The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [175]
She stood for some minutes, holding on to the branch, head bowed, breathing with a thickness in the sound. He’d thought she was fond of the man.
“Were you with him?” she said at last, not looking at him.
“If I had been, I should have stopped him.”
She turned round then, lips pressed tight.
“Not then. Were you with him when you … went away?” Her fingers fluttered briefly.
“Yes. Some of the time.”
“The soldiers who took you—did they catch him?”
“No.” He understood what she was asking: whether it was the prospect of captivity, transportation, or hanging that had made Toby do it.
“Then why?” she cried, fists curling. “Why would he do it?”
He swallowed, seeing again the tiny dark room and smelling blood and excrement. Seeing “Teind” on the wall.
“Despair,” he said quietly.
She made a small huffing sound, shaking her head doggedly to and fro.
“He was a Papist. Despair’s a sin to a Papist, isn’t it?”
“Folk do a great many things they think are sins.”
She made a little noise through her nose.
“Yes, they do.” She stood for a moment staring at the stones in the walk, then looked up suddenly at him, fierce. “I don’t understand at all how he could have—what made him despair?”
Oh, God. Guide my tongue.
“Ye ken he was a Jacobite, aye? Well, there was a plot he was involved in—a great matter, with great consequences, did it either fail or succeed. It failed, and the heart went out o’ the man.”
She let out her breath in a sigh that sank her shoulders, seeming to deflate before his eyes. She shook her head.
“Men,” she said flatly. “Men are fools.”
“Aye, well … ye’re no wrong there,” he said ruefully, hoping that she would not ask whether he had been involved in the great matter—or why the soldiers had taken him to start with.
He needed to go before the conversation became personal. She took his hand again, though, holding it between both of hers, and he could see that she was about to say something he didn’t want her to say. He’d shifted his weight, about to pull loose, when he heard footsteps on the walk behind him, heavy and quick.
“What’s going on here?” Sure enough, it was Roberts, face flushed and lowering. Jamie could have kissed the man.
“I brought sad news to Mistress Betty,” he said quickly, taking back his hand. “The death of a kinsman.”
Roberts looked back and forth between them, clearly suspicious, but Betty’s air of shock and desolation was unfeigned and obvious. Roberts, who was not, after all, a stupid man, went rapidly to her, taking her by the arm and bending solicitously down to her.
“Are you all right, my dear?”
“I—yes. It’s only … oh, poor Toby!”
Betty was not stupid, either, and burst into tears, burying her face in Roberts’s shoulder.
Jamie, being the third wise party present, silently praised God and backed hastily away, murmuring inconsequent regrets.
The wind was cold outside the shelter of the kitchen garden, but he was sweating. He made his way back toward the stables, nodding to Keren-happuch, who was standing outside the kitchen garden, holding a vegetable basin and waiting patiently for the godless behavior inside the walls to cease.
“A death, was it?” she said, having obviously come along to ensure that his aim had not been wicked canoodling, after all.
“A sad death. Would ye say a prayer, maybe, for the soul of Tobias Quinn?”
A look of surprised distaste crossed her face.
“For a Papist?” she said.
“For a poor sinner.”
She pushed out her thin lips, considering, but reluctantly nodded. “I suppose so.”
He nodded, touched her shoulder in thanks, and went on his way.
The Church did call despair a sin, and suicide an unforgivable sin, as the sinner could not repent. A suicide was therefore condemned to hell, and prayers thus useless. But neither Keren nor Betty was a Papist, and perhaps their Protestant prayers might be heard.
For himself, he prayed each night for Quinn. After all, he