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For his personal reasons that had nothing to do with the village… She knew those reasons. And she did believe he was from another time now, she realized. It was the only explanation for David’s strange words, strange accent, strange behavior.

And he wanted to go back to his time. He wanted to leave her. After all the nice words he’d said… Calling her his princess… Telling her how he wanted her…how she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

Yet the moment she went to get water, he was going to leave her because he had finally found the rock. Anger and hurt spread through her like wildfire. What did she expect? He’d never promised her anything. He’d told her he’d leave eventually. He’d told her that was what he wanted.

Still, it hurt. Because she didn’t want to ever separate from him. She didn’t want to marry Sir Philip. If she was to marry anyone, she wanted it to be David.

The crowd groaned. “Ah. So ye confess ye called a faerie after all,” said the priest.

David sighed and said nothing.

The priest looked over the crowd. “I sentence him to death by drowning with the first light of the morrow.”

Anna’s heart plummeted in her chest.

The man she was falling for may die because of her. He would likely be nowhere near this village if he hadn’t saved her from Carlisle and then promised to take her to Stirling.

Devastation weighed on her like a stone. But she couldn’t just sit and wait for it to happen. She had to free him.

CHAPTER 18

Anna watched David’s prison with a heavy feeling of trepidation. To keep the usual market trade going, they had moved him from the stocks to a shed next to the market square.

Gaps between the worn-out boards would let in a bit of light. But it was a prison nonetheless, and she knew what it was like to be in one.

Even if they would never be together, she needed to save him, needed to know he was free and alive. Even if he would be alive in another time.

The wind picked up and brought the scent of smoke from the households. The onlookers had left the market square when David had been dragged into the shed, and the merchants and farmers were setting up their stalls around the place. There were booths with fish—smoked, dried, or fresh—oats, live chickens and geese, kitchen utensils, clay and glass pots and jars, knives and trenchers. The blacksmith set out his swords, scramasaxes, scissors, tweezers, and other metalwork. Another merchant laid out red, blue, and ochre silks and linens. Merchants called out for customers to take a look at their things.

“Cloth!” cried one.

“Tanned leather!” came another call.

Slowly, people arrived to browse the displays. The square filled with laughter and conversation. A minstrel started playing a lute and singing the ballad of Tristan and Isolde. Anna’s heart ached. That was the story that had helped her go to sleep that first night of freedom. Her first night with David.

Like Tristan and Isolde, their growing love was doomed.

But, unlike Isolde, she was determined to not let the man she loved die.

As more and more people came to the market square, it started to feel crowded. But the five lepers sat near the church, and like water parting around a rock in a stream, people stayed at least ten steps away from them. There was almost a perfect circle of emptiness around them. People were afraid of the miasma that came from the lepers. If they inhaled it, they could get sick themselves. And there was no cure.

Anna watched the five of them, with a single wooden cup set before them. They begged for alms, stretching out their cupped hands. Two of them had dark, almost black fingers, and one had only two fingers left. Their faces were bluish or violet, looking like stones were set under their skin, making it uneven. This was the corruption of the sickness that God had sent to them. It started in their souls and then ravaged their bodies.

In big towns and burghs, like Carlisle or Edinburgh, they wouldn’t be allowed in until a certain day of the week and time, when they could come in and ask for alms. But this was a small village, and no one would stop them.

No one gave them any alms or food. People were too afraid of the curse, of the corruption.

Well, Anna wasn’t. She knew David hadn’t brought the miasma on them. And they needed to eat something. She went to the new horse and got some of the silver that she’d found in MacDowell purse attached to its saddle. Then she bought some fresh bannocks, cheese, and smoked herring from the merchants, as well as some weak ale. With that, she went to the lepers. There were three men and two women, all different ages, probably, but looking like dead, dried-out bodies that moved.

Standing alone in the circle of emptiness, neither with the villagers nor with the sick, she felt awkward, and she knew people were staring.

The five lepers were staring also, wide-eyed.

“Alms?” said one of the men, hopeful. His nose had a dark tip that looked like dried wood.

“Aye,” she said and sank to her knees. “Alms.”

She gave each of them a bannock and cheese and poured the weak ale for them. They grabbed the food like starving people, which, she was sure, they were. They smelled like sickness and death, and she knew she was probably breathing in that miasma that might kill her, too. But if that was God’s will, so be it. She couldn’t let these people starve.