Jamie drew in a deep breath and released it, the cloud of vapor rising like dragon smoke from his nostrils. He smiled grimly and patted the sporran at his waist.
"Not now he can't," he said.
It was a two-day trip from Beauly to Lallybroch in good weather, given sound horses and dry ground, pausing for nothing more than the necessities of eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene. As it was, one of the horses went lame six miles out of Beauly, it snowed and sleeted and blew by turns, the boggy ground froze in patches of slippery ice, and what with one thing and another, it was nearly a week before we made our way down the last slope that led to the farmhouse at Lallybroch—cold, tired, hungry, and far from hygienic.
We were alone, just the two of us. Murtagh had been sent to Edinburgh with Young Simon and the Beaufort men-at-arms, to judge how matters stood with the Highland army.
The house stood solid among its outbuildings, white as the snow-streaked fields that surrounded it. I remembered vividly the emotions I had felt when I first saw the place. Granted, I had seen it first in the glow of a fine autumn day, not through sheets of blowing, icy snow, but even then it had seemed a welcoming refuge. The house's impression of strength and serenity was heightened now by the warm lamplight spilling through the lower windows, soft yellow in the deepening gray of early evening.
The feeling of welcome grew even stronger when I followed Jamie through the front door, to be met by the mouth-watering smell of roasting meat and fresh bread.
"Supper," Jamie said, closing his eyes in bliss as he inhaled the fragrant aromas. "God, I could eat a horse." Melting ice dripped from the hem of his cloak, making wet spots on the wooden floor.
"I thought we were going to have to eat one of them," I remarked, untying the strings of my cloak and brushing melting snow from my hair. "That poor creature you traded in Kirkinmill could barely hobble."
The sound of our voices carried through the hall, and a door opened overhead, followed by the sound of small running feet and a cry of joy as the younger Jamie spotted his namesake below.
The racket of their reunion attracted the attention of the rest of the household, and before we knew it, we were enveloped in greetings and embraces as Jenny and the baby, little Maggie, Ian, Mrs. Crook, and assorted maidservants all rushed into the hall.
"It's so good to see ye, my dearie!" Jenny said for the third time, standing on tiptoe to kiss Jamie. "Such news as we've heard of the army, we feared it would be months before ye came home."
"Aye," Ian said, "have ye brought any of the men back with ye, or is this only a visit?"
"Brought them back?" Arrested in the act of greeting his elder niece, Jamie stared at his brother-in-law, momentarily forgetting the little girl in his arms. Brought to a realization of her presence by her yanking his hair, he kissed her absently and handed her to me.
"What d'ye mean, Ian?" he demanded. "The men should all ha' returned a month ago. Did some of them not come home?"
I held small Maggie tight, a dreadful feeling of foreboding coming over me as I watched the smile fade from Ian's face.
"None of them came back, Jamie," he said slowly, his long, good-humored face suddenly mirroring the grim expression he saw on Jamie's. "We havena seen hide nor hair of any of them, since they marched awa' with you."
There was a shout from the dooryard outside, where Rabbie MacNab was putting away the horses. Jamie whirled, turned to the door and pushed it open, leaning out into the storm.
Over his shoulder, I could see a rider coming through the blowing snow. Visibility was too poor to make out his face, but that small, wiry figure, clinging monkeylike to the saddle, was unmistakable. "Fast as chain lightning," Jamie had said, and clearly he was right; to make the trip from Beauly to Edinburgh, and then to Lallybroch in a week was a true feat of endurance. The coming rider was Murtagh, and it didn't take Maisri's gift of prophecy to tell us that the news he bore was ill.
42
REUNIONS
White with rage, Jamie flung back the door of Holyrood's morning drawing room with a crash. Ewan Cameron leaped to his feet, upsetting the inkpot he had been using. Simon Fraser, Master of Lovat, was seated across the table, but merely raised thick black brows at his half-nephew's entrance.
"Damn!" Ewan said, scrabbling in his sleeve for a handkerchief to mop the spreading puddle with. "What's the matter wi' ye, Fraser? Oh, good morning to ye, Mistress Fraser," he added, seeing me behind Jamie.
"Where's His Highness?" Jamie demanded without preamble.
"Stirling Castle," Cameron replied, failing to find the handkerchief he was searching for. "Got a cloth, Fraser?"
"If I did, I'd choke ye with it," Jamie said. He had relaxed slightly, upon finding that Charles Stuart was not in residence, but the corners of his lips were still tight. "Why have ye let my men be kept in the Tolbooth? I've just seen them, kept in a place I wouldna let pigs live! Surely to God you could have done something!"
Cameron flushed at this, but his clear brown eyes met Jamie's steadily.
"I tried," he said. "I told his Highness that I was sure it was a mistake—aye, and the thirty of them ten miles from the army when they were found, some mistake!—and besides, even if they'd really meant to desert, he didna have such a strength of men that he could afford to do without them. That's all that kept him from ordering the lot of them to be hanged on the spot, ye ken," he said, beginning to grow angry as the shock of Jamie's entrance wore off. "God, man, it's treason to desert in time of war!"
"Aye?" Jamie said skeptically. He nodded briefly to Young Simon, and pushed a chair in my direction before sitting down himself. "And have you sent orders to hang the twenty of your men who've gone home, Ewan? Or is it more like forty, now?"
Cameron flushed more deeply and dropped his eyes, concentrating on mopping up the ink with the cloth Simon Fraser handed him.
"They weren't caught," he muttered at last. He glanced up at Jamie, his thin face earnest. "Go to His Highness at Stirling," he advised. "He was furious about the desertion, but after all, it was his orders sent ye to Beauly and left your men untended, aye? And he's always thought well of ye, Jamie, and called ye friend. It might be he'll pardon your men, and ye beg him for their lives."
Picking up the ink-soaked cloth, he looked dubiously at it, then, with a muttered excuse, left to dispose of it outside, obviously eager to get away from Jamie.
Jamie sat sprawled in his chair, breathing through clenched teeth with a small hissing noise, eyes fixed on the small embroidered hanging on the wall that showed the Stuart coat of arms. The two stiff fingers of his right hand tapped slowly on the table. He had been in much the same state ever since Murtagh's arrival at Lallybroch with the news that the thirty men of Jamie's command had been apprehended in the act of desertion and imprisoned in Edinburgh's notorious Tolbooth Prison, under sentence of death.
I didn't myself think that Charles intended to execute the men. As Ewan Cameron pointed out, the Highland army had need of every able-bodied man it could muster. The push into England that Charles had argued for had been costly, and the influx of support he had foreseen from the English countryside had not materialized. Not only that; to execute Jamie's men in his absence would have been an act of political idiocy and personal betrayal too great even for Charles Stuart to contemplate.
No, I imagined that Cameron was right, and the men would be pardoned eventually. Jamie undoubtedly realized it, too, but the realization was poor consolation to him, faced with the matching realization that rather than seeing his men safely removed from the risks of a deteriorating campaign, his orders had landed them in one of the worst prisons in all of Scotland, branded as cowards and sentenced to a shameful death by hanging.
This, coupled with the imminent prospect of leaving the men in their dark, filthy imprisonment, to go to Stirling and face the humiliation of pleading with Charles, was more than sufficient to explain the look on Jamie's face—that of a man who has just breakfasted on broken glass.
Young Simon also was silent, frowning, wide forehead creasing with thought.
"I'll come with ye to His Highness," he said abruptly.
"You will?" Jamie glanced at his half-uncle in surprise, then his eyes narrowed at Simon. "Why?"
Simon gave a half-grin. "Blood's blood, after all. Or do ye think I'd try to claim your men, like Father did?"
"Would you?
"I might," Simon said frankly, "if I thought there was a chance of it doing me some good. More likely to cause trouble, though, is what I think. I've no wish to fight wi' the MacKenzies—or you, nevvie," he added, the grin widening. "Rich as Lallybroch might be, it's a good long way from Beauly, and likely to be the devil of a fight to get hold of it, either by force or by the courts. I told Father so, but he hears what he wants to."
The young man shook his head and settled his swordbelt around his hips.
"There's like to be better pickings with the army; certainly there will be with a restored king. And—" he concluded, "if that army's going to fight again like they did at Preston, they'll need every man they can get. I'll go with ye," he repeated firmly.
Jamie nodded, a slow smile dawning on his face. "I thank ye, then, Simon. It will be of help."