Jamie turned to Roger then, and said, in a quite ordinary tone of voice, “Do Presbyterians have the sacrament of Confession, mac mo chinnidh?”
Roger said nothing for a moment, taken aback both by the question and its immediate implications and by Jamie’s addressing him as “son of my house”—a thing he’d done exactly once, at the calling of the clans at Mount Helicon some years before.
The question itself was straightforward, though, and he answered it that way.
“No. Catholics have seven sacraments but Presbyterians only recognize two: Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” He might have left it at that, but the first implication of the question was plain before him.
“D’ye have a thing ye want to tell me, Jamie?” He thought it might be the second time he’d called his father-in-law Jamie to his face. “I can’t give ye absolution—but I can listen.”
He wouldn’t have said that Jamie’s face showed anything in the way of strain. But now it relaxed and the difference was sufficiently visible that his own heart opened to the man, ready for whatever he might say. Or so he thought.
“Aye.” Jamie’s voice was husky and he cleared his throat, ducking his head, a little shy. “Aye, that’ll do fine. D’ye remember the night we took Claire back from the bandits?”
“I’m no likely to forget it,” Roger said, staring at him. He cut his eyes at the boys, but they were still at it, and he looked back at Jamie. “Why?” he asked, wary.
“Were ye there wi’ me, at the last, when I broke Hodgepile’s neck and Ian asked me what to do with the rest? I said, ‘Kill them all.’”
“I was there.” He had been. And he didn’t want to go back. Three words and it was all there, just below the surface of memory, still cold in his bones: black night in the forest, a sear of fire across his eyes, chilling wind, and the smell of blood. The drums—a bodhran thundering against his arm, two more behind him. Screaming in the dark. The sudden shine of eyes and the stomach-clenching feel of a skull caving in.
“I killed one of them,” Roger said abruptly. “Did you know that?”
Jamie hadn’t looked away and didn’t now; his mouth compressed for a moment, and he nodded.
“I didna see ye do it,” he said. “But it was plain enough in your face, next day.”
“I don’t wonder.” Roger’s throat was tight, and the words came out thick and gruff. He was surprised that Jamie had noticed—had noticed anything at all on that day other than Claire, once the fighting was over. The image of her, kneeling by a creek, setting her own broken nose by her reflection in the water, the blood streaking down over her bruised and naked body, came back to him with the force of a punch in the solar plexus.
“Ye never ken how it will be.” Jamie lifted one shoulder and let it fall; he’d lost the lace that bound his hair, snagged by a tree branch, and the thick red strands stirred in the evening breeze. “A fight like that, I mean. What ye recall and what ye don’t. I remember everything about that night, though—and the day beyond it.”
Roger nodded but didn’t speak. It was true that Presbyterians had no sacrament of Confession—and he rather regretted that they didn’t; it was a useful thing to have in your pocket. Particularly, he supposed, if you led the sort of life Jamie had. But any minister knows the soul’s need to speak and be understood, and that he could give.
“I expect ye do,” he said. “Do ye regret it, then? Telling the men to kill them all, I mean.”
“Not for an instant.” Jamie gave him a brief, fierce glance. “Do ye regret your part of it?”
“I—” Roger stopped abruptly. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about it, but … “I regret that I had to,” he said carefully. “Very much. But I’m sure in my own mind that I did have to.”
Jamie’s breath came out in a sigh. “Ye’ll know Claire was raped, I expect.” It wasn’t a question, but Roger nodded. Claire hadn’t spoken of it, even to Brianna—but she hadn’t had to.
“The man who did it wasna killed, that night. She saw him alive two months past, at Beardsley’s.”
The evening breeze had turned chilly, but that wasn’t what raised the hairs on Roger’s forearms. Jamie was a man of precise speech—and he’d started this conversation with the word “Confession.” Roger took his time about replying.