Chapter 5 #3
The light was fading rapidly beyond the small windows, making the figures on the ceiling blur into twilit outlines, and it thundered home to me again that it wasn’t July any more. The shock sat me down on the bed, which was, indeed, hard.
‘Are you all right?’ Lachlan asked, gently.
‘Yes. No. I don’t really know.’ I took a deep breath and tried not to think, concentrating on Kaylinn, who was still gazing at the ceiling, to distract my mind. ‘You were a very small archaeological dig,’ I said to her. Anything to keep from thinking. ‘Just four of you.’
‘Oh, the others had gone back over to the campsite,’ she said, her eyes tracing complicated knot work picked out in gold above the bed.
‘They’d seen the storm coming and decided to pack up for the day.
We wanted to carry on; Mal and David had found a stone that they thought might have some carving on it and I was helping. ’
‘What about you?’ I asked Lachlan, who had sat down beside me but was still staring at the window as though he were trying to work out how to squeeze between the narrow wooden slats to run free across the landscape. We were more than thirty feet up, so I hoped he wasn’t going to try.
‘Me? Oh, I’m not part of the dig. I’m supposed to be doing some work for Historic Environment Scotland,’ he said vaguely.
‘Writing about lost castles, obscure ruins, that sort of thing. Sheer fluke I pitched up when this lot were here. It was meant to be a quick job, take some pictures, make some notes and go back to do some research. Like I said before, I’m moving into a wee cottage about twenty miles away…
’ He stopped speaking suddenly and I saw his face change.
He’d clearly got the same feeling as I’d just had, where the unbelievability of what was going on had hit him on the head with all the force of three hundred lost years.
‘We’ll get back,’ I half whispered. ‘We will.’
He swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he did a half-shake of his head, opened his eyes again and gave me a smile that was only a bit wobbly at the edges. ‘We have to,’ he said. ‘That’s all my money going on the mortgage and I’d like to get some use out of it.’
‘Nobody moving in with you?’ I tried to sound casual but I heard Kaylinn giggle. Damn, and I’d thought I was being subtle.
‘No,’ and even Lachlan sounded amused. ‘Strictly solo. Long divorced, very amicable but she’s gone to Antarctica to track migrating whales so nobody to miss me.
I haven’t even got a cat.’ He bounced a little bit, experimentally, and the bed frame jiggled.
His expression was very curated, very neutral and the subject change clunked.
‘You’re right about the bed though, Kaylinn. Straw, do we reckon?’
‘Feather mattress over a straw one,’ she said confidently.
‘I had a quick look in the interests of research. Poor Jeannie, this place must take some housekeeping. It’s a hard life and all the books seem to go on about how tough it was for the men – we need more study about what this life must be like for women. ’ She sniffed. ‘And I’m not gonna cry.’
I reached out without looking and patted her hand.
‘Good for you,’ Lachlan said robustly.
There was the sound of feet on the stone stairs and the three of us leaped up and looked for somewhere to hide, which was ridiculous when you thought about it. But it was only David and Mal arriving, carrying the blankets bundled in front of them like soft shielding.
‘Just got in before Jeannie went off out,’ David said. ‘And you were right, Lachlan, she does lock the door, so I brought the rest of the turnip stew just in case we can’t open the windows. I put it in Kaylinn’s flask – sorry, Kay, but you’d drunk all the coffee.’
‘And turnip stew might be nasty, but cold turnip stew doesn’t bear thinking about,’ added Mal, with a theatrical shudder.
‘Good thinking,’ Lachlan said.
‘The windows must open from the inside,’ I said. ‘On the ground floor. We can climb out if we need to.’
‘We might need to.’ Mal dropped the blankets on the end of the bed. ‘I have seen the garderobe in here and outside is better.’
‘What’s a garderobe?’ I had to ask – my interest in castles had been severely dented by Dad’s love of dragging Lenny and me around them every summer holiday when I would rather have been back at home, riding.
‘Toilet,’ David said. ‘Or rather, hole in the wall with a drop to somewhere we don’t want to think about.’ Then he yawned. ‘I grew up in a place like that,’ he said. ‘Only without the whole “castle” element, and I am not keen to relive my childhood.’
‘Right then,’ Lachlan said briskly. ‘Bed. We can light a candle if we’re careful. Close over the shutters, Davey, and who has the matches?’ A moment of pocket groping revealed that Kaylinn had the only remaining matches.
‘Jeannie has left a bucket of water downstairs,’ Mal said. ‘So she must be coming in tomorrow for a good clean round and we can get a drink if we need one.’
‘Okay. At least we won’t die of dehydration.
If we can die, which I don’t think we can.
’ A moment of silence followed Lachlan’s pronouncement, into which I could hear the gulls rusty-calling on the cliffs beyond and a horse whinnied.
I felt very, very far from home. ‘We’ll sleep through here, lads, let the ladies have the fancy ceiling to stare at. ’
I realised that I didn’t even know what time it was. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, a reflex that I realised the stupidity of even as I did it, but it was a hard habit to break. The screen still sat blackly reflecting my face, white and staring. Not even the torch worked.
‘We think they can’t work here,’ Kaylinn said gently. ‘Mine was fully charged when we… when it happened, but it won’t even turn on.’
‘But why?’ I shook it. ‘I mean, electricity still exists! They might not have invented a way to use it yet, but it’s still here!’
‘Probably because cell networks haven’t happened yet. Try not to think about it,’ she suggested, pulling off a top layer of clothes to sit in T-shirt and shorts. ‘We just kinda go along with the light. So sleep when it’s dark and get up when it’s morning kinda thing.’
A pathetic candle flame guttered from over in the doorway. ‘Need the light?’
‘Nah, thanks, Mal. We’re good.’
I could have done with a bit of light, but it didn’t seem worth arguing. Kaylinn was already sliding into the bed so I unzipped my coat, took off my jeans and sweatshirt and plopped them onto the floor.
‘You have to hide your clothes,’ she said from the far side of the mattress. ‘If Jeannie comes in she might see them if they’re not on us.’
I made a very rude face that she hopefully couldn’t see in this thick darkness and scrunched my clothes up and kicked them under the bed, where the hangings reached the floor.
Then I lay back onto the bolster-type pillow and pulled the sheets, which felt like linen and smelled floral but slightly musty, up to my neck.
I wanted to talk to Kaylinn. I wanted to ask her…
I didn’t know what I wanted to ask, but I was certain that the questions would come.
They felt as though they were stacking up in a holding pattern somewhere and the slightest excuse would cause them to come pouring out, sharp edged with fear and fuelled by anxiety.
But it wasn’t fair. Kaylinn was treading a fine line already, missing her family, scared and confused – what good would it do for me to lay my fears on her too?
It might make me feel better to share my worries, but it wouldn’t help her mental health at all.
Anyway, she was already a soft-breathing hump beneath the sheets, so I closed my eyes and tried not to let myself think.