The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [8]
“What the devil are you doing, John?”
He withdrew his head reluctantly, drew the window to, and blinked water from his lashes. Hal was staring at him in disapproval, page in hand. There was a dark pink camellia in his buttonhole, leaning drunkenly.
“Enjoying the rain.” He wiped a hand over his face and shook himself a little; his hair was damp, as was his collar and the shoulders of his coat. “Was Minnie able to be of help?”
“Yes.” Hal sounded surprised at the admission. “She says it’s neither a code nor a cipher.”
“That’s helpful? What is it, if it’s neither code nor cipher?”
“She says it’s Erse.”
ERSE. THE WORD GAVE Grey a very odd sensation. Erse was what folk spoke in the Scottish Highlands. It sounded like no other language he’d ever heard—and, barbarous as it was, he was rather surprised to learn that it existed in a written form.
Hal was looking at him speculatively. “You must have heard it fairly often, at Ardsmuir?”
“Heard it, yes. Almost all the prisoners spoke it.” Grey had been governor of Ardsmuir prison for a brief period; as much exile as appointment, in the wake of a near scandal. He disliked thinking about that period of his life, for assorted reasons.
“Did Fraser speak it?”
Oh, God, Grey thought. Not that. Anything but that.
“Yes,” he said, though. He had often overheard James Fraser speaking in his native tongue to the other prisoners, the words mysterious and flowing.
“When did you see him last?”
“Not for some time.” Grey spoke briefly, his voice careful. He hadn’t spoken to the man in more than a year.
Not careful enough; Hal came round in front of him, examining him at close range, as though he might be an unusual sort of Chinese jug.
“He is still at Helwater, is he not? Will you go and ask him about Siverly?” Hal said mildly.
“No.”
“No?”
“I would not piss on him was he burning in the flames of hell,” Grey said politely.
One of Hal’s brows flicked upward, but only momentarily.
“Just so,” he said dryly. “The question, though, is whether Fraser might be inclined to perform a similar service for you.”
Grey placed his cup carefully in the center of the desk.
“Only if he thought I might drown,” he said, and went out.
3
An Irishman, a Gentleman
Helwater
April 2
JAMIE DRESSED AND WENT DOWN TO FORK HAY FOR THE horses, disregarding the dark and the chill in his hands and feet as he worked. An Irishman. A gentleman.
Who the devil could that be? And—if the Irishman existed—what had he to do with Betty? He kent some Irishmen. Such Irish gentlemen as he knew, though, were Jacobites, who’d come to Scotland with Charles Stuart. That thought froze what small parts of him weren’t chilled already.
The Jacobite Cause was dead, and so was the part of his life connected with it.
Have sense, though. What would such a man want with him? He was a paroled prisoner of war, held in menial servitude, not even allowed to use his own notorious name. He was no better than a black slave, save that he couldn’t be sold and no one beat him. He occasionally wished that someone would try, to give him the excuse of violence, but he recognized the desire as idle fantasy and pushed the thought aside.
Beyond that … how did anyone, Jacobite, Irishman, or Hottentot, know where he was? He’d had a letter from his sister in the Highlands only a week before, and she’d certainly have mentioned anyone inquiring after him, let alone an Irishman.
The air of the stable was changing, gray light seeping in through the chinks of the walls. The dark was growing thin and with it the nightly illusion of space and freedom, as the grimy boards of his prison faded into view.
At the end of the row, he put down his pitchfork and, with a hasty glance over his shoulder to be sure neither Hanks nor Crusoe had come down yet,