Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [458]
God only also knew what my own motives were in this; I had thought I did, but was no longer sure. Had I involved Roger in the search for Geillis because it seemed the only way of convincing Brianna? And yet—even if we found her in time, my own purpose would be served only if Gillian succeeded in going back. And thus, in dying by fire.
When Geillis Duncan had been condemned as a witch, Jamie had said to me, “Dinna grieve for her, Sassenach; she’s a wicked woman.” And whether she had been wicked or mad, it had made little difference at the time. Should I not have left well enough alone, and left her to find her own fate? Still, I thought, she had once saved my life. In spite of what she was—would be—did I owe it to her to try to save her life? And thus perhaps doom Roger? What right did I have to meddle any further?
It isna a matter of right, Sassenach, I heard Jamie’s voice saying, with a tinge of impatience. It’s a question of duty. Of honor.
“Honor, is it?” I said aloud. “And what’s that?” The waiter with my plate of tortellini Portofino looked startled.
“Eh?” he said.
“Never mind,” I said, too distracted to care much what he thought of me. “Perhaps you’d better bring the rest of the bottle.”
I finished my meal surrounded by ghosts. Finally, fortified by food and wine, I pushed my empty plate aside, and opened Gillian Edgars’s gray notebook.
49
BLESSED ARE THOSE…
There’s no place darker than a Highland road in the middle of a moonless night. I could see the flash of passing headlights now and then, silhouetting Roger’s head and shoulders in a sudden flare of light. They were hunched forward, as though in defense against oncoming danger. Bree sat hunched as well, curled into the corner of the seat beside me. We were all three self-contained, insulated from each other, sealed in small, individual pockets of silence, inside the larger silence of the car and its rushing flight.
My fists curled in the pockets of my coat, idly scooping up coins and small bits of debris; shredded tissue, a pencil stub, a tiny rubber ball left on the floor of my office by a small patient. My thumb circled and identified the milled edge of an American quarter, the broad embossed face of an English penny, and the serrated edge of a key—the key to Gillian Edgars’s carrel, which I had neglected to return to the Institute.
I had tried again to call Greg Edgars, just before we left the old manse. The phone had rung again and again without answer.
I stared at the dark glass of the window beside me, seeing neither my own faint reflection nor the massy shapes of stone walls and scattered trees that rushed by in the night. Instead, I saw the row of books, arranged on the carrel’s single shelf in a line as neat as a row of apothecary’s jars. And below, the notebook filled with fine cursive script, laying out in strict order conclusion and delusion, mingling myth and science, drawing from learned men and legends, all of it based on the power of dreams. To any casual observer, it could be either a muddle of half-thought-out nonsense or, at best, the outline for a clever-silly novel. Only to me did it have the look of a careful, deliberate plan.
In a parody of the scientific method, the first section of the book was titled “Observations.” It contained disjointed references, tidy drawings, and carefully numbered tables. “The position of sun and moon on the Feast of Beltane” was one, with a list of more than two hundred paired figures laid out beneath. Similar tables existed for Hogmanay and Midsummer’s Day, and another for Samhainn, the Feast of All Hallows. The ancient feasts of fire and sun, and Beltane’s sun would rise tomorrow.
The central section of the notebook was titled “Speculations.” That was accurate, at least, I reflected wryly. One page had borne this entry, in neat, slanting script: “The Druids burnt sacrificial victims in wicker cages shaped like men, but individuals were killed by strangling, and the throat slit to drain the body of blood. Was it