Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [340]
“I was too sick to say a word; the sky was black and whirling round and bits of light kept flickering at the edges of my eyes, like fallin’ stars. So he said it for me; by Geordie’s head should I live, and by his arse I should die, and he threw the shilling up in the air. It came down in the dirt by my head, but I had nay strength to turn and look.
“He bent to see and gave a grunt, then he stood up and took nay more notice of me.”
They had reached the stern in their quiet pacing. Bonnet stopped there, hands on the rail, smoking silently. Then he took the cigar from his mouth.
“They pulled the daftie to the wall that was built, and made him sit down on the ground at its foot. I do remember his foolish face,” he said softly. “He took a drink and he laughed wi’ them, and his mouth was open—slack and wet as a old whore’s cunt. The next moment, the stone came down from the top of the wall, and crushed his head.”
Drops of moisture had gathered on the spikes of hair at the back of Roger’s neck; he could feel them run down, one at a time, trickling cold down the crease of his back.
“They rolled me on my face and hit me,” Bonnet continued matter-of-factly. “When I came to myself again, I was in the bottom of a fishing boat. The fisherman left me on the shore near Peterhead and said he would advise me to find a new ship—he could see, he said, I was not meant for the land.”
He held up the cigar and tapped it gently with a finger to loosen the ash.
“At that,” he said, “they did give me my wages; when I came to look, the shilling was in my pocket. Ah, they were honest men, sure.”
Roger leaned against the rail, gripping its wood as the single solid thing in a world gone soft and nebulous.
“And did you go back to the land?” he asked, and heard his own voice, preternaturally calm, as though it belonged to someone else.
“Did I find them, ye mean.” Bonnet turned and leaned back against the rail, half facing Roger. “Oh, yes. Years later. One at a time. But I found them all.” He opened the hand that held the coin, and held it cupped thoughtfully before him, tilting it back and forth so the silver gleamed in the lantern light.
“Heads you live, and tails you die. A fair chance, would yez say, MacKenzie?”
“For them?”
“For you.”
The soft Irish voice was as unemphatic as it might be were it making observations of the weather.
As in a dream, Roger felt the weight of the shilling drop once more into his hands. He heard the suck and hiss of the water on the hull, the blowing of the whales—and the suck and hiss of Bonnet’s breath as he drew on his cigar. Seven whales the fill of a Cirein Croin.
“A fair chance,” Bonnet said. “Luck was with you before, MacKenzie. See will Danu come for you again—or will it be the Soul-Eater this time?”
The fog had closed over the deck. There was nothing visible save the glowing coal of Bonnet’s cigar, a burning cyclops in the mist. The man might be a devil indeed, one eye closed to human misery, one eye open to the dark. And here Roger stood quite literally between the devil and the deep blue sea, with his fate shining silver in the palm of his hand.
“It is my life; I’ll make the call,” he said, and was surprised to hear his voice calm and steady. “Tails—tails is mine.” He threw, and caught, clapped his one hand hard against the back of the other, trapped the coin and its unknown sentence.
He closed his eyes and thought just once of Brianna. I’m sorry, he said silently to her, and lifted his hand.
A warm breath passed over his skin, and then he felt a spot of coolness on the back of his hand as the coin was picked up, but he didn’t move, didn’t open his eyes.
It was some time before he realized that he stood alone.
PART NINE
Passionnément
40
VIRGIN SACRIFICE
Wilmington, the Colony of North Carolina, September 1, 1769
This was the third attack, of whatever Lizzie’s sickness was. She had seemed to recover after the first bad fever, and after a day spent regaining