The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [5]
“Have you ever seen anything like that before?” he asked Hal. His brother shook his head, still frowning.
“No. It looks vaguely as though someone had made an effort to transliterate Greek, using the Roman alphabet—but the words certainly aren’t Greek.”
“Nor Hebrew,” Grey said, peering at the first line. “Russian, perhaps? Turkish?”
“Perhaps,” Hal said dubiously. “But why, for God’s sake?”
Grey ran through in his mind what he knew of Carruthers’s career but turned up no particular connections with exotic languages. Neither had Charlie ever struck him as being remarkably well educated; he was always getting into a muddle over his bills when Grey first knew him, through simple inability to add, and his French was fluent but uncouth.
“Everything else in the packet pertains to Siverly and his misdeeds. So logically this must, too.”
“Was Carruthers particularly logical?” Hal eyed the stack of papers. “He’s legible, I’ll give him that. You knew him a great deal better than I, though—what d’you think?”
Grey thought a lot of things, most of which he didn’t intend to speak out loud. He had known Charlie Carruthers fairly well—in the Biblical sense, among others—though for only a short time and that time, more than ten years ago. Their meeting in Canada the year before had been brief—but Charlie had known Grey very well, too. He’d known who to trust with his inflammatory legacy.
“Not particularly logical, no,” he answered slowly. “Rather determined, though. Once he’d made up his mind to something, he’d see it through.”
And he nearly had. In spite of a failing heart, Carruthers had clung to life stubbornly, compiling this damning mass of testimony, determined to bring Major Gerald Siverly to justice.
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” he had whispered in John’s ear, during their last meeting. Grey picked up the little stack of papers and shuffled them neatly into order, smelling in memory the scent of that attic room in Gareon, near Quebec. Pine boards, hot with a stifling turpentine perfume. Soured milk and the moldy sweetness of mouse droppings. The scent of Charlie’s skin, sweating with heat and with illness. The touch of his deformed hand on Grey’s face, a light touch but strong with the force of memory.
“I hunger, John,” he’d said, his breath heavy with approaching death. “And you thirst. You won’t fail me.”
Grey didn’t intend to. With slow deliberation, he tapped the papers on the table, squaring them, and set them neatly down.
“Is there enough here, do you think?” he asked his brother. Enough to cause a general court-martial to be called, he meant—enough to convict Siverly of corruption, of abuse of his office. Of misconduct amounting to the murder of his own men. Siverly did not belong to Hal’s regiment, but he did belong to the army to which Hal—and Grey himself, come to that—had given most of their lives.
“More than enough,” Hal said, rubbing a hand over his chin. It was late in the day; the bristles of his beard made a tiny rasping sound. “If the witnesses can be found. If they’ll speak.” He spoke abstractedly, though, still puzzling over the mysterious sheet.
Do chuir siad na Róisíní Bhán ar an bealach go bua.
Agus iad toilteannach agus buail le híobáirt an teannta ifrinn.
Iad ag leanúint le bealach glór an Bhanríon.
“Do choo-ir see-ad na Royseence …” he read aloud, slowly. “Is it a cipher, do you suppose? Or a code?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes, there is,” Hal said absently. He held it up to the light from the window, presumably to see if anything showed through, then bent and held it over the fire.
Grey stopped his involuntary move to snatch the paper; there were ways of doing secret writing, and most of those showed up with heat. Though why one would add an overtly mysterious code to a paper with hidden writing, thus drawing attention to it …
The paper was beginning to scorch and curl at the edges, but nothing was showing up save the original words, cryptic as ever. Hal pulled it back and dropped it smoking on the desk,