And then I stopped dead, feeling much colder than the night chill justified. No city lights. "What town?" the woman inside had asked. Accustomed as I was to blackouts and air raids from the war years, the lack of light had not at first disturbed me. But this was peacetime, and the lights of Inverness should have been visible for miles.
The men were shapeless masses in the dark. I thought of trying to slip away into the trees, but Dougal, apparently divining my thought, grabbed my elbow and pulled me toward the horses.
"Jamie, get yourself up," he called. "The lass will ride wi' you." He squeezed my elbow. "You can hold the reins, if Jamie canna manage one-handed, but do ye take care to keep close wi' the rest of us. Should ye try anythin' else, I shall cut your throat. D'ye understand me?"
I nodded, throat too dry to answer. His voice was not particularly threatening, but I believed every word. I was the less tempted to "try anythin'," in that I had no idea what to try. I didn't know where I was, who my companions were, why we were leaving with such urgency, or where we were going, but I lacked any reasonable alternatives to going with them. I was worried about Frank, who must long since have started looking for me, but this didn't seem the time to mention him.
Dougal must have sensed my nod, for he let go of my arm and stooped suddenly beside me. I stood stupidly staring down at him until he hissed, "Your foot, lass! Give me your foot! Your left foot," he added disgustedly. I hastily took my misplaced right foot out of his hand and stepped up with my left. With a slight grunt, he boosted me into the saddle in front of Jamie, who gathered me in closely with his good arm.
In spite of the general awkwardness of my situation, I was grateful for the young Scot's warmth. He smelt strongly of woodsmoke, blood, and unwashed male, but the night chill bit through my thin dress and I was happy enough to lean back against him.
With no more than a faint chinking of bridles, we moved off into the starlit night. There was no conversation among the men, only a general wary watchfulness. The horses broke into a trot as soon as we reached the road, and I was jostled too uncomfortably to want to talk myself, even assuming that anyone was willing to listen.
My companion seemed to be having little trouble, in spite of being unable to use his right hand. I could feel his thighs behind mine, shifting and pressing occasionally to guide the horse. I clutched the edge of the short saddle in order to stay seated; I had been on horses before, but was by no means the horseman this Jamie was.
After a time, we reached a crossroads, where we stopped a moment while the bald man and the leader conferred in low tones. Jamie dropped the reins over the horse's neck and let it wander to the verge to crop grass, while he began twisting and turning behind me.
"Careful!" I said. "Don't twist like that, or your dressing will come off! What are you trying to do?"
"Get my plaid loose to cover you," he replied. "You're shivering. But I canna do it one-handed. Can ye reach the clasp of my brooch for me?"
With a good deal of tugging and awkward shifting, we got the plaid loosened. With a surprisingly dexterous swirl, he twirled the cloth out and let it settle, shawllike, around his shoulders. He then put the ends over my shoulders and tucked them neatly under the saddle edge, so that we were both warmly wrapped.
"There!" he said. "We dinna want ye to freeze before we get there."
"Thank you," I said, grateful for the shelter. "But where are we going?"
I couldn't see his face, behind and above me, but he paused a moment before answering.
At last he laughed shortly. "Tell ye the truth, lassie, I don't know. Reckon we'll both find out when we get there, eh?"
Something seemed faintly familiar about the section of countryside through which we were passing. Surely I knew that large rock formation ahead, the one shaped like a rooster's tail?
"Cocknammon Rock!" I exclaimed.
"Aye, reckon," said my escort, unexcited by this revelation.
"Didn't the English use it for ambushes?" I asked, trying to remember the dreary details of local history Frank had spent hours regaling me with over the last week. "If there is an English patrol in the neighborhood…" I hesitated. If there was an English patrol in the neighborhood, perhaps I was wrong to draw attention to it. And yet, in case of an ambush, I would be quite indistinguishable from my companion, shrouded as we were in one plaid. And I thought again of Captain Jonathan Randall, and shuddered involuntarily. Everything I had seen since I had stepped through the cleft stone pointed toward the completely irrational conclusion that the man I had met in the wood was in fact Frank's six-times-great-grandfather. I fought stubbornly against this conclusion, but was unable to formulate another that met the facts.