Murdoch Carson is also your cousin, he reminded himself.
And what if Geordie was right, and Finleywasin danger? If it hadn’t been for her, Lachlan never would have discovered that Geordie Blair was alive, or his own connection to the Carsons. He never would have run on the beach at sunset onLá Bealltainn. He never would have known the passion possible in an innocent kiss; the sweet excitement of the unknown; the laughter of a different people.
But why had she gone to Town Blair?
Lachlan began climbing.
Geordie was right; the hand- and footholds carved out of the cliff were so evenly spaced, and it was so pitch in the shaft, that it made little difference if Lachlan’s eyes were open or closed. He concentrated on the grip of his fingers, the distribution of his weight from foot to foot as he climbed for what seemed an hour.
“Almost there.” Geordie’s voice seemed right above him now, and Lachlan at last looked up.
He was perhaps only four feet from the opening, and the fresh air rushing over the shaft made a sad, empty sound. It pricked Lachlan’s conscience to think of the man now helping to pull him over the edge and on to solid ground listening to that lonely, howling wind, alone, for years and years and years.
And Murdoch Carson had known Geordie was there.
Lachlan stood, and the wind immediately assaulted him, buffeting him with a surprising strength as he looked out over the town and the bay below. Several tiny pinpricks of light could be seen along the strip of beach: the remnants of the celebration he had taken part in. So close, and yet so far away from where he stood. From where Geordie Blair stood. Outsiders.
“Stay close to me, Edna’s son,” the man warned. “Sinkholes. Wet pits. Right behind me now, ken?”
Lachlan nodded. “Aye, Geordie. Lead on.”
They walked a narrow path that would have been invisible even in the daylight, its solid, zigzagging trail covered over by huge tufts of heather and brush. The buzz of insects and chirping of frogs were thick in the air, and Lachlan kept his eyes on the hunched and oddly loping form of Geordie Blair as he led unhesitatingly toward the line of the wood marking the top of the ben that could be seen from Town Blair and Loch Acras. This area had always been spoken of as a dangerous wasteland, useless for game because of the bog, but Lachlan reckoned if they went down the side of the mountain from here, the distance between the two towns was likely half that of the falls path.
Again, something so far away, and yet closer than he’d ever known.
The bog narrowed into a rocky ridge that disappeared into the black night, and the men veered south toward the edge of the wood. Geordie suddenly stopped near a seemingly out-of-place pile of rock and shell, mounded up in a little hillock at the base of a tree. He dug in his crude, skin sack for what appeared to be a small stone, but then he simply stood there, staring at the thing in his hand.
“This is where I buried him,” Geordie said haltingly, as if the words were difficult, or the sentiment foreign. Lachlan reckoned that the man had never thought to have to explain the location’s existence to anyone.
“Who?”
Geordie turned his face toward Lachlan, his expression full of confusion. “Yer da, I thought it was.” He looked back to the pile of stone. “Dragged him up here meself after everyone stopping comin’ to gawp at him. They just stared and stared.” His breath was coming heavier now, and Lachlan couldn’t tell if it was with anger or sadness. He was a difficult man to read. “They talked over him like he was a hero. He was, to me. Edna, too. But they was so bad to him. So when they was gone, I took him. Brought him here.”
Geordie straightened his shoulders as much as his bent posture would allow. “Visited him every day. I had nae tool to dig with, so I just brung him a few stones or shells or a little piece of something each time to cover him with. I thought one day, when the chief was dead, when Harrell was dead, I could bring Edna here to visit with him.”
“That must have been hard,” Lachlan said, a catch in his chest taking him by surprise. “Seeing your friend like that.”
Geordie gave a jerky nod. “I had to run off animals sometimes. ’Til he was covered up proper. But now…” His voice trailed off.
“Now what?”
Geordie turned his bulging gaze to Lachlan once more, and the look of puzzlement was greater than ever. “It isna him.”
Lachlan shook his head. “I doona think so.”
“Well.” Geordie gave his queer bird-head nod and then leaned over to place the small stone on the top of the pyre with the thousands of others. “He didna deserve what happened to him anyhow. And he’s been company for me all these years. A thing to take care of. Like I was for yer mam. I owed it to her, I reckoned.”
Lachlan suddenly didn’t want to be here with Geordie Blair anymore. He didn’t want to be thinking the things he was thinking, feeling the emotions flooding him; opening his mind to the sinister conclusions that were taking shape from all the little bits and pieces of the past that were rolling downhill to come to rest against his feet in the shape of something dark and ugly and unfair.
Geordie Blair turned away from the pyre and started down the hill.
“Come on, Edna’s son.”
Chapter 15
Finley and Kirsten didn’t have to go far in the wood until they found Searrach Blair, and even if she hadn’t been directly on the path so as to have stumbled over her, her wailing would have given away her location had she been underwater. As it was, she was sitting on the path with her back to a tree, legs flopped out before her, and her hands in her lap, sobbing aloud like a wee bairn just learning to walk and having fallen soundly on its bottom.
“What’s she doing?” Kirsten hissed in Finley’s ear. “She’s just stopped!”
