The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [649]
“Och, aye. So, was he killed at once, then?” Jamie asked, interested.
“Well, no.” Duncan had grown easier in his manner, telling the tale, but now began to look uneasy again. “Now, see, Mac Dubh, here’s the pinch of the matter. For I’d gone staggering, too, when I knocked him ower, and I stepped into the stone channel from the necessary and snapped my leg, and there I lay, groaning by the walk. Ulysses heard me callin’ at last, and came down, and Jo after him.”
Duncan had told Jocasta what had happened, as Ulysses had gone to fetch a couple of grooms to help carry Duncan into the house. And then, between the pain of his broken leg and his habit of leaving difficulties to the butler to be resolved, had likewise left the Lieutenant.
“It was my fault, Mac Dubh, and I ken it well,” he said, his face drawn and pale. “I ought to have given orders of some kind; though in fact I canna think even now what I ought to have said, and I’ve had time and plenty enough to think.”
The rest of the story, pried out of him with some reluctance, was that Jocasta and Ulysses had evidently conferred on the matter, and concluded that the Lieutenant had gone beyond being a nuisance, and become an outright threat. And that being so . . .
“Ulysses killed him,” Duncan said baldly, then stopped, as though appalled afresh. He swallowed, looking deeply unhappy. “Jo says as how she ordered him to do it—and Christ knows, Mac Dubh, she might have done so. She’s no the woman to be trifled with, let alone to have her servants murdered, herself threatened, and her husband set upon.”
I gathered from his hesitance, though, that some small doubt about Jocasta’s part in this still lingered in his mind.
Jamie had grasped the main point troubling him, though.
“Christ,” he said. “The man Ulysses will be hangit on the spot, or worse, if anyone hears of it. Whether my aunt ordered it, or no.”
Duncan looked a little calmer, now that the truth was out. He nodded.
“Aye, that’s it,” he agreed. “I canna let him go to the gallows—but what am I to do about the Lieutenant? There’s the Navy to be considered, to say nothing of sheriffs and magistrates.” That was a definite point. A good deal of the prosperity of River Run depended upon its naval contracts for timber and tar; Lieutenant Wolff had in fact been the naval liaison responsible for such contracts. I could see that His Majesty’s Navy might just possibly be inclined to look squiggle-eyed at a proprietor who had killed his local naval representative, no matter what the excuse. I imagined that the law, in the person of Sheriff and magistrates, might take a more lenient view of the situation—save for the person of the perpetrator.
A slave who shed the blood of a white person was automatically condemned, regardless of provocation. It would make no difference what had happened—even with a dozen witnesses to testify to Wolff’s attack on Duncan, Ulysses would be doomed. If anyone found out about it. I began to understand the air of desperation that hung over River Run; the other slaves were well aware of what might happen.
Jamie rubbed a knuckle over his chin.
“Ah . . . just how did . . . I mean, would it not be possible to say that ye’d done it yourself, Duncan? It was self-defense, after all—and I’ve evidence that the man did come in order to murder ye, wi’ the notion of marrying my aunt then by force, or at least holding her hostage so as she might be threatened into telling about the gold.”
“Gold?” Duncan looked blank. “But there isna any gold here. I thought we’d got that straight last year.”
“The Lieutenant and his associates thought there was,” I told him. “But Jamie can tell you all about that, in a bit. What did happen to the Lieutenant, exactly?”
“Ulysses cut his throat,” Duncan said, and swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing in his own throat. “I should be pleased enough to say I’d done it, aye, only . . .”
Beyond the simple difficulty of cutting someone’s throat with