"Hear!" she said. "Hear the wind of his coming! Beware, ye people of Cranesmuir! For my Master comes on the wings o' the wind!" She lowered her head and screamed, a high, eerie sound of triumph. The large green eyes were fixed and staring, trancelike.
The wind was rising; I could see the clouds of the storm rolling across the far side of the loch. People began to look uneasily around; a few souls dropped back from the edge of the crowd.
Geilie began to spin, twirling round and round, hair whipping in the wind, hand gracefully overhead like a maypole dancer's. I watched her in stunned disbelief.
As she turned, her hair hid her face. On the last turn, though, she snapped her head to throw the fair mane to one side and I saw her face clearly, looking at me. The mask of trance had vanished momentarily, and her mouth formed a single word. Then her turn took her around to face the crowd once more, and she began her eerie screaming again.
The word had been "Run!"
She stopped her spinning suddenly, and with a look of mad exultation, gripped the remnants of her bodice with both hands and tore it down the front. Tore it far enough to show the crowd the secret I had learned, huddled close beside her in the cold filth of the thieves' hole. The secret Arthur Duncan had learned, in the hour before his death. The secret for which he had died. The shreds of her loose gown dropped away, exposing the swelling bulge of a six-month pregnancy.
I still stood like a rock, staring. Jamie had no such hesitations. Seizing me with one hand and his sword with the other, he flung himself into the crowd, knocking people out of the way with elbows, knees, and sword hilt, bulling his way toward the edge of the loch. He let out a piercing whistle through his teeth.
Intent on the spectacle under the oak, few people at first realized what was happening. Then, as individuals began to shout and grab at us, there was the sound of galloping hooves on the hard-packed dirt above the shore.
Donas still didn't care much for people, and was all too willing to show it. He bit the first hand reaching for his bridle, and a man dropped back, crying out and dripping blood. The horse reared, squealing and pawing the air, and the few bold souls still intent on stopping him suddenly lost interest.
Jamie flung me over the saddle like a sack of meal and swung up himself in one fluid motion. Clearing a path with vicious swipes of his sword, he turned Donas through the hindering mass of the crowd. As people fell back from the onslaught of teeth, hooves, and blade, we picked up speed, leaving the loch, the village, and Leoch behind. Breath knocked out of me by the impact, I struggled to speak, to scream to Jamie.
For I hadn't stood frozen at the revelation of Geilie's pregnancy. It was something else I had seen that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. As Geilie had spun, white arms stretched aloft, I saw what she had seen when my own clothes were stripped away. A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.
Rain pattered on the water, soothing my swollen face and the rope burns on my wrists. I dipped a handful of water from the stream and sipped it slowly, feeling the cold liquid trickle down my throat with gratitude.
Jamie disappeared for a few minutes. He came back with a handful of dark green oblate leaves, chewing something. He spat a glob of macerated green into the palm of his hand, stuffed another wad of leaves into his mouth and turned me away from him. He rubbed the chewed leaves gently over my back, and the stinging eased considerably.
"What is that?" I asked, making an effort to control myself. I was still shaky and snuffling, but the helpless tears were beginning to ebb.
"Watercress," he answered, voice slightly muffled by the leaves in his mouth. He spat them out and applied them to my back. "You're no the only one knows a bit about grass-cures, Sassenach," he said, a bit clearer.
"How—how does it taste?" I asked, gulping back the sobs.
"Fair nasty," he replied laconically. He finished his application and laid the plaid softly back across my shoulders.
"It won't—" he began, then hesitated, "I mean, the cuts are not deep. I—I think you'll no be… marked." He spoke gruffly, but his touch was very gentle, and reduced me to tears once more.
"I'm sorry," I mumbled, dabbling my nose on a corner of the plaid. "I—I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why I can't stop crying."
He shrugged. "I dinna suppose anyone's tried to hurt ye on purpose before, Sassenach," he said. "It's likely the shock of that, so much as the pain." He paused, picking up a plaid-end.