Outlander (20 page)

We found accommodation for the night at a crofter's cottage. Or I should say I did. The men slept outside, disposed in various haystacks, wagon-beds and patches of bracken. In deference to my sex or my status as semicaptive, I was provided with a pallet on the floor inside, near the hearth.

While my pallet seemed vastly preferable to the single bedstead in which the entire family of six was sleeping, I rather envied the men their open-air sleeping arrangements. The fire was not put out, only damped for the night, and the air in the cottage was stifling with warmth and the scents and sounds of the tossing, turning, groaning, snoring, sweating, farting inhabitants.

After some time, I gave up any thought of sleeping in that smothered atmosphere. I rose and stole quietly outside, taking a blanket with me. The air outside was so fresh by contrast with the congestion in the cottage that I leaned against the stone wall, gulping in enormous lungfuls of the delicious cool stuff.

There was a guard, sitting in quiet watchfulness under a tree by the path, but he merely glanced at me. Apparently deciding that I was not going far in my shift, he went back to whittling at a small object in his hands. The moon was bright, and the blade of the tiny
sgian dhu
flickered in the leafy shadows.

I walked around the cottage, and a little way up the hill behind it, careful to watch for slumbering forms in the grass. 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.

Just so had I watched the moon rise from the window of Castle Leoch, on my first night as Colum's unwilling guest. A month, then, since my calamitous passage through the circle of standing stones. At least I now thought I knew why the stones had been placed there.

Likely of no particular importance in themselves, they were markers. Just as a signpost warns of rockfalls near a cliff-edge, the standing stones were meant to mark a spot of danger. A spot where… what? Where the crust of time was thin? Where a gate of some sort stood ajar? Not that the makers of the circles would have known what it was they were marking. To them, the spot would have been one of terrible mystery and powerful magic; a spot where people disappeared without warning. Or appeared, perhaps, out of thin air.

That was a thought. What would have happened, I wondered, had anyone been present on the hill of Craigh na Dun when I made my abrupt appearance? I supposed it might depend on the time one entered. Here, had a cottar encountered me under such circumstances, I would doubtless have been thought a witch or a fairy. More likely a fairy, popping into existence on that particular hill, with its reputation.

And that might well be where its reputation came from, I thought. If people through the years had suddenly disappeared, or just as suddenly appeared from nowhere at a certain spot, it might with good reason acquire a name for enchantment.

I poked a foot out from under the blanket and waggled my long toes in the moonlight. Most unfairylike, I decided critically. At five foot six, I was quite a tall woman for these times; as tall as many men. Since I could hardly pass as one of the Wee Folk, then, I would likely have been thought a witch or an evil spirit of some kind. From the little I knew of current methods for dealing with such manifestations, I could only be grateful that no one, in fact, had seen me appear.

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? That, after all, was precisely what I was intending to do, if there were any possible way of managing it. How would a modern-day Scot, like Mrs. Buchanan, the postmistress, react if someone like Murtagh, for instance, were suddenly to spring from the earth beneath her feet?

The most likely reaction, I thought, would be to run, to summon the police, or perhaps to do nothing at all, beyond telling one's friends and neighbors about the most extraordinary thing that happened the other day…

As for the visitor? 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. Even when it happened in front of witnesses, there would be no clues at all; nothing to tell what had happened, because the only person who knew would be gone. And as for the disappeared, they'd likely keep their mouths shut at the other end.

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." The 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." So it was young Jamie MacTavish, and precisely three guesses as to what he was upset about.

"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," came the quick rejoinder. Despite the bitterness of the tone, there was a lurking wit that enjoyed this clash of wills. "What d'ye think the right is going to say about the left collecting gold for the Stuarts?"

There was a brief pause before Dougal replied, "MacKenzies and MacBeolains and MacVinichs; they're free men all. 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."

"It may," the deeper voice agreed. "It may rain straight up tomorrow instead of down, as well. That doesna mean I'll stand waiting at the stairhead wi' my wee bucket turned upside down."

"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 silly 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. "Come out, if ye like." From his tone, it was a matter of complete indifference to him. I rose and started to come out, when I realized I had been lying in my shift. Reflecting that he had enough to worry about without needing to blush for me as well, I tactfully wrapped myself in the blanket before emerging.

I sat down near him and leaned back against a rock, watching him a little diffidently. Beyond a brief nod of acknowledgment, he ignored me, completely occupied with inward thoughts of no very pleasant form, to judge from the dark frown on his face. 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 the field hospital where I worked, Captain Manson suffered shortages, missed deliveries, and the endless idiocies of the army bureaucracy as his own personal slings and arrows. Normally a mild and pleasant-spoken man, when the frustrations became too great, he would retire briefly into his private office and punch the wall behind the door with all the force he could muster. Visitors a the outer reception area would watch in fascination as the flimsy wallboard quivered under the force of the blows. A few moments later, Captain Manson would reemerge, bruised of knuckle but once more calm of spirit, to deal with the current crisis. By the time he was transferred to another unit, the wall behind his door was pocked with dozens of fist-sized holes.

Watching the young man on the rock trying to disjoint his own fingers, I was forcibly reminded of the captain, facing some insoluble problem of supply.

"You need to hit something," I said.

"Eh?" He looked up in surprise, apparently having forgotten I was there.

"Hit something," I advised. "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 delirious shower of pale-pink petals to rain down upon his head.

Sucking a grazed knuckle, he came back a moment later.

"Thank ye," he said, with a wry smile. "Perhaps I'll sleep tonight after all."

"Did you hurt your hand?" I rose to examine it, but shook his head, rubbing the knuckles gently with the palm the other hand.

"Nay, it's nothing."

We stood a moment in awkward silence. I didn't want refer to the scene I had overheard, or to the earlier events the evening. I broke the silence finally by saying, "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?" He was wearing no arms at the moment except his dirk and
sgian dhu
, but during the day he customarily wore both sword and pistols, as did most of the men in the party.

"No, I use a sword well enough in either hand. A left-handed swordsman's at a disadvantage, ye ken, wi' a smallsword, for ye fight wi' your left side turned to the enemy, and your heart's on that side, d'ye see?"

Too filled with nervous energy to keep still, he had begun to stride about the grassy clearing, making illustrative gestures with an imaginary sword. "It makes little difference wi' a broadsword," he said. He extended both arms straight out, hands together and swept them in a flat, graceful arc through the air. "Ye use both hands, usually," he explained.

"Or if you're close enough to use only one, it doesna matter much which, for you come down from above and cleave the man through the shoulder. Not the head," he added instructively, "for the blade may slip off easy. Catch him clean in the notch, though"—he chopped the edge of his hand at the juncture of neck and shoulder—"and he's dead. And if it's not a clean cut, still the man will no fight again that day—or ever, likely," he added.

His left hand dropped to his belt and he drew the dirk in a motion like water pouring from a glass.

"Now, to fight wi' sword and dirk together," he said, "if ye have no targe to shelter your dirk hand, then you favor the right side, wi' the small-sword in that hand, and come up from underneath wi' the dirk if ye fight in close. But if the dirk hand is well shielded, ye can come from either side, and twist your body about"—he ducked and weaved, illustrating—"to keep the enemy's blade away, and use the dirk only if ye lose the sword or the use of the sword arm."

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."

"You're awfully good," I said, with sincerity. "Who taught you to fight?" I asked. "I'd think you'd need another lefthanded fighter to show you."

"Aye, it was a left-handed fighter. The best I've ever seen." He smiled briefly, without humor. "Dougal MacKenzie."

Most of the cherry blossoms had fallen from his head by now; only a few pink petals clung to his shoulders, and I reached out to brush them away. The seam of his shirt had been mended neatly, I saw, if without artistry. Even a rip through the fabric had been catch-stitched together.

"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?"

He looked past me, down the hill toward the tavern, where a single light still showed through chinks in the timbers. His face was smooth and blank as a wall.

"For now."

We continued on our rounds, moving no more than a few miles a day, often stopping for Dougal to conduct business at a crossroads or a cottage, where several tenants would gather with their bags of grain and bits of carefully hoarded money. All was recorded in ledgers by the quick-moving pen of Ned Gowan, and such receipts as were needed dispensed from his scrap-bag of parchment and papers.