The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [108]
Had the time come for that? He thought not yet. He’d take with him not only the poem but a few selected sheets from Carruthers’s packet and, depending upon Siverly’s reception of him, would decide whether—and which—to show him. Showing the poem would link him immediately with Jamie Fraser, and thus perhaps threaten Siverly. If he could persuade Siverly to go back to England voluntarily, that was by far the best result. But if not … He brooded for a bit, but he was sick of thinking of Siverly, and his mind wandered. The scent of onions had subsided to a pleasant odor that conjured thoughts of supper. It was very late. Perhaps he should go down; he could have the girl bring something up for Fraser.…
Once more he saw the woman’s hands, gentle on Fraser’s face and body, and the big Scot turning at once to her touch, a stranger’s touch. Only because she was a woman. If he himself had ventured to touch the man …
But I have. If not directly. The open neck of the shirt had slipped back, and the faint glimmer of the scars showed once more.
Jamie’s head turned, and his eyes opened, as though he had felt the pressure of Grey’s gaze. He didn’t speak but lay quiet, meeting John’s eyes. Grey was conscious all at once of the silence; the pub’s customers had all gone home, the landlord and his family retired for the night.
“I’m sorry,” he said, very softly.
“Ego te absolvo,” Fraser murmured, and shut his eyes.
22
Glastuig
THE BAY GELDING WAS LAME IN THE RIGHT FORE, AND JOHN Grey had declined to ride the unfortunate Bedelia, on grounds that she would be instantly recognized, thus establishing a link between himself and Jamie Fraser and causing Major Siverly to smell a rat. He therefore walked the two miles from Beckett’s inn to Siverly’s estate, Glastuig, reciting Latin poetry as a means of keeping his thoughts off the impending meeting.
He’d done what planning was possible. Once the strategy and tactics of a battle were decided, you put it out of your mind until you came to the field and saw what was what. Trying to fight a battle in your head was pointless and did nothing but fret the nerves and exhaust the energies.
He’d had a hearty breakfast of black pudding and buttered eggs with toasted soda bread, washed down with Mr. Beckett’s very good beer. Thus internally fortified, and dressed in a country gentleman’s good wool suit—complete with gaiters to save his lisle stockings from the mud—and with several documents carefully stowed in separate pockets, he was armed and ready.
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc, unde negant redire quemquam.
Now he goes along the dark road, thither whence they say
no man returns.
It was a very beautiful morning, and a small group of pigs were enjoying it to the maximum, snorting and rooting under a tumbled stone wall. Aside from these, the landscape seemed entirely empty, until after a mile or so a woman in a shawl came past him in the lane, leading an ass with a small boy sitting on it. He lifted his hat politely to the woman and wished her good morning. All of them stared at him, the woman and the boy turning round in order to keep staring after they’d passed him. Possibly strangers were not common in the neighborhood, he thought.
This conclusion was borne out when he rapped his walking stick on the door of Siverly’s manor, and a weedy-looking young butler with astonishingly vivid ginger hair and a large quantity of freckles blinked at him as though he’d sprung out from behind a mushroom.
“I’ve come to call upon Major Siverly,” Grey said politely. “My name is Grey.”
“Is it?” said the butler uncertainly. “You’re an Englishman, I daresay?”
“Yes, it is,” Grey assured him. “And, yes, I am. Is your master at home?”
“Well, he is, then, but—” The man glanced over his shoulder at a closed door on the far side of a spacious foyer. “Oh!” A thought seemed to strike him, and he looked back