The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [577]
“Och, no. It’s only I was a bit surprised to see him here. He didna quite get on sae well wi’ Mac Dubh, is all. If he had another place to go, I wouldna have thought he’d seek out Fraser’s Ridge.”
Roger was momentarily surprised by the revelation that there was someone from Ardsmuir who didn’t think the sun shone out of Jamie Fraser’s arse, though on consideration, there was no reason why this shouldn’t be so; God knew the man was quite as capable of making enemies as friends.
“Why?”
What he was asking was plain. Kenny looked about the goat-shed, as though seeking escape, but Roger stood between him and the door.
“No great matter,” he said, finally, shoulders slumping in capitulation. “Only Christie’s a Protestant, see?”
“Aye, I see,” Roger said, very dryly. “But he was put in with the Jacobite prisoners. So, was there trouble in Ardsmuir over it, is that what you’re telling me?”
Likely enough, he reflected. In his own time, there was no love lost between the Catholics and the stern Scottish sons of John Knox and his ilk. Nothing Scots liked better than a wee spot of religious warfare—and if you got right down to it, that’s what the entire Jacobite cause had been.
Take a few staunch Calvinists, convinced that if they didn’t tuck their blankets tight, the Pope would nip down the chimney and bite their toes, and bang them up in a prison cheek-by-jowl with men who prayed out loud to the Virgin Mary . . . aye, he could see it. Football riots would be nothing to it, numbers being equal.
“How did he come to be in Ardsmuir, then—Christie, I mean?”
Kenny looked surprised.
“Och, he was a Jacobite—arrested wi’ the rest after Culloden, tried and imprisoned.”
“A Protestant Jacobite?” It wasn’t impossible, or even farfetched—politics made stranger bedfellows than that, and always had. It was unusual, though.
Kenny heaved a sigh, glancing toward the horizon, where the sun was slowly sinking into the pines.
“Come along inside then, MacKenzie. If Tom Christie’s come to the Ridge, I suppose it’s best someone tells ye all about it. If I hurry myself, ye’ll be in time for your supper.”
Rosamund was not at home, but the buttermilk was cool in the well, as advertised. Stools fetched and the buttermilk poured, Kenny Lindsay was good as his word, and started in in businesslike fashion. Christie was a Lowlander, Kenny said; MacKenzie would have gathered as much. From Edinburgh. At the time of the Rising, Christie had been a merchant in the city, with a good business, newly inherited from a hard-working father. Tom Christie was far from lazy, himself, and determined to set up for a gentleman.
With this in mind, and Prince Tearlach’s army occupying the city, Christie had put on his best suit of clothes and gone calling on O’Sullivan, the Irishman who had charge of the army commissary. “Naebody kens what passed between them, other than words—but when Christie came out, he had a contract to victual the Highland Army, and an invitation to dance at Holyrood that night.” Kenny took a long drink of sweet buttermilk and set down the cup, his mustache thickly coated with white. He nodded wisely at Roger.
“We heard what they were like, those balls at the Palace. Mac Dubh told us of them, time and again. The Great Gallery, wi’ the portraits of all the kings o’ Scotland, and the hearths of blue Dutch tile, big enough to roast an ox. The Prince, and all the great folk who’d come to see him, dressed in silks and laces. And the food! Sweet Jesus, such food as he’d tell about.” Kenny’s eyes grew round and dreamy, remembering descriptions heard on an empty stomach. His tongue came out and absently licked the buttermilk from his upper lip.
Then he shook himself back to the present.
“Well, so,” he said, matter-of-factly. “When the Army left Edinburgh, Christie cam’ along. Whether it was to mind his investment, or that he meant to keep himself in the Prince’s eye, I canna say.”
Roger noted privately that the