The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [10]
He could of course entrust such a note to one of the kitchen maids when he had his breakfast, but the fewer people who had to do with this business, the better. He’d try it alone first.
That much tentatively decided, he stopped to wipe his face with the grubby towel that hung on a hook over the bran tub and turned his mind again toward Betty’s Irish gentleman.
Did he exist at all? If he did, what the devil did he want with Alex MacKenzie? Unless, of course, it wasn’t Alex MacKenzie but instead Jamie Fraser whom he—
This embryonic train of thought was severed by a skittering thud and the appearance of Hanks at the foot of the ladder, yellow-jowled and smelling rancid.
“Here, Mac,” he said, trying to sound jovial. “Do me a favor?”
“Aye. What?”
Hanks managed a ghastly half smile.
“Doncher want to know what it is?”
“No.” What he wanted was for Hanks to leave, and now. The man stank as though he were dead inside, and the horses near him were whuffling and snorting in disgust.
“Oh.” Hanks rubbed a trembling hand over his face. “ ’S not much. Just … can you take my string out? I’m not …” The hand fell limp in sweeping illustration of all the things that Hanks was not.
A gust of wind came in cold beneath the stable door, smelling of the coming rain, whirling chaff and straw along the bricks between the boxes. He hesitated. It would be pouring within the hour. He could feel the storm brooding up there on the fells, dark with its gathering.
Rain wouldn’t trouble the horses; they loved it. And the fog would go when the rain fell; no great danger of getting lost.
“Meet him on the fells,” Betty had said. “Where the old shepherd’s hut is.”
“Aye, fine.” He turned his back and began to measure out the bran and flaxseed for the mash. After a moment, he heard Hanks stumble toward the ladder and he half-turned, watching in idle curiosity to see whether the man might fall and break his neck. He didn’t, though.
April 3
In the event, it had rained too hard to get high up on the fells. Jamie had taken his string of horses pounding through the mud of the lakeshore road, then walked them through the shallows of Glassmere to get the worst of it off, then back to be rubbed down and dried. He’d glanced up toward the fells once, but the rain hid the heights where the ruins of the old shepherd’s hut lay.
It was cold on the fells today but bright, and he had no string to fash with. Augustus’s coat steamed from the effort of the climb, and Jamie reined up at the crest of the rocky path to reconnoiter and to let the horse breathe. This high up, the landscape was still patched with winter, rags of frozen snow in the lee of the rocks and dripping icicles still hanging under ledges, but he felt the sun’s warmth on his shoulders and there was a faint haze of green over White Moss, just visible in the distance below.
He’d come up this way, approaching the ruined shepherd’s cottage from behind and above, to give himself an opportunity to look things over. There was no reason to suspect ambush or trap, but instinct had kept him alive so far and he seldom ignored its grim mutterings in his ear.
He’d not been up here in months, but very little changed on the fells, save the weather. There was a small tarn below, rimmed with a crescent of thin ice, last year’s dry reeds poking black through it, not yet supplanted by new growth. The shepherd’s hut was just beyond the tarn. So ruined was it that from the water’s level you’d never see it, taking it for no more than another heap of lichened stones. From above, though, the square foundation was clearly visible—and, in one corner, something flapped in the wind. Canvas, maybe? There was a bundle of some kind there, he was almost sure.
Nothing moved below save the flapping canvas and the wind in the last of winter’s grass. He slid off Augustus and hobbled him, leaving the gelding to nose among the rocks for what might be found there. He walked a short way along the ridge for a better view and, emerging from behind a jutting outcrop, saw the man sitting on a rock, thirty feet below him, also watching