The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [543]
Fraser had pulled off his hunting shirt in spite of the chill, and was sitting with his eyes closed, swaying slightly. Roger squatted next to him and touched his arm. Jesus! The man was blazing hot to the touch.
He opened his eyes, though, and smiled faintly. Roger held up a cup of water; Jamie nodded and took the cup, fumbling. The leg was grotesquely swollen below the knee, nearly twice its normal size. The skin showed irregular dark red blotches, as though some succubus had come to place its hungry mouth upon the flesh, then left unsatisfied.
Roger wondered uneasily whether he might, perhaps, be wrong. He’d been convinced that the past couldn’t be changed; ergo, the time and manner of Fraser’s death was set—some four years in the future. If it weren’t for that certainty, though, he thought, he’d be bloody worried by the look of the man. Just how certain was he, after all?
“Ye could be wrong.” Jamie had put down the cup and was regarding him with a steady blue gaze.
“About what?” he asked, startled to hear his thought spoken aloud. Had he been muttering to himself, not realizing it?
“About the changing. Ye thought it wasna possible to change history, ye said. But what if ye’re wrong?”
Roger bent to poke the fire.
“I’m not wrong,” he said firmly, as much to himself as to Fraser. “Think, man. You and Claire—you tried to stop Charles Stuart—change what he did—and ye couldn’t. It can’t be done.”
“That’s no quite right,” Fraser objected. He leaned back, eyes half-hooded against the fire’s brightness.
“What’s not right?”
“It’s true we failed to keep him from the Rising—but that didna depend only on us and on him; there were a good many other folk had to do wi’ that. The chiefs who followed him, the damn Irishmen who flattered him—even Louis; him and his gold.”
He waved a hand, dismissing it. “But that’s neither here nor there. Ye said Claire and I couldna stop him—and it’s true, we couldna stop the beginning. But we might have stopped the end.”
“Culloden, you mean?” Roger stared into the fire, remembering dimly that long-ago day when Claire had first told him and Brianna the story of the stones—and Jamie Fraser. Yes, she had spoken of a last opportunity—the chance to prevent that final slaughter of the clans . . .
He glanced up at Fraser.
“By killing Charles Stuart?”
“Aye. If we had done so—but neither she nor I could bring ourselves to it.” His eyes were nearly closed, but he turned his head restlessly, clearly uncomfortable. “I have wondered many times since, if that was decency—or cowardice.”
“Or maybe something else,” Roger said abruptly. “You don’t know. If Claire had tried to poison him, I’m betting something would have happened; the dish would have spilled, a dog would have eaten it, someone else would have died—it wouldn’t have made a difference!”
Fraser’s eyes opened slowly.
“So ye think it’s all destined, do ye? A man has no free choice at all?” He rubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. “And when ye chose to come back, for Brianna, and then again, for her and the wean—it wasna your choice at all, aye? Ye were meant to do it?”
“I—” Roger stopped, hands clenched on his thighs. The smell of the Gloriana’s bilges seemed suddenly to rise above the scent of burning wood. Then he relaxed, and gave a short laugh. “Hell of a time to get philosophical, isn’t it?”
“Aye, well,” Fraser spoke quite mildly. “It’s only that I may not have another time.” Before Roger could expostulate, he went on. “If there is nay free choice . . . then there is neither sin nor redemption, aye?”
“Jesus,” Roger muttered, shoving the hair back from his forehead. “Come out with Hawkeye and end up under a tree with bloody Augustine of Hippo!”
Jamie ignored him, intent on his point.
“We chose—Claire and I. We wouldna do murder. We wouldna shed the blood of one man; but does the blood of Culloden then rest on us? We wouldna commit the sin—but does the sin find us, still?”
“Of course not.” Roger rose to his feet,