Dragonfly in Amber - Diana Gabaldon [64]
“There’s always talk of it,” he had said. “In the houses, mostly, not the taverns. And that’s why nothing’s come of it. When it gets to the taverns, you’ll know it’s serious.”
“Tell me,” I said, watching him brush the dust from his coat, “are all Scots born knowing about politics, or is it just you?”
He laughed, but quickly sobered as he opened the huge armoire and hung up the coat. It looked worn and rather pathetic, hanging by itself in the enormous, cedar-scented space.
“Well, I’ll tell ye, Sassenach, I’d as soon not know. But born as I was, between the MacKenzies and the Frasers, I’d little choice in the matter. And ye don’t spend a year in French society and two years in an army without learning how to listen to what’s being said, and what’s being meant, and how to tell the difference between the two. Given these times, though, it isna just me; there’s neither laird nor cottar in the Highlands who can stand aside from what’s to come.”
“What’s to come.” What was to come? I wondered. What would come, if we were not successful in our efforts here, was an armed rebellion, an attempt at restoration of the Stuart monarchy, led by the son of the exiled king, Prince Charles Edward (Casimir Maria Sylvester) Stuart.
“Bonnie Prince Charlie,” I said softly to myself, looking over my reflection in the large pier glass. He was here, now, in the same city, perhaps not too far away. What would he be like? I could think of him only in terms of his usual historical portrait, which showed a handsome, slightly effeminate youth of sixteen or so, with soft pink lips and powdered hair, in the fashion of the times. Or the imagined paintings, showing a more robust version of the same thing, brandishing a broadsword as he stepped out of a boat onto the shore of Scotland.
A Scotland he would ruin and lay waste in the effort to reclaim it for his father and himself. Doomed to failure, he would attract enough support to cleave the country, and lead his followers through civil war to a bloody end on the field of Culloden. Then he would flee back to safety in France, but the retribution of his enemies would be exacted upon those he left behind.
It was to prevent such a disaster that we had come. It seemed incredible, thinking about it in the peace and luxury of Jared’s house. How did one stop a rebellion? Well, if risings were fomented in taverns, perhaps they could be stopped over dinner tables. I shrugged at myself in the mirror, blew an errant curl out of one eye, and went down to cozen the cook.
* * *
The staff, at first inclined to view me with frightened suspicion, soon realized that I had no intention of interfering with their work, and relaxed into a mood of wary obligingness. I had thought at first, in my blur of fatigue, that there were at least a dozen servants lined up in the hallway for my inspection. In fact, there were sixteen of them, counting the groom, the stable-lad and the knife-boy, whom I hadn’t noticed in the general scrum. I was still more impressed at Jared’s success in business, until I realized just how little the servants were paid: a new pair of shoes and two livres per year for the footmen, a trifle less for the housemaids and kitchenmaids, a little more for such exalted personages as Madame Vionnet, the cook, and the butler, Magnus.
While I explored the mechanics of the household and stored up what information I could glean at home from the gossip of the parlormaids, Jamie was out with Jared every day, calling upon customers, meeting people, preparing himself to “assist His Highness” by making those social connections that might prove of value to an exiled prince. It was among the dinner guests that we might find allies—or enemies.
“St. Germain?” I said, suddenly catching a familiar name in the midst of Marguerite’s chatter as she polished the parquet floor. “The Comte St. Germain?”
“Oui,