Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [462]
My heart was beginning to slow, the shock overcome in a great wave of curiosity. I could feel the questions bubbling up by the dozens, and picked one off the top at random.
“Did you know me?” I asked. “When you met me in Cranesmuir?”
She shook her head, the strands of cream-white hair coming loose from their pins and sliding down her neck. She poked haphazardly at her knot, still surveying me with interest.
“Not at the first, no. Though sure and I thought there was a great strangeness about ye—not that I was the only one to think that. Ye didna come through the stones prepared, did ye? Not on purpose, I mean?”
I bit back the words, “Not that time,” and said instead, “No, it was an accident. You came on purpose, though—from 1967?”
She nodded, studying me intently. The thickened flesh between her brows was creased, and the crease deepened slightly as she looked at me.
“Aye—to help Prince Tearlach.” Her mouth twisted to one side, as though she tasted something bad, and quite suddenly, she turned her head and spat. The globule of saliva hit the polished wooden floor with an audible plop.
“An gealtaire salach Atailteach!” she said. “Filthy Italian coward!” Her eyes darkened and shone with no pleasant light. “Had I known, I should have made my way to Rome and killed him, while there was time. His brother Henry might ha’ been no better, though—a ballock-less, sniveling priest, that one. Not that it made a difference. After Culloden, any Stuart would be as useless as another.”
She sighed, and shifted her bulk, the rattan of the chair creaking beneath her. She waved a hand impatiently, dismissing the Stuarts.
“Still, that’s done with for now. Ye came by accident—walked through the stones near the date of a Fire Feast, did ye? That’s how it usually happens.”
“Yes,” I said, startled. “I came through on Beltane. But what do you mean, ‘usually happens’? Have you met a great many others—like…us?” I ended hesitantly.
She shook her head rather absently. “Not many.” She seemed to be pondering something, though perhaps it was only the absence of her refreshments; she picked up the silver bell and rang it violently.
“Damn that Clotilda! Like us?” she said, returning to the question at hand. “No, I haven’t. Only one besides you, that I ken. Ye could ha’ knocked me over wi’ a feather, when I saw the wee scar on your arm, and kent ye for one like myself.” She touched the great swell of her own upper arm, where the small vaccination scar lay hidden beneath the puff of white muslin. She tilted her head in that bird-like way again, surveying me with one bright green eye.
“No, when I said that’s how it usually happens, I meant, judging from the stories. Folk who disappear in fairy rings and the stone circles, I mean. They usually walk through near Beltane or Samhain; a few near the Sun Feasts—Midsummer’s Day or the winter solstice.”
“That’s what the list was!” I said suddenly, reminded of the gray notebook I had left with Roger Wakefield. “You had a list of dates and initials—nearly two hundred of them. I didn’t know what they were, but I saw that the dates were mostly in late April or early May, or near the end of October.”
“Aye, that’s right.” She nodded, eyes still fixed on me in speculation. “So ye found my wee book? Is that how ye knew to come and look for me on Craigh na Dun? It was you, no? That shouted my name, just before I stepped through the stones?”
“Gillian,” I said, and saw her pupils widen at the name that had once been hers, though her face stayed smooth. “Gillian Edgars. Yes, it was me. I didn’t know if you saw me in the dark.” I could see in memory the night-black circle of stones—and in the center, the blazing bonfire, and the figure of a slim girl standing by it, pale hair flying in the heat of the fire.
“I didn’t see ye,” she said. “’Twas only later, when I heard ye call out at the witch trial and thought I’d heard your voice before. And then, when I saw the mark on