Travelling on the road was remarkably similar to travelling with my Uncle Lamb. He was often in the presence of male academics, speaking foreign languages and discussing topics I didn't understand. When Joe and I traveled, we did it as equals, but with Uncle Lamb, I had been so young, that he had sheltered me from everything. That feeling of isolation was occurring now. The men most often spoke in Gaelic. I don't think it was to be excluding, but rather that they didn't feel the need to be inclusive. Jamie and Murtagh kept busy, and together, they almost as much outsiders in this party as I was.
My new best friend was Ned Gowan. He was a lawyer, a kind soul, a deeply philosophical, and hilarious man. I had interacted with him the first time when I listened to what sounded like an asthmatic cough. I tucked the right herbs into his pipe, to reduce the inflammation of the bronchial tubes, and he was absolutely delighted. I started talking with him about my background, and he his. We sparked up some good theological, philosophical, ethical, and even legal debates. Ned explained to me what we were doing, and how we would be collecting rents and taxes.
"This year I've sent express notice that we will not be accepting pigs." Ned proclaimed, in a tone I found more hopeful than authoritative. I had smiled, and we had continued on. I now understood the need for the large travelling party, and even me, the healer, to protect the taxes and rents collected from the lands.
As it turned out, Ned was equally as fascinated by my stories of other cultures, curious plants and animals, and places as Jamie had been. More often than not, the other men listened in on my descriptive stories too. I talked about mostly things they could understand, or that I could apply some form of analogy to. Without pictures, or sketches, some of the things in my stories were outlandish enough to be unimaginable. They all loved my descriptions of fish, corals, marine animals that they may have heard faint whisperings of. Though none but Ned, and occasionally Jamie, ever actually asked me to tell the stories, all of the men fell silent when I spoke. My first night under the stars was not an easy one. The men all huddled at the fire trading stories and singing songs, while I wrapped myself up into the tiniest of balls under a horse blanket, tucking myself against a tree.
The night was peaceful, quiet, open. I craned my head to look at the myriad of stars above me. It was a beautifully glorious sight. Light pollution didn't exist yet. Fuck that, regular pollution didn't either. I tried to wrap my head around the time scales of things, about famous people who would be alive, or unborn in this year. I wondered about science, and chemistry, astronomy, and even physics. The Theory of Relativity didn't exist yet. Beethoven wasn't born yet. Was Van Gogh? I tried to remember my dates, but - much like my sense of direction - the talent to remember them seemed to be situational.
There was a watch at all times, and when I drifted awake in the early dawn, I went to sit with the watchman I recognized - Rupert. He was civil, and kind. He offered me a bannock for breakfast, and asked about my foot.
"I'm glad we've been riding. It's given it a break. I'll be back to my usual in no time."
"Ye're not going to start running again are ye?" Rupert asked, slightly mortified.
"No." I chuckled. "Only when we're back at Leoch."
"What if ye find yer friends?" Rupert reminded.
"Anna and Joe?" I asked. I sighed, sadly. "I'm afraid I have very little hope of finding them again. I can only hope that whichever country they've traveled to, and eventually settle, that they set up somewhere public, near a trade route. It's my only chance of locating them."
"Dougal thinks the men at the Fort may know something."
"I think Dougal is reaching a little there. My colleagues are not important people, quiet academics, in search of knowledge and meaning, rather than powers or place. I very much doubt that they would have settled anywhere, therefore his hope of a forwarding address for my mail is a little stretched."
"Aye, well mebbe they stayed, to find ye. Ye are important and all."
"I'm not important." I scoffed.
"I meant ranking. High, of some kind. Not sure what exactly ye are, mind."
"I hold no titles I'm aware of, aside from widow." I smiled. "My life, Rupert, has been thus far, the loneliest life you could imagine. I expect even prisoners have more of a family and sense of belonging than I."
Rupert looked saddened for a moment, then looked across the camp, to a sleeping mound of plaid, with fiery red hair at the top. "Things are picking up for ye then Mistress. At least ye have a dozen travelling companions, a room to return to, and a job, now. Not to mention the occasional stable visit." He winked conspiratorially at me, and I laughed quietly.
"Shut up." I scoffed, and stood, signaling the end of the conversation. "Where's a girl go to get some privacy around here?.
We reached the first stopping-place near noon of the second day. It was no more than a cluster of three or four huts, set off the road at the foot of a small glen. A stool was brought out from one of the cottages for Dougal's use, and a plank—thoughtfully brought along in one of the wagons—laid across two others to serve as a writing surface for Mr. Gowan. He seated himself in this and began to lay out inkhorn, ledgers, and receipt-book, as composed in his manner as though he were still behind his lace curtains in Edinburgh. ONe by one, the laird's tenants came to pay rent. It was a leisurely process, with a lot of socializing, which gave me a lot of time to walk around the village collecting herbs. Meanwhile, the men-at-arms lounged beneath the trees or disappeared up the wooded bank—to hunt, I supposed. Variations of this scene were repeated over the next few days. Now and then I would be invited into a cottage for cider or milk, and all of the women would crowd into the small single room to talk with me, it was a welcome invitation always, although I knew my outlander status was intimidating, and made me vulnerable. I did do some general healing though, offering tidbits, and even pulling a stray tooth or two. Sometimes a cluster of rude huts would be large enough to support a tavern or even an inn, which became Dougal's headquarters for the day. Once in a while, the rents would include a horse, a sheep, or other livestock. These were generally traded to someone in the neighborhood for something more portable, or, if Jamie declared a horse fit for inclusion in the castle stables, it would be added to our string. I wondered about Jamie's presence in the party. While the young man clearly knew horses well, so did most of the men in the party, including Dougal himself. Considering also that horses were both a rare sort of payment, and usually nothing special in the way of breeding, I wondered why it had been thought necessary to bring an expert along.
Jamie and Murtagh themselves, had been following the example of the men, civil and distant. I supposed that their strategy was to not alienate their riding partners, or perhaps my stolen moments with the men in Leoch had been unique because of their private nature. Perhaps I was not to be counted as friend in public.
There was one day, in which I climbed a particularly formidable tree without the men noticing. I wanted to get to a mushroom collection I could see that was double my height from the ground. By the time the men saw me, they'd caused a stir, and I had an audience. I, balancing carefully in my tree, yanked off the mushrooms I had gone up for, tucking them carefully in my apron. They were exactly what I thought they were, and extremely out of place. Native to Asia, as far as I could remember, I was still glad to have some Shittake mushrooms for my stock. They were not only edible, and delicious, but good immune boosters. I clambered carefully back down the tree, and Dougal came storming up to me, face thunderous.
"Stay where we leave you, when we leave you."
"I literally haven't fucking moved from the tree you left me at." I counter-argued. "I just went up to collect these, medicinally they -" I unfolded my apron skirt to reveal the half dozen mushrooms I had found. Dougal ripped off my apron, throwing it off to the side. The mushrooms scattered and bounced. I stood there, looking at the apron belt left tucked around my waist. I'd have to sew that now. Without thinking about it, I decked him in the nose. His head whipped back slightly, his hand flying to his nose. I hadn't hit him hard, but it would sting.
"If you want a healer, I'll be a healer. If you wanted anything other than that, I don't see why you bothered dragging me along."
The back of Dougal's hand made contact with my cheekbone, and my eye felt like it was going to explode. Jamie rushed forward, separating us, confronting Dougal, and speaking in Gaelic. My eyes were burning with tears. Apparently my newfound freedom was simply a tighter-leashed prison sentence. Undoubtedly the separation from Colum had something to do with it - he seemed to trust me more. Dougal, done arguing with Jamie, spat on my dress, cursed something I was moderately sure I knew the meaning of, and turned away. I ripped the ruined apron belt off, dropping it with the rest of my damaged and scattered things. Mushrooms forgotten, I scrambled up, walked over to my horse, and began braiding her mane. My fingers shook with adrenaline, and my cheekbone throbbed like it had been lit on fire. The presence of the calm beast cooled my head. I skipped dinner that night, slumping to sleep by a different tree, cradled in some large roots. and pressing my sore cheekbone against the cool wet moss. When I woke in the morning, a freshly mended apron, and a neat pile of mushrooms - some damaged - were tucked beside me. I swallowed hard as I looked at them. I collected them, and continued without talking for the rest of the day. Aside from the basic interactions needed to obtain food, and privacy while shitting, I kept to myself. Murtagh stayed close, silent, and supportive in his own way.
It was a week after we had set out that I found out the real reason why Dougal had wanted Jamie. I sat quietly in the corner of a tavern, sipping sour ale and enjoying the respite from horseback. I was paying little attention to Dougal's talk, which shifted back and forth between Gaelic and English, ranging from bits of gossip and farming talk to what sounded like vulgar jokes and meandering stories. I was wondering idly how long, at this rate, it might take to reach Fort William. And once there, exactly how I might best not part company with the Scots of Castle Leoch without becoming equally entangled with the English army garrison. Lost in my own thoughts, I had not noticed that Dougal had been speaking for some time alone, as though making a speech of some kind. Coming gradually back to an awareness of my surroundings, I realized that he was rousing his audience to a high pitch of excitement about something. I glanced around, and listened. I heard the word 'English' and 'Sassenach', and realised that this was probably a nice and fuzzy hate speech. It had that nice lilting tone, while certain words were spat. I nervously wondered how many of the people around here knew that I was one of those distasteful outlanders. Fat Rupert and Ned Gowan, sat against the wall behind Dougal, tankards of ale forgotten on the bench beside them as they listened intently. Jamie was looking at me, frowning, and leaning forward with his elbows on the table. Murtagh moved suddenly beside me, resting his knife on the table. Wherever the speech was going, they didn't like it either.
With no warning, Dougal stood, seized Jamie's shirt collar and pulled, ripping it open and exposing his back. Taken completely by surprise, Jamie froze. His eyes locked with mine, and I couldn't look away. Anger bubbled inside me, and Jamie set his jaw. I opened my mouth, then caught the word "Sassenach," spoken with no kindly intonation, and shut it again. Jamie, with a face like stone, stood and stepped back from the small crowd clustering around him. He carefully peeled off the remnants of his shirt, wadding the cloth into a ball, and left the room. I didn't understand most of the comments spreading around the room, though the bits I caught seemed to be highly anti-English in nature. I was torn between wanting to follow Jamie outside, and staying inconspicuously where I was. I doubted that he wanted any company, so I shrank back into my corner and kept my head down, studying Murtagh's knife on the table.
Rebellion. I remembered what was going to happen, only a few years from now, to the highlanders, to the Jacobites. From the little I remembered of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender to the throne, part of his support had come from France, but part of the finances behind his unsuccessful rising had come from the pockets of the people he proposed to rule. So Colum, or Dougal, or both, were Jacobites.
Finally, Dougal came over to my end of the tavern, where Ned was also sitting. "Aye, well enough," he remarked. "Canna expect a great deal from such a small place. But manage enough of the same, and it will be a respectable sum."
" 'Respectable' is not quite the word I'd use," I said, rising stiffly from my lurking place. Dougal turned, as though noticing me for the first time.
"No?" he said, mouth curling in amusement. "Why not? Have ye an objection to loyal subjects contributing their mite in support of their sovereign?"
"None," I said, meeting his stare. "No matter which sovereign it is. It's your collection methods I don't care for." Dougal studied me carefully, as though my features might tell him something.
"No matter which sovereign it is?" he repeated softly. "I thought ye had no Gaelic."
"I haven't," I said shortly. "But I've got ears, and whatever 'King George's health' may be in Gaelic, I doubt very much that it sounds like 'Bragh Stuart.' "
He tossed back his head and laughed. "That it doesna," he agreed. I wandered over to the shirt on the ground, collecting it.
"Since ye dinna care for my methods, perhaps ye'd wish to remedy them," he pointed to the shirt. "Mend it."
"Mend it yourself!" I threw it it back into his arms and turned to leave.
"Suit yourself," Dougal said pleasantly from behind me. "Jamie can mend his own shirt, then, if you're not disposed to help."
I stopped, hand out. "All right," I began, but was interrupted by a large hand that snaked over my shoulder and snatched the shirt from Dougal's grasp.
The men offered me a place inside, but I declined. I didn't need the 'luxury'. Outside though, after some time, I gave up any thought of sleeping that night. There was a guard, sitting in quiet watchfulness under a tree by the path, but he merely glanced at me, used to my odd behaviour. Apparently deciding that I was not going far, he went back to whittling at a small object in his hands.
I found a pleasant private spot between two large boulders and made a comfortable nest for myself from heaped grass and the blanket. Stretched at length on the ground, I watched the full moon on its slow voyage across the sky. My thoughts wandered to the circle of standing stones. At least I now thought I knew why the stones had been placed there; they were markers, meant to indicate a spot of danger. A spot where time and it's linear nature apparently had little meaning. Was it a spot where people disappeared without warning. Or appeared, perhaps, out of thin air. I wondered idly what would happen if it worked the other way. What if someone disappeared from this time, and popped up in my own? Well, he might manage to fit into the new time without arousing excessive attention, if he was cautious and lucky. After all, I was managing to pass with some success as a normal resident of this time and place, though my appearance and language had certainly aroused plenty of suspicion. What if a displaced person were too different, though, or went about loudly proclaiming what had happened to him? If the exit were in primitive times, likely a conspicuous stranger would simply have been killed on the spot without further inquiry. And in more enlightened times, they would most likely be considered mad and tidied away into an institution somewhere, if they didn't quiet down. This sort of thing could have been going on as long the earth itself, I reflected.
Deep in my thoughts, I hadn't noticed the faint murmur of voices or the stirrings of footsteps through the grass, and I was quite startled to hear a voice speak only a few yards away. "Devil take ye, Dougal MacKenzie," it said. "Kinsman or no, I dinna owe ye that." Jamie's voice was pitched low, but tight with anger.
"Do ye no?" said another voice, faintly amused. "I seem to recall a certain oath, giving your obedience. 'So long as my feet rest on the lands of clan MacKenzie,' I believe was the way of it." There was a soft thud, as of a foot stamping packed earth. "And MacKenzie land it is, laddie."
"I gave my word to Colum, not to you."
"One and the same, man, and ye ken it well." There was the sound of a light slap, as of a hand against a cheek. "Your obedience is to the chieftain of the clan, and outside of Leoch, I am Colum's head and arms and hands as well as his legs."
"And never saw I a better case of the right hand not knowin' what the left is up to. What do ye think Colum is going to say about the left collecting gold for the Stuarts?"
There was a brief pause before Dougal replied, "None can force them to give against their will, and none can stop them, either. And who knows? It may happen that Colum will give more for Prince Charles Edward than all o' them put together, in the end."
"Aye, and it may happen that Claire'll turn out to be a queen, and have you hanged for striking her. That doesn't mean I'll be curtsying to her tomorrow does it?"
I scowled at my use in Jamie's retaliation, but pondered the vision of hanging the man who'd bruised my face.
"No? You've more to gain from a Stuart throne than I have, laddie. And naught from the English, save a noose. If ye dinna care for your own neck—"
"My neck is my own concern," Jamie interrupted savagely. "And so is my back."
"Not while ye travel with me, sweet lad," said his uncle's mocking voice. "If ye wish to hear what Horrocks may tell ye, you'll do as you're told, yourself. And wise to do it, at that; a fine hand ye may be wi' a needle, but you've no but the one clean shirt." There was a shifting, as of someone rising from his seat on a rock, and the soft passage of footsteps through the grass. Only one set of footsteps, though, I thought. I sat up as quietly as I could, and peered cautiously around the edge of one of the boulders that hid me. Jamie was still there, sitting hunched on a rock a few feet away, elbows braced on his knees, chin sunk on his locked hands. His back was mostly to me. I started to ease backward, not wishing to intrude on his solitude, when he suddenly spoke. "I know you're there," he said.
"How?" I asked.
"I could smell you." he said. "Ye smell of herbs all the time. And yer toes were sticking out."
I sat down near him and leaned back against a rock, watching him carefully. One foot tapped restlessly against the rock he sat on, and he twisted his fingers together, clenching, then spreading them with a force that made several knuckles pop with soft crackling sounds.
It was the popping knuckles that reminded me of Captain Manson. The supply officer for a field hospital where I had worked, Captain Manson, normally a mild and pleasant-spoken man, would retire briefly into his private office and punch the wall behind the door with all the force he could muster.
"You need to hit something," I said. "Eh?" He looked up in surprise, apparently having forgotten I was there.
"Hit something," I advised. "Preferably not me. But you'll feel better for it." His mouth quirked as though about to say something, but instead he rose from his rock, headed decisively for a sturdy-looking cherry tree, and dealt it a solid blow. Apparently finding this some palliative to his feelings, he smashed the quivering trunk several times more, causing a shower of pale-pink petals to rain down upon his head. Sucking a grazed knuckle, he came back a moment later.
"Perhaps I'll sleep tonight after all."
"Did you hurt your hand?" I rose to examine it, but he shook his head, rubbing the knuckles gently with the palm of the other hand. "Nay, it's nothing."
"I didn't know you were a lefty."
"A lefty? Oh, cack-handed, ye mean. Aye, always have been. The schoolmaster used to tie that one to my belt behind my back, to make me write wi' the other."
"Can you? Write with the other, I mean?" He nodded, reapplying the injured hand to his mouth. "Aye. Makes my head ache to do it, though." "Do you fight left-handed too?" I asked, wanting to distract him. "With a sword, I mean?"
"No, I use a sword well enough in either hand. A left-handed swordsman's at a disadvantage." He strode about the grassy clearing, making illustrative gestures with an imaginary sword. "It makes little difference wi' a broadsword," he said.
Using pretend fighting motions, he illustrated the differences between weapon types. Eventually he got to the small knife he carried, and began showing stances with that. During one demonstration, he dropped low and brought the blade up in a swift, murderous jab that stopped an inch short of my breast. I stepped back involuntarily, and at once he stood upright, sheathing the dirk with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. I'm showin' off. I didna mean to startle ye."
"I show off plenty. It's about time you had a turn. I only wish I had a bow I could draw. I used to be a fair shot."
Jamie looked at me considering. "I didn't think women learned things like that."
"Again, I'm not like most women." I smiled. "Apparently I might be a queen."
"Sorry about that."
"It's alright. Though the idea of hanging Dougal kept me amused for a while." I carefully rubbed my cheek.
"Ye shouldna struck him."
"He yelled at me for no reason."
"Aye."
"And surely someone as 'braw' as that can take a hit from a girl?" I asked, mockingly.
"Aye. But not in front of the men. His pride was hurt, so he took it out on you. He shouldna hit you though. If Colum found out..." He shook his head.
"There's a few things I'm sure Colum would love to find out." I tugged gently at his shirt. "He'll do it again?" I said abruptly, unable to stop myself. He paused before answering, but there was no pretense of not understanding what I meant.
"Oh, aye," he said at last, nodding. "It gets him what he wants, ye see."
"And you'll let him do it? Let him use you that way?"
"For now," he paused a moment. "Now, off ta bed yer majesty, or you'll be dead on the horse tomorrow."