The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [452]
I was watching Roger’s face. Still heavily bruised, it too was beginning to look more normal, despite the livid weal under his jaw, and I thought there was something odd about his expression. I could see physical pain in his eyes, helplessness, and frustration at his immediate inability to tell Jamie what he wanted to know, but I thought there was something else there, too. Anger, certainly, but something like bafflement, as well.
“Do you know any William MacKenzies?” I asked Jamie, who was tapping his fingers lightly on the table as he thought.
“Aye, four or five,” he replied, brows still knotted in concentration. “In Scotland. But none here, and none that—”
Roger’s hand lifted abruptly at the word “Scotland,” and Jamie stopped, fixed on Roger’s face like a pointing bird dog.
“Scotland,” he said. “Something about Scotland? The man is a new immigrant?”
Roger shook his head violently, then stopped abruptly, grimacing in pain. He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then opened them, and waved urgently at the bits of charcoal I still held in my hand.
It took several tries, and at the end of it Roger lay back exhausted on the pillow, the neck of his nightshirt damp with sweat and spotted with blood from his throat. The result of his effort was smeared and straggling, but I could read the word clearly.
Dougal, it said. Jamie’s look of interest sharpened into something like wariness.
“Dougal,” he repeated carefully. He knew several Dougals as well; a few of them resident in North Carolina. “Dougal Chisholm? Dougal O’Neill?”
Roger shook his head and the tube in his throat wheezed with his exhalation. He lifted his hand and pointed emphatically at Jamie, the splinted fingers jabbing. Getting only a blank look in response, he fumbled for the bit of charcoal again, but it rolled off the sketch-box and shattered on the floor.
His fingers were smeared with charcoal dust. Grimacing, he pressed the tip of his ring finger against the page, and by dint of using all the fingers in turn, produced a faint and ghostly scrawl that sent a small electric shock shooting up from the base of my spine.
Geilie, it said.
Jamie stared at the name for a moment. Then I saw a small shiver move over him, and he crossed himself.
“A Dhia,” he said softly, and looked at me. Awareness thickened between us; Roger saw it and fell back on his pillow, exhaling loudly through his breathing-tube.
“Dougal’s son by Geillis Duncan,” Jamie said, turning to Roger with incredulity writ large on his face. “He was named William, I think. Ye mean it? Ye’re sure of it?”
A brief nod, and Roger’s eyes closed. Then they opened again; one splinted finger rose wavering, and pointed to his own eye—a deep, clear green, the color of moss. He was white as the linen he lay on, and his charcoal-smeared fingers were trembling. His mouth was twitching; he wanted badly to talk, to explain—but further explanations were going to have to wait, for a little while, at least.
His hand dropped, and his eyes closed again.
THE REVELATION of William Buccleigh MacKenzie’s identity didn’t alter Jamie’s urgent desire to find the man, but it did change his intention of murdering him immediately, once found. On the whole, I was grateful for small favors.
Brianna, summoned from her painting to consult, arrived in my room in her smock, smelling strongly of turpentine and linseed oil, with a smear of cobalt blue on one earlobe.
“Yes,” she said, bewildered by Jamie’s abrupt questions. “I’ve heard of him. William Buccleigh MacKenzie. The changeling.”
“The what?” Jamie’s brows shot up toward his hairline.
“That’s what I called him,” I said. “When I saw Roger’s family tree, and realized who William Buccleigh MacKenzie must be. Dougal gave the child to William and Sarah MacKenzie, remember? And they gave him the name of the child they’d lost two months before.”
“Roger mentioned that he’d seen William MacKenzie and his wife, on board the Gloriana, when he sailed from Scotland to North Carolina,” Bree put