“James Fraser,” I hissed between clenched teeth. “If you touch that boy, you’ll certainly never share my bed again!”
Jamie raised one eyebrow. His canines gleamed briefly in the firelight. “Well, that’s a serious threat, to an unprincipled voluptuary such as myself, but I dinna suppose I can consider my own interests in such a situation. War’s war, after all.” The pistol, which had been allowed to fall, began to rise once more.
“Jamie!” I screamed.
He lowered the pistol again, and turned to me with an expression of exaggerated patience. “Yes?”
I took a deep breath, to keep my voice from shaking with rage. I could only guess what he was up to, and hoped I was doing the right thing. Right or not, when this was over … I choked off an intensely pleasing vision of Jamie writhing on the ground with my foot on his Adam’s apple, in order to concentrate on my present role.
“You haven’t any evidence whatever that he’s a spy,” I said. “He says he stumbled on you by accident. Who wouldn’t be curious if they saw a fire out in the woods?”
Jamie nodded, following the argument. “Aye, and what about attempted murder? Spy or no, he tried to kill me, and admits as much.” He tenderly fingered the raw scratch at the side of his throat.
“Well, of course he did,” I said hotly. “He says he knew you were an outlaw. There’s a bloody price on your head, for heaven’s sake!”
Jamie rubbed his chin dubiously, at last turning to the prisoner. “Well, it’s a point,” he said. “William Grey, your advocate makes a good case for ye. It’s no the policy either of His Highness Prince Charles or myself to execute persons unlawfully, enemy or no.” He summoned Kincaid with a wave of the hand.
“Kincaid, you and Ross take this man in the direction he says his camp lies. If the information he gave us proves to be true, tie him to a tree a mile from the camp in the line of march. His friends will find him there tomorrow. If what he told us is not true …”—he paused, cold eyes bent on the prisoner—“cut his throat.”
He looked the boy in the face and said, without a shadow of mockery, “I give you your life. I hope ye’ll use it well.”
Moving behind me, he cut the cloth binding my wrists. As I turned furiously, he motioned toward the boy, who had sat down suddenly on the ground beneath the oak. “Perhaps ye’d be good enough to tend the boy’s arm before he goes?” The scowl of pretended ferocity had left his face, leaving it blank as a wall. His eyelids were lowered, preventing me from meeting his gaze.
Without a word, I went to the boy and sank to my knees beside him. He seemed dazed, and didn’t protest my examination, or the subsequent manipulations, though the handling must have been painful.
The split bodice of my gown kept sliding off my shoulders, and I muttered beneath my breath as I irritably hitched up one side or the other for the dozenth time. The bones of the boy’s forearm were light and angular under the skin, hardly thicker than my own. I splinted the arm and slung it, using my own kerchief. “It’s a clean break,” I told him, keeping my voice impersonal. “Try to keep it still for two weeks, at least.” He nodded, not looking at me.
Jamie had been sitting quietly on a log watching my ministrations. My breath coming unevenly, I walked up to him and slapped him as hard as I could. The blow left a white patch on one cheek and made his eyes water, but he didn’t move or change expression.
Kincaid pulled the boy to his feet and propelled him to the edge of the clearing with a hand at his back. At the edge of the shadows he halted and turned back. Avoiding looking at me, he spoke only to Jamie.
“I owe you my life,” he said formally. “I should greatly prefer not to, but since you have forced the gift upon me, I must regard it as a debt of honor. I shall hope to discharge that debt in the future, and once it is discharged …” The boy’s voice shook slightly with suppressed hatred, losing all its assumed formality in the utter sincerity of his feelings. “… I’ll kill you!”
Jamie rose from the log to his full height. His face was calm, free of any taint of amusement. He inclined his head gravely to his departing prisoner. “In that case, sir, I must hope that we do not meet again.”
The boy straightened his shoulders and returned the bow stiffly. “A Grey does not forget an obligation, sir,” he said, and vanished into the darkness, Kincaid at his elbow.
There was a discreet interval of breathless waiting, as the leaf-shuffling sounds of feet moved off through the darkness. Then the laughter started, first with a soft, fizzing noise through the nostrils of one man, then a tentative chuckle from another. Never raucous, still it gathered volume, spiraling round the circle of men.
Jamie took one step into the circle, face turned toward his men. The laughter stopped abruptly. Glancing down at me, he said briefly, “Go to the tent.”
Warned by my expression, he gripped my wrist before I could raise my hand.
“If you’re going to slap me again, at least let me turn the other cheek,” he said dryly. “Besides, I think I can save ye the trouble. But I’d advise you to go to the tent, just the same.”
Dropping my hand, he strode out to the edge of the fire, and with one peremptory jerk of the head, gathered the scattered men into a reluctant, half-wary clump before him. Their faces were big-eyed, orbits scooped with darkness by the shadows.
I didn’t understand everything he said, as he spoke in an odd mixture of Gaelic and English, but I gathered sufficient sense to realize that he was inquiring, in a soft, level tone that seemed to turn his listeners to stone, as to the identity of the sentinels on duty for the evening.
There was a furtive glancing to and fro, and uneasy movement among the men, who seemed to clump more strongly together in the face of danger. But then the closed ranks parted, and two men stepped out, glanced up—once—then hastily down, and stood shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the ground, outside the protection of their fellows.
It was the McClure brothers, George and Sorley. Close in age, somewhere in their thirties, they stood hang-dog near each other, fingers of the work-toughened hands twitching as though longing to link and clasp together, as some small protection before the coming storm.
There was a brief, wordless pause as Jamie looked over the two delinquent sentinels. Then followed five solid minutes of unpleasantness, all conducted in that same soft, level voice. There wasn’t a sound from the grouped men, and the McClures, both burly men, seemed to dwindle and shrink under the weight of it. I wiped my sweating palms on my skirt, glad that I didn’t understand it all, and beginning to regret not following Jamie’s order to return to the tent.
I regretted it still more in the next moment, when Jamie turned suddenly to Murtagh, who, expecting the command, was ready with a leather strip, some two feet long, knotted at one end to provide a rough grip.
“Strip and stand to me, the both of ye.” The McClures moved at once, thick fingers fumbling with shirt fastenings, as though eager to obey, relieved that the preliminaries were over and the reckoning arrived.
I thought perhaps I would be sick, though I gathered that the punishment was light enough, by the standards applied to such things. There was no sound in the clearing, save the slap of the lash and an occasional gasp or groan from the man being flogged.
At the last stroke, Jamie let the thong fall to his side. He was sweating heavily, and the grimed linen of his shirt was pasted to his back. He nodded to the McClures in dismissal, and wiped his wet face on his sleeve as one man bent painfully to retrieve the discarded shirts, his brother, shaky himself, bracing him on the other side.
The men in the clearing seemed to have ceased even breathing, during the punishment. Now there was a tremor through the group, as though a collective breath had been released in a sigh of relief.
Jamie eyed them, shaking his head slightly. The night wind was rising, stirring and lifting the hair on his crown.
“We canna afford carelessness, mo duinnen,” he said softly. “Not from anyone.” He took a deep breath and his mouth twi
sted wryly. “And that includes me. It was my unshielded fire drew the lad to us.” Fresh sweat had sprung out on his brow, and he wiped a hand roughly across his face, drying it on his kilt. He nodded toward Murtagh, standing grimly apart from the other men, and held the leather strap out toward him.
“If ye’ll oblige me, sir?”
After a moment’s hesitation, Murtagh’s gnarled hand reached out and took the strap. An expression that might have been amusement flickered in the little clansman’s bright black eyes.
“Wi’ pleasure … sir.”
Jamie turned his back to his men, and began to unfasten his shirt. His eye caught me, standing frozen between the tree trunks, and one eyebrow lifted in ironic question. Did I want to watch? I shook my head frantically, whirled, and blundered away through the trees, belatedly taking his advice.
* * *
In fact, I didn’t return to the tent. I couldn’t bear the thought of its stifling enclosure; my chest felt tight and I needed air.
I found it on the crest of a small rise, just beyond the tent. I stumbled to a stop in a small open space, flung myself full-length on the ground, and put both arms over my head. I didn’t want to hear the faintest echo of the drama’s final act, down behind me by the fire.
The rough grass beneath me was cold on bare skin, and I hunched to wrap the cloak around me. Cocooned and insulated, I lay quiet, listening to the pounding of my heart, waiting for the turmoil inside me to calm.
Sometime later, I heard men passing by in small groups of four or five, returning to their sleeping spots. Muffled by folds of cloth, I couldn’t distinguish their words, but they sounded subdued, perhaps a little awed. Some time passed before I realized that he was there. He didn’t speak or make a noise, but I suddenly knew that he was nearby. When I rolled over and sat up, I could see his bulk shadowed on a stone, head resting on forearms, folded across his knees.
Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.
“Are you all right?” I asked, after a moment’s pause, voice neutral as I could make it.
“Aye, I’ll do.” He unfolded himself slowly, and stretched, moving gingerly, with a deep sigh.
“I’m sorry for your gown,” he said, a minute later. I realized that he could see my bare flesh shining dim-white in the darkness, and pulled the edges of my cloak sharply together.
“Oh, for the gown?” I said, more than a slight edge to my voice.
He sighed again. “Aye, and for the rest of it, too.” He paused, then said, “I thought perhaps ye might be willing to sacrifice your modesty to prevent my havin’ to damage the lad, but under the circumstances, I hadna time to ask your permission. If I was wrong, then I’ll ask your pardon, lady.”
“You mean you would have tortured him further?”
He was irritated, and didn’t trouble to hide it. “Torture, forbye! I didna hurt the lad.”
I drew the folds of my cloak more tightly around me. “Oh, you don’t consider breaking his arm and branding him with a hot knife as hurting him, then?”
“No, I don’t.” He scooted across the few feet of grass between us, and grasped me by the elbow, pulling me around to face him. “Listen to me. He broke his own silly arm, trying to force his way out of an unbreakable lock. He’s brave as any man I’ve got, but he’s no experience at hand-to-hand fighting.”
“And the knife?”
Jamie snorted. “Tcha! He’s a small sore spot under one ear, that won’t pain him much past dinner tomorrow. I expect it hurt a bit, but I meant to scare him, not wound him.”
“Oh.” I pulled away and turned back to the dark wood, looking for our tent. His voice followed me.
“I could have broken him, Sassenach. It would have been messy, though, and likely permanent. I’d rather not use such means if I dinna have to. Mind ye, Sassenach”—his voice reached me from the shadows, holding a note of warning—“sometime I may have to. I had to know where his fellows were, their arms and the rest of it. I couldna scare him into it; it was trick him or break him.”
“He said you couldn’t do anything that would make him talk.”
Jamie’s voice was weary. “Christ, Sassenach, of course I could. Ye can break anyone if you’re prepared to hurt them enough. I know that, if anyone does.”
“Yes,” I said quietly, “I suppose you do.”
Neither of us moved for a time, nor spoke. I could hear the murmurs of men bedding down for the night, the occasional stamp of boots on hard earth and the rustle of leaves heaped up as a barrier against the autumn chill. My eyes had adjusted sufficiently to the dark that I could now see the outline of our tent, some thirty feet away in the shelter of a big larch. I could see Jamie, too, his figure black against the lighter darkness of the night.
“All right,” I said at last. “All right. Given the choice between what you did, and what you might have done … yes, all right.”
“Thank you.” I couldn’t tell whether he was smiling or not, but it sounded like it.
“You were taking the hell of a chance with the rest of it,” I said. “If I hadn’t given you an excuse for not killing him, what would you have done?”
The large figure stirred and shrugged, and there was a faint chuckle in the shadows.
“I don’t know, Sassenach. I reckoned as how you’d think of something. If ye hadn’t—well, I suppose I would have had to shoot the lad. Couldna very well disappoint him by just lettin’ him go, could I?”
“You bloody Scottish bastard,” I said without heat.
He heaved a deep exasperated sigh. “Sassenach, I’ve been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper—which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children and I dinna like to flog men, and I’ve had to do both. I’ve two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m sore. If you’ve anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!”
He sounded so aggrieved that I laughed in spite of myself. I got up and walked toward him.
“I suppose you could, at that. Come here, and I’ll see if I can find a bit for you.” He had put his shirt back on loose over his shoulders, not troubling to do it up. I slid my hands under it and over the hot, tender skin of his back. “Didn’t cut the skin,” I said, feeling gently upward.
“A strap doesn’t; it just stings.”
I removed the shirt and sat him down to have his back sponged with cold water from the stream.
“Better?” I asked.
“Mmmm.” The muscles of his shoulders relaxed, but he flinched slightly as I touched a particularly tender spot.
I turned my attention to the scratch under his ear. “You wouldn’t really have shot him, would you?”
“What d’ye take me for, Sassenach?” he said, in mock outrage.
“A Scottish poltroon. Or at best, a conscienceless outlaw. Who knows what a fellow like that would do? Let alone an unprincipled voluptuary.”
He laughed with me, and his shoulder shook under my hand. “Turn your head. If you want womanly sympathy, you’ll have to keep still while I apply it.”
“Mmm.” There was a moment of silence. “No,” he said at last, “I wouldna have shot him. But I had to save his pride somehow, after making him feel ridiculous over you. He’s a brave lad; he deserved to feel he was worth killing.”
I shook my head. “I will never understand men,” I muttered, smoothing marigold ointment over the scratch.
He reached back for my hands and brought them together under his chin.
“You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach,” he said quietly. “So long as ye love me.” His head tilted forward and he gently kissed my clasped hands.
“And feed me,” he added, releasing them.
“Oh, womanly sympathy, love and food?” I said, laughing. “Don’t want a lot, do you?”
There were cold bannocks in the saddlebags, cheese, and a bit of cold bacon as well. The tensions and absurdities o
f the last two hours had been more draining than I realized, and I hungrily joined in the meal.
The sounds of the men surrounding us had now died down, and there was neither sound nor any flicker of an unguarded fire to indicate that we were not a thousand miles from any human soul. Only the wind rattled busily among the leaves, sending the odd twig bouncing down through the branches.
Jamie leaned back against a tree, face dim in the starlight, but body instinct with mischief.
“I gave your champion my word that I’d no molest ye wi’ my loathsome advances. I suppose that means unless ye invite me to share your bed, I shall have to go and sleep wi’ Murtagh or Kincaid. And Murtagh snores.”
“So do you,” I said.
I looked at him for a moment, then shrugged, letting half my ruined gown slide off my shoulder. “Well, you’ve made a good start at ravishing me.” I dropped the other shoulder, and the torn cloth fell free to my waist. “You may as well come and finish the job properly.”
The warmth of his arms was like heated silk, sliding over my cold skin.
“Aye, well,” he murmured into my hair, “war’s war, no?”
* * *
“I’m very bad at dates,” I said to the star-thick sky sometime later. “Has Miguel de Cervantes been born yet?”
Jamie was lying—perforce—on his stomach next to me, head and shoulders protruding from the tent’s shelter. One eye slowly opened, and swiveled toward the eastern horizon. Finding no trace of dawn, it traveled slowly back and rested on my face, with an expression of jaundiced resignation.
“You’ve a sudden urge to discuss Spanish novels?” he said, a little hoarsely.
“Not particularly,” I said. “I just wondered whether perhaps you were familiar with the term ‘quixotic.’ ”
He heaved himself onto his elbows, scrubbed at his scalp with both hands to wake himself fully, then turned toward me, blinking but alert.
“Cervantes was born almost two hundred years ago, Sassenach, and, me having had the benefit of a thorough education, aye, I’m familiar with the gentleman. Ye wouldna be implying anything personal by that last remark, would ye?”
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