Cameron sighed. “Look: if there are no further strikes on Morningside, the Gorbals will be safe as well. Got it, Senga?”
Heather shrugged. “Fair enough, Jimmy.”
“Right. We’ll be off, then, your ladyship.” Cameron turned to Elizabeth. “Come on, hen.”
When they were out of earshot, Elizabeth said, “At first I thought she was mad at you because you didn’t treat her like one of the nobility. Then I got really confused. I guess you got along okay, though.” She sniffed. “After all, you called her your ladyship, and me, hen.”
Cameron smiled. “You got the best of it, lassie.”
Walter Hutcheson tried not to look worried as he maneuvered his way toward the uninvited guest. He hoped that Colin hadn’t come to continue their argument about the lake property.
“Evening, Colin,” he said cautiously. “Can I get you a drink?”
Colin Campbell scowled at the party in general. “Oh, why not?” he grumbled. “As long as you don’t go off playing the host. I need your attention for once.”
“Is anything the matter?” asked Dr. Hutcheson in his professional voice. He couldn’t think of a likelier candidate for a stroke.
Dr. Campbell followed his host back to the picnic table, trying to converse over recorded bagpipe music. “Now, you know we don’t always get along, Walter,” he said in an urgent undertone. “But the one thing we have no problem with is fraud. Remember that resident at the hospital who turned out to have a medical degree from a match-book? You were on my side about that fast enough.”
“Well, of course, Colin,” said Dr. Hutcheson mildly. “It was a matter of ethics, for the good of the organization, and all that. Why?”
“Exactly. I came to tell you that we need to call a meeting of the festival committee first thing tomorrow. There’s something extraordinary going on. I happened on to it by chance.”
“Here you are, Batair,” Heather pouted. “Why did you go off and leave me with that prat and his bird? And we’re nearly out of ice, as well.”
“Sorry, dear,” he murmured. “I just need to have a word with Dr. Campbell. Colin, may I present my wife, Heather.”
“How do you do?” said Colin stiffly. “I’ve heard of you.”
Heather turned on her new husband. “Oh, Batair! Have you been telling folk about my family connections again? You promised you wouldn’t! I don’t want to be treated any different.”
“Heather, I didn’t-”
“That sort of secret doesn’t keep,” said Colin with a sour smile. “I found it very interesting. I believe you’re to be congratulated on a new cousin.”
“What?”
“Your uncle, the Duke. Once again a proud father, I believe.”
Heather frowned. “You know him?”
Dr. Campbell remained noncommittal. “I mustn’t take up the hostess’s time with family chitchat. You’ll have to see to your guests. But sometime we might talk about it.”
“Colin is quite a hobbyist in genealogy,” Dr. Hutcheson remarked. “Now, what was it you wanted to see me about?”
“Oh, the fraud business? Perhaps we ought to wait until the committee assembles in the morning. I’ll have the materials with me then. It’ll save time.”
“Look,” said Heather, “do you want a drink?”
“What are you having?” asked Colin Campbell. “Babycham?”
He was still laughing as he walked away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GLENCOE MOUNTAIN loomed dark against the sky. In the light of a quarter-moon, the stalls and clan tents stood as empty as a stage set of Brigadoon; but farther along the field path, in the herding meadow, the festival folk were preparing for the Hill-Sing. An hour after sunset, members of the clans began to line up for the ceremony, while the spectators spread their tartan blankets down on the meadow and hillside in preparation for the evening’s festivities.
“This is a lovely ceremony,” Elizabeth whispered to Cameron. “Watch.”
One by one, a kilted representative from each clan ran across the field, holding aloft a burning torch. When all of the clansmen stood on the field, the torches formed a Cross of St. Andrew that they held in flickering silence for a few moments, followed by wild cheering from the spectators in the darkness.
“Yes, that was quite nice,” said Cameron. “What happens next?”
Elizabeth pointed to a dark shape in the center of the field. As the cheering died away, each torchbearer laid his firebrand on the stack of logs, igniting it into a roaring blaze. From the shadows a tenor voice sang the first line of “Annie Laurie,” and one by one other voices joined in from all sections of the field.
“Do you know this one?” whispered Elizabeth.
“What do you mean do I know this one?” Cameron hissed back. “It’s a Scottish song! We bloody wrote it! Of course I-Well, I’m a bit hazy on the verses, though.”
Elizabeth joined in for the chorus. By the time they had sung it twice, she had noticed that “Cameron Dawson” had almost the same number of syllables as “Annie Laurie” and while she was careful to sing the words correctly, there was unusual fervor in her rendering of “lay me doon and dee.”
Cameron began to feel relaxed for the first time all day. The soothing sounds of a familiar song, mingled with the darkness and the beauty of the mountain setting, made him feel that the trip hadn’t been such a waste after all. He smiled at Elizabeth, and reached down to pet the sleeping bobcat. Somehow it was all beginning to make sense.
Jimmy McGowan stared into the flames of the bonfire, thankful that his parents were not around to foist marshmallows off on him. Beside him, Lachlan Forsyth was leaning forward and swinging on his cane in time to the music.
“That’s the only good song they’ll sing tonight, lad,” he roared as the crowd struggled with the high note with varying degrees of success. “From here on out, they won’t half come out with some rubbish.”
A voice across the meadow began to bellow: “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road!”
“I’ve heard this one,” said Jimmy.
“Sung just like that, I’ll wager,” growled Lachlan. “Folk should nae sing a tune if they haven’t any idea what it means. Listen to them belting it out like they were singing about a bloody hiking competition!”
“And I’ll be in Scotland before ya!” roared the crowd. “But me and my true love will never meet again…”
“What does it mean?” asked Jimmy.
“It’s a Jacobite song from the ’45,” Lachlan said. “When Charles Edward Stuart-”
Jimmy recognized the name. “Bonnie Prince Charlie?”
The old man grunted. “He was nae bonny, and nae much of a prince, but he was a right bloody Charlie. Anyway, he and his Highland army invaded England, and this song is about a Scottish soldier dying. He says for his mates to take the high road-the highway-back to Scotland, and he’ll take the low road, which is the way the fairy folk travel-in a twinkling of an eye.”
Jimmy nodded. “So he’ll be in Scotland before them because he’s using magic.”
“Aye, but it won’t profit him any to get there, because he’ll not be meeting his sweetheart again, being dead like he is.”
“On the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond…”
Jimmy was still thinking about the prince. His parents were always bragging about a McGowan ancestor who’d fought with him, and how Jimmy ought to be proud to wear a kilt in his honor. “My parents want me to get a kilt,” he told Lachlan. He explained about his Jacobite ancestor, and the old man listened, shaking his head. “Do you think I ought to let them buy me one?”
The voices on the hill had begun to croon “The Bluebells of Scotland.”
“Ah, your braw McGowan ancestor,” sighed Lachlan. “Let me tell you how it was, laddie, as if you was him.”