The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [121]
It might conceivably work. God knew, much madder schemes had.
“But they canna hold out for very long, even wi’ the king’s person to bargain with,” Jamie pointed out. “What if there’s some delay in Charles Stuart coming wi’ the new army from Ireland?” Some delay, he thought, remembering all too well what it took to assemble even an ill-equipped rabble, let alone feed and transport them. And that was reckoning without the Bonnie Prince himself—a weak reed for a revolution to lean upon, and surely to God Quinn must know that much. Or was that what the conspiracy counted upon?
“We thought of that,” Quinn said importantly, and Jamie wondered just who “we” were. Could he get Quinn to tell him names? “There are fallbacks. The regiments in London don’t stir a step until they’ve heard the word.”
“Oh, aye? And what word is that?”
Quinn grinned at him and shook his head.
“Never you mind that, laddie. It’s a mark of the great trust I bear ye that I’ve told ye what I have—but ’tis more than my life’s worth to say more just yet.” He leaned back and a loud fart ripped the air beneath him, surprising him.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
Despite the recent hair-raising revelations, Jamie laughed. Tom stirred at the sound, and a popping noise like distant gunfire emerged from the mound of wet blankets. Quinn glanced at Jamie, eyebrow raised.
“Three’s a lucky number, so it is.”
JOHN GREY HAD SOME experience of prisons but had never been a guest of one. As such establishments went, the cell to which he’d been shown was fairly reasonable: there was no one else in the tiny room, the slop bucket was empty and dry, and there was a small, barred window. The walls oozed damp—why not, everything else in Ireland did—but there were no puddles on the floor, and while there was neither bed nor pallet, there was a wadded blanket in one corner of the room. He was glad to see it; the cell was bloody cold and his clothes were damp, his linen clammy; the heavens had opened on them an hour before they reached Athlone.
He paced the dimensions of the cell: eight feet by ten. If he were to walk seven hundred lengths of the cell, that would be approximately a mile. He shook out the blanket, dislodging a dead cricket, two live moths, and the broken fragments of what had once been a cockroach. What the devil had eaten it? he wondered. Rats?
Suddenly very tired, he sat down on the floor and pulled the blanket round his shoulders, shivering. He’d had time to think, riding to Athlone. He thought he’d have quite a bit more now but didn’t expect it to do him much good.
It was both good luck and bad that Sir Melchior was gone. Bad, as it meant that the sergeant of the garrison had locked Grey up, because the deputy justiciar had not yet arrived, and the sergeant refused to summon the magistrate from the town until the morning. Good, as Sir Melchior or his deputy would very likely have questioned Grey—rather awkward—and then either put him under guard or demanded his parole, either of which would have kept him from getting back to Siverly’s house or making his own investigation into Siverly’s death.
His main concern was for Edward Twelvetrees. There had been no sign of the man, and none of the servants had mentioned his being there. Had he been