The passengers in the launch shivered as they looked at the dark island ahead, each thinking that he alone must have imagined such romantic nonsense. But the feeling was there.
Unlike most of Scotland's islands, Banrigh was fertile
enough and just large enough to have supported a struggling population of farmer-fishermen, but by the early twentieth century, the last of the islanders had given up their precarious existence in the back of beyond and had moved to larger islands like Skye. One or two daring ones had even gone as far afield as Inverness on the mainland, leaving the island to the gales and to the ghosts of its ancient inhabitants: those who had built the stone circle, for reasons no one remembered.
Mountains of coarse-grained black gabbro formed the spine of the island, ice-eroded over the centuries into steep-walled conies and long scree runs of broken rock. Over this ancient, sterile skeleton a more recent outcrop of limestone softened the island with stone-studded green fields and a scattering of elder bush and rowan trees. Except for a small plateau on the west side, leading to a rocky channel, three sides of the island were barricaded from the sea by steep bare cliffs that looked axe-carved from a distance, but on the eastern shore the fringe of limestone stretched out to form a rough beach of pebbles and old shells. It was there that the odd private boat would put to shore, mostly Celtophiles or National Trust photographers wanting a look at the Banrigh standing stones. Even that was a rare occurrence. Callanish, the stone circle on Lewis, was both more impressive and more accessible. Banrigh, much off the beaten track, was left alone.
The ruins of the village were visible from the beach; a scattering of "black houses," dirt-floored dwellings built of stacked boulders, with holes in the thatched roofs for the smoke from the peat fire that was kept burning within. The cottages, long unroofed and empty, wouldn't even provide shelter from a mild summer night. Luckily, the Banrigh expedition would not be needing them. The object of their study lay on the other side of the island, as did the island's other ruined dwelling where they were destined to make their camp.
Elizabeth looked about her at the flash of white breakers across the cold blue depths, and at the clouds of lapwing overhead. "This doesn't look anything like Appalachia," she murmured, and Cameron smiled.
Owen Gilchrist hoisted his duffel bag onto a sagging, pudgy shoulder. "How far is it to where we're staying?" he asked plaintively.
"There's a path through the hills there," Tom Leath told him. "What have you got in that thing anyhow?"
"Oh, clothes. A few books. My bagpipes."
Denny snickered. "You've just forfeited any offers of assistance."
"Come along!" said Marchand, slapping Owen's other shoulder. "It's a bracing walk! Lovely weather for it, too!"
"Why didn't you land on the other side of the island?" Owen asked, still trying to think of a way to keep from carrying the heavy duffel bag over a mountain.
"There's just a narrow beach there," Cameron explained, "And the inlet is full of rocks. I didn't trust myself to navigate it, especially with such a crowd on board."
"Are you coming with us?" asked Elizabeth, seeing that Cameron was glancing uncertainly back at his boat. "And don't say that you have to get back to the research station before dark, because God knows when that it is in the summertime. Midnight?"
Cameron grinned. "Very nearly. I should be getting back and getting things set up for my own project, but I suppose I could give you a hand with some of this gear."
Alasdair had picked up his own canvas bag and sleeping bag, leaving Gitte's things on the ground at his feet. "Why couldn't the bloody Navy have built their station on this side of the island?" he demanded, scowling at the green wall of mountain in front of them.
"Because they were wanting to watch the U-boats on the other side!" said Denny.
Callum Farthing cleared his throat. "Actually, I think it was a weather station."
Tom Leath cast a critical eye at his reluctant troops. "We'd better get going. It's nearly five now, and we may need all of the available daylight to make the place habitable."
"The view from the mountain should be very pretty,'' said Elizabeth, looping the camera strap around her neck.
The party began to straggle past the crumbling black houses of the old village, with Denny, the joker as usual, whistling "The Colonel Bogey March."
Owen stopped to look at an odd circular thicket near one of the abandoned cottages. "What a funny hedge! It has a wooden gate attached to the shrubbery, but there's nothing inside. It was too small to fit a house in anyway."
"It was a garden," Gitte told him. "They planted the hedge to protect it from the winds out here—and from the sheep, of course."
Owen looked disappointed. "I thought it might have been a sacred well."
Gitte stole a glance at Alasdair. He seemed pleased that she. had been able to give the American even that small piece of information. She jinked at him, as if to say, "Of course, you knew that, too," although perhaps he had not.
"What a nice path this is!" Elizabeth said when they had gone a quarter of a mile up the gentle slope to the first hill. "Even after all these years the heather hasn't grown onto the path." She stooped to pick a sprig of the tiny purple bloom from the brush. Heather had not been at all the way she had imagined it. Rosebay willow herb, the graceful purple weed that grew as tall as Cameron, was much closer to her expectations, though now that she considered it logically, a short scrubby bush was the logical plant to survive in such a Spartan environment.
Callum Farthing, the young man from Inverness, was walking beside her. "They used this path a lot over the years," he told her, as if to explain why the way was still clear.
"And what are these little piles of stones along the road?" she wanted to know.
"Resting cairns," said Callum. "This was the way to the burying ground, and whenever they rested the coffin along the way, they left a small stone to mark the spot."
Elizabeth stared at the small mound of gray stones. "But not many people lived here."
He shrugged. "Over the years, it adds up."
The path wound its way around the mountain until the village and Cameron's boat were no longer in sight. Elizabeth had been right about the view: from the narrow path she could see gray and green folds of mountains across a narrow valley and the dark blue water shining in the sun beyond that.
Elizabeth, thinking of the ritual signal fires and the stone-circle-as-observatory theory, had expected to find the Banrigh circle at the highest point on the path, but when they had crossed over the summit, she could see the outline of a ring in a field of heather far below. "Why did they put it in the valley?" she wondered aloud.
Cameron smiled. "Would you want to drag stones that large up this mountain?"
"Perhaps not," Elizabeth said after some consideration. "But if I were going to put that much work into a project, I'd sure want everybody to see it."
Derek Marchand spotted the stone circle a few moments later, and he halted the procession on the path and pointed it out to everyone. "There it is! The object of our quest."