it’s the wrong person, you see.”

Mrs. Andrews mouth dropped open slightly, and she blinked in confusion, but she nodded after a moment, and began fussing round her desk, opening drawers and talking to herself.

“I know they’re here somewhere. I saw them just yesterday, so they can’t have gone far… oh, here!” She bobbed up with a folder of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs in her hand, and sorted rapidly through them.

“There,” she said. “That’s her, with one of the digging expeditions, out near town, but you can’t see her face, can you? Let me see if there’s any more…”

She resumed her sorting, muttering to herself, as Roger peered interestedly over Claire’s shoulder at the photograph Mrs. Andrews had laid on the desk. It showed a small group of people standing near a Land-Rover, with a number of burlap sacks and small tools on the ground beside them. It was an impromptu shot, and several of the people were turned away from the camera. Claire’s finger reached out without hesitation, touching the image of a tall girl with long, straight, fair hair hanging halfway down her back. She tapped the photograph and nodded silently to Roger.

“You can’t possibly be sure,” he muttered to her under his breath.

“What’s that, luv?” said Mrs. Andrews, looking up absently over her spectacles. “Oh, you weren’t talking to me. That’s all right, then, I’ve found one a little better. It’s still not her whole face – she’s turned sideways, like – but it’s better nor the other.” She plopped the new picture down on top of the other with a triumphant little splat.

This one showed an older man with half-spectacles and the same fairhaired girl, bent over a table holding what looked like a collection of rusted motor parts to Roger, but which were undoubtedly valuable artifacts. The girl’s hair swung down beside her cheek, and her head was turned toward the older man, but the slant of a short, straight nose, a sweetly rounded chin, and the curve of a beautiful mouth showed clearly. The eye was cast down, hidden under long, thick lashes. Roger repressed the admiring whistle that rose unbidden to his lips. Ancestress or not, she was a real dolly, he thought irreverently.

He glanced at Claire. She nodded, without speaking. She was paler even than usual, and he could see the pulse beating rapidly in her throat, but she thanked Mrs. Andrews with her usual composure.

“Yes, that’s the one. I think perhaps we would like to talk to the Director, if he’s available.”

Mrs. Andrews cast a quick glance at the white-paneled door behind her desk.

“Well, I’ll go and ask for you, dearie. Could I tell him what it’s for, though?”

Roger was opening his mouth, groping for some excuse, when Claire stepped smoothly into the breach.

“We’re from Oxford, actually,” she said. “Mrs. Edgars has applied for a study grant with the Department of Antiquities, and she’d given the Institute as a reference with the rest of her credentials. So, if you wouldn’t mind…?”

“Oh, I see,” said Mrs. Andrews, looking impressed. “Oxford. Just think! I’ll ask Dr. McEwan if he can see you just now.”

As she disappeared behind the white-paneled door, pausing for no more than a perfunctory rap before entering, Roger leaned down to whisper in Claire’s ear.

“There is no such thing as a Department of Antiquities at Oxford,” he hissed, “and you know it.”

“You know that,” she replied demurely, “and I, as you so cleverly point out, do too. But there are any number of people in the world who don’t, and we’ve just met one of them.”

The white-paneled door was beginning to open.

“Let’s hope they’re thick on the ground hereabouts,” Roger said, wiping his brow, “or that you’re a quick liar.”

Claire rose, smiling at the beckoning figure of Mrs. Andrews as she spoke out of the side of her mouth.

“I? I, who read souls for the King of France?” She brushed down her skirt and set it swinging. “This will be pie.”

Roger bowed ironically, gesturing toward the door. “Aprés vous, Madame.”

As she stepped ahead of him, he added, “Aprés vous, le déluge,” under his breath. Her shoulders stiffened, but she didn’t turn around.

Rather to Roger’s surprise, it was pie. He wasn’t sure whether it was Claire’s skill at misrepresentation, or Dr. McEwan’s own preoccupation, but their bona fides went unquestioned. It didn’t seem to occur to the man that it was highly unlikely for scouting parties from Oxford to penetrate to the wilds of Inverness to make inquiries about the background of a potential graduate student. But then, Roger thought, Dr. McEwan appeared to have something on his mind; perhaps he wasn’t thinking as clearly as usual.

“Weeeel… yes, Mrs. Edgars unquestionably has a fine mind. Very fine,” the Director said, as though convincing himself. He was a tall, spare man, with a long upper lip like a camel’s, which wobbled as he searched hesitantly for each new word. “Have you… has she… that is…” He trailed off, lip twitching, then, “Have you ever actually met Mrs. Edgars?” he finally burst out.

“No,” said Roger, eyeing Dr. McEwan with some austerity. “That’s why we’re asking about her.”

“Is there anything…” Claire paused delicately, inviting, “that you think perhaps the committee should know, Dr. McEwan?” She leaned forward, opening her eyes very wide. “You know, inquiries like this are completely confidential. But it’s so important that we be fully informed; there is a position of trust involved.” Her voice dropped suggestively. “The Ministry, you know.”

Roger would dearly have loved to strangle her, but Dr. McEwan was nodding sagely, lip wobbling like mad.

“Oh, yes, dear lady. Yes, of course. The Ministry. I completely understand. Yes, yes, Well, I… hm, perhaps – I shouldn’t like to mislead you in any respect, you know. And it is a wonderful chance, no doubt…”

Now Roger wanted to throttle both of them. Claire must have noticed his hands twitching in his lap with irresistible desire, for she put a firm stop to the Director’s maundering.

“We’re basically interested in two things,” she said briskly, opening the notebook she carried and poising it on her knee as if for reference. Pick up bottle sherry for Mrs. T, Roger read out of the corner of one eye. Sliced ham for picnic.

“We want to know, first, your opinion of Mrs. Edgars’s scholarship, and secondly, your opinion of her overall personality. The first we have of course evaluated ourselves” – she made a small tick in the notebook, next to an entry that read Change traveler’s cheques – “but you have a much more substantial and detailed grasp, of course.” Dr. McEwan was nodding away by this time, thoroughly mesmerized.

“Yes, well…” He puffed a little, then, with a glance at the door to make sure it was shut, leaned confidentially across his desk. “The quality of her work – well, about that I think I can satisfy you completely. I’ll show you a few things she’s been working on. And the other…” Roger thought he was about to go in for another spot of lip-twitching and leaned forward menacingly.

Dr. McEwan leaned back abruptly, looking startled. “It’s nothing very much, really,” he said. “It’s only… well, she’s such an intense young lady. Perhaps her interest seems at times a trifle… obsessive?” His voice went up questioningly. His eyes darted from Roger to Claire, like a trapped rat’s.

“Would the direction of this intense interest perhaps be focused on the standing stones? The stone circles?” Claire suggested gently.

“Oh, it showed up in her application materials, then?” The Director hauled a large, grubby handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face with it. “Yes, that’s it. Of course, a lot of people get quite carried away with them,” he offered. “The romance of it, the mystery. Look at those benighted souls out at Stonehenge on Midsummer’s Day, in hoods and robes. Chanting… all that nonsense. Not that I would compare Gillian Edgars to…”

There was quite a lot more of it, but Roger quit listening. It seemed stifling in the narrow office, and his collar was too tight; he could hear his heart beating, a slow, incessant thrumping in both ears that was very irritating.

It simply couldn’t be! he thought. Positively impossible. True, Claire Randall’s story was convincing – quite awfully convincing. But then, look at the effect she was having on this poor old dodderer, who wouldn’t know scholarship if it was served up on a plate with piccalilli relish. She could obviously talk a tinker out of his pans. Not that he, Roger, was as susceptible as Dr. McEwan surely, but…

Beset with doubt and dripping with sweat, Roger paid little attention as Dr. McEwan fetched a set of keys from his drawer and rose to lead them out through a second door into a long hallway studded with doors.

“Study carrels,” the Director explained. He opened one of the doors, revealing a cubicle some four feet on a side, barely big enough to contain a narrow table, a chair, and a small bookshelf. On the table, neatly stacked, were a series of folders in different colors. To the side, Roger saw a large notebook with gray covers, and a neat hand-lettered label on the front – MISCELLANEOUS. For some reason, the sight of the handwriting sent a shiver through him.

This was getting more personal by the moment. First photographs, now the woman’s writings. He was assailed by a moment’s panic at the thought of actually meeting Geillis Duncan. Gillian Edgars, he meant. Whoever the woman was.

The Director was opening various folders, pointing and explaining to Claire, who was putting on a good show of having some idea what he was talking about. Roger peered over her shoulder, nodding and saying, “Um-hm, very interesting,” at intervals, but the slanted lines and loops of the script were incomprehensible to him.

She wrote this, he kept thinking. She’s real. Flesh and blood and lips and long eyelashes. And if she goes back through the stone, she’ll burn – crackle and blacken, with her hair lit like a torch in the black dawn. And if she doesn’t, then… I don’t exist.

He shook his head violently.

“You disagree, Mr. Wakefield?” The Director of the Institute was peering at him in puzzlement.

He shook his head again, this time in embarrassment.

“No, no. I mean… it’s only… do you think I could have a drink of water?”

“Of course, of course! Come with me, there’s a fountain just round the corner, I’ll show you.” Dr. McEwan bustled him out of the carrel and down the hall, expressing voluble, disjointed concern for his state of health.

Once away from the claustrophobic confines of the carrel and the proximity of Gillian Edgars’s books and folders, Roger began to feel slightly better. Still, the thought of going back into that tiny room, where all Claire’s words about her past seemed to echo off the thin partitions… no. He made up his mind. Claire could finish with Dr. McEwan by herself. He passed the carrel quickly, not looking inside, and went through the door that led back to the receptionist’s desk.

Mrs. Andrews stared at him as he came in, her spectacles gleaming with concern and curiosity.

“Dear me, Mr. Wakefield. Are ye not feeling just right, then?” Roger rubbed a hand over his face; he must look really ghastly. He smiled weakly at the plump little secretary.

“No, thanks very much. I just got a bit hot back there; thought I’d step down for a little fresh air.”

“Oh, aye.” The secretary nodded understandingly. “The radiators.” She pronounced it “raddiators.” “They get stuck on, ye know, and won’t turn off. I’d best see about it.” She rose from her desk, where the picture of Gillian Edgars still rested. She glanced down at the picture, then up at Roger.

“Isn’t that odd?” she said conversationally. “I was just looking at this and wondering what it was about Mrs. Edgars’s face that struck me all of a sudden. And I couldn’t think what it was. But she’s quite a look of you, Mr. Wakefield – especially round the eyes. Isn’t that a coincidence? Mr. Wakefield?” Mrs. Andrews stared in the direction of the stair, where the thump of Roger’s footsteps echoed from the wooden risers.

“Taken a bit short, I expect,” she said kindly. “Poor lad.”

The sun was still above the horizon when Claire rejoined him on the street, but it was late in the day; people were going home to their tea, and there was a feeling of general relaxation in the air – a looking forward to leisured peace after the long day’s work.

Roger himself had no such feeling. He moved to open the car door for Claire, conscious of such a mix of emotions that he couldn’t decide what to say first. She got in, glancing up at him sympathetically.

“Rather a jar, isn’t it?” was all she said.

The fiendish maze of new one-way streets made getting through the town center a task that demanded all his attention. They were well on their way before he could take his eyes off the road long enough to ask, “What next?”

Claire was leaning back in her seat, eyes closed, the tendrils of her hair coming loose from their clip. She didn’t open her eyes at his question, but stretched slightly, easing herself in the seat.

“Why don’t you ask Brianna out for supper somewhere?” she said. Supper? Somehow it seemed subtly wrong to stop for supper in the midst of a life-or-death detective endeavor, but on the other hand, Roger was suddenly aware that the hollowness in his stomach wasn’t entirely due to the revelations of the last hour.

“Well, all right,” he said slowly. “But then tomorrow-”

“Why wait ’til tomorrow?” Claire broke in. She was sitting up now, combing out her hair. It was thick and unruly, and loosed swirling on her shoulders, Roger thought it made her look suddenly very young. “You can go talk to Greg Edgars again after supper, can’t you?”

“How do you know his name is Greg?” Roger asked curiously. “And if he wouldn’t talk to me this afternoon, why should he tonight?”

Claire looked at Roger as though suddenly doubting his basic intelligence.

“I know his name because I saw it on a letter in his mailbox,” she said. “As for why he’ll talk to you tonight, he’ll talk to you because you’re going to take along a bottle of whisky when you come this time.”

“And you think that will make him invite us in?”

She lifted one brow. “Did you see the collection of empty bottles in his waste bin? Of course he will. Like a shot.” She sat back, fists thrust into the pockets of her coat, and stared out at the passing street.

“You might see if Brianna will go with you,” she said casually.

“She said she isn’t having anything to do with this,” Roger objected.

Claire glanced at him impatiently. The sun was setting behind her, and it made her eyes glow amber, like a wolf’s.

“In that case, I suggest you don’t tell her what you’re up to,” she said, in a tone that made Roger remember that she was chief of staff at a large hospital.

His ears burned, but he stubbornly said, “You can’t very well hide it, if you and I-”

“Not me,” Claire interrupted. “You. I have something else to do.”

This was too much, Roger thought. He pulled the car over without signaling and skidded to a stop at the side of the road. He glared at her.

“Something else to do, have you?” he demanded. “I like that! You’re landing me with the job of trying to entice a drunken sot who will likely assault me on sight, and luring your daughter along to watch! What, do you think she’ll be needed to drive me to hospital after Edgars has finished beating me over the head with a bottle?”

“No,” Claire said, ignoring his tone. “I think you and Greg Edgars together may succeed where I couldn’t, in convincing Bree that Gillian Edgars is the woman I knew as Geillis Duncan. She won’t listen to me. She likely won’t listen to you, either, if you try to tell her what we found at the Institute today. But she’ll listen to Greg Edgars.” Her tone was flat and grim, and Roger felt his annoyance ebbing slightly. He started the car once more, and pulled out into the stream of traffic.

“All right, I’ll try,” he said grudgingly, not looking at her. “And just where are you going to be, while I do this?”

There was a small, shuffling movement alongside as she groped in her pocket again. Then she drew out her hand and opened it. His eye caught the silvery gleam of a small object in the darkness of her palm. A key.

“I’m going to burgle the Institute,” she said calmly. “I want that notebook.”

After Claire excused herself to run her unspecified “errand” – making Roger shudder only slightly – he and Brianna had driven to the pub, but then decided to wait for their supper, since the evening was unexpectedly fine. They strolled down the narrow walk by the River Ness, and he had forgotten his misgivings about the evening in the pleasure of Brianna’s company.

They talked carefully at first, avoiding anything controversial. Then the chat turned to Roger’s work, and grew gradually more animated.

“And how do you know so much about it, anyway?” Roger demanded, breaking off in the middle of a sentence.

“My father taught me,” she replied. At the word “father,” she stiffened a bit, and drew back, as though expecting him to say something. “My real father,” she added pointedly.

“Well, he certainly knew,” Roger replied mildly, leaving the challenge strictly alone. Plenty of time for that later, my girl, he thought cynically. But it isn’t going to be me that springs the trap.

Just down the street, Roger could see a light in the window of the Edgars’s house. The quarry was denned, then. He felt an unexpected surge of adrenaline at the thought of the coming confrontation.

Adrenaline lost out to the surge of gastric juices that resulted when they stepped into the pub’s savory atmosphere, redolent of shepherd’s pie. Conversation was general and friendly, with an unspoken agreement to avoid any reference to the scene at the manse the day before. Roger had noticed the coolness between Claire and her daughter, before he had left her at the cab stand on their way to the pub. Seated side by side in the backseat, they had reminded him of two strange cats, ears laid flat and tails twitching, but both avoiding the eye-locking stare that would lead to claws and flying fur.

After dinner, Brianna fetched their coats while he paid the bill.

“What’s that for?” she asked, noticing the bottle of whisky in his hand. “Planning a rave-up for later on?”

“Rave-up?” he said, grinning at her. “You are getting on, aren’t you? And what else have you picked up in your linguistic studies?”

She cast her eyes down in exaggerated demureness.

“Oh, well. There’s a dance in the States, called the Shag. I gather I shouldn’t ask you to do it with me here, though.”

“Not unless you mean it,” he said. They both laughed, but he thought the flush on her cheeks had deepened, and he was conscious of a certain stirring at the suggestion that made him keep his coat hung over one arm instead of putting it on.

“Well, after enough of that stuff, anything’s possible,” she said, indicating the whisky bottle with a mildly malicious smile. “Terrible taste, though.”

“It’s acquired, lassie,” Roger informed her, letting his accent broaden. “Only Scots are born wi’ it. I’ll buy ye a bottle of your own to practice with. This one’s a gift, though – something I promised to leave off. Want to come along, or shall I do it later?” he asked. He didn’t know whether he wanted her to come or not, but felt a surge of happiness when she nodded and shrugged into her own coat.

“Sure, why not?”

“Good.” He reached out and delicately turned down the flap of her collar, so it lay flat on her shoulder. “It’s just down the street – let’s walk, shall we?”

The neighborhood looked a little better at night. Some of its shabbiness was hidden by the darkness, and the lights glowing from windows into the tiny front gardens gave the street an air of coziness that it lacked during the day.

“This won’t take a minute,” Roger told Brianna as he pressed the buzzer. He wasn’t sure whether to hope he was right or not. His first fear passed as the door opened; someone was home, and still conscious.

Edgars had plainly spent the afternoon in the company of one of the bottles lined up along the edge of the swaybacked buffet visible behind him. Luckily, he appeared not to connect his evening visitors with the intrusion of the afternoon. He squinted at Roger’s introduction, composed on the way to the house.

“Gilly’s cousin? I didn’ know she had a cousin.”

“Well, she has,” said Roger, boldly taking advantage of this admission. “I’m him.” He would deal with Gillian herself when he saw her. If he saw her.

Edgars blinked once or twice, then rubbed an inflamed eye with one fist, as though to get a better look at them. His eyes focused with some difficulty on Brianna, hovering diffidently behind Roger.

“Who’s that?” he demanded.

“Er… my girlfriend,” Roger improvised. Brianna narrowed her eyes at him, but said nothing. Plainly she was beginning to smell a rat, but went ahead of him without protest as Greg Edgars swung the door wider to admit them.

The flat was small and stuffy, overfurnished with secondhand furniture. The air reeked of stale cigarettes and insufficiently taken-out garbage, and the remnants of take-away meals were scattered heedlessly over every horizontal surface in the room. Brianna gave Roger a sidelong look that said Nice relatives you have, and he shrugged slightly. Not my fault. The woman of the house was plainly not at home, and hadn’t been for some time.

Or not in the physical sense, at least. Turning to take the chair Edgars offered him, Roger came face-to-face with a large studio photograph, framed in brass, standing in the center of the tiny mantelpiece. He bit his tongue to stifle a startled exclamation.

The woman seemed to be looking out of the photograph into his face, a slight smile barely creasing the corner of her mouth. Wings of platinum-fair hair fell thick and glossy past her shoulders, framing a perfect heart-shaped face. Eyes deep green as winter moss glowed under thick, dark lashes.

“Good likeness, i’n’t?” Greg Edgars looked at the photo, his expression one of mingled hostility and longing.

“Er, yes. Just like her.” Roger felt a little breathless, and turned to remove a crumpled fish-and-chips paper from his chair. Brianna was staring at the portrait with interest. She glanced from the photo to Roger and back, clearly drawing comparisons. Cousins, was it?

“I take it Gillian’s not here?” Roger started to wave away the bottle Edgars had tilted inquiringly in his direction, then changed his mind and nodded. Perhaps a shared drink would gain Edgars’s confidence. If Gillian wasn’t here, he needed to find out where she was.

Occupied in removing the excise seal with his teeth, Edgars shook his head, then delicately plucked the bit of wax and paper off his lower lip.

“Not hardly, mate. ’S not quite so much a slum as this when she’s here.” A sweeping gesture took in the overflowing ashtrays and tumbled paper drinks cups. “Close, maybe, but not quite this bad.” He took down three wineglasses from the china cupboard, peering dubiously into each one, as though checking for dust.

He poured the whisky with the exaggerated care of the very drunk, taking the glasses one by one across the room to his guests. Brianna accepted hers with equal care, but declined a chair, instead leaning gracefully against the corner of the china cabinet.

Edgars plumped at last onto the rump-sprung sofa, ignoring the debris, and raised his glass.

“Cheers, mate,” he said briefly, and took a long, slurping gulp. “Wotcher say yer name is?” he demanded, emerging abruptly from his immersion. “Oh, Roger, right. Gilly never mentioned ye… but then, she wouldn’,” he added moodily. “Never knew nothin’ about her family, and she wasn’ sayin’. Think she was ashamed of ’em all… but you don’t look such a nelly,” he said, generously. “Yer lass is a looker, at least. Aye, that sounds right, eh? ‘Yer lass is a looker, at least!’ Hear ’at, eh?” He laughed uproariously, spraying whisky droplets.

“Yeah,” said Roger. “Thanks.” He took a small sip of his drink. Brianna, offended, turned her back on Edgars and affected to be examining the contents of the china closet through the bevel-cut glass doors.

There seemed no point in beating around the bush, Roger decided. Edgars wouldn’t recognize subtlety if it bit him on the bum at this point, and there seemed a substantial danger that he might pass out soon, at the rate he was going.

“D’you know where Gillian is?” he asked bluntly. Every time he said her name, it felt strange on his tongue. This time, he couldn’t help glancing up at the mantelpiece, where the photo smiled serenely on the debauch below.

Edgars shook his head, swinging it slowly back and forth over his glass like an ox over a corncrib. He was a short, heavyset man, about Roger’s age, perhaps, but looking older because of the heavy growth of unshaved beard and disheveled black hair.

“Nah,” he said. “Thought maybe you knew. It’ll be the Nats or the Roses, likely, but I’ve no kep’ up. I couldny say who, specially.”

“Nats?” Roger’s heart began to speed up. “You mean the Scottish Nationalists?”

Edgars’s eyelids were beginning to droop, but they blinked open once more.

“Oh, aye. Bloody Nats. ’S where I met Gilly, aye?”

“When was this, Mr. Edgars?”

Roger looked up in surprise at the soft voice from above. It wasn’t the photograph that had spoken, though, but Brianna, looking intently down at Greg Edgars. Roger couldn’t tell whether she was merely making conversation, or if she suspected something. Her face showed nothing beyond polite interest.

“Dunno… maybe two, three years gone. Fun at first, hm? Toss the bloody English out, join the Common Market on our own… beer in the pub and a cuddle i’ the back of the van comin’ home from rallies. Mmm.” Edgars shook his head again, dreamy-eyed at the vision. Then the smile faded from his face, and he frowned into his drink. “That’s before she went potty.”

“Potty?” Roger took another quick glance at the photo. Intense, yes. She looked that. But not barking mad, surely. Or could you tell, from a photo?

“Aye. Society o’ the White Rose. Charlie’s m’ darlin’. Will ye no come back again, and all that rot. Lot of jimmies dressed up in kilts and full rig, wi’ swords and all. All right if ye like it, o’ course,” he added, with a cockeyed attempt at objectivity. “But Gilly’d always take a thing too far. On and on about the Bonnie Prince, and wouldn’ it be a thing if he’d won the ’45? Blokes in the kitchen ’til all hours, drinking up the beer and arguing why he hadn’t. In the Gaelic, too.” He rolled his eyes. “Load o’ rubbish.” He drained his glass to emphasize this opinion.

Roger could feel Brianna’s eyes boring into the side of his neck like gimlets. He pulled at his collar to loosen it, though he wasn’t wearing a tie and his collar button was undone.

“I don’t suppose your wife’s also interested in standing stones, is she, Mr. Edgars?” Brianna wasn’t bothering a lot with the polite interest anymore; her voice was sharp enough to cut cheese. The effect was largely wasted on Edgars.

“Stones?” He seemed fuddled, and stuck a forefinger into one ear, screwing it in industriously, as though in hopes of improving his hearing.

“The prehistoric stone circles. Like the Clava Cairns,” Roger offered, naming one of the more famous local landmarks. In for a penny, in for a pound, he thought, with a mental sigh of resignation. Brianna was plainly never going to speak to him again, so he might as well find out what he could.

“Oh, those.” Edgars uttered a short laugh. “Aye, and every other bit o’ auld rubbish ye could name. That’s the last bit, and the worst. Down at that Institewt day an’ night, spendin’ all my money on courses… courses! Make a cat laugh, ay? Fairy tales, they teach ’em there. Ye’ll learn nothin’ useful in that place, lass, I told her. Whyna learn to type? Get a job, if she’s bored. ’S what I tell’t her. So she left,” he said morosely. “Not seen her in two weeks.” He stared into his wineglass as though surprised to find it empty.

“Have another?” he offered, reaching for the bottle, but Brianna shook her head decidedly.

“Thanks, no. We have to be going. Don’t we, Roger?”

Seeing the dangerous glint in her eye, Roger wasn’t at all sure that he wouldn’t be better off staying to split the rest of the bottle with Greg Edgars. Still, it was a long walk home, if he let Brianna take the car. He rose with a sigh, and shook Edgars’s hand in farewell. It was warm and surprisingly firm in its grip, if a trifle moist.

Edgars followed them to the door, clutching the bottle by the neck. He peered after them through the screen, suddenly calling down the walk, “If ye see Gilly, tell her to come home, eh?”

Roger turned and waved at the blurry figure in the lighted rectangle of the door.

“I’ll try,” he called, the words sticking in his throat.

They made it to the walk and half down the street toward the pub before she rounded on him.

“What in bloody hell are you up to?” she said. She sounded angry, but not hysterical. “You told me you haven’t any family in the Highlands, so what’s all this about cousins? Who is that woman in the picture?”

He looked round the darkened street for inspiration, but there was no help for it. He took a deep breath and took her by the arm.

“Geillis Duncan,” he said.

She stopped stock-still, and the shock of it jarred up his own arm. With great deliberation, she detached her elbow from his grip. The delicate tissue of the evening had torn down the middle.

“Don’t… touch… me,” she said through her teeth. “Is this something Mother thought up?”

Despite his resolve to be understanding, Roger felt himself growing angry in return.

“Look,” he said, “can you not think of anyone but yourself in this? I know it’s been a shock to you – God, how could it not be? And if you cannot bring yourself even to think about it… well, I’ll not push you to it. But there’s your mother to consider. And there’s me, as well.”

“You? What have you got to do with it?” It was too dark to see her face, but the surprise in her voice was evident.

He had not meant to complicate matters further by telling her of his involvement, but it was clearly too late for keeping secrets. And no doubt Claire had seen that, when she suggested his taking Brianna out this evening.

In a flash of revelation, he realized for the first time just what Claire had meant. She did have one means of proving her story to Brianna, beyond question. She had Gillian Edgars, who had – perhaps – not yet vanished to meet her fate as Geillis Duncan, tied to a flaming stake beneath the rowan trees of Leoch. The most stubborn cynic would be convinced, he supposed, by the sight of someone disappearing into the past before their eyes. No wonder Claire had wanted to find Gillian Edgars.

In a few words, he told Brianna his relationship with the would-be witch of Cranesmuir.

“And so it looks like being my life or hers,” he ended, shrugging, hideously conscious of how ridiculously melodramatic it sounded. “Claire – your mother – she left it to me. But I thought I had to find her, at the least.”

Brianna had stopped walking to listen to him. The dim light from a corner shop caught the gleam of her eyes as she stared at him.

“You believe it, then?” she asked. There was no incredulity or scorn in her voice; she was altogether serious.

He sighed and reached for her arm again. She didn’t resist, but fell into step beside him.

“Yes,” he said. “I had to. You didn’t see your mother’s face, when she saw the words written inside her ring. That was real – real enough to break my heart.”

“You’d better tell me,” she said, after a short silence. “What words?”

By the time he had finished the story, they had reached the car-park behind the pub.

“Well…” Brianna said hesitantly. “If…” She stopped again, looking into his eyes. She was standing near enough for him to feel the warmth of her breasts, close to his chest, but he didn’t reach for her. The kirk of St. Kilda was a long way off, and neither of them wanted to remember the grave beneath the yew trees, where the names of her parents were written in stone.

“I don’t know, Roger,” she said, shaking her head. The neon sign over the pub’s back door made purple glints in her hair. “I just can’t… I can’t think about it yet. But…” Words failed her, but she lifted a hand and touched his cheek, light as the brush of the evening wind. “I’ll think of you,” she whispered.

When you come right down to it, committing burglary with a key is not really a difficult proposition. The chance that either Mrs. Andrews or Dr. McEwan was going to come back and cop me in the act were vanishingly small. Even if they had, all I would have to do is say that I’d come back to look for a lost pocketbook, and found the door open. I was out of practice, but deception had at one point been second nature to me. Lying was like riding a bicycle, I thought; you don’t forget how.

So it wasn’t the act of getting hold of Gillian Edgars’s notebook that made my heart race and my breath sound loud in my own ears. It was the book itself.

As Master Raymond had told me in Paris, the power and the danger of magic lie in the people who believe it. From the glimpse I had had of the contents earlier, the actual information written in this cardboard notebook was an extraordinary mishmash of fact, speculation, and flat-out fantasy that could be of importance only to the writer. But I felt an almost physical revulsion at touching it. Knowing who had written it, I knew it for what it likely was: a grimoire, a magician’s book of secrets.

Still, if there existed any clue to Geillis Duncan’s whereabouts and intentions, it would be here. Suppressing a shudder at the touch of the slick cover, I tucked it under my coat, holding it in place with my elbow for the trip down the stairs.

Safely out on the street, still I kept the book under my elbow, the cover growing clammy with perspiration as I walked. I felt as though I were transporting a bomb, something which must be handled with scrupulous carefulness, in order to prevent an explosion.

I walked for some time, finally turning into the front garden of a small Italian restaurant with a terrace near the river. The night was chilly, but a small electric fire made the terrace tables warm enough for use; I chose one and ordered a glass of Chianti. I sipped at it for some time, the notebook lying on the paper placemat in front of me, in the concealing shadow of a basket of garlic bread.

It was late April. Only a few days until May Day – the Feast of Beltane. That was when I had made my own impromptu voyage into the past. I supposed it was possible that there was something about the date – or just the general time of year? It had been mid-April when I returned – that made that eerie passage possible. Or maybe not; maybe the time of year had nothing to do with it. I ordered another glass of wine.

It could be that only certain people had the ability to penetrate a barrier that was solid to everyone else – something in the genetic makeup? Who knew? Jamie had not been able to enter it, though I could. And Geillis Duncan obviously had – or would. Or wouldn’t, depending. I thought of young Roger Wakefield, and felt mildly queasy. I thought perhaps I had better have some food to go with the wine.

The visit to the Institute had convinced me that wherever Gillian/Geillis was, she had not yet made her own fateful passage. Anyone who had studied the legends of the Highlands would know that the Feast of Beltane was approaching; surely anyone planning such an expedition would undertake it then? But I had no idea where she might be, if she wasn’t at home; in hiding? Performing some peculiar rite of preparation, picked up from Fiona’s group of neo-Druids? The notebook might hold a clue, but God only knew.

God only also knew what my own motives were in this; I had thought I did, but was no longer sure. Had I involved Roger in the search for Geillis because it seemed the only way of convincing Brianna? And yet – even if we found her in time, my own purpose would be served only if Gillian succeeded in going back. And thus, in dying by fire.

When Geillis Duncan had been condemned as a witch, Jamie had said to me, “Dinna grieve for her, Sassenach; she’s a wicked woman.” And whether she had been wicked or mad, it had made little difference at the time. Should I not have left well enough alone, and left her to find her own fate? Still, I thought, she had once saved my life. In spite of what she was – would be – did I owe it to her to try to save her life? And thus perhaps doom Roger? What right did I have to meddle any further?

It isna a matter of right, Sassenach, I heard Jamie’s voice saying, with a tinge of impatience. It’s a question of duty. Of honor.

“Honor, is it?” I said aloud. “And what’s that?” The waiter with my plate of tortellini Portofino looked startled.

“Eh?” he said.

“Never mind,” I said, too distracted to care much what he thought of me. “Perhaps you’d better bring the rest of the bottle.”

I finished my meal surrounded by ghosts. Finally, fortified by food and wine, I pushed my empty plate aside, and opened Gillian Edgars’s gray notebook.

49 BLESSED ARE THOSE…

There’s no place darker than a Highland road in the middle of a moonless night. I could see the flash of passing headlights now and then, silhouetting Roger’s head and shoulders in a sudden flare of light. They were hunched forward, as though in defense against oncoming danger. Bree sat hunched as well, curled into the corner of the seat beside me. We were all three self-contained, insulated from each other, sealed in small, individual pockets of silence, inside the larger silence of the car and its rushing flight.

My fists curled in the pockets of my coat, idly scooping up coins and small bits of debris; shredded tissue, a pencil stub, a tiny rubber ball left on the floor of my office by a small patient. My thumb circled and identified the milled edge of an American quarter, the broad embossed face of an English penny, and the serrated edge of a key – the key to Gillian Edgars’s carrel, which I had neglected to return to the Institute.

I had tried again to call Greg Edgars, just before we left the old manse. The phone had rung again and again without answer.

I stared at the dark glass of the window beside me, seeing neither my own faint reflection nor the massy shapes of stone walls and scattered trees that rushed by in the night. Instead, I saw the row of books, arranged on the carrel’s single shelf in a line as neat as a row of apothecary’s jars. And below, the notebook filled with fine cursive script, laying out in strict order conclusion and delusion, mingling myth and science, drawing from learned men and legends, all of it based on the power of dreams. To any casual observer, it could be either a muddle of half-thought-out nonsense or, at best, the outline for a clever-silly novel. Only to me did it have the look of a careful, deliberate plan.

In a parody of the scientific method, the first section of the book was titled “Observations.” It contained disjointed references, tidy drawings, and carefully numbered tables. “The position of sun and moon on the Feast of Beltane” was one, with a list of more than two hundred paired figures laid out beneath. Similar tables existed for Hogmanay and Midsummer’s Day, and another for Samhainn, the Feast of All Hallows. The ancient feasts of fire and sun, and Beltane’s sun would rise tomorrow.

The central section of the notebook was titled “Speculations.” That was accurate, at least, I reflected wryly. One page had borne this entry, in neat, slanting script: “The Druids burnt sacrificial victims in wicker cages shaped like men, but individuals were killed by strangling, and the throat slit to drain the body of blood. Was it fire or blood that was the necessary element?” The coldblooded curiosity of the question brought Geillis Duncan’s face before me clearly – not the wide-eyed, straight-haired student whose portrait adorned the Institute, but the secretive, half-smiling fiscal’s wife, ten years older, versed in the uses of drugs and the body, who lured men to her purposes, and killed without passion to achieve her ends.

And the last few pages of the book, neatly labeled “Conclusions,” which had led us to this dark journey, on the eve of the Feast of Beltane. I curled my fingers around the key, wishing with all my heart that Greg Edgars had answered his phone.

Roger slowed, turning onto the bumpy dirt lane that led past the base of the hill called Craigh na Dun.

“I don’t see anything,” he said. He hadn’t spoken in so long that the statement came out gruffly, sounding belligerent.

“Well, of course not,” Brianna said impatiently. “You can’t see the stone circle from here.”

Roger grunted in reply, and slowed the car still more. Obviously, Brianna’s nerves were stretched, but so were his own. Only Claire seemed calm, unaffected by the growing air of tension in the car.

“She’s here,” Claire said suddenly. Roger slammed on the brakes so abruptly that both Claire and her daughter pitched forward, thumping into the back of the seat in front of them.

“Be careful, you idiot!” Brianna snapped furiously at Roger. She shoved a hand through her hair, pushing it off her face with a quick, nervous gesture. A swallow ran visibly down her throat as she bent to peer through the dark window.

“Where?” she said.

Claire nodded ahead to the right, keeping her hands shoved deep into her pockets.

“There’s a car parked, just behind that thicket.”

Roger licked his lips and reached for the door handle.

“It’s Edgars’s car. I’ll go and look; you stay here.”

Brianna flung her door open with a squeal of metal from the unoiled hinges. Her silent look of scorn made Roger flush red in the dim glow of the dome light overhead.

She was back almost before Roger had gotten out of the car himself.

“No one there,” she reported. She glanced up at the top of the hill. “Do you think…?”

Claire finished buttoning up her coat, and stepped into the darkness without answering her daughter’s question.

“The path is this way,” she said.

She led the way, perforce, and Roger, watching the pale form drift ghostlike up the hill ahead of him, was forcibly reminded of that earlier trip up a steep hill, to St. Kilda’s kirkyard. So was Brianna; she hesitated and he heard her mutter something angrily under her breath, but then her hand reached for his elbow, and gave it a hard squeeze – whether as encouragement or as a plea for support, he couldn’t tell. It encouraged him, in any case, and he patted the hand and tugged it through the curve of his arm. In spite of his general doubts, and the undeniable eeriness of the whole expedition, he felt a sense of excitement as they approached the crest of the hill.

It was a clear night, moonless and very dark, with no more than the tiny gleams of mica flecks in the starlight serving to distinguish the looming stones of the ancient circle from the night around them. The trio paused on the gently rounded top of the hill, huddling together like a misplaced flock of sheep. Roger’s own breath sounded unnaturally loud to himself.

“This,” said Brianna through her teeth, “is silly!”

“No, it isn’t,” said Roger. He felt suddenly breathless, as though a constricting band had squeezed the air from his chest. “There’s a light over there.”

It was barely there – no more than a flicker that promptly disappeared – but she saw it. He heard the sharp intake of her breath.

Now what? Roger wondered. Ought they to shout? Or would the noise of visitors frighten their quarry into precipitate action? And if so, what action might that be?

He saw Claire shake her head suddenly, as though trying to dismiss a buzzing insect. She took a step back, away from the nearest stone, and blundered into him.

He grabbed her by the arm, murmuring, “Steady, steady there,” as one might to a horse. Her face was a dim blur in the starlight, but he could feel the quiver that ran through her, like electricity through a wire. He stood frozen, holding her arm, stiff with indecision.

It was the sudden stink of petrol that jerked him into motion. He was vaguely conscious of Brianna, head flung up as the smell met her nostrils, turning toward the north end of the circle, and then he had dropped Claire’s arm, and was through the surrounding bushes and the stones themselves, striding toward the center of the ring, where a hunched black figure made an inkblot on the lighter darkness of the grass.

Claire’s voice came from behind him, strong and urgent, shattering the silence.

“Gillian!” she called.

There was a soft, sudden whoosh, and the night lit up in brilliance. Dazzled, Roger fell back a pace, stumbling and dropping to his knees.

For a moment, there was nothing but the sharp pain of light on his retinas, and the blaze of brightness that hid everything behind it. He heard a cry beside him, and felt Brianna’s hand on his shoulder. He blinked hard, eyes streaming, and sight began to return.

The slim figure stood between them and the fire, silhouetted like an hourglass. As his sight cleared, he realized that she was dressed in a long, full skirt and tight bodice – the clothes of another time. She had turned at the call, and he had a brief impression of wide eyes and fair, flying hair, lifted and tossed in the hot wind of the fire.

He found time, struggling to his feet, to wonder how she had dragged a log of that size up here. Then the smell of burned hair and crackled skin hit his face like a blow, and he remembered. Greg Edgars was not at home tonight. Not knowing whether blood or fire was the necessary element, she had chosen both.

He pushed past Brianna, focused only on the tall, slim girl before him, and the image of a face that mirrored his own. She saw him coming, turned and ran like the wind for the cleft stone at the end of the circle. She had a knapsack of rough canvas, slung over one shoulder; he heard her grunt as it swung heavily and struck her in the side.

She paused for an instant, hand outstretched to the rock, and looked back. He could have sworn that her eyes rested on him, met his own and held them, beyond the barrier of the fire’s blaze. He opened his mouth in a wordless shout. She whirled then, light as a dancing spark, and vanished in the cleft of the rock.

The fire, the body, the night itself, disappeared abruptly in a shriek of blinding noise. Roger found himself facedown in the grass, clutching at the earth in frantic search of a familiar sensation to which to anchor his sanity. The search was vain; none of his senses seemed to function – even the touch of the ground was insubstantial, amorphous as though he lay on quicksand, not granite.

Blinded by whiteness, deafened by the scream of rending stone, he groped, flailing wildly, out of touch with his own extremities, conscious only of an immense pull and the need to resist it.

There was no sense of time passing; it felt as though he had been struggling in emptiness forever, when he at last became aware of something outside himself. Hands that gripped his arms with desperate strength, and the smothering softness of breasts thrust against his face.

Hearing began gradually to return, and with it the sound of a voice calling his name. Calling him names, in fact, panting between phrases.

“You idiot! You… jerk! Wake up, Roger, you… ass!” Her voice was muffled, but the sense of it reached him clearly. With a superhuman effort, he reached up and got hold of her wrists. He rolled, feeling ponderous as the start of an avalanche, and found himself blinking stupidly at the tear-streaked face of Brianna Randall, eyes dark as caves in the dying light of the fire.

The smell of petrol and roasting flesh was overwhelming. He turned aside and gagged, retching heavily into the damp grass. He was too occupied even to be grateful that his sense of smell had returned.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and groped unsteadily for Brianna’s arm. She was huddled into herself, shaking.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. I didn’t think I could stop you. You were crawling straight to it. Oh, God.”

She didn’t resist as he pulled her to him, but neither did she respond to him. She merely went on shaking, the tears running from wide, empty eyes, repeating “Oh, God,” at intervals, like a broken record.

“Hush,” he said, patting her. “It will be all right. Hush.” The spinning sensation in his head was easing, though he still felt as though he had been split into several pieces and scattered violently among the points of the compass.

There was a faint, crackling pop from the darkening object on the ground, but beyond that and Brianna’s mechanical ejaculations, the stillness of the night was returning. He put his hands to his ears, as though to still the echoes of the killing noise.

“You heard it, too?” he asked. Brianna went on crying, but nodded her head, jerky as a puppet.

“Did your-” he began, still laboriously assembling his thoughts piecemeal, then snapped upright as one came to him full-formed.

“Your mother!” he exclaimed, gripping Brianna hard by both arms. “Claire! Where is she?”

Brianna’s mouth dropped open in shock, and she scrambled to her feet, wildly scanning the confines of the empty circle, where the man-high stones loomed stark, half-seen in the shadows of the dying fire.

“Mother!” she screamed. “Mother, where are you?”

“It’s all right,” Roger said, trying to sound authoritatively reassuring. “She’ll be all right now.”

In truth, he had no idea whether Claire Randall would ever be all right. She was alive, at least, and that was all he could vouch for.

They had found her, senseless in the grass near the edge of the circle, white as the rising moon above, with nothing but the slow, dark seep of blood from her abraded palms to testify that her heart still beat. Of the hellish journey down the path to the car, her dead weight slung across his shoulder, bumping awkwardly as stones rolled under his feet and twigs snatched at his clothing, he preferred to remember nothing.

The trip down the cursed hill had exhausted him; it was Brianna, the bones of her face stark with concentration, who had driven them back to the manse, hands clamped to the wheel like vises. Slumped in the seat beside her, Roger had seen in the rearview mirror the last faint glow of the hilltop behind them, where a small, luminous cloud floated like a puff of cannon smoke, mute evidence of battle past.

Brianna hovered now over the sofa where her mother lay, motionless as a tomb figure on a sarcophagus. With a shudder, Roger had avoided the hearth where the banked fire lay sleeping, and had instead pulled up the small electric fire with which the Reverend had warmed his feet on winter nights. Its bars glowed orange and hot, and it made a loud, friendly whirring noise that covered the silence in the study.

Roger sat on a low stool beside the sofa, feeling limp and starchless. With the last remnants of resolve, he reached toward the telephone table, his hand hovering a few inches above the instrument.

“Should we-” He had to stop to clear his throat. “Should we… call a doctor? The police?”

“No.” Brianna’s voice was intent, almost absentminded, as she bent over the still figure on the couch. “She’s coming around.”

The domed eyelids stirred, tightened briefly in the returning memory of pain, then relaxed and opened. Her eyes were clear and soft as honey. They drifted to and fro, skimmed over Brianna, standing tall and stiff at his side, and fixed on Roger’s face.

Claire’s lips were bloodless as the rest of her face; it took more than one try to get the words out, in a hoarse whisper.

“Did she… go back?”

Her fingers were twisted in the fabric of her skirt, and he saw the faint, dark smear of blood they left behind. His own hands clutched instinctively on his knees, palms tingling. She had held on, too, then, grappling among the grass and gravel for any small hold against the engulfment of the past. He closed his eyes against the memory of that pulling rupture, nodding.

“Yes,” he said. “She went.”

The clear eyes went at once to her daughter’s face, brows above them arched as though in question. But it was Brianna who asked.

“It was true, then?” she asked hesitantly. “Everything was true?”

Roger felt the small shudder that ran through the girl’s body, and without thinking about it, reached up to take her hand. He winced involuntarily as she squeezed it, and suddenly in memory heard one of the Reverend’s texts: “Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.” And those who must see, in order to believe? The effects of belief wrought by seeing trembled fearful at his side, terrified at what else must now be believed.

Even as the girl tightened, bracing herself to meet a truth she had already seen, the lines of Claire’s tensed body on the sofa relaxed. The pale lips curved in the shadow of a smile, and a look of profound peace smoothed the strained white face, and settled glowing in the golden eyes.

“It’s true,” she said. A tinge of color came back into the pallid cheeks. “Would your mother lie to you?” And she closed her eyes once more.

Roger reached down to switch off the electric fire. The night was cold, but he could stay no longer in the study, his temporary sanctuary. He still felt groggy, but he couldn’t delay longer. The decision had to be made.

It had been dawn before the police and the doctor had finished their work the night before, filling in their forms, taking statements and vital signs, doing their best to explain away the truth. “Blessed are they who have not seen,” he thought again, devoutly, “but who have believed.” Especially in this case.

Finally, they had left, with their forms and badges and cars with flashing lights, to oversee the removal of Greg Edgars’s body from the ring of stone, to issue a warrant for the arrest of his wife, who, having lured her husband to his death, had fled the scene. To put it mildly, Roger thought dazedly.

Exhausted in mind and body, Roger had left the Randalls to the care of the doctor and Fiona, and had gone to bed, not bothering to undress or turn back the quilts, merely collapsing into a welcome oblivion. Roused near sunset by gnawing hunger, he had stumbled downstairs to find his guests, similarly silent, if less disheveled, helping Fiona with the preparation of supper.

It had been a quiet meal. The atmosphere was not strained; it was as though communication ran unseen among the people at the table. Brianna sat close to her mother, touching her now and then in the passing of food, as though to reassure herself of her presence. She had glanced occasionally at Roger, shy small looks from beneath her lashes, but didn’t talk to him.

Claire said little, and ate almost nothing, but sat quite still, quiet and peaceful as a loch in the sun, her thoughts turned inward. After dinner, she had excused herself and gone to sit in the deep window seat at the end of the hall, pleading tiredness. Brianna had cast a quick glance at her mother, silhouetted in the last glow of the fading sun as she faced the window, and gone to help Fiona in the kitchen with the dishes. Roger had gone to the study, Fiona’s good meal heavy in his stomach, to think.

Two hours later, he was still thinking, to remarkably little effect. Books were stacked untidily on the desk and table, left half-open on the seats of chairs and the back of the sofa, and gaping holes in the crowded bookshelves testified to the effort of his haphazard research.

It had taken some time, but he had found it – the short passage he remembered from his earlier search on Claire Randall’s behalf. Those results had brought her comfort and peace; this wouldn’t – if he told her. And if he were right? But he must be; it accounted for that misplaced grave, so far from Culloden.

He rubbed a hand over his face, and felt the rasp of beard. Not surprising that he had forgotten to shave, what with everything. When he closed his eyes, he could still smell smoke and blood; see the blaze of fire on dark rock, and the strands of fair hair, flying just beyond the reach of his fingers. He shuddered at the memory, and felt a sudden surge of resentment. Claire had destroyed his own peace of mind; did he owe her any less? And Brianna – if she knew the truth now, should she not know all of it?

Claire was still there at the end of the hall; feet curled under her on the window seat, staring out at the blank black stretch of the night-filled glass.

“Claire?” His voice felt scratchy from disuse, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “Claire? I… have something to tell you.”

She turned and looked up at him, no more than the faintest curiosity visible on her features. She wore a look of calm, the look of one who has borne terror, despair, and mourning, and the desperate burden of survival – and has endured. Looking at her, he felt suddenly that he couldn’t do it.

But she had told the truth; he must do likewise.

“I found something.” He raised the book in a brief, futile gesture. “About… Jamie.” Speaking that name aloud seemed to brace him, as though the big Scot himself had been conjured by his calling, to stand solid and unmoving in the hallway, between his wife and Roger. Roger took a deep breath in preparation.

“What is it?”

“The last thing he meant to do. I think… I think he failed.”

Her face paled suddenly, and she glanced wide-eyed at the book.

“His men? But I thought you found-”

“I did,” Roger interrupted. “No, I’m fairly sure he succeeded in that. He got the men of Lallybroch out; he saved them from Culloden, and set them on the road home.”

“But then…”

“He meant to turn back – back to the battle – and I think he did that, too.” He was increasingly reluctant, but it had to be said. Finding no words of his own, he flipped the book open, and read aloud:

“After the final battle at Culloden, eighteen Jacobite officers, all wounded, took refuge in the old house and for two days, their wounds untended, lay in pain; then they were taken out to be shot. One of them, a Fraser of the Master of Lovat’s regiment, escaped the slaughter; the others were buried at the edge of the domestic park.”

“One man, a Fraser of the Master of Lovat’s regiment, escaped…” Roger repeated softly. He looked up from the stark page to see her eyes, wide and unseeing as a deer’s fixed in the headlights of an oncoming car.

“He meant to die on Culloden Field,” Roger whispered. “But he didn’t.”