I came to in the circle of rocks, cool grass against my back and the sun to my face. A chilling breeze blew by as I sat up, seeming to freeze my bones like a gust from the tundra. My head was pounding, from what I was not sure; the last thing I remembered was touching the rock, screams, and then darkness. I stood up, holding my sweater clad arms close, trying to keep the wind from stealing the little body heat I had left. Looking around, I saw the rocks just as they had been before, if not a little less covered in moss and lichen. And yet, as I turned around, examining my surroundings, something felt wrong, oh so wrong, and yet I couldn't pinpoint what it was that was eating at me. With the uncanny feeling that I would find no help among these stones, I began to walk. I vaguely remembered that the sun set in the west, and tried to seek it out to orient myself. Yet with my luck, I realized that it was high noon, the shining orb was straight overhead and I had no clue where it was going, and I certainly wasn't going to wait around by the rocks to see. With that decided I began my little journey, stumbling down the green hills and rocky outcrops. An expanse of green marsh, blue mountains, and a lush forests rose up in front of me, unfamiliar and yet so peaceful. I closed my eyes and sucked in a breath of fresh, unadulterated air; wherever I was, I didn't mind being lost as much as I thought I would.
I would find out in moments that I had spoken much too soon.
Once I had clumsily traversed the rocky hillside beneath the stone circle, I stopped at the edge of the forest, spotted a babbling creek and decided that if I was going to keep walking to find help, I would need to stay hydrated. Slowly I picked my way to the waters edge, taking care to avoid the patches of glistening mud. Once on the flat stones of the water's edge, I got down and dipped my hands into the crystal liquid, slightly jerking at the freezing water, and hurried to gulp down a few sizable mouthfuls. With the last gulp I mopped up my dripping chin with the sleeve of my sweater, scratching my face on a bramble that had snuck its way onto the knit fabric. Knowing that I must move on before dark, I stood up and turned around, straight into a hard yet warm chest clad in red.
This wasn't any red though, it was red decorated with brass buttons, with a trim of white and black and the tassels of a military official. In absolute confusion I jerked back, looking up into the pale, pinched face of a tri-corn wearing man. His face was very plain, smeared with what looked like dirt, on his forehead like he wiped it there in a moment of stress. His eyes were small and piggish, a shade of brown, the exact same as the mud I had so carefully tried to avoid.
"And what may I ask is a-" at this his eyes, dropped to my outfit, which consisted of jeans, brown laced up boots, and a black and white knit sweater, "-interestingly dressed woman doing wandering out on her own?" He finished in a clipped tone, even more apparent with his English accent. My heart soared with the possibility of finding my way home, and yet his nationality and outfit tugged at my attention, warning me that this wasn't what it seemed.
"I got lost-" I pointed towards the hill with the stone circle behind me "-and woke up there, if you could help me find my way home that would be wonderful."
Alarm bells rang in my head as I spoke, noticing that once the first few words had left my lips, the man had seemed to stop listening altogether, his mouth twitched into a frown and his brow pulled down in a most hostile expression.
"How the hell did you get here?! You're a bloody spy! Helping the cause you are!" As he yelled he grasped my arm in a grip of steel and yanked me into the woods.
"What?! I promise I don't know what you're talking about! Please!" I fought back, scratching and clawing, kicking and punching. But with a quick whistle into the trees, another red coat came running out, initially taken aback by the situation until a violent jerk from my captors head ordered him to grasp my other arm and follow along. Try in vain I did to escape, but my strength was no match for the combined efforts of the two men, and I was afraid that if I fought too hard they would knock me out, I wanted to be conscious for this, it was too important to leave to chance. After a short scramble through bushes of thistle and thorns, the soldiers finally came out in to a clearing, filled with three tents and a roaring fire. Four other men sat by the fire, or milled around the camp, but immediately their eyes were drawn to my fighting form, a look of confusion and curiosity decorating their brows.
"Sir, what is-" began one as my original captor handed my arm off to another man, who grasped it an iron grip.
"I seem to have found a traitor and a spy lurking in the woods, and I will see to it that this threat to the crown is taken care of appropriately!"
"Please!" I screamed, "I'm lost! All I want to do is find my way home!" and yet, just like the other man, the minute the words left my mouth, the men's faces closed off to me. One turned to his tent, rummaged around for a bit and came back with a strip of leather that I realized with horror was a whip.
The man with the piggish eyes, came up behind me and grasped my sweater, the sound of grating metal rang through the forest and in a flash my sweater hung around my body, cut in half with a knife, my back now exposed. The cold air tore at my flesh, stinging like needles, at least until the first cut. With a horrified shock, I felt the tip of the man's knife slice neatly down my back, releasing a flood of warmth to course down my skin.
"What's wrong girlie? Can't handle the punishment fit for the crime?" Another slow, agonizing slice. I was about to plead again when I realized that these men would never listen, and if they did it was to get pleasure from my screams and pain. I figured that if they were going to kill me, I certainly wasn't going to give them what they wanted before they did it.
Another slice.
"Thirteen cuts for the colonies missy" pig eyes said with a laugh. On and on this went, he and his cohorts taunting, me hanging on, teeth clenched, sweating with the effort not to scream. Finally he stepped back and I heard the knife slid back into his sheath. My shoulders dropped in relief.
"Ohh no, you're not getting off that easy, traitors will suffer at my hand, its a personal motto of sorts." he said with a chuckle, and then in a second I knew I was a goner. I understood with the first crack of the whip why he had cut me first. A whipping is a horrible endeavor, but a whipping on open wounds is an experience so unbearable that when the first crack came down, I hoped I would die right then and there; struck down by some other worldly force, or simply just die of blood loss... anything to stop the pain. Throughout the next thirteen lashes, I held my tongue, and fought to stay conscious, determined to show these men that I was made of tougher stuff before they killed me.
I never had to though, on number thirteen, there was a call from an owl somewhere in the woods, which instead of being answered by another owl was answered by the battle cries of a band of scraggly warriors, brandishing broadswords and wooden shields. Clad in kilts. I closed my eyes at this sight as everything clicked into place, I was clearly no longer in my own time, I had no clue how or why but this was no longer the 21st century.
With a jerk, my captors dropped my arms to join the fray and I held my tattered sweater around my front, sinking to the ground and succumbing to the waves of pain, made fresh with every gust of wind that hit my back. I held myself tightly, afraid that if I didn't I would simply fall apart into oblivion. In my ears, the sounds of battle raged on around me, when I gained enough strength to lift my head, I looked around and saw that the ground was covered in red, from the coats and blood of my assailants. Standing over them was a group of rag-tag warriors, battle worn, and covered in dirt and grim. I blinked calmly as one of them came over and squatted down in front of me,
"Dinna worry lassie, we are here to take ye to a safe place, no more English, I promise ye." He held out a hand at this and I nodded and reached to grasp it. The torn bits of my back pulled painfully, and yet I was so far gone with the sensation that I was in a state of tranquility and calmness. What was the worst that could happen to me now?
With help from the strange Scottish warriors, I was loaded up behind a kind, older man on his horse. Told to hold on and that a safe haven was but a few miles away. Together, the group and I trudged through the night, with me fading in and out of consciousness and them conversing in low streams of Gaelic, so quietly that at times I couldn't distinguish it from the sounds of the forest around us.
Finally, when I felt as if I could take no more of the jarring movements of the horse, my partner announced that were had arrived at the castle, Castle Leoch, he called it. I felt the horses slow down as we entered the courtyard, but by then my eyes has rolled back into my head.
"She's goin' down! Someone ge' her!" I heard my rider yell, I wondered lazily who he was talking about before I felt the horse turning beneath me and realized that I was the one going over. With a jarring thud, I landed in the hard, warm arms of someone, a man. His hands grasped me and slid over the bloody expanse that was my back. I gasped in pain, and struggled to stay conscious through the pain,
"What the-" said the voice holding me, his voice was like the group that rescued me, deep and filled with a Scottish lilt. Gingerly he hoisted me up, I could hear the men around me yelling advice and recounting the story,
"Take her ta Mistress Beauchamp, Jamie!"
"I swear tha' lassie is strong, dinna cry out once!"
I was carried over a shoulder, to prevent any contact to the mangled flesh that was my back. Each step reverted through me painfully, and my head felt light, like it would float away at any second. Finally, the movement stopped and I was set down on a cold, stone slab, a table I presumed. My head lolled forward and two hands braced themselves on my shoulders to hold me up. All around me was the buzz of conversation, alive with excitement and news. Over the din of Scottish brogue, was the commanding tone of an English woman,
"Alright, alright, Rupurt and Angus hold onto the girl's arms, tightly please, this will either wake her up or knock her out." Immediately two sets of arms grasped me tightly and the hands on my shoulders tightened. And then the pain somehow doubled, tripled, quadrupled into endless waves of pure agony.
This time I screamed, my eyes shot open and I arched my back, whatever that woman had just poured down my back felt like fire, sizzling my skin straight off the bone. I was awake now.
"Mistress Beauchamp!" Exclaimed a voice.
"Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ! Unless you wanted her wound to fester, that was necessary!"
I looked around in fear, the woman's term did not at all fit with this time period, but then another wave of pain came as the woman doused me again in alcohol. Not caring, I leaned my head forward on the chest in front of me, too wrapped up in the pain to care. Before I knew it I felt the tug of stitches,
"Why are ye stitchin' a flogging?" asked the chest I was leaning against,
"Because it wasn't just a flogging Jamie, this girl was cut before she was flogged." As this Mistress Beauchamp finished her sentence, the room led out an audible gasp and was silent. Then a voice spoke up hesitantly,
"What on Earth di' the lassie do ta' ge' somethin' like tha'?" The room's occupants shuffled nervously as they considered my situation. In order to dispel any accusations of spying, and also because I felt that I owed these people, I used the very last of my strength and raised my head to the crowd surrounding me.
"I'd say it was because of my accent."
The room fell silent, and then at last, Mistress Beauchamp, with a bloody needle still in her hand came into my field of vision and said,
"You're a Patriot." I nodded silently, and a voice in the back let out a nervous laugh,
"Aye, I see now, theres no much tha' a Sassenach hates more than a Scot, cept' a Patriot tha' is."