The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [97]
“They do still hang men—the English,” the abbot said thoughtfully. It wasn’t a question, but Jamie gave an obliging grunt.
“That was the means of dispatch preferred by Esus—hanging or stabbing. Sometimes both!”
“Well, the hanging doesna always answer,” Jamie replied, a little tersely. “Sometimes a man will live, in spite of it. Which,” he added, in hopes of leading the abbot on to the point he seemed to be tending toward, “is why whoever did in your bog-man wrapped the rope around his neck instead. Though I should have thought the bashing and throat-cutting and drowning—assuming he had any breath left to drown with—would have made it certain enough in any case.”
The abbot nodded, unperturbed. The wind was pulling wisps of his white hair loose and causing them to wave about his tonsure, much like the wisps of bog-cotton that grew near the track.
“Teutates,” he said triumphantly. “That’s the name of one of the old tribal gods, at least. Aye, he took his victims into his embrace in the water—drowning in sacred wells and the like. This way.” He had come to a spot where the trackway forked, half of it going off toward the little hillock, the other toward a gaping hole in the bog. That would be where the monks were in the habit of cutting their peats, Jamie supposed—and where they’d found the bog-man, whose grave they were almost certainly heading for.
Why? he wondered uneasily. The abbot’s conversation had implied that this wee expedition had something to do with Jamie’s confession—and, whatever it was, it wasn’t meant to be easy.
But he hadn’t yet been absolved of his sins. And so he followed, as the abbot turned toward the hill.
“I didn’t think I should put him straight back where he came from,” Father Michael explained, flattening the flying wisps of hair with his palm. “Someone cutting peats would just be digging him up again, and the whole wearisome business to do again.”
“So ye put him under the hill,” Jamie said, and a sudden chill went up his back at the phrase. That was in the poem “The King from Under the Hill”—and, to his knowledge, the folk “under the hill” were the Auld Ones, the faerie folk. His mouth was dry from the wind, and he had to swallow before speaking further. Before he could ask his question, though, the abbot bent to take off his sandals and, hiking up the skirts of his robe, skipped on ahead.
“This way,” he called back over his shoulder. “We’ll need to wade the last little bit!”
Muttering—but carefully avoiding blasphemy—Jamie stripped off shoes and stockings and followed the abbot’s footsteps carefully. He was twice the abbot’s size; there was no chance the priest would be able to pull him free, should he strike a shaking quagmire and sink.
The dark water purled up between his toes, cold but not unpleasant on his bare feet. He could feel the springy peat beneath it, spongy, slightly prickling. He sank ankle-deep at each step, but no further, and came ashore on the little hillock with no more damage than a few splashes to his breeks.
“Well, then,” Father Michael said, turning to him. “The difficult part.”
FATHER MICHAEL LED HIM to the top of the little hillock, and there beneath the pine tree was a crude seat, carved out of the native stone. It was blotched with blue and green and yellow lichens and had plainly stood there for centuries.
“This is the High Seat—the árd chnoc—where the kings of this place were confirmed before the old gods,” the priest said, and crossed himself. Jamie did likewise, impressed despite himself. It was a very old place, and the stone seemed to hold a deep silence; even the wind over the bog had died, and he could hear his heart beating in his chest, slow and steady.
Father Michael reached into the leather pouch he wore at his belt and, to Jamie’s disquiet, drew out the gem-studded wooden cup, which he placed gently on the ancient seat.
“I know what you once were,” he said to Jamie, in a conversational tone of voice. “Your uncle Alex would write to me with news of you, during the Rising. You were a great warrior for the king. The rightful