A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [585]
Roger was sitting on the steps of the porch, Lee above him and several feet away, but could hear the young man swallow.
“We fell back. That’s how they say it. We ran, is what we did. So’d they.”
He swallowed again.
“A bayonet—it makes a terrible sound, goin’ into a man. Just—terrible. I can’t say how it is, describe it properly. Heard it, though, and more’n once. Was a good many run straight through the body that day—skewered and then the steel pulled out, and they left to die on the ground, floppin’ like fish.”
Roger had seen—handled—eighteenth-century bayonets, often. A seventeen-inch triangular blade, heavy and brutal, with a blood groove down one side. He thought, quite suddenly, of the furrowed scar that ran up Jamie Fraser’s thigh, and rose to his feet. Murmuring a brief excuse, he left the porch, and walked down the shore, pausing only for a moment to shed his shoes and stockings.
The tide was going out; sand and shingle were wet and cool under his bare feet. The breeze rattled faintly among palmetto leaves behind him, and a line of pelicans flew down the shore, solemn against the last of the light. He walked a little way into the surf, small rippling waves that tugged at his heels, sucking the sand away beneath him, making him shift and sway to keep his balance.
Far out on the water of Albemarle Sound, he could see lights; fishing boats, with small fires built in sandboxes aboard, to light the torches the fishermen swung over the side. These seemed to float in the air, swinging to and fro, their reflections in the water winking slowly in and out like fireflies.
The stars were coming out. He stood looking up, trying to empty his mind, his heart, open himself to the love of God.
Tomorrow, he would be a minister. Thou art a priest forever, said the ordination service, quoting from the Bible, after the order of Melchizedek.
“Are you afraid?” Brianna had asked him, when he’d told her.
“Yeah,” he said softly, aloud.
He stood until the tide left him, then followed it, walking into the water, wanting the rhythmic touch of the waves.
“Will you do it anyway?”
“Yeah,” he said, more softly still. He had no idea what he was agreeing to, but said it, anyway. Far down the beach behind him, the breeze brought him now and then a snatch of laughter, a few words from the Reverend McMillan’s porch. They had moved on, then, from the talk of war and death.
Had any of them ever killed a man? Lee, perhaps. The Reverend Doctor McCorkle? He snorted a little at the thought, but did not dismiss it. He turned and walked a little further, until the only sounds were those of the waves and the offshore wind.
Soul-searching. It was what squires used to do, he thought, smiling a little wryly at the thought. The night before he became a knight, a young man would keep vigil in church or chapel, watching through the dark hours, lighted only by the glow of a sanctuary lamp, praying.
For what? he wondered. Purity of mind, singleness of purpose. Courage? Or perhaps forgiveness?
He hadn’t meant to kill Randall Lillington; that had been almost accident, and what wasn’t had been self-defense. But he had been hunting when he did it, had gone out looking for Stephen Bonnet, meaning to kill him in cold blood. And Harley Boble; he could still see the shine of the thieftaker’s eyes, feel the echo of the blow, the shards of the man’s skull reverberating through the bones of his own arm. He’d meant that, yes. Could have stopped. Didn’t.
Tomorrow, he would swear before God that he believed in the doctrine of predestination, that he had been meant to do what he had done. Perhaps.
Maybe I don’t believe that, so much, he thought, doubt stealing in. But maybe I do. Christ—oh, sorry—he apologized mentally—can I be a proper minister, with doubts? I think everyone’s got them, but if I’ve got too many—maybe ye’d best let me know now, before it’s too late.
His feet had gone numb, and the sky was ablaze with a glory of stars, thick in the black velvet night. He heard the crunch of footsteps among the shingle