Finding Fraser Page 9

  I have experienced my share of pain in my lifetime, but having my entire insides seared by a steaming cauldron of bug-tar was like nothing I’d ever known. My eyeballs immediately flooded with tears of shock and pain and my tongue felt like it had been cooked right inside my mouth.

  “Right,” she said. “Now a glass of tap water and you’ll be fit for anything.”

  I staggered over to the counter, and apparently the expression on my face was enough, because the old lady who passed for the Scottish equivalent of a barista slid a full water glass across the counter to me without a word.

  I gulped it down and then turned to face Susan. “What the hell?” I gasped. “You could have scarred me for life!”

  She grinned at me. “How’s yer head?” she said, and took a bite of her first roll.

  I sat back down, feeling the charred insides of my mouth with my abused tongue. Everything seemed to still be in place, if completely singed. But my head—my head was filled with the buzzing of a thousand bees.

  “So, you’re looking for historical monuments, are yeh?” she said. “Yeh do know we’re jes’ a stone’s throw from Culloden?”

  I nodded gingerly, hoping the bees would quiet themselves. I watched her wolf down the first roll. “Yes, I was planning to go there, but a bit later in my trip. I’m sort of tracing a route I’ve planned out.”

  “Yeah, yeah, agreed. But if ye’re planning to go, why not now? Save yerself a trip back to this godforsaken hole.” She bit deeply into her second roll, and sighed before taking a long drink of her coffee. “I’m goin’ there today, meself. Ye’re welcome to join me.”

  “I guess so …” I said.

  The bees seemed to be settling at last, and she launched into a vivid description of all that could be seen and enjoyed on the nearby battlefield.

  After about five minutes of that, she looked at me inquiringly, and I thought of my own carefully constructed plans. My explanation would involve admitting to the annotated map inside the cover of my OUTLANDER book. I decided I didn’t really care to tell this very practical woman that I was in search of a mysterious red-headed warrior who was destined to sweep me away to happily ever after.

  Especially after the episode with Rabbie.

  “Let’s do it,” I said, making up my mind on the spot. “Is it a long taxi ride from here?”

  She jumped up, wiping her face with the back of one hand. “Who needs a feckin’ taxicab?” she said, grinning. “The sun’s shining! We’re goin’ by bike.”

  And so as Susan went off to arrange for a second bicycle rental for me, I went up to pay for her coffee. Turns out she’d forgotten to look after her breakfast, so I added the bill to my own, thinking of the money saved on cab fare. After all, I’d planned to tour Culloden near the end of my trip, and Susan had promised to show me where the secret graves of a rogue band of Irishmen who had fought alongside the Scots lay. I’d never find anything like that on my own.

  I stepped outside the coffee shop to find Susan already half a block ahead of me.

  “Bike shop’s just up the street here,” she called, and I limped along as fast as my sore knee would allow, cursing her cheeriness every step of the way.

  But damned if my head didn’t hurt any more. At all.

  She stood with a hand on the door to the shop. Outside three or four bicycles of assorted sizes stood propped in a rusting iron stand.

  “Right. You have a look out here and decide which bike is the best for you. I’ll go in and take care of the deposit, yeah?”

  “I can come in—you shouldn’t have to pay my deposit, Susan.”

  She waved me off. “Ach, it’s jes’ five quid to rent. Yeh pay the bulk of it when ye return ’em. We’ll even it out then.”

  With that, she turned on her heel and marched inside to the tinkling of a little bell tied to the door. I slowly walked along the line of bikes, trying to judge which one would suit me best. My knee was pretty sore, so I wanted something that was the right size so as not to aggravate the weird knee injury I had acquired while escaping Rabbie. I had my hand on a flashy little green number when a young man stepped out the door.

  “Right—yeh like that one, do ye? ‘Fraid it’s a bit too small a frame for a big girl like you—howse aboot yeh try this one?”

  I dragged my big girl ass over and tried sitting on the black utility number he held out to me. “It’s got a nice lamp on it for the evenin’,” he said, encouragingly.

  “I have no intention of riding after dark,” I said, coldly. ”But it’ll be fine. I’ll take it.”

  He smiled blandly back at me, oblivious to my attempts to cut him dead with my eyes. “Early in the year for you American girls to be out touring the country,” he said.

  I was about to point out to him that only one of us was American, when the bell tinkled again and Susan came out of the shop. She threw her leg over the green bicycle and the young man nodded. “Looks about right,” he said. “See yiz later, eh?”

  I declined to wave goodbye.

  As the young man walked back into the shop, Susan wheeled her bike over beside me and nudged me with her elbow. “He were a feckin’ looker, weren’t he?” she hissed. “I’da bent my ass over the countertop with him if we weren’t on the go today, I tell yeh.”

  “I can’t see it,” I said, but she’d already pulled out onto the street.

  I jumped on my bike and pedaled after her. Knee or no knee, I was going to keep up if it killed me.

  The ride to Culloden Battlefield was, according to the local map I had tucked in my pack, along a fairly straightforward route of only a bit more than five miles. Susan had been to the battlefield many times before, she assured me, and though it was her first time taking a bicycle, felt it would take us no more than a half an hour to get there. I found the first ten minutes to be pretty tough, negotiating on the left side of the road. Twice I pulled right into traffic, and the second time Susan had to literally reach out and grab my shirt to yank me out of the way of a speeding truck.

  She stuck two fingers up at the rapidly receding back of the vehicle. “Feckin’ eejit!” she screamed, not that it seemed to slow him down at all.

  She turned back to me. “All right then, Emma?”

  I nodded, hoping that the extra calories burned from my heart beating at twice the recommended rate would maybe qualify me for the smaller bike the next time.

  “Not sure he knew you were mad at him when you only shot him a peace sign,” I said, when my breath returned.

  She laughed. “Ah, you Yanks and yer middle finger salute. This is our version—more of a Celtic Peace Sign, mebbe. Trust me when I say this one has just as ripe a meaning.”

  I nodded and filed it away. Susan was a veritable font of local culture, and I felt a moment of gratefulness that fate had introduced us at the pub. My headache had vanished, and now she’d taught me how to swear in sign language. The beginnings of a true friendship.

  The ride was fairly uneventful after that. I’d clipped my room key to an outer zipper on my pack, and it jingled lightly as we trundled along the gravel verge of the road. Outside Inverness, there was still a skiff of snow on the ground, but the roads themselves were clear, and the sun and ride combined to keep me warm. I paused and looked both ways at every intersection, just in case, and Susan soon had us pedaling into the parking lot at the gate of the battlefield presentation center.

  The road leading to Culloden circled near the actual battlefield before arriving at the entrance, and I peered across the brown lumpy expanse, sure that Susan must be mistaken. I could see sheep wandering about, but how could anyone possibly fight a battle on such an odd and uneven surface?

  We rolled our bikes up outside, and Susan expertly locked them together on an otherwise empty bike stand. “Ye can niver be too careful, aye?” she said, tapping the side of her nose.

  I tapped back. One more cultural lesson learned. It was turning out to be an amazing day.

  11:30 am, March 15

  Inverness, S
cotland

  Haven’t got my laptop with me, so jotting quickly here in my notebook, and will copy to the blog later. Remember to make a short post to note the change of plan. I still hope to try to follow Claire’s footsteps wherever possible, but this is a chance I can’t pass up. The proximity of Culloden Battlefield, and the opportunity for a personal guide has brought me here a bit earlier than I had thought. I’m sure to learn so much, and it’ll probably mean I save a bit of money, too, not having to double-back the way Claire did.

  I jammed my little spiral notebook into my pack after making the notes. I’d post to the blog again when I returned to the hostel. By then I’d probably have a ton of interesting facts to add. Susan had turned out to be the best part of the trip so far; a walking Wikipedia of information.

  But as I waited for her to come back from the restroom, I found my thoughts turning to the drop in comments from my Japanese fan club. I mean, this trip was supposed to be for me, after all. But my self-confidence had been really shaken by the sudden cyber-silence.

  What did this say about me? Just who was I making this trip for, anyway?

  I grabbed my notebook again.

  Also, remember to leave a note to HiHoKitty and the other commenters from Asia: Make sure to say I’m truly sorry if Rabbie’s remark about the feet offended anyone. To tell you the truth, it offended me, too, and I was just trying to get that across.

  Hoping they don’t give up on support for my “Finding Fraser” quest. I have to find some way to say just how important their encouragement has been to me. Whatever else comes of this trip, I’ve learned that I really do enjoy the writing. I’d love to find some way to keep it going, even after the journey...

  Susan came marching out of the restroom and slapped me on the arm.

  “Why so glum, chum? This place is amazing. And I’ve a few special treats in store for yeh, too. Just follow ol’ Suzy and learn all about it.”

  For an Irish visitor, Susan’s knowledge of this ancient Scottish site was almost encyclopedic. Within minutes, she had me choking back tears as we walked into the visitor’s center at Culloden Moor. The course of history had been changed at this very location and the skirl of the pipes that greeted us as we entered was a reminder of all the Scottish lives lost on those fields so long ago.

  I had to stop and take a deep breath. I was here in the very place where Jamie and his clan brothers had fought and so desperately lost against the English. Or—his real-life counterparts had, at least. I could hardly believe it.

  We wandered through the displays describing the banishment and return of the pretender, Charles Stuart, known to all as Bonny Prince Charlie, and the lead-up to the battle as he rode through Scotland gathering support. I had to dig around in my pocket for a tissue as I read the displays, and by the time we sat down for a short film re-enacting the battle itself I was nearly losing it.

  Susan must have sensed my emotion, as she moved away to give me some privacy. A few minutes later, as the lights went up between film loops, I could see I was not the only person wiping their eyes.

  I walked into the main section of the visitor’s center and Susan was there to greet me.

  “Yeah—difficult to see, ain’t it?” she said, her voice low. “Let’s go outside and yeh can get a feel for the actual battlefield in person.”

  She hurried through the rest of the displays and I followed her outside. The sunny morning had clouded over somewhat, but the day was still bright. We followed the path that led out into the field.

  “It’s pretty mucky out there right now, but yeh get the idea of what it musta been like, yeah?” said Susan. She shaded her eyes and pointed off to one side of the field. “The fight had begun at Nairn, but hadn’t gone well and the feckin’ English chose this site to finish the Scots off. That flag over there shows where the Scots made their stand, and the English troops stood over on t’other side.”

  We followed the path as far as we could as it wound across the bleak moor. A collection of black sheep gathered to one side of the field, nosing at the frozen grass and nibbling the first tender shoots under the snow.

  “I can’t believe they could hold a battle on this land—it’s not even remotely flat. You’d think they’d all be tripping and falling into the rough patches.”

  Susan shrugged. “Well, they had no heavy equipment, or even horses really,” she said. “And it was likely not quite as lumpy as it seems today. Here, check these out.”

  She hurried over to one of the mounds under the snow and reached down to brush it off. Under her gloved fingers, words appeared on a surface of rough-hewn stone. Clan Stewart of Appin, it read.

  “A gravestone?” I breathed. I could hardly believe it.

  Susan nodded. “Indeed. These were put in place by the landholders after the battle and have been here since. And see over there?”

  I followed as she hurried past a much larger stone to one side of the moor. “Is this another grave marker?” I asked, pausing beside it.

  “Tch,” Susan waved her hand, not even turning her head to look. “That marks the graves of the few English soldiers who fell here. Doesn’t even bear a second glance. No—what I wanted to show you is away this side.”

  She stood well over to one side of the field, beside a couple of low rocks almost completely buried in snow. But instead of brushing them clean, she bent over almost on one foot, leaning and listening.

  “Can ye hear it?” she asked. I paused and solved the problem of my winded panting by holding my breath. It had been a bit of an energetic day to that point.

  After a moment, I looked at her. “Is that water?” I asked, and she beamed at me as though I had just passed an important test.

  “Tis the Well of the Dead,” she explained. “On’y source of water fer the poor souls on the battlefield.”

  I stood beside the spot in the snow and thought about the real-life version of Jamie and his lads, their lifeblood quenching this frozen ground. Heroes for their nation but doomed all the same.

  “Emma. The mos’ important bit is here.”

  Thinking of Jamie and the wrenching choices he and his family had to make, with so many lives lost, I wiped my eyes surreptitiously and turned to where Susan was standing. It was yet another snow-covered rock, and I marveled at how well she knew the geography of the place.

  I bent to brush the rock face off, but she put her hand on my arm.

  “There’s no call for that. No words mark this stone,” she said, somberly. “This is a place of our shared heritage, you and I. For this is the stone where the Irish fell—the Irish who came to the aid of their Scots brothers against the foul shared enemy.”

  “There were Irish battling at Culloden?” I whispered, feeling my fingertips tingle at the very thought. “I had no idea.”

  She nodded. “My very own family members fell here, and yours, for the bugler was a Sheridan.”

  I think my mouth must have dropped open. One of my own ancestors had fought with the brave, doomed Scots at Culloden? Where so many of the Frasers and MacKenzies had fallen? My heart swelled with a fierce pride, which must have shone through on my face, for Susan smiled and patted my arm.

  “Aye. God’s truth, though ye’ll find it in no history book. It’s a point of pride, passed down from Irish father to son in story and song.”

  I squeezed her arm. “I can’t believe it—I am so lucky to have met you,” I said. “How would I have learned any of this without you here?”

  “Mus’ be destiny,” she said, with a grin. “Now, how about some lunch? I’m feckin’ starvin’, I am.”

  I couldn’t talk Susan into going back inside for lunch. She refused to pay tourist prices, she said. I pointed out that as it was March, they likely still had the lower winter season rates in play, but she was adamant.

  “I’ll wait for yeh here,” she said, brushing the snow off a wooden bench and pulling out a small sandwich. I left her there, went inside and bought two containers of warm clam chowder and a couple of ham sand
wiches. She received my offerings of food with earnest thanks, and while we ate, pointed out the various strategic battle sites that were in view.

  The day had assumed a kind of silvery-gray tinge, but Susan insisted there was little chance of rain. As she scraped the last of the soup from her cardboard container, my will broke.

  “I have to tell you something, Susan,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I haven’t told you the whole truth. I’m not just a normal tourist. I’m here—well, I’m chasing a fugitive.”

  She looked up at me, her spoon poised halfway to her mouth, a startled expression on her face.

  “A—what …?”

  “A fugitive from the past. A ghost. A person who has never existed, but is so real that I believe he must be here somewhere. Here for me.”

  Her startled expression gave way to what almost looked like relief before settling on full-out puzzlement. “What the feck are y’sayin’, girl?”

  So I started at the beginning and told her. I brought out the book, even opening the cover to show where I had drawn Claire’s journey on the map of Scotland printed inside. I admit that her eyes widened several times as I went through the details, but to give her credit, she didn’t laugh at me. Not even once.

  When I was through she stood up and checked her watch.

  “Well, it seems perfectly feckin’ clear to me,” she said, shouldering her pack. “Ye need to cross that yon field, and head to Clava to see the stones.”

  “Clava,” I repeated slowly. “I think Craig—the cute guy in the pub last night—I think he mentioned Clava. But he said they were cairns.”