“Mmphm.” Roger made a Scottish noise in the back of his throat, meant to convey both appreciation of Claire’s acuity, and general suspicion of what the barman might be wanting to prove to Brianna.
“Thanks,” he said to the clerk, who shoved the receipt across the counter to him. “Ready, Bree?” he asked.
* * *
The loch was calm and the fishing slow, but it was pleasant on the water, with the August sun warm on their backs and the scent of raspberry canes and sun-warmed pine trees wafting from the nearby shore. Full of lunch, they all grew drowsy, and before long, Brianna was curled up in the bow, asleep with her head pillowed on Roger’s jacket. Claire sat in the stern, blinking, but still awake.
“What about short and tall women?” Roger asked, resuming their earlier conversation as he sculled slowly across the loch. He glanced over his shoulder at the amazing length of Brianna’s legs, awkwardly curled under her. “Same thing? The little ones nasty?”
Claire shook her head meditatively, the curls beginning to work their way loose from her hairclip. “No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with size. I think it’s more a matter of whether they see men as The Enemy, or just see them as men, and on the whole, rather like them for it.”
“Oh, to do with women’s liberation, is it?”
“No, not at all,” Claire said. “I saw just the same kinds of behavior between men and women in 1743 that you see now. Some differences, of course, in how they each behave, but not so much in how they behave to each other.”
She looked out over the dark waters of the loch, shading her eyes with her hand. She might have been keeping an eye out for otters and floating logs, but Roger thought that far-seeing gaze was looking a bit farther than the cliffs of the opposite shore.
“You like men, don’t you?” he said quietly. “Tall men.”
She smiled briefly, not looking at him.
“One,” she said softly.
“Will you go, then—if I can find him?” he rested his oars momentarily, watching her.
She drew a deep breath before answering. The wind flushed her cheeks with pink and molded the fabric of the white shirt to her figure, showing off a high bosom and a slender waist. Too young to be a widow, he thought, too lovely to be wasted.
“I don’t know,” she said, a little shakily. “The thought of it—or rather, the thoughts of it! On the one hand, to find Jamie—and then, on the other, to…go through again.” A shudder went through her, closing her eyes.
“It’s indescribable, you know,” she said, eyes still closed as though she saw inside them the ring of stones on Craigh na Dun. “Horrible, but horrible in a way that isn’t like other horrible things, so you can’t say.” She opened her eyes and smiled wryly at him.
“A bit like trying to tell a man what having a baby is like; he can more or less grasp the idea that it’s painful, but he isn’t equipped actually to understand what it feels like.”
Roger grunted with amusement. “Oh, aye? Well, there’s some difference, you know. I’ve actually heard those bloody stones.” He shivered himself, involuntarily. The memory of the night, three months ago, when Gillian Edgars had gone through the stones, was not one he willingly called to mind; it had come back to him in nightmares several times, though. He heaved strongly on the oars, trying to erase it.
“Like being torn apart, isn’t it?” he said, his eyes intent on hers. “There’s something pulling at you, ripping, dragging, and not just outside—inside you as well, so you feel your skull will fly to pieces any moment. And the filthy noise.” He shuddered again. Claire’s face had gone slightly pale.
“I didn’t know you could hear them,” she said. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It didn’t seem important.” He studied her a moment, as he pulled, then added quietly, “Bree heard them as well.”
“I see.” She turned to look back over the loch, where the wake of the tiny boat spread its V-shaped wings. Far behind, the waves from the passage of a larger boat reflected back from the cliffs and joined again in the center of the loch, making a long, humped form of glistening water—a standing wave, a phenomenon of the loch that had often been mistaken for a sighting of the monster.
“It’s there, you know,” she said suddenly, nodding down into the black, peat-laden water.
He opened his mouth to ask what she meant, but then realized that he did know. He had lived near Loch Ness for most of his life, fished for eels and salmon in its waters, and heard—and laughed at—every story of the “fearsome beastie” that had ever been told in the pubs of Drumnadrochit and Fort Augustus.
Perhaps it was the unlikeliness of the situation—sitting here, calmly discussing whether the woman with him should or should not take the unimaginable risk of catapulting herself into an unknown past. Whatever the cause of his certainty, it seemed suddenly not only possible, but sure, that the dark water of the loch hid unknown but fleshly mystery.
“What do you think it is?” he asked, as much to give his disturbed feelings time to settle, as out of curiosity.
Claire leaned over the side, watching intently as a log drifted into view.
“The one I saw was probably a plesiosaur,” she said at last. She didn’t look at Roger, but kept her gaze astern. “Though I didn’t take notes at the time.” Her mouth twisted in something not quite a smile.
“How many stone circles are there?” she asked abruptly. “In Britain, in Europe. Do you know?”
“Not exactly. Several hundred, though,” he answered cautiously. “Do you think they’re all—”
“How should I know?” she interrupted impatiently. “The point is, they may be. They were set up to mark something, which means there may be the hell of a lot of places where that something has happened.” She tilted her head to one side, wiping the windblown hair out of her face, and gave him a lopsided smile.
“That would explain it, you know.”
“Explain what?” Roger felt fogged by the rapid shifts of her conversation.
“The monster.” She gestured out over the water. “What if there’s another of those—places—under the loch?”
“A time corridor—passage—whatever?” Roger looked out over the purling wake, staggered by the idea.
“It would explain a lot.” There was a smile hiding at the corner of her mouth, behind the veil of blowing hair. He couldn’t tell whether she was serious or not. “The best candidates for monster are all things that have been extinct for hundreds of thousands of years. If there’s a time passage under the loch, that would take care of that little problem.”
“It would also explain why the reports are sometimes different,” Roger said, becoming intrigued by the idea. “If it’s different creatures who come through.”
“And it would explain why the creature—or creatures—haven’t been caught, and aren’t seen all that often. Maybe they go back the other way, too, so they aren’t in the loch all the time.”
“What a marvelous idea!” Roger said. He and Claire grinned at each other.