"Why do you wear your hair cropped?" I asked suddenly, then blushed. "I'm sorry, it's none of my business. I only wondered, since most of the other men I've seen here wear it long… ."
He flattened the spiky licks, looking a bit self-conscious.
"I used to wear mine long as well. It's short now because the monks had to shave the back of my head and it's had but a few months to grow again." He bent forward at the waist, inviting me to inspect the back of his head.
"See there, across the back?" I could certainly feel it, and see it as well when I spread the thick hair aside; a six-inch weal of freshly healed scar tissue, still pink and slightly raised. I pressed gently along its length. Cleanly healed, and a nice neat job by whoever had stitched it; a wound like that must have gaped and bled considerably.
"Do you have headaches?" I asked professionally. He sat up, smoothing the hair down over the wound. He nodded.
"Sometimes, though none so bad as it was. I was blind for a month or so after it happened, and my head ached like fury all the time. The headache started to go away when my sight came back." He blinked several times, as though testing his vision.
"Fades a bit sometimes," he explained, "if I'm verra tired. Things get blurry round the edges."
"It's a wonder it didn't kill you," I said. "You must have a good thick skull on you."
"That I have. Solid bone, according to my sister." We both laughed.
"How did it happen?" I asked. He frowned, and a look of uncertainty came over his face.
"Weel, there's just the question," he answered slowly. "I dinna remember anything about it. I was down near Carryarick Pass with a few lads from Loch Laggan. Last I knew, I was pushing my way uphill through a wee thicket; I remember pricking my hand on a hollybush and thinking the blood drops looked just like the berries. And the next thing I remember is waking in France, in the Abbey of Sainte Anne de Beaupré, with my head throbbing like a drum and someone I couldn't see giving me something cool to drink."
He rubbed the back of his head as though it ached yet.
"Sometimes I think I remember little bits of things—a lamp over my head, swinging back and forth, a sort of sweet oily taste on my lips, people saying things to me—but I do not know if any of it's real. I know the monks gave me opium, and I dreamed nearly all the time." He pressed his fingers flat over closed eyelids.
"There was one dream I had over and over. Tree roots growing inside my head, big gnarled things, growing and swelling, pushing out through my eyes, thrusting down my throat to choke me. It went on and on, with the roots twisting and curling and getting bigger all the time. Finally they'd get big enough to burst my skull and I'd wake hearing the sound of the bones popping apart." He grimaced. "Sort of a juicy, cracking noise, like gunshots under water."
"Ugh!"
A shadow fell suddenly over us and a stout boot shot out and nudged Jamie in the ribs.
"Idle young bastard," the newcomer said without heat, "stuffin' yerself while the horses run wild. And when's that filly goin' to be broke, hey, lad?"
"None the sooner for my starving myself, Alec," Jamie replied "Meanwhile, have a bit; there's plenty." He reached a chunk of cheese up to a hand knotted with arthritis. The fingers, permanently curled in a half-grip, slowly closed on the cheese as their owner sank down on the grass.
With unexpectedly courtly manners, Jamie introduced the visitor; Alec McMahon MacKenzie, Master of Horse of Castle Leoch.
A squat figure in leather breeks and rough shirt, the Master of Horse had an air of authority sufficient, I thought, to quell the most recalcitrant stallion. An "eye like Mars, to threaten or command," the quotation sprang at once to mind. A single eye it was, the other being covered with a black cloth patch. As if to make up for the loss, his eyebrows sprouted profusely from a central point, sporting long grey hairs like insects' antennae that waved threateningly from the basic brown tufts.
After an initial nod of acknowledgment, Old Alec （for so Jamie referred to him, no doubt to distinguish him from the Young Alec who had been my guide） ignored me, dividing his attention instead between the food and the three young horses switching their tails in the meadow below. I rather lost interest during a long discussion involving the parentage of several no doubt distinguished horses not among those present, details of breeding records of the entire stable for several years, and a number of incomprehensible points of equine conformation, dealing with hocks, withers, shoulders, and other items of anatomy. Since the only points I noticed on a horse were nose, tail, and ears, the subtleties were lost on me.