Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [455]
There was a small fire burning, but the interior was so dark after the brightness of the day outside that he was momentarily blinded.
“Who are you?” said a startled voice in French.
Roger blinked several times, and made out a slight figure rising from its seat beside the fire. The priest.
“Roger MacKenzie,” he said. “Et vous?” He experienced a sudden and unexpected flood of happiness at the simple speaking of his name. The Indians didn’t care what his name was; they called him dogface when they wanted him.
“Alexandre.” The priest came forward, looking both pleased and incredulous. “Père Alexandre Ferigault. Vous êtes anglais?”
“Scots,” said Roger, and sat down suddenly, his lame leg giving way.
“A Scotsman? How do you come here? You are a soldier?”
“A prisoner.”
The priest squatted by him, looking him over curiously. He was fairly young—in his late twenties or early thirties, though his fair skin was chapped and weathered by the cold.
“You will eat with me?” He gestured to a small collection of clay pots and baskets that held food and water.
Speaking in his own language seemed to be as much a relief for the priest as speaking freely was for Roger. By the time the meal was concluded, they had gleaned a cautious knowledge of each other’s basic past—if no explanation as yet for their present situation.
“Why have they put me here with you?” Roger asked, wiping grease from his mouth. He didn’t think it was to provide the priest with company. Thoughtfulness was not an outstanding Mohawk characteristic, so far as he’d noticed.
“I cannot say. I was in fact astonished to see another white man.”
Roger glanced at the door of the hut. It moved slightly; there was someone outside.
“Are you a prisoner?” he asked, in some surprise. The priest hesitated, then shrugged, with a small smile.
“I cannot say that, either. With the Mohawk, one is Kahnyen’kehaka or one is—other. And if one is other, the line between guest and prisoner can alter in a moment. Leave it that I have lived among them for several years—but I have not been adopted into the tribe. I am still ‘other.’ ” He coughed and changed the subject. “How did you come to be taken captive?”
Roger hesitated, not really knowing how to answer.
“I was betrayed,” he said at last. “Sold.”
The priest nodded sympathetically.
“Is there anyone who might ransom you? They will take care to keep you alive if they have some hope of ransom.”
Roger shook his head, feeling hollow as a drum.
“There’s no one.”
Conversation ceased as the light from the smokehole dimmed into dusk, leaving them in darkness below. There was a firepit, but no wood; the fire died out. The hut seemed to have been abandoned; there was a bed frame built of poles, but nothing else in the hut save a couple of tattered deerskins and a small heap of domestic debris in one corner.
“Have you been here—in this hut—long?” Roger asked at last, breaking the silence. He could barely see the other man, though the last remnants of twilight were visible through the smokehole.
“No. They brought me here today—shortly before you came.” The priest coughed, shifting uneasily on the packed dirt floor.
That seemed sinister, but Roger thought it more tactful—and less frightening—not to mention it. It was no doubt as obvious to the priest as to himself that the line between “guest” and “prisoner” had been crossed. What had the man done?
“You are a Christian?” Alexandre broke the silence abruptly.
“Yes. My father was a minister.”
“Ah. May I ask—if they take me away, will you pray for me?”
Roger felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the cheerless surroundings.
“Yes,” he said awkwardly. “Of course. If you like.”
The priest rose and began to walk restlessly about the confines of the hut, unable to keep still.
“It may be all right,” he said, but it was the voice of a man trying to convince himself. “They are still deciding.”
“Deciding what?”
He felt rather than saw the priest’s shrug.
“Whether I live.”
There seemed no good response