The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [582]
“Apparently. And perhaps it isn’t forbidden, now. It will be, later.” I flapped a hand, dismissing it. “There’s something else about Christie, though, isn’t there?”
He nodded, and glanced away.
“Aye, there is,” he said quietly. “D’ye recall a Sergeant Murchison, Sassenach?”
“Vividly.” I had met the Sergeant only once, more than two years previously, in Cross Creek. The name seemed familiar in some other, more recent context, though. Then I recalled where I had heard it.
“Archie Hayes mentioned him—or them. That was it; there were two of them, twins. One of them was the man who shot Archie at Culloden, wasn’t he?”
Jamie nodded. His eyes were hooded, and I could see that he was looking back into the time he had spent in Ardsmuir.
“Aye. And to shoot a lad in cold blood was nay more than one could expect from either of them. A crueler pair I hope never to meet.” The corner of his mouth turned up, but without humor. “The only thing I ken to Stephen Bonnet’s credit is that he killed one o’ yon lurdans.”
“And the other?” I asked.
“I killed the other.”
The room seemed suddenly very quiet, as though the two of us were far removed from Fraser’s Ridge, alone together, that bald statement floating in the air between us. He was looking straight at me, blue eyes guarded, waiting to see what I would say. I swallowed.
“Why?” I asked, vaguely surprised at the calmness of my own voice.
He did look away then, shaking his head.
“A hundred reasons,” he said softly, “and none.” He rubbed absently at his wrist, as though feeling the weight of iron fetters.
“I could tell ye stories of their viciousness, Sassenach, and they would be true. They preyed upon the weak, robbing and beating—and they were the sort who took delight in cruelty for its own sake. There’s no recourse against such men, not in a prison. But I dinna say so as an excuse—for there is none.”
The prisoners at Ardsmuir were used for labor, cutting peats, quarrying and hauling stone. They worked in small groups, each group guarded by an English soldier, armed with musket and club. The musket, to prevent escape—the club, to enforce orders and ensure submission.
“It was summer. Ye’ll ken the summer in the Highlands, Sassenach—the summer dim?”
I nodded. The summer dim was the light of the Highland night, late in summer. So far to the north, the sun barely set on Midsummer’s Eve; it would disappear below the horizon, but even at midnight, the sky was pale and milky white, and the air was not dark, but seemed filled with unearthly mist.
The prison governor took advantage of the light, now and then, to work the prisoners into the late hours of the evening.
“We didna mind so much,” Jamie said. His eyes were open, but fixed on whatever he was seeing in the summer dim of memory. “It was better to be outside than in. And yet, by the evening, we would be so droukit wi’ fatigue that we could barely set one foot before the other. It was like walking in a dream.”
Both guards and men were numb with exhaustion, by the time the work of the day was done. The groups of prisoners were collected, formed up into a column, and marched back toward the prison, shuffling across the moorland, stumbling and nodding, drunk with the need to fall down and sleep.
“We were still by the quarry, when they set off; we were to load the wagon wi’ the stone-cutting tools and the last of the blocks, and follow. I remember—I heaved a great block up into the wagon bed, and stood back, panting wi’ the effort. There was a sound behind me, and I turned to see Sergeant Murchison—Billy, it was, though I didna find that out ’til later.”
The Sergeant was no more than a squat black shape in the dim, face invisible against a sky the color of an oyster’s shell.
“I wondered, now and then, if I wouldna have done it, had I seen his face.” The fingers of Jamie’s left hand stroked his wrist absently, and I realized that he still felt the weight of the irons he had worn.
The Sergeant had raised his club, poked Jamie hard in the ribs, then used it to point to a maul left lying on the ground.