Cameron watched his hostess march off toward the Chattan tent, with the sinking feeling of one who has been abandoned in the asylum. His new keeper was a frazzled young woman in what appeared to be a wool outfit, with a lynx on a chain lead. He wondered if she represented anybody famous; Morgan Le Fay came to mind, but it might be uncivil to ask. He thought she might be very pretty in a less ludicrous climate. What must the temperature be on this mountain? They’d measure it in Kelvin degrees, he was certain of that. Cameron dabbed at his forehead and endeavored to look pleasant.
“Hello,” said the young woman. “My name is Elizabeth. I guess you can tell my last name,” she added, pointing to her skirt.
What can she mean? thought Cameron. A last name from a skirt… Weaver? Taylor? Dirndl?
“I don’t understand,” he admitted.
“Didn’t you recognize the MacPherson tartan?”
“No, I’m afraid not. I don’t know much about that sort of thing.”
“I thought Betty said you were Clan MacPherson.”
“So she tells me,” sighed Cameron. “Actually, I’m a marine biologist, and I’m much more familiar with porpoises and seals than with history.”
“Seals! Oh, the Selkies! Banished to the sea for being neutral in the battle of good and evil. I am a man upon the land; I am a Selkie o-oon tha sea!” She hummed a bit of the tune. Elizabeth had finished her folk-medicine course and enrolled in Folklore 5270.
Cameron stared. He knew that there was an odd religious sect somewhere in Virginia; his hosts had mentioned it in passing. Perhaps she was a member. At any rate, she seemed to believe in animal transmutation. He nodded toward the bobcat. “What about him?”
“Cluny? He’s a bobcat. I’m Maid of the Cat.”
“Ah. He’s your father then?”
“Who?”
“The lynx.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Are you sure you’re a biologist?”
“Practically the only thing I’m certain of just now. Why?”
“Because, if you think people are descended from bobcats, you’ll be a novelty at the university.”
“Oh, that. I was humoring you. Selkies, indeed!”
Elizabeth smiled. “Folklore,” she said. “I’m doing graduate work in anthropology. Would you like me to show you around?”
“Might as well. I suppose I should see what these things are like.”
“I guess the ones in Scotland are much larger,” said Elizabeth.
“Don’t know. Never went to one.”
She glanced at his shorts and Save-the-Whales T-shirt. “And I suppose you thought it was too hot to wear your kilt today?”
“Haven’t got one.”
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, “do you speak Gaelic? Do you play a bagpipe? Do you read Walter Scott? Do you believe in the Loch Ness monster?”
“None of the above. Sorry.”
She grinned. “Well, come along. I’ll be your guide. God knows you’re going to need one.”
Lachlan Forsyth and his orange-kilted companion had stopped to watch the dancers practice, careful to be just out of earshot of the other spectators. Lachlan, nodding in time to the tape-recorded bagpipe music, seemed unaware of the other’s nervousness. “Lovely tune that,” he remarked. “It’s a doddle to dance to.”
Jerry Buchanan glanced nervously about. “Can we talk here?” he whispered.
“Aye, laddie, and we’d be that much safer if you would’na look sa guilty.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to jeopardize the Cause.”
“I know,” said Lachlan kindly.
“It’s going all right, isn’t it? I haven’t read anything about it in the newspapers.”
“I know.”
“Is that good?”
“Aye.”
“Have you been in touch with…” Jerry couldn’t think of any discreet way to phrase it. “With anybody?” he finished lamely.
“Aye. The secret is safe, but the progress is slow. It’s a matter of money. We’d get donations if we advertised, but we have to be particular about who we tell.”
“Is there going to be any kind of a sign here at the games? Some way that I can tell who’s with the Cause.”
“Aye, laddie. But if I tell you, you must swear not to discuss it with a soul. I would ken an enemy, but you couldna’. Do ya swear tae silence?”
Jerry nodded vigorously. “Oh, of course, Mr. Forsyth! Absolutely.”
“Well, since you’re a Buchanan…”
“I wish I weren’t,” sighed Jerry, glancing at his rainbow kilt.
“There’s worse things, laddie. There were Buchanans at Agincourt and Flodden, mind ye remember. But you asked for a sign. Will you be going to the Hill-Sing tonight?”
Jerry tried to remember when that cocktail party was being held in the Hutchesons’ camper. Had he promised to be there, or just said that he might drop by? It didn’t matter-not compared to this. “Of course I’ll be there if you want me to,” he said.
“Right. Good lad. Now, at the singing, when they begin ‘Flower of Scotland,’ you stand up. And look around to see who else is standing up, and there’s your sign.”
“ ‘Flower of Scotland’? It’s a folk song?”
The old man gave him a solemn stare. “It’s the national anthem of the Republic of Scotland.”
Jerry Buchanan gasped. “About donations,” he whispered. “Would another thousand help?”
Lachlan Forsyth smiled. “Aye.”
“That,” said Elizabeth, “is a bagpipe.”
“Oh, good!” cried Cameron. “Let’s borrow it and vacuum the cat!”
After an ominous pause, Elizabeth began to laugh. “Monty Python, I presume?”
“The Goon Show, I think.”
“I take it you don’t listen to this much at home?”
“I’m very fond of Scottish music. Sheena Easton, Rod Stewart… The porpoises love Rod Stewart.” His face brightened as it always did when he could get the subject around to marine biology. Elizabeth looked at him in his Save-the-Whales T-shirt, and beyond him at the kilted Americans playing bagpipes. He’s like a time traveler, she thought. But if he is now, then what time are we?
Aloud she said, “I’ll bet you’d like to see the refreshment tent. They have any amount of weird food there that you’re not going to find in the Shop-Rite near the university.”
“What, haggis with neeps and tatties followed by a clootie dumpling?”
Elizabeth frowned. “Clootie means the devil, doesn’t it?”
“Not on a menu. It’s a cloth-wrapped dumpling. What’s that?” She turned to look at a blue-kilted man wearing a khaki shirt and an Australian bush hat. “A Douglas, I think.”
“Kangaroo branch. He ought to have a wallaby in his sporran. Are we headed for the refreshment stand?”
“Keep going. It’s at the end of this row of tents, but if you keep turning around like that, it’ll take us two hours to get there.”
Cameron, who was staring at passersby, didn’t seem to have heard. “A cowboy hat? What’s that-the Highland cowboy?” Suddenly he noticed the tent of a regional Scottish society. “Piedmont Highlanders. Piedmont Highlanders? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”
Their progress was slowed further. Having noticed the signs on each tent, Cameron began to use them as an exercise in free association. “Grant-that’s a furniture store in Glasgow… Menzies-John Menzies; I buy my books there… Barclay-the banking folks… and Gordon’s gin, of course.”
Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re going to be crushed when the MacDonald tent doesn’t have golden arches, aren’t you?”