An echo in the bone - Gabaldon Diana (читать книги TXT) 📗

He laughed, but shook his head.

“Well, it’s true enough; most of the folk on the Ridge couldn’t read. But I’d disagree with the notion that ye’d only sing the psalms that way because of ignorance, or a lack of books.” He paused for thought, idly scraping up a stray noodle and eating it.

“Singing all together, that’s grand, no doubt about it. But to do it in that back-and-forth way—I think there’s maybe something about it that draws the people closer, makes them feel more involved in what they’re singing, what’s truly happening. Maybe it’s only because they’ve got to concentrate harder to remember each line.” He smiled briefly, and looked away.

Please! she thought passionately, whether to God, the Blessed Virgin, Roger’s guardian angel, or all three. You’ve got to let him find a way!

“I… meant to ask ye something,” he said, suddenly diffident.

“What’s that?”

“Well… Jemmy. He can sing. Would ye—of course he’d go to Mass with you still—but would ye mind if he was to come along with me, as well? Only if he liked,” he added hastily. “But I think he might enjoy being in the choir. And I’d… like him to see I have a job, too, I suppose,” he added, with a half-rueful smile.

“He’d love that,” Brianna said, remarking mentally to the heavenly host, Well, that was fast! Because she saw at once—and wondered whether Roger had, but she didn’t think so—that this offered a graceful way by which she and Mandy could attend the Presbyterian services, as well, without any overt conflict between their two faiths.

“Would you come with us to the early Mass at St. Mary’s?” she asked. “Because then we could all just go across to St. Stephen’s together and see you and Jem sing.”

“Yes, of course.”

He stopped, the sandwich halfway to his mouth, and smiled at her, his eyes green as moss.

“It’s better, isn’t it?” he said.

“Lots,” she said.

LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, Roger called her across to the study. There was a map of Scotland laid on his desk, next to the open notebook in which he was compiling the thing they had taken to calling—with a jokiness that barely covered the aversion they felt in even talking about it—“The Hitchhiker’s Guide,” after the BBC radio comedy.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But I thought we’d best do it before Jem comes home. If ye’re going back to Loch Errochty tomorrow…” He put the point of his pencil on the blue blotch labeled L.Errochty. “You could maybe get an accurate bearing for the tunnel, if ye’re not quite sure where it is. Or are you?”

She swallowed, feeling the remains of her cheese sandwich stir uneasily at the memory of the dark tunnel, the rocking of the little train, of passing through… it.

“I don’t, but I have something better. Wait.” She stepped across to her own office and brought back the binder of Loch Errochty’s specs.

“Here are the drawings for the tunnel construction,” she said, flipping the binder open and laying it on the desk. “I have the blueprints, too, but they’re at the main office.”

“No, this is great,” he assured her, poring over the drawing. “All I really wanted is the compass orientation of the tunnel to the dam.” He glanced up at her. “Speaking of that—have ye been all across the dam itself?”

“Not all across,” she said slowly. “Just the east side of the servicing bay. But I don’t think—I mean, look.” She put a finger on the drawing. “I hit it somewhere in the middle of the tunnel, and the tunnel is nearly in a straight line with the dam. If it runs in a line—is that what you think it does?” she added, looking at him curiously. He shrugged.

“It’s a place to start. Though I suppose engineers would have a better-sounding word than ‘guess’?”

“Working hypothesis,” she said dryly. “Anyway, if it does run in a line, rather than just existing in random spots, I’d probably have felt it in the dam if it was there at all. But I could go back and check.” Even she could hear the reluctance in her voice; he certainly did, and ran a light hand down her back in reassurance.

“No. I’ll do it.”

“What?”

“I’ll do it,” he repeated mildly. “We’ll see if I feel it, too.”

“No!” She straightened up abruptly. “You can’t. You don’t—I mean, what if something… happens? You can’t take that kind of risk!”

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, and nodded.

“Aye, I suppose there’s something of a risk. But small. I’ve been all over the Highlands, ken, in my younger years. And now and again I’ve felt something queer pass through me. So have most folk who live here,” he added with a smile. “Queerness is part of the place, aye?”

“Yes,” she said, with a brief shudder at thought of water horses, ban-sidhe, and Nuckelavees. “But you know what sort of queerness this is—and you know damned well it can kill you, Roger!”

“Didn’t kill you,” he pointed out. “Didn’t kill us on Ocracoke.” He spoke lightly, but she could see the shadow of that journey on his face with the speaking. It hadn’t killed them—but it had come close.

“No. But—” She looked at him and had a deep, wrenching instant in which she experienced at once the feel of his long, warm body next to hers in bed, the sound of his deep, corncrake voice—and the cold silence of his absence. “No,” she said, and made it apparent by her tone that she was prepared to be as stubborn as necessary about it. He heard that and gave a mild snort.

“All right,” he said. “Let me just put it down, then.” Comparing drawing and map, he chose a spot on the map that might correspond roughly with the center of the tunnel and raised one dark eyebrow in question. She nodded, and he made a light pencil mark in the shape of a star.

There was a large, definite star, made in black ink, over the site of the stone circle on Craigh na Dun. Smaller ones in light pencil at the sites of other stone circles. Someday, they might have to visit those circles. But not yet. Not now.

“Ever been to Lewis?” Roger asked—casually, but not as though it were an idle question.

“No, why?” she said warily.

“The Outer Hebrides are part of the Gaeltacht,” he said. “They do the line-singing in the Gaidhlig on Lewis, and on Harris, too. Don’t know about Uist and Barra—they’re mostly Catholic—but maybe. I’m thinking I’d like to go and see what it’s like these days.”

She could see the Isle of Lewis on the map, shaped like a pancreas, off the west coast of Scotland. It was a large map. Large enough for her to see the small legend Callanish Stones, on the Isle of Lewis.

She exhaled slowly.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll go with you.”

“Ye’ve got work, haven’t you?”

“I’ll take time off.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment. Brianna broke away first, glancing at the clock on the shelf.

“Jem’ll be home soon,” she said, the prosaic nature of daily life asserting itself. “I’d better start something for supper. Annie brought us a nice salmon that her husband took. Shall I marinate it and bake it, or would you like it grilled?”

He shook his head and, rising, began to fold the map away.

“I won’t be in to supper tonight. It’s lodge night.”

THE PROVINCIAL GRAND Masonic Lodge of Inverness-shire included a number of local lodges, two of them in Inverness. Roger had joined Number 6, the Old Inverness Lodge, in his early twenties, but had not set foot inside the building in fifteen years, and did so now with a mingled sense of wariness and anticipation.

It was, though, the Highlands—and home. The first person he saw upon walking in was Barney Gaugh, who had been the burly, smiling station agent when Roger had come to Inverness on the train, aged five, to live with his great-uncle. Mr. Gaugh had shrunk considerably, and his tobacco-stained teeth had long since been replaced by equally tobacco-stained dentures, but he recognized Roger at once and beamed in delight, seizing him by the arm and towing him into a group of other old men, half of whom likewise exclaimed over his return.