“If he went in anywhere along this stretch, Major, you’ll have seen the last of him, I’m thinking.” It was Sergeant Grissom, standing beside him, gazing down at the crash and whirl of water through the jagged rocks below. He nodded at the furious water.
“They call this spot the Devil’s Cauldron, because of the way it boils all the time. Fishermen drowned off this coast are seldom found; there are wicked currents to blame for it, of course, but folk say the Devil seizes them and pulls them below.”
“Do they?” Grey said bleakly. He stared down into the smash and spume forty feet below. “I wouldn’t doubt it, Sergeant.”
He turned back toward the campfire.
“Give orders to search until nightfall, Sergeant. If nothing is found, we’ll start back in the morning.”
* * *
Grey lifted his gaze from his horse’s neck, squinting through the dim early light. His eyes felt swollen from peat smoke and lack of sleep, and his bones ached from several nights spent lying on damp ground.
The ride back to Ardsmuir would take no more than a day. The thought of a soft bed and a hot supper was delightful—but then he would have to write the official dispatch to London, confessing Fraser’s escape—the reason for it—and his own shameful failure to recapture the man.
The feeling of bleakness at this prospect was reinforced by a deep griping in the major’s lower abdomen. He raised a hand, signaling a halt, and slid wearily to the ground.
“Wait here,” he said to his men. There was a small hillock a few hundred feet away; it would afford him sufficient privacy for the relief he sorely needed; his bowels, unaccustomed to Scottish parritch and oatcake, had rebelled altogether at the exigencies of a field diet.
The birds were singing in the heather. Away from the noise of hooves and harness, he could hear all the tiny sounds of the waking moor. The wind had changed with the dawn, and the scent of the sea came inland now, whispering through the grass. Some small animal made a rustling noise on the other side of a gorse bush. It was all very peaceful.
Straightening up from what too late struck him as a most undignified posture, Grey raised his head and looked straight into the face of James Fraser.
He was no more than six feet away. He stood still as one of the red deer, the moor wind brushing over him, with the rising sun tangled in his hair.
They stood frozen, staring at each other. The smell of the sea came faintly on the wind. There was no sound but the sea wind and the singing of meadowlarks for a moment. Then Grey drew himself up, swallowing to bring his heart down from his throat.
“I fear you take me at a disadvantage, Mr. Fraser,” he said coolly, fastening his breeches with as much self-possession as he could muster.
The Scot’s eyes were the only part of him to move, down over Grey and slowly back up. Looked over his shoulder, to where six armed soldiers stood, pointing their muskets. Dark blue eyes met his, straight on. At last, the edge of Fraser’s mouth twitched, and he said, “I think ye take me at the same, Major.”
10
WHITE WITCH’S CURSE
Jamie Fraser sat shivering on the stone floor of the empty storeroom, clutching his knees and trying to get warm. He thought he likely would never be warm again. The chill of the sea had seeped into his bones, and he could still feel the churn of the crashing breakers, deep in his belly.
He wished for the presence of the other prisoners—Morrison, Hayes, Sinclair, Sutherland. Not only for company, but for the heat of their bodies. On bitter nights, the men would huddle close together for warmth, breathing each other’s stale breath, tolerating the bump and knock of close quarters for the sake of warmth.
He was alone, though. Likely they would not return him to the large cell with the other men until after they had done whatever they meant to do to him as punishment for escaping. He leaned back against the wall with a sigh, morbidly aware of the bones of his spine pressing against the stone, and the fragility of the flesh covering them.
He was very much afraid of being flogged, and yet he hoped that would be his punishment. It would be horrible, but it would be soon over—and infinitely more bearable than being put back in irons. He could feel in his flesh the crash of the smith’s hammer, echoing through the bones of his arm as the smith pounded the fetters firmly into place, holding his wrist steady on the anvil.
His fingers sought the rosary around his neck. His sister had given it to him when he left Lallybroch; the English had let him keep it, as the string of beechwood beads had no value.
“Hail Mary, full of grace,” he muttered, “blessed art thou amongst women.”
He hadn’t much hope. That wee yellow-haired fiend of a major had seen, damn his soul—he knew just how terrible the fetters had been.
“Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…”
The wee Major had made him a bargain, and he had kept it. The major would not be thinking so, though.
He had kept his oath, had done as he promised. Had relayed the words spoken to him, one by one, just as he had heard them from the wandering man. It was no part of his bargain to tell the Englishman that he knew the man—or what conclusions he had drawn from the muttered words.
He had recognized Duncan Kerr at once, changed though he was by time and mortal illness. Before Culloden, he had been a tacksman of Colum MacKenzie, Jamie’s uncle. After, he had escaped to France, to eke out what living might be made there.
“Be still, a charaid; bi sàmhach,” he had said softly in Gaelic, dropping to his knees by the bed where the sick man lay. Duncan was an elderly man, his worn face wasted by illness and fatigue, and his eyes were bright with fever. At first he had thought Duncan too far gone to know him, but the wasted hand had gripped his with surprising strength, and the man had repeated through his rasping breath, “mo charaid.” My kinsman.
The innkeeper was watching, from his place near the door, peering over Major Grey’s shoulder. Jamie had bent his head and whispered in Duncan’s ear, “All you say will be told to the English. Speak wary.” The landlord’s eyes narrowed, but the distance between them was too far; Jamie was sure he hadn’t heard. Then the Major had turned and ordered the innkeeper out, and he was safe.
He couldn’t tell whether it was the effect of his warning, or only the derangement of fever, but Duncan’s speech wandered with his mind, often incoherent, images of the past overlapping with those of the present. Sometimes he had called Jamie “Dougal,” the name of Colum’s brother, Jamie’s other uncle. Sometimes he dropped into poetry, sometimes he simply raved. And within the ravings and the scattered words, sometimes there was a grain of sense—or more than sense.
“It is cursed,” Duncan whispered. “The gold is cursed. Do ye be warned, lad. It was given by the white witch, given for the King’s son. But the Cause is lost, and the King’s son fled, and she will not let the gold be given to a coward.”
“Who is she?” Jamie asked. His heart had sprung up and choked him at Duncan’s words, and it beat madly as he asked. “The white witch—who is she?”
“She seeks a brave man. A MacKenzie, it is for Himself. MacKenzie. It is theirs, she says it, for the sake of him who is dead.”