Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [381]
The two men dismounted and stood face-to-face, obviously going at it hammer and tongs. Young Simon, seeing the altercation, reined aside himself, motioning the rest of the column to proceed. A good deal of to and fro then ensued; we were close enough to see Simon’s face, flushed red with annoyance, the worried grimace on the clerk’s countenance, and a series of rather violent gestures on Jamie’s part.
I watched this pantomime in fascination, as the clerk, with a shrug of resignation, unfastened his saddlebag, scrabbled in the depths, and came up with several sheets of parchment. Jamie snatched these and skimmed rapidly through them, forefinger tracing the lines of writing. He seized one sheet, letting the rest drop to the ground, and shook it in Simon Fraser’s face. The Young Fox looked taken aback. He took the sheet, peered at it, then looked up in bewilderment. Jamie grabbed back the sheet, and with a sudden effort, ripped the tough parchment down, then across, and stuffed the pieces into his sporran.
I had halted my pony, who took advantage of the recess to nose about among the meager shreds of plant life still to be found. The back of Young Simon’s neck was bright red as he turned back to his horse, and I decided to keep out of the way. Jamie, remounted, came trotting back along the verge to join me, red hair flying like a banner in the wind, eyes gleaming with anger over tight-set lips.
“The filthy auld arse-wipe,” he said without ceremony.
“What’s he done?” I inquired.
“Listed the names of my men on his own rolls,” Jamie said. “Claimed them as part of his Fraser regiment. Mozie auld pout-worm!” He glanced back up the track with longing. “Pity we’ve come such a way; it’s too far to go back and proddle the auld mumper.”
I resisted the temptation to egg Jamie on to call his grandfather more names, and asked instead, “Why would he do that? Just to make it look as though he were making more of a contribution to the Stuarts?”
Jamie nodded, the tide of fury receding slightly from his cheeks.
“Aye, that. Make himself look better, at no cost. But not only that. The wretched auld nettercap wants my land back—he has, ever since he was forced to give it up when my parents wed. Now he thinks if it all comes right and he’s made Duke of Inverness, he can claim Lallybroch has been his all along, and me just his tenant—the proof being that he’s raised men from the estate to answer the Stuarts’ call to the clans.”
“Could he actually get away with something like that?” I asked doubtfully.
Jamie drew in a deep breath and released it, the cloud of vapor rising like dragon smoke from his nostrils. He smiled grimly and patted the sporran at his waist.
“Not now he can’t,” he said.
* * *
It was a two-day trip from Beauly to Lallybroch in good weather, given sound horses and dry ground, pausing for nothing more than the necessities of eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene. As it was, one of the horses went lame six miles out of Beauly, it snowed and sleeted and blew by turns, the boggy ground froze in patches of slippery ice, and what with one thing and another, it was nearly a week before we made our way down the last slope that led to the farmhouse at Lallybroch—cold, tired, hungry, and far from hygienic.
We were alone, just the two of us. Murtagh had been sent to Edinburgh with Young Simon and the Beaufort men-at-arms, to judge how matters stood with the Highland army.
The house stood solid among its outbuildings, white as the snow-streaked fields that surrounded it. I remembered vividly the emotions I had felt when I first saw the place. Granted, I had seen it first in the glow of a fine autumn day, not through sheets of blowing, icy snow, but even then it had seemed a welcoming refuge. The house’s impression of strength and serenity was heightened now by the warm lamplight spilling through the lower windows, soft yellow in the deepening gray of early evening.
The feeling of welcome grew even stronger when