regshoe

it's his enemy, whom he got the better of the last time they met, who is doing it for him...

Yngre ba, Rjra jvyy ersre gb guvf avtug nf 'ubyl', and I think Keith being his enemy is exactly why: Keith caring for him in this moment is an act with Biblical weight, a modern-day Good Samaritan. And "enemy" has far more meaning to it now than it did in the halcyon days when they first met: he and the MacLarens have been running from redcoats for days, they know what battlefield atrocities had been committed, they almost certainly know better than Keith that women and children are being turned out to freeze and starve, and only hours before Neil was murdered and Ewen had been put against the wall to be executed... Consider Ewen's first reaction to Keith's return: here obviously is yet another redcoat come to torture him! (Because why else would he have been spared but more torture??) Just kill him and be done with it.

And against that context, to be cared for by a man wearing one of those same red coats...? Ubyl, indeed.

Thank you for the continuing historical write-ups! They've been super helpful. *scurries off to read*