"Aye, if ye'll take the lassie off my chest and fetch me a clean shirt."
* * *
4
I Come to the Castle
The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.
Dawn was coming up in streaks and slashes over the foggy moor. Our destination loomed ahead, a huge bulk of dark stone outlined by the grey light.
The surroundings were no longer quiet and deserted. There was a trickle of rudely dressed people, heading toward the castle. They moved to the side of the narrow road to let the horses trot past, gawking at what they plainly thought my outlandish garb.
Not surprisingly, it was misting heavily, but there was enough light to show a stone bridge, arching over a small stream that ran past the front of the castle, down to a dully gleaming loch a quarter mile away.
The castle itself was blunt and solid. No fanciful turrets or toothed battlements. This was more like an enormous fortified house, with thick stone walls and high, slitted windows. A number of chimney pots smoked over the slick tiles of the roof, adding to the general impression of greyness.
The gated entrance of the castle was wide enough to accommodate two wagons side by side. I say this without fear of contradiction, because it was doing exactly that as we crossed the bridge. One ox-drawn wagon was loaded with barrels, the other with hay. Our little cavalcade huddled on the bridge, waiting impatiently for the wagons to complete their laborious entry.
I risked a question as the horses picked their way over the slippery stones of the wet courtyard. I hadn't spoken to my escort since hastily re-dressing his shoulder by the roadside. He had been silent, too, aside from an occasional grunt of discomfort when a misstep by the horse jolted him.
"Where are we?" I croaked, my voice hoarse from cold and disuse.
"The keep of Leoch," he answered shortly.
Castle Leoch. Well, at least now I knew where I was. When I had known it, Castle Leoch was a picturesque ruin, some thirty miles north of Bargrennan. It was considerably more picturesque now, what with the pigs rooting under the walls of the keep and the pervasive smell of raw sewage. I was beginning to accept the impossible idea that I was, most likely, somewhere in the eighteenth century.
I was sure that such filth and chaos existed nowhere in the Scotland of 1945, bomb craters or no. And we were definitely in Scotland; the accents of the people in the courtyard left no doubt of that.
"Ay, Dougal!" shouted a tattered hostler, running up to grab the halter of the lead horse. "You're early, man; we hadna thought to see ye before the Gathering!"
The leader of our little group swung down from the saddle, leaving the reins to the grubby youth.
"Aye, well, we've had some luck, both good and bad. I'm off to see my brother. Will ye summon Mrs. Fitz to feed the lads? They'll need their breakfasts and their beds."
He beckoned Murtagh and Rupert down to accompany him, and together they disappeared under a pointed archway.
The rest of us dismounted and stood steaming in the wet courtyard for another ten minutes before Mrs. Fitz, whoever she might be, consented to show herself. A cluster of curious children gathered around us, speculating on my possible origins and function. The bolder ones had just begun to get up enough courage to pluck at my skirt when a large, stout lady in dark brown linen and homespun bustled out and shooed them away.
"Willy, my dear!" she cried. "How good to see ye! And Neddie!" She gave the small balding man a hearty buss of welcome that nearly knocked him over. "Ye'll be needin' breakfast, I reckon. Plenty in the kitchen; do ye go and feed yerselves." Turning to me and Jamie, she started back as though bitten by a snake. She looked openmouthed at me, then turned to Jamie for an explanation of this apparition.
"Claire," he said, with a brief tilt of his head toward me "And Mistress FitzGibbons," he added, with a tilt the other way. "Murtagh found her yesterday, and Dougal said we must bring her along wi' us," he added, making it clear it was no good blaming him.
Mistress FitzGibbons closed her mouth and looked me up and down with an air of shrewd evaluation. Apparently she decided that I looked harmless enough, despite my odd and scandalous appearance, for she smiled—kindly, despite several missing teeth—and took me by the arm.