The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [579]
“Aye, I see. And he didn’t care for the competition, was that it?”
Kenny nodded, off-hand.
“It wouldna have been so bad, maybe, save that half his wee band of salvationers started creepin’ off from their prayers to hear Mac Dubh tell stories. But the main thing was the new governor.”
Bogle, the prison’s original governor, had left, replaced by Colonel Harry Quarry. Quarry was a relatively young man, but an experienced soldier, who had fought at Falkirk and at Culloden. Unlike his predecessor, he viewed the prisoners under his command with a certain respect—and he knew Jamie Fraser by repute, regarding him as an honorable, if defeated, foe.
“Quarry had Mac Dubh brought up to see him, soon after he took command at Ardsmuir. I couldna say what happened between them, but soon it was a matter of course; once a week, the guards would come and take Mac Dubh off to shave and wash himself, and he would go take a bit of supper with Quarry, and speak to him of whatever was needed.”
“And Tom Christie didn’t like that, either,” Roger guessed. He was forming a comprehensive picture of Christie; ambitious, intelligent—and envious. Competent himself, but lacking Fraser’s fortunate birth and skill at warfare—advantages that a self-made merchant with social aspirations might well have resented, even before the catastrophe of Culloden. Roger felt a certain sneaking sympathy for Christie; Jamie Fraser was stiff competition for the merely mortal.
Kenny shook his head, and tilted back to drain his cup. He set it down with a sigh of repletion, raising his brows with a gesture toward the jug. Roger waved a hand, dismissing it.
“No, no more, thanks. But the Freemasons . . . how did that happen? You said it was to do with Christie?” The light was nearly gone. He would have to walk home in the dark—but that was no matter; his curiosity wouldn’t let him leave without learning what had happened.
Kenny grunted, rearranging his kilt over his thighs. Hospitality was all very well, but he had chores to do as well. Still, courtesy was courtesy, and he liked the Thrush for himself, not only that he was Mac Dubh’s good son.
“Aye, well.” He shrugged, resigning himself. “No, Christie didna like it a bit, that Mac Dubh should be the great one, when he felt it his own place by right.” He cast a shrewd glance at Roger, assessing. “I dinna think he kent what it might cost to be chief in a place like that—not ’til later. But that’s naught to do with it.” He flapped a hand, waving off irrelevancy.
“The thing was, Christie was a chief himself; only not just so good at it as was Mac Dubh. But there were those who listened to him, and not only the God-naggers.”
If Roger was a trifle taken aback at hearing this characterization of his co-religionists, he disregarded it in his eagerness to hear more.
“Aye, so?”
“There was trouble again.” Kenny shrugged again. “Small things, aye, but ye could see it happening.”
Shifts and schisms, the small faults and fractures that result when two land masses come together, straining and shoving until either mountains rise between them or one is subsumed by the other, in a breaking of earth and a shattering of stone.
“We could see Mac Dubh thinking,” Kenny said. “But he’s no the man to be telling anyone what’s in his mind, aye?”
Almost no one, Roger thought suddenly, with the memory of Fraser’s voice, so low as barely to be heard beneath the whining autumn wind. He told me. The thought was a small sudden warmth in his chest, but he pushed it aside, not to be distracted.
“So one evening Mac Dubh came back to us, quite late,” Kenny said. “But instead of lying down to his rest, he came and summoned us—me and my brothers, Gavin Hayes, Ronnie Sinclair . . . and Tom Christie.”
Fraser had roused the six men quietly from their sleep, and brought them to one of the cell’s few windows, where the light of the night sky might shine upon his face. The men had gathered round him, heavy-eyed