Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [138]
“So he could prove that it wasn’t you!” This sounded good news, and I said so. Jamie nodded.
“Well, yes. Though the word of a deserter would likely not count for much. Still, it’s a start. At least I’d know myself who it was. And while I…well, I dinna see how I can go back to Lallybroch; still it would be as well if I could walk the soil of Scotland without the risk of being hanged.”
“Yes, that seems a good idea,” I said dryly. “But where do the MacKenzies come into it?”
There followed a certain amount of complicated analysis of family relationships and clan alliances, but when the smoke cleared away, it appeared that Francis MacLean was some connection with the MacKenzie side, and had sent word of Horrocks to Colum, who had sent Dougal to make contact with Jamie.
“Which is how he came to be nearby when I was wounded,” Jamie finished up. He paused, squinting into the sun. “I wondered, afterward, ye know, whether perhaps he’d done it.”
“Hit you with an ax? Your own uncle? Why on earth!?”
He frowned as though weighing how much to tell me, then shrugged.
“I dinna ken how much ye know about the clan MacKenzie,” he said, “though I imagine ye canna have ridden wi’ old Ned Gowan for days without hearin’ something of it. He canna keep off the subject for long.”
He nodded at my answering smile. “Well, you’ve seen Colum for yourself. Anyone can see that he’ll not make old bones. And wee Hamish is barely eight; he’ll no be able to lead a clan for ten years yet. So what happens if Colum dies before Hamish is ready?” He looked at me, prompting.
“Well, Dougal would be laird, I suppose,” I said slowly, “at least until Hamish is old enough.”
“Aye, that’s true.” Jamie nodded. “But Dougal’s not the man Colum is, and there are those in the clan that wouldna follow him so gladly—if there were an alternative.”
“I see,” I said slowly, “and you are the alternative.”
I looked him over carefully, and had to admit that there was a certain amount of possibility there. He was old Jacob’s grandson; a MacKenzie by blood, if only on his mother’s side. A big, comely, well-made lad, plainly intelligent, and with the family knack for managing people. He had fought in France and proved his ability to lead men in battle; an important consideration. Even the price on his head might not be an insurmountable obstacle—if he were laird.
The English had enough trouble in the Highlands, between the constant small rebellions, the border raids and the warring clans, not to risk a major uprising by accusing the chieftain of a major clan of murder—which would seem no murder at all to the clansmen.
To hang an unimportant Fraser clansman was one thing; to storm Castle Leoch and drag out the laird of the clan MacKenzie to face English justice was something else again.
“Do you mean to be laird, if Colum dies?” It was one way out of his difficulties, after all, though I suspected it was a way hedged with its own considerable obstacles.
He smiled briefly at the thought. “No. Even if I felt myself entitled to it—which I don’t—it would split the clan, Dougal’s men against those that might follow me. I havena the taste for power at the cost of other men’s blood. But Dougal and Colum couldna be sure of that, could they? So they might think it safer just to kill me than to take the risk.”
My brow was furrowed, thinking it all out. “But surely you could tell Dougal and Colum that you don’t intend…oh.” I looked up at him with considerable respect. “But you did. At the oath-taking.”
I had thought already how well he had handled a dangerous situation there; now I saw just how dangerous it had been. The clansmen had certainly wanted him to take his oath; just as certainly Colum had not.