The Scottish Prisoner

Lord, that she might be safe!he prayed in agony. She and the child!

“Absolve me, Father,” he whispered. “I would go now.”

The abbot’s lips pressed tight, reluctant, and the hair trigger of Jamie’s temper went off.

“Do you think to blackmail me by withholding absolution? Ye blackguard priest! You would betray your vows and your office for the sake of—”

Father Michael stopped him with an upraised hand. He glared at Jamie for a moment, unmoving, then traced the sign of the cross in the air, in sharp, precise movements.

“Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patris—”

“I’m sorry, Father,” Jamie blurted. “I shouldna have spoken to ye like that. I—”

“We’ll count that as part of your confession, shall we?” murmured Father Michael. “Say the rosary every day for a month; there’s your penance.” The shadow of a wry smile crossed his face, and he finished, “et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”He lowered his hand and spoke normally.

“I didn’t think to ask how long it had been since your last confession. D’you remember how the Act of Contrition goes, or had I best help you?” It was said seriously, but Jamie saw the trace of the leprechaun lurking in those bright green eyes. Father Michael folded his hands and bowed his head, as much to hide a smile as for piety.

“Mon Dieu, je regrette …”He said it in French, as he always had. And as it always had, a sense of peace came upon him with the saying.

He stopped speaking, and the air of the evening was still.

For the first time, he saw what he had not seen before: the mound of slightly darker rock and soil, speckled with the sprouting green blades of fresh grass, spangled with the tiny jewels of wildflowers. And a small wooden cross at the head of it, just under the pine tree.

Dust to dust. This was the stranger’s grave, then; they had given him burial in the Christian way, letting the unseemly jumble of bones and leather, so long preserved in dark water, crumble at last in peaceful anonymity. Here, by the seat of kings.

The sun was still above the horizon, but the light came low, and shadows lay dark upon the bog, ready to rise and join the coming night.

“Wait for a bit, mo mhic,” Father Michael said, reaching to retrieve the cup. “Let me put this away safe, and I’ll see ye back.”

In the distance, Jamie could see the dark gash of the pit where the peat-cutters had been at work. They called that sort of place a moss-hag in Scotland, he thought, and wondered briefly what—or who?—might lie in other bogs.

“Di

20

Stalking Horse

QUINN HAD GONE, PRESUMABLY TO TEND TO HIS OWN BUSINESS. Jamie found his absence soothing but not reassuring; Qui

“Show him the Wild Hunt poem,” Grey had suggested. “I want to know if he seems to recognize it. If not, there’s at least the possibility that it has nothing to do with him and was somehow included with Carruthers’s packet by mistake. If he doesrecognize it, though, I want to know what he says about it.” He’d smiled at Jamie, eyes alight with the imminence of action. “And once you’ve spied out the land for me, I’ll have a better notion of which tack to take when I see him.”

A stalking horse, Jamie noted dourly. At least Grey had been honest about that.

On Tom Byrd’s advice, Jamie wore the brown worsted suit, as being more suitable to a day call in the country—the puce velvet was much too fine for such an occasion. There had been an argument between Tom and Lord John as to whether the yellow silk waistcoat with the blackwork was preferable to the plain cream-colored one, as indicating Jamie’s presumed wealth, or not, as possibly being thought vulgar.

“I di

Lord John made a noise that he hastily converted to a sneeze, causing both Jamie and Tom to look at him austerely.

Jamie was not sure how much—if at all—Siverly might recall him. He had seen Siverly only now and then in Paris, and only for a few weeks. He thought they might have exchanged words once in the course of a di

In Paris, he had worked in his cousin Jared’s wine business; he might reasonably have continued in trade, after the Rising. There would be no reason for Siverly either to have heard of his actions, nor to have followed his movements after Culloden.

Jamie hadn’t bothered noting that his English speech would likely cause Siverly to regard him as a social inferior, no matter what he wore, and thus when he gave his horse to the gatekeeper who came out of the lodge to meet him, he broadened his accent slightly.

“What’s the name of this place, lad?”

“Glastuig,” the man said. “Will it be the place ye’re lookin’ for, then?”

“The verra place. Will your master be at home the day?”

“Himself’s in the house,” the gatekeeper said dubiously. “As for bein’ at home … I’ll send and see, if ye like, sir.”

“Much obliged to ye, lad. Here, then, give him this—and that wee bawbee’s for yourself.” He handed over the note he’d prepared, enclosing the introduction from Sir Melchior and asking for an interview, along with a lavish thrupe

His role as a rich vulgarian thus promisingly begun, he furthered it by openly gaping at the imposing house and its extensive grounds as he walked slowly up the drive after the servant. It was an old house—he hadn’t yet seen a newly built one in Ireland—but well kept up, its dark stonework freshly pointed and the chimneys—fourteen, he counted them—all alight and drawing well. Six good horses in the far pasture, including one that he wouldn’t have minded seeing closer to—a big dark bay with a white blaze and a nice arse end; good muscle, he thought approvingly. A good-sized lawn spread out before the house, a gardener pushing a heavy roller over it with no perceptible enthusiasm, and the gardens themselves had a dull, prosperous gleam to their leaves, wet with the drizzling rain.

He was in no great doubt that he’d be admitted, and by the time he’d reached the door, there was a butler standing in it to take his hat and cloak and show him to a drawing room. Like the house itself, it was richly appointed—there was a huge silver candlestick, with six beeswax tapers shedding a gracious light—but lacking any great sense of style. He wandered slowly around the room, fingering the ornaments: a Meissen figurine of a woman, a dove perched on her hand, taking a comfit from her lips; a longcase clock with three dials, showing the time, the barometric pressure, and the phase of the moon; a tobacco humidor made of a dark, unfamiliar kind of wood that he thought might be African; a footed silver bowl full of sugared violets, jumbled and broken among a handful of ginger-nut biscuits; a vicious-looking club with a peculiar knob at the end; a curious piece of something … He picked it up to examine closer. It was a rectangular strip, perhaps ten inches by five (he measured it automatically, using the joints of his left middle finger as gauge), made of small, odd beads—what were they made of? Not glass … Shell?—strung on a woven thread in an interesting pattern of blue and white and black.