“Does your back hurt?”
He hunched his shoulders experimentally. “Not much. A wee bit bruised, I expect.”
“Jamie, why, for God’s sake?” I burst out.
He rested his chin on his folded forearms, the sidelong turn of his head emphasizing the slant of his eyes. The one I could see narrowed still further with his smile.
“Well, Murtagh enjoyed it. He’s owed me a hiding since I was nine and put pieces of honeycomb in his boots while he had them off to cool his feet. He couldna catch me at the time, but I learned a good many interesting new words whilst he was chasing me barefoot. He—”
I put a stop to this by punching him as hard as I could on the point of the shoulder. Surprised, he let the arm collapse under him with a sharp “Oof!” and rolled onto his side, back toward me.
I brought my knees up behind him and wrapped an arm around his waist. His back blotted out the stars, wide and smoothly muscled, still gleaming faintly with the moisture of exertion. I kissed him between the shoulder blades, then drew back and blew gently, for the pleasure of feeling his skin shiver under my fingertips and the tiny fine hairs stand up in goose bumps down the furrow of his spine.
“Why?” I said again. I rested my face against his warm, damp back. Shadowed by the darkness, the scars were invisible, but I could feel them, faint tough lines hard under my cheek.
He was quiet for a moment, his ribs rising and falling under my arm with each deep, slow breath.
“Aye, well,” he said, then fell silent again, thinking.
“I dinna ken exactly, Sassenach,” he said finally. “Could be I thought I owed it to you. Or maybe to myself.”
I laid a light palm across the width of one shoulder blade, broad and flat, the edges of the bone clear-drawn beneath the skin.
“Not to me.”
“Aye? Is it the act of a gentleman to unclothe his wife in the presence of thirty men?” His tone was suddenly bitter, and my hands stilled, pressing against him. “Is it the act of a gallant man to use violence against a captive enemy, and a child to boot? To consider doing worse?”
“Would it have been better to spare me—or him—and lose half your men in two days’ time? You had to know. You couldn’t—you can’t afford to let notions of gentlemanly conduct sway you.”
“No,” he said softly, “I can’t. And so I must ride wi’ a man—with the son of my King—whom duty and honor call me to follow—and seek meanwhiles to pervert his cause that I am sworn to uphold. I am forsworn for the lives of those I love—I betray the name of honor that those I honor may survive.”
“Honor has killed one bloody hell of a lot of men,” I said to the dark groove of his bruised back. “Honor without sense is … foolishness. A gallant foolishness, but foolishness nonetheless.”
“Aye, it is. And it will change—you’ve told me. But if I shall be among the first who sacrifice honor for expedience … shall I feel nay shame in the doing of it?” He rolled suddenly to face me, eyes troubled in the starlight.
“I willna turn back—I cannot, now—but Sassenach, sometimes I do sorrow for that bit of myself I have left behind.”
“It’s my fault,” I said softly. I touched his face, the thick brows, wide mouth, and the sprouting stubble along the clean, long jaw. “Mine. If I hadn’t come … and told you what would happen …” I felt a true sorrow for his corruption, and shared a sense of loss for the naive, gallant lad he had been. And yet … what choice had either of us truly had, being who we were? I had had to tell him, and he had had to act on it. An Old Testament line drifted through my mind: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long.”
As though he had picked up this biblical strain of thought, he smiled faintly.
“Aye, well,” he said. “I dinna recall Adam’s asking God to take back Eve—and look what she did to him.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I laughed, then drew the blanket up over my bare shoulders. “Go to sleep, my wee rib. I shall be needin’ a helpmeet in the morning.”
* * *
An odd metallic noise woke me. I poked my head out of the blanket and blinked in the direction of the noise, to find my nose a foot from Jamie’s plaid-covered knee.
“Awake, are ye?” Something silvery and chinking suddenly descended in front of my face, and a heavy weight settled around my neck.
“What on earth is this?” I asked, sitting up in astonishment and peering downward. I seemed to be wearing a necklace composed of a large number of three-inch metal objects, each with a divided shank and a hooped top, strung together on a leather bootlace. Some of the objects were rusted at the tops, others brand-new. All showed scratches along the length of the shanks, as though they had been wrenched by force out of some larger object.
“Trophies of war, Sassenach,” said Jamie.
I looked up at him, and uttered a small shriek at the sight.
“Oh,” he said, putting a hand to his face. “I forgot. I hadna time to wash it off.”
“You scared me to death,” I said, hand pressed to my palpitating heart. “What is it?”
“Charcoal,” he said, voice muffled in the cloth he was rubbing over his face. He let it down and grinned at me. The rubbing had removed some of the blackening from nose, chin and forehead, which glowed pinkish-bronze through the remaining smears, but his eyes were still ringed black as a raccoon’s, and charcoal lines bracketed his mouth. It was barely dawn, and in the dim light of the tent, his darkened face and hair tended to fade into the drab background of the canvas wall behind him, giving the distinctly unsettling impression that I was speaking to a headless body.
“It was your idea,” he said.
“My idea? You look like the end man in a minstrel show,” I replied. “What the hell have you been doing?”
His teeth gleamed a brilliant white amid the sooty creases of his face.
“Commando raid,” he said, with immense satisfaction. “Commando? Is that the right word?”
“Oh, God,” I said. “You’ve been in the English camp? Christ! Not alone, I hope?”
“I couldna leave my men out of the fun, could I? I left three of them to guard you, and the rest of us had a verra profitable night.” He gestured at my necklace with pride.
“Cotter pins from the cannon carriages. We couldna take the cannon, or damage them without noise, but they’ll no be goin’ far, wi’ no wheels to them. And the hell of a lot of good sixteen gallopers will do General Cope, stranded out on the moor.”
I examined my necklace critically.
“That’s well and good, but can’t they contrive new cotter pins? It looks like you could make something like this from heavy wire.”
He nodded, his air of smugness abating not a whit.
“Oh, aye. They could. But nay bit o’ good it will do them, wi’ no new wheels to put them to.” He lifted the tent flap, and gestured down toward the foot of the hill, where I could now see Murtagh, black as a wizened demon, supervising the activities of several similarly decorated subdemons, who were gaily feeding the last of thirty-two large wooden wheels into a roaring fire. The iron rims of the wheels lay in a stack to one side; Fergus, Kincaid, and one of the other young men had improvised a game with one of them, rolling it to and fro with sticks. Ross sat on a log nearby, sipping at a horn cup and idly twirling another round his burly forearm.
I laughed at the sight.
“Jamie, you are clever!”
“I may be clever,” he replied, “but you’re half-naked, and we’re leaving now. Have ye something to put on? We left the sentinels tied up in an abandoned sheep-pen, but the rest of them will be up by now, and none so far behind us. We’d best be off.”
As though to emphasize his words, the tent suddenly shook above me, as someone jerked free the lines on one side. I uttered an alarmed squeak and dived for the saddlebags as Jamie left to superintend the details of departure.
* * *
It was midafternoon before we reached the village of Tranent
. Perched on the hills above the seaside, the usually tranquil hamlet was reeling under the impact of the Highland army. The main bulk of the army was visible on the hills beyond, overlooking the small plain that stretched toward the shore. But with the usual disorganized comings and goings, there were as many men in Tranent as out of it, with detachments coming and going in more or less military formation, messengers galloping to and fro—some on ponies, some by shanks’ mare—and the wives, children, and camp followers, who overflowed the cottages and sat outside, leaning on stone walls and nursing babies in the intermittent sun, calling to passing messengers for word of the most recent action.
We halted at the edge of this seethe of activity, and Jamie sent Murtagh to discover the whereabouts of Lord George Murray, the army’s commander in chief, while he made a hasty toilet in one of the cottages.
My own appearance left a good bit to be desired; while not deliberately covered with charcoal, my face undoubtedly sported a few streaks of grime left as tokens of several nights spent sleeping out-of-doors. The goodwife kindly lent me a towel and a comb, and I was seated at her table, doing battle with my ungovernable locks, when the door opened and Lord George himself burst in without ceremony.
His usually impeccable dress was disheveled, with several buttons of his waistcoat undone, his stock slipped loose, and one garter come untied. His wig had been thrust unceremoniously into his pocket, and his own thinning brown curls stood on end, as though he had been tugging at them in frustration.
“Thank God!” he said. “A sane face, at last!” Then he leaned forward, squinting as he peered at Jamie. Most of the charcoal dust had been rinsed from the blazing hair, but gray rivulets ran down his face and dripped on his shirtfront, and his ears, which had been overlooked in the hastiness of his ablutions, were still coal-black.
“What—” began a startled Lord George, but he broke off, shook his head rapidly once or twice as though to dismiss some figment of his imagination, and resumed his conversation as though he had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.
“How does it go, sir?” said Jamie respectfully, also affecting not to notice the ribboned tail of the periwig which hung out of Lord George’s pocket, wagging like the tail of a small dog as His Lordship gestured violently.
“How does it go?” he echoed. “Why, I’ll tell you, sir! It goes to the east, and then it goes to the west, and then half of it comes downhill to have luncheon, while the other half marches off to devil-knows-where! That’s how it goes!”
“ ‘It,’ ” he said, momentarily relieved by his outburst, “being His Highness’s loyal Highland army.” Somewhat calmer, he began to tell us of the events transpiring since the army’s first arrival in Tranent the day before.
Arriving with the army, Lord George had left the bulk of the men in the village and rushed with a small detachment to take possession of the ridge above the plain. Prince Charles, coming along somewhat later, had been displeased with this action and said so—loudly and publicly. His Highness had then taken half the army and marched off westward, the Duke of Perth—nominally the other commander in chief—tamely in tow, presumably to assess the possibilities of attacking through Preston.
With the army divided, and His Lordship occupied in conferring with villagemen who knew the hell of a lot more about the surrounding terrain than did either His Highness or His Lordship, O’Sullivan, one of the Prince’s Irish confidants, had taken it upon himself to order a contingent of Lochiel’s Cameron clansmen to the Tranent churchyard.
“Cope, of course, brought up a pair of galloper guns and bombarded them,” Lord George said grimly. “And I’ve had the devil of a time with Lochiel this afternoon. He was rather understandably upset at having a number of his men wounded for no evident purpose. He asked that they be withdrawn, which request I naturally acceded to. Whereupon here comes His Highness’s frog-spawn, O’Sullivan—pest! Simply because he landed at Eriskay with His Highness, the man thinks he—well, anyway, he comes whining that the presence of the Camerons in the churchyard is essential—essential, mind you!—if we are to attack from the west. Told him in no uncertain terms that we attack from the east, if at all. Which prospect is exceedingly doubtful at the moment, insofar as we do not presently know exactly where half of our men are—nor His Highness, come to that,” he added, in a tone that made it clear that he considered the whereabouts of Prince Charles a matter of academic interest only.
“And the chiefs! Lochiel’s Camerons drew the lot that gives them the honor of fighting on the right hand in the battle—if there is one—but the MacDonalds, having agreed to the arrangement, now energetically deny having done any such thing, and insist that they will not fight at all if they’re denied their traditional privilege of fighting on the right.”
Having started this recitation calmly enough, Lord George had grown heated again in the telling, and at this point sprang to his feet again, rubbing his scalp energetically with both hands.
“The Camerons have been drilled all day. By now, they’ve been marched to and fro so much that they can’t tell their pricks from their arseholes—saving your presence, mum,” he added, with a distracted glance at me, “and Clanranald’s men have been having fistfights with Glengarry’s.” He paused, lower jaw thrust out, face red. “If Glengarry wasn’t who he is, I’d … ah, well.” He dismissed Glengarry with a flip of the hand and resumed his pacing.
“The only saving grace of the matter,” he said, “is that the English have been forced to turn themselves about as well, in response to our movements. They’ve turned Cope’s entire force no less than four times, and now he’s strung his right flank out nearly to the sea, no doubt wondering what in God’s name we’ll do next.” He bent and peered out the window, as though expecting to see General Cope himself advancing down the main road to inquire.
“Er … where exactly is your half of the army at present, sir?” Jamie made a move as though to join His Lordship in his random peregrinations about the cottage, but was restrained by my grip on his collar. Armed with a towel and a bowl of warm water, I had occupied myself during His Lordship’s exegesis with removing the soot from my husband’s ears. They stood out now, glowing pinkly with earnestness.
“On the ridge just south of town.”
“We still hold the high ground, then?”
“Yes, it sounds good, doesn’t it?” His Lordship smiled bleakly. “However, occupation of the high ground profits us relatively little, in consideration of the fact that the ground just below the ridge is riddled with pools and boggy marsh. God’s eyes! There’s a six-foot ditch filled with water that runs a hundred feet along the base of that ridge! There’s scarce five hundred yards between the armies this moment, and it might as well be five hundred miles, for all we can do.” Lord George plunged a hand into his pocket in search of a handkerchief, brought it out, and stood staring blankly at the wig with which he had been about to wipe his face.
I delicately offered him the sooty handkerchief. He closed his eyes, inhaled strongly through both nostrils, then opened them and bowed to me with his usual courtly manner.
“Your servant, mum.” He polished his face thoroughly with the filthy rag, handed it politely back to me, and clapped the tousled wig on his head.
“Damn my liver,” he said distinctly, “if I let that fool lose this engagement for us.” He turned to Jamie with decision.
“How many men have you, Fraser?”
“Thirty, sir.”
“Horses?”
“Six, sir. And four ponies for pack animals.”
“Pack animals? Ah. Carrying provisions for your men?”
“Yes, sir. And sixty sacks of meal abstracted from an English detachment last night. Oh, and one sixteen-inch mortar, sir.”
Jamie imparted this last bit of information with an air of such perfect offhand casualness that I wanted to cram the handkerchief down his throat. Lord George stared at him for a moment, then one corner of his mouth twitched upward in a smile.
“Ah? Well, c
ome with me, Fraser. You can tell me all about it on the way.” He wheeled toward the door, and Jamie, with a wide-eyed glance at me, caught up his hat and followed.
At the cottage door, Lord George stopped suddenly, and turned back. He glanced up at Jamie’s towering form, shirt collar undone and coat flung hastily over one arm.
“I may be in a hurry, Fraser, but we have still sufficient time to observe the civilities. Go and kiss your wife goodbye, man. Meet me outside.”
Turning on his heel, he made a leg to me, bowing deeply, so that the tail of his wig flopped forward.
“Your servant, mum.”
* * *
I knew enough about armies to realize that nothing apparent was likely to happen for some time, and sure enough, it didn’t. Random parties of men marched up and down the single main street of Tranent. Wives, camp followers, and the displaced citizens of Tranent milled aimlessly, uncertain whether to stay or go. Messengers darted sideways through the crowd, carrying notes.
I had met Lord George before, in Paris. He was not a man to stand on ceremony when action would better suit, though I thought it likely that the fraying of his temper at Prince Charles’s actions, and a desire to escape the company of O’Sullivan, were more responsible for his coming in person to meet Jamie than any desire either for expeditiousness or confidentiality. When the total strength of the Highland army stood somewhere between fifteen hundred and two thousand, thirty men were neither to be regarded as a gift from the gods, nor sneered at altogether.
I glanced at Fergus, fidgeting to and fro like a hoptoad with St. Vitus’s dance, and decided that I might as well send a few messages myself. There is a saying, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” I promptly invented its analogy, based on experience: “When no one knows what to do, anyone with a sensible suggestion is going to be listened to.”
There was paper and ink in the saddlebags. I sat down, watched with an almost superstitious awe by the goodwife, who had likely never seen a woman write anything before, and composed a note to Jenny Cameron. It was she who had led three hundred Cameron clansmen across the mountains to join Prince Charles, when he had raised his banner at Glenfinnan on the coast. Her brother Hugh, arriving home belatedly and hearing what had happened, had ridden posthaste to Glenfinnan to take the chieftain’s place at the head of his men, but Jenny had declined to go home and miss the fun. She had thoroughly enjoyed the brief stop in Edinburgh, where Charles received the plaudits of his loyal subjects, but she had been equally willing to accompany her Prince on his way to battle.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 162
