He glanced with narrowed eyes at Buccleigh for an instant, then made up his mind. “We’ll need a bit of thought to explain ye,” Roger said, rising. “Just for the moment, though—come with me, aye?”
Buccleigh stood at once and followed Roger into the scullery. She heard Buccleigh’s voice rise in momentary astonishment, a brief mutter of explanation from Roger, then the grating noise as they moved the bench that hid the access panel covering the priest’s hole.
Moving as if in a trance, Brianna rose hastily to clear and wash the three glasses, to put away the whisky and water. Hearing the knocker go against the front door, she jumped a little. Not the kids, after all. Who could that be?
She swept the family tree off the table and hurried down the hall, pausing to toss it onto Roger’s desk as she made her way to the door.
How old is he? she thought abruptly, as she reached for the handle. He looks to be in his late thirties, maybe, but—
“Hi,” said Rob Cameron, looking faintly alarmed at the look on her face. “Have I come at a bad time, then?”
ROB HAD COME to bring back a book Roger had lent him and to deliver an invitation: would Jem like to come to the pictures with Bobby on the Friday, then have a nice fish supper and spend the night?
“I’m sure he would,” Brianna said. “But he’s not—oh, there he is.” Annie had just driven up, with a clashing of gears that made the engine die in the driveway. Brianna shuddered slightly, pleased that Annie hadn’t taken her car.
By the time the kids had been extracted from the car, wiped off, and made to shake hands politely with Mr. Cameron, Roger had come out from the back of the house and was at once drawn into a conversation about his efforts on the chapel, which went on to such an extent that it became obvious that it was supper-time, and it would have been rude not to ask him to stay…
And so Brianna found herself scrambling eggs and heating beans and frying potatoes in a sort of daze, thinking of their uninvited guest under the scullery floor, who must be smelling the cooking and dying of hunger—and what on earth were they going to do with him?
All the time they ate, making pleasant conversation, herding the kids off to bed while Roger and Rob talked Pictish stones and archaeological excavations in the Orkneys, she found her mind dwelling on William Buccleigh MacKenzie.
The Orkneys, she thought. Roger said the Nuckelavee is an Orkney ghoulie. Has he been in the Orkneys? When? And why the bloody hell was he hanging round our broch all this time? When he found what had happened, why didn’t he just go right back? What is he doing here?
By the time Rob took his leave—and another book—with profuse thanks for the food and a reminder of the movie date on Friday, she was prepared to haul William Buccleigh out of the priest’s hole by the scruff of the neck, drive him straight to Craigh na Dun herself, and stuff him bodily into a stone.
But when he finally clambered out, moving slowly, white-faced and clearly hungry, she found her agitation lessening. Just a little. She made fresh eggs for him, quickly, and sat with him while Roger went round the house, checking doors and windows.
“Though I suppose we needn’t worry so much about that,” she observed caustically, “since you’re inside now.”
He looked up, tired but wary.
“I did say I was sorry,” he said softly. “D’ye want me to go?”
“And where would you go, if I said yes?” she asked unkindly.
He turned his face toward the window over the kitchen sink. In the daylight, it looked out on peace, on the kailyard with its worn wooden gate and the pasture beyond. Now there was nothing out there but the black of a moonless Highland night. The sort of night when Christians stayed indoors and put holy water on the doorposts, because the things that walked the moors and the high places were not always holy.
He didn’t say anything but swallowed, and she saw the fair hairs on his forearms rise.
“You don’t have to go,” she said, gruff. “We’ll find you a bed. But tomorrow…”
He bobbed his head, not looking at her, and made to rise. She stopped him with a hand on his arm and he looked at her, startled, his eyes dark in the quiet light.
“Just tell me one thing now,” she said. “Do you want to go back?”
“Oh, God, yes,” he said, and turned his head away, but his voice was thick. “I want Morag. I want my wee lad.”
She let go of his wrist and stood up, but another thought had occurred to her.
“How old are you?” she asked abruptly, and he shrugged, brushing the back of his wrist across his eyes.
“Eight and thirty,” he said. “Why?”
“Just… curious,” she said, and moved to turn the Aga’s heat down to its nighttime setting. “Come with me; I’ll make you a bed in the parlor. Tomorrow we’ll—we’ll see.”
She led him down the hall past Roger’s study, and in her stomach was a ball of ice. The light was on, and the family tree Roger had taken out to show William Buccleigh was still where she’d tossed it, on the desk. Had he seen the date? She thought not—or if he had, he hadn’t noticed. The dates of birth and death weren’t listed for everyone on that table—but they were for him. William Buccleigh MacKenzie had died, according to that table, at age thirty-eight.
He won’t get back, she thought, and the ice rose up around her heart.
LOCH ERROCHTY LAY dull as pewter under a lowering sky. They were standing on the footbridge across Alt Ruighe nan Saorach, the river that fed the loch, looking down to where the man-made loch spread itself between the smooth hills. Buck—he’d said that was what folk called him in America, and he’d got used to it—looked and looked, his face a study in amazement and dismay.
“Down there,” he said softly, pointing. “See where that wee burn comes down into it? That’s where my auntie Ross’s house stood. About a hundred feet below the burn.”
About thirty feet below the surface of the loch now.
“I imagine it’s something of a wrench,” Brianna said, not without sympathy. “To see things so changed.”
“It is that.” He glanced at her, those eyes, so unsettlingly like Roger’s, quick in his face. “It’s maybe more that so much hasna changed. Up there, aye?” He lifted his chin toward the distant mountains. “Just like they always were. And the wee birds in the grass, and the salmon jumping in the river. I could set foot on yon shore”—he nodded toward the end of the footbridge— “and feel as though I had walked there yesterday. I did walk there yesterday! And yet… all the people are gone.
“All of them,” he ended softly. “Morag. My children. They’re all dead. Unless I can go back.”
She hadn’t planned to ask him anything; better to wait until she and Roger could talk to him together in the evening after the kids were down. But the opportunity offered itself. Roger had driven Buck around the Highlands near Lallybroch, down the Great Glen along Loch Ness, and finally dropped him off at the Loch Errochty dam, where she was working today; she’d drive him back with her for supper.
They’d argued—in whispers—about it the night before. Not about what to say about him; he’d be Daddy’s relative, come for a short visit. That was the truth, after all. But whether to take him into the tunnel. Roger had been in favor of this, she very much against, remembering the shock of the… timeline?… cutting through her like a sharpened wire. She still hadn’t decided.
But now he’d brought up the subject of going back, on his own.
“When you came to yourself after you… came through, and realized what had happened,” she asked curiously, “why didn’t you go back into the circle right then?”
He shrugged.
“I did. Though I canna say that I realized straight off what had happened. I didna come to that for some days. But I kent something terrible had happened and the stones were to do wi’ it. So I was wary of them, as I imagine ye can understand.” He quirked an eyebrow at her, and she nodded reluctantly.
She could understand. She wouldn’t go within a mile of a standing stone herself, unless it was to save some member of her family from a horrible fate. And even then she might think twice. She dismissed the thought, though, and returned to her interrogation.
“But you did go back, you said. What happened?”
He looked helplessly at her, spreading his hands.
“I dinna ken how to describe it to ye. Nothing like that’s ever happened to me before.”
“Try,” she suggested, hardening her voice, and he sighed.
“Aye. Well, I walked up to the circle, and this time I could hear them—the stones. Talking to themselves, like, buzzing like a hive of bees, and with a sound in it made the hairs stand up on my nape.”
He’d wanted to turn and run then, but with thought of Morag and Jemmy in his mind, had determined to push on. He’d walked into the center of the circle, where the sound assailed him from all sides.
“I thought I’d lose my mind from it,” he said frankly. “Putting my fingers in my ears did nay good at all; it was inside me, like as if ’twas comin’ from my bones. Was it like that for you?” he asked suddenly, peering at her curiously.
“Yes, it was,” she answered shortly. “Or close enough. Go on. What did you do then?”
He’d seen the big cleft stone he’d gone through the first time and, taking as deep a breath as he could hold, had lunged through it.
“And ye can skin me for a liar if ye like,” he assured her. “I canna for the life of me tell ye what happened next, but after it did, I was lyin’ on the grass in the midst of the stones, and I was on fire.”
She looked at him, startled.
“Literally? I mean, were your clothes burning, or was it just—”
“I ken what ‘literally’ means,” he said, with an edge in his voice. “I may not be what you are, but I was educated.”
“Sorry.” She made a small apologetic nod and gestured to him to go on.
“Anyway, aye, I was literally on fire. My shirt was in flames. Here—” He unzipped his wind-cheater and fumbled with the buttons of Roger’s blue cambric shirt, pulling the edges apart to show her the sprawling reddish mark of a healing burn on his chest. He would have buttoned it again at once, but she motioned him not to and bent to look closer. It seemed to be centered on his heart. Was that significant? she wondered.
“Thank you,” she said, straightening up. “What—what were you thinking about when you went through?”
He stared at her.
“I was thinking I wanted to get back, what else?”
“Yes, of course. But were you thinking of someone in particular? Of Morag, I mean, or your Jem?”
The most extraordinary expression—shame? embarrassment?—crossed his face, and he looked away.
“I was,” he said briefly, and she knew he lied but couldn’t think why. He coughed and went on hurriedly.
“Well, so. I rolled upon the grass to put it out, and then I was sick. I lay there for a good while, not having the strength to rise. I dinna ken how long, but a long time. Ye ken what it’s like here, close to Midsummer Day? That milky light when ye canna see the sun, but it’s not really set?”