Outlander - Diana Gabaldon [263]
“Claire…no. I can’t.” The wind was bringing the moisture to his eyes.
“It’s the Rising,” I said urgently, shaking his arm. “Jamie, listen. Prince Charlie—his army. Colum is right! Do you hear me, Jamie? Colum is right, not Dougal.”
“Eh? What d’ye mean, lass?” I had his attention now. He rubbed his sleeve across his face and the eyes that looked down at me were sharp and clear. The wind sang in my ears.
“Prince Charlie. There will be a Rising, Dougal’s right about that, but it won’t succeed. Charlie’s army will do well for a bit, but it will end in slaughter. At Culloden, that’s where it will end. The—the clans…” In my mind’s eye I saw the clanstones, the grey boulders that would lie scattered on the field, each stone bearing the single clan name of the butchered men who lay under it. I took a breath and gripped his hand to steady myself. It was cold as a corpse’s. I shuddered and closed my eyes to concentrate on what I was saying.
“The Highlanders—all the clans that follow Charlie—will be wiped out. Hundreds and hundreds of the clansmen will die at Culloden; those that are left will be hunted and killed. The clans will be crushed…and they’ll not rise again. Not in your time—not even in mine.”
I opened my eyes to find him staring at me, expressionless.
“Jamie, stay out of it!” I begged him. “Keep your people out of it if you can, but for the Lord’s sake…Jamie, if you—” I broke off. I had been going to say “Jamie, if you love me.” But I couldn’t. I was going to lose him forever, and if I could not speak of love to him before, I could not do it now.
“Don’t go to France,” I said, softly. “Go to America, or to Spain, to Italy. But for the sake of the people who love you, Jamie, don’t set foot on Culloden Field.”
He went on staring at me. I wondered if he had heard.
“Jamie? Did you hear me? Do you understand?”
After a moment, he nodded numbly.
“Aye,” he said quietly, so quietly I could hardly hear him, beneath the whining of the wind. “Aye, I hear.” He dropped my hand.
“Go wi’ God…mo duinne.”
He stepped off the ledge and made his way down the steep incline, bracing his feet against tufts of grass, catching at branches to keep his balance, not looking back. I watched him until he disappeared into the oak clump, walking slowly, like a man wounded, who knows he must keep moving, but feels his life ebbing slowly away through the fingers he has clenched over the wound.
My knees were trembling. Slowly, I lowered myself to the granite shelf and sat cross-legged, watching the swallows about their business. Below, I could just see the roof of the cottage that now held my past. At my back loomed the cleft stone. And my future.
I sat without moving through the afternoon. I tried to force all emotion from my mind and use reason. Jamie certainly had logic on his side when he argued that I should go back: home, safety, Frank; even the small amenities of life that I sorely missed from time to time, like hot baths and indoor plumbing, to say nothing of larger considerations such as proper medical care and convenient travel.
And yet, while I would certainly admit the inconveniences and outright dangers of this place, I would have also to admit that I had enjoyed many aspects of it. If travel was inconvenient, there were no enormous stretches of concrete blanketing the countryside, nor any noisy, stinking autos—contrivances with their own dangers, I reminded myself. Life was much simpler, and so were the people. Not less intelligent, but much more direct—with a few sterling exceptions like Colum ban Campbell MacKenzie, I thought grimly.
Because of Uncle Lamb’s work, I had lived in a great many places, many even cruder and more lacking in amenities than this one. I adapted quite easily to rough conditions, and did not really miss “civilization” when away from it, though I adapted just as easily to the presence of niceties like electric cookers and hot-water geysers. I shivered in the cold wind, hugging myself as I stared at the rock.