I shook my head. I could find no answers by thinking about it. Nothing was clear, except the fact that I would have go back to the standing stones.
"Mistress?" A soft Scottish voice from the doorway made me look up. Two girls, perhaps sixteen or seventeen, hung back shyly in the corridor. They were roughly dressed, with clogs on their feet and homespun scarves covering their hair. The one who had spoken carried a brush and several folded cloths, while her companion held a steaming pail. Mrs. Fitz's lasses, here to clean the surgery.
"We'll no be disturbin' ye, mistress?" one asked anxiously.
"No, no,"I assured them. "I was about to leave anyway."
"You've missed the noon meal," the other informed me. "But Mrs. Fitz said to tell ye as there's food for ye in the kitchens whenever ye like to go there."
I glanced out the window at the end of the corridor. The sun was, in fact, a little past the zenith, and I became conscious of increasing hunger pangs. I smiled at the girls.
"I might just do that. Thank you."
I brought lunch to the fields again, fearing that Jamie might get nothing to eat until dinner otherwise. Seated on the grass, watching him eat, I asked him why he had been living in the rough, raiding cattle and thieving over the Border. I had seen enough by now both of the folk that came and went from the nearby village and of the castle dwellers, to be able to tell that Jamie was both higher born and much better educated than most. It seemed likely that he came from a fairly wealthy family, judging from the brief description he had given me of their farm estate. Why was he so far from home?
"I'm an outlaw," he said, as though surprised that I didn't know. "The English have a price of ten pounds sterling on my head. Not quite so much as a highwayman," he said, deprecatingly, "but a bit more than a pickpocket."
"Just for obstruction?" I said, unbelievingly. Ten pounds sterling here was half the yearly income of a small farm; I couldn't imagine a single escaped prisoner was worth that much to the English government.
"Och, no. Murder." I choked on a mouthful of bread-and-pickle. Jamie pounded me helpfully on the back until I could speak again.
Eyes watering, I asked, "Wh-who did you k-kill?"
He shrugged. "Well, it's a bit odd. I didna actually kill the man whose murder I'm outlawed for. Mind ye, I've done for a few other redcoats along the way, so I suppose it's not unjust."
He paused and shifted his shoulders, as though rubbing against some invisible wall. I had noticed him do it before, on my first morning in the castle, when I had doctored him and seen the marks on his back.
"It was at Fort William. I could hardly move for a day or two, after I'd been flogged the second time, and then I had fever from the wounds. Once I could stand again, though, some… friends made shift to get me out of the camp, by means I'd best not go into. Anyhow, there was some ruckus as we left, and an English sergeant-major was shot—by coincidence, it was the man that gave me the first flogging. I'd not ha' shot him, though; I had nothing personal against him, and I was too weak to do more than hang on to the horse, in any case." The wide mouth tightened and thinned. "Though had it been Captain Randall, I expect I'd ha' made the effort." He eased his shoulders again, stretching the rough linen shirt taut across his back, and shrugged.
"There it is, though. That's one reason I do not go far from the castle alone. This far into the Highlands, there's little chance of running into an English patrol, but they do come over the Border quite often. And then there's the Watch, though they'll not come near the castle, either. Colum's not much need of their services, having his own men to hand." He smiled, running a hand through his bright cropped hair 'til it stood on end like porcupine quills.
"I'm no precisely inconspicuous, ye ken. I doubt there's informers in the castle itself, but there might be a few here and there about the countryside as would be glad enough to earn a few pence by letting the English know where I was, did they know I was a wanted man." He smiled at me. "Ye'll have gathered the name's not MacTavish?"
"Does the laird know?"
"That I'm an outlaw? Oh, aye, Colum knows. Most people through this part of the Highlands likely know that; what happened at Fort William caused quite a bit of stir at the time, and news travels fast here. What they won't know is that Jamie MacTavish is the man that's wanted; provided nobody that knows me by my own name sees me." His hair was still sticking up absurdly. I had a sudden impulse to smooth it for him, but resisted.