Paying the Piper

PAYING

THE

PIPER

Sharyn McCrumb

Copyright © 1988 by Sharyn McCrumb

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-91970

ISBN 0-345-34518-5

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Ariel and Spencer

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the many experts who were generous with their time and knowledge in helping with the research for this book. Among the most helpful were Lyle Browning, archaeologist for the state of Virginia; Dr. Robert Carman of the Virginia Tech Department of Microbiology; the Cadies—Colin MacPhail and Robin Mitchell—of Edinburgh, who allowed me to use their tour of the Murder Walks of Edinburgh in the narrative; Erich Neumann, for help with information on bagpipes; Dr. Gavin Faulkner, for letting himself be dragged all over Scotland while I researched this book; and Dr. Zach Agioutantis, for his help with computers.

CHAPTER 1

CAMERON

I loaned her eight guidebooks of Scotland, and all the maps that I had, but she only looked at the castles and the pictures of the mountains, bare against the sky.

"Not like our mountains in Virginia,'' she said. "We have trees. But it's close enough. I guess my MacPherson ancestors must have felt almost at home when they settled there."

They call themselves Scots, these ninth-generation descendants of a MacDonald or a Stewart, and they've no idea what or where the family was in the ''old country," but they feel some sort of kinship with Scotland that is half history and half Robert Burns. It isn't the country I've come from, though I can't make them see that.

Elizabeth knows more history than I do, but she takes it all personally. Her eyes flash when she talks about the Jacobite Cause, but she mispronounces most of the battles— "Cul-tow-den," she says. I tell her how to say them correctly, but I can't tell her much about them. It was a long time

ago , and nobody minds anymore. I'm a marine biologist, not a historian.

She tells me I don't look Scottish, whatever that means. Lots of people have brown hair and brown eyes. What would she know about it? She's never been there. "I'm a Celt!" she says, the way someone else might say, "I'm a duchess," though I think it's nothing much to be proud of, the way they're carrying on in Belfast. She has the look of them, though, with that mass of black hair and the clear blue eyes of a bomb-throwing Irish saint. She looks at me sometimes, and she knows things I'd never dream of telling her.

She claims no interest in genealogy because she doesn't haunt courthouses or write away for shipping records, but the yearning is there; only she goes about it differently. ''Fash't,'' she'll say. "Do you have that word? Or clabbered, or red the room? Sometimes I’ve heard them, from my grandmother perhaps, and she'll smile as if I’ve given her something, and say, "From mine, too." She takes me to bluegrass conceits and watches to see if I recognize a song. Often I do, but I don't know if it's because the tune has Celtic roots or if it's because they play country music on Radio Forth. I grew up listening to Jim Reeves and Ernest Tubb as much as she did, but she won't realize that. She thinks that because you can see Edinburgh Castle from our upstairs window at home, somehow we're neighbors of Mary, Queen of Scots, instead of residents of the modern world.

I don't know what she's looking for in the phrases or the mountains or the faces in my photo album, and when she says she loves me, I wonder if she sees me at all.

* * *

I don't remember telling her that she could go along when I went back to Scotland to do my summer research. It's as if one moment I was recommending things she might like to see if she ever visited there, and the next, I was writing to Edinburgh University to see if there were any archaeological digs in the Highlands near the island where I'd be doing my seal research. Elizabeth is doing graduate work in forensic anthropology; she studies the bones of something to determine what it was like when it was alive; perhaps this is also her approach to Scottish culture.

There weren't many digs to choose from, and none that were related to her field of study, but one of the replies mentioned that Denny Allan was fielding the requests to join the expedition. A Denny Allan had been in my class at Fettes.

I explained to Elizabeth that the dig offered no pay, no university credit, and was completely out of her field. Still, she insisted that I write to Denny Allan and get her accepted as one of the crew. I pointed out that my own research was solitary, isolated, and time-consuming. Perhaps I could see her on weekends. That was all. She said that weekends were better than nothing. I said I hoped she knew what she was in for. The group would be camping out on the site: no modern conveniences, and an uninhabited island with no bridge or ferry service to the mainland and no town nearby. "Don't be fooled by the term summer, either,'' I warned her. ‘‘Scotland is cold by your standards, and you may not enjoy tent-dwelling in a rainy climate."

My lament fell on deaf ears, all of it. She is so enchanted at the thought of being "in the Highlands," as she puts it, that all practical considerations are dismissed out of hand. So I wrote to Denny (it turned out he was my school chum,

after all) and got her a place on the Marchand expedition, studying Celtic standing stones on an island near Skye. I am afraid that she will be disappointed, but she can't say she wasn't told. When I suggested that she might see more museums and castles if she signed up for a bus tour and came over with a group, she wept and accused me of calling her a "tourist," which she said she was not. The MacPherson ancestors, you see. Elizabeth thinks she is "going home."

Dear Cousin Geoffrey,

Yes, I am finally making a trip to Europe, even if I have to "rob graves" (as you so colorfully put it) to get to go.

As a matter of fact, the archaeological expedition I'll be working with is not concerned with unearthing bodies. We're studying megalithic monuments in the Scottish Highlands, in order to determine whether the Celts used Pythagorean geometry in constructing their stone circles. I'll admit that this is not particularly relevant to my graduate work in forensic anthropology (body snatching, to you), but it was the only archaeological dig we could find near where Cameron is doing his summer research. It should work out very nicely: he'll be studying seals, and I'll be measuring standing stones, and we'll get to see each other on weekends.

We're landing in London, so I should get to do some sightseeing on the way to Scotland. Thank you for your travel suggestions, but I don't think I care to visit the alley where Jack the Ripper left his victims, or the eighteenth-century sex club in High Wycombe. Just the usual touristy sites like Oxford and Stratford-on-Avon will suit me fine.

I doubt if I will have either the time or the money to visit you during your vacation in the Greek islands, where you will no doubt be viewed as Dionysus with MasterCard. And if you persist in this quest for the perfect tan, you are going to resemble the cover of a Bible by the time you are fifty!

I'll send you a postcard from Edinburgh (of Burke and Hare, if I can find one), but after that I'll be incommunicado. The dig is on a tiny island with no inhabitants and no mail service. Perhaps we can get together for the family Thanksgiving ordeal and inflict slide shows on one another. Until then—

As ever, Elizabeth

TRAVELER'S DIARY

You can't sleep on a DC-10. Not this one, anyway, with stewardesses rolling drinks carts up the aisles and making movie announcements and hawking duty-free goods. It's like trying to fly to Britain in a K-Mart. I'm hunched up in my window seat, trying to decide which half of my body I want circulation in and where the Band-Aid sized pillow would do the most good.

"I feel like a squirrel in a coconut!" I hissed to Cameron.

"No. Sorry," he replied. "They only serve those on Caribbean flights."

British humor. I'm still not accustomed to it, even after all these months of knowing Cameron. He seems to be able to take a phrase and turn it inside out, so that I have to think for a minute before I understand the point of the joke. During the year that he has been at the university as a visiting professor, he has been trying to absorb American culture; I, in turn, have spent the year learning him, as if he were a foreign language. Having ancestors who came from Scotland two centuries ago is certainly no help in figuring out a specimen from the present! For the longest time I thought that dear was a term of affection, until I began to notice the circumstances in which he used it. "That restaurant is fine, dear," when we had to wait an hour for a table. "Next street, I think, dear," when I hadn't noticed the sign that said one way.

Dear means idiot.

I still don't know what he would use as a term of affection. It would probably take implements of torture to find out. He said he liked an outfit I was wearing once. And he told me that I was the only woman he could really discuss his work with. Two compliments in a year-long relationship. Whoever said that the British are not demonstrative had a gift for understatement. The only real indication that he likes me is his assumption that I'll always be there, always be free to go out, always want to hear about his experiences at the biology lab. That, and the fact that he eats the potato chips off my plate in restaurants, a sure sign of intimacy. There's more difference between Brits and Americans than a few vocabulary changes—flat for apartment, and that sort of thing. I don't know how he thinks. Does he simply not show affection, or does he also not feel it?

I wonder what else I'm going to learn about British-American culture while I'm over here.

PEOPLE WHO PRIDE THEMSELVES ON THEIR BRITISH PREP SCHOOL MANNERS SHOULD NOT READ OTHER PEOPLE'S TRAVEL DIARIES WHILE THEY ARE TRYING TO WRITE!

Finally got to sleep (from sheer exhaustion) and woke up to sunlight—at a time my body knew was 1:00 a.m.

The cumulus clouds below us look like white outline embroidery seamed on a white quilt. What is that called? Candlewicking? My mother would know. I wonder when we'll see Ireland and if it will really look emerald-green down below. . . .

I must have dozed off. A change in the noise of the airplane engines woke me up, and I looked out the window to see a patchwork of golden fields and green meadows, with little stone houses set all among them. We are much nearer the ground now. Must be coming into Heathrow.

I stand corrected. Gatwick. We are coming into Gat-wick. And when I find out what silly git means, you're going to be in trouble, Doctor Dawson, sir.

Caveat, Britannia! Here we come.

"Hmmm," said Elizabeth MacPherson, "the glove compartment in this car is awfully small."

"Glove box." Cameron Dawson's correction was automatic. "Small?"

"Yes. I was thinking of crawling into it." She risked a glance out the windshield. "Everybody here is driving on the wrong side of the road, and they must be doing eighty at least.''

Cameron smiled. "High speeds are allowed on the Ml. You'll be used to it by the time we get to Scotland."

If we get to Scotland, Elizabeth thought, but she tried to look reassured. "It's quite amazing how quickly you got used to British driving again," she remarked. After that one little incident with the truck as we were leaving the car rental lot, she added to herself.

"I’ve only been away for a year," he reminded her. "Look at that car ahead of us. The red one. That's a Vauxhall VX 4/90. You can hear those things two streets away."

"That's nice," Elizabeth said absently. She was scanning the horizon for castles or picturesque villages with cobbled streets, but so far the drive on the motorway from Gatwick had been mostly trees and pastures, looking remarkably like the Virginia landscape they had just left.

"And that white one is a TR6. My cousin had one of those. On a cold day we used to have to stick a fan in the engine to get it started."

"Look!" cried Elizabeth, seeing a flash of purple on the roadside. "Heather!"

Cameron did not spare a glance out the window. "Rose-bay willow herb, I expect," he told her. "Heather doesn't grow on roadways in Hampshire, dear."

"It's very pretty, though."

"It's a weed. We had to slave to keep them out of the garden. My father says that during the war willow herb was the first plant to grow in the ruins of a bomb site."

"How lovely!" Elizabeth cried. "Like a condolence card from Nature."

Cameron refused to be drawn into paeans of nature. "That green car is a Moggie Thou—a Morris 1000," he informed her. "My first car was one of those."

Elizabeth sighed. "Cameron, is this your idea of a guided tour of Britain? Identifying all the cars we pass on the motorway?"

He looked puzzled. "Well, you didn't know them, did

you ? I haven't seen a Moggie Thou in the States. Thought you'd be interested."

"Why stop with cars?" asked Elizabeth sarcastically. "See those black-and-white cows in the field? Those are Holsteins."

Cameron smiled. "Actually, they're not. In this country they're called Friesians." Noting the dangerous look in her eyes, he added hastily, "All right! You're the tourist. Just what would you like to see?"

And for the next fifty-six miles she told him.

TRAVELER'S DIARY

Haworth doesn't seem to have changed much since the Brontes' time. Despite the fact that their home has become a shrine for half the English lit majors in the world, the village itself is still a tiny community off a side road in the Yorkshire moors. It wasn't even listed on our map.

"I know the Bronte sisters were notorious recluses," I told Cameron, "but an unlisted village is going a bit far!"

He finally located it on a Yorkshire map, in the vicinity of Bradford, and, as out of the way as it was, he agreed to take me there. I had packed a paperback copy of Wuthering Heights in my suitcase because I'd hoped we could visit Haworth. There is a modem part of the town down in the valley; you can see it from the road as you drive in, but the village as the sisters knew it is a collection of stone houses on the top of a hill, centering on the church and on the Black Bull Tavern, where Branwell got drunk and claimed to have written Emily's book.

I had a real wallow in Haworth, as Cameron so ungallantly phrased it. It was past eight in the evening when we got there (but the sky was as light as afternoon), so the church and the shops were closed, but I insisted on spending an hour in the churchyard, looking for the Bronte graves. (That was a waste of time. When we went into the church the next morning, we discovered the plaque that said the family was buried in a crypt inside the church. There are no graves, per se. So much for a private word with Emily.) Then, as the sun was setting, I hauled Cameron off to the moors, sat on a hill in the white heather, and read my favorite passages from Wuthering Heights:

". . .1 was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights, where I woke sobbing for joy ."

Cameron was looking somewhat restive, since his knowledge of British literature equals my knowledge of manatee breeding. I ignored the glazed look in his eyes and kept reading. It was so beautiful, to be out on the actual moor on which Emily used to wander, in the gathering twilight . . . no one within miles of us. It could have done with a few trees, but it was still lovely. Miles and miles of dark green hills outlined in stone walls, and nothing of the twentieth century in sight.

In an effort to capture Cameron's flagging attention (which was probably focused on car repair), I began to explain the plot of the novel, and that the passage I was reading explained Catherine's love for Heathcliff. Very romantic, I thought, hoping that he'd come and sit by me. No such luck.

". . .He does not know what being in love is?" "I see no reason that he should not know, as well as you," I returned; "and if you are his choice, he'll be the most unfortunate creature that ever was born! As soon as you become Mrs. Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all! Have you considered how you'll bear the separation, and how he'll bear to be quite deserted in the world? Because, Miss Catherine—" "He quite deserted! We separated!" she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. "Who is to separate us, pray? They'll meet the fate of Milo ..."

My voice trailed off, and I wouldn't look at Cameron. As many times as I'd read Wuthering Heights, I hadn't seen that. Of course, it wouldn't have registered before. I had been trying not to think about my own Milo and all the awkwardness that had occurred when I came back from the Highland Games, having met Cameron, and ended the "understanding" we'd had for a couple of years.

Milo had taken it well. "I'm a forensic anthropologist," he kept saying. "I don't understand live people." But I knew he was hurt, and the guilt was like a pebble in my shoe. I couldn't quite shake it. I really did feel caught between Linton and Heathcliff—only I wasn't sure which was which.

Cameron must have seen me blush and guessed what word had thrown me, but British reserve does not allow him to discuss such matters. "Very nice book," he observed politely. "Now, which one of the Bronte sisters was it who wrote Pride and Prejudice?"

By the time I stopped laughing, the mood had passed and so had the light, so we went down the hill and followed the path back to the village for dinner at the Black Bull Tavern, where Branwell Bronte drank himself to death—perhaps from a broken heart.

CHAPTER

2

The drive from London to Edinburgh had been a clash of tourism, compounded of Elizabeth's romantic Britain and Cameron's more prosaic stopping points. Oxford University and the Donnington Park car museum; the Brontes' village and Harry Ramsden's famous fish restaurant; the Border Abbeys and the Dewsbury market (cheap tools, tape recorders, and electronics parts). They tolerated each other's obsessions with affectionate good humor, but with very little real interest.

They reached Edinburgh on a rainy Friday evening—in time for tea, a salmon salad prepared by Cameron's mother in honor of the American visitor who might turn out to be someone "significant." Elizabeth smiled prettily and tried not to feel like Wallis Simpson.

Cameron's younger brother Ian had come home from the University of Strathclyde for the weekend, and he spent a good bit of time trying to convince Elizabeth to attend the

Commonwealth Games. The fact that the Queen might be there was an alluring prospect, but in the end Elizabeth decided that even flesh-and-blood royalty could not tempt her into sitting through a "special Olympics for British subjects," as she put it.

"Elizabeth doesn't like anything that hasn't been dead a hundred years," Cameron told his brother.

"Well, that explains her attraction to you." Ian smirked.

During the ensuing pillow fight, Elizabeth helped Margaret Dawson with the washing up.

The next morning was cloudy, but not actually raining—a typical British summer day, Elizabeth had learned. Cameron had promised her a full day's tour of the city, but he explained that he had a few errands to attend to first, and Elizabeth had gamely agreed to accompany him.

"We'll get to the castle, I promise you. I shouldn't be much longer here. What time is your meeting this afternoon?"

"Three o'clock," said Elizabeth, consulting her watch. "I don't suppose we'll have time for the museum as well?"

No reply was forthcoming. By that time the salesman had unearthed another catalogue, and he and Cameron were rooting through it happily, talking about master cylinders and oil seals.

Oil seals. That was what threw her. When Cameron, the marine biologist, had announced that he wanted to consult Halfords about oil seals, before they went sightseeing, she had assumed it had to do with his research, and naturally she had agreed. Halfords, she thought, must be some sort of aquarium or research station on the Firth of Forth, and she looked forward to watching the seals cavorting about in the water, or, failing that, she could at least view the other exhibits while Cameron made his inquiries.

She spent the first few minutes of the drive enjoying the scenery and studying the houses and gardens, so that they were several miles along before she brought up the subject of the trip. "Is this a new research project, then?"

"What?" said Cameron.

"This Halfords trip. Are you studying the effects of North Sea oil drilling on the seals?"

Cameron had found that so amusing that he had repeated it to the clerk, the cashier, and to two other customers in Halfords—which turned out to be an auto-parts store. After his performance on the Ml, she should have known; but somehow she hadn't thought of British men as being car-crazed. Horses, perhaps. That would have fit in with her God-is-an-Englishman view of the species, but somehow an obsession with batteries and spark plugs lacked the aura of romance that she associated with tweeds and spaniels.

She didn't complain, though. She sat down at the catalogue table in the corner and wrote postcards while Cameron blethered on about his car troubles. Perhaps she had romanticized him a bit, she thought. "Built him a soul," as Dorothy Parker had phrased it. But after all, it did seem to fit rather nicely. And even carburetors had a certain charm when they were discussed in a cultured Scottish accent.

Elizabeth smiled sweetly at Halfords in general. Everything was romantic in Britain.

CHAPTER

3

The National Museum of Antiquities, on Edinburgh's Queen Street, across from Scotland's National Portrait Gallery, was to be the setting for the first meeting of the archaeologists working on the Banrigh project. The museum's principal exhibit at the moment was "I Am Come Home," a tribute to Charles Edward Stuart that featured some of the Bonnie Prince's own personal possessions, including his silver mess kit for "roughing it.'' With the possible exception of the American members of the expedition, everyone would give that room a miss in favor of the more ancient relics of Scotland.

Derek Marchand had arrived early for the dig's organizational meeting because he believed in being punctual. After he had checked out the meeting room upstairs, he had gone back to the first floor of the museum to have a look around while he organized his thoughts.

The St. Ninian's Isle treasure was popular, as usual. Crowds of people were milling about the glass cases looking at the silver bowls and penannular Pictish brooches that had been found on Shetland in the 1950s. A professor from Aberdeen University had been excavating on the small island to locate and plan the medieval church that had once stood there. A schoolboy volunteer on the dig had turned over a broken stone in what had been the nave of the church and had found the larchwood box containing treasure: twenty-eight decorated silver objects—and the jawbone of a porpoise. No doubt the Picts had hidden their valuables beneath the church floor during a Viking raid and had never reclaimed the box.

Marchand smiled. This was most people's idea of archaeology: finding heavily carved silver jewelry stashed away in the earth. He had been a schoolboy himself when Howard Carter found even gaudier treasure in the grave of Tutankhamen in Egypt. Perhaps that story had awakened his own passion for archaeology. If so, he had long outgrown such romantic notions. Now, as a man of seventy, choosing archaeology as the avocation of his retirement, he preferred knowledge to trinkets. A few handfuls of wood ash or a trowel of bone fragments could offer more information than a trunkful of silver-gilt brooches. He was no longer interested in treasure troves.

Marchand bent over a case containing stone axes and flint microliths. The tools of ancient Britain still fascinated him, and made him feel a kinship with those early engineers, perhaps more so than with their modern counterparts. Having served with the Royal Corps of Engineers in World War II, Marchand knew what it meant to accommodate your structures to nature, just as the old ones did. These days young civil engineers had the money and the technology to change the environment to suit their needs: level the mountain, divert the river. They hadn't done it that way in Greece in 1943. The war had deprived them or the luxury or time and technology. They d had three days to build a bridge, and they had to put it where nature would permit. Yes, he understood the Celts: using makeshift tools to negotiate a truce with the elements. He admired them for it.

He rather thought he might resemble one of tie ancient Celts. He was just over five feet seven but still fit, and with a mane of silvery hair, a bit thin on top. He didn't suppose many of them had lived as long as he had; seventy was nearly double the life expectancy in prehistoric Britain. Still, he felt it would have been a good time to live. He could think of few things in the twentieth century that he would miss. Certainly not telephones, automobiles, or television sets. He was pleased that the dig site would have none of those modern inconveniences. Their absence would make him feel closer to the ancient builders; perhaps it would bring them luck.

Because the Scottish Museum had been closer to Buckingham Terrace than he'd expected, Owen Gilchrist was twenty minutes early for the organizational meeting of the Banrigh dig. If he hadn't been carrying camera equipment, he would have walked instead of taking a cab, but he had wanted to photograph the house. Owen wished he'd had the nerve to go up and knock on the door, but the place was obviously a private home, and perhaps its occupants didn't even know that a murder had been committed mere fifty years" ago. Owen knew—because his hobby was murder.

In 1926 the sandstone row house had been home to John Donald Merrett, an Edinburgh University student who had shot and killed his mother—one of the few matricides ever recorded in Scotland. The facade of the house seemed unchanged from the photographs Owen had seen in his crime books. He wondered about the interior, but he was too shy to seek admittance.

The infamous Merrett house was not listed in any of the cheery paperback guidebooks Owen had purchased back in Ohio to prepare for his summer in Scotland; all of them recommended the conventional fare for visitor: the castle, the Royal Mile, and the art gallery. Owen's taste in tourism was quite different, but fortunately he was well versed in his specialty and needed no assistance other than the city maps provided by less sanguine guidebook writers.

Owen had spent the three days before the start of the dig in an absolute orgy of crime—all vicariously experienced, that is. He had paid his respects to the skeleton of Burke the Body Snatcher, on display at the Royal College of Surgeons, and on a side trip to Sir Walter Scott's home at Abbotsford he insisted upon seeing the bit of Burke's tanned flesh that Scott supposedly kept in a stamp box. (The grandmotherly guide had disavowed all knowledge of such a barbarity in strangled tones suggesting that she wouldn't mind having Owen similarly displayed with a placard reading: touristus americanus.)

He had had lunch in Deacon Brodie's Tavern, a pub named after the original model for Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and he had toured Edinburgh's famous old prison, the Tollbooth, happily reminiscing about the Porteous Riot and the Heart of Midlothian executions.

Owen Gilchrist knew that his hobby was a bit unusual, but he did not consider himself at all strange. Scores of people his age and younger went to "dead teenager" movies, sitting through an evening of axe murders or chainsaw massacres in living color, and no one seemed to worry about their mental health. He, by contrast, simply combined the adolescent fascination with gore with an interest in history; to him the stories were the more exciting for being true.

Owen Gilchrist didn't encounter much excitement in the ordinary course of his life. Owen, who had been accused of being born middle-aged, was having a sedate time at college, with none of the wild parties and romantic escapades experienced by college students in films. He was a pudgy, bespectacled teddy bear to whom sex was still a branch of philosophy, and his major in anthropology suggested an interest in people that was as impersonal in his private life as it was in his course work. His acquaintances considered him timid and a trifle immature, and so he was; but he could be quite merciless when tracking a serial killer through the pages of a true-crime biography. He had studied all the major murderers of the twentieth century, and he would go on about "Ted" or "Ian and Myra" as if they were his dearest friends. Perhaps they were. Certainly they provided him with more entertainment and less hassle than those he met in his everyday existence. Sometimes he imagined the jock types in his dorm being dismembered by a crazed psychopath, or an unattainable sorority member bound, gagged, and terrified in a lantern-lit cellar, awaiting the pleasure of Owen-the-Ripper. But he wouldn't actually do it "in real life"; dear me, no. It was a harmless form of fantasy; Owen was always unfailingly polite to his college classmates. He must have lost a dozen pens a month because he was too shy to ask for the return of them. His fantasies, though, were his own business.

He hoped that the archaeological dig would provide a bit of ghoulish excitement. Surely they would find a few skeletons in the course of the excavation. Owen had read about the bog people, a prehistoric Norse tribe that had left ritually throttled sacrifices in tannin bogs, so perfectly preserved by the natural acids that, twenty centuries later, they were mistaken for recent murder victims. If there were any bogs on the isle of Banrigh, Owen would certainly search them. If not, perhaps the standing stones would yield a few bony offerings to the sun god; he heard of similar finds at Stonehenge in the south.

As inoffensive as Owen was, he had recently adopted one antisocial habit that he planned to perfect during the course of the dig. He hoped no one would object, but he vowed to make no concessions on this point to his fellow diggers. Owen had every intention of continuing his self-taught bagpipe lessons.

Gitte Dankert looked at her watch for the third time in as many minutes. "Please finish your salad, Alasdair," she urged. "You are going to make us late for the meeting."

Her companion, interrupted in a tale about his anatomy lecturer, scowled and set down his fork. "Don't be so bloody punctual! I suppose the trains run on time in Denmark?"

"We always try to arrive on schedule for a meeting," Gitte said seriously.

"Don't worry about it. I'm the medical man for the expedition, so I needn't follow all the petty little rules set down for the ditchdiggers."

"But, Alasdair, I'm one of those ditchdiggers," she said softly.

"Nonsense! You're with me. Don't take offense, love." He yanked one strand of her mousy fringe, and then he went back to his salad, spearing forkfuls of bean sprouts and nuts in the same leisurely fashion as before.

Gitte sighed, resigning herself to being late for the meeting. If she continued to press the point, they would only be that much later. She knew these moods of Alasdair's. He could be quite charming when he wanted, but his opinion of himself was very high. Her fiat-mates joked that he acted as if M.D. stood for medical deity, and they warned her that if he was this difficult as a third-year student, he would only become worse as he came closer to qualifying.

Gitte suspected that they were right, but she didn't seem to be able to help herself. When Alasdair was rude to everyone else but nice to her, she felt very special and privileged, and when he was brusque with her, it made her try all the harder to win his approval. She supposed she loved him—the fact that he was not particularly good-looking or passionate made her feel virtuous in her affection. Surely it could not be mere animal magnetism if he were so drab and serious; surely only true love would kindle with so little fuel. She wondered at times how he felt about her. She was not very pretty, with her dull brown hair and lashless green eyes, but she was small and thin and twenty-two, which counted for beauty in the everyday world. There was always an offer or two to buy her a shandy at the pub, and Alasdair seemed gratified by that, as if being her escort allowed him pride of ownership. But she wondered if that attractiveness counted enough—for a serious relationship, that is. "Buy British" seemed to apply to more than manufactured goods; often she felt that being a Dane made her somehow "not quite the article,'' a favorite expression of Alasdair's. Perhaps it explained the drink offers as well. Danes seemed to have earned a reputation for sexual liberation that Gitte did not live up to at all, but fortunately Alasdair did not seem to mind her shyness. He was a bit of a prude himself.

She had never met his family. He said he was estranged from them, but she wondered if that could be an excuse. Still, she knew that he wasn't seeing anyone else, and she supposed that being taken for granted could be interpreted as a kind of devotion.

British men were quite undemonstrative, and she thought that perhaps the language barrier could keep her from understanding the nuances of their relationship. It is one thing to be able to understand university courses taught in English, but quite another to pick up the shades of meaning in private life. Of course, Alasdair did not speak Danish, except for the simplest and most anglicized words, like farvel, for goodbye. He assumed that she would accommodate him—at great advantage to herself, he thought—by learning perfect English.

Sometimes Gitte bristled at her lover's condescending attitude toward her heritage, but mostly she didn't. If he thought himself such an altogether superior person, perhaps it was true, and in that case she was very lucky to have him.

She was pleased that he had asked her to go along on the archaeological dig. He would have gone without her, of course, and he hadn't consulted her about it beforehand, but at least he had permitted her to accompany him. She told herself that Alasdair was a lonely and troubled person, and that if only she loved him enough, all would be well.

Tom Leath rather liked Edinburgh, It was less crowded and noisy than his usual haunts in a suburb of London. He liked the look of the castle perched there over everything, never letting you forget for a moment that you were treading on history at every turn. He thought he might like to get assigned to a dig there sometime, perhaps more excavations of the Roman fort at Cramond. It was a yacht basin now, quite a picturesque village of whitewashed stone houses and a bit of nark overlooking the River Almond and the Firth of Forth. Trust the Romans to take the best property around.

Of course, the night life in Edinburgh was nil—not only compared to London; probably compared to downtown Brighton. What did you bloody do in Edinburgh after dark if you were under forty and on your own?

It would be good practice for the Isle of Banrigh, though. Dead deserted, that was, and not even any electricity for the telly. He'd bought a few bottles of moderately priced Scotch to take over in his rucksack; perhaps some of the other diggers would be sociable types, and they could have a camp fire after work and pass round the old bottle. He expected it to be cold and drizzling on Banrigh, summer or not; the Scottish islands were all the same, climates like basements. Leath thought, not for the first time, that being a specialist in Celtic culture could have its drawbacks. Had he specialized in Greek archaeology, he could be lounging on Delos right now, acquiring a healthy tan along with the potsherds.

Marchand should be all right as head of the expedition. He was ex-army. He'd be all right in terms of leniency, that is, toward the odd bit of drinking or high spirits. Leath wasn't so sure about his being all right in terms of archaeology, though. After all, the man was an engineer, and he wasn't much of an expert on Celtic culture in general—just that one bee in his bonnet about the standing stones.

Leath thought of Heinrich Schliemann, who troweled through half a dozen cities and threw the remains of Troy on the scrap heap because he thought that it should be a few meters deeper in the earth. Archaeology had tried to become more of a science since those days, but there were still enough contract archaeologists around to create problems. He'd heard of one extraordinary fellow in Wyoming in the United States who used the local Indian ruins to provide a sort of dude ranch for scholarly minded tourists. He had built a dormitory and conference center, and he charged people hefty sums to go and paw about in the foothills, pretending to be archaeologists. Probably made a fortune; Learn hoped there hadn't been anything there for him to destroy. If the world was lucky, the bugger was a complete crook who seeded the earth with newly made arrowheads before each new wave of diggers.

Leath didn't suppose that Marchand was as complete an idiot as that. After all, he had managed to get Aberdeen University to sponsor him, and they had instructed him to appoint a Celtic culture person as advisor to the expedition. That was Leath. At twenty-nine, he had a degree in archaeology from Manchester and a dozen years' experience on excavations throughout England, Wales, and Brittany. The Banrigh dig would be his first in Scotland, but he didn't expect to see too many differences in the Celtic remains. They probably wouldn't be finding much, anyway, since all the old bampot wanted to do was measure stone circles and to prove his engineering theory. Leath didn't think Marchand could do much damage under those circumstances; in feet, he intended to make damn sure he didn't.

Elizabeth MacPherson always visited a museum gift shop before she went round to see the exhibits. That way she didn't have to wonder about what gifts and postcards there would be to choose from, and there was no danger of losing track of time in an interesting exhibit and not having the opportunity to browse in the gift shop before it closed.

Since only twenty minutes remained before the archaeological meeting, Elizabeth decided to spend it selecting postcards—while Cameron talked to Denny Allan, who had also come for the meeting. Or rather, she gave a convincing imitation of someone engrossed in choosing postcards; actually she was maintaining a careful surveillance of the meeting between Cameron and his old friend. They made an unlikely pair, she thought. Cameron was tall and serious and rather patrician-looking, and Denny could have modeled for a leprechaun poster. Watching them converse reminded her of a terrier racing and barking around a Great Dane. She had wondered a bit what Cameron would say about her, but he didn't seem to have much chance of getting a word in edgewise.

Denny finally paused for breath after a long account of his troubles with the city street improvement department. He then asked, "So, what's it like in the States, Cameron?"

"Well, they don't all drive like the Dukes of Hazzard," Cameron replied. "Some of the back roads are pretty primitive, though. I nearly got a rock through my windshield last month."

"Windshield? Listen to yourself talking like them already! I suppose you say gas now, instead of petrol?

"So would you if you wanted anybody to understand you!" Cameron retorted. He was already fed up with remarks about his accent, or the loss thereof. The unkindest cut of all had come in Bradford when a woman who had been chatting with Elizabeth asked where they were headed. When Cameron told her Edinburgh, she had assured him he'd love the city, and began to suggest places for him to visit. Cameron assumed his frostiest air of dignity and snapped, "I was borrn there!" He had been further annoyed when Elizabeth suggested that he should have heeded the woman's suggestions, because, in fact, he never had visited the Tollbooth, the Museum of Childhood, or John Knox's house.

Deciding to change the subject before he lost his temper, Cameron thanked Denny for choosing Elizabeth to join the expedition.

Denny grinned. "No problem! I'd have done it on vulgar curiosity alone. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got your card. Imagine stuffy old Dawson the seal-man wanting his lady friend over for the summer!"

Cameron didn't like the way this conversation was going, either. He noticed that Elizabeth had been examining the same four postcards for a considerable amount of time without turning the rack. "Yes, well, I'm sure she'll be an asset to the dig. She's quite knowledgeable about bones." Seeing the snappy retort forming on Denny's lips, he added hastily, "Dead people, I mean. Identifying remains. You know—skulls!"

"Yes, but we aren't supposed to find any, Cameron. We're just measuring monoliths. Still, there's always the off chance, and she'd be a useful person to have around. Wish I could think of a way to bring one of my birds along. I take it we'll be seeing a lot of you these next few weeks as well?"

Cameron shrugged. "A fair amount. I'll be monitoring a seal herd from Canna, and I'll have a skiff. I expect I'll come over to see you once a week if the weather holds.''

"Well, don't expect too much privacy. It's a small island." Still grinning, Denny motioned for Elizabeth to join them. "I hear you're an anthropology student," he remarked. "Do you know what a seal-man is?"

Elizabeth smiled. "A selkie? Only from the Joan Baez recording. 'I am a man upon the land; I am a selkie on the sea.'

They are magic seal-people who take mortal form on dry land to—umm—to mate with human maidens."

"Right. On the islands we'll be going to, they called them the Raoine. The legends are very similar. Just remember that unless you take away their skin, they always go back to their own kind eventually.''

Elizabeth nodded. "I know," she said, looking at Cameron. "It's never quite safe to love a seal-man."

CHAPTER

4

CAMERON

Elizabeth is upstairs in her archaeology meeting, and I am left to wander about in the museum until she is finished. I feel as though I have been wandering about in a museum all these past ten days. Elizabeth seems to see Britain the way the rest of us see the stars: not as they are now, but as they were centuries ago when their light first shone out into space. When we look up into the sky, we see old light; and when she looks out the windscreen of our rental car, she sees the high road to Caledonia, I think. Elizabeth slept through the factories and the concrete mushroom cooling towers of the Midlands, to wake up in a cobblestoned village in Yorkshire, only a century too late for tea at the vicarage.

She picked white heather in the twilight on Haworth Moor and quoted lines on star-crossed lovers from Wuthering Heights: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ..." But it seemed to me that another line on the page suited us more: ". . .as different as a moonbeam from

lightning , or frost from fire." When she says she loves me, I can almost guess what she means. It isn't the steady cottage-and-children, tea-in-front-of-the-telly sort of affection she's after, but some sort of mythic ritual, fueled by the differences between us: accent and culture. When I speak, she hears not only my words, but also the sounds of Byron and Walter Scott and, for ail I know, the Bonnie Prince himself, and I wonder just which of us it is that she loves, and which myth she will finally choose for us.

The enchantment followed us into the Eildon Hills of the Borders. She recognized the name from her folklore studies: it was home to Thomas the Rhymer. About eight centuries ago, as near as I could make out. Elizabeth told me the legend, looking out across the sweep of low green hills unchanged by the centuries. She never looked at the lorries rumbling past us up the motorway.

Thomas of Ercildoune, she said (mispronouncing it), was an ordinary Scottish villager sitting in the forest one day, when the Queen of Elfland rode up on her white horse and carried him off to the fairy kingdom. A mysterious foreign woman and an ordinary Scot ... I could see where this was going . . . they rode through swirling mists and crossed a stream filled with all the blood that is shed on earth, and at last in Elfland she gave him an apple that granted him the gift of prophecy. He left her after seven years to return to his home in Ercildoune, but years later, while Thomas was attending a village feast, two white deer appeared at the edge of the forest, and he announced that they had come for him. Off he went and was never seen again. Back to the Queen of Elfland—to stay in her country forever after.

She stole a glance at me when she finished the story. "Does his village still exist?" she asked. "Ercildoune?"

"Earlston," I corrected her. "Oh, yes. The A68 goes right through it."

Derek Marchand hunched over the conference table and inspected his troops. "Only six?" he said, with a puzzled glance at Denny Allan.

"Yes, well, there is one more," Denny told him. "Callum Farming will be along on the dig, but he couldn't make the meeting. Prior appointment of some sort. He's a good fellow, though. Archaeology student from Inverness."

Marchand looked as if he wanted to comment further on this early dereliction of duty, but he merely nodded. "Right, then, I'll begin. As you must know by now, I am Derek Marchand, and I'll be heading up this investigation, but the dig is actually financed by a grant from Aberdeen University. That is who will be paying your princely salaries."

Sour smiles from the diggers. Archaeology pays less than lemonade stands.

"I shall outline the purpose to you first, and then we'll get acquainted and go into the logistics of everything."

Elizabeth wrote down logistics on her notepad, changing the last s to a drawing of a seal.

"As you know, chambered tombs and long cairns are a part of Celtic culture found in much of western Europe, but only in Britain do we find the circular earthworks called henge monuments; that is, a deep ditch, a concentric outer bank, and entrance causeways through the ditch and bank." Marchand held up a diagram of a site resembling Stonehenge.

"We are just beginning to examine this sort of monument. The Banrigh site, where we shall be working, is a great stone circle. You may think of it as a prehistoric Westminster Abbey, if you like. Actually we know very little about them: how they were built, or why."

Tom Leath smiled at this. You know less about them than that, he thought. If we learn anything about the culture, it will be in spite of you.

"Our purpose in the present phase of the dig is to attempt to discover the unit of measurement used by these ancient engineers. We will mark off the circle and measure it to see whether—as Alexander Thom has claimed—a megalithic yard was used to determine distances within the stone circle."

"What about the island?" asked Alasdair McEwan in a bored voice.

"Banrigh is a rather remote little island in the Hebrides. There were a few farms and a small village mere until early in this century, but the inhabitants are long since gone."

Elizabeth looked up from her notes. "We won't be staying in tents, will we?"

Marchand smiled. "I can tell by that American accent of yours that you're not accustomed to a Scottish summer," he said playfully.

Elizabeth shivered. "Has there ever been one?"

Denny laughed. "Actually, there is some sort of structure on Banrigh, isn't there?"

Marchand nodded. "During the war, the island was used as a weather station for the North Atlantic fleets, and an army Nissen hut used by those chaps is still standing. It's a bit rusty, and the electricity's long gone, but it will serve to keep the rain off our backs.''

Owen Gilchrist frowned. 'The island is deserted/

"Another American accent," Marchand remarked. "Young man, we will be alone on Banrigh, but we will hardly be castaways. We will have a radio with us for emergency communications, and a marine biologist who will be working on an island several miles away has kindly offered to come in once a week and to bring in supplies."

Elizabeth wondered if she were blushing at this oblique reference to Cameron.

Owen did not look reassured. "But suppose one of us gets hurt?"

"That, I think, will be my concern," said Alasdair with a condescending smile. "Archaeology is only my hobby. I'm a medical student at Edinburgh University."

"And very kind of you to come along and look after us," said Marchand heartily.

Tom Leath winced. He hoped the self-appointed doctor wouldn't turn out to be a prima donna. The expedition was too small to carry any dead weight in the crew.

"Well, then, that seems settled. Is there anything else to be said before I get on to the technical part of our briefing?"

Owen Gilchrist beamed across the table at his newfound comrades. "Would anyone like to have dinner with a vampire?"

"You should have seen their faces!" Elizabeth grinned. "They must have thought he was completely crazy!"

"Don't be too sure he isn't," Denny added. "But it does sound like a lovely evening, Cameron. Why don't we all go?"

With counterpoint interjections Denny and Elizabeth explained Owen s invitation to experience one of Edinburgh s most unusual tourist attractions. First came dinner at nine at The Witchery, an elegant restaurant in an old building on the Royal Mile, just a few yards from the entrance to Edinburgh Castle. Owen had been so sure of everyone's enthusiasm that he had booked two tables.

"And he would be awfully hurt if he had to cancel both of them," Elizabeth said.

Cameron looked suspicious. "Who else is going?"

Denny grinned. "Marchand and his assistant both pleaded prior engagements. It's probably true."

"And I think the Danish girl wanted to come, but her doctor-boyfriend is a prig." Elizabeth sniffed. "He said he had some work to do before he could leave for the dig, and that the least Gitte could do for him would be to get his laundry ready and pack for him."

"His bedside manner seems less than promising," Denny agreed.

"I take it that we have already agreed to go in order to spare young Owen's feelings?" Cameron asked wearily.

"Not at all," said Elizabeth. "We have agreed to go because I wouldn't miss it for the world!"

"Dinner, she means," Cameron remarked to Denny.

Elizabeth put out her tongue at him. "That wasn't what I was talking about. I want to see the vampire!"

"Steady on!" said Cameron. "What vampire?"

"It's a deceased highwayman, actually," Denny said. "Two young businessmen have come up with a splendid innovation in guided tours. They're leading the tourists all around the so-called Murder Walks of Edinburgh in an after-dark excursion."

"Just the evening for a forensic anthropologist, I suppose?" Cameron asked. "Sort of a busman's holiday, Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth nodded. "Not to mention all the favors you owe me for the auto-parts stores I've suffered through."

"And this is how you want to spend your last evening in civilization? Trailing around after a vampire? You're sure?"

Elizabeth grinned. '' A-positive!''

CHAPTER

5

Elizabeth loved The Witchery. As soon as she entered the candlelit restaurant, with its white stone walls and its Halloween decor, she succumbed to an attack of folklore expertise and proceeded to wander around the room examining all the wall decorations and occult graffiti and explaining their significance to Cameron, Denny, and Owen.

"The Pentagram, of course, is a symbol of protection. One is supposed to stand inside it when—"

Denny grinned. "Let's order dinner—and hope she doesn't talk with her mouth full."

"Anthropology major," Cameron said apologetically to the waitress, as he led Elizabeth away from the stuffed goat's head and back to their table. "What would you like for dinner, dear? Eye of newt? Toe of frog?"

"This is a neat place!" Owen exclaimed. "I don't know much about medieval Scotland, though. Except for Sawney Bean."

Cameron and Denny exchanged blank looks.

"You've never heard of Sawney Bean?" Owen asked incredulously. "But you're from Scotland!"

Cameron shrugged. "He didn't write seal monographs."

"No, he was a cannibal."

"And is he coming to dinner tonight as well?" Denny asked politely.

While the waitress took their orders for venison and steak with peppercorns, Owen Gilchrist was silent, his sense of dignity struggling with his desire to show off. The latter won.

Finally, staring into the candle flame for inspiration, he began in a ghost-story whisper. "Sawney Bean lived on the coast of Ayrshire in the fifteenth century. Travelers in that part of Scotland kept disappearing. They hanged an innkeeper, thinking he had been killing off his guests, but the disappearances kept on. Finally, a traveler got away!"

Elizabeth ignored Cameron's stern look. It meant either "What an odd lot you archaeologists are!" or "What an odd lot you Americans are!" She didn't like shouldering responsibility for either group. After all, Cameron's friends wouldn't win any prizes, either. They talked forever about seal research and left dinner parties early to return home and feed their ferrets. For spite she gave Owen her most encouraging smile.

Owen's face glowed in the candlelight as he described the wounded traveler making his way to the nearest town and reporting being attacked by a band of savages. A search party was formed to scour the countryside. "They found nothing," Owen said dramatically. "Until they looked in a cave that could only be entered at low tide."

The waitress looked a bit disconcerted as she set the salad

plates in front of them, but Owen was too deep in his recitation to notice. "When they entered the cave, they found Sawney, his wife, and a tribe of their children and grandchildren-by-incest, living among piles of stolen gold and jewels. Hanging from the roof of the cave were human arms and legs—like a smokehouse!"

Denny set down his fork. "Well, that's done it for dinner." He sighed.

"What happened to them?" asked Elizabeth.

"They were taken back to Edinburgh and burned at the stake," Owen said. "Even in the fifteenth century they were considered subhuman savages."

"Whereas burning them in public was mature and civilized behavior," Elizabeth said sweetly. She returned Cameron's stern stare, hoping that he would feel a collective responsibility for Scots of all eras, but it did not work. Cameron was not checking Sawney Bean into his emotional baggage.

"You're an unusual sort of tourist," Denny remarked. "Even for an American. Most of them seem to have a Robert Burns fixation."

"Or Macbeth," Cameron grunted.

Owen flushed. "Murder is sort of a hobby of mine," he mumbled. "I'm not a kook or anything. I just like scary stories that happen to be true. The tour tonight should be great!"

Cameron smiled faintly. "I’ve always thought of Edinburgh as a sleepy old lady. I'm sure this will provide a new perspective."

Owen grinned. "She may be sleepy now, but she's had quite a past!"

* * *

For the rest of dinner the conversation proceeded along tamer lines. The three archaeologists discussed Marchand's lecture and details of the Banrigh dig. Owen was stunned to learn that neither of the two native Scots could help him at all in his efforts to learn to play bagpipes. Denny announced that he preferred the banjo, and Cameron disavowed all knowledge of music. Elizabeth said carefully that she didn't think it was necessary to practice too much in order to become a good player.

Cameron explained his seal migration project to Owen, who countered with his own marine biology story—that of a shark in Australia who vomited up the tattooed arm of a murder victim, thus enabling police to solve the case.

Just as they were finishing their coffee, a sudden hush fell upon the restaurant as a tall young man in a vampire cloak swept into the room. His face was covered with white stage makeup, and his dark hair was slicked down like paint on a porcelain doll. One by one, the Witchery guests who had signed up for the tour left their tables to form a cluster around their strange guide. When everyone was ready, he led the gaggle of tourists out into the twilight and up the cobbled street to the castle esplanade.

In the gathering darkness the street seemed old and empty, hardly part of the present century at all. The group shivered with anticipation as they circled around the shadow man.

"My name is Adam Lyal," the guide said in a smooth Edinburgh accent. "Deceased," he added with a grin.

The crowd of tourists tittered nervously. The night air was chilly, and the deepening shadows heightened the effect of the ghoul makeup.

"I was a highwayman here in Edinburgh in the eighteenth century. Got hanged for it, too. But the devil has allowed me to come back to earth on the condition that I guide the living along the Murder Walks of Edinburgh's dark history. Every night I take groups like this one up and down the closes, searching out the darkest corners of Auld Reekie's grimy past."

"Will we be visiting the Merrett house?" someone called out.

Adam Lyal (deceased) frowned. "No, he's not on our tour," he answered. "It would be a considerable departure to get to his house. He's small potatoes anyway. Compared to some of us," he added menacingly.

At the mention of his latest crime obsession—by someone other than himself—Owen became instantly alert. "Another crime buff!" he whispered to Elizabeth. "I'll be back."

As the tour wound its way farther up the hill into the shadow of the castle to the spot at the barricade where the witches had once been executed, Owen threaded his way through the crowd and finally reached the side of the man who'd asked the question: a tall, stocky Englishman in a green anorak.

"I visited the Merrett house this afternoon," Owen offered as an opening gambit. "I don't think the people know it's a crime scene."

The older man nodded. "Not very dramatic looking, is it? Still, a black and white shot in the right light might set it off."

"Are you interested in murders?" whispered Owen, trying to appear casual.

"Well, it's a living." The man smiled, turning his attention back to the guide.

The young soldier on guard at the castle entrance had been listening to Adam Lyal's account of the witch-burning. "Looks like they missed a few," he remarked in tones suggesting that the banter was a nightly occurrence.

The deceased highwayman was ready with a reply. "And this young man," he said, pointing to the soldier, "will have to stay up here a-aaall night. . . a-aaall alo-oone."

"Right. Well, I'll stock up on holy water," the guard called out as the party trooped off.

Owen, still intent upon his private conversation, followed the Englishman. "Are you a detective, then?" he persisted.

"I suppose I am, in a way," the man replied. "I'm Kevin Keenan."

Owen knew that he was expected to recognize the name, but since he had only been in Britain a week, he hadn't a clue. Except that Kevin Keenan wasn't a famous murderer; he knew all of them. "Oh, really?" he murmured.

"Yes. Just thought I'd have a listen to this tour. It's good stuff. Well presented."

Owen decided that the man must be in show business, perhaps a writer for a BBC crime show. "Are you interested in Ian Brady?" he asked breathlessly. The Moors Murders were among Owen's favorite cases.

Keenan sighed. "Not particularly," he whispered. "But I know that Myra recently came up for parole. She thinks she'll get out, poor cow."

Owen nodded eagerly. He felt as if they were discussing mutual friends. "Do you know anything about the woman in the Crippen case?"

"Ethel LeNeve? Smith was her married name. Oh, she died in 1968," Keenan replied, edging away from Owen.

"It's really great to meet somebody who knows all this!" Owen said reverently. "All my friends think I'm crazy. Can we have a drink after the tour and talk some more?"

The Englishman shrugged. "If they haven't called time by then, I might," he said in weary tones suggesting that he didn't care one way or the other. Kevin Keenan didn't usually enjoy discussing crime with amateurs. They were always asking awkward questions about the Yorkshire Ripper, or wanting to know what it was like behind police lines at death scenes. He had a set of memorized answers that enabled him to hold such conversations without actually listening to them, but occasionally even that proved a bit of a strain.

Owen nodded happily and scurried back to tell Cameron and Elizabeth of his good fortune in finding another expert on crime. They shushed him, too, but he took it in good spirits and settled down to enjoy the remainder of the tour, his brain seething with plans to waylay his new friend immediately afterward and to find out just what his crime-related living actually was. Owen experienced a momentary qualm: suppose the stranger was a criminal? Was there a Mafia in Britain? But this anxiety soon passed. Owen was sure he would never be so lucky as to meet anyone that interesting.

Adam Lyal took them down a narrow cobblestone alley, which he said was haunted by the ghost of an old sailor. As he launched into an explanation of the sailor's ill-fated life, a "ghostly" apparition dashed out of the shadows in front of him and lunged at the startled audience, evoking screams from most of the ladies. After a few more menacing gestures

aimed at the loudest screamer, the figure ran back into the shadows of a side street. When the tourists had quieted down, the highwayman smiled. "Of course," he said, "I've never seen the ghost myself."

The party continued down the alley to the Grassmarket— the scene of Adam Lyal's demise, he told them. They clustered around the iron-railed plot of grass containing a circular stone monument, the memorial to all those executed in the square over the years.

"Was Burke executed here?" Owen wanted to know.

Elizabeth tugged at his arm. "Hush, Owen! This is a tour, not Meet the Press!

"I'll show you where he used to live—in Tanner's Close," Adam Lyal said patiently.

He led the way up a steep dark street, his cloak flapping about his legs. A wino, cradling his bottle in a paper sack, was settled for the night in a doorway. The noise of so many footsteps shook him out of his stupor, and he looked up just in time to see the chalk-faced ghoul stride past him. After a few moments of startled silence, the derelict called out, "Have ye no been weel, man?"

Cameron and Denny were still snickering at this unscheduled performance when the tour made its next stop, but the highwayman had the last word: "He was on the tour last night," he announced.

He launched into a description of the mad old woman said to haunt this particular close, when suddenly the confederate appeared again, this time in a woman's dress and wig, making the tourists scream again and running off into the night as before.

By now the group had discerned the pattern of the tour,

so that at each stop, they braced themselves for another fright. Sometimes the accomplice appeared and sometimes he didn't, but the anticipation of his dramatic arrival kept the tension high.

"The ghost is wearing gym shoes!" Denny whispered to Cameron. They had begun to look for the accomplice, to see if they could spot him before he attacked.

"It's a wonderful idea for a tour, isn't it?" Owen said to Elizabeth.

She smiled. "Are you thinking of doing one in America, with all your knowledge of crime?"

Owen shook his head. "American murders are too spread out for a walking tour. And probably too gruesome anyway. Well, I suppose you could do Chicago, but it wouldn't be the same. Mafia executions? Leopold and Loeb killing a little boy? Richard Speck and the eight student nurses? Nobody would pay to see that."

Except possibly you, Elizabeth thought, but aloud she agreed that it wouldn't work as a paying concern.

In the darkest close of all there was not room for the group to form a circle around the guide, so they leaned in clumps against the brick wall of an ancient building, as he paced up and down the cobblestones. "The plague came to Edinburgh, did you know that?" he asked in menacing tones. "It came and went half a dozen times through the Middle Ages, brought from the Continent by . . . rats!"

As he uttered the last word, Adam Lyal's ghostly assistant, his face red-streaked with plague pustules, rounded the corner and drew a squeaking black rat from the folds of his cloak, waving it menacingly at the shrieking tour group. The women in the party shrank back against the building, and Elizabeth found that she had grabbed Cameron's arm without a conscious thought. After prowling up and down the line of cowering tourists, shaking the rat at those who screamed, the assistant seemed to single out the man in the green anorak. Lunging at him with the rat, as if to cause him to be bitten, the accomplice drew close enough to his victim to speak to him, while those nearby tittered nervously, perhaps in relief that they had not been chosen instead.

After a few moments of terror the assistant dropped the still mewling rat at the feet of a hysterical French girl, and ran out of the close. By that time most of the party had already realized that the creature was only a toy, but the tension of the horror-laden tour and the surrounding darkness had done its work on their nerves, and the screams continued.

The spectral highwayman, amused by his audience's reaction to the trick, leaned against an ashcan, waiting for the panic to subside. When the squeals had died down to a thin murmur, he stepped forward to resume the narrative.

"As I was saying, the plague is no stranger to Britain. In 1348 and again in 166S, the disease arrived on British shores, carried in ships along with—"

He got no further before he was interrupted again, this time by the man in the green anorak, who pitched forward onto the pavement at the highwayman's feet.

In respectful silence, the tourists watched him die.

CHAPTER

6

Owen Gilchrist did not enjoy the murder investigation nearly as much as he might have expected. Someone who doted on true crime stories and biographies of former chief inspectors should have welcomed the opportunity to observe police procedure firsthand, but instead of being thrilled with his good fortune, Owen found himself both uncomfortable at the long wait in the chilly room and oddly apprehensive about his own turn at being questioned.

When the police arrived in Fishers Close to take charge of the corpse and to escort the members of the tour in for questioning, Owen was too nervous to pay much attention to what they did. He found later that he could not remember whether the deceased was covered with a blanket or an oilskin groundsheet, whether the surgeon had arrived with the police or not, and just what was said to him by the officer who noted down his name and address.

He did remember blurting out that he had spoken to the

unfortunate victim. And what had they talked about, please? Well, murder, actually. Despite the chill of the night air, Owen had been sweating when he arrived at the police station. He would probably get pneumonia from it, he thought— another victim for the unknown killer.

Most of the other members of the tour—a women's group from a local church—had been released almost immediately. The archaeologists had been detained, waiting in uncomfortable wooden chairs while the police questioned Adam Lyal himself. Owen wondered why he felt so guilty. Suppose he had to take a lie detector test. What if he failed it simply because he was having an anxiety attack? He wondered if the British police allowed one the customary phone call, and whether the American consul to Scotland would have his home phone number listed in the directory.

Adam Lyal, deceased, had wiped off most of his white stage makeup from the evening's performance, but he still managed to look decidedly pale. The unscheduled demise of a tourist was one surprise that he had not incorporated into the evening's entertainment. As he explained the premise of the tour for the fourth time that evening, he leaned back in the dented metal chair and looked at the linoleum floor instead of at the spotty youth in blue who was meticulously printing Adam Lyal at the top of his notebook. Gently the guide corrected him, providing the spelling of his real name. The constable looked at him suspiciously: an alias. Adam Lyal was sure that he had just been promoted to the top of a short list of suspects, but he was too tired and worried to be amused.

"Have they found my partner yet?" he asked the young police constable who was taking the statement.

P. C. Hendry took a long look at the smeared vampire makeup and the rumpled black cloak. "There were two of you?"

The tour guide nodded impatiently. "I must have explained this half a dozen times by now! Don't you people talk to each other? When we give the murder tour, I lead the people round and do the commentary; my partner waits for us along the route and makes various surprise entrances in disguise to liven up the tour. Have you found him yet?"

"You are saying then, sir, that it was he who murdered—"

"No, of course, I'm not saying that! Somebody coshed him, and took his place in Fishers Close. You have to find him!"

"I'm sure it's being seen to," the constable said soothingly, scribbling a word on his notepad. "Now, how well did you know the gentleman who was murdered?"

"I hadn't any idea who he was," Lyal replied. "People phone up to reserve a place on the tour, but I don't meet them beforehand. In fact, it is so dark when we begin that I scarcely see them at all."

"Well, we can help you there," P. C. Hendry told him. "There'll be plenty of light in the morgue, and you can go along and look at him for as long as you like. But we have made a tentative identification of the deceased. He was an Englishman called Kevin Keenan. Does that help?"

Lyal shook his head. "Quite a lot of the people who take the tour are from out of town. I take them round in the dark for an hour and never see them again.''

"Did the deceased say anything to you during the tour?"

Adam Lyal almost laughed at the constable’s formal phrasing. I wonder how many American cop shows he watches per week, he thought. Next he'll be making references to the perpetrator. Suppressing a smile, he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. "Wait . . . somebody asked me a stupid question. What was it? Oh, yes! Whether John Donald Merrett's house was on the tour. But I don't think he asked it. I seem to remember an American accent."

P. C. Hendry hesitated, as if trying to determine what to say next. Sometimes, he decided, you had to give a little information in order to get some. "It sounds like the sort of question Mr. Keenan might have asked," he said. "Considering who he was."

At that moment the door opened, and another officer signaled for their attention. "We've just found the other gentleman who runs the tour," he told Hendry. "He's on his way to hospital with a head injury."

"Thank God for that!" said Adam Lyal. "I've been afraid he was dead."

P. C. Hendry's lips twitched. "No, sir," he said. "Excepting the victim tonight, you are still the only one deceased."

In the end Owen had decided against routing the American consul general out of bed, but as he was led away to be questioned, he implored Elizabeth not to leave him alone at the police station. She promised they would wait for him.

"Of course he didn't do it!" Elizabeth said to no one in particular. "He was standing right beside me when the man was stabbed!"

Cameron and Denny ignored her. "Gangs, do you suppose ?" asked Cameron. "One hears of such things in Glasgow."

Denny shrugged. "It's possible, of course, but there was no robbery, and surely that fellow was a bit too old to be mixed up in such things."

"Will I need my passport?" Elizabeth asked. "They always say not to carry it with you, don't they? Or is it not to leave it anywhere?" She began to rummage through her purse.

"I hope they're not planning to make us stay in town," said Denny. "Imagine telling the old man that the dig has been held up because of a murder.''

Cameron smiled. "They can hardly detain an entire tour. I believe the parish auxiliary has already been sent home. I think they just want to get the paperwork done. Find out if anyone saw anything, and of course we didn't."

Elizabeth looked up. "I did."

"No," said Cameron. "I mean, if we noticed anything about the killer. All of us saw it happen, more or less, but it was so dark and sudden that we hadn't time to take it in."

"I did."

Denny grinned. "Two days in Edinburgh, and the killer turned out to be somebody you knew, Elizabeth?"

She blushed. 'Of course not! But I did notice his feet. Or rather I noticed the feet of the other one. Adam Lyal's accomplice, I mean. After the first two times, when I was just as startled as everyone else, I noticed that he was wearing white socks and sneakers. His costume always changed, but his footwear didn't. After a while I started looking around for him, because, of course, he was going on ahead and waiting for us to catch up. Once I spotted him waiting for us

across the street from one of the closes. But the person who came in during the plague speech—the killer—wasn't wearing white socks and sneakers."

Cameron sighed. "So you've just cleared the other tour guide, who has no doubt been found coshed behind an ash-can by now. Very helpful indeed, dear."

If Owen had not reappeared just then, Elizabeth was sure that there would have been a major Anglo-American disagreement, because her reply would have contained a particularly Anglo-Saxon four-letter word of which Cameron disapproved thoroughly. It was an unladylike utterance, he had informed her more than once. Elizabeth found this attitude very confusing, not only because Cameron himself used the word quite often in reacting to heavy traffic and minor injuries, but also because she had just that afternoon read the Dawson family newspaper and discovered that most of page three consisted of a bosomy young woman, nude from the waist up. When she had asked his brother Ian about this unusual feature for a family newspaper, he seemed surprised that she'd noticed; page three, he explained, was always like that. Elizabeth thought that it was quite hypocritical of Cameron to quibble about a figure of speech and then to drag girlie pictures into the house every day without giving it a second thought. British morals, she decided, were not what she would call consistent.

If he continued to make gentle jokes at her expense for Denny's amusement, they might have words about the British attitude toward women as well, she thought.

Owen, looking more like his Saint Bernard puppy self, interrupted these mutinous thoughts with news of his own.

He appeared to have enjoyed his session with the police hugely.

"I got the constable's autograph!'' he announced, in tones suggesting possession of the Hope Diamond, or at least a winning lottery ticket.

"That I would like to have seen," murmured Denny, picturing the spotty young policeman's reaction to celebrity status.

"He was a nice guy," Owen assured them. "Asked me all kinds of stuff about Disney World. Which I haven't been to, but I was able to advise him not to make hotel reservations near his cousin's place in Pittsburgh, and then plan to drive down to Orlando for the day." He shook his head. "Boy, you people are really hazy on distances here."

Denny raised his eyebrows. "Did the subject of the recent murder happen to crop up?" he inquired.

Owen nodded, his enthusiasm undampened by the sarcasm. "Sure did! Do you know who that guy was?"

"Elizabeth seems to." Cameron grinned.

Owen ignored the bait. "His name was Kevin Keenan." No signs of recognition lit the feces of his listeners. "Well, I'd never heard of him, either," he admitted. "I just thought you guys might have. He was a reporter for the World Star. A lady cop came in while I was talking to Donald, and she said they'd called his newspaper back in Britain."

"England!" said Cameron in menacing tones. Why couldn't the bloody Americans get their terms straight? Britain for the whole country; England, Scotland, or Wales for wherever you happened to be.

"Whatever!" Owen shrugged. "Anyhow, she was telling Donald that they said it sounded like Kevin Keenan, from

the description on the phone. And you'll never guess what he was doing in Scotland!" Without waiting for the clever remarks that would surely follow, Owen supplied the answer himself. "He was working on a story for his newspaper."

Cameron shrugged. "The World Star is a scandal sheet. I wouldn't use it to wrap fish in."

"So different from the high journalistic standards of your own dear newspaper," Elizabeth purred.

Denny frowned. "Stop bickering, both of you. Owen, I can't think how you got the police to take you into their confidence, but—"

Owen looked uneasy. "Well, when the policewoman came in, I said I had to go to the toilet. But I left the door a bit ajar so that I could hear what they said."

Cameron smirked. "How very—" A glance at Elizabeth told him that it would be as much as his life was worth to complete that sentence with the word American, as he'd planned, "—resourceful," he finished lamely.

"You'll never guess what he was working on!"

"Tell us," Denny suggested.

"He was doing a piece on famous murderers. A where-are-they-now article!"

Cameron blinked. "What do you mean, where are they now? Peterhead, I should think. And Barlinnie, and Wormwood Scrubbs, and Strangeways—"

"No, not that," said Owen. "Now that you people have abolished capital punishment, most killers get out sooner or later. I guess they go somewhere and start new lives, maybe change their names, if they were well known."

"And then this reporter comes barging into their lives,

telling everyone about their past. No wonder someone murdered him!" Elizabeth said.

"I wonder who he was looking for in Edinburgh," said Owen. "Merrett has been dead for years. Madeline Smith, the poisoner, died in the twenties. One of the Moors Murderers was from Glasgow; but they're not out, are they?"

"Oh, give it up, Owen!" Denny said. "Keenan's murder was probably not related to his story at all. And even if it were, the murderer would turn out to be some druggie that nobody ever heard of.''

"I suppose so," said Owen, dampened by this dose of common sense.

"And besides," Cameron said, "after tomorrow, you'll be stuck on a barren island in the Hebrides. So there'll be no chance for you to play detective anyhow."

Owen wasn't listening. "A not-so-reformed killer loose in Edinburgh," he mused. "I wonder how Keenan found him?"

CHAPTER

7

CAMERON

We left Edinburgh early on Sunday morning, when the streets were empty and all the shops were shut, thus relieving Elizabeth of having to decide whether or not she could live without the teddy bear in Waterston's window, the one decked out in the MacPherson tartan.

Perhaps she would have decided against him, anyway; he might have been out of place where she was going, which seemed to be the eighteenth century.

In the car's tape deck she put a cassette of Gaelic folk songs, of which neither of us understands a word, although she claims to know "instinctively" what the songs are generally about. She has learned a few phrases of the language out of one of her interminable books, but her pronunciation is arbitrary, and her fluency nil. Still, whatever ghosts she expects to find in the Highlands would think her very pretty: her hair falls about her shoulders in soft waves, and her dark eyes have a new sparkle of anticipation. She was wearing a white tapestry skirt and a teal-blue shawl of lambswool, acquired during one of her raids on Princes Street. I said that I hoped she had more suitable clothing for grubbing about in the dirt on Banrigh, and she made a face at me and said I had the soul of a chartered accountant, and that the stone circle on the island was a Celtic cathedral. I replied that she could rinse off the sacred soil in holy water if she wanted to, but she'd better add two cups of Clorox besides. (We were not amused.)

She paid hardly any attention at all to Glasgow. It is too rough and modern. Its monoliths are bustling office buildings of glass and steel, rooted in concrete, rather than the abandoned stone circles of the Hebrides, drifting in mist and heather. She did not want to stop; nothing there caught her interest. The Highlands were waiting.

So we left the twentieth century, a rapidly diminishing vista in the rear-view mirror, and side by side in my brother's green Moggie Thou, we went our separate ways.

"Oh, ye'll tak' the high road an' I'll tak' the low road." Elizabeth is too fond of explaining to people that the song refers to the differing means of travel used by mortals and fairy folk. The high road would be the motorway of today, and the low road is the magic passageway used by the Daoine Sidhe to reach their destinations in the twinkling of an eye. "An' I'll be in Scotland before ye." But will you come to the same place?

Because we started out with different memories, we were going to different destinations. The Highlands to me was scout camporees on the banks of Loch Ness and long stretches of country roads perfect for trying out my motorbike on weekends away from college. But Elizabeth was taking the low road north. She had visited the Highlands in a stack of books on history and folklore: on her A82 the Campbells massacred the MacDonalds in the glen of weeping, shadowed by Buchaille Etive Mor, the rock bastion that supposedly shepherds the pass. Her A830 is a scattering of loch-shore caves where the Bonnie Prince hid after the disaster of Culloden.

There are no billboards or convenience stores to pull her back into the twentieth century, and she wrapped herself in the unintelligible Gaelic songs, overlooking the modernity of car and well-paved road.

When she talked to me, it was to tell me tales I'd never heard about the fairy folk, who hid the Sleeping Warriors in the Hollow Hills, in case Britain should ever need them again. And stories of Ossian and Cuchulain, who fought the Norsemen with cold iron and magic. She's had it all out of her books; these tales were not handed down at the fireside by her MacPherson kin, who must all have forgotten about their point of origin several generations before Elizabeth herself existed. Perhaps they had good reason to forget. Such as the New World was two centuries ago, with disease and Indians and only pockets of civilization in a great howling wilderness, the people who went there must have had desperate reasons for going. The Scotland she has returned to is not the one they left; nor is she—the middle-class, college-educated, well-spoken young lady—the same MacPherson who departed these shores so long ago. She could find no more distant strangers, I think, than the ghosts of her own ancestors.

Appalachia has the look of the Highlands, she says, but the New World has more trees. And the people have the same look about them in bone structure, the same fiddle tunes, but even she concedes that the conscious memories of Scotland are generations gone.

"I wonder why we never see the fairy folk in Scotland these days," I said once, in an effort to humor her.

She answered me in Gaelic. I've no idea what she said.

TRAVELER'S DIARY

I'm beginning to understand why my pioneer ancestors stopped their journey in the hills of western North Carolina, rather than pushing on for the plains of the Midwest. They must have thought they were back home. On our drive from Glasgow to Mallaig there were long stretches of landscape that could have been Carolina, if they'd thrown in a few trees. What trees there were turned out to be evergreen; no hardwoods to speak of. I asked Cameron if previous generations had cut down all the good trees for firewood (I can almost sympathize with that; it is July, and I have been so cold at times, I might have burned the Book of Kells to take the chill out of the room), or if hardwood trees have never grown there at all, because of climate, or altitude, or whatever. Of course, he didn't know. To Cameron, Glenfinnan is a brand of Scotch, and Caithness is glass paperweights, not Pictish ruins. How can you get a sense of the past out of someone who cannot even remember the name of his first-grade teacher?

Even in summer the sky has been a misty gray most of the time, giving a brooding quality to the landscape. You can see for miles on the ribbon of highway through the hills: slippery-looking green mountains dotted with sheep and stone fences, and almost never a sign of human habitation. I would want to live out here in the wilderness, where there'd be nobody else for miles, but the British seem to want to cluster together in cities. I wonder if this is because of land prices, or if it's that the matey ones stayed in Britain, and those who loved solitude (like my kinfolk) left for the New World, where the wilderness went on forever.

Cameron is definitely one of the matey ones. He just loves his apartment back at the university. I told him, "You put me in a box up off the ground, where I can hear folks on three sides through the walls, and I'd be dead in a month." I feel the spell of the mountains and the past very strongly in the north of Scotland, but all of that is lost on Cameron, the seal-man.

On the drive up, I asked him the name of the mountain in the distance. I was looking for Ben Nevis, or perhaps the first of the Five Sisters of Kintail. Cameron glanced at the stark bluish peak across the valley and quipped, "The locals call it Benny Hill." He seemed to find this wonderfully amusing. He was still chuckling over it miles later and didn't seem to notice that I wasn't speaking to him. Then he assumed that I had missed the joke, so lie carefully explained to me that ben is Gaelic for mountain, and that Benny Hill is a television comedian. I replied that he got full marks for bilingual punning and no credit at all for sensitivity. In fact, he owes points in that category. Cameron's heart is not in the Highlands; it is probably not attached to his brain; it may even be in a jar of formaldehyde in an Edinburgh University biology lab.

He looks the part, though. When he isn't being so gratingly modern, he could pose for cover art for practically any of those silly romance novels with titles like Tartan Rapture. It's the kind of handsomeness that won't change with age. (As a forensic anthropologist, I can tell about things like that.) His looks are in the bone structure, not in what covers them. He'll probably still have those looks at sixty. And despite it all, I hope I will be around to verify that hypothesis. It will probably take till then to break through all that British reserve anyway.

We have until tomorrow morning to reach Mallaig, from which the Calmac ferry departs for the islands beyond, and after that we'll be taken to Banrigh in Cameron's small boat. It will be so fitting, I think, to be crossing the Scottish sea in the same sort of craft my ancestors must have used—a boat like the one Flora McDonald used to take Bonnie Prince Charlie to Skye.

Cameron says that a visit to Culloden Moor would be out of our way, so I will probably have to cry before he will agree to take me. Men can be so difficult at times.

Elizabeth found Mallaig to be a picture postcard sort of fishing village perched between mountain and blue sea. She spent much of the wait for the ferry buying postcards and running around taking photographs, explaining to Cameron, "I must have something to remember this by!" It never seemed to occur to her that she had nothing to remember the village for, since she had spent her entire time there storing up memories rather than making them.

The other members of the Banrigh expedition arrived by train, and the group reassembled at a cafe near the dock, waiting for the Calmac ferry that would take them to the islands beyond.

"Want another meat pie?" Cameron asked Elizabeth. "This is the best meal you'll get for a while."

"I'm not hungry just now," said Elizabeth. "Perhaps I could get one to go."

Cameron and Denny burst out laughing. "It's obvious that you've never had one of these things cold," Denny told her. "Congealed grease! I think I'll have another beer to wash mine down, though I probably shouldn't, as it's pill time."

"Oh, do you have a cold?" Cameron asked.

Denny grinned. "No, just a bit of an infection. My doctor told me to take this antibiotic—ampicillin, I think he said— and to cultivate better taste in women!"

Cameron sighed. "You haven't changed a bit since university. '

"And has Cameron changed?" asked Elizabeth.

"Seal-men never change," said Denny. "Except into seals and back."

At a nearby table Owen Gilchrist and Callum Farthing, who had driven over from Inverness, were holding a desultory conversation about American Indian mound builders, because their table-mates, Alasdair and his Danish girlfriend, were talking in urgent whispers and pretending that they were alone at the table.

Gitte, as always, looked nervously obsequious. Like a whipped hound, Callum thought to himself. He had sized up the med student as a pompous asshole early on and was prepared to have as little to do with him as possible, easier said than done on a tiny island. The girl was a mousy type, rather shaky in her English; he dismissed her at once, thinking that it would be nice to have someone doing the scut work. Cooking detail and washing up—that would be the extent of her usefulness. He wasn't sure about the American one: she looked more capable, but she might be one of those artistic loonies that archaeology seemed to attract. (Callum had once been on a dig with a grandmotherly woman who clanked of turquoise jewelry and wanted to dance naked among the ruins by moonlight.) He smiled to himself: that might be all right; anything to liven up Banrigh.

"Of course, I haven't heard any evidence that the eastern mound builders actually practiced human sacrifice or ritual cannibalism," Owen was saying wistfully.

Callum smiled. The resident loony was present and accounted for.

"Wonderful to be getting away from it all!" Derek Marchand remarked to his assistant.

"Wonderful, indeed," Tom Leath said, through his teeth. He hoped the bottles wouldn't clank in his rucksack. With his luck Marchand would either demand that he pour them out or expect him to share the lot.

"I like the fact that we'll be right away from civilization. It will make me feel more in touch with the people who built this thing. Set up a channel across the centuries, perhaps— no interference." He grinned. "I'm being fanciful—not daft!"

"Right," Leath grunted. "Let's hope they tip you off to some good burial sites. We could do with a major find."

"Like the Viking ship at Sutton Hoo?" Marchand smiled. "That would do wonders for our funding, wouldn't it?"

"We've as much chance of finding Nessie, though."

"Don't be too pessimistic, lad. Our ship may come in."

In fact, it had, but it was the Calmac ferry, a nautical monopoly of the Caledonian MacBrayne Company, which inspired the Scottish doggerel:

The earth belongs unto the Lord, and all it contains, Except the western highland piers, and they are all MacBrayne's.

Elizabeth enjoyed the ferryboat ride very much. Despite a sharp wind from the sea, she spent most of the time on deck, scanning the water for seals and taking photographs of the mainland diminishing in the distance across an expanse of darkest blue. Occasionally, when the wind made her cold, she climbed back into the Dawsons' Moggie Thou, parked with the other cars on the deck, but soon she would brave the elements again, trying for just one more shot of a seabird diving for its dinner. She asked Cameron when they were going to pass the white castle that showed up in all the calendars of Scotland. When he finally realized that she was talking about Eilean Donan, he explained that she could stop waiting for that particular shot: that castle was on the way to the Skye ferry at the Kyle of Lochalsh, and they wouldn't be going anywhere near it.

Elizabeth took it philosophically, saying that castles didn't seem to bring her much luck anyhow.

After several hours of sea watching and picture taking, punctuated by conversations with various members of the expedition over sausage rolls in the snack room, Elizabeth saw the small green point of land appear in front of them. Cameron, who was leaning against the railing, his green windbreaker zipped to protect him from the sea spray, touched her shoulder and pointed to the island. "I guess this is it," Elizabeth murmured, snuggling closer to him.

He nodded. "That white building off to the left is my research station."

"And you'll come to Banrigh every Saturday?" "Barring bad weather," Cameron said reasonably. "I'm not that good a sailor."

"And will you come oftener if you miss me?"

He smiled. "No. But I'll miss you all the same, hen."

The remainder of the journey to the isle of Banrigh began two hours later, when the diggers and their gear had been transferred from die ferry to the green Moggie Thou—in several trips—and when the gear was stowed away on the old motor launch on loan to Cameron by the foundation for his seal research.

There were more people headed for Banrigh than the launch could comfortably transport, but the trip was a relatively short one—just under an hour, if the wind and weather were good—so it was decided that they would forego the elbow room in me interest of making only one trip.

Elizabeth found the voyage much less enjoyable than she had anticipated. It did not turn out to be a romantic journey, reminiscent of the Young Pretender's sail to Skye, nor was it a quiet time of togetherness before she and Cameron went their separate ways. Elizabeth decided that it was like being in steerage with a party of mental patients. She found herself stuck with Callum, Denny, and Alasdair, all of whom were discussing soccer rivalries, while Cameron had been cornered by Derek Marchand, who wanted to hear about the seal research.

"Not going to kill the beasts, are you?" he asked. "I hear that in Canada they club the young ones for their fur."

"We don't have fur seals," Cameron said politely. "Ours are gray seals, Halichoerus giyphus."

"The ones I've seen are brown," said Marchand.

Cameron smiled. "Gray seals can be brown, silver, or any shade of gray."

"And what are you wanting to know. Dietary habits?"

"Oh, no. We know that. They eat herring, halibut, pollack, and even crustaceans. My project is to find out how far they go, and in what direction."

"Going to follow them about, are you?"

"In a high tech way, yes. We've put radio collars on a dozen or so, and I plan to keep track of them electronically.''

"Think you can tell a seal from a Russian sub?"

Cameron blinked. "I imagine so, unless one of the crew is wearing a radio collar."

This reply amused Derek Marchand so much mat he insisted on repeating the entire conversation to the rest of the party, who smiled faintly and went back to their own conversations.

"So you'll be by every week to bring us supplies and to see your young lady. Very kind of you."

"Not at all," said Cameron, blushing. "Of course, if you need anything urgently, you can always contact me at the station on your radio set. You won't have any range to speak of out here, but your signal ought to reach as far as my research station." His lips twitched. "Or you could try hailing a Russian submarine."

"Perhaps we could catch a passing seal!" Denny said.

"I doubt if you'll see any on Banrigh," Cameron said. "Of course, you might. They've never been tracked before. And nobody lives there to report their presence."

"We'll let you know if we see any," Gitte promised.

Midway through the trip Owen discovered that most of the expedition had not heard about the Witchery adventure and the murder investigation that followed it, and although none of them seemed interested in obtaining such information, Owen insisted on providing it anyway, with heavy emphasis on his cachet as the last person to speak to the deceased.

"And you didn't even find out who he was," Denny reminded him.

Owen shrugged. "Who knew he was going to get himself killed?"

"Some detective you are!" said Elizabeth.

"I don't do well under stress," Owen informed her, "but I'm better prepared now, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Mr. Keenan's murder.''

"I'll let you know if I hear on the news that the Edinburgh police have solved it," Cameron offered.

"And if I solve it first," Owen said, "I'll radio the information to you."

Elizabeth sighed. "Owen, how can you solve the murder of someone you hardly spoke to, in a country where you don't know a soul, when you are stranded on a barren island miles from civilization?"

"I have my methods!" Owen smirked. He seemed to be willing to explain them, but at that moment Cameron announced that they were coming in sight of Banrigh, and Elizabeth turned her attention back to the heaving sea and the rocky island still small in the distance.

CHAPTER

8

Banrigh, appearing from a distance like a black seal floating on the surface of the ocean, was one of several thousand uninhabited islands off the northern coast of Scotland. It lay dead and silent in the dark sea, its rocky cliffs shining like bones washed up on the barren beach. In winter the island would be a gray shell shrouded in mist, cold and wet and empty. Even now in the bright summer sunshine some trace of this starkness remained in the sharp outlines of the rocks. The stone circle was not visible from the sea, but its presence seemed to make itself felt, reminding the visitor of prehistoric rituals and sacrifice before the old gods. It made one think, too, of the shipwrecks that must have brought death time and again to the rocky shores.

The passengers in the launch shivered as they looked at the dark island ahead, each thinking that he alone must have imagined such romantic nonsense. But the feeling was there.

Unlike most of Scotland's islands, Banrigh was fertile

enough and just large enough to have supported a struggling population of farmer-fishermen, but by the early twentieth century, the last of the islanders had given up their precarious existence in the back of beyond and had moved to larger islands like Skye. One or two daring ones had even gone as far afield as Inverness on the mainland, leaving the island to the gales and to the ghosts of its ancient inhabitants: those who had built the stone circle, for reasons no one remembered.

Mountains of coarse-grained black gabbro formed the spine of the island, ice-eroded over the centuries into steep-walled conies and long scree runs of broken rock. Over this ancient, sterile skeleton a more recent outcrop of limestone softened the island with stone-studded green fields and a scattering of elder bush and rowan trees. Except for a small plateau on the west side, leading to a rocky channel, three sides of the island were barricaded from the sea by steep bare cliffs that looked axe-carved from a distance, but on the eastern shore the fringe of limestone stretched out to form a rough beach of pebbles and old shells. It was there that the odd private boat would put to shore, mostly Celtophiles or National Trust photographers wanting a look at the Banrigh standing stones. Even that was a rare occurrence. Callanish, the stone circle on Lewis, was both more impressive and more accessible. Banrigh, much off the beaten track, was left alone.

The ruins of the village were visible from the beach; a scattering of "black houses," dirt-floored dwellings built of stacked boulders, with holes in the thatched roofs for the smoke from the peat fire that was kept burning within. The cottages, long unroofed and empty, wouldn't even provide shelter from a mild summer night. Luckily, the Banrigh expedition would not be needing them. The object of their study lay on the other side of the island, as did the island's other ruined dwelling where they were destined to make their camp.

Elizabeth looked about her at the flash of white breakers across the cold blue depths, and at the clouds of lapwing overhead. "This doesn't look anything like Appalachia," she murmured, and Cameron smiled.

Owen Gilchrist hoisted his duffel bag onto a sagging, pudgy shoulder. "How far is it to where we're staying?" he asked plaintively.

"There's a path through the hills there," Tom Leath told him. "What have you got in that thing anyhow?"

"Oh, clothes. A few books. My bagpipes."

Denny snickered. "You've just forfeited any offers of assistance."

"Come along!" said Marchand, slapping Owen's other shoulder. "It's a bracing walk! Lovely weather for it, too!"

"Why didn't you land on the other side of the island?" Owen asked, still trying to think of a way to keep from carrying the heavy duffel bag over a mountain.

"There's just a narrow beach there," Cameron explained, "And the inlet is full of rocks. I didn't trust myself to navigate it, especially with such a crowd on board."

"Are you coming with us?" asked Elizabeth, seeing that Cameron was glancing uncertainly back at his boat. "And don't say that you have to get back to the research station before dark, because God knows when that it is in the summertime. Midnight?"

Cameron grinned. "Very nearly. I should be getting back and getting things set up for my own project, but I suppose I could give you a hand with some of this gear."

Alasdair had picked up his own canvas bag and sleeping bag, leaving Gitte's things on the ground at his feet. "Why couldn't the bloody Navy have built their station on this side of the island?" he demanded, scowling at the green wall of mountain in front of them.

"Because they were wanting to watch the U-boats on the other side!" said Denny.

Callum Farthing cleared his throat. "Actually, I think it was a weather station."

Tom Leath cast a critical eye at his reluctant troops. "We'd better get going. It's nearly five now, and we may need all of the available daylight to make the place habitable."

"The view from the mountain should be very pretty,'' said Elizabeth, looping the camera strap around her neck.

The party began to straggle past the crumbling black houses of the old village, with Denny, the joker as usual, whistling "The Colonel Bogey March."

Owen stopped to look at an odd circular thicket near one of the abandoned cottages. "What a funny hedge! It has a wooden gate attached to the shrubbery, but there's nothing inside. It was too small to fit a house in anyway."

"It was a garden," Gitte told him. "They planted the hedge to protect it from the winds out here—and from the sheep, of course."

Owen looked disappointed. "I thought it might have been a sacred well."

Gitte stole a glance at Alasdair. He seemed pleased that she. had been able to give the American even that small piece of information. She jinked at him, as if to say, "Of course, you knew that, too," although perhaps he had not.

"What a nice path this is!" Elizabeth said when they had gone a quarter of a mile up the gentle slope to the first hill. "Even after all these years the heather hasn't grown onto the path." She stooped to pick a sprig of the tiny purple bloom from the brush. Heather had not been at all the way she had imagined it. Rosebay willow herb, the graceful purple weed that grew as tall as Cameron, was much closer to her expectations, though now that she considered it logically, a short scrubby bush was the logical plant to survive in such a Spartan environment.

Callum Farthing, the young man from Inverness, was walking beside her. "They used this path a lot over the years," he told her, as if to explain why the way was still clear.

"And what are these little piles of stones along the road?" she wanted to know.

"Resting cairns," said Callum. "This was the way to the burying ground, and whenever they rested the coffin along the way, they left a small stone to mark the spot."

Elizabeth stared at the small mound of gray stones. "But not many people lived here."

He shrugged. "Over the years, it adds up."

The path wound its way around the mountain until the village and Cameron's boat were no longer in sight. Elizabeth had been right about the view: from the narrow path she could see gray and green folds of mountains across a narrow valley and the dark blue water shining in the sun beyond that.

Elizabeth, thinking of the ritual signal fires and the stone-circle-as-observatory theory, had expected to find the Banrigh circle at the highest point on the path, but when they had crossed over the summit, she could see the outline of a ring in a field of heather far below. "Why did they put it in the valley?" she wondered aloud.

Cameron smiled. "Would you want to drag stones that large up this mountain?"

"Perhaps not," Elizabeth said after some consideration. "But if I were going to put that much work into a project, I'd sure want everybody to see it."

Derek Marchand spotted the stone circle a few moments later, and he halted the procession on the path and pointed it out to everyone. "There it is! The object of our quest."

"Should be a good spot for overhead shots of the site," Tom Leath muttered to Callum Farthing.

"We will visit the circle tomorrow," Marchand was saying. "I'm greatly tempted to march you all there tonight, but I feel sure that we will need every moment of daylight to work on our own living quarters.

"Thank God he's got some sense of priorities!" Alasdair muttered.

"Also from here you can see the very small island just a few hundred yards from Banrigh, with one large stone on it. We shall be sending someone there to do more measurements as well."

"I can't swim!" Denny quipped.

"There's supposed to be an old rowboat near the military hut," Leath informed him.

Elizabeth focused her camera on the stone circle glinting in the sunlight far below, trying to get the smaller island in

the background of the shot. "I hope this turns out," she murmured.

"So do I," said Cameron. "In more ways than one."

"Good view from up here," Alasdair said approvingly. "I'll bet the old boys could see the Viking raiding parties from miles away. Not much they could do about it, though, I guess, except stash the valuables under a rock."

Gitte Dankert did not smile. She was not amused by jokes about her bloodthirsty Norse ancestors; in fact, she found it most embarrassing that she should somehow be allied to the destruction blamed on her ancestors. She hoped she wouldn't have to endure teasing on the subject from her fellow diggers; after all, many of the island dwellers of Scotland were closely related to the Scandinavians both by blood and by culture, and she knew that she would be most helpful in pointing out similarities.

Alasdair was still examining the island from this bird's-eye view. His eyes flickered from the glint of the stone circle in the sunlight to the bright green grass of the peat fields dotted with white-flecked boulders. A narrow burn sparkled amid the heather. "I don't see any obvious burial sites," he grunted.

"I do," said Callum Farthing. "Several. But I'm afraid they're not of the period we're investigating."

"Burial sites? Where?" Owen's gothic soul was stirred out of fatigue and into something like animation. "How can you tell?"

Callum smiled. "Later. We have work to do."

* * *

The Nissen hut, erected by the Royal Navy during World War II, looked like an overturned tin can half buried in the dirt. It was a windowless cylinder, thirty feet long, and just high enough to stand up in. Despite forty years of salt air and neglect, it was still in good shape, with only a few rust spots in its metal exterior and no sign of roof leaks on the dirt floor within. The interior had been partitioned off, probably to separate sleeping quarters from work areas, but now the shell was empty, except for a long wooden table and a few scraps of yellowed paper still posted here and there. The bare light sockets dangled from the ceiling; both bulbs and electricity had vanished long ago.

"This is rather primitive," said Alasdair, looking around. "We might be better off in tents.''

Derek Marchand smiled. "Yes, I had decided that myself. I spent enough time in these during the war, so I brought my one-man tent. A bit of damp is a small price to pay for a bed under the stars."

"We can set the radio up on that half of the table," Tom Leath said. "There ought to be room enough for us to eat on whats left. I'm sleeping outside, too," he added.

' T thought the ladies might like to have one of the partitioned spaces," said Marchand.

Elizabeth smiled weakly at Gitte Dankert. She supposed she would have to think of something to make conversation about9 but the prospect was not inviting. What, she wondered, do you discuss with a Danish geisha?

"Would anyone like some tea?" she asked brightly.

In order to prepare tea, Callum Farthing had to assemble the Camping Gaz, the two-burner butane stove that would

serve them for cooking and heating. By the time he had the stove working and Gitte had brought a pail of water from the burn, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the blue had not begun to fade from the sky.

"One cup of tea," said Cameron, "and then I really have to be getting back."

Elizabeth nodded. "I wish ..." What? she thought. That he didn't have to go, or that I could go and help him? That the islands were closer together than they are? "I wish I were a seal."

"I'll be back on Saturday. Let me go and say goodbye to Marchand."

"Shall I walk you back to the boat?" Elizabeth asked.

Cameron shook his head. "You have enough to do here. This place could do with a good scrubbing."

Elizabeth spent the remaining daylight hours helping Gitte scour the Nissen hut, not because she wanted to, and not because she thought it needed to be as clean as Gitte was determined to get it. In the middle of the room Callum Farthing was setting up the radio, seemingly oblivious to both their conversation and their labors.

"It has a dirt floor!" Elizabeth said once in exasperation. "How clean can you get it? Besides, we're not going to do brain surgery here!"

Gitte didn't answer directly. She very seldom did. She went on scrubbing the side of the partition. After a few minutes she said, "I'm sure I can manage by myself."

Elizabeth sighed and picked up the bucket. If there was anything she hated more than boredom, it was guilt. "I'm going for some more water from the bur-rrn," she announced.

Gitte kept scrubbing. "You don't sound Scottish."

Elizabeth consoled herself with the thought that she didn't have to hurry back with the pail of water. Fetching it at all was a splendid gesture of cooperation; there was no need to be fanatic. Besides, she could explore the island tomorrow. It had better not rain tomorrow! she thought.

Across the fields she could see Leath and Marchand at the stone circle. She wondered where the others were. Probably making landmark discoveries in Scottish archaeology, she thought. Probably finding solid gold Viking ships and a Celtic Rosetta Stone, describing in clearly carved runes just exactly how to use a stone circle. "And I will have helped to clean a Nissen hut," she said aloud.

She missed Cameron already. She stood for several minutes on the cliff above the rocky cove, trying to catch a glimpse of the small white boat among the whitecaps, but it never appeared.

Suddenly, a moving square of red on the shore caught her attention. It was Denny, walking along the water's edge, examining shells.

"Hey!" she yelled. "How did you get down there?"

Denny looked up and waved. He pointed to an outcrop of rocks a few hundred yards along the cliff. Elizabeth hesitated. She ought to be heading in the other direction, but then it occurred to her that brine would be an even better disinfectant than fresh water, so she waved back at Denny and hurried along the path at the edge of the cliff.

A natural way down the cliffs, probably improved by the original inhabitants of the Nissen hut, was still discernible,

although crumbling rocks and sudden zigzags indicated that it had not been used for many years. Elizabeth, who did not quite trust her running shoes for mountain climbing, took a long time to pick her way down through the rocks, holding on to a jutting boulder as often as she could on the descent. Finally, she reached the bed of smooth pebbles that constituted the so-called beach of Banrigh's western side.

"Where have you been keeping yourself?" Denny asked. "I thought Cameron had taken you away with him."

"No such luck," said Elizabeth. "I've been helping Gitte clean our living quarters."

"And you'll be fixing dinner, then, soon, I suppose?" asked Denny with a look of careful innocence.

Elizabeth paused long enough to count to ten before answering. "I suppose I could," she replied. "And after dinner we can draw up the chart to see whose turn it will be tomorrow.''

Denny laughed. "So you're not just a girlfriend along for the ride?"

"No," Elizabeth said, "I'm not. I don't know much about British archaeology, but I've had enough experience back home, and I intend to learn a lot while I'm over here." She looked around at the wall of rocks behind them and at the ripples of water splashing gently on the pebbles. "Which reminds me. What are you doing down here?"

Denny shrugged. "Just messing about, I suppose. Getting the lay of the land. I've proved Cameron wrong already. There was a seal here when I came down. Cute little bugger, sunning himself on a rock near the shore. I didn't scare him off, either. I think he left to go fishing."

"I hope he comes back," Elizabeth said. "I haven't seen a seal before. Except in zoos, I mean. Never out in the wild."

"Really?" said Denny. "I thought they were quite common out in California.''

"Everything is quite common out in California!" Elizabeth quipped. "I happen to be from Virginia."

"Well, if the seal turns up again, I'll give you a shout," Denny promised.

"Yes, we ought to tell Cameron about him."

"Something tells me he'll find out on his own," Denny said. "The beastie was wearing a wee black collar around his neck."

Owen had found Alasdair walking alone on the cliffs and had tagged along, despite the pointed lack of an invitation to do so. "This is a very dramatic place!" he remarked. "It could be any century at all, couldn't it?"

"I suppose so," Alasdair said politely.

"And with such a bloody history!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Violent, I mean," Owen corrected himself, suddenly remembering what his original adjective meant in Britain. "Viking sea raids! Druid sacrifices! Imagine the ghosts that must walk these hills!"

Alasdair summoned up a frosty smile. "I hardly think it was quite the pageant that you imagine. I rather think it was countless years of tedium, of dull little nobodies scratching out an existence on a seabound rock, stinking of peat smoke and sheep shite."

Owen blinked at this outburst, He was not sure what shite was, but he rather thought it must be what it sounded like.

"But surely you're interested in their way of life," he stammered.

"Not particularly,'' said Alasdair, walking faster. "I think the common man has always been pretty much the same, from Babylon to Bearsden. What interests me are those who take charge of the common man. The leader for whom the great tomb is built, for whom the gold is fashioned into ornaments."

Owen nodded. "That's just how I feel about murderers! I mean, money isn't the only measure of a powerful person. Murderers are usually highly intelligent, and they're trying to get out of adversity by following their own rules. They're crazy, of course," he added, seeing the look on Alasdair's face.

"You haven't much of a sample to judge from, have you?'' Alasdair smiled. "Since you can only judge by the ones who were caught. And who knows what percentage that is? By definition, the very best of the breed are never considered at all."

Owen shrugged. "Well, maybe a few were just caught by bad luck, but in general I guess you're right. I'd say the guy who killed Keenan in Edinburgh was a leader type. Imagine killing someone in front of a whole alleyful of witnesses!"

"Well, it was dark, wasn't it?" Alasdair pointed out. "Not much risk there, considering the slow reflexes of the average person in shock. Still, that's only rebellion on a small scale, in our tight little society of today. They're hardly worth your obsession. The true rebels lived centuries ago, when you could level whole kingdoms, not just individuals. When murder was a privilege of the elite, and no one questioned it. I hope that we will find evidence of such a great one here."

"I don't think there were any big shots here on Banrigh,'' said Owen, scratching his head. "Skye, maybe."

Alasdair pointed to the standing stones, shining red in the slant of the evening sun. "Somebody who was somebody was here."

CHAPTER

9

By ten o'clock the sky was a sheet of copper, streaked with thin black clouds against the silhouettes of the mountains. The diggers had taken their dinner plates outside, where they sat on the rocks watching the sunset.

"Nature's fireworks!" Marchand said, waving his fork at the sky.

Owen shoveled a heaping forkload of rice into his mouth. "What is this stuff?"

"Chicken curry," said Denny. "Invented by the Indians, but cooked by the Danes, I believe."

Gitte smiled. "I enjoy to cook," she said.

Elizabeth, who had done at least half of the preparation of the meal, noticed the conspicuous lack of credit given to the American contribution, but she decided that it was not worth mentioning, since dinner had turned out to be considerably less of a production than she had expected. The provisions for the expedition consisted almost entirely

of packets of dehydrated stews and curries, to which one added water, and which were then heated in a saucepan on the camp stove. Elizabeth decided that it didn't really matter who did the cooking, since it was hardly any bother at all. Even so, she would have preferred not sharing the task with Gitte. The cooking was nothing; listening to Gitte run on about Alasdair's preferences in food and the restaurant they went to on his birthday—that was a chore! She considered asking Denny to help her with future meals, but as soon as she thought of it, she realized that she would never get this plan past Gitte. No meal would be prepared except under Gitte's supervision—with all credit going to her. If Marchand was the father of the expedition, Gitte seemed determined to be the mother.

"Can we get any news on the radio?" Elizabeth asked Callum.

Callum Farthing laughed. "It isn't that kind of radio," he told her. "It's just for sending messages over a distance of a few miles. Something like your CB in the States."

"Besides," Gitte said, "it is very late, and we should all go to sleep now so that we can begin working early tomorrow." She began to gather up the plates.

Elizabeth sighed. "Is it very far from here to Cameron's island?" she asked Denny.

He shrugged. "In comparison to what? You saw how long it took this afternoon. Why do you ask?"

"I was thinking of swimming it."

Although the sky was cloudy, it was already well past dawn by seven o'clock. By then the camp was stirring. Gitte had taken the water bucket with her when she went to the burn for her morning ablutions. Shortly after her return she had managed to wake everyone up—with a combination of coffee smells and a rendering of "Blowin' in the Wind," in Danish and off-key. Breakfast was powdered eggs and stewed tomatoes, and Elizabeth was glad to let Gitte have the credit for its concoction.

"Do we have any marmalade for this bread?" asked Denny, eyeing the untoasted lump on his plate.

"There's something in a jar on the table," Elizabeth replied. "Shall I get it?"

"Hold it!'' Owen called after her. "Was it an old mayonnaise jar with no label? I thought so. That's not to eat. It's a honey-and-wax mixture. For my bagpipes," he added, seeing the others' puzzled expressions.

"You feed your bagpipes?" Elizabeth asked.

"That's exactly what it's called!" Owen said eagerly. "Feeding the bagpipes! The inner bag is leather, and you have to keep it lubricated so that it won't crack and split."

"Can't you just use saddle soap?"

"No. There are commercial preparations that you can use nowadays, but the traditional treatment has always been honey and hot wax. I thought, being an archaeologist and all, I'd like to stick with tradition."

Denny nodded. "Stick with tradition, indeed. So you're going to pour this gunk down your bagpipes?''

"Tonight after dinner."

"And then I suppose you won't be able to play them for ... oh ... at least a week?" Elizabeth said hopefully.

"They should be okay by tomorrow."

"Here is your marmalade, Denny." said Gitte. Holding out a small white jar. "I brought some myself." She smiled triumphantly at Elizabeth.

Elizabeth smiled back with equal warmth. "How very clever of you," she said.

As they finished their coffee, Tom Leath outlined the plans for the day. "We're going to do background work," he explained. "This site has never really been studied, so the more we find out about this island, the better off we'll be. I want soil samples taken—that's you, Alasdair—not only from the stone circle, but also from the peat, the field of heather, and so on. Check for chalk dust, outcroppings of rock—anything we ought to know about."

"Right," Alasdair said. "I know the drill. And I'll work alone."

Leath ignored this remark and the hurt look that crossed Gitte's face. "And, Denny, you need to take the surveying equipment up the mountain and give us some general plans of the site."

"Can I poke about a bit while I'm up there?" Denny wanted to know.

"Not today," Marchand said. "We need the overview before we go on with the main focus of our project."

"Okay." Denny nodded. "It'll keep."

"What will keep?" Elizabeth whispered.

"Callum, you'll be doing the photography, of course," Leath told him. "We need some shots from above, from where Denny is surveying, but also close shots of the circle itself from various angles. Marchand and I will be walking around the island looking for other signs of the culture of the circle builders. Grave sites, a brock . . . whatever.''

"What about me?" Elizabeth asked.

"You'll be digging an exploratory trench just beyond the circle itself. Go down a few inches by shovel, and then trowel. We want soil layers, evidence of chalk. Bones if we're lucky."

"Gold bracelets if we're really lucky," Denny called.

"Gitte can help you," Leath continued.

"Oh, no!" Elizabeth said too quickly. "I don't need any help at all!"

After a short, embarrassed silence Denny spoke up again. "I could use a hand with the surveying, then. Somebody needs to note down the figures and all that. I'd be glad of your help, Gitte."

She smiled and nodded. "Yes, Denny, of course."

Elizabeth felt guilty again. I suppose I ought to beg her pardon, she thought, but then I'd feel guilty for lying.

"What about me?" Owen asked plaintively.

"Not forgotten," said Leath, consulting his notes. "You're to have a look at that monolith on the wee island offshore. Just find out all you can. Whether the rock matches the stone circle; type of soil; angle in relation to the circle . . . Any questions?"

Owen frowned. "I didn't see a boat. Did you see a boat?"

"There's supposed to be an old rowboat beside the hut here."

"Where?" Owen asked.

"Right," said Leath. "Gilchrist, your assignment is to find the bloody rowboat. Any other questions?"

"Just one." It was Denny. "What time is lunch?"

The morning passed quickly for Elizabeth. She had someone to talk to for most of the morning. First, Alasdair appeared with his auger and plastic bags to collect the first in his series of soil samples.

"Yours is an interesting job," she told him. "You might find all sorts of things buried here."

Alasdair smiled. "Perhaps you're thinking of metal detectors," he said. "I'm just differentiating between loam and sand—that sort of thing."

Elizabeth reddened. "Yes, I know about soil sampling," she told him. "I'm getting a master's in forensic anthropology, and we find soil analysis useful. I was thinking that you might find evidence of, say, human sacrifice in the soil. Like the bog people in Scandinavia."

Alasdair smiled. "I doubt there were any ritual burials in this peat bog. I suppose it would preserve the bodies well enough because of the high acidity and natural formalin, but I'm not likely to stumble across anything spectacular on a random soil sampling. I doubt that we shall find anything at all dramatic here. I fear we'll dash the hopes of your fellow countryman."

Elizabeth sighed. "Owen is a bit gung ho, isn't he? He's very new at archaeology, and I'm afraid he's based his impressions on Raiders of the Lost Ark.''

"This should set him to rights, then," said Alasdair, emptying the core of soil into his plastic bag. "I'm sure I shall find nothing more exciting than a few dead sheep."

By the time Callum had finished the overhead photographs of the stone circle, taken from the path on the mountain, Elizabeth had begun to trowel away the soil in her trench, a few millimeters at a time.

"Am I in your way?" she asked as he adjusted the focus of his camera.

"Not yet. Want a picture of yourself with the circle behind you?"

Elizabeth touched her hair, which had been thoroughly tangled by a morning of sea winds. "What do I look like?"

Callum looked up from the viewfinder. "Very American," he told her.

Elizabeth frowned. "You're the one with a camera around your neck."

"The sweatshirt's a dead giveaway. Very collegiate."

"Oh, the outfit," Elizabeth said. "That's what everybody wears on digs. I always thought I looked sort of Celtic, though, with my dark hair and blue eyes."

Callum shrugged. "I suppose so. I always think of them as redheads, myself."

Since Callum himself had bright red hair, Elizabeth decided that this was a form of projection and that it didn't bear arguing about. She put down her trowel and posed in front of the largest stone of the circle. She turned her profile to the camera and stared out to the sea with what she hoped was a brooding expression. She tried to capture the mood of an ancient Celt by imagining one of the Highland legends: crashing breakers turning into demon horses to carry away drowned sailors; a young girl waiting for a ship that never comes; an island woman watching the empty sea for her selkie lover . . .

"Now how do I look?" she asked Callum, trying not to move her lips.

He shrugged. "Dunno. Bit like one of those perfume commercials, I s'pose. The ones that try for a mood instead of bludgeoning you with the product. What would you be selling? Old Spices for Ladies, if there is such a thing. Or some wild West scent. Old Cowhide?"

"You Scots are a romantic lot!" Elizabeth grumbled.

"We are," said Callum, "but we're not much on pretense. It isn't something that you play at. It happens—or it doesn't."

She nodded. "Mostly it doesn't."

Alasdair set down the bag of soil and glanced at his watch. It was nearly the hour the others had agreed on for lunch, but he was not hungry, at least not hungry enough to give up his solitude for the trivial banter of his fellow workers. He rather enjoyed being alone with his thoughts and with the rough beauty of the island. Perhaps he could buy it someday, when he had made a success of his medical career. People did own islands, he knew. They even built very grand houses on them. He stretched his long legs out in the grass, thinking for just a moment of sheep droppings. But no, it had been a good many decades since sheep had grazed the fields on Banrigh. He liked the feel of the sun on his face—really lovely weather they were having, and not something you could take for granted in the islands. It was bound to rain sooner or later. Another good reason not to go back for lunch. He'd better get as much done as he possibly could, in case the weather didn't hold.

Alasdair did not mind hard work, not even menial work, as long as he felt that he was appreciated, that his work was contributing to his future. The archaeological expedition might seem an odd choice of holiday for a medical student, but he liked the idea of being the physician for the crew, and he thought that archaeology was a rather posh hobby for one to have. The right sort of people had an interest in antiquities; it might serve him well in the future.

He smiled to himself. Besides, there was always the promise of adventure, which appealed to him. The crass little American might be right about treasure in the Highlands. There were certainly enough legends about it. Alasdair would be glad of a bit of treasure; he could use it more than the Crown could. It was a bit tiresome, at times, being all alone in the world and having to associate with scores of rich kids whose parents were seeing them through medical school with cars, flats, and a decent allowance, while Alasdair the Orphan worked and scrimped and studied hard to keep up with them. He was going to make it, though. Nothing was going to hold him back.

Idly, he began to scratch in the soil with the auger. Hello! What was that? . . . Nothing he need mention, he decided a few moments later. Lunch was definitely out.

"How did your morning go?" Elizabeth asked Denny in a carefully neutral tone.

"Just as you think it did, I'm sure," he murmured, scooping up the last bit of canned spaghetti from his tin plate. "She's bloody hopeless, is Gitte. Tell her everything twice, and she still gets it wrong! We managed, though. I finally let her hold the clipboard when I wasn't using it, and that was the extent of her assistance."

"I wonder if I'd be the same way if I were trying to

"I shouldn't think so," said Denny. "You're the competent sort, aren't you?"

Elizabeth sighed. "I wonder if I am. Look at this." She held up a forefinger with a small jagged cut just beginning to scab.

"How did you do that?" Denny asked. "That's bad-looking."

"I was walking along the shore just before lunch, and I saw something metal in the sand, so I ran and pulled on it." She grinned. "I guess I had caught some of Owen's madness! I was expecting to find the Lord of the Isles' crown, at the very least."

"And it was . . . ?"

"A rusty old piece of metal. Probably off a shipwreck, or even an old tin can! And I got cut trying to retrieve it. That will teach me to go chasing treasure!"

"It's more than a scratch," Denny said, inspecting her hand. "What have you done about it?"

"Well, I dipped it in the ocean. And I did think of showing it to Alasdair, but he didn't turn up for lunch. Besides, I'm not sure I'd like the idea of being his patient —not after listening to Gitte run on about him by the hour. Anyway, it's not that bad."

"Well, I can see how you wouldn't want Alasdair putting on his doctorly airs for you, but I don't think you can risk getting it infected. Not with us grubbing about in the dirt and all. You'll fetch up with lockjaw if you're not careful. Here, I tell you what—" He fished in the pocket of his trousers and brought out a small plastic bottle. "I'll share my antibiotic tablets with you. They're strong stuff; ought to keep the finger germs at bay."

"Oh, I couldn't take your medicine."

"Go on!" he urged. "This is my second bottle. I'm nearly well, I swear it. This is just my doctor making sure. Go on—take one!"