Leath didn't suppose that Marchand was as complete an idiot as that. After all, he had managed to get Aberdeen University to sponsor him, and they had instructed him to appoint a Celtic culture person as advisor to the expedition. That was Leath. At twenty-nine, he had a degree in archaeology from Manchester and a dozen years' experience on excavations throughout England, Wales, and Brittany. The Banrigh dig would be his first in Scotland, but he didn't expect to see too many differences in the Celtic remains. They probably wouldn't be finding much, anyway, since all the old bampot wanted to do was measure stone circles and to prove his engineering theory. Leath didn't think Marchand could do much damage under those circumstances; in feet, he intended to make damn sure he didn't.
Elizabeth MacPherson always visited a museum gift shop before she went round to see the exhibits. That way she didn't have to wonder about what gifts and postcards there would be to choose from, and there was no danger of losing track of time in an interesting exhibit and not having the opportunity to browse in the gift shop before it closed.
Since only twenty minutes remained before the archaeological meeting, Elizabeth decided to spend it selecting postcards—while Cameron talked to Denny Allan, who had also come for the meeting. Or rather, she gave a convincing imitation of someone engrossed in choosing postcards; actually she was maintaining a careful surveillance of the meeting between Cameron and his old friend. They made an unlikely pair, she thought. Cameron was tall and serious and rather patrician-looking, and Denny could have modeled for a leprechaun poster. Watching them converse reminded her of a terrier racing and barking around a Great Dane. She had wondered a bit what Cameron would say about her, but he didn't seem to have much chance of getting a word in edgewise.
Denny finally paused for breath after a long account of his troubles with the city street improvement department. He then asked, "So, what's it like in the States, Cameron?"
"Well, they don't all drive like the Dukes of Hazzard," Cameron replied. "Some of the back roads are pretty primitive, though. I nearly got a rock through my windshield last month."
"Windshield? Listen to yourself talking like them already! I suppose you say gas now, instead of petrol?
"So would you if you wanted anybody to understand you!" Cameron retorted. He was already fed up with remarks about his accent, or the loss thereof. The unkindest cut of all had come in Bradford when a woman who had been chatting with Elizabeth asked where they were headed. When Cameron told her Edinburgh, she had assured him he'd love the city, and began to suggest places for him to visit. Cameron assumed his frostiest air of dignity and snapped, "I was borrn there!" He had been further annoyed when Elizabeth suggested that he should have heeded the woman's suggestions, because, in fact, he never had visited the Tollbooth, the Museum of Childhood, or John Knox's house.
Deciding to change the subject before he lost his temper, Cameron thanked Denny for choosing Elizabeth to join the expedition.
Denny grinned. "No problem! I'd have done it on vulgar curiosity alone. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I got your card. Imagine stuffy old Dawson the seal-man wanting his lady friend over for the summer!"
Cameron didn't like the way this conversation was going, either. He noticed that Elizabeth had been examining the same four postcards for a considerable amount of time without turning the rack. "Yes, well, I'm sure she'll be an asset to the dig. She's quite knowledgeable about bones." Seeing the snappy retort forming on Denny's lips, he added hastily, "Dead people, I mean. Identifying remains. You know—skulls!"
"Yes, but we aren't supposed to find any, Cameron. We're just measuring monoliths. Still, there's always the off chance, and she'd be a useful person to have around. Wish I could think of a way to bring one of my birds along. I take it we'll be seeing a lot of you these next few weeks as well?"
Cameron shrugged. "A fair amount. I'll be monitoring a seal herd from Canna, and I'll have a skiff. I expect I'll come over to see you once a week if the weather holds.''
"Well, don't expect too much privacy. It's a small island." Still grinning, Denny motioned for Elizabeth to join them. "I hear you're an anthropology student," he remarked. "Do you know what a seal-man is?"
Elizabeth smiled. "A selkie? Only from the Joan Baez recording. 'I am a man upon the land; I am a selkie on the sea.'
They are magic seal-people who take mortal form on dry land to—umm—to mate with human maidens."
"Right. On the islands we'll be going to, they called them the Raoine. The legends are very similar. Just remember that unless you take away their skin, they always go back to their own kind eventually.''
Elizabeth nodded. "I know," she said, looking at Cameron. "It's never quite safe to love a seal-man."
CHAPTER
4
CAMERON
Elizabeth is upstairs in her archaeology meeting, and I am left to wander about in the museum until she is finished. I feel as though I have been wandering about in a museum all these past ten days. Elizabeth seems to see Britain the way the rest of us see the stars: not as they are now, but as they were centuries ago when their light first shone out into space. When we look up into the sky, we see old light; and when she looks out the windscreen of our rental car, she sees the high road to Caledonia, I think. Elizabeth slept through the factories and the concrete mushroom cooling towers of the Midlands, to wake up in a cobblestoned village in Yorkshire, only a century too late for tea at the vicarage.
She picked white heather in the twilight on Haworth Moor and quoted lines on star-crossed lovers from Wuthering Heights: "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ..." But it seemed to me that another line on the page suited us more: ". . .as different as a moonbeam from
lightning , or frost from fire." When she says she loves me, I can almost guess what she means. It isn't the steady cottage-and-children, tea-in-front-of-the-telly sort of affection she's after, but some sort of mythic ritual, fueled by the differences between us: accent and culture. When I speak, she hears not only my words, but also the sounds of Byron and Walter Scott and, for ail I know, the Bonnie Prince himself, and I wonder just which of us it is that she loves, and which myth she will finally choose for us.
The enchantment followed us into the Eildon Hills of the Borders. She recognized the name from her folklore studies: it was home to Thomas the Rhymer. About eight centuries ago, as near as I could make out. Elizabeth told me the legend, looking out across the sweep of low green hills unchanged by the centuries. She never looked at the lorries rumbling past us up the motorway.
Thomas of Ercildoune, she said (mispronouncing it), was an ordinary Scottish villager sitting in the forest one day, when the Queen of Elfland rode up on her white horse and carried him off to the fairy kingdom. A mysterious foreign woman and an ordinary Scot ... I could see where this was going . . . they rode through swirling mists and crossed a stream filled with all the blood that is shed on earth, and at last in Elfland she gave him an apple that granted him the gift of prophecy. He left her after seven years to return to his home in Ercildoune, but years later, while Thomas was attending a village feast, two white deer appeared at the edge of the forest, and he announced that they had come for him. Off he went and was never seen again. Back to the Queen of Elfland—to stay in her country forever after.