Two hours later the circle was glinting in bright sunshine, and the site was animated by the babble of voices and a flash of red and yellow sweatshirts weaving in and out among the stones.
Marchand, looking like a silver-haired gnome, was directing the bustle of activity, sending his workers scurrying to and fro with every new instruction. The first order of business was to check the temperature and the humidity, since weather conditions—especially dampness—affected the readings of the electronic surveying instrument.
Tom Leath, in a hangover-induced calm, was leaning against one of the stones, studying an ordnance map, trying to concentrate on Denny Allan's explanation of the procedure. Leath, who was accustomed neither to surveying nor to Scottish accents, and who was not in his most receptive mood at present, kept nodding and wishing that the lilting Glasgow accent would stop clanging in his head.
"The ordnance survey has the national grid superimposed on it, right?" Denny was saying. "Okay, in the margin you'll find the angle between grid north and true north . . . Not following me? Look, if we calculate the azimuth of a line with respect to the grid, it can be reduced to true north if we apply the correction obtained at the observer's end of the line. And if we know the grid coordinates of two points, then we can find the azimuth of the line joining the two points."
"Fine with me." Leath shrugged. "We tend to put things in simpler terms for the measuring done in my fieldwork."
Denny smiled. "I know you'll be wanting to get on to your own specialty here."
"Right. Give me a kitchen midden. Once I find where these fellows dumped their garbage, I can find out where they lived."
"There's a lot of peat covering up mat secret."
"Too right." Leath sighed. "It took a major storm on Mainland in the Orkneys to uncover the ruins at Skara Brae. I suppose I could pray for more rain. Ah, well, that's neither here nor there. Suppose you tell me in less grandiose terms how I can help."
Denny handed the Englishman a hexagonal-shaped prism. "Hold this," he said. "And go and stand where I tell you."
The site may have been ancient, but me surveying techniques were not. The tachymeter used an infrared beam bounced off the prism to determine distance, and Leath's job was to hold the prism against the base of each standing stone while Denny took aim from the tripod set up in center circle.
"We are closing a traverse," Denny said to Elizabeth, who was noting down the figures on a clipboard as he called them out to her.
"Shall I write that down?" Elizabeth asked.
"No, hen, I'm explaining it to you. Closing a traverse means that we will be shooting the location of a number of points around a circle and then coming back to our original point."
"Impressive jargon," Elizabeth said approvingly. "Mind if I take a look through the sight?"
Denny stepped back and motioned her to the tachymeter. "No! Don't stand with your legs astraddle the tripod legs, dear! It's too easy to bump it out of alignment that way. Stand between the legs. That's fine. Now have a look."
She peered into the lens. "It's upside down," she announced.
"It's supposed to be."
"I see a little symbol on the stick. I think it's supposed to be a V."
"That stands for five," Denny told her. "They put it in Roman numerals so you won't mistake it for a nine when you see it upside down."
"Why don't you just hold the measuring stick upside down?" Elizabeth wanted to know.
Denny shook his head. "There's no explaining science to some people," he said.
"That means you haven't a clue." Elizabeth nodded.
The day spent measuring the circle was the most perfect one imaginable in a Highland summer: comfortably warm sunshine and a bright blue sky with only a few puffs of clouds low on the horizon. They had spent many hours carefully measuring the site and rechecking their findings, stopping only for quick lunch of potted meat sandwiches fetched to the site by Alasdair, who was being more cooperative than anyone had expected. He and Gitte had taken charge of a second tripod and were measuring the levels at the base of each stone, while Owen followed, making chalk marks on
the stones to indicate the points of measurement. Callum, as usual, photographed the work in progress.
Marchand and Denny had compared their findings and pronounced the site a flattened circle, composed of two arcs of 240 degrees and 120 degrees respectively.
"Does mat make sense?" Elizabeth wanted to know; she was resting on the grass, adding notations to her clipboard.
"I think so," said Owen, who was also resting. "There are hundreds of these stone circles all over Britain, and from what Marchand was saying today, mat seems to be one of the recognized types of circles.''
"I haven't seen any evidence of a tomb, yet, have you?"
"I asked about that," Owen said. "Callum told me that if you do find tombs associated with stone circles, they were added by a later culture. The original builders did not use the circles for burial purposes."
"So much for the treasure." Elizabeth sighed. "I wondered when I saw Alasdair poking into the peat with a sharp stick. What was he looking for?"
Owen shrugged. "More stones. They seem to think a few are missing."
"The villagers probably snatched them for millstones in the Middle Ages."
"It's really going to be difficult to measure that outer ring of the henge monument. The posts were usually timber or small stones, and those will be a couple of feet into the turf by now.''
Elizabeth nodded. "Shoveling required. I doubt if we get to that stage on this expedition, though. If we stay that long,
we'll be digging peat anyway—to bum!"
* * *
They kept working until seven to make up for the days the rain had cost them. Even then the sky was bright with full sun, but everyone except Marchand was too tired to care. He and Denny stayed at the circle for "just one more measuring," while the others straggled off to the burn to wash off the sweat before going back to camp.
Elizabeth shivered as she plunged her arms into the icy spring. "Ugh!" she said. "The Bronze Age is losing its charm incredibly fast."
Gitte nodded. "Tonight I will heat water on the camping stove, no matter how long it takes. I do not think we get really clean in cold water.''
"Boil some extra water," Owen told her. "I'll want some to soften up my honey and hot wax."
"You'll crack the jar," Gitte told him.
Owen rolled his eyes. "I'll wait until it cools off some. Honestly!"
"So you're cleaning the bagpipes tonight, huh, Owen?" Elizabeth asked.
He blushed. "I might as well. You'll be playing bridge, and nobody else wants to talk to me. Besides, Marchand says that he's sending me over to the small island to measure that stone tomorrow, now that it's stopped raining. I told him I'd just take some food and camp over there for a couple of days. That way I can play my bagpipes without disturbing anyone."
Elizabeth privately thought that sound would carry very well indeed over still water, but she decided not to say so. Perhaps Owen wanted her to protest that his playing was no disturbance at all, and that was nearly true. It was not that he played well, but it took enormous lung power to play, and as a relative beginner, Owen had very little endurance. He was, therefore, only able to be a nuisance for short periods of time.