Finding Fraser (12 page)

The young woman with the backpack had
disappeared, but the girl who had served our drinks earlier was standing beside
the bar, loading beer onto her enormous tray.

“Is there a back way out of here?” I hissed
in her ear.

She grinned. “Had enough of our Mister
Rowanby, have ye?”

I shot her a pleading look.

“Righ’. No’ that I blame ye—he’s a bit
much to handle, sometimes. But ye likely should know…” she leaned over and
whispered in my ear. “Forget the whole ‘gnome’ thing. He’s also known as
‘Rabbie the tripod,’ and for good reason, luv.”

She grinned at my look of horror. “Righ’,
righ’—I see he’s no’ for you. No worries. Just past the bogs there’s a
door marked ‘private’. Inside’s a flight o’ stairs. Beneath the landing is another
door that’ll lead you out to the lane.”

I dropped a two-pound coin on her tray.
“Thank you!”

“Ta, yerself. And mind you don’t go up them
stairs. Office is up there, and I’ll catch hell if any of the brass sees yeh,
aye?”

“Got it. And thanks again.”

She rolled her eyes. “Ach, you aren’t the
first and ye won’t be the last to need an escape route from wee Rabbie. For all
his endowments, the man’s a menace to anything with a vagina.”

“Or a bound foot,” I muttered, as I pushed
my way toward the door and my freedom.

It was slightly less crowded at the back of
the pub, but even so, the door was located in such a dark corner it was hard to
see. When I shook the handle, it felt like it was locked. I looked over my
shoulder to see the server in conversation with Rabbie. Then they turned and
looked right at me. I grabbed the handle with both hands and yanked it with all
my strength.

The door swung open and I threw myself
inside, only to come face-to-face with the brunette woman with the backpack,
just coming down the stairs. She was no longer holding a drink, since her free
hand was in her pocket, but the loaded pack was still slung over her shoulder.

“I—I …” she began, but I interrupted
her.

“You,” I said, “just saved my life.”

Her expression could best be described as
somewhat confused. “I saved your … what?”

“OI!” came a man’s voice from the top of the
stairs. “That you, Helen? We’re out of bluidy ink!”

She shot a look up the stairs and I held my
finger to my lips. Behind her in the dim stairwell, a brass doorknob gleamed
under a sign that said Door Alarmed. I took a deep breath and turned the knob. Icy
night-time air swirled in, but no alarm went off.

“HELEN?” called the voice, and we both piled
outside and hastily slammed the door behind us.

I set off in the direction of the hostel,
and the girl kept pace with me, tucking her head into a voluminous wool scarf.

“Thanks,” I said as we hurried up the street.
“I owe you one.”

“Yeah,” she said, and shot me a grin.
“Apparently I jes’ saved yer feckin’ life for yeh.”

I grinned back at her. “You did. I’ve been
held captive in there for the past hour by a sex-crazed gnome. Dwarf. I—I
mean, little person.”

She laughed. “An’ here I thought you
Americans were all about the political correctness.”

“He called himself Rabbie the Gnome—I
swear! Anyway, I told him you were my cousin Susan. Didn’t you hear him yell at
you? He practically deafened everyone in the place.”

She laughed again. “No, I didn’t. But it’s
funny, that—because me name
is
Susan.”

I stopped in the street and stared at her.
“Seriously?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Fer real, an all. Susan D—Susan
O’Donnell.”

She stuck out her hand and I shook it. “Emma
Sheridan.”

She nodded at my backpack. “Where are ye
stayin’, when yer not trying to avoid randy gnomes?”

I pointed up the street. “My hostel’s up
that way.”

“Really? Mine, too. I’ll walk wit’ ye.
Luckily, we Irish are good at protectin’ ourselves from the wee folk.”

I laughed. “Oh, you’re from Ireland?
Whereabouts?”

She inclined her head. “The Republic,
o’course. Yeh evir been?”

“No. This is my first time in the United Kingdom.”

“Ah, well, and you with such an Irish name,
and all. I’m a Dubliner. Headin’ north to visit family on Skye. When I’m not
rescuing fair Americans.”

I grinned. “Well, you know, his friend was
cute, and seemed pretty nice until Rabbie arrived. He was an unbelievable
horn-dog.”

She laughed. “Horn dog, eh? I’ve niver heard
that one, but I like it.
Horn dog
.”
She repeated it with an American accent, and I laughed too. Her accent was
terrible.

We walked up the street as the wind from the
river tried its best to freeze every exposed bit of my flesh. I had my hood
pulled up but was seriously envying Susan her scarf by the time we neared the
hostel.

“This is me,” I said, stepping into the
shelter of the doorway.

She glanced up at the sign over the door.
“Away wit’ yeh! Me too!”

We had to step aside as a loudly chattering
group of young males tumbled out the doorway. Susan gave me a thoughtful look.

“What’re yer plans for tomorrow?”

I shrugged. “I—uh—just looking
around for old stone circles, actually.”

She jammed her hands further in her pockets.
“Care to meet for coffee in the morning before you set out? I’ve a mind to see
a few sights around here before I head north. If you’re willin’ to put up wit’
the company.”

“Why not?” I said, and opened the door,
holding it for her.

But she stepped backwards. “Oh, I’m not
goin’ in yet. I’ve a fair few errands to do before I hit the sheets tonight.”
She grinned and pointed at a heavily shuttered cafe across the street. “Meet ye
at nine sharp, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” I said, and watched her stride
off into the swirling snow.

Fate & Faith…

8:30 am, March 15

Inverness, Scotland

A few brief thoughts on having faith in
human nature while traveling:

Just because someone buys you a drink in
a bar does not mean his intentions are noble.

Have the strength of character to just
walk away. If a situation feels bad, it probably is. Follow your gut instinct!

If you do find yourself backed into a
corner, girl power can save you. I speak from experience——having
faith in our sisters has saved many a woman trapped on the bench seat of a bar
by a gnome.

And to finish, a public service announcement
for anyone planning to come to this beautiful old city:

Do not accept cranberry juice offered by
an odd little man with a penchant for Asian ladies’ feet. Do not then go on and
drink two of these drinks, no matter how good they taste.

You will thank me.

- ES

Comments: 1

HiHoKitty, Sapporo, Japan:

Emma, your remark about feet shows
ignorance of vast differences in Asian cultures. Book club members expect
better.

My
room in the hostel was warm and snug, and had a bonus kettle, though no biscuits
to be found.
I’d slept like a cranberry-vodka-saturated
log, and rose to find the day painfully sunshiny, with no traces of the tiny
flakes that had blown so viciously through the gaps in my coat the night
before. My knee was swollen to the size of a baseball, and my head felt even
worse. Since I’d posted already, cruising on the house Wi-Fi, I left the laptop
locked in my room and headed down the stairs with just my pack over my
shoulder.

I made it over to the coffee shop, and was
sitting in a corner when Susan walked in. The effects of Rabbie’s pink drinks
were far less desirable in the cold hard light of a Scottish morning, and it is
possible I may have had to rest my head on the table once or twice. By
contrast, Susan had a spring in her step and such a twinkle in her eye that I
dropped my head into my hands.

“Oi—feelin a bi’ rough, are yeh?” she
said. I nodded and sipped my coffee.

“Well, we can’t have tha now, can we? I’ll
jes’ have yer cup, here, shall I?” She slid my coffee out from between my
protesting hands and poured a dollop of something into it from a flask she
whipped out of her coat pocket.

“Ohhhh—I don’t think so,” I whispered.
Even the sound of my own words echoed painfully around in my head. “I’ve taken
some aspirin. I’ll be better soon.”

“Nonsense. Drink that right up. Is it hot
enough?”

She peered at the steam coming off the cup
with one of her over-bright eyes, and pronounced it just right. “Go on. Drink
it. We haven’t all day for you to be scuppered now, do we?”

She pushed the cup back into my hands. The
steam wafted up and fogged my glasses. I hadn’t even the strength of character
to get my contacts into my eyes that morning.

“Aren’t you going to have something?” I
asked, weakly, stalling.

The coffee shop smelled sickeningly of
porridge and fresh scones. “At least let me buy you a cup of tea,” I said, as
she slapped a local map down on the table.

“Nah, I wouldn’t think of it,” she said, but
when the girl came by to wipe down the table, she agreed to a hot drink, and
then jumped up to have a look behind the counter.

Moments later, she returned to the table
with two bacon rolls and a large cup of coffee. She stared sternly at my
still-full cup. “Get that inside yeh. We’ve a day to plan.”

I nodded obediently and took a sip. Whatever
she’d done to the coffee made it taste like road tar. With insects in it.

Susan heaved an exasperated sigh and stood
up. “Let me just give yeh a hand …” she began, and before I knew what was
happening, she had my nose pinched between two fingers. When I opened my mouth
to gasp out a protest, she poured half of the steaming cup down my throat. The
other half splattered onto my lap and across the table.

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, Scotland

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
.