“Why, no. You don’t look heavy. If ye won’t walk, I shall pick you up and sling ye over my shoulder. Do ye want me to do that?” He took a step toward me, and I hastily retreated. I hadn’t the slightest doubt he would do it, injury or no.
“No! You can’t do that; you’ll damage your shoulder again.”
His features were indistinct, but the moonlight caught the gleam of teeth as he grinned.
“Well then, since ye don’t want me to hurt myself, I suppose that means as you’re comin’ with me?” I struggled for an answer, but failed to find one in time. He took my arm again, firmly, and we set off toward the road.
Jamie kept a tight hold on my arm, hauling me upright when I stumbled over rocks and plants. He himself walked as though the stubbled heath were a paved road in broad daylight. He has cat blood, I reflected sourly, no doubt that was how he managed to sneak up on me in the darkness.
The other men were, as advertised, waiting with the horses at no great distance; apparently there had been no losses or injuries, for they were all present. Scrambling up in an undignified scuffle, I plopped down in the saddle again. My head gave Jamie’s bad shoulder an unintentional thump, and he drew in his breath with a hiss.
I tried to cover my resentment at being recaptured and my remorse at having hurt him with an air of bullying officiousness.
“Serves you right, brawling round the countryside and chasing through bushes and rocks. I told you not to move that joint; now you’ve probably got torn muscles as well as bruises.”
He seemed amused by my scolding. “Well, it wasna much of a choice. If I’d not moved my shoulder, I wouldna have ever moved anything else again. I can handle a single redcoat wi’ one hand—maybe even two of them,” he said, a bit boastfully, “but not three.”
“Besides,” he said, drawing me against his blood-encrusted shirt, “ye can fix it for me again when we get where we’re going.”
“That’s what you think,” I said coldly, squirming away from the sticky fabric. He clucked to the horse, and we set off again. The men were in ferocious good spirits after the fight, and there was a good deal of laughter and joking. My minor part in thwarting the ambush was much praised, and toasts were drunk in my honor from the flasks that several of the men carried.
I was offered some of the contents, but declined at first on grounds that I found it hard enough to stay in the saddle sober. From the men’s discussion, I gathered it had been a small patrol of some ten English soldiers, armed with muskets and sabers.
Someone passed a flask to Jamie, and I could smell the hot, burnt-smelling liquor as he drank. I wasn’t at all thirsty, but the faint scent of honey reminded me that I was starving, and had been for some time. My stomach gave an embarrassingly loud growl, protesting my neglect.
“Hey, then, Jamie-lad! Hungry, are ye? Or have ye a set of bagpipes with ye?” shouted Rupert, mistaking the source of the noise.
“Hungry enough to eat a set of pipes, I reckon,” called Jamie, gallantly assuming the blame. A moment later, a hand with a flask came around in front of me again.
“Better have a wee nip,” he whispered to me. “It willna fill your belly, but it will make ye forget you’re hungry.”
And a number of other things as well, I hoped. I tilted the flask and swallowed.
* * *
My escort had been correct; the whisky built a small warm fire that burned comfortably in my stomach, obscuring the hunger pangs. We managed without incident for several miles, taking turns with both reins and whisky flask. Near a ruined cottage, though, the breathing of my escort gradually changed to a ragged gasping. Our precarious balance, heretofore contained in a staid wobble, suddenly became much more erratic. I was confused; if I wasn’t drunk, it seemed rather unlikely that he was.
“Stop! Help!” I yelled. “He’s going over!” I remembered my last unrehearsed descent and had no inclination to repeat it.
Dark shapes swirled and crowded around us, with a confused muttering of voices. Jamie slid off headfirst like a sack of stones, luckily landing in someone’s arms. The rest of the men were off their horses and had him laid in a field by the time I had scrambled down.
“He’s breathin’,” said one.
“Well, how very helpful,” I snapped, groping frantically for a pulse in the blackness. I found one at last, rapid but fairly strong. Putting a hand on his chest and an ear to his mouth, I could feel a regular rise and fall, with less of that gasping note. I straightened up.
“I think he’s just fainted,” I said. “Put a saddle-bag under his feet and if there’s water, bring me some.” I was surprised to find that my orders were instantly obeyed. Apparently the young man was important to them. He groaned and opened his eyes, black holes in the starlight. In the faint, light his face looked like a skull, white skin stretched tight over the angled bones around the orbits.
“I’m all right,” he said, trying to sit up. “Just a bit dizzy is all.” I put a hand on his chest and pushed him flat.
“Lie still,” I ordered. I carried out a rapid inspection by touch, then rose on my knees and turned to a looming shape that I deduced from its size to be the leader, Dougal.
“The gunshot wound has been bleeding again, and the idiot’s been knifed as well. I think it’s not serious, but he’s lost quite a lot of blood. His shirt is soaked through, but I don’t know how much of it is his. He needs rest and quiet; we should camp here at least until morning.” The shape made a negative motion.
“Nay. We’re farther than the garrison will venture, but there’s still the Watch to be mindful of. We’ve a good fifteen miles yet to go.” The featureless head tilted back, gauging the movement of the stars.
“Five hours, at the least, and more likely seven. We can stay long enough for ye to stop the bleeding and dress the wound again; no much more than that.”
I set to work, muttering to myself, while Dougal, with a soft word, dispatched one of the other shadows to stand guard with the horses by the road. The other men relaxed for the moment, drinking from flasks and chatting in low voices. The ferret-faced Murtagh helped me, tearing strips of linen, fetching more water, and lifting the patient up to have the dressing tied on, Jamie being strictly forbidden to move himself, despite his grumbling that he was perfectly all right.
“You are not all right, and it’s no wonder,” I snapped, venting my fear and irritation. “What sort of idiot gets himself knifed and doesn’t even stop to take care of it? Couldn’t you tell how badly you were bleeding? You’re lucky you’re not dead, tearing around the countryside all night, brawling and fighting and throwing yourself off horses … hold still, you bloody fool.” The rayon and linen strips I was working with were irritatingly elusive in the dark. They slipped away, eluding my grasp, like fish darting away into the depths with a mocking flash of white bellies. Despite the chill, sweat sprang out on my neck. I finally finished tying one end and reached for another, which persisted in slithering away behind the patient’s back. “Come back here, you … oh, you goddamned bloody bastard!” Jamie had moved and the original end had come untied.
There was a moment of shocked silence. “Christ,” said the fat man named Rupert. “I’ve ne’er heard a woman use such language in me life.”
“Then ye’ve ne’er met my auntie Grisel,” said another voice, to laughter.
“Your husband should tan ye, woman,” said an austere voice from the blackness under a tree. “St. Paul says ‘Let a woman be silent, and—’ ”
“You can mind your own bloody business,” I snarled, sweat dripping behind my ears, “and so can St. Paul.” I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. “Turn him to the left. And if you,” addressing my patient, “move so much as one single muscle while I’m tying this bandage, I’ll throttle you.”
“Och, aye,” he answered meekly.
I pulled too hard on the last bandage, and the entire dressing scooted off.
“Goddamn it all to hell!” I bellowed, striking my hand on the ground in frustration. The
re was a moment of shocked silence, then, as I fumbled in the dark for the loose ends of the bandages, further comment on my unwomanly language.
“Perhaps we should send her to Ste. Anne, Dougal,” offered one of the blank-faced figures squatting by the road. “I’ve not heard Jamie swear once since we left the coast, and he used to have a mouth on him would put a sailor to shame. Four months in a monastery must have had some effect. You do not even take the name of the Lord in vain anymore, do ye, lad?”
“You wouldna do so either, if you’d been made to do penance for it by lying for three hours at midnight on the stone floor of a chapel in February, wearing nothin’ but your shirt,” answered my patient.
The men all laughed, as he continued. “The penance was only for two hours, but it took another to get myself up off the floor afterward; I thought my … er, I thought I’d frozen to the flags, but it turned out just to be stiffness.”
Apparently he was feeling better. I smiled, despite myself, but spoke firmly nonetheless. “You be quiet,” I said, “or I’ll hurt you.” He gingerly touched the dressing, and I slapped his hand away.
“Oh, threats, is it?” he asked impudently. “And after I shared my drink with ye too!”
The flask completed the circle of men. Kneeling down next to me, Dougal tilted it carefully for the patient to drink. The pungent, burnt smell of very raw whisky floated up, and I put a restraining hand on the flask.
“No more spirits,” I said. “He needs tea, or at worst, water. Not alcohol.”
Dougal pulled the flask from my hand, completely disregarding me, and poured a sizable slug of the hot-smelling liquid down the throat of my patient, making him cough. Waiting only long enough for the man on the ground to catch his breath, he reapplied the flask.
“Stop that!” I reached for the whisky again. “Do you want him so drunk he can’t stand up?”
I was rudely elbowed aside.
“Feisty wee bitch, is she no?” said my patient, sounding amused.
“Tend to your business, woman,” Dougal ordered. “We’ve a good way to go yet tonight, and he’ll need whatever strength the drink can give him.”
The instant the bandages were tied, the patient tried to sit up. I pushed him flat and put a knee on his chest to keep him there. “You are not to move,” I said fiercely. I grabbed the hem of Dougal’s kilt and jerked it roughly, urging him back down on his knees next to me.
“Look at that,” I ordered, in my best ward-sister voice. I plopped the sopping mass of the discarded shirt into his hand. He dropped it with an exclamation of disgust.
I took his hand and put it on the patient’s shoulder. “And look there. He’s had a blade of some kind right through the trapezius muscle.”
“A bayonet,” put in the patient helpfully.
“A bayonet!” I exclaimed. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
He shrugged, and stopped short with a mild grunt of pain. “I felt it go in, but I couldna tell how bad it was; it didna hurt that much.”
“Is it hurting now?”
“It is,” he said, shortly.
“Good,” I said, completely provoked. “You deserve it. Maybe that will teach you to go haring round the countryside kidnapping young women and k-killing people, and.…” I felt myself ridiculously close to tears and stopped, fighting for control.
Dougal was growing impatient with this conversation. “Well, can ye keep one foot on each side of the horse, man?”
“He can’t go anywhere!” I protested indignantly. “He ought to be in hospital! Certainly he can’t—”
My protests, as usual, went completely ignored.
“Can ye ride?” Dougal repeated.
“Aye, if ye’ll take the lassie off my chest and fetch me a clean shirt.”
4
I COME TO THE CASTLE
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn’t rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.
Dawn was coming up in streaks and slashes over the foggy moor. Our destination loomed ahead, a huge bulk of dark stone outlined by the grey light.
The surroundings were no longer quiet and deserted. There was a trickle of rudely dressed people, heading toward the castle. They moved to the side of the narrow road to let the horses trot past, gawking at what they plainly thought my outlandish garb.
Not surprisingly, it was misting heavily, but there was enough light to show a stone bridge, arching over a small stream that ran past the front of the castle, down to a dully gleaming loch a quarter mile away.
The castle itself was blunt and solid. No fanciful turrets or toothed battlements. This was more like an enormous fortified house, with thick stone walls and high, slitted windows. A number of chimney pots smoked over the slick tiles of the roof, adding to the general impression of greyness.
The gated entrance of the castle was wide enough to accommodate two wagons side by side. I say this without fear of contradiction, because it was doing exactly that as we crossed the bridge. One ox-drawn wagon was loaded with barrels, the other with hay. Our little cavalcade huddled on the bridge, waiting impatiently for the wagons to complete their laborious entry.
I risked a question as the horses picked their way over the slippery stones of the wet courtyard. I hadn’t spoken to my escort since hastily re-dressing his shoulder by the roadside. He had been silent, too, aside from an occasional grunt of discomfort when a misstep by the horse jolted him.
“Where are we?” I croaked, my voice hoarse from cold and disuse.
“The keep of Leoch,” he answered shortly.
Castle Leoch. Well, at least now I knew where I was. When I had known it, Castle Leoch was a picturesque ruin, some thirty miles north of Bargrennan. It was considerably more picturesque now, what with the pigs rooting under the walls of the keep and the pervasive smell of raw sewage. I was beginning to accept the impossible idea that I was, most likely, somewhere in the eighteenth century.
I was sure that such filth and chaos existed nowhere in the Scotland of 1945, bomb craters or no. And we were definitely in Scotland; the accents of the people in the courtyard left no doubt of that.
“Ay, Dougal!” shouted a tattered hostler, running up to grab the halter of the lead horse. “You’re early, man; we hadna thought to see ye before the Gathering!”
The leader of our little group swung down from the saddle, leaving the reins to the grubby youth.
“Aye, well, we’ve had some luck, both good and bad. I’m off to see my brother. Will ye summon Mrs. Fitz to feed the lads? They’ll need their breakfasts and their beds.”
He beckoned Murtagh and Rupert down to accompany him, and together they disappeared under a pointed archway.
The rest of us dismounted and stood steaming in the wet courtyard for another ten minutes before Mrs. Fitz, whoever she might be, consented to show herself. A cluster of curious children gathered around us, speculating on my possible origins and function. The bolder ones had just begun to get up enough courage to pluck at my skirt when a large, stout lady in dark brown linen and homespun bustled out and shooed them away.
“Willy, my dear!” she cried. “How good to see ye! And Neddie!” She gave the small balding man a hearty buss of welcome that nearly knocked him over. “Ye’ll be needin’ breakfast, I reckon. Plenty in the kitchen; do ye go and feed yerselves.” Turning to me and Jamie, she started back as though bitten by a snake. She looked openmouthed at me, then turned to Jamie for an explanation of this apparition.
“Claire,” he said, with a brief tilt of his head toward me. “And Mistress FitzGibbons,” he added, with a tilt the other way. “Murtagh found her yesterday, and Dougal said we must bring her along wi’ us,” he added, making it clear it was no good bl
aming him.
Mistress FitzGibbons closed her mouth and looked me up and down with an air of shrewd evaluation. Apparently she decided that I looked harmless enough, despite my odd and scandalous appearance, for she smiled—kindly, despite several missing teeth—and took me by the arm.
“Well then, Claire. Welcome to ye. Come wi’ me and we shall find ye somethin’ a bit more … mmm.” She looked over my short skirt and inadequate shoes, shaking her head.
She was leading me firmly away when I remembered my patient.
“Oh, wait, please! I forgot Jamie!”
Mistress FitzGibbons was surprised. “Why, Jamie can fend for himself. He knows where to get food and someone will find him a bed.”
“But he’s hurt. He was shot yesterday and stabbed last night. I bandaged the wound for riding, but I didn’t have time to clean or dress it properly. I must care for it now, before it gets infected.”
“Infected?”
“Yes, that is, I mean, inflamed, you know, with pus and swelling and fever.”
“Oh, aye, I know what ye mean. But do ye mean to say as ye know what to do for that? Are ye a charmer then? A Beaton?”
“Something like that.” I had no notion what a Beaton might be, nor any wish to go into my medical qualifications, standing out in the chilly drizzle that had set in. Mistress FitzGibbons seemed of a like mind, for she called back Jamie, who was making off in the opposite direction, and taking him also by an arm, towed us both into the castle.
After a long trip through cold narrow corridors, dimly lit by slitted windows, we came to a fairly large room furnished with a bed, a couple of stools, and most importantly, a fire.
I ignored my patient temporarily in favor of thawing my hands. Mistress FitzGibbons, presumably immune to cold, sat Jamie on a stool by the fire and gently got the remains of his tattered shirt off, replacing it with a warm quilt from the bed. She clucked at the shoulder, which was bruised and swollen, and poked at my clumsy dressing.
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