Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [140]
His matter-of-fact tone was nearly as chilling as the content of this bald account. I felt a small shiver pass up my spine, in spite of the stifling heat.
“Did you—” I began, but he put a finger to his lips, jerking his head toward the door. A moment later, I heard the footsteps that his keener ears had picked up.
It was the Sergeant, not his clerk. He had been perspiring heavily; streaks of sweat ran down his face beneath his wig, and his whole countenance was the unhealthy color of fresh beef liver.
He glanced at the vacant desk, and made a small, vicious noise in his throat. I felt a qualm on behalf of the absent clerk. The Sergeant shoved aside the clutter on the desk with a sweep of his arm that sent paper cascading onto the floor.
He snatched a pewter inkwell and a sheet of foolscap from the rubble, and banged them down on the desk.
“Write it down,” he ordered. “Where you found her, what happened.” He thrust a spattered goose-quill at Jamie. “Sign it, date it.”
Jamie stared at him, eyes narrowed, but made no move to take the quill. I felt a sudden sinking in my belly.
Jamie was left-handed but had been taught forcibly to write with his right hand, and then had that right hand crippled. Writing, for him, was a slow, laborious business that left the pages blotted, sweat-stained, and crumpled, and the writer himself in no better case. There was no power on earth that would make him humiliate himself in that fashion before the Sergeant.
“Write. It. Down.” The Sergeant bit off the words between his teeth.
Jamie’s eyes narrowed further, but before he could speak, I reached out and snatched the pen from the Sergeant’s grasp.
“I was there; let me do it.”
Jamie’s hand closed on mine before I could dip the quill in the inkwell. He plucked the pen from my fingers and dropped it in the center of the desk.
“Your clerk can wait upon me later, at my aunt’s house,” he said briefly to Murchison. “Come with me, Claire.”
Not waiting for an answer from the Sergeant, he grasped my elbow and all but pulled me to my feet. We were outside before I knew what had happened. The wagon still stood under the tree, but now it was empty.
“Well, she’s safe for the moment, Mac Dubh, but what in hell shall we do with the woman?” Duncan scratched at the stubble on his chin; he and Ian had spent three days in the forest, searching, before finding the slave Pollyanne.
“She’ll no be easy to move,” Ian put in, snaring a piece of bacon off the breakfast table. He broke it in half, and handed one piece to Rollo. “The poor lady near died of terror when Rollo sniffed her out, and we had God’s own time gettin’ her on her feet. We couldna get her on a horse at all; I had to walk with my arm around her, to keep her from fallin’ down.”
“We must get her clear away, somehow.” Jocasta frowned, blank eyes half hooded in thought. “Yon Murchison was at the mill again yesterday morning, making a nuisance of himself, and last night, Farquard Campbell sent to tell me that the man has declared it was murder, and he’s called for men to search the district for the slave who did it. Farquard’s sae hot under his collar, I thought his head would burst into flame.”
“Do ye think she could have done it?” Chewing, Ian looked from Jamie to me. “By accident, I mean?”
In spite of the hot morning, I shuddered, feeling in memory the unyielding stiffness of the metal skewer in my hand.
“You have three possibilities: accident, murder, or suicide,” I said. “There are lots easier ways of committing suicide, believe me. And no motive for murder, that we know of.”
“Be that as it may,” Jamie said, neatly fielding the conversation, “if Murchison takes the slave woman, he’ll have her hanged or flogged to death within a day. He’s no need of trial. No, we must take her clear