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“Well, then,” Father Michael said, turning to him. “The difficult part.”
FATHER MICHAEL LED HIM to the top of the little hillock, and there beneath the pine tree was a crude seat, carved out of the native stone. It was blotched with blue and green and yellow lichens and had plainly stood there for centuries.
“This is the High Seat—the бrd chnoc—where the kings of this place were confirmed before the old gods,” the priest said, and crossed himself. Jamie did likewise, impressed despite himself. It was a very old place, and the stone seemed to hold a deep silence; even the wind over the bog had died, and he could hear his heart beating in his chest, slow and steady.
Father Michael reached into the leather pouch he wore at his belt and, to Jamie’s disquiet, drew out the gem-studded wooden cup, which he placed gently on the ancient seat.
“I know what you once were,” he said to Jamie, in a conversational tone of voice. “Your uncle Alex would write to me with news of you, during the Rising. You were a great warrior for the king. The rightful king.”
“That was a long time ago, Father.” He was begi
The abbot straightened up and eyed him appraisingly.
“You’re in the prime of your manhood, Shйamais Mac Bhrian,” he said. “Is it right that you should waste the strength and the gift you have for leading men?” Jesus God, he wants me to do it, Jamie thought, appalled. Take that cursed thing and do as Qui
“Is it right for me to lead men to their deaths, for the sake of a vain cause?” he asked, sharply enough that the abbot blinked.
“Vain? The cause of the Church, of God? To restore the anointed king and remove the foot of the English from the neck of your people and mine?”
“Vain, Father,” he said, striving for calmness, though the mere thought of the Rising in Scotland tightened every muscle he had. “Ye know what I was, ye say. But ye di
“I hid,” Jamie said, after a moment. “On my own land. Hid in a cave for seven years, for fear of the English.” He took a deep breath and felt the scars tight on his back, burning. He opened his eyes and fixed the priest’s gaze with his own.
“I came down one night to hunt, perhaps a year past the time of Culloden. I passed a burnt-out croft, one I’d passed a hundred times. But rain had washed out the path and I stepped aside—and I stepped on her.” He swallowed, remembering the heart-stopping snap of the bone under his foot. The terrible delicacy of the tiny ribs, the sprinkle of bones that had once been hands, strewn careless as pebbles.
“A wee lass. She’d been there months.… The foxes and corbies … I didna ken which one she was. There were three of them lived there, three wee lassies, near in age, and their hair brown—it was all that was left of her, her hair—so I couldna say was she Mairi or Beathag or wee Cairistiona—I—” He stopped speaking, abruptly.
“I said it would be difficult.” The priest spoke quietly, not looking away. His eyes were dark, the brightness of them shadowed but steady. “Do you think I’ve not seen such things here?”
“Do ye want to see them again?” His hands had curled into fists without his knowledge.
“Will they stop?” the priest snapped. “Will ye condemn your countrymen and mine to such cruelties, to the rule of the yellow-johns, for lack of will? I’d not thought from Alexander’s letters that ye lacked courage, but perhaps he was wrong in what he thought of you.”
“Oh, no, Father,” he said, and his voice dropped low in his throat. “Di
Father Michael gave a brief snort, half amused, but his eyes stayed dark.
“Is it the boy?” he asked. “You’d turn aside from your duty—from the thing God has called you to do!—to be a lickspittle to the English, to wear their chains, to go and tend a child who does not need you, who will never bear your name?”
“No,” Jamie said between his teeth. “I have left home and family before, for the sake of duty. I lost my wife to it. And I saw what that duty led to. Mind me, Father—if it comes to war, it will not be different this time. It. Will. Not. Be. Different!”
“Not if men like you will not chance it! Mind what I say—there are sins of omission, as well as those of commission. And remember the parable of the talents, will you now. Do you mean to stand before God, come the Last Day, and tell Him you spurned the gifts He gave you?”
It came to Jamie quite suddenly that Father Michael knew. Knew what, or how much, Jamie couldn’t say—but the news of Qui
He gathered himself, pushing down his temper. The man was doing his own duty—as he saw it.
“Is there a lang stone like that one somewhere nearby?” he asked, lifting his chin toward the cup. The cleft stone carved into its bowl wasn’t visible from where he stood, but there was a feeling on the back of his neck like a cool wind blowing—and the boughs of the little pine tree were still.
Father Michael was disconcerted by this sudden change of subject.
“I—why … Aye, there is.” He turned his head toward the west, where the sun was slowly sinking behind a scrim of cloud, red as a fresh-fired ca
Why, indeed. Jamie’s mouth was dry and he swallowed, but without much effect. Must he tell the priest exactly why he was certain that this effort to restore the Stuarts would not succeed, any more than the Rising in Scotland had?
No, he decided. He wouldn’t. Claire was his, alone. There was nothing sinful in his love for her, nothing that concerned Father Michael, and he meant to keep her to himself.
Beyond that, he thought wryly, if I told him, he’d be convinced I’d lost my wits—or was trying to feign madness to wriggle out of this foolish coil.
“Why did ye bring that here?” he asked, ignoring the priest’s question and nodding at the cup.
Father Michael looked at him for a time without answering, then lifted one shoulder.
“If you should be the man that God has chosen for the task, then I meant to give it to you, to use as you thought best. If you are not …” He squared his shoulders under the black broadcloth of his habit. “Then I shall give it back to its original owner.”
“I am not, Father,” Jamie said. “I ca
The look of curiosity returned. “Do you … feel his presence? The bog-man? Now?”
“I do.” He did, too; the sense of someone standing behind him was back and had about it something of … eagerness? Desperation? He could not say what it was exactly, but it was bloody unsettling.
Was the dead man one like Claire? Was that the meaning of the carving in the bowl? If so, what fate had come upon him, to leave him here, in this place of desolation, far from wherever he had come?
Doubt seized him suddenly in jaws of iron. What if she had not made it back through the stones, back to safety? What if she, like the man who lay beneath the black waters here, had gone astray? Horror clenched his fists so tightly that the nails cut into his palms, and he kept them so, clung to the realness of the physical pain with stubborn force, so that he might dismiss the much more painful thought as something unreal, insubstantial.