Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [541]
Not a thing I could say to my parish priest, for obvious reasons. I doubt he’d see the sin in it, even if he didn’t slip out to telephone discreetly for psychiatric help!
But you’re a priest, Reg, if not a Catholic—and more importantly, you’re my friend. You needn’t reply to this; I don’t suppose a reply is possible. But you can listen. One of your great gifts, listening. Had I told you that before?
I’m delaying, though I don’t know why I should. Best have it out.
You’ll recall the favor I asked you a few years ago—about the gravestones at St. Kilda’s? Kind friend that you are, you never asked, but it’s time I should tell you why.
God knows why old Black Jack Randall should have been left out there on a Scottish hill instead of taken home to Sussex for burial. Perhaps no one cared enough to bring him home. Sad to think of; I rather hope it wasn’t that.
There he is, though. If Bree’s ever interested in her history—in my history—she’ll look, and she’ll find him there; the location of his grave is mentioned in the family papers. That’s why I asked you to have the other stone put up nearby. It will stand out—all the other stones in that kirkyard are crumbling away with age.
Claire will take her to Scotland one day; I’m sure of that much. If she goes to St. Kilda’s, she’ll see it—no one goes into an old churchyard and doesn’t have a browse round the stones. If she wonders, if she cares to look further—if she asks Claire—well, that’s as far as I’m prepared to go. I’ve made the gesture; I shall leave it to chance what happens when I’ve gone.
You know all the rubbish Claire talked when she came back. I did all I could to get it out of her head, but she wouldn’t be budged; God, she is a stubborn woman!
You’ll not credit this, perhaps, but when I came last to visit you, I hired a car and went to that damned hill—to Craigh na Dun. I told you about the witches dancing in the circle, just before Claire disappeared. With that eerie sight in mind, standing there in the early light among those stones—I could almost believe her. I touched one. Nothing happened, of course.
And yet. I looked. Looked for the man—for Fraser. And perhaps I found him. At least I found a man of that name, and what I could dredge up of his connections matched what Claire told me of him. Whether she was telling the truth, or whether she had grafted some delusion onto real experience … well, there was a man, I’m sure of that!
You’ll scarcely credit this, but I stood there with my hand on that bloody stone, and wanted nothing more than that it should open, and put me face-to-face with James Fraser. Whoever he was, whenever he was, I wanted nothing more in life than to see him—and to kill him.
I have never seen him—I don’t know that he existed!—and yet I hate this man as I have never hated anyone else. If what Claire said and what I found was true—then I’ve taken her from him, and kept her by me through these years by a lie. Maybe only a lie of omission, but nonetheless a lie for that. I could call that revenge, I suppose.
Priests and poets call revenge a two-edged sword; and the other edge of it is that I’ll never know—if I gave her the choice, would she have stayed with me? Or if I told her that her Jamie survived Culloden, would she have been off to Scotland like a shot?
I cannot think Claire would leave her daughter. I hope she’d not leave me, either … but … if I had any certainty of it, I swear I’d have told her, but I haven’t, and that’s the truth of it.
Fraser—shall I curse him for stealing my wife, or bless him for giving me my daughter? I think these things, and then I stop, appalled that I should be giving a moment’s credence to such a preposterous theory. And yet … I have the oddest sense of James Fraser, almost a memory, as though I must have seen him somewhere. Though likely this is just the product of jealousy and imagination—I know what the bastard looks like, well enough; I see his face on my daughter, day