“Aye,” he said. “And when I have?”
Jamie glanced at me, then back at his godfather. “They’ll be on the moor now, I think, with Young Simon. Just gather them together, in one place. I shall see my wife safe, and then—” He hesitated, then shrugged. “I will find you. Wait my coming.”
Murtagh nodded once more, and turned to go. Then he paused, and turned back to face Jamie. The thin mouth twitched briefly, and he said, “I would ask the one thing of ye, lad—let it be the English. Not your ain folk.”
Jamie flinched slightly, but after a moment, he nodded. Then, without speaking, he held out his arms to the older man. They embraced quickly, fiercely, and Murtagh, too, was gone, in a swirl of ragged tartan.
I was the last bit of business on the agenda.
“Come on, Sassenach,” he said, seizing me by the arm. “We must go.”
No one stopped us; there was so much coming and going by the roads that we were scarcely noticed while we were near the moor. Farther away, when we left the main road, there was no one to see.
Jamie was completely silent, concentrating single-mindedly on the job at hand. I said nothing to him, too occupied with my own shock and dread to wish for conversation.
“I shall see my wife safe.” I hadn’t known what he meant by that, but it became obvious within two hours, when he turned the head of his horse farther south, and the steep green hill called Craigh na Dun came in view.
“No!” I said, when I saw it, and realized where we were headed. “Jamie, no! I won’t go!”
He didn’t answer me, only spurred his horse and galloped ahead, leaving me no option but to follow.
My feelings were in turmoil; beyond the doom of the coming battle and the horror of Dougal’s death, now there was the prospect of the stones. That accursed circle, through which I had come here. Plainly Jamie meant to send me back, back to my own time—if such a thing was possible.
He could mean all he liked, I thought, clenching my jaw as I followed him down the narrow trail through the heather. There was no power on earth that could make me leave him now.
* * *
We stood together on the hillside, in the small dooryard of the ruined cottage that stood below the crest of the hill. No one had lived there for years; the local folk said the hill was haunted—a fairy’s dun.
Jamie had half-urged, half-dragged me up the slope, paying no attention to my protests. At the cottage he had stopped, though, and sunk to the ground, chest heaving as he gasped for breath.
“It’s all right,” he said at last. “We have a bit of time now; no one will find us here.”
He sat on the ground, his plaid wrapped around him for warmth. It had stopped raining for the moment, but the wind blew cold from the mountains nearby, where snow still capped the peaks and choked the passes. He let his head fall forward onto his knees, exhausted by the flight.
I sat close by him, huddled within my cloak, and felt his breathing gradually slow as the panic subsided. We sat in silence for a long time, afraid to move from what seemed a precarious perch above the chaos below. Chaos I felt I had somehow helped create.
“Jamie,” I said, at last. I reached out a hand to touch him, but then drew back and let it fall. “Jamie—I’m sorry.”
He continued to look out, into the darkening void of the moor below. For a moment, I thought he hadn’t heard me. He closed his eyes. Then he shook his head very slightly.
“No,” he said softly. “There is no need.”
“But there is.” Grief nearly choked me, but I felt as though I must say it; must tell him that I knew what I had done to him.
“I should have gone back. Jamie—if I had gone, then, when you brought me here from Cranesmuir…maybe then—”
“Aye, maybe,” he interrupted. He swung toward me abruptly, and I could see his eyes fixed on me. There was longing there, and a grief that matched mine, but no anger, no reproach.
He shook his head again.
“No,” he said once more. “I ken what ye mean, mo duinne. But it isna so. Had ye gone then, matters might still have happened as they have. Maybe so, maybe no. Perhaps it would have come sooner. Perhaps differently. Perhaps—just perhaps—not at all. But there are more folk have had a hand in this than we two, and I willna have ye take the guilt of it upon yourself.”
His hand touched my hair, smoothing it out of my eyes. A tear rolled down my cheek, and he caught it on his finger.
“Not that,” I said. I flung a hand out toward the dark, taking in the armies, and Charles, and the starved man in the wood, and the slaughter to come. “Not that. What I did to you.”