I pulled away from him. "Don't bother," I said ungraciously. "I can find my own way."
He took my elbow with considerable firmness. "I daresay ye can. But you'll not want to meet any of Colum's guards alone."
"And why not?" I snapped. "I'm not doing anything wrong; there's no law against walking outside the castle, is there?"
"No. I doubt they'd mean to do ye harm," he said, peering thoughtfully into the shadows. "But it's far from unusual for a man to take a flask along to keep him company when he stands guard. And the drink may be a boon companion, but it's no a verra good adviser as to suitable behavior, when a small, sweet lass comes on ye alone in the dark."
"I came on you in the dark, alone," I reminded him, with some boldness. "And I'm neither particularly small, nor very sweet, at least at present."
"Aye, well, I was asleep, not drunk," he responded briefly. "And questions of your temper aside, you're a good bit smaller than most of Colum's guards."
I put that aside as an unproductive line of argument, and tried another tack. "And why were you asleep in the stable?" I asked. "Haven't you a bed somewhere?" We were in the outer reaches of the kitchen gardens by now, and I could see his face in the faint light. He was intent, checking the stone arches carefully as we went, but he glanced sharply aside at this.
"Aye," he said. He continued to stride forward, still gripping me by the elbow, but went on after a moment, "I thought I'd be better out of the way."
"Because you don't mean to swear allegiance to Colum MacKenzie?" I guessed. "And you don't want to stand any racket about it?"
He glanced at me, amused at my words. "Something like that," he admitted.
One of the side gates had been left welcomingly ajar, and a lantern perched atop the stone ledge, next to it shed a yellow glow on the path. We had almost reached this beacon when a hand suddenly descended on my mouth from behind and I was jerked abruptly off my feet.
I struggled and bit, but my captor was heavily gloved, and, as Jamie had said, a good deal larger than I.
Jamie himself seemed to be having minor difficulties, judging from the sound of it. The grunting and muffled cursing ceased abruptly with a thud and a rich Gaelic expletive.
The struggle in the dark stopped, and there was an unfamilur laugh.
'God's eyes, if it's no the young lad, Colum's nephew. Come late to the oathtaking, are ye not, lad? And who's that wi' ye?"
"It's a lassie," replied the man holding me. "And a sweet, juicy one, too, by the heft of her." The hand left my mouth and administered a hearty squeeze elsewhere. I squeaked in indignation, reached over my shoulder, got hold of his nose and yanked. The man set me down with a quick oath of his own, less formal than those about to be taken within the hall. I stepped back from the blast of whisky fumes, feeling a sudden surge of appreciation for Jamie's presence. Perhaps his accompanying me had been prudent, after all.
He appeared to be thinking otherwise, as he made a vain attempt to remove the clinging grip of the two men-at-arms who had attached themselves to him. There was nothing hostile about their actions, but there was a considerable amount of firmness. They began to move purposefully toward the open gate, their captive in tow.
"Nay, let me go and change first, man," he protested. "I'm no decent to be going into the oathtaking like this."
His attempt at graceful escape was foiled by the sudden appearance of Rupert, fatly resplendent in ruffled shirt and gold-laced coat, who popped out of the narrow gate like a cork from a bottle.
"Dinna worrit yourself about that, laddie," he said, surveying Jamie with a gleaming eye. "We'll outfit ye proper—inside." He jerked his head toward the gate, and Jamie disappeared within, under compulsion. A meaty hand gripped my own elbow, and I followed, willy-nilly.
Rupert appeared to be in very high spirits, as did the other men I saw inside the castle. There were perhaps sixty or seventy men, all dressed in their best, festooned with dirks, swords, pistols, and sporrans, milling about in the courtyard nearest the entrance to the Great Hall. Rupert gestured to a door set in the wall, and the men hustled Jamie into a small lighted room. It was one apparently used for storage; odds and ends of all kinds littered the tables and shelves with which it was furnished.
Rupert surveyed Jamie critically, with an eye to the oatstraws in his hair and the stains on his shirt. I saw his glance flicker to the oatstraws in my own hair, and a cynical grin split his face.