Voyager - Diana Gabaldon [70]
The innkeeper was watching, from his place near the door, peering over Major Grey’s shoulder. Jamie had bent his head and whispered in Duncan’s ear, “All you say will be told to the English. Speak wary.” The landlord’s eyes narrowed, but the distance between them was too far; Jamie was sure he hadn’t heard. Then the Major had turned and ordered the innkeeper out, and he was safe.
He couldn’t tell whether it was the effect of his warning, or only the derangement of fever, but Duncan’s speech wandered with his mind, often incoherent, images of the past overlapping with those of the present. Sometimes he had called Jamie “Dougal,” the name of Colum’s brother, Jamie’s other uncle. Sometimes he dropped into poetry, sometimes he simply raved. And within the ravings and the scattered words, sometimes there was a grain of sense—or more than sense.
“It is cursed,” Duncan whispered. “The gold is cursed. Do ye be warned, lad. It was given by the white witch, given for the King’s son. But the Cause is lost, and the King’s son fled, and she will not let the gold be given to a coward.”
“Who is she?” Jamie asked. His heart had sprung up and choked him at Duncan’s words, and it beat madly as he asked. “The white witch—who is she?”
“She seeks a brave man. A MacKenzie, it is for Himself. MacKenzie. It is theirs, she says it, for the sake of him who is dead.”
“Who is the witch?” Jamie asked again. The word Duncan used was ban-druidh—a witch, a wisewoman, a white lady. They had called his wife that, once. Claire—his own white lady. He squeezed Duncan’s hand tight in his own, willing him to keep his senses.
“Who?” he said again. “Who is the witch?”
“The witch,” Duncan muttered, his eyes closing. “The witch. She is a soul-eater. She is death. He is dead, the MacKenzie, he is dead.”
“Who is dead? Colum MacKenzie?”
“All of them, all of them. All dead. All dead!” cried the sick man, clutching tight to his hand. “Colum, and Dougal, and Ellen, too.”
Suddenly his eyes opened, and fixed on Jamie’s. The fever had dilated his pupils, so his gaze seemed a pool of drowning black.
“Folk do say,” he said, with surprising clarity, “as how Ellen MacKenzie did leave her brothers and her home, and go to wed with a silkie from the sea. She heard them, aye?” Duncan smiled dreamily, the black stare swimming with distant vision. “She heard the silkies singing, there upon the rocks, one, and two, and three of them, and she saw from her tower, one and two, and three of them, and so she came down, and went to the sea, and so under it, to live wi’ the silkies. Aye? Did she no?”
“So folk say,” Jamie had answered, mouth gone dry. Ellen had been his mother’s name. And that was what folk had said, when she had left her home, to elope with Brian Dubh Fraser, a man with the shining black hair of a silkie. The man for whose sake he was himself now called Mac Dubh—Black Brian’s son.
Major Grey stood close, on the other side of the bed, brow furrowed as he watched Duncan’s face. The Englishman had no Gaelic, but Jamie would have been willing to wager that he knew the word for gold. He caught the Major’s eye, and nodded, bending again to speak to the sick man.
“The gold, man,” he said, in French, loud enough for Grey to hear. “Where is the gold?” He squeezed Duncan’s hand as hard as he could, hoping to convey some warning.
Duncan’s eyes closed, and he rolled his head restlessly, to and fro upon the pillow. He muttered something, but the words were too faint to catch.
“What did he say?” the Major demanded sharply. “What?”
“I don’t know.” Jamie patted Duncan’s hand to rouse him. “Speak to me, man, tell me again.”
There was no response save more muttering. Duncan’s eyes had rolled back in his head, so that only a thin line of gleaming white showed beneath the wrinkled lids. Impatient, the Major leaned forward and shook him by one shoulder.
“Wake up!” he said. “Speak to us!”
At once Duncan