Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [383]
“Aye?” Jamie said skeptically. He nodded briefly to Young Simon, and pushed a chair in my direction before sitting down himself. “And have you sent orders to hang the twenty of your men who’ve gone home, Ewan? Or is it more like forty, now?”
Cameron flushed more deeply and dropped his eyes, concentrating on mopping up the ink with the cloth Simon Fraser handed him.
“They weren’t caught,” he muttered at last. He glanced up at Jamie, his thin face earnest. “Go to His Highness at Stirling,” he advised. “He was furious about the desertion, but after all, it was his orders sent ye to Beauly and left your men untended, aye? And he’s always thought well of ye, Jamie, and called ye friend. It might be he’ll pardon your men, and ye beg him for their lives.”
Picking up the ink-soaked cloth, he looked dubiously at it, then, with a muttered excuse, left to dispose of it outside, obviously eager to get away from Jamie.
Jamie sat sprawled in his chair, breathing through clenched teeth with a small hissing noise, eyes fixed on the small embroidered hanging on the wall that showed the Stuart coat of arms. The two stiff fingers of his right hand tapped slowly on the table. He had been in much the same state ever since Murtagh’s arrival at Lallybroch with the news that the thirty men of Jamie’s command had been apprehended in the act of desertion and imprisoned in Edinburgh’s notorious Tolbooth Prison, under sentence of death.
I didn’t myself think that Charles intended to execute the men. As Ewan Cameron pointed out, the Highland army had need of every able-bodied man it could muster. The push into England that Charles had argued for had been costly, and the influx of support he had foreseen from the English countryside had not materialized. Not only that; to execute Jamie’s men in his absence would have been an act of political idiocy and personal betrayal too great even for Charles Stuart to contemplate.
No, I imagined that Cameron was right, and the men would be pardoned eventually. Jamie undoubtedly realized it, too, but the realization was poor consolation to him, faced with the matching realization that rather than seeing his men safely removed from the risks of a deteriorating campaign, his orders had landed them in one of the worst prisons in all of Scotland, branded as cowards and sentenced to a shameful death by hanging.
This, coupled with the imminent prospect of leaving the men in their dark, filthy imprisonment, to go to Stirling and face the humiliation of pleading with Charles, was more than sufficient to explain the look on Jamie’s face—that of a man who has just breakfasted on broken glass.
Young Simon also was silent, frowning, wide forehead creasing with thought.
“I’ll come with ye to His Highness,” he said abruptly.
“You will?” Jamie glanced at his half-uncle in surprise, then his eyes narrowed at Simon. “Why?”
Simon gave a half-grin. “Blood’s blood, after all. Or do ye think I’d try to claim your men, like Father did?”
“Would you?
“I might,” Simon said frankly, “if I thought there was a chance of it doing me some good. More likely to cause trouble, though, is what I think. I’ve no wish to fight wi’ the MacKenzies—or you, nevvie,” he added, the grin widening. “Rich as Lallybroch might be, it’s a good long way from Beauly, and likely to be the devil of a fight to get hold of it, either by force or by the courts. I told Father so, but he hears what he wants to.”
The young man shook his head and settled his swordbelt around his hips.
“There’s like to be better pickings with the army; certainly there will be with a restored king. And—” he concluded, “if that army’s going to fight again like they did at Preston, they’ll need every man they can get. I’ll go with ye,” he repeated firmly.
Jamie nodded, a slow smile dawning on his face. “I thank ye, then, Simon. It will be of help.”
Simon nodded. “Aye, well. It wouldna hurt matters any for ye to ask Dougal MacKenzie