An Echo in the Bone (56 page)

She sat still for a long time, head on her knees, until rational thought began to come back.

She couldn’t be mistaken. She’d passed through time twice, and
knew
the feeling. But this hadn’t been nearly so shocking. Her skin still prickled and her nerves jumped and her inner ears rang as though she’d thrust her head into a hive of hornets—but she felt solid. She felt as though a red-hot wire had sliced her in two, but she hadn’t had the horrible sense of being disassembled, turned physically inside out.

A terrible thought sent her surging to her feet, clinging to the console. Had she jumped? Was she somewhere—some
when—
else? But the metal console was cool and solid under her hands, the smell of damp rock and cable insulation unchanged.

“No,” she whispered, and flicked the power light for reassurance. It came on, and the train, still in gear, gave a sudden lurch. Hastily, she throttled back the speed to less than a crawl.

She couldn’t have jumped into the past. Small objects in direct contact with a traveler’s person seemed to move with them, but an entire train and its track was surely pushing it. “Besides,” she said out loud, “if you’d gone more than twenty-five years or so into the past, the tunnel wouldn’t
be
here. You’d be inside… solid rock.” Her gorge rose suddenly, and she threw up.

The sense of… it… was receding, though. It—whatever it was—was behind her. Well, that settled it, she thought, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. There bloody well
had
to be a door at the far end, because there was no way she was going back the way she’d come.

There was a door. A plain, ordinary, industrial metal door. And a padlock, unlocked, hanging from an open hasp. She could smell WD-40; someone had oiled the hinges, very recently, and the door swung open easily when she turned the knob. She felt suddenly like Alice, after falling down the White Rabbit’s hole. A really mad Alice.

A steep flight of steps lay on the other side of the door, dimly lit—and at the top was another metal door, edged with light. She could hear the rumble and the metallic whine of a ceiling crane in operation.

Her breath was coming fast, and not from the effort of climbing the stairs. What would she find on the other side? It was the servicing chamber inside the dam; she knew that much. But would she find Thursday on the other side? The
same
Thursday she’d had when the tunnel doors had closed behind her?

She gritted her teeth and opened the door. Rob Cameron was waiting, lounging back against the wall, lit cigarette in hand. He broke into an enormous grin at sight of her, dropped the butt, and stepped on it.

“Knew ye’d make it, hen,” he said. Across the room, Andy and Craig turned from their work and applauded.

“Buy ye a pint after work, then, lass,” Andy called.

“Two!” shouted Craig.

She could still taste bile at the back of her throat. She gave Rob Cameron the sort of look she’d given Mr. Campbell.

“Don’t,” she said evenly, “call me hen.”

His good-looking face twitched and he tugged at his forelock with mock subservience.

“Anything you say, boss,” he said.

HILLTOPS

IT WAS NEARLY SEVEN by the time he heard Brianna’s car in the drive. The kids had had their supper, but came swarming out to her, clinging to her legs as though she’d just come back from darkest Africa or the North Pole.

It was some time before the kids were settled for the night and Bree had time to give her undivided attention to him. He didn’t mind. “Are you starving?” she said. “I can fix—”

He interrupted her, taking her by the hand and drawing her into his office, where he carefully closed and locked the door. She was standing there, hair half matted from her hard hat, grimy from spending the day in the bowels of the earth. She smelled of earth. Also engine grease, cigarette smoke, sweat, and… beer?

“I’ve a lot to tell you,” he said. “And I know ye’ve a lot to tell me. But first… could ye just slip off your jeans, maybe, sit on the desk, and spread your legs?”

Her eyes went perfectly round.

“Yes,” she said mildly. “I could do that.”

ROGER HAD OFTEN WONDERED whether it was true what they said about redheaded people being more volatile than the usual—or whether it was just that their emotions showed so suddenly and alarmingly on their skins. Both, he thought.

Maybe he should have waited ’til she’d got her clothes on before telling her about Miss Glendenning. If he had, though, he’d have missed the remarkable sight of his wife, naked and flushed with fury from the navel upward.

“That bloody old besom! If she thinks she can get away with—”

“She can’t,” he interrupted firmly. “Of course she can’t.”

“You bet she can’t! I’ll go down there first thing tomorrow and—”

“Well, maybe not.”

She stopped and looked at him, one eye narrowed.

“Maybe not
what
?”

“Maybe not you.” He fastened his own jeans, and picked hers up. “I was thinking it might be best if I go.”

She frowned, turning that one over.

“Not that I think ye’d lose your temper and set about the old bitch,” he added, smiling, “but you have got your job to go to, aye?”

“Hmmm,” she said, seeming skeptical of his ability to adequately impress Miss Glendenning with the magnitude of her crime.

“And if ye
did lose
the heid and nut the woman, I’d hate to have to explain to the kids why we were visiting Mummy in jail.”

That made her laugh, and he relaxed a little. He really didn’t
think
she’d resort to physical violence, but then, she hadn’t seen Jemmy’s ear right after he’d come home. He’d had a strong urge himself to go straight down to the school and show the woman what it felt like, but he was in better command of himself now.

“So what
do
you mean to say to her?” She fished her brassiere out from under the desk, giving him a succulent view of her rear aspect, as she hadn’t put the jeans on yet.

“Nothing. I’ll speak to the principal.
He
can have a word with her.”

“Well, that might be better,” she said slowly. “We don’t want Miss Glendenning to take it out on Jemmy.”

“Right.” The beautiful flush was fading. Her hard hat had rolled off under the chair; he picked it up and set it on her head again. “So—how was work today? And why don’t ye wear knickers to work?” he asked, suddenly remembering.

To his startlement, the flush roared back like a brushfire.

“I got out of the habit in the eighteenth century,” she snapped, plainly taking the huff. “I only wear knickers for ceremonial purposes anymore. What did you think, I was planning to seduce Mr. Campbell?”

“Well, not if he’s anything like you described him, no,” he said mildly. “I just noticed when ye left this morning, and wondered.”

“Oh.” She was still ruffled, he could see that and wondered why. He was about to ask again about her day when she took the hat off and eyed him speculatively.

“You said if I wore the hat, you’d tell me what you were doing with that champagne bottle.

Other than giving it to Mandy to throw through the window,” she added, with a tinge of wifely censoriousness. “What were you
thinking
, Roger?”

“Well, in all honesty, I was thinking about your arse,” he said. “But it never occurred to me that she’d throw the thing. Or that she
could
throw it like that.”

“Did you ask her why she did it?”

He stopped, nonplused.

“It hadn’t occurred to me that she’d have a reason,” he confessed. “I snatched her off the table as she was about to pitch face-first into the broken window, and I was so frightened that I just picked her up and smacked her bum.”

“I don’t think she’d do something like that for no reason,” Bree said meditatively. She’d put aside the hard hat and was scooping herself into her brassiere, a spectacle Roger found diverting under just about any circumstances.

It wasn’t until they’d gone back to the kitchen for their own late supper that he remembered to ask again how her workday had gone.

“Not bad,” she said, with a good assumption of casualness. Not so good as to convince him, but good enough that he thought better of prodding, and instead asked, “Ceremonial purposes?”

A broad grin spread across her face.

“You know. For you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you and your fetish for women’s lacy underthings.”

“What—you mean you only wear knickers for—”

“For you to take off, of course.”

There was no telling where the conversation might have gone from this point, but it was interrupted by a loud wail from above, and Bree disappeared hastily in the direction of the stairs, leaving Roger to contemplate this latest revelation.

He’d got the bacon fried and the tinned beans simmering by the time she reappeared, a small frown between her brows.

“Bad dream,” she said, in answer to his lifted brow. “The same one.”

“The bad thing trying to get in her window again?”

She nodded and took the saucepan of beans he handed her, though she didn’t move immediately to serve out the food.

“I asked her why she threw the bottle.”

“Aye?”

Brianna took the bean spoon, holding it like a weapon.

“She said she saw him outside the window.”

“Him? The—”

“The Nuckelavee.”

IN THE MORNING, the broch was just as it had been the last time he’d looked. Dark. Quiet, save for the rustling of the doves overhead. He’d taken away the rubbish; no new fish papers had come.
Swept and garnished
, he thought. Waiting for the occupation of whatever roaming spirit might happen by?

He shook that thought off and closed the door firmly. He’d get new hinges and a padlock for it, next time he passed by the Farm and Household Stores.

Had Mandy really seen someone? And if she had, was it the same tramp who had frightened Jem? The idea of someone hanging round, spying on his family, made something hard and black curl through his chest, like a sharp-pointed iron spring. He stood for a moment, narrowly surveying the house, the grounds, for any trace of an intruder. Anywhere a man might hide. He’d already searched the barn and the other outbuildings.

The Dunbonnet’s cave? The thought—with his memory of Jem standing right by the mouth of the cave—chilled him. Well, he’d soon find out, he thought grimly, and with a last glance at Annie MacDonald and Mandy, peacefully hanging out the family washing in the yard below, he set off.

He kept a sharp ear out today. He heard the echo of the red stags belling, still hard at it, and once saw a small herd of hinds in the distance, but luckily met no lust-crazed males. No lurking tramps, either.

It took him some time of casting about to find the cave’s entrance, even though he’d been there only the day before. He made a good bit of noise, approaching, but stood outside and called,

“Hallo, the cave!” just in case. No answer.

He approached the entrance from the side, pressing back the covering gorse with a forearm, ready in case the tramp might be lurking inside—but he could tell as soon as the damp breath of the place touched his face that it was unoccupied.

Nonetheless, he poked his head in, then swung himself down into the cave itself. It was dry, for a cave in the Highlands, which was not saying all that much. Cold as a tomb, though. It was no wonder Highlanders had a reputation for toughness; anyone who wasn’t would have succumbed to starvation or pneumonia in short order.

Despite the chill of the place, he stood for a minute, imagining his father-in-law here. It was empty and cold, but oddly peaceful, he thought. No sense of foreboding. In fact, he felt…

welcomed, and the notion made the hairs prickle on his arms.

“Grant, Lord, that they may be safe,” he said quietly, his hand resting on the stone at the entrance. Then he climbed out, into the sun’s warm benediction.

That strange sense of welcome, of having been somehow acknowledged, remained with him.

“Well, what now,
athair-céile
?” he said aloud, half joking. “Anyplace else I should look?”

Even as he said it, he realized that he
was
looking. On the top of the next small hill was the heap of stones Brianna had told him about. Human-made, she’d said, and thought it might be an Iron Age fort. There didn’t look to be enough of whatever it was standing to offer shelter to anyone, but out of sheer restlessness, he made his way down through the tumble of rock and heather, splashed through a tiny burn that gurgled through the rock at the foot of the hill, and toiled his way up to the heap of ancient rubble.

It
was
ancient—but not as old as the Iron Age. What he found looked like the ruins of a small chapel; a stone on the ground had a cross chiseled crudely into it, and he saw what looked like the weathered fragments of a stone statue, scattered by the entrance. There was more of it than he’d thought from a distance; one wall still reached as high as his waist, and there were parts of two more. The roof had long since fallen in and disappeared, but a length of the rooftree was still there, the wood gone hard as metal.

Wiping sweat from the back of his neck, he stooped and picked up the statue’s head. Very old.

Celtic, Pictish? Not enough left to tell even the statue’s intended gender.

He passed a thumb gently over the statue’s sightless eyes, then set the head carefully atop the half wall; there was a depression there, as though there might once have been a niche in the wall.

“Okay,” he said, feeling awkward. “See you later, then.” And, turning, made his way down the rough hill toward home, still with that odd sense of being accompanied on his way.

The Bible says, “Seek, and ye shall find,”
he thought. And said aloud to the vibrant air, “But there’s no guarantee about
what
you’ll find, is there?”

CONVERSATION WITH A HEADMASTER

AFTER A PEACEFUL LUNCH with Mandy, who seemed to have forgotten all about her nightmares, he dressed with some care for his interview with the headmaster of Jem’s school.

Mr. Menzies was a surprise; Roger hadn’t thought to ask Bree what the man was like, and had been expecting something squat, middle-aged, and authoritarian, along the lines of his own headmaster at school. Instead, Menzies was close to Roger’s own age, a slender, pale-skinned man with spectacles and what looked like a humorous eye behind them. Roger didn’t miss the firm set of the mouth, though, and thought he’d been right to keep Bree from coming.