The Scottish Prisoner (Lord John Grey #3)(5)
Author: Diana Gabaldon

“Ye might have told Betty your name,” Jamie said, making his way down. He held out a hand to the Irishman, but Quinn stood and flung his arms round Jamie, embracing him. Jamie was startled and embarrassed to feel tears come to his eyes at the touch, and he hugged Quinn tight for a minute, to blink them back.

“She knows my name. But I wasn’t sure ye’d come, if ye knew ’twas me.” Quinn stood back, brushed an unashamed knuckle under his own eyes, and laughed. “By the Blessed Mother, Jamie, it’s glad I am to see ye!”

“And I you.” That much was true; Jamie left alone the question of whether he would have come, knowing it was Quinn who waited on the fells. He sat down slowly on a rock, to gain a moment.

It wasn’t that he disliked the man; quite the opposite. But to see this bit of the past rise up before him like a ghost from blood-soaked ground roused feelings he’d gone to great trouble to bury—and memories were stirring that he didn’t want back. Beyond that … instinct had given over muttering in his ear and was talking plain and clear. Quinn had been one of Charles Stuart’s intimates, but never a soldier. He’d fled to France after Culloden, or so Jamie had heard. What the devil was he doing here now?

“Ah, sure that Betty’s a fine girl, and her with those snapping black eyes,” Quinn was saying. He eyed Jamie, head on one side. “She’s a bit of a fondness for you, my lad, I can tell.”

Jamie repressed the urge to cross himself at the thought.

“Ye’ve a clear field there,” he assured Quinn. “Dinna fash yourself that I’d queer your pitch.”

Quinn blinked at him, and it struck him of a sudden that “queer your pitch” was one of Claire’s expressions; maybe it was not merely English but from her own time?

Whether Quinn was puzzled or not, though, he plainly took Jamie’s meaning.

“Well, I might, too—save that Betty’s me late wife’s sister. I’m sure there’s a thing or two in the Bible about not doing the deed with your late wife’s sister.”

Jamie had read the Bible cover to cover several times—from necessity, it being his only book at the time—and recalled no such proscription, but he merely said, “I’m sorry to hear about your wife, man. Was it lang since that she died?”

Quinn pursed his lips and tilted his head from side to side.

“Well, when I say ‘late,’ I don’t mean necessarily that the woman’s deceased, if ye take my meaning.”

Jamie raised one brow, and Quinn sighed.

“When it all went to smash after Culloden, and I had to scarper to France, she took a hard look at my future prospects, so to speak, and decided her fortunes lay elsewhere. My Tess always did have a sound head on her shoulders,” he said, shaking his own head in admiration. “She was in Leeds, the last I heard. Inherited a tavern from her last husband. Well, by ‘last,’ mind, I mean the latest one, because I don’t for a moment think she means to stop.”

“Oh, aye?”

“But that’s what I wanted to speak with ye about, conveniently enough,” Quinn went on, waving an airy hand in dismissal of the erstwhile Tess.

“About Leeds? Or taverns?” Jamie prayed that the man didn’t mean wives. He’d not mentioned Claire to anyone in several years and would rather have his toenails pulled out with horse-nail pliers than be forced to talk about her.

“Culloden,” Quinn said, causing equal amounts of relief and dismay in the bosom of his hearer. Culloden came about fourth on Jamie’s list of things he didn’t want to talk about, preceded only by his wife, Claire; his son, William; and Jack Randall.

Jamie got off the rock, feeling obscurely that he’d rather be on his feet just now, though not knowing whether it was needing to feel ready to meet whatever was coming or an incipient urge to flee. Either way, he felt better standing.

“Or rather,” Quinn amended, “not Culloden so much as the Cause, if ye take my meaning.”

“I should think the two are much the same,” Jamie said, not trying to keep the edge out of his voice. “Dead.”

“Ah, well, now there ye’re wrong,” Quinn said, waggling a bony finger at him. “Though of course ye’ll have been out of touch.”

“I have, aye.”

Quinn continued to ignore the edge.

“The Cause may have suffered some reverses in Scotland—”

“Reverses!” Jamie exclaimed. “Ye call what happened at Drumossie reverses?”

“—but it’s alive and thrivin’ in Ireland.”

Jamie stared at him for a moment of blank incomprehension, then realized what he was saying.

“Jesus!”

“Ah, thought that would gladden yer heart, lad,” said Quinn, choosing to interpret Jamie’s cry as one of hallelujah rather than horror. He smiled, the tip of his tongue poking briefly through the hole left by his missing eyetooth.

“There’s a group of us, see. Did Betty not pass on what I said about the green branch?”

“She did, aye, but I didna ken what she meant by it.”

Quinn waved a hand, dismissing this.

“Well, it took some time to pull things together after Culloden, but it’s all moving a treat now. I’ll not give the details just yet, if ye don’t mind—”

“I dinna mind a bit.”

“—but I will say that there’s an invasion planned, maybe as soon as next year—ha-ha! Would ye look at your face now? Flabbergasted, aye? Well, I was, too, first I heard of it. But there’s more!”

“Oh, God.”

Quinn leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering his voice—though there was no one near enough to hear save a soaring peregrine overhead.

“And this is where you come into it.”

“Me?!” Jamie had begun to sink back onto his rock, but this brought him up all standing at once. “Are ye mad?”

He hadn’t meant it as a rhetorical question, but neither did he expect an affirmative answer, and it was just as well, because he didn’t get one.

“Have ye ever heard”—and here Quinn paused to dart his eyes one way and then the other, looking out for invisible watchers—“of the Cupán Druid riogh?”

“I have not. A cup …?”

“The cup o’ the Druid king, the very thing!”

Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, feeling very tired. “Quinn, I’m pleased to see ye well, but I’ve work to do and—”

“Oh, indeed ye have, lad!” Quinn reached out and fastened an earnest hand to Jamie’s forearm. “Let me explain.”

He didn’t wait for permission.

“It’s the ancient possession o’ the kings of Ireland, the Cupán is. Given to the king of kings by the chief Druid himself, so far back folk have forgotten the time of it.”

“Oh, aye?”

“But the people know it still; it’s spoken of in the legends, and ’tis a powerful symbol of kingship.” The hand on Jamie’s forearm tightened. “Think, now. How would it be, Prince Tearlach riding into Dublin, standin’ in the courtyard o’ Dublin Castle, between the Gates of Fortitude and Justice, with the Cupán raised high as he claims all of Ireland for his father?”

“Well, since ye ask …”

“Why, man, the people would rise from the bailes and the bogs in their thousands! We should take England with scarce a shot fired, there’d be so many!”

“Ye have seen the English army …” Jamie began, but he might as well have tried to stop the tide coming into the River Ness.

“And that’s where you come in!” Quinn let go of his arm at last, but only in order to prod him enthusiastically in the chest.

Jamie recoiled slightly. “Me?”

“See, the thing is, we’ve found the Cupán—lost for two hundred years it’s been, and legends saying the faeries took it, the Druids reclaimed it, all manner of tosh, but we—well, I myself, in fact”—here he tried to look modest, with indifferent results—“discovered it, in the hands of the monks at the monastery of Inchcleraun.”

“But—”

“Now, the monks are keepin’ the precious thing close and quiet, to be sure. But the thing is, the abbot at Inchcleraun is one Michael FitzGibbons.” He stood back a bit, looking expectant.

Jamie raised the brow again. Quinn sighed at such obtuseness but obliged with more information.

“Mi-chael Fitz-Gib-bons,” he repeated, prodding Jamie’s chest anew with each syllable. Jamie moved back out of reach.

“FitzGibbons,” Quinn repeated, “and the man first cousin to your godfather, Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, is he not? To say nothing of having grown up in the house of your uncle Alexander Fraser, and the two of them thick as thieves? Though perhaps that’s not quite the figure of speech to be using for a pair of priests, but what I mean to say is, they might be brothers, so close as they are, and the two writing back and forth from month to month. So—”

Finally, Quinn was obliged to draw breath, giving Jamie the chance to stick a word in edgewise.

“No,” he said definitely. “Not for all the tea in China.”

Quinn’s long face creased in puzzlement. “China? What’s China got to do with it, for all love?”

Ah. Another of Claire’s sayings, then. He tried again. “I mean I will not try to persuade my uncle Alexander to pry this thing out of FitzGibbons’s hands.”

“Oh, no, that’s not what I had in mind, at all.”

“Good, because—”

“I want ye to go to Inchcleraun yourself. Oh, now, there’s that look on your face again!” Quinn laughed in amusement, rocking back, then planted his hands on his knees and leaned forward.

Jamie leaned forward, too, to forestall him.

“Quinn, I’m a prisoner of war. I’ve given my parole. Surely to goodness Betty told ye as much?”

“Sure and I didn’t think ye were here for your health,” Quinn said, with a glance round at the bleak fells and the desolate ruins of the shepherd’s hut. “But that’s of no moment.”

“It’s not?”

Quinn waved this aside as a mere quibble.

“No. It’s got to be someone Father Michael trusts and at the same time someone known to be at the right hand o’ the Stuarts, who can swear that the Cupán won’t be misused but put to its right and sacred purpose in restoring a Catholic monarch to the throne of Ireland. And a man who can raise and lead an army. People trust you, ye know,” he said earnestly, tilting his head up and examining Jamie’s face. “They listen when ye speak, and men will follow ye without question. It’s known of ye.”

“No longer,” Jamie said, and found he was clenching his fists; his throat was dried by the wind, so the words came hoarse. “No. No longer.”

Quinn’s fizzy manner had calmed somewhat. He clasped Jamie’s hand in both his own.

“Man, dear,” he said, almost gently. “Kings have their destiny about them—but so do those who serve them. This is yours. God’s chosen ye for the task.”