"Tell me about the examiners," I said. "What will happen, exactly?"
"1 canna say, exactly. I've ne'er seen a witch trial, though I've heard of them, of course." She paused a moment, considering. "They'll not be expecting a witch trial, since they were coming to try some land disputes. So they'll not have a witch-pricker, at least."
"A what?"
"Witches canna feel pain," Geilie explained. "Nor do they bleed when they're pricked." The witch-pricker, equipped with a variety of pins, lancets, and other pointed implements, was charged with testing for this condition. I vaguely recalled something of this from Frank's books, but had thought it a practice common to the seventeenth century, not this one. On the other hand, I thought wryly, Cranesmuir was not exactly a hotbed of civilization.
"In that case, it's too bad there won't be one," I said, though recoiling slightly at the thought of being stabbed repeatedly. "We could pass that test with no difficulty. Or I could," I added caustically. "I imagine they'd get ice water, not blood, when they tried it on you."
"I'd not be too sure," she said reflectively, overlooking the insult. "I've heard of witch-prickers with special pins—made to collapse when they're pressed against the skin, so it looks as though they don't go in."
"But why? Why try to prove someone a witch on purpose?"
The sun was on the decline now, but the afternoon light was enough to suffuse our hutch with a dim glow. The elegant oval of Geilie's face showed only pity for my innocence.
"Ye still dinna understand, do ye?" she said. "They mean to kill us. And it doesna matter much what the charge is, or what the evidence shows. We'll burn, all the same."
The night before, I had been too shocked from the mob's attack and the misery of our surroundings to do more than huddle with Geilie and wait for the dawn. With the light, though, what remained of my spirit was beginning to awake.
"Why, Geilie?" I asked, feeling rather breathless. "Do you know?" The atmosphere in the hole was thick with the stench of rot, filth, and damp soil, and I felt as though the impenetrable earthen walls were about to cave in upon me like the sides of an ill-dug grave.
I felt rather than saw her shrug; the shaft of light from above had moved with the sun, and now struck the wall of our prison, leaving us in cold dark below.
"If it's much comfort to ye," she said dryly, "I misdoubt ye were meant to be taken. It's a matter between me and Colum—you had the ill-luck to be with me when the townsfolk came. Had ye been wi' Colum, you'd likely have been safe enough, Sassenach or no."
The term "Sassenach," spoken in its usual derogatory sense, suddenly struck me with a sense of desperate longing for the man who called me so in affection. I wrapped my arms around my body, hugging myself to contain the lonely panic that threatened to envelop me.
"Why did you come to my house?" Geilie asked curiously.
"I thought you had sent for me. One of the girls at the castle brought me a message—from you, she said."
"Ah," she said thoughtfully. "Laoghaire, was it?"
I sat down and rested my back against the earth wall, despite my revulsion for the muddy, stinking surface. Feeling my movement, Geilie shifted closer. Friends or enemies, we were each other's only source of warmth in the hole; we huddled together perforce.
"How did you know it was Laoghaire?" I asked, shivering.
" 'Twas her that left the ill-wish in your bed," Geilie replied. "I told ye at the first there were those minded your taking the red-haired laddie. I suppose she thought if ye were gone, she'd have a chance at him again."
I was struck dumb at this, and it took a moment to find my voice.
"But she couldn't!"
Geilie's laugh was hoarsened by cold and thirst, but still held that edge of silver.
"Anyone seein' the way the lad looks at ye would know that. But I dinna suppose she's seen enough o' the world to ken such things. Let her lie wi' a man once or twice, and she'll know, but not now."
"That's not what I meant!" I burst out. "It isn't Jamie she wants; the girl's with child by Dougal MacKenzie."
"What?!" She was genuinely shocked for a moment, and her fingers bit into the flesh of my arm. "How d'ye come to think that?"
I told her of seeing Laoghaire on the stair below Colum's study, and the conclusions I had come to.
Geilie snorted.
"Pah! She heard Colum and Dougal talking about me; that's what made her blench—she'd think Colum had heard she'd been to me for the ill-wish. He'd have her whipped to bleeding for that; he doesna allow any truck wi' such arts."