His expression cleared. "Oh, aye. I knew that."
"But surely," I said, "a young man like yourself; I mean, isn't there anyone else you're, ah, interested in?" He looked blank for a moment, then understanding dawned.
"Oh, am I promised? Nay, I'm no much of a prospect for a girl." He hurried on, as though feeling this might sound insulting. "I mean, I've no property to speak of, and nothing more than a soldier's pay to live on."
He rubbed his chin, eyeing me dubiously. "Then there's the minor difficulty that I've a price on my head. No father much wants his daughter married to a man as may be arrested and hanged any time. Did ye think of that?"
I flapped my hand, dismissing the matter of outlawry as a minor consideration, compared to the whole monstrous idea. I had one last try.
"Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?" He hesitated a moment before answering.
"Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am." He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door.
"Reckon one of us should know what they're doing," he said. The door closed softly behind him; clearly the courtship was over.
The papers duly signed, I made my way cautiously down the inn's steep stairs and over to the bar table in the taproom.
"Whisky," I said to the rumpled old creature behind it. He glared rheumily, but a nod from Dougal made him oblige with a bottle and glass. The latter was thick and greenish, a bit smeared, with a chip out of the rim, but it had a hole in the top, and that was all that mattered at the moment.
Once the searing effect of swallowing the stuff had passed, it did induce a certain spurious calmness. I felt detached, noticing details of my surroundings with a peculiar intensity: the small stained-glass inset over the bar, casting colored shadows over the ruffianly proprietor and his wares, the curve of the handle on a copper-bottomed dipper that hung on the wall next to me, a green-bellied fly struggling on the edges of a sticky puddle on the table. With a certain amount of fellow-feeling, I nudged it out of danger with the edge of my glass.
I gradually became aware of raised voices behind the closed door on the far side of the room. Dougal had disappeared there after the conclusion of his business with me, presumably to firm up arrangements with the other contracting party. I was pleased to hear that, judging from the sound of it, my intended bridegroom was cutting up rough, despite his apparent lack of objection earlier. Perhaps he hadn't wanted to offend me.
"Stick to it, lad," I murmured, and took another gulp.
Sometime later, I was dimly conscious of a hand prying my fingers open in order to remove the greenish glass. Another hand was steadyingly under my elbow.
"Christ, she's drunk as an auld besom in a bothy," said a voice in my ear. The voice rasped unpleasantly, I thought, as though its owner had been eating sandpaper. I giggled softly at the thought.
"Quiet yerself, woman!" said the unpleasant rasping voice. It grew fainter as the owner turned to talk to someone else. "Drunk as a laird and screechin' like a parrot—what do ye expect—"
Another voice interrupted the first, but I couldn't tell what it said; the words were blurred and indistinguishable. It was a pleasanter sound, though, deep and somehow reassuring. It came nearer, and I could make out a few words. I made an effort to focus, but my attention had begun to wander again.
The fly had found its way back to the puddle, and was floundering in the middle, hopelessly mired. The light from the stained-glass window fell on it, glittering like sparks on the straining green belly. My gaze fixed on the tiny green spot which seemed to pulsate as the fly twitched and struggled.
"Brother… you haven't a shance," I saidand the spark went out.
* * *
14
A Marriage Takes Place
There was a low, beamed ceiling over me when I woke, and a thick quilt tucked tidily under my chin. I seemed to be clad only in my shift. I started to sit up to look for my clothes, but thought better of it halfway up. I eased myself very carefully back down, closed my eyes and held on to my head to prevent it from rolling off the pillow and bouncing on the floor.
I woke again, sometime later, when the door of the room opened. I cracked one eye cautiously. A wavering outline resolved itself into the dour figure of Murtagh, staring disapprovingly down at me from the foot of the bed. I closed the eye. I heard a muffled Scottish noise, presumably indicating appalled disgust, but when I looked again he was gone.
I was just sinking thankfully back into unconsciousness when the door opened again, this time to reveal a middle-aged woman I took to be the publican's wife, carrying a ewer and basin. She bustled cheerily into the room and banged the shutters open with a crash that reverberated through my head like a tank collision. Advancing on the bed like a Panzer division, she ripped the quilt from my feeble grasp and tossed it aside, leaving me quaking and exposed.