"Should be a good spot for overhead shots of the site," Tom Leath muttered to Callum Farthing.
"We will visit the circle tomorrow," Marchand was saying. "I'm greatly tempted to march you all there tonight, but I feel sure that we will need every moment of daylight to work on our own living quarters.
"Thank God he's got some sense of priorities!" Alasdair muttered.
"Also from here you can see the very small island just a few hundred yards from Banrigh, with one large stone on it. We shall be sending someone there to do more measurements as well."
"I can't swim!" Denny quipped.
"There's supposed to be an old rowboat near the military hut," Leath informed him.
Elizabeth focused her camera on the stone circle glinting in the sunlight far below, trying to get the smaller island in
the background of the shot. "I hope this turns out," she murmured.
"So do I," said Cameron. "In more ways than one."
"Good view from up here," Alasdair said approvingly. "I'll bet the old boys could see the Viking raiding parties from miles away. Not much they could do about it, though, I guess, except stash the valuables under a rock."
Gitte Dankert did not smile. She was not amused by jokes about her bloodthirsty Norse ancestors; in fact, she found it most embarrassing that she should somehow be allied to the destruction blamed on her ancestors. She hoped she wouldn't have to endure teasing on the subject from her fellow diggers; after all, many of the island dwellers of Scotland were closely related to the Scandinavians both by blood and by culture, and she knew that she would be most helpful in pointing out similarities.
Alasdair was still examining the island from this bird's-eye view. His eyes flickered from the glint of the stone circle in the sunlight to the bright green grass of the peat fields dotted with white-flecked boulders. A narrow burn sparkled amid the heather. "I don't see any obvious burial sites," he grunted.
"I do," said Callum Farthing. "Several. But I'm afraid they're not of the period we're investigating."
"Burial sites? Where?" Owen's gothic soul was stirred out of fatigue and into something like animation. "How can you tell?"
Callum smiled. "Later. We have work to do."
* * *
The Nissen hut, erected by the Royal Navy during World War II, looked like an overturned tin can half buried in the dirt. It was a windowless cylinder, thirty feet long, and just high enough to stand up in. Despite forty years of salt air and neglect, it was still in good shape, with only a few rust spots in its metal exterior and no sign of roof leaks on the dirt floor within. The interior had been partitioned off, probably to separate sleeping quarters from work areas, but now the shell was empty, except for a long wooden table and a few scraps of yellowed paper still posted here and there. The bare light sockets dangled from the ceiling; both bulbs and electricity had vanished long ago.
"This is rather primitive," said Alasdair, looking around. "We might be better off in tents.''
Derek Marchand smiled. "Yes, I had decided that myself. I spent enough time in these during the war, so I brought my one-man tent. A bit of damp is a small price to pay for a bed under the stars."
"We can set the radio up on that half of the table," Tom Leath said. "There ought to be room enough for us to eat on whats left. I'm sleeping outside, too," he added.
' T thought the ladies might like to have one of the partitioned spaces," said Marchand.
Elizabeth smiled weakly at Gitte Dankert. She supposed she would have to think of something to make conversation about9 but the prospect was not inviting. What, she wondered, do you discuss with a Danish geisha?
"Would anyone like some tea?" she asked brightly.
In order to prepare tea, Callum Farthing had to assemble the Camping Gaz, the two-burner butane stove that would
serve them for cooking and heating. By the time he had the stove working and Gitte had brought a pail of water from the burn, it was nearly seven o'clock, but the blue had not begun to fade from the sky.
"One cup of tea," said Cameron, "and then I really have to be getting back."
Elizabeth nodded. "I wish ..." What? she thought. That he didn't have to go, or that I could go and help him? That the islands were closer together than they are? "I wish I were a seal."
"I'll be back on Saturday. Let me go and say goodbye to Marchand."
"Shall I walk you back to the boat?" Elizabeth asked.
Cameron shook his head. "You have enough to do here. This place could do with a good scrubbing."
Elizabeth spent the remaining daylight hours helping Gitte scour the Nissen hut, not because she wanted to, and not because she thought it needed to be as clean as Gitte was determined to get it. In the middle of the room Callum Farthing was setting up the radio, seemingly oblivious to both their conversation and their labors.
"It has a dirt floor!" Elizabeth said once in exasperation. "How clean can you get it? Besides, we're not going to do brain surgery here!"
Gitte didn't answer directly. She very seldom did. She went on scrubbing the side of the partition. After a few minutes she said, "I'm sure I can manage by myself."
Elizabeth sighed and picked up the bucket. If there was anything she hated more than boredom, it was guilt. "I'm going for some more water from the bur-rrn," she announced.
Gitte kept scrubbing. "You don't sound Scottish."
Elizabeth consoled herself with the thought that she didn't have to hurry back with the pail of water. Fetching it at all was a splendid gesture of cooperation; there was no need to be fanatic. Besides, she could explore the island tomorrow. It had better not rain tomorrow! she thought.
Across the fields she could see Leath and Marchand at the stone circle. She wondered where the others were. Probably making landmark discoveries in Scottish archaeology, she thought. Probably finding solid gold Viking ships and a Celtic Rosetta Stone, describing in clearly carved runes just exactly how to use a stone circle. "And I will have helped to clean a Nissen hut," she said aloud.
She missed Cameron already. She stood for several minutes on the cliff above the rocky cove, trying to catch a glimpse of the small white boat among the whitecaps, but it never appeared.
Suddenly, a moving square of red on the shore caught her attention. It was Denny, walking along the water's edge, examining shells.
"Hey!" she yelled. "How did you get down there?"
Denny looked up and waved. He pointed to an outcrop of rocks a few hundred yards along the cliff. Elizabeth hesitated. She ought to be heading in the other direction, but then it occurred to her that brine would be an even better disinfectant than fresh water, so she waved back at Denny and hurried along the path at the edge of the cliff.
A natural way down the cliffs, probably improved by the original inhabitants of the Nissen hut, was still discernible,
although crumbling rocks and sudden zigzags indicated that it had not been used for many years. Elizabeth, who did not quite trust her running shoes for mountain climbing, took a long time to pick her way down through the rocks, holding on to a jutting boulder as often as she could on the descent. Finally, she reached the bed of smooth pebbles that constituted the so-called beach of Banrigh's western side.
"Where have you been keeping yourself?" Denny asked. "I thought Cameron had taken you away with him."