“I was going to say like watching someone go slowly mad in front of you, but ‘creepy’ will do.” He took the pages from her and tapped them together. “It’s just an academic tic, I suppose. I don’t feel right in suppressing an original source.”
She gave a different snort, one indicating what she thought of Geillis Duncan as an original source of anything bar trouble. Still …
“I suppose you’re right,” she said reluctantly. “Maybe you could do a summary, though, and just mention where the notebooks are, in case someone down the line is really curious.”
“Not a bad thought.” He put the papers inside the notebook and rose, closing it as he did so. “I’ll go down and get them, then, maybe when school’s out. I could take Jem and show him the city; he’s old enough to walk the Royal Mile, and he’d love the castle.”
“Do not take him to the Edinburgh Dungeon!” she said at once, and he broke into a broad grin.
“What, ye don’t think wax figures of people being tortured are educational? It’s all historical, aye?”
“It would be a lot less horrible if it wasn’t,” she said, and, turning, caught sight of the wall clock. “Roger! Aren’t you supposed to be doing your Gaelic class at the school at two o’clock?”
He glanced at the clock in disbelief, snatched up the pile of books and papers on his desk, and shot out of the room in a flurry of very eloquent Gaelic.
She went out into the hall to see him hastily kiss Mandy and charge for the door. Mandy stood in the open doorway, waving enthusiastically.
“Bye-bye, Daddy!” she cried. “Bwing me ice cweam!”
“If he forgets, we’ll go into the village after supper and get some,” Brianna promised, bending down to pick her daughter up. She stood there holding Mandy, watching Roger’s ancient orange Morris cough, choke, shudder, and start up with a brief belch of blue smoke. She frowned slightly at the sight, thinking she must get him a set of new spark plugs, but waved as he leaned out at the corner of the drive, smiling back at them.
Mandy snuggled close, murmuring one of Roger’s more picturesque Gaelic phrases, which she was obviously committing to memory, and Bree bent her head, inhaling the sweet scent of Johnson’s baby shampoo and grubby child. No doubt it was the mention of Geillis Duncan that was making her feel still uneasy. The woman was well and truly dead, but after all … she was Roger’s multiple great-grandmother. And perhaps the ability to travel through stone circles was not the only thing to be passed down through the blood.
Though surely some things were diluted by time. Roger, for instance, had nothing in common with William Buccleigh MacKenzie, Geillis’s son by Dougal MacKenzie—and the man responsible for Roger’s being hanged.
“Son of a witch,” she said, under her breath. “I hope you rot in hell.”
“ ’At’s a bad word, Mummy,” Mandy said reprovingly.
It went better than he could have hoped. The schoolroom was crowded, with lots of kids, a number of parents, and even a few grandparents crammed in round the walls. He had that moment of light-headedness—not quite panic or stage fright, but a sense of looking into some vast canyon that he couldn’t see the bottom of—that he was used to from his days as a performer. He took a deep breath, put down his stack of books and papers, smiled at them, and said, “Feasgar math!”
That’s all it ever took; the first words spoken—or sung—and it was like taking hold of a live wire. A current sprang up between him and the audience, and the next words seemed to come from nowhere, flowing through him like the crash of water through one of Bree’s giant turbines.
After a word or two of introduction, he started with the notion of Gaelic cursing, knowing why most of the kids had come. A few parents’ brows shot up, but small, knowing smiles appeared on the faces of the grandparents.
“We haven’t got bad words in the Gàidhlig, like there are in the English,” he said, and grinned at the feisty-looking towhead in the second row, who had to be the wee Glasscock bugger who’d told Jemmy he was going to hell. “Sorry, Jimmy.
“Which is not to say ye can’t give a good, strong opinion of someone,” he went on, as soon as the laughter subsided. “But Gàidhlig cursing is a matter of art, not crudeness.” That got a ripple of laughter from the old people, too, and several of the kids’ heads turned toward their grandparents, amazed.
“For example, I once heard a farmer whose pig got into the mash tell her that he hoped her intestines would burst through her belly and be eaten by crows.”
An impressed “Oo!” from the kids, and he smiled and went on, giving carefully edited versions of some of the more creative things he’d heard his father-in-law say on occasion. No need to add that, lack of bad words notwithstanding, it is indeed possible to call someone a “daughter of a bitch” when wishing to be seriously nasty. If the kids wanted to know what Jem had really said to Miss Glendenning, they’d have to ask him. If they hadn’t already.
From there, he went to a more serious—but quick—description of the Gaeltacht, that area of Scotland where Gaelic was traditionally spoken, and told a few anecdotes of learning the Gaelic on herring boats in the Minch as a teenager—including the entire speech given by a particular Captain Taylor when a storm scoured out his favorite lobster hole and made away with all his pots (this piece of eloquence having been addressed, with shaken fist, to the sea, the heavens, the crew, and the lobsters). That one had them rolling again, and a couple of the old buggers in the back were grinning and muttering to one another, they having obviously encountered similar situations.
“But the Gàidhlig is a language,” he said, when the laughter had died down once more. “And that means its primary use is for communication—people talking to one another. How many of you have ever heard line singing? Waulking songs?”
Murmurs of interest; some had, some hadn’t. So he explained what waulking was: “The women all working together, pushing and pulling and kneading the wet wool cloth to make it tight and waterproof—because they didn’t have macs or wellies in the auld days, and folk would need to be out of doors day and night, in all kinds of weather, tending their animals or their crofts.” His voice was well warmed by now; he thought he could make it through a brief waulking song and, flipping open the folder, sang them the first verse and refrain, then got them to do it, as well. They got four verses, and then he could feel the strain starting to tell and brought it to a close.
“My gran used to sing that one,” one of the mothers blurted impulsively, then blushed red as a beet as everyone looked at her.
“Is your gran still alive?” Roger asked, and at her abashed nod, said, “Well, then, have her teach it to you, and you can teach it to your kids. That kind of thing shouldn’t be lost, aye?”
A small murmur of half-surprised agreement, and he smiled again and lifted the battered hymnbook he’d brought.
“Right. I mentioned the line singing, too. Ye’ll still hear this of a Sunday in kirk out on the Isles. Go to Stornaway, for instance, and ye’ll hear it. It’s a way of singing the psalms that goes back to when folk hadn’t many books—or maybe not so many of the congregation could read. So there’d be a precentor, whose job it was to sing the psalm, one line at a time, and then the congregation would sing it back to him. This book”—and he raised the hymnal—“belonged to my own father, the Reverend Wakefield; some of you might recall him. But originally it belonged to another clergyman, the Reverend Alexander Carmichael. Now he …” And he went on to tell them about the Reverend Carmichael, who had combed the Highlands and the Isles in the nineteenth century, talking with people, urging them to sing him their songs and tell him their ways, collecting “hymns, charms, and incantations” from the oral tradition wherever he could find them, and had published this great work of scholarship in several volumes, called the Carmina Gadelica.
He’d brought one volume of the Gadelica with him, and while he passed the ancient hymnal round the room, along with a booklet of waulking songs he’d put together, he read them one of the charms of the
new moon, the Cud Chewing Charm, the Indigestion Spell, the Poem of the Beetle, and some bits from “The Speech of Birds.”
Columba went out
An early mild morning;
He saw a white swan,
“Guile, guile,”
Down on the strand,
“Guile, guile,”
With a dirge of death,
“Guile, guile.”
A white swan and she wounded, wounded,
A white swan and she bruised, bruised,
The white swan of the two visions,
“Guile, guile,”
The white swan of the two omens,
“Guile, guile,”
Life and death,
“Guile, guile,”
“Guile, guile.”
When thy journey,
Swan of mourning?
Said Columba of love,
“Guile, guile,”
From Erin my swimming,
“Guile, guile,”
From the Fiann my wounding,
“Guile, guile,”
The sharp wound of my death,
“Guile, guile,”
“Guile, guile.”
White swan of Erin,
A friend am I to the needy;
The eye of Christ be on thy wound,
“Guile, guile,”
The eye of affection and of mercy,
“Guile, guile,”
The eye of kindness and of love,
“Guile, guile,”
Making thee whole,
“Guile, guile,”
“Guile, guile.”
Swan of Erin,
“Guile, guile,”
No harm shall touch thee,
“Guile, guile,”
Whole be thy wounds,
“Guile, guile.”
Lady of the wave,
“Guile, guile,”
Lady of the dirge,
“Guile, guile,”
Lady of the melody,
“Guile, guile.”
To Christ the glory,
“Guile, guile,”
To the Son of the Virgin,
“Guile, guile,”
To the great High-King,
“Guile, guile,”
To Him be thy song,
“Guile, guile,”
To Him be thy song,
“Guile, guile,”
“Guile guile!”
His throat hurt almost unbearably from doing the swan calls, from the soft moan of the wounded swan to the triumphant cry of the final words, and his voice cracked with it at the last, but triumphant it was, nonetheless, and the room erupted in applause.
Between soreness and emotion, he couldn’t actually speak for a few moments, and instead bowed and smiled and bowed again, mutely handing the stack of books and folders to Jimmy Glasscock to be passed round, while the audience swarmed up to congratulate him.
“Man, that was great!” said a half-familiar voice, and he looked up to find that it was Rob Cameron wringing his hand, shining-eyed with enthusiasm. Roger’s surprise must have shown on his face, for Rob bobbed his head toward the little boy at his side: Bobby Hurragh, whom Roger knew well from the choir. A heartbreakingly pure soprano, and a wee fiend if not carefully watched.
“I brought wee Bobby,” Rob said, keeping—Roger noticed—a tight grip on the kid’s hand. “My sister’s had to work today and couldn’t get off. She’s a widow,” he added, by way of explanation, both of the mother’s absence and his own stepping in.
“Thanks,” Roger managed to croak, but Cameron just wrung his hand again, and then gave way to the next well-wisher.
Among the mob was a middle-aged woman whom he didn’t know but who recognized him.
“My husband and I saw you sing once, at the Inverness Games,” she said, in an educated accent, “though you went by your late father’s name then, did you not?”
“I did,” he said, in the bullfrog croak that was as far as his voice was prepared to go just now. “Your—you have—a grandchild?” He waved vaguely at the buzzing swarm of kids milling round an elderly lady who, pink with pleasure, was explaining the pronunciation of some of the odd-looking Gaelic words in the storybook.
“Yes,” the woman said, but wouldn’t be distracted from her focus, which was the scar across his throat. “What happened?” she asked sympathetically. “Is it permanent?”
“Accident,” he said. “ ’Fraid so.”
Distress creased the corners of her eyes and she shook her head.
“Oh, such a loss,” she said. “Your voice was beautiful. I am so sorry.”
“Thanks,” he said, because it was all he could say, and she let him go then, to receive the praise of people who’d never heard him sing. Before.
Afterward, he thanked Lionel Menzies, who stood by the door to see people out, beaming like the ringmaster of a successful circus.
“It was wonderful,” Menzies said, clasping him warmly by the hand. “Even better than I’d hoped. Tell me, would ye think of doing it again?”
“Again?” He laughed, but broke off coughing in the middle. “I barely made it through this one.”
“Ach.” Menzies waved that off. “A dram’ll see your throat right. Come down the pub with me, why don’t you?”
Roger was about to refuse, but Menzies’s face shone with such pleasure that he changed his mind. The fact that he was wringing with sweat—performing always raised his body temperature by several degrees—and had a thirst fit for the Gobi Desert had nothing to do with it, of course.
“Just the one, then,” he said, and smiled.
As they crossed the parking lot, a battered small blue panel truck pulled up and Rob Cameron leaned out of the window, calling to them.
“Like it, did ye, Rob?” Menzies asked, still beaming.
“Loved it,” Cameron said, with every evidence of sincerity. “Two things, Rog—I wanted to ask, maybe, if ye’d let me see some of the old songs ye have; Siegfried MacLeod showed me the ones you did for him.”
Roger was a little taken aback, but pleased.
“Aye, sure,” he said. “Didn’t know you were a fan,” he joked.
“I love all the old stuff,” Cameron said, serious for once. “Really, I’d appreciate it.”
“Okay, then. Come on out to the house, maybe, next weekend?”
Rob grinned and saluted briefly.
“Wait—two things, ye said?” Menzies asked.
“Oh, aye.” Cameron reached over and picked up something from the seat between Bobby and him. “This was in with the Gaelic bits ye were handing round. It looked as though it was in there by mistake, though, so I took it out. Writing a novel, are ye?”
He handed out the black notebook, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” and Roger’s throat clenched as though he’d been garroted. He took the notebook, nodding speechlessly.
“Maybe ye’ll let me read it when it’s done,” Cameron said casually, putting his truck in gear. “I’m a great one for the science fiction.”
The truck pulled away, then stopped suddenly and reversed. Roger took a firmer grip on the notebook, but Rob didn’t look at it.
“Hey,” he said. “Forgot. Brianna said ye’ve got an old stone fort or some such on your place?”
Roger nodded, clearing his throat.
“I’ve got a friend, an archaeologist. Would ye mind, maybe, if he was to come and have a look at it sometime?”
“No,” Roger croaked, then cleared his throat again and said more firmly, “No, that’d be fine. Thanks.”
Rob grinned cheerfully at him and revved the engine.
“Nay bother, mate,” he said.
HIGH PLACES
Rob’s archaeologist friend, Michael Callahan, turned out to be a genial bloke in his fifties with thinning sandy hair, sunburned so badly and so often that his face looked like patchwork, dark freckles blotched among patches of raw pink skin. He ferreted about among the collapsed stones of the old church with every sign of interest, asking Roger’s permission t
o dig a trench along the outside of one wall.
Rob, Brianna, and the kids all came up briefly to watch, but archaeological work is not a spectator sport, and when Jem and Mandy got bored, the lot of them went down to the house to make lunch, leaving Roger and Mike to their poking.
“I don’t need you,” Callahan said, glancing up at Roger after a bit. “If you’ve things to do.”
There were always things to do—it was a farm, after all, if a small one—but Roger shook his head.
“I’m interested,” he said. “If I won’t be in your way …?”
“Not a bit of it,” Callahan said cheerfully. “Come and help me lift this, then.”
Callahan whistled through his teeth as he worked, occasionally muttering to himself, but for the most part made no comment on whatever he was looking at. Roger was called on now and then to help clear away rubble or hold an unstable stone while Callahan peered underneath it with a small torch, but for the most part Roger sat on the bit of uncollapsed wall, listening to the wind.
It was quiet on the hilltop, in the way that wild places are quiet, with a constant sense of unobtrusive movement, and it struck him odd that this should be so. Normally you didn’t get that feeling in places where people had lived, and plainly people had been mucking about on this hilltop for a good long time, judging from the depth of Callahan’s trench and the small whistles of interest he gave off now and then, like a marmoset.
Brianna brought them up sandwiches and lemonade and sat down beside Roger on the wall to eat.
“Rob gone off, then?” Roger asked, noticing that the truck was gone from the dooryard.
“Just to run some errands, he said. He said it didn’t look as though Mike would be finished anytime soon,” she said, with a glance at Callahan’s trouser seat, this sticking out from a bush as he burrowed happily beneath it.
“Maybe not,” Roger said, smiling, and leaning forward, kissed her lightly. She made a low, contented noise in her throat and stepped back, but kept hold of his hand for a moment.
“Rob asked about the old songs you did up for Sandy MacLeod,” she said, with a sideways glance down toward the house. “Did you tell him he could see them?”
“Oh, aye, I’d forgot that. Sure. If I’m not down when he comes back, you can show him them. The originals are in my bottom file drawer, in a folder labeled Cèolas.”
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