The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [190]
He didn’t want to think about Percy. Obligingly, his thoughts veered straight back in the direction of Jamie Fraser.
Will you bloody go away? he thought irritably, and jerked his attention firmly to the sight before him: people were crammed into every crevice of the chapel, sitting on anything they could find. The white breath of the crowd mingled with the smell of smoke from the torches in the nave. If Hal did pass out, Grey thought, he wouldn’t fall down; there wasn’t room. Nonetheless, he moved closer, his elbow brushing Hal’s.
“At least now we’ll have a ruler who speaks English. More or less.” Walpole’s cynical remark drew Grey’s wandering eye to the heir—the king, he should say. The new George looked just like all the Hanovers, he thought, the beaky nose and heavy-lidded, gelid eyes undiluted by any softer maternal influence; doubtless they’d all looked that way for a thousand years and would do so for another thousand. George III was only twenty-two, though, and Grey wondered how well he might withstand the influence of his uncle Cumberland, should the latter decide to shift his concerns from horse racing to politics.
Though perhaps his health would not recover enough to allow any meddling. He looked almost as ill as Hal did. Grey didn’t suppose that the outcome of Siverly’s court-martial had actually caused Cumberland to have a paralytic stroke, but the timing was coincidental.
The anthem plodded toward a conclusion, and people began to draw breath in relief—but it was a false amnesty; the ponderous refrain started up again, this time sung by a bevy of angel-faced little boys, and the audience relapsed into glazed endurance. Perhaps the point of funerals was to exhaust the mourners, thus numbing the more exigent emotions.
In spite of the tedium, Grey found something reassuring about the service, with its sheer solidity, its insistence upon permanence in the face of transience, the reliability of succession. Life was fragile, but life went on. King to king, father to son …
Father to son. And with that thought, all the disconnected, fragmentary, scattered fancies in his brain dropped suddenly into a single, vivid image: Jamie Fraser, seen from the back, looking over the horses in the paddock at Helwater. And beside him, standing on a rail and clinging to a higher one, William, Earl of Ellesmere. The alert cock of their heads, the set of their shoulders, the wide stance—just the same. If one had eyes to see, it was plain as the nose on the new king’s face.
And now a great sense of peace filled his soul, as the anthem at last came to an end and a huge sigh filled the abbey. He remembered Jamie’s face as they rode in to Helwater, alight as they saw the women on the lawn—with William.
He’d suspected it when he’d found Fraser in the chapel with Geneva Dunsany’s coffin, just before her funeral. But now he knew, beyond doubt. Knew, too, why Fraser did not desire his freedom.
A sudden poke in the back jerked him from his revelation.
“I do believe Pardloe’s going to die,” Walpole said. A small, neat hand came through the narrow gap between the Grey brothers, holding a corked glass vial. “Would you care to use my salts?”
Startled, Grey looked at his brother. Hal’s face was white as a sheet and running with sweat, his eyes huge and dilated, absolutely black with pain. He was swaying. Grey grabbed the salts with one hand, Hal’s arm with the other.
By the combined effect of smelling salts and force of will, Hal remained on his feet, and the service came mercifully to an end ten minutes later.
George Grenville had come in a sedan chair, and his bearers were waiting on the embankment. Grenville generously put these at Hal’s service, and he was taken off at the trot for Argus House, nearly insensible. Grey took leave of his friends as soon as he decently could and made his own way home on foot.
The dark streets near the abbey were thronged with the people of London, come out to pay their respects; they would file through all night, and much of the next day, before the vault was sealed again. Within a