The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [367]
“What happened to them, Aunt?” she said quietly. “Tell me.”
Jocasta was silent for a few moments. So was the room; there was no sound save the hiss of beeswax burning, and the faint asthmatic wheeze of her breath. To my surprise, when she spoke again, it wasn’t to Brianna. Instead, she lifted her head and turned again toward Jamie.
“You know about the gold, then, a mhic mo pheathar?” she said. If he found this a strange question, he gave no sign of it, but answered calmly.
“I have heard something of it,” he said. He moved, coming round the bed to sit beside me, closer to his aunt. “It has been a rumor in the Highlands, ever since Culloden. Louis would send gold, they said, to help his cousin in his holy fight. And then they said the gold had come, yet no man saw it.”
“I saw it.” Jocasta’s wide mouth, so like her nephew’s, widened further in a sudden grimace, then relaxed. “I saw it,” she repeated.
“Thirty thousand pound, in gold bullion. I was with them the night it came ashore, rowed in from the French ship. It was in six small chests, each one so heavy that only two at a time could be brought, else the boat would sink. Each chest had the fleur-de-lis carved on the lid, each one bound with iron bands and a lock, each lock itself sealed with red wax, and the wax bore the print of King Louis’s ring. The fleur-de-lis.”
A sigh ran through us all at the words, a collective breath of awe. Jocasta nodded slowly, blind eyes open to the sights of that night long past.
“Where was it brought ashore, Aunt?” Jamie asked softly.
She nodded slowly, as though to herself, eyes fixed on the scene her memory painted.
“On Innismaraich,” she said. “A tiny isle, just off Coigach.”
I had been holding my breath. Now I let it out, slowly, and met Jamie’s eyes. Innismaraich. Island of the Sea-people; the silkies’ isle, it meant. We knew that place.
“There were the three men trusted with it,” she said. “Hector was one, my brother Dougal was another—the third man was masked; they all were, but of course I kent Hector and Dougal. I didna ken the third man, nor did any of them speak his name. I knew his servant, though; a man named Duncan Kerr.”
Jamie had stiffened slightly at Dougal’s name; at the name of Duncan Kerr he froze.
“There were servants, too?” he asked.
“Two,” she said, and a faint, bitter smile twisted her mouth. “The masked man brought Duncan Kerr, as I said, and my brother Dougal had a man with him from Leoch—I kent his face, but not his name. Hector had me to help him; I was a braw, strong woman—like you, a leannan, like you,” she said softly, squeezing Brianna’s hand. “I was strong, and Hector trusted me as he could trust no other. I trusted him, too—then.”
The noises from outside had died away, but a breeze through the broken pane stirred the curtains, uneasy as a ghost that hears its name called from a distance.
“There were three boats. The chests were small, but heavy enough that it took two persons to carry one between them. We took two chests into our boat, Hector and I, and we rowed away, into the fog. I could hear the splash of the others’ oars, growing fainter as they drew away, and then lost in the night.”
“When was this, Aunt?” Jamie asked, his eyes intent on her. “When did the gold come from France?”
“Too late,” she whispered. “Much too late. Damn Louis!” she exclaimed, with a sudden fierceness that brought her upright in her seat. “Damn the wicked Frenchman, and may his eyes rot as mine have! To think what might have been, had he been true to his blood and his word!”
Jamie’s eyes met mine, sidelong. Too late. Had the gold come sooner—when Charles landed at Glenfinnan, perhaps, or when he took Edinburgh, and for a few brief weeks held the city as a king returned—what then?
The ghost of a smile touched Jamie’s lips with ruefulness, and he glanced at Brianna, then back at me, the question asked and answered in his eyes. What, then?
“It was March,” Jocasta said, recovering from her outburst. “A freezing night, but clear as ice. I stood upon the cliff and looked far out to sea, and the