The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [190]
“What was it, then?” I asked, a little testily.
“The mark? I’m pretty sure it was the letter ‘T’—I saw it when you made him take the coffee and he wrapped his hand round the cup.”
My stomach tightened. I knew what that meant; I’d seen it before.
“Thief,” Roger said, eyes on my face. “He’s been branded.”
“Yes,” I said unhappily. “Oh, dear.”
“Would the folk on the Ridge not accept him, if they knew?” Roger asked.
“I doubt most of them would be much bothered,” I said. “It’s not that; it’s that he ran when you mentioned it. He isn’t just a convicted thief—I’m afraid he may be a fugitive. And Jamie called him, at the Gathering.”
“Ah.” Roger scratched absently at his whiskers. “Earbsachd. Jamie will feel obliged to him in some way, then?”
“Something like that.”
Roger was a Scot, and—technically, at least—a Highlander. But he had been born long after the death of the clans, and neither history nor heritage could ever have taught him the strength of the ancient bonds between laird and tenant, between chief and clansman. Most likely, Josiah himself had no idea of the importance of the earbsachd—of what had been promised and accepted on both sides. Jamie had.
“Do you think Jamie will catch him?” Roger asked.
“I expect he already has. He can’t be tracking the boy in the dark, and if he’d lost him, he would have come back already.”
There were other possibilities—that Jamie had fallen over a precipice in the dark, tripped on a stone and broken his leg, or met with a catamount or a bear, for instance—but I preferred not to dwell on those.
I stood up, stretching my cramped limbs, and looked into the woods, where Jamie and his prey had disappeared. Josiah might be a good woodsman and hunter; Jamie had been one much longer. Josiah was small, quick, and impelled by fear; Jamie had a considerable advantage in size, strength, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
Roger stood up beside me. His lean face was slightly troubled, as he peered into the encircling trees.
“It’s taking a long time. If he’s caught the lad, what’s he doing with him?”
“Extracting the truth from him, I imagine,” I said. I bit my lip at the thought. “Jamie doesn’t like being lied to.”
Roger looked down at me, mildly startled.
“How?”
I shrugged.
“However he can.” I’d seen him do it by reason, by guile, with charm, with threats—and on occasion, by means of brute force. I hoped he hadn’t had to use force—though more for his sake than Josiah’s.
“I see,” Roger said quietly. “Well, then.”
The coffeepot was empty; I bundled my cloak round me and went down to the stream to rinse and fill it, hung it to brew once more above the fire, and sat down to wait.
“You should go to sleep,” I said to Roger, after a few minutes. He merely smiled at me, wiped his nose, and hunched deeper into his cloak.
“So should you,” he said.
There was no wind, but it was very late, and the cold had settled well into the hollow, lying damp and heavy on the ground. The men’s blankets had grown limp with condensation, and I could feel the dense chill of the ground seeping through the folds of my skirt. I thought about retrieving my breeches, but couldn’t muster the energy to search for them. The excitement of Josiah’s appearance and escape had faded, and the lethargy of cold and fatigue was setting in.
Roger poked up the fire a bit, and added a few small chunks of wood. I tucked another fold of skirt beneath my thighs and pulled cloak and shawl close around me, burying my hands in the folds of fabric. The coffeepot hung steaming, the hiss of occasional droplets falling into the fire punctuating the phlegm-filled snores of the sleeping men.
I wasn’t seeing the blanket-rolled shapes, though, or hearing the sough of dark pines. I heard the crackle of dried leaves in a Scottish oak wood, in the hills above Carryarrick. We had camped there, two days before Prestonpans, with thirty men from Lallybroch—on our way to join Charles Stuart’s army. And a young boy had come