The Scottish Prisoner (Lord John Grey #3)(36)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

“Is it an evil thing, do you think?”

“I canna say that, Father. Only that it gives me the cold grue to touch it. But”—he clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward—“what is the thing carved into the bottom there?”

“A carraig mór, or so I think. A long stone.” The abbot turned the bowl, holding it sideways so that the lantern light illumined the dish. The cold grue slid right down the backs of Jamie’s legs, and he shuddered. The carving showed what was plainly a standing stone—cleft down the center.

“Father,” he said abruptly, making up his mind on the moment. “I’ve a thing or two to tell ye. Might ye hear my confession?”

THEY STOPPED BRIEFLY for Father Michael to fetch his stola, then walked out across the sheep field and into a small apple orchard, thick with scent and the humming of bees. There they found a couple of stones to sit upon, and he told the abbot, as simply as he could, about Quinn, the notion of a fresh Jacobite rising from Ireland, and the idea of using the Druid king’s Cupán to legitimize the Stuarts’ last bid for the throne of three kingdoms.

The abbot sat clutching the ends of the purple stola that hung round his neck, head down, listening. He didn’t move or make any response while Jamie laid out for him Quinn’s plan. When Jamie had finished, though, Father Michael looked up at him.

“Did you come to steal the cup for this purpose yourself?” the abbot asked, quite casually.

“No!” He spoke from astonishment rather than resentment; the abbot saw it and smiled faintly.

“No, of course not.” He was sitting on a rock, the cup itself perched on his knee. He looked down at it, contemplating. “Put it back, you said.”

“It’s no my place to say, Father. But I—” The presence that had hovered near him earlier had vanished, but the memory of it was cold in his mind. “It—he—he wants it back, Father,” he blurted. “The man ye found in the bog.”

The abbot’s green eyes went wide, and he studied Jamie closely. “He spoke to you, did he?”

“Not in words, no. I—I feel him. Felt him. He’s gone now.”

The abbot picked up the cup and peered into it, his thumb stroking the ancient wood. Then he put it down on his knee and, looking at Jamie, said quietly, “There’s more, is there not? Tell me.”

Jamie hesitated. Grey’s business was not his to share—and it had nothing to do with the bog-man, the cup, nor anything that was the abbot’s concern. But the priest’s green eyes were on him, kind but firm.

“It’s under the seal, you know, mo mhic,” he said, conversationally. “And I can see you’ve a burden on your soul.”

Jamie closed his eyes, the breath going out of him in a long, long sigh.

“I have, Father,” he said. He got up from the stone where he’d sat and knelt down at the abbot’s feet.

“It’s not a sin, Father,” he said. “Or most of it’s not. But it troubles me.”

“Tell God, and let him ease you, man,” the abbot said, and, taking Jamie’s hands, placed them on his bony knees and laid his own hand gently on Jamie’s head.

He told it all. Slowly, with many hesitations. Then faster, the words beginning to find themselves. What the Greys wanted of him, and how they had made him come to Ireland. How it was, caught between the loyalty of his old friendship to Quinn and his present forced obligation to John Grey. Swallowing, face burning and hands tight on the black cloth of the abbot’s habit, he told about Grey’s feeling for him and what had passed between them in the stable at Helwater. And finally—with the feeling of jumping from a high cliff into a roaring sea—he told about Willie. And Geneva.

There were tears running down his face before he had finished. When Jamie had come to the end of it, the abbot drew his hand softly down Jamie’s cheek before dipping his hand into his robe and coming out with a large, worn, mostly clean black handkerchief, which he handed him.

“Sit, man,” he said. “Bide for a bit, and rest while I think.”

Jamie got up and sat on the flat stone again, blowing his nose and wiping his face. He felt emptied of turmoil, purged. And more at peace than he’d been since the days before Culloden.

His mind was blank, and he made no effort to inscribe anything on it. He breathed freely, no tightness in his chest. That was enough. There was more, though: the spring sun came out from behind the clouds and warmed him, a bee lighted briefly on his sleeve, spilling grains of yellow pollen when it rose, and the bruised grass where he’d knelt smelled of rest and comfort.

He had no idea how long he’d sat in this pleasant state of exhausted mindlessness. But Father Michael stirred at last, stretched his old back with a muffled groan, and smiled at him.

“Well, now,” he said. “Let’s begin with the easy bits. You’re not in the habit of fornicating regularly with young women, I hope? Good. Don’t start. If you feel you—no.” He shook his head. “No. I was going to recommend that you find a good girl and marry her, but I saw how it is with you; your wife’s still with you.” He spoke in an entirely matter-of-fact tone of voice.

“It wouldn’t be fair on a young woman, were you to marry while that’s the case. At the same time, you mustn’t cling over-long to the memory of your wife; she’s safe with God now, and you must deal with your life. Soon … but you’ll know when it’s right. Meanwhile, avoid the occasion of sin, aye?”

“Aye, Father,” Jamie said obediently, thinking briefly of Betty. He’d avoided her so far, and certainly meant to keep doing so.

“Cold baths help. That and reading. Now, your son …” These words were equally matter-of-fact but gave Jamie a breathless feeling, a small bubble of happiness beneath his ribs—one that popped with the abbot’s next words.

“You must do nothing to endanger him.” The abbot looked at him seriously. “You’ve no claim on him, and from what you say, he’s well settled. Might it not be better—for the both of you—for you to leave this place where he is?”

“I—” Jamie began, hardly knowing where to begin for the rush of words and feelings that flooded his brain, but the abbot raised a hand.

“Aye, I know you said you’re a paroled prisoner—but from what you say regarding the service these English require of you, I think there is an excellent chance that you might win your freedom as a result.”

Jamie thought so, too, and the thought filled him with a violent confusion. To be free was one thing—to leave his son was another. Two months ago, he might have been able to leave, knowing William well looked after. Not now.

He forced down the sense of violent refusal the abbot’s words had roused in him.

“Father—I hear what ye say. But … the boy has no father, no man to … to show him the way of being a man. His grandfather’s a worthy gentleman, but very old, and the man who was legally his father is … is dead.” He drew a deep breath; need he confess that he had killed the old earl? No. He’d done it to save William’s life, and that could be no sin. “If I thought for an instant that my presence there was danger to him, rather than benefit—I would go at once. But I do not think I delude myself in thinking that … he needs me.”

The last words came hoarsely, and the abbot regarded him closely for a moment, before nodding.

“You must pray for the strength to do the right thing—God will give it to you.”

He nodded mutely. He’d prayed for strength like that twice before, and it had been granted. He hadn’t thought he’d survive, either time, but he had. He hoped if it came to a third time, he wouldn’t.

“I thought ye said this was the easy bits,” Jamie said, forcing a smile.

The abbot grimaced, not without sympathy.

“Easy to see what’s to do, I meant. Not necessarily easy to do it.” He stood up and brushed a fuzzy catkin from the shoulder of his robe. “Come, let’s be walking a bit. A man could turn to stone sitting too long.”

They paced slowly through the orchard and out into a stretch of fields, some left in meadow for a few sheep and the odd cow, some sowed and already sprouting, a green haze covering the furrows. They kept to the edges, not to trample the young neeps and tattie-vines, and eventually emerged on the edge of a bog.

This was a proper bog, not merely the soggy clay or spongy footing common everywhere in Ireland. A treeless gray-green bumpy landscape, it stretched a good half mile before them to a tiny hillock of rock in the far distance, from which a stunted pine tree sprouted, flaglike in the wind. For once out of the shelter of the trees, the wind had come up and sang about their ears, flapping the ends of Father Michael’s stola and tugging at the skirts of their clothing.

Father Michael beckoned to him, and, following, he found a wooden trackway, half sunk between the hummocks of moss-choked grass that rose up among a thousand tiny channels and pools.

“I don’t know who made these tracks to begin with,” the abbot remarked, setting a sandaled foot on the thin planks. “They’ve been here longer than any man remembers. We keep them up, though; it’s the only safe way across the moss.”

Jamie nodded; the planks gave slightly when stepped upon, water oozing through the cracks between. But they bore his weight, though the vibration of his step made the bog beside the trackway tremble, the antennae of moss quivering in curiosity as he passed.

“The Old Ones thought the number three holy, just as we do.” Father Michael’s words, half-shouted above the wind, drifted back to him. “They had the three gods—the god of thunder, him they called Taranis. Then Esus, the god of the underworld—mind, they didn’t see the underworld quite the same way we think of hell, but it wasn’t a pleasant place, nonetheless.”

“And the third?” Jamie was still clutching the abbot’s handkerchief. He wiped his nose with it; the chill wind made it stream.

“Ah, now, that would be …” The abbot didn’t stop walking but tapped his fingers briskly on his skull, to assist thought. “Now, who in creation … Oh, of course. The third is the god of the particular tribe, so they’d all have different names.”

“Oh, aye.” Was the abbot telling him this only to pass the time? He wondered. Obviously they weren’t out walking for their health, and he knew of only one reason they might be traversing a bog.

He was right.

“Now, a proper god requires sacrifice, does he not? And the old gods wanted blood.”

He’d drawn close to the abbot now and could hear him clearly, despite the whine of the wind. There were birds in the moss, too; he heard the call of a snipe, thin and high.

“They would take prisoners of war and burn them in great wicker cages, for Taranis.” The abbot turned his head to look back at Jamie, showing a smile. “A good thing for you the English are more civilized now?” The ironic question at the end of this remark was evidently meant to convey the abbot’s doubt regarding the level of English civilization, and Jamie gave him back a wry smile, acknowledging it. Being burned alive … well, they’d done that, too, the English. Fired crofts and fields, without regard to the women and children they condemned—either by the fire itself, or by cold and slow starvation.