The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [50]
“I know you.” The Chinaman’s voice was low and even, his gaze unwavering. “I see you. See you in red room, with the woman who laughs. See you too with stinking whores, in Scotland.” Very slowly, he lifted his hand to his throat and drew it across, precise as a blade. “You kill pretty often, holy fella, I think.”
In the confrontation that follows, the Reverend draws a case knife, and is killed by Mr. Willoughby, who strikes him on the head with the bag containing his heavy jade “healthy balls.”
Yi Tien Cho disappears into the Caribbean night, and Claire, unable to stay in the room with Campbell’s body, goes upstairs to Geilie’s workroom, looking for clues as to her whereabouts—or Ian’s. What she finds there is sinister: the stolen photograph of Brianna, in the center of a charred pentacle. Is Geilie intending merely to use the image as a focus for her time travel—or has she some more threatening motive? In either case, plainly the witch of Rose Hall has left, and Claire needs to find Jamie, as soon as possible.
Stumbling through the blackness outside, Claire returns to the shore, hoping to find Jamie and his men near the boat. Instead, she meets with something else—a crocodile, from which she is rescued by several slaves, who kill the beast. Given the stress of recent events, Claire is only mildly taken aback to find that the leader of the slaves is Ishmael—the man rescued from the Bruja; the slave kidnapped—from Rose Hall, evidently—by the pirates.
The connection between the Bruja and Rose Hall is more or less clear; evidently the pirate captain had retrieved and delivered the seals’ treasure for Geillis, along with a consignment of young Scottish boys. Whether as part of the agreed-upon price, or only by whim, the Bruja had taken Ishmael—Geilie’s cook—as the ship departed. Why, though, has he come back?
The answer to that question emerges quickly. Half-fainting, Claire is taken to one of the slave huts to recover from her encounter with the crocodile, and wakes to find a voodoo ceremony beginning— featuring an oracle: the missing Margaret Campbell.
This is why Ishmael has come back; to retrieve his oracle, the thing that gives him power over the other slaves. For an oracle Margaret Campbell truly is; as Claire listens in horrified fascination, she hears the loas—the spirits of the dead, the avatars of voodoo deities—speak through the lips of the Scottish woman. Among the loas summoned is that of Bouassa, a famous maroon, who raised a slave rebellion—and died for it, tortured to death. Ishmael asks the loa’s blessing on some enterprise—and Bouasssa grants it, with a bitter laugh.
Her mouth closed, and her eyes resumed their vacant stare, but the men weren’t noticing. An excited chatter erupted from them, to be hushed by Ishmael, with a significant glance at me. Abruptly quiet, they moved away, still muttering, glancing at me as they went.
Ishmael closed his eyes as the last man left the clearing and his shoulders sagged. I felt a trifle drained myself.
“What—” I began, and then stopped. Across the fire, a man had stepped from the shelter of the sugarcane. Jamie, tall as the cane itself, with the dying fire staining shirt and face as red as his hair.
He raised a finger to his lips, and I nodded. I gathered my feet cautiously beneath me, picking up my stained skirt in one hand. I could be up, past the fire, and into the cane with him before Ishmael could reach me. But Margaret?
I hesitated, turned to look at her, and saw that her face had come alive once again. It was lifted, eager, lips parted and shining eyes narrowed so that they seemed slightly slanted, as she stared across the fire.
“Daddy?” said Brianna’s voice beside me.
Shocked and mesmerized, Claire and Jamie listen to the voice of their daughter, speaking through Margaret Campbell’s blood-smeared lips. “Don’t let Mama go alone, ”she tells Jamie. “Go with her.”
But go where? With the vanishing of the loa, Ishmael sends Margaret away in the care of his women, and tells Jamie and Claire to leave themselves, at once. Jamie informs