And so very different from the smaller, mud-colored replica I remembered, adorning the fifth-floor diorama in the British Museum. But the shape was unmistakable. The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.
Valved nostrils opened suddenly with a startling hiss of breath; a moment of suspended motion, and the creature sank again, a churning roil of waters the only testimony to its passage.
I had risen to my feet when it appeared. And unconsciously I must have moved closer in order to watch it, for I found myself standing on one of the rock slabs that jutted out into the water, watching the dying waves fall back into the smoothness of the loch.
I stood there for a moment, looking out across the fathomless loch. "Goodbye," I said at last to the empty water. I shook myself and turned back to the bank.
A man was standing at the top of the slope. I was startled at first, then recognized him as one of the drovers from our party. His name was Peter, I recalled, and the bucket in his hand gave the reason for his presence. I was about to ask him whether he had seen the beast, but the expression on his face as I drew near was more than sufficient answer. His face was paler than the daisies at his feet, and tiny droplets of sweat trickled down into his beard. His eyes showed white all around like those of a terrified horse, and his hand shook so that the bucket bumped against his leg.
"It's all right," I said, as I came up to him. "It's gone."
Instead of finding this statement reassuring, it seemed occasion for fresh alarm. He dropped the bucket, fell to his knees before me and crossed himself.
"Ha-have mercy, lady," he stammered. To my extreme embarrassment, he then flung himself flat on his face and clutched at the hem of my dress.
"Don't be ridiculous," I said with some asperity. "Get up." I prodded him gently with my toe, but he only quivered and stayed pressed to the ground like a flattened fungus. "Get up," I repeated. "Stupid man, it's only a…" I paused, trying to think. Telling him its Latin name was unlikely to help.
"It's only a wee monster," I said at last, and grabbing his hand, tugged him to his feet. I had to fill the bucket, as he would （not unreasonably） not go near the water's edge again. He followed me back to the camp, keeping a careful distance, and scuttled off at once to tend to his mules, casting apprehensive glances over his shoulder at me as he went.
As he seemed undisposed to mention the creature to anyone else, I thought perhaps I should keep quiet as well. While Dougal, Jamie, and Ned were educated men, the rest were largely illiterate Highlanders from the remote crags and glens of the MacKenzie lands. They were courageous fighters and dauntless warriors, but they were also as superstitious as any primitive tribesmen from Africa or the Middle East
So I ate my supper quietly and went to bed, conscious all the time of the wary gaze of the drover Peter.
* * *
20
Deserted Glades
Two days after the raid, we turned again to the north. We were drawing closer to the rendezvous with Horrocks, and Jamie seemed abstracted from time to time, perhaps considering what importance the English deserter's news might have.
I had not seen Hugh Munro again, but I had wakened in darkness the night before to find Jamie gone from the blanket beside me. I tried to stay awake, waiting for him to return, but fell asleep as the moon began to sink. In the morning, he was sound asleep beside me, and on my blanket rested a small parcel, done up in a sheet of thin paper, fastened with the tail-feather of a woodpecker thrust through the sheet. Unfolding it carefully, I found a large chunk of rough amber. One face of the chunk had been smoothed off and polished, and in this window could be seen the delicate dark form of a tiny dragonfly, suspended in eternal flight.
I smoothed out the wrapping. A message was incised on the grimy white surface, written in small and surprisingly elegant lettering.
"What does it say?" I asked Jamie, squinting at the odd letters and marks. "I think it's in Gaelic."
He raised up on one elbow, squinting at the paper.
"Not Gaelic. Latin. Munro was a schoolmaster once, before the Turks took him. It's a bit from Catullus," he said.
… da mi basin mille, diende centum,
dein mille altera, dein secunda centum…
A faint blush pinkened his earlobes as he translated:
Then let amorous kisses dwell
On our lips, begin and tell
A Thousand and a Hundred score