The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [191]
A different place, a different time. I shook myself, trying to dispel the sudden memories: a thin white face and a boy’s eyes huge with shock and pain. The blade of a dirk, darkening and glowing in the embers of the fire. The smell of gunpowder, sweat, and burning flesh.
“I mean to shoot you,” he had told John Grey. “Head, or heart?” By threat, by guile—by brute force.
That was then; this was now, I told myself. But Jamie would do what he thought he must.
Roger sat quietly, watching the dancing flames and the wood beyond. His eyes were hooded, and I wondered what he was thinking.
“D’you worry for him?” he asked softly, not looking at me.
“What, now? Or ever?” I smiled, though without much humor. “If I did, I’d never rest.”
He turned his head toward me, and a faint smile touched his lips.
“You’re resting now, are you?”
I smiled again, a real one in spite of myself.
“I’m not pacing to and fro,” I answered. “Nor yet wringing my hands.”
One dark eyebrow flicked up.
“Might help keep them warm.”
One of the men stirred, muttering in his wrappings, and we ceased talking for a moment. The coffeepot was boiling; I could hear the soft rumble of the liquid inside.
Whatever could be keeping him? He couldn’t be taking all this time to question Josiah Beardsley—he would either have gotten what answers he required in short order, or he would have let the boy go. No matter what the boy had stolen, it was no concern of Jamie’s—save for the promise of the earbsachd.
The flames were mildly hypnotic; I could look into the wavering glow and see in memory the great fire of the Gathering, the figures dark around it, and the sound of distant fiddles. . . .
“Should I go to look for him?” Roger asked suddenly, low-voiced.
I jerked, startled out of sleepy hypnosis. I rubbed a hand over my face and shook my head to clear it.
“No. It’s dangerous to go into strange woods in the dark, and you couldn’t find him anyway. If he isn’t back by the morning—that will be time enough.”
As the moments wore slowly on, I began to think that the dawn might come before Jamie did. I was worried for Jamie—but there was in fact nothing that could be done before the morning. Disquieting thoughts tried to push their way in; did Josiah have a knife? Surely he did. But even if the boy was desperate enough to use it, could he possibly take Jamie by surprise? I pushed aside these anxious speculations, trying to occupy my mind instead with counting the number of coughs from the men around the fire.
Number eight was Roger; a deep, loose cough that shook his shoulders. Was he worried for Bree and Jemmy? I wondered. Or did he wonder whether Bree worried about him? I could have told him that, but it wouldn’t have helped him to know. Men fighting—or preparing to fight—needed the idea of home as a place of utter safety; the conviction that all was well there kept them in good heart and on their feet, marching, enduring. Other things would make them fight, but fighting is such a small part of warfare. . . .
A damned important part, Sassenach, said Jamie’s voice in the back of my head.
I began at last to nod off, waking repeatedly as my head jerked sharply on my neck. The last time, it was the feel of hands on my shoulders that wakened me, but only briefly. Roger eased me to the ground, wadding half my shawl beneath my head for a pillow, tucking the rest of it snug about my shoulders. I caught a brief glimpse of him in silhouette against the fire, black and bearlike in his cloak, and then I knew no more.
I DON’T KNOW how long I slept; I woke quite suddenly, at the sound of an explosive sneeze nearby. Jamie was sitting a few feet away, holding Josiah Beardsley’s wrist in one hand, his dirk in the other. He paused long enough to sneeze twice more, wiped his nose impatiently on his sleeve, then thrust the dirk into the embers of the fire.
I caught the stink of hot metal, and raised myself abruptly on one elbow. Before I could say or do anything, something twitched and moved against me. I looked