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.
“Lionel Menzies,” the headmaster said, smiling. He had a solid handshake and a friendly air, and Roger found himself revising his strategy.
“Roger MacKenzie.” He let go and took the proffered seat, across the desk from Menzies. “Jem’s—Jeremiah’s—dad.”
“Oh, aye, of course. I rather thought I might see you or your wife, when Jem didn’t turn up at school this morning.” Menzies leaned back a little, folding his hands. “Before we go very far… could I just ask exactly what Jem told ye about what happened?”
Roger’s opinion of the man rose a grudging notch.
“He said that his teacher heard him say something to another lad in the Gaelic, whereupon she grabbed him by the ear and shook him. That made him mad and he called her names—also in Gaelic—for which you belted him.” He’d spotted the strap itself, hung up inconspicuously—but still quite visible—on the wall beside a filing cabinet.
Menzies’s eyebrows rose behind his spectacles.
“Is that not what happened?” Roger asked, wondering for the first time whether Jem had lied or omitted something even more horrible from his account.
“No, that’s what happened,” Menzies said. “I’ve just never heard a parent give such a concise account. Generally speaking, it’s a half hour of prologue, dissociated trivia, contumely, and contradiction—that’s if both parents come—and personal attacks before I can make out precisely what the trouble is. Thank you.” He smiled, and quite involuntarily, Roger smiled back.
“I was sorry to have to do it,” Menzies went on, not pausing for reply. “I like Jem. He’s clever, hardworking—and really funny.”
“He is that,” Roger said. “But—”
“But I hadn’t a choice, really,” Menzies interrupted firmly. “If none of the other students had known what he was saying, we might have done with a simple apology. But—did he tell ye what it was he said?”
“Not in detail, no.” Roger hadn’t inquired; he’d heard Jamie Fraser curse someone in Gaelic only three or four times—but it was a memorable experience, and Jem had an excellent memory.
“Well, I won’t, either, then, unless you insist. But the thing is, while only a few of the kids on the play yard likely understood him, they would tell—well, they have told, in fact—all their friends exactly what he said. And they know I understood it, too. I’ve got to support the authority of my teachers; if there’s no respect for the staff, the whole place goes to hell…. Did your wife tell me ye’d taught yourself? At Oxford, I think she said? That’s very impressive.”
“That was some years ago, and I was only a junior don, but yes. And I hear what you’re saying, though I unfortunately had to keep order and respect without the threat of physical force.” Not that he wouldn’t have loved to be able to punch one or two of his Oxford second-year students in the nose…
Menzies eyed him with a slight twinkle.
“I’d say your presence was likely adequate,” he said. “And given that you’re twice my size, I’m pleased to hear that you’re not inclined to use force.”
“Some of your other parents are?” Roger asked, raising his own brows.
“Well, none of the fathers has actually struck me, no, though it’s been threatened once or twice. Did have one mother come in with the family shotgun, though.” Menzies inclined his head at the wall behind him, and looking up, Roger saw a spray of black pockmarks in the plaster, mostly—but not entirely—covered by a framed map of Africa.
“Fired over your head, at least,” Roger said dryly, and Menzies laughed.
“Well, no,” he said, deprecating. “I asked her please to set it down carefully, and she did, but not carefully enough. Caught the trigger somehow and blam! The poor woman was really unnerved—though not quite as much as I was.”
“You’re bloody good, mate,” Roger said, smiling in acknowledgment of Menzies’s skill in handling difficult parents—including Roger—but leaning forward a little to indicate that he meant to take control of the conversation. “But I’m not—not yet, anyway—complaining about your belting Jem. It’s what led to that.”
Menzies drew breath and nodded, setting his elbows on the desk and steepling his hands.
“Aye, right.”
“I understand the need to support your teachers,” Roger said, and set his own hands on the desk. “But that woman nearly tore my son’s ear off, and evidently for no crime greater than saying a few words—not cursing, just words—in the Gàidhlig.”
Menzies eyes sharpened, catching the accent.
“Ah, you’ve got it, then. Wondered, ken, was it you or your wife had it.”
“You make it sound like a disease. My wife’s an American—surely ye noticed?”
Menzies gave him an amused look—no one failed to notice Brianna—but said only, “Aye, I noticed. She told me her da was Scots, though, and a Highlander. You speak it at home?”
“No, not much. Jem got it from his grandda. He’s … no longer with us,” he added.
Menzies nodded.
“Ah,” he said softly. “Aye, I had it from my grandparents, as well—my mam’s folk. Dead, too, now. They were from Skye.” The usual implied question hovered, and Roger answered it.
“I was born in Kyle of Lochalsh, but I grew up mostly in Inverness. Picked up most of my own Gaelic on the fishing boats in the Minch.” And in the mountains of North Carolina.
Menzies nodded again, for the first time looking down at his hands rather than at Roger.
“Been on a fishing boat in the last twenty years?”
“No, thank God.”
Menzies smiled briefly, but didn’t look up.
“No. You won’t find much of the Gaelic there these days. Spanish, Polish, Estonian… quite a bit of those, but not the Gaelic. Your wife said ye’d spent a number of years in America, so you’ll maybe not have noticed, but it’s not much spoken in public anymore.”
“To be honest, I hadn’t paid it much mind—not ’til now.”
Menzies nodded again, as though to himself, then took off his spectacles and rubbed at the marks they’d left on the bridge of his nose. His eyes were pale blue and seemed suddenly vulnerable, without the protection of his glasses.
“It’s been on the decline for a number of years. Much more so for the last ten, fifteen years. The Highlands are suddenly part of the UK—or at least the rest of the UK says so—in a way they’ve never been before, and keeping a separate language is seen as not only old-fashioned but outright destructive.
“It’s no what you’d call a written policy, to stamp it out, but the use of Gaelic is strongly… discouraged… in schools. Mind”—he raised a hand to forestall Roger’s response—“they couldn’t get away with that if the parents protested, but they don’t. Most of them are eager for their kids to be part of the modern world, speak good English, get good jobs, fit in elsewhere, be able to leave the Highlands… Not so much for them here, is there, save the North Sea?”
“The parents…”
“If they’ve learnt the Gaelic from their own parents, they deliberately don’t teach it to their kids. And if they haven’t got it, they certainly make no effort to learn. It’s seen as backward, ignorant. Very much a mark of the lower classes.”
“Barbarous, in fact,” Roger said, with an edge. “The barbarous Erse?”
Menzies recognized Samuel Johnson’s dismissive description of the tongue spoken by his eighteenth-century Highland hosts, and the brief, rueful smile lit his face again.
“Exactly. There’s a great deal of prejudice—much of it outspoken—against…”
“Teuchters?” “Teuchter” was a Lowland Scots term for someone in the Gaeltacht, the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, and in cultural terms the general equivalent of “hillbilly” or “trailer trash.”
“Oh, ye do know, then.”
“Something.” It was true; even as recently as the sixties, Gaelic speakers had been viewed with a certain derision and public dismissiveness, but this… Roger cleared his throat.
“Regardless, Mr. Menzies,” he said, coming down a bit on the “Mr.,” “I object very much to my son’s teacher not only disciplining him for speaking Gaelic but actually assaulting him for doing so.”
“I share your concern, Mr. MacKenzie,” Menzies said, looking up and meeting his eyes in a way that made it seem as though he truly did. “I’ve had a wee word with Miss Glendenning, and I think it won’t happen again.”
Roger held his gaze for moment, wanting to say all sorts of things but realizing that Menzies was not responsible for most of them.
“If it does,” he said evenly, “I won’t come back with a shotgun—but I will come back with the sheriff. And a newspaper photographer, to document Miss Glendenning being taken off in handcuffs.”
Menzies blinked once and put his spectacles back on.
“You’re sure ye wouldn’t rather send your wife round with the family shotgun?” he asked wistfully, and Roger laughed, despite himself.
“Fine, then.” Menzies pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll see ye out; I’ve got to lock up. We’ll see Jem on the Monday, then, will we?”
“He’ll be here. With or without handcuffs.”
Menzies laughed.
“Well, he needn’t worry about his reception. Since the Gaelic-speaking kids did tell their friends what it was he said, and he took his belting without a squeak, I think his entire form now regards him as Robin Hood or Billy Jack.”
“Oh, God.”