Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [325]
“What are ye doing here, Father?” he growled, mouth pressed to the priest’s ear. “You’re meant to be behind the lines.”
A widening of the priest’s eyes at this told Jamie the truth—the man of God, lost in the darkness, had thought he was behind the lines, and the belated realization that he was, in fact, in the vanguard of the advancing Highlanders, made him buckle slightly at the knees.
Jamie glanced backward; he didn’t dare send the priest back through the lines. In the misty dark, he could easily stumble into an advancing Highlander, be mistaken for an enemy, and be killed on the spot. Gripping the smaller man by the back of the neck, he pushed him to his knees.
“Lie flat and stay that way until the firing stops,” he hissed into the man’s ear. The priest nodded frantically, then suddenly saw the body of the English soldier, lying on the ground a few feet away. He glanced up at Jamie in awed horror, and reached for the bottles of chrism and holy water that he wore at his belt in lieu of a dirk.
Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Jamie made a series of violent motions, meant to indicate that the man was not dead, and thus in no need of the priest’s services. These failing to make their point, he bent, seized the priest’s hand, and pressed the fingers on the Englishman’s neck, as the simplest method of illustrating that the man was not in fact the first victim of the battle. Caught in this ludicrous position, he froze as a voice cut through the mist behind him.
“Halt!” it said. “Who goes there?”
* * *
“Have ye got a bit of water, Sassenach?” asked Jamie. “I’m gettin’ a bit dry with the talking.”
“Bastard!” I said. “You can’t stop there! What happened?”
“Water,” he said, grinning, “and I’ll tell ye.”
“All right,” I said, handing him a water bottle and watching as he tilted it into his mouth. “What happened then?”
“Nothing,” he said, lowering the bottle and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “What did ye think, I was going to answer him?” He grinned impudently at me and ducked as I aimed a slap at his ear.
“Now, now,” he reproved. “No way to treat a man wounded in the service of his King, now is it?”
“Wounded, are you?” I said. “Believe me, Jamie Fraser, a mere saber slash is as nothing compared to what I will do to you if…”
“Oh, threats, too, is it? What was that poem ye told me about, ‘When pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel’…ow!”
“Next time, I twist it right off at the roots,” I said, releasing the ear. “Get on with it, I have to go back in a minute.”
He rubbed the ear gingerly, but leaned back against the wall and resumed his story.
“Well, we just sat there on our haunches, the padre and I, staring at each other and listening to the sentries six feet away. “What’s that?” says the one, and me thinking can I get up in time to take him with my dirk before he shoots me in the back, and what about his friend? For I canna expect help from the priest, unless maybe it’s a last prayer over my body.”
There was a long, nerve-racking silence, as the two Jacobites squatted in the grass, hands still clasped, afraid to move enough even to let go.
“Ahhh, yer seein’ things,” came from the other sentry at last, and Jamie felt the shudder of relief run through the priest, as his damp fingers slid free. “Nothin’ up there but furze bushes. Never mind, lad,” the sentry said reassuringly, and Jamie heard the clap of a hand on a shoulder and the stamp of booted feet, trying to keep warm. “There’s the damn lot of ’em, sure, and in this dark, they could be the whole bloody Highland army, for all you can see.” Jamie thought he heard the breath of a smothered laugh from one of the “furze bushes,” on the hillside within hearing.
He glanced at the crest of the hill, where the stars were beginning to dim. Less than ten minutes to first light,