"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.