The Scottish Prisoner - Diana Gabaldon [99]
“Is there a lang stone like that one somewhere nearby?” he asked, lifting his chin toward the cup. The cleft stone carved into its bowl wasn’t visible from where he stood, but there was a feeling on the back of his neck like a cool wind blowing—and the boughs of the little pine tree were still.
Father Michael was disconcerted by this sudden change of subject.
“I—why … Aye, there is.” He turned his head toward the west, where the sun was slowly sinking behind a scrim of cloud, red as a fresh-fired cannonball, and pointed beyond the edge of the bog. “A mile or so that way. There’s a wee circle of stones, standing in a field. One of them is cleft like that.” He turned back, looking curiously at Jamie. “Why?”
Why, indeed. Jamie’s mouth was dry and he swallowed, but without much effect. Must he tell the priest exactly why he was certain that this effort to restore the Stuarts would not succeed, any more than the Rising in Scotland had?
No, he decided. He wouldn’t. Claire was his, alone. There was nothing sinful in his love for her, nothing that concerned Father Michael, and he meant to keep her to himself.
Beyond that, he thought wryly, if I told him, he’d be convinced I’d lost my wits—or was trying to feign madness to wriggle out of this foolish coil.
“Why did ye bring that here?” he asked, ignoring the priest’s question and nodding at the cup.
Father Michael looked at him for a time without answering, then lifted one shoulder.
“If you should be the man that God has chosen for the task, then I meant to give it to you, to use as you thought best. If you are not …” He squared his shoulders under the black broadcloth of his habit. “Then I shall give it back to its original owner.”
“I am not, Father,” Jamie said. “I canna touch the thing. Perhaps it’s a sign that I am not the man.”
The look of curiosity returned. “Do you … feel his presence? The bog-man? Now?”
“I do.” He did, too; the sense of someone standing behind him was back and had about it something of … eagerness? Desperation? He could not say what it was exactly, but it was bloody unsettling.
Was the dead man one like Claire? Was that the meaning of the carving in the bowl? If so, what fate had come upon him, to leave him here, in this place of desolation, far from wherever he had come?
Doubt seized him suddenly in jaws of iron. What if she had not made it back through the stones, back to safety? What if she, like the man who lay beneath the black waters here, had gone astray? Horror clenched his fists so tightly that the nails cut into his palms, and he kept them so, clung to the realness of the physical pain with stubborn force, so that he might dismiss the much more painful thought as something unreal, insubstantial.
Lord, that she might be safe! he prayed in agony. She and the child!
“Absolve me, Father,” he whispered. “I would go now.”
The abbot’s lips pressed tight, reluctant, and the hair trigger of Jamie’s temper went off.
“Do you think to blackmail me by withholding absolution? Ye blackguard priest! You would betray your vows and your office for the sake of—”
Father Michael stopped him with an upraised hand. He glared at Jamie for a moment, unmoving, then traced the sign of the cross in the air, in sharp, precise movements.
“Ego te absolvo, in nomine Patris—”
“I’m sorry, Father,” Jamie blurted. “I shouldna have spoken to ye like that. I—”
“We’ll count that as part of your confession, shall we?” murmured Father Michael. “Say the rosary every day for a month; there’s your penance.” The shadow of a wry smile crossed his face, and he finished, “et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.” He lowered his hand and spoke normally.
“I didn’t think to ask how long it had been since your last confession. D’you remember how the Act of Contrition goes, or had I best help you?” It was said seriously, but Jamie saw the trace of the leprechaun lurking in those bright green eyes. Father Michael folded his hands and bowed his head, as much to hide a smile as for piety.
“Mon Dieu, je regrette …” He said it in French, as he always had. And as it always