Finding Fraser(57)

That didn’t last long.

We stepped off the path into the clearing, which I could see had been fenced away from a farmer’s field. Just along the neat footpath was a collection of rusty red Highland cattle alternately grazing and staring into space. The circle of stones, eleven in number, was startlingly similar to the ones near Culloden. It surrounded a pile of rocks, indented on one side, with a rounded hollow center.

“It’s a cairn,” said Valerie. “Long deserted. Robbed, in times past, of any valuables. But something still remains.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “Twas the old ’uns that built this cairn, and the ones at Balnuaran, too,” she said, quietly. “Aligned with the midsummer moon, but not jes’ any moon. The entrance lies in the path of the rare, long moon, wha’ comes but once a generation.”

She stepped to the edge of the cairn. “Did ye walk through the ones up north?” she asked.

When I nodded, she gestured toward the low entrance. “Those at Balnuaran are open to the sky, but this one still has its roof. It’s corbeled, y’see, strong enough to hold those rocks in place for millennia.”

Pointing at the middle, she walked back over to where I lingered near one of the low standing stones. “When the archeologists finally went in, there were no remains of the body. Just a sort of stain on the stone, showing how they’d placed her, face out to see the moon as it waxed full on all her children and theirs, each in turn.”

“It was a woman?” I asked. “I thought these old monuments mostly revered kings and warriors and so on.”

Valerie smiled. “Oh, they’ve no proof, o’ course, as there were no remains found to test. But I’ve had my hand on that center stone.” She pointed to a large slab that rested to one side of the opening at the top. “And I can tell ye, I feel her still, or what she once was.”

We stood silently together and watched the wind create weird shapes in the dead grasses sown across the roof of the cairn, each lost in our own thoughts.

“Can you climb down through there to get into the center?” I asked her, at last.

Valerie nodded. “Oh, aye—it’s called a passage grave for a reason, y’know. But I’d not like to do it m’self, I’ll tell ye, as it is a wee low ceiling. I’m too claustrophobic for that sort of thing these days, though I done it enough when I was a young’un, up to no good here with the other boys and girls.” She chuckled, eyes distant.

I walked over to the entrance, a dark smudge of shadow amid the gray stone. “It was here that the ghost stood,” I blurted. “At Clava. I saw him and another man—a friend who was there—saw him, too. I could see his kilt in the moonlight, but not much else. Heavy boots, maybe.”

Valerie, walking up to join me, burst into delighted laughter. “Ach, girlie, someone’s havin’ ye on. Ye’ll see no tartan-clad ghosties at these sites. The spirits of any who remain here—even those of the warriors who may have guarded them—came long before the plaid. Long before the bonnie sort of folk you’d recognize these days. It was the old ’uns that made this place. Tha’s why I came with ye today. Whether ye’re of the Celtic blood or no’, it doesn’t do to come unlearned before the old ’uns.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her. And then I remembered. “My friend who was here—he stayed all night hoping to see the ghost.”

“And …?” She crossed her arms then, waiting for me to finish.

“He’s in the hospital,” I admitted reluctantly. “He caught a chill and it turned into pneumonia.”

Valerie nodded, tracing a finger along the surface of the standing stone. “American?” she asked, though from her smile, I felt she must know the answer.

“From Georgia,” I said. “But his mother’s family came from England.”

She shrugged. “Who’s to know what’s at play?”

We both stood quiet a moment, and then Valerie raised her head. “I don’t have a sense of him, I’m sorry to say. But I hope he’ll be well again soon.”

“I think he’s doing much better,” I said.

She nodded, and stepped back onto the path. “And glad I am to hear it. But for you, though … have ye seen enough? Is there anything else I can answer for ye?”

Looking back over the low cairn, I could see the old stones standing sentinel around it. Behind it fields dotted with red cattle spread across the landscape, completed by the white coats of sheep on the nearby hillside. The only sound I could hear, apart from the cars on the motorway in the distance, was the jagged cawing of a crow as it flew overhead.