THE LAST LAIRD

Chapter 3 - Drenched in Heartbreak

I woke face down in my bed, my head throbbing, and felt immediate regret for finishing the bottle of whisky after Duncan left. I realised my phone was buzzing. I couldn't recall setting my alarm and picked it up, staring at the screen through bleary eyes.

"Maggie?" I asked, my tongue thick and furry in my mouth.

"Are you OK? I've called three times!"

"I'm sorry, I was asleep..."

"Well you're awake now, excellent, because I'm on my way back! I sorted things out, we're back on!"

"Oh good," I mumbled, trying to follow Maggie's fast and excited way of speaking.

"We should all be there after lunch," she said.

"All?"

"Me, Lila and Josh, the interns."

"Oh, of course," I sat up, the fog slowly clearing. "And Duncan, from the Pub, I've told him we need him for the heavy work."

"You did?" She squeaked. "Heavy work? Alright I guess."

She sounded sceptical and I was annoyed, sick of feeling out of the loop. This was my dig after all, not Maggie's.

"Maggie, you still haven't told me why the dig was closed down."

She was quiet for a few beats, an odd situation in itself.

"It was about the man, Duncan. They were worried he was going to sue them." I could tell immediately that it was not the truth, not the whole truth at least. I was tempted to push for more information, but I decided I would get further with Maggie in person, perhaps while we were working. Another mystery for me to solve. "Right, so I'll see you after lunch then!" She said quickly.

"Maggie, before you go. Could you forward me your notes from the last couple of weeks?"

"My notes?" She squeaked.

"Is that a problem?"

"No, of course not. I just...I'll make sure it's all, you know, readable and everything, and I'll get it over to you." Once again, I got the feeling she was hiding something. "There's not much though."

"That's fine, it will just help me see where things were at before I got here."

She gave a nervous laugh. "Ok, sure, I'll do that as soon as I get back."

The sun was out but the wind whipped my hair around my face. I had let it grow long and had it highlighted in the US and honey blonde strands caught in my mouth as I walked down to the dig site. Now it felt like an unnecessary vanity as I tromped through the slush from the melted snow. The cold snap had been and gone and so had the pretty flurries from a couple of days ago, now we were just left with very cold mud. The site was inside the castle walls and was staked out and covered. It seemed undisturbed by the wild weather, Maggie and the interns knew their job well. I had my tablet and folding chair and I sat at a point where I could see everything, opening the Professor's notes and acquainting myself with the layout. The castle had been just been a local landmark and minor tourist attraction until three years ago when some high school students from a nearby village on a field trip had dug and discovered a completely intact medieval knife. Some archaeology students from London had heard about it and descended on the site, finding a few shards of pottery, and finally, human bones, which dated back to the seventeenth century. They determined the area the remains had been found in was a chapel, so we possibly had a burial site. Not much was known about the history of the castle, there was little left of it, it had been unoccupied for hundreds of years and apart from some old ghost stories, it seemed there was little historical data to go by.