The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [234]
Some four hundred Highlanders surrounded Hayes’s small beachhead on the creek bank. Men and women sheltered among the trees above the clearing, plaids and shawls pulled tight against the rising wind. They, too, were keeping their own counsel, judging from the array of stony faces visible under the flutter of scarves and bonnets. Of course, I thought, their expressions might derive from cold as much as from natural caution; my own cheeks were stiff, the end of my nose had gone numb, and I hadn’t felt my feet anytime since daybreak.
“Any pairson wishing to make a deposition concairning these most serious matters may entrust it safely to my care,” Hayes announced, his round face an official blank. “I will remain in my tent with my clairk for the rest of the day. God save the King!”
He handed the proclamation to his corporal, bowed to the crowd in dismissal, and turned smartly toward a large canvas tent that had been erected near the trees, regimental banners flapping wildly from a standard next to it.
Shivering, I slid a hand into the slit of Jamie’s cloak and over the crook of his arm, my cold fingers comforted by the warmth of his body. Jamie pressed his elbow briefly to his side in acknowledgment of my frozen grasp, but didn’t look down at me; he was studying Archie Hayes’s retreating back, eyes narrowed against the sting of the wind.
A compact and solid man, of inconsequent height but considerable presence, the Leftenant moved with great deliberation, as though oblivious of the crowd on the hillside above. Hayes was a Highlander himself, as were his men; that was why he was here.
The Leftenant vanished into his tent, leaving the flap invitingly pinned up. Not for the first time, I reluctantly admired Governor Tryon’s political instincts. This Proclamation was clearly being read in towns and villages throughout the Colony; he could have relied on a local magistrate or sheriff to carry his message of official fury to this Gathering. Instead, he had taken the trouble to send Hayes.
Archibald Hayes had taken the field at Culloden by his father’s side at the age of twelve. Wounded in the fight, he had been taken prisoner and sent south. Presented with a choice of transportation or joining the Army, he had taken the King’s shilling and made the best of it. Quite a lot the best of it; the fact that he had risen to be an officer in his midthirties, in a time when almost all commissions were bought rather than earned, was sufficient testimony to his abilities, I thought.
He was as personable as he was professional; invited to share our food and fire, he had spent half the night talking with Jamie—and the other half moving from fire to fire under the aegis of Jamie’s presence, being introduced to the heads of all the important families present.
And whose notion had that been? I wondered, looking up at Jamie. His long, straight nose was reddened by the cold, his eyes hooded from the wind, but his face gave no inkling of what he was thinking. And that, I thought, was a bloody good indication that he was thinking something rather dangerous. Had he known about this Proclamation?
No English officer, with an English troop, could have brought such news into a Gathering like this with any hope of cooperation. But Hayes and his Highlanders, stalwart in their tartan and bearskins… I didn’t miss the fact that Hayes had had his tent erected with its back to a thick grove of pines; anyone who wished to speak to the Leftenant in secret could approach through the woods, unseen.
“Does Hayes expect someone to pop out of the crowd, rush into his tent, and surrender on the spot?” I murmured to Jamie. I personally knew of at least a dozen men among those present who had taken part in the Hillsborough riots; three of them were standing within arm’s length of us.
Jamie saw the direction of my glance and put his hand over mine, squeezing it in a silent adjuration of discretion. I lowered my brows at him; surely he didn’t think I would give anyone away by inadvertence?