The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [138]
“D’ye want me to search the house?”
Grey’s eyes were on Twelvetrees, and he saw the man’s nostrils flare, his lips compress in disgust—but there was no hint of agitation or fear in his red-rimmed eyes.
“No,” Jamie said, echoing Grey’s thoughts. “He’s right; he’s carried it away already.”
“You’re quite good at this business of outlawry,” Grey said dryly.
“Aye, well. I’ve had practice.” The Scot had a small collection of singed papers in his hand. He carefully pulled one free and handed it to Grey.
“I think this is the only one that might be of interest, my lord.”
It was written in a different hand, but Grey recognized the sheet at once. It was the Wild Hunt poem—and he did wonder where the devil the rest of it was; why only this one page?—much singed and smeared with ash.
“Why—” he began, but then, seeing Fraser jerk his chin upward, turned the paper over. He heard Twelvetrees’s breath hiss in, but paid no attention.
The Wild Hunt
Capt. Ronald Dougan
Wm. Scarry Spender
Robert Wilson Bishop
Fordham O’Toole
Èamonn Ó Chriadha
Patrick Bannion Laverty
Grey whistled softly through his teeth. He knew none of the names on the list but had a good idea what it was—an idea reinforced by the look of fury on Twelvetrees’s face. He wouldn’t go back to Hal quite empty-handed.
If he wasn’t mistaken, what he held in his hand was a list of conspirators, almost certainly Irish Jacobites. Someone—had it been Fraser or himself?—had suggested that the Wild Hunt poem was a recognition signal, and he had wondered at the time, a signal for whom? Here was the answer—or part of one. Men who did not know one another personally would recognize others in their group by the showing of the poem—on its face a bit of half-finished, innocuous verse, but in reality a code, readable by those who held the key.
Fraser nodded casually toward Twelvetrees. “Is there anything ye want me to beat out of him?”
Twelvetrees’s eyes sprang wide. Grey wanted to laugh, in spite of everything, but didn’t.
“The temptation is considerable,” he said. “But I doubt the experiment would prove productive. Just keep him there, if you would, while I have a quick look round.”
He could tell from Twelvetrees’s dour expression that there was nothing further to be found in the house, but, for form’s sake, he went through the desk and the bookshelves and made a brief foray upstairs with a candlestick, in case Siverly should have kept anything secret in his bedchamber.
He felt a strong sense of oppression, walking through the empty darkness of the house, and something akin to sadness, standing in the dead man’s chamber. The servants had stripped the bed, rolled up the mattress, and tidily covered the furniture in dust sheets. Only the moving gleam of candlelight from the damask wallpaper gave a hint of life.
He felt curiously empty, as though he himself might be a ghost, viewing the remnants of his own life without emotion. The heat and excitement of his confrontation with Twelvetrees had quite drained away, leaving a sense of flatness in its wake. There was nothing further he could do here; he could not arrest Twelvetrees or compel answers from him. Whatever might yet be discovered, the end of the matter was that Siverly was dead, and his crimes with him.
“And his place shall know him no more,” he said softly, and the words fell and vanished among the silent shapes of the sleeping furniture. He turned and left, leaving the door open on darkness.
SECTION IV
A Tithe to Hell
29
The Wild Hunt
THEY STRAGGLED INTO LONDON ON THE LATE MAIL COACH, unwashed, unshaven, and smelling strongly of vomit. The channel crossing had again been rough, and even Grey had been sick.
“If you can hold on to your stomach when all about you are losing theirs …” he muttered, thinking that this would be a good line for a poem. He must remember to tell Harry; perhaps he could think of a decent rhyme. “Boozing lairs” was the only thing that came to his own mind, and the thought of boozing kens, dark cellars full of drunken,