Outlander #2 - Page 97

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But…I'm real!" he burst out. "I can't just…evaporate!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No answers, only choices.

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

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

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

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

"Let's find her," he said.

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

48

WITCH-HUNT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Claire let go of the windowsill.

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

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

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

"She isn't here now, by chance, is she?" Claire asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You can't possibly be sure," he muttered to her under his breath.

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

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

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

"Yes, that's the one. I think perhaps we would like to talk to the Director, if he's available."

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

"Well, I'll go and ask for you, dearie. Could I tell him what it's for, though?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

The white-paneled door was beginning to open.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter end