The Crow Road

She flashed a shocked expression at me and handed me the glass.

I shook my head. "You as well, eh?"

"Hmm?" Diana said.

"Nothing," I breathed, ru

"Not at all, Prentice." She closed the now empty cabinet, and took off her white gloves. "I mean, maybe I'd have settled on astronomy anyway, without your one-man show. Whatever; it's been fun. Cold at nights and a long way from the beach, and the air's a bit thin… but it's the skies that really take your breath away." She nodded. "You should visit, come see it all some time."

"I'd like to," I said. "People allowed to come and look round?"

Diana folded her arms and rested her back against the display cabinet. "It can be arranged."

"There's somebody I'd like to take there."

Diana smirked. "Yeah? Somebody special? Who's that?"

"Oh… friend of mine. In Canada at the moment."

"Ashley, huh?"

I felt myself blush. "Well, yeah," I said, trying not to grin too much.

Diana nodded, still smiling. "It'd be great to see you both out there. You two sort of an item these days?"

I shrugged, felt myself blush again. "Sort of. I hope so. I think so."

Diana laughed, which was good to hear; I didn't think she had laughed since Fergus died. "Yeah, I think so."

Verity and Lewis brought young Ke

Diana broke open a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallen which was older than any of us (well, except Mrs McS, but she'd gone back to the kitchen by then), and an awful lot older than Ke

"Let's wet his head," Diana said.

"Can we go up on the roof?" I said. It just seemed like a good idea.

So we climbed up there, into a bright March afternoon with a keen blue sky and a smell of wood-smoke on the westerly breeze. We sat on the slates and drank our whiskies and took turns holding the baby, who was still fast asleep.

"You having him christened?" Diana asked Verity softly, peering down at the infant's tiny scrunched-up face. She rocked him to and fro.

"Well, I think mum and dad would rather he was, but I'm not bothered one way or the other. Lewis isn't too keen, are you my love?"

Lewis showed his teeth. "Over my dead body, actually." he said.

"See?" Verity said to Diana, who was smiling broadly and holding the boy close, sniffing him. She just nodded.

Verity glanced at Lewis, then said, "Prentice?"

"Yo?"

"We'd like you to be his godfather. Would you be?" She actually looked as though she thought I might refuse. Lewis was gri

I cleared my throat. "Well… in terms of the actual title, I'm sort of taking a long hard look at my previous statements about the existence or non-existence of a supreme being at this moment in time, re-appraisal-wise," I said, a suitably pained expression on my face as Diana handed the baby to me.

Lewis laughed.

Anyway, it was agreed, and then we thought the little blighter ought to have at least a semblance of a christening, so Lewis dabbed his finger in his whisky and reached over and put a tiny drop of the spirit on his son's head, and said, "There; that's all he's going to get."

"Ke

We drank the lad's health. Then Diana threw her glass away over the battlements towards the woods. Lewis, Verity and I all looked at each other, then followed suit, and heard a couple of the tumblers smash somewhere in the trees beneath. Young Ke

I stood up then and went to the battlements, and held the ancient rough stones beneath my hands. I looked out over the woods and the plain and the fields; to Gallanach, with its quays and spires and serried streets, and out to the crumpled hills beyond, the brindle of forests to the east and the glitter of waves to the west, where the ocean was. I thought of Ashley, on the other side of that ocean, and wondered what she was doing right now, and hoped that she was well, and happy, and maybe thinking of me, and then I just stood there, gri