Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [428]
Jamie was at my side in an instant. My legs didn’t work very well; he half-carried me to the broken settle and sat down with me, his arms wrapped tight around me.
“You’ve the courage of a lion, mo duinne,” he murmured in my ear. “Of a bear, a wolf! But you know I willna let ye do it.”
The shivering eased slightly, though I still felt cold, and sick with the horror of what I was saying.
“There might be another way,” I said. “There’s little food, but what there is goes to the Prince. I think it might not be difficult to add something to his dish without being noticed; things are so disorganized.” This was true; all over the house, officers lay sleeping on tables and floors, still clad in their boots, too tired to lay aside their arms. The house was in chaos, with constant comings and goings. It would be a simple matter to distract a servant long enough to add a deadly powder to the evening dish.
The immediate terror had receded slightly, but the awfulness of my suggestion lingered like poison, chilling my own blood. Jamie’s arm tightened briefly around my shoulders, then fell away as he contemplated the situation.
The death of Charles Stuart would not end the matter of the Rising; things had gone much too far for that. Lord George Murray, Balmerino, Kilmarnock, Lochiel, Clanranald—all of us were traitors, lives and property forfeit to the Crown. The Highland army was in tatters; without the figurehead of Charles to rally to, it would dissipate like smoke. The English, terrorized and humiliated at Preston and Falkirk, would not hesitate to pursue the fugitives, seeking to retrieve their lost honor and wash out the insult in blood.
There was little chance that Henry of York, Charles’s pious younger brother, already bound by churchly vows, would take his brother’s place to continue the fight for restoration. There was nothing ahead but catastrophe and wreck, and no possible way to avert it. All that might be salvaged now was the lives of the men who would die on the moor tomorrow.
It was Charles who had chosen to fight at Culloden, Charles whose stubborn, shortsighted autocracy had defied the advice of his own generals and gone to invade England. And whether Sandringham had meant his offer for good or ill, it had died with him. There was no support from the South; such English Jacobites as there were did not rally as expected to the banner of their king. Forced against his will to retreat, Charles had chosen this last stubborn stand, to place ill-armed, exhausted, starving men in a battle line on a rain-soaked moor, to face the wrath of Cumberland’s cannon fire. If Charles Stuart were dead, the battle of Culloden might not take place. One life, against two thousand. One life—but that life a Royal one, and taken not in battle, but in cold blood.
The small room where we sat had a hearth, but a fire had not been lit—there was no fuel. Jamie sat gazing at it as though seeking an answer in invisible flames. Murder. Not only murder, but regicide. Not only murder, but the killing of a sometime friend.
And yet—the clansmen of the Highlands shivered already on the open moor, shifting in their serried ranks as the plan of battle was adjusted, rearranged, reordered, as more men drifted to join them. Among them were the MacKenzies of Leoch, the Frasers of Beauly, four hundred men of Jamie’s blood. And the thirty men of Lallybroch, his own.
His face was blank, immobile as he thought, but the hands laced together on his knee knotted tight with the struggle. The crippled fingers and the straight strove together, twisting. I sat beside him, scarcely daring to breathe, awaiting his decision.
At last the breath went from him in an almost inaudible sigh, and he turned to me, a look of unutterable sadness in his eyes.
“I cannot,” he whispered. His hand touched my face briefly, cupping my cheek. “Would God that I could, Sassenach. I cannot do it.”
The wave of relief