‘Getting a wee bit ahead of ourselves there. I was thinking more dinner, film, maybe showing you my cottage, with the childbirth for maybe some time in the future – but I see where you’re going.’
‘We can’t have a life here, is what I’m saying. So we’vegotto go back. And everyone must be looking for us. Lenny will be desperate.’ I spared another thought for my brother, searching the castle site for me probably with increasing distress. I might be his snappy, resentful sister but he would be missing me, because he cared. He’d have called the police and my parents, they would all have gathered on that windy hilltop, gazing out to sea. Police launches would have gone out, the coastguard would be searching for my body amid the undulating waves. I’d lost track of how long we’d been here, tucked away in this little fold of time, while my family would have suffered through every day passing. And there I had been, thinking I’d managed to stop feeling guilty about Lenny, only for it to start all over again with a new topic. Ihadto get back, even if it was just to apologise.
‘I don’t think staying was ever the option, was it?’ Mal slid down from the alcove and landed in front of me. ‘What’s this bit of the castle?’
‘You’re the one writing about it.’ I looked up at the soaring walls, broken by window gaps in a line all the way up, like buttons on a ruined coat.
‘Gatehouse, then. Not much use now for guarding the entrance.’
‘Lenny wants to turn it into staff accommodation,’ I said. ‘When we rebuild the castle as a hotel.Ifwe ever do, which is unlikely, but we have to dosomethingwith it or it’s money we don’t have down the drain.’
Lachlan blew out a breath. ‘The twenty-first century has its drawbacks, doesn’t it?’
‘But we need to get back.’ I sounded a little less definite than I meant to. ‘People are missing us.’ Now I turned so that I was confronted by his flapping shirt. ‘Our families, people need us. Just because the realities of life there are a bit grim…’
‘As opposed to no toilets, terrible food, no washing facilities…’
‘Differentlygrim,’ I said. ‘You’re unemployed…’
‘Hey, I’m working for Historic Environment Scotland, I’ll have you know! It’s only temporary but if I make a good impression they might keep me on.’
‘All right, you’re temporarily employed. I’m a reluctant chemistry teacher. I live in a rented flat and my boyfriend has decamped to find someone who’s free to travel outside school holidays and doesn’t have to spend most evenings on paperwork.’
‘People have it worse, Pax,’ he said seriously. ‘It’s a life. We’ve got potential. Whereas what we have here is mostly turnips.’
‘And a dog to whom we are invisible.’
We both looked down at Cellar Dog, who had lain down alongside us panting slightly. ‘He’s very philosophical about it all, isn’t he? He’s decided he belongs to a group of beings he can only sense.’
‘Who give him meat scraps and let him share their blankets.’ I thought about the other dogs, who milled around the castle and didn’t seem to get more than the occasional boot. I remembered them huddling together outside in the storm, their coats wet and showing their ribs.
‘I’m pretty sure he’s a talbot. They’re extinct in our time. Crossbred with too many other types of dog, you see. Excellent hunting dogs, apparently.’
This ‘excellent hunting dog’ had mud smeared up his stomach and sides forming a Plimsoll line of grubbiness along his flanks. He scratched behind his ear and flopped a tongue in our general direction.
‘Right.’ I stepped back slightly. ‘We need to work out what I’m going to say to George tonight. I need help with the sort of questions to ask, bearing in mind we still aren’t sure of his connection to us being here.’
‘Do you want us to come with you?’ Lachlan scratched his chin again. ‘You might need help – that earl is a bit tall, dark and handsome for my liking.’
‘You cannot possibly be jealous of a man who’s been dead for donkey’s years and is my however-many-greats-grandfather.’
‘Kaylinn is prepared to see how much contact she can make with the dead,’ he said archly. ‘And I don’t think she has a séance in mind. But I think we grab Davey and get as much as he knows about the history of Scotland with particular relevance to now.’ He sighed. ‘I can join in where I’m able. We’ll see what we can piece together. You, your family, what the earl is here for, we might be able to stitch together some story that we’re here to be part of.’
15
The little kirk was a bare stone box with an altar. The windows were small and deeply arched and it smelled of cold air and damp rock. There was nothing of ecclesiastical architectural note about it, it was just a place with a cross above the door and two dogs fighting inside. It reminded me of my school dinner hall.
George was there already when I arrived, kneeling on the flagstones in front of the altar with his head bowed. I hesitated, but Cellar Dog marched in ahead of me, ignoring his quarrelling pack members, and shoved his nose in the back of George’s neck. Prayers were interrupted by a shout of alarm and George leaped to his feet.
I expect that seeing me didn’t brighten his day either.
‘Oh, it’s my wee demon.’ I didn’t like the slightly patronising tone he assumed. ‘Come to take my secrets. Tell me, demon, do you have a name?’
I so wanted to say something ridiculous but demonic, like Lucifer or Beelzebub but I didn’t. Instead I muttered, a touch rebelliously, ‘My name is Perdita. But everyone calls me Pax.’
‘Pax. A good name for an angelic demon.’
I didn’t say anything. I could see his hands still shaking as he propped himself up on the wall and realised that he was having as much difficulty adjusting to the situation as I was. The breezy, take-everything-in-my-stride attitude was probably very useful when you were leading men into battle, but it came over a bit hollow when facing someone that nobody else could see.
