Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [341]
Colum, on the other hand, was.
“What was he like, d’ye mean?” He looked his nephew over carefully, then gave a short grunt of amusement.
“Look ye in the mirror, lad,” he said, a half-grudging smile lingering on his face. “If it’s your mother’s face ye see, it’s your father looking back at ye through those damned Fraser cat-eyes.” He stretched and shifted his position, easing his bones on the lichened stone bench. His lips were pressed tight, by habit, against any exclamation of discomfort, and I could see what had made those deep creases between nose and mouth.
“To answer ye, though,” he went on, once more comfortably settled, “I didn’t like the man overmuch—nor he me—but I knew him at once for a man of honor.” He paused, then said, very softly, “I know you for the same, Jamie MacKenzie Fraser.”
Jamie didn’t change expression, but there was a faint quiver to his eyelids; only one as familiar with him as I was—or as observant as Colum was—would have noticed.
Colum let out his breath in a long sigh.
“So, lad, that’s why I wished to talk with you. I must decide, ye see, whether the MacKenzies of Leoch go for King James or King Geordie.” He smiled sourly. “It’s a case, I think, of the devil ye know, or the devil ye don’t, but it’s a choice I must make.”
“Dougal—” Jamie began, but his uncle cut him off with a sharp motion of his hand.
“Aye, I know what Dougal thinks—I’ve had little rest from it, these two years past,” he said impatiently. “But I am the MacKenzie of Leoch, and it’s mine to decide. Dougal will abide by what I say. I’d know what you’d advise me to do—for the sake of the clan whose blood runs in your veins.”
Jamie glanced up, eyes dark blue and impervious, hooded against the afternoon sun that shone in his face.
“I am here, and my men with me,” he said. “Surely my choice is plain?”
Colum shifted himself again, head cocked attentively to his nephew, as though to catch any nuances of voice or expression that might give him a clue.
“Is it?” he asked. “Men give their allegiance for any number of reasons, lad, and few of them have much to do with the reasons they speak aloud. I’ve talked with Lochiel, and Clanranald, and Angus and Alex MacDonald of Scotus. D’ye think they’re here only because they feel James Stuart their rightful king? Now I would talk with you—and hear the truth, for the sake of your father’s honor.”
Seeing Jamie hesitate, Colum went on, still watching his nephew keenly.
“I don’t ask for myself; if you’ve eyes, ye can see that the matter isn’t one that will trouble me long. But for Hamish—the lad is your cousin, remember. If there’s to be a clan for him to lead, once he’s of age—then I must choose rightly, now.”
He stopped speaking and sat still, the usual caution now relaxed from his features, the gray eyes open and listening.
Jamie sat as still as Colum, frozen like the marble angel on the tomb behind him. I knew the dilemma that preoccupied him, though no trace of it showed on the stern, chiseled face. It was the same one we had faced before, choosing to come with the men from Lallybroch. Charles’s Rising was balanced on a knife edge; the allegiance of a large clan such as the MacKenzies of Leoch might encourage others to join the brash Young Pretender, and lead to his success. But if it ended in failure nonetheless, the MacKenzies of Leoch could well end with it.
At last Jamie turned his head deliberately, and looked at me, blue eyes holding my own. You have some say in this, his look said. What shall I do?
I could feel Colum’s eyes upon me, too, and felt rather than saw the questioning lift of the thick, dark brows above them. But what I saw in my mind’s eye was young Hamish, a redheaded ten-year-old who looked enough like Jamie to be his son, rather than his cousin. And what life might be for him, and the rest of his clan, if the MacKenzies of Leoch fell with Charles at Culloden. The men of Lallybroch had Jamie to save them from