She answered them all with a few words and a smile, and it was clear to see that Jennet was a great favorite in Carryckton.

Near an alehouse two men were juggling eggs, sending them in endless circles in the air with flicks of the wrist. One was as tall as Robbie MacLachlan; the other barely came to his knees, although he was full bearded and the short fingers that worked the eggs were covered with dark hair. Bells jangled at their elbows and knees and they bantered with the crowd, hardly watching their work.

Just around the corner a rough stage had been put up, and the traveling players had drawn a good crowd.

"Let's bide a while," whispered Jennet. Hannah had never seen a play, and so she was happy to watch as a young man with his face painted to look like an old man held out a vial of cloudy yellow liquid. He threw his voice out in a reedy wobble over the audience:

Sir doctor, please be sae kind and examine this piss

Wi' ma bonnie young dauchter there's somethin' amiss

She stays tae her bed aa the night, aa the day

Turns awa fra' her food, an' does naethin' but lie

aboot in a hoose which is naucht but a mess

Can this be the plague; can ye hazard a guess?

Hannah had learned something from the Hakim about examining urine to diagnose an illness, and she was very curious as to what this doctor would say. With the rest of the crowd she leaned forward. He rocked back and forth on his heels and stroked his beard thoughtfully with one hand while he patted a round belly with the other. With each pat a small puff of feathers escaped from the juncture of breeches and coat, but the audience seemed not to mind.

Your ailing wee dauchter is a servant, I see

She takes her work verra seriously

She swabs the floors and cooks the food

But the hired man is the cause o' her mood

When she bent ower her work he pressed his point

Tae a well laid table he added a joint

Tae carve her meat he supplied the blade

For a bluidy gash just as she bade

Soon her belly will grow and swell

Nivver fear! in the spring aa will be well.

Your bonnie Kate is no' alone,

Young and limber, muny maidens moan.

They curse and vomit and wring their hands

'Tis a problem that's growing across the land!

The crowd laughed, but Jennet pulled Hannah away, sniffing loudly in her displeasure. "Kate o' Lauchine, agin! What a lither lot those players are, always tossin' aboot words instead o' swords. They'll lift naethin' heavier than a filled tankard."

Hannah was about to tell her that as far as she knew, you could not read pregnancy from the color of urine, but just then a boy with a cast in his eye shoved himself in front of them. "Bi crivens, Jennet Hope, look what ye dragged doon the lane the-day. A heathen. Does it ken oor tongue?"

"Better than you, Hugh Brown," she snapped, going up on tiptoe to put her face to his. "Ye'll wish that ye had nae tongue a'tall once the minister kens how ye're cursin', ye scunnerin wee nyaff." And she poked her elbow in his gut hard enough to make him turn white.

They darted off into the crowd while he was still trying to get back his breath. The shadowy lanes were cool even on this sunny day, the cobblestones smooth underfoot and the smell of bread baking and brewing ale in the air. They came around a corner to a large open area of trampled earth with a pillar in its center.

"Och, look," Jennet breathed. "Dame Sanderson. There's goin' tae be a bear-baitin'."

"Bear?" Hannah looked harder and saw no more than a dusty hump of fur chained to the pillar. "Dame Sanderson?"

"Aye." Jennet gave her a curious look. "That bear, there. She's called Dame Sanderson. Have ye nivver seen a bear?"

It was such a strange question that Hannah didn't know at first how to answer. When she needed more than her mother's milk she had sucked bear fat from her fingers; she had learned to recognize bear tracks when she was hardly old enough to walk herself. Bears played on the boulders above the waterfalls at Lake in the Clouds, and napped in trees and fished in the marshes on Big Muddy. Once an eagle had dropped a she-cub--mangled and close to dead--into the cornfield while they had been planting squash. Hannah had rescued her from Hector and Blue and tended her wounds until she died, and then she had taken her pelt and cured it. That pelt was on her sleeping pallet at Lake in the Clouds right now.

"I have an uncle called Runs-from-Bears," Hannah said.

Jennet's eyebrows shot up high in delight and interest. "Is he afraid o' them, then?"

"No," Hannah said, smiling at the idea of Runs-from-Bears afraid of anything. "Not at all." She could see that she would have to tell this story, even though the web it would weave might tangle her thoughts for the rest of the day.

"When my uncle was a baby he was called Sitting-Boy. Wherever Two-Moons--his mother --put him down he would stay, and while the others played he watched, and when they ran, he smiled. Two-Moons and her husband, Stands-Tall, worried that the boy was weak-witted, but for the bright look in his eyes.

"In his third year, in the Strawberry Moon, Two-Moons went with all the women to pick fruit for the festival ..." Hannah swallowed, feeling the flush of the sun on her face and a clench of homesickness so deep and hard that she swayed with it.

"The women were busy gathering strawberries when a bear came out of the forest with her cub. The other women hurried the children away but Two-Moons could find no trace of Sitting-Boy. She looked and called and the bear came closer and closer until she was so close that Two-Moons could smell the river water on her fur.