Текст книги "The Scottish Prisoner"
Автор книги: Diana Gabaldon
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Исторические приключения
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 27 страниц)
He made to turn on his heel, but Grey, moved by impulse, put out a hand and grasped his sleeve.
“A moment, Captain, if you please.” He groped with his free hand for his waistcoat pocket and pulled out another sheet of paper—one of the copies of the Wild Hunt verse. “Look at this.”
Twelvetrees looked as though he meant to jerk away, but instead seized the paper impatiently and opened it.
He didn’t even read it but turned pale at sight of the words.
“Where did you get this?” he said, his voice nearly a whisper.
“From Charlie Carruthers,” Grey said. “I see you recognize it. Do you—”
He never got to complete the sentence. Twelvetrees shoved the paper into his chest so hard that he took a step backward to avoid falling. He caught his balance, but Twelvetrees was already striding away across the little flagstone walk. Grey caught sight of a snail on the stone. Twelvetrees’s shoe came down upon the animal with an audible crunch. He paid no attention but forged blindly on, leaving a small, wet stain glimmering on the flags.
23
Plan B
THE NEXT DAY DAWNED SULLEN AND OVERCAST BUT NOT actually raining. Yet. Grey dressed carefully in his uniform, Tom Byrd assisting him with the same sense of solemn ceremony as though preparing Grey for battle. Leather stock, gorget, polished boots … Grey hesitated for a moment over wearing his dagger, but in the end, thinking of Siverly’s attack on Jamie Fraser, put it in his belt.
Fraser leaned against the window frame, half-sitting on the sill, watching the preparations with a small frown. He’d offered to go with Grey, but John had declined, thinking that his presence could not but inflame Siverly. It was going to be a sufficiently sticky interview without introducing further complications.
“If I don’t come back,” he told Fraser at the door, “you have my explicit permission to do whatever you like to Siverly.” He’d meant it as a joke, but the Scotsman nodded soberly.
“I’ll take your body home to your brother.”
Tom Byrd made a horrified noise, but Grey smiled, affecting to think this a witty riposte to his own feeble jest.
“Yes, you do that,” he said, and went downstairs, bootheels thumping.
The butler at Glastuig opened the door to him, eyes wide at seeing him in his uniform.
“I will see your master, if you please,” Grey informed him, stepping inside without invitation. “Where is he?”
The butler gave way, flustered.
“The master’s not in the house, sir!”
“Where is he, then?”
The man’s mouth worked for a moment and he glanced from side to side, looking for a suitable answer, but he was too discomposed by the uniform to lie.
“Why … he’s out in the summerhouse, to be sure. He often sits out there of a morning. But he—”
Grey nodded and turned on his heel, leaving the butler dithering behind him.
He walked across the lawn toward the folly, rehearsing what to say—and thinking what to do next if his reasoning did not move Siverly. He had very little expectation that it would, but he owed it to his own sense of fairness to give the man a chance to come back voluntarily.
If not … then he’d come back under arrest. The slightly sticky part being that Grey had no formal authority in Ireland, still less the authority to arrest anyone, and Siverly almost certainly knew that. Grey could do it legally, by requesting the justiciar at Athlone to send a party of soldiers to bring Siverly to the castle—if the justiciar saw the matter in the same light—there to be formally handed over to Grey, who would then serve as a military escort to see Siverly into the custody of the British army.
This supposed, though, that Siverly would remain in situ while Grey rode to Athlone and back, that the justiciar’s deputy (the justiciar being presumably a-wooing in France at the moment) would be moved by the force of Grey’s argument to arrest an obviously wealthy and locally esteemed man and then submit him to the mercies of a foreign government, and that Siverly would in turn meekly submit to the justiciar’s men. Frankly, Grey thought the odds low on all three fronts.
The alternative was summary arrest—well, kidnapping, if you wanted to be blunt about it—carried out by Grey and Jamie Fraser, with Tom Byrd holding the horses. Grey was strongly inclined to favor this line of action, and he knew that Fraser would be only too pleased to assist him.
While it had the appeal of directness—plus the additional charming possibility of collateral damage sustained by Siverly in the course of resisting arrest—he didn’t delude himself that it would be simple. They’d have to get Siverly across half of Ireland and onto a ship without attracting undue attention—in a country where he spoke the local language and they didn’t.
“Needs must when the devil drives,” he muttered, and stamped heavily up the steps of the folly, in order to give Siverly fair warning of his advent. He thought he heard movement inside, but as his head came above the top of the steps, the folly appeared to be empty.
He’d been a soldier for a long time, though, and the sense of danger struck him so acutely that he ducked before realizing consciously that anything was wrong. Crouched on the steps with his heart hammering, he grasped his dagger and listened for all he was worth. He heard a loud rustling of the shrubbery behind the folly and instantly leapt up, ran down the steps and round the folly.
Siverly had made it into the ornamental wood; Grey couldn’t see the man, but he heard the snap and crunch of a body forcing its way through undergrowth in a hurry. Follow, or go round?
He hesitated for no more than an instant, then ran to the left. The man must be heading for the stables; he could cut him off.
He vaguely saw servants in the distance, pointing at him and shouting, but paid them no mind. He’d lost his hat, but that didn’t matter, either. He galloped through the kitchen garden, leaping a basket of turnip greens set dead in the middle of the walk, and dodging the openmouthed cook who’d set it there.
The gate was shut, and he didn’t bother fumbling for the latch but seized it with both hands and vaulted over, feeling an absurd rush of fierce pleasure in the feat. A short, destructive dash through a terrace of rosebushes, and the stables loomed ahead of him. The big sliding door was closed; Siverly hadn’t got out yet. He wrenched the door open and charged into the dim-lit stable, where his tumultuous advent startled a number of horses, who snorted and whinnied, dancing and curvetting in their stalls. He ignored them all and stood panting in the center of the aisle, facing the door at the opposite end.
The guilty flee where no man pursueth. The words came to him and he would have laughed, if he’d had breath. He hadn’t wanted any more proof of Siverly’s guilt, but this open admission by flight would give Grey the excuse to make an immediate arrest.
It occurred to him vaguely that Siverly outweighed him by at least three stone and might be armed, but he dismissed the thought. He had the advantage of surprise here, and meant to use it. He took up a position to the side of the sliding door and stepped into a narrow alcove used for storing tack.
The horses had calmed down, still snorting and bobbing their heads but now beginning to munch hay again. He heard the rumbling as the sliding door opened—but it was the wrong door, the one he’d come in by. He risked a quick glance out of his hiding place but saw only a groom, pitchfork and manure shovel in hand. He ducked back, muttering, “Shit,” under his breath. He didn’t need a witness, let alone one armed with a pitchfork, who would likely come to his master’s aid.
The groom’s eyes flicked from side to side, though, instantly sensing something amiss among the horses. He dropped the shovel with a clang and advanced toward Grey’s end of the stable, fork held menacingly before him.
“Come on! Let’s be havin’ ye out of there!”
Not much help for it. Grey tucked his dagger out of sight and stepped out into the aisle.
“Good morning,” he said pleasantly. “Is your master about?”
The groom halted, blinking at this crimson-clad apparition.
“And who the divil are you? Sir,” he added uncertainly.
“An acquaintance of Major Siverly’s. Grey is my name,” he added helpfully.
The man, middle-aged and possessed of a head like a cannonball, paused, blinking suspiciously. Grey wondered whether he’d ever met an Englishman—but of course he must have; Edward Twelvetrees had visited here.
“How does your honor come to be in the stable, eh?” The pitchfork stayed steady. Surely the idiot didn’t take him for a horse thief?
“The butler told me Major Siverly was here, of course.” Grey allowed a certain impatience to creep into his tone, all too aware that Siverly himself might come in at any moment. So much for his ambush! He’d just have to put the best face on it he could and inveigle Siverly into walking back to the house with him. Once out of pitchfork reach …
“Himself’s not here.”
“Yes, I noticed that. I’ll … um … look for him outside.” Before he could be forcibly escorted out with a pitchfork aimed at the seat of his breeches, he whirled on his heel and strode briskly toward the door. The groom came after him, but slowly.
He was mentally cursing his luck and trying to think how best to deal with Siverly—but was saved the effort, as Siverly was not in fact advancing on the stable. A paddock and a field lay between the stable and the little wood where the folly stood, and both were empty.
Grey said a bad word.
“Your honor?” said the groom, startled.
“Are all the horses in the stable?” he demanded, turning on the groom. The man eyed him narrowly, but the pitchfork was now resting tines on the ground, thank God. The groom scratched his head slowly.
“What would they be doing there, for all love? There’s Bessie and Clover out with the big wagon, and the gray mare and her colt with the others in the upper field, and—”
“Saddle horses, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, saddle horses, is it?” The groom was at last beginning to be moved by his urgency, and wrinkled his brow. He squinted off to the left, where Grey perceived several horses switching their tails in a distant field. “Well, there’s the four up there—that’s Richard Lionheart, and Istanbul, and Marco, and—”
“Will you just for God’s sake tell me if any are missing?” Grey’s urgency was taking on a sense of nightmare, the sort of dream where one strove to make progress through some sucking bog, only to encounter the walls of an endless maze.
“No, your honor.” Before the words were fully out of the groom’s mouth, Grey was striding back toward the folly, the sense of nightmare growing.
It wasn’t Siverly’s alarm at his presence that he’d sensed on the steps of the folly. It was acute, impending danger, a sense of harm. He was running now, ignoring the groom’s shout behind him.
He took the steps of the folly in two great strides, smelling it before he saw it, what he must have smelled faintly before, but so much stronger now, and his foot came down in the blood and slid out from under him. He waved his arms, staggering to keep his balance, and fetched up hard against the railing of the folly, breathless and choked with the smell of it, the whiff of death now full-blown and reeking at his feet.
24
Clishmaclaver
JAMIE HAD BORROWED A BOOK FROM PARDLOE’S LIBRARY, A pocket edition of Homer’s Iliad, in Greek. He’d not read Greek in some years, and thought perhaps to renew his acquaintance with the language, but distraction of mind was interfering with his concentration.
Not thus the lion glories in his might,
Nor panther braves his spotted foe in fight,
Nor thus the boar (those terrors of the plain;)
Man only vaunts his force, and vaunts in vain.
He’d last spoken Greek in Ardsmuir prison, trading bits of Aristophanes with Lord John over a makeshift supper of porridge and sliced ham, the rations being short even in the governor’s quarters, owing to a storm that had kept regular supplies from being delivered. There had been claret to wash it down with, though, and it had been a cordial evening. He’d taken care of the bits of business that needed to be done on behalf of the prisoners, and then they’d played chess, a long, drawn-out duel that had lasted nearly ’til dawn. Grey had won, at last, and had hesitated, glancing at the battered sofa in his office, clearly wondering whether he might offer Jamie the use of it, rather than send him back to the cells for an hour’s sleep before the prisoners rose.
Jamie had appreciated the thought, but it wouldn’t do, and he’d set his face impassively, bowed correctly, and bade Lord John good night, himself rapping on the doorframe to summon the dozing guard.
“Merde,”he said under his breath. He’d been sitting on the bench outside the inn, gazing down the road with the book open on his knee, for God knew how long. Now it had come on to rain, and wee drops stippled the page, brushing soft against his face.
He wiped the page hastily with his sleeve and went inside, putting the book in his pocket. Tom Byrd was sitting by the hearth, helping young Moira Beckett wind her fresh-dyed yarn. He’d been making sheep’s eyes at Moira, but at the sound of Jamie’s entrance, his head swiveled round like a compass needle.
Jamie shook his head slightly, and Tom grimaced, but then turned back to Moira.
“D’you know what time it is, Miss Beckett?” Tom asked politely.
“About half-three, so it is,” she replied, looking a little startled. Jamie suppressed a smile. She’d turned her head to look out the window at the light, just as Jamie had when Tom asked the question. The notion that anyone would not be able to know what time it was by the light was clearly foreign to her, but Tom was a Londoner bred and born, and thus never out of hearing of the bells of one church or another.
“I s’pose his lordship must be having a good visit with his friend,” Tom offered, looking to Jamie for confirmation.
“Aye, well, I hope he had a more cordial reception than I did.” Grey had left for Glastuig just after ten; it was no more than a half hour’s ride. Five hours was surely a portent of something, but whether it might be good news or bad …
He shook his head and went upstairs. He sat by the window and opened his book again, but could not bend either eye or mind to the tragedy of Hector’s ignominious death.
If it came to him having to go back to England with Grey’s body and deliver him to Pardloe … he might just take Quinn at his offer and run, he thought. But surely the wee fool would have been on his guard, knowing what had happened to him? After all—
He sat up straight, his eye catching the flicker of movement far down the road. It wasn’t Grey, though; it was a man on foot, half-running, with the hitching, lolloping gait of one forcing himself past his bodily limits.
He was down the stairs and out the door, Tom Byrd on his heels, by the time the runner came within hailing distance, and they rushed to him, supporting him.
Quinn was deathly pale, drenched in sweat, and gasping for breath.
“I think ye’d best come, Jamie. Your friend’s killed Major Siverly, and the constable’s after arresting him.”
THERE WAS A KNOT of people standing on the lawn, most of them gesticulating. There was a man in a sober cloth coat and good cocked hat who seemed to be in charge of the proceedings—Jamie supposed this must be the constable. Most of the other folk there were obviously the servants of the house, all talking at once and waving their arms. And in the midst of it all stood John Grey, looking vastly irritated.
He was disheveled, his hair coming out of its plait, and there were smears of mud on his uniform– Tom Byrd willna care for that, Jamie thought automatically. He was right; beside him, Tom gave a small squeak of outrage, and Jamie put his hand on the lad’s arm to keep him quiet.
Making his way cautiously toward the little knot of people, he kept out of sight as much as he might, until he should determine how best to be of help. From twenty feet away, he saw that Grey’s wrists were bound together in front of him and that the dark smears on his boots and breeks were blood, not dirt.
Grey was saying something, his voice pitched loud to be heard over the clishmaclaver, but Jamie couldn’t make out what he said. Grey turned away from the constable, shaking his head in disgust—and his eye caught Jamie’s. His face went from anger to calculation in an instant, and he made a brief, violent shooing gesture with one hand. “Go away,”it said, clear as day.
“What are they going to do with him?” Tom whispered urgently in Jamie’s ear.
“I dinna ken.” Jamie faded back a step or two into the shrubbery. “They’ve arrested him, Quinn said. Maybe they’ll take him to the local gaol.”
“They can’t do that!”
He glanced at Tom, whose round face was set in indignation, fists clenched at his sides.
“Aye, well, wait and see.” Thoughts were running through his mind, trying to make out what it was Grey wanted him to do.
“Go out where he can see ye, wee Byrd,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the scene. “They’ll let ye near him, I think, as ye’re his servant.”
Tom gave him a wild look, but then drew himself up and nodded manfully. He stepped out of the shrubbery and walked toward the group, and Jamie saw Grey’s expression of annoyance and anxiety ease a little. His own eased, as well; he’d guessed right, then.
There was a good bit of palaver and some shoving, the servants trying to keep Tom Byrd away from Grey. The young valet stood his ground, though, and Grey added his own insistence, scowling and gesturing at the constable with his bound hands. The constable looked slow and suspicious, but he had an air about him of authority; when he lifted a hand for silence, the magpie chatter ceased.
“You’re this man’s valet, ye say?” Jamie could just hear, above the patter of rain on the leaves and the servants’ muttering.
“I am, sir.” Tom Byrd bowed deeply. “Will you let me talk to him, please?”
The constable glanced from Tom Byrd to Grey, then back. He stood in thought for some moments, but then nodded.
“Aye, go ahead. You lot!” He lifted his chin imperiously at the servants. “I want to speak to the person who found the body.”
There was a general shifting and glancing to and fro, but then a maid stepped out of the throng, pushed by two of her fellow servants. She looked wild, her eyes showing white like a spooked horse, and her hands wrapped in her apron, strangling it.
“Was it you found your master, then? Go on, now, there’s naught to fear,” the constable said, in a tone that he probably thought was reassuring. He might as well have said that he proposed to take her straight to the hangman, for the maid wailed in terror and threw the mangled apron over her head.
One of the men with her appeared to be her husband, for he put an arm around her and stuck out his chin—trembling, but out, Jamie noted with approval—at the constable.
“She did, then, your honor, and it’s quite put her out of her wits with the shock, as ye see.”
“I see,” the constable said rather brusquely. “Well, who the fook else saw what happened? You?”
“Oh, not me, oh, no, your honor,” said the husband, turning white and stepping back, making a sign against evil. His wife shrieked, feeling his sheltering arm depart, and cowered. Her friends among the servants obligingly set up a companionable keening to keep her company, and the constable set his jaw like a bulldog against the racket, lower teeth set hard in his upper lip.
While the constable conducted his laborious investigations, and the rain began to fall more heavily, Jamie saw Grey draw Tom Byrd aside with a jerk of his head, then bend close to his ear, clearly giving instructions, glancing now and then as he did so at the shrubbery where Jamie stood hidden.
He thought he made out from the incoherent babblings of the maid that she’d found the master in the summerhouse, and as the constable seemed indisposed to go and look for himself, Jamie eased out of the shrubbery and went quietly round the back of the little wood.
More than one person had run through it; he could see that from the fresh-broken twigs and trampled ferns. He skirted the damage delicately and stole quietly up to the rear of the summerhouse. It was made with latticed panels, these interspersed with open sections, which were barred with an ornamental railing, with latticework below. Tall as he was, he could just manage to peer through this latticework by standing on his toes.
The first thing he saw was not Siverly’s body, but the weapon. It was the same odd, knob-headed club with which Siverly had attacked him, and he crossed himself at the sight, with a peculiar feeling that was not satisfaction but more awe at God’s sense of justice.
Grey had recognized the thing from his description; had told him it was a war club, a weapon made by the Iroquois. Hardwood, and, in the right hands, a very deadly thing. Evidently, Siverly had run into someone who knew how to employ it—the knob at the end was thick with blood and hair, and … His eye tracked across the wide swath of blood that lay smeared over the floor of the summerhouse and came to rest on an object that he knew must be Siverly’s head, only because it could be nothing else.
The man was lying with his head toward Jamie, the rest of his body largely invisible. The blow had caved in his skull to a shocking extent; white bone showed, and rimming the wound was a pinkish ooze that he knew to be brain. He felt his gorge rise and turned round hastily, shutting his eyes and trying not to breathe, for the smell of blood and death was thick in his nose.
There was little to be learned here, and sooner or later someone would come; he couldn’t be found lurking near the body. He stole quietly out through the wood, turned right, and circled round the house, coming out of the gardens near the drive, just in time to see Lord John being taken away. The constable had commandeered a wagon from the estate and rode his mule alongside, keeping a sharp eye on his prisoner. The prisoner himself sat straight as a ramrod on the wagon’s seat, looking extremely cross but self-possessed. Jamie saw him say something to the constable that made the latter rear back, blinking, but then glower at Lord John and make an abrupt gesture to the wagon’s driver, who clicked his tongue to the horses and set off at a trot that nearly toppled John Grey off his perch, unable to catch himself with his hands bound.
Jamie felt an angry spasm of kinship at the sight; he’d known such small cruelties when he’d worn fetters. He murmured a deliberate curse toward the constable and walked out onto the drive, where the servants were clustered accusingly round Tom Byrd.
They all fell silent at sight of Jamie, falling back a little. He ignored the lot of them and jerked his head at Tom, saying merely, “Come with me, Mr. Byrd,” as he turned away down the drive.
Tom followed promptly, and while there was a hostile muttering behind them, no one hindered their departure.
“I’m that glad you come up when you did, sir,” Tom said, hurrying a little to come even with him and glancing back over his shoulder. “I thought they were a-going to take me to pieces—and so did they.”
“Aye, well, they’re like dogs whose master’s died,” Jamie said, not unkindly. “They dinna ken what to do, so they howl and snap at one another. What did his lordship tell ye, wee Byrd?”
Tom was pale and excited but had control of himself. He rubbed his sleeve across his face to wipe away the rain and settled himself to recite Lord John’s message.
“Right, sir. To begin with, the constable—that was the constable, the loud fat man—is taking his lordship to Castle Athlone.”
“Aye? Well, that’s good—it’s not?” Jamie asked, seeing Tom shake his head.
“No, sir. He says the justiciar has gone to France, and whoever’s in charge will either keep him locked up or make him give his parole, and that won’t do.”
“It won’t? Did he say why not?”
“No, sir, there wasn’t time. He says you must come and get him out, quick as ever you can.”
Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, brushing water out of his eyebrows.
“Does he, then,” he said dryly. “Did he suggest how I was to do that?”
Tom half-smiled, despite his worry.
“No, sir. He says to tell you that he trusts in your native wit and ferocity to accomplish this. I’m to help you,” he added modestly, with a sideways look up at Jamie. He put a hand to his middle, looking portentous. “His lordship gave me his dagger to keep for him.”
“That will be a great help,” Jamie assured him gravely. “Dinna stick anyone with it unless I tell ye, though, aye? I dinna want to have to save ye both from the hangman.”
The rain was coming down harder now, but as they were already wet through, there was little point in hurry, and they strode along without talking, the rain pattering on their heads and shoulders.
25
Escape from Athlone
QUINN HAD NOT GONE BACK TO GLASTUIG WITH THEM; they found him crouched by the fire with a glass of arrack in his hands, still shivering. He got up when he saw Jamie, though, and came outside at the jerk of Jamie’s head.
The rain had stopped, at least for a bit, and Jamie led the way down the road so they might talk unheard. In a few words, he acquainted Quinn with the news of John Grey’s arrest, which caused Quinn to cross himself piously—though Jamie could see from his face that he did not regard this as particularly unwelcome news.
He’d known pretty much what Quinn’s reaction was likely to be and had decided what to do about it.
“Ye still want that cup, aye?” Jamie asked Quinn abruptly. “The Cupбn Dr uid riogh?”
Quinn looked at him, wide-eyed, and grasped him by the arm.
“Ye’ll never mean ye’ve got it, man?”
“No, I have not.” Jamie detached his arm, though without violence.
“But ye know where it is.” Quinn’s restless eyes had stilled, fixed intently on his, and it wasn’t a question.
“Aye, I know. It’s well beyond anyone’s reach, is where it is. I told the abbot to put it back where it came from, and to the best of my knowledge”– which is considerable, he added silently to himself—“he did.”
Quinn’s lips pursed in thought. “Someone will know,” he said. “All the monks had to know when they dug the poor fella up—they’ll remember where he was planted, too.”
“Aye. Well, ye want to go and ask them, do that—but ye’re no going until we get John Grey out of Athlone.”
Quinn’s strange light eyes bulged a bit.
“Out of Athlone Castle? Man, are ye demented?”
“Aye, I am,” Jamie said crossly. “But I mean to do it, anyway.”
“Why? The man’s not only English, not only your captor—he’s a fecking murderer!”
“No, that he’s not,” Jamie said, with decision. “He may be a good many disagreeable things, but not that.”
“But they found him standin’ over Siverly’s body, and the blood fresh on his boots!”
“I saw, aye?”
Quinn fumed visibly. “Why the devil d’ye think he didn’t do the man in, then? Ye heard what he had to say about him and all his talk about bringin’ the fellow to justice. Ye don’t get more justice than a bullet through the head!”
There was no point in telling Quinn that Siverly’s death—however administered—wouldn’t have been justice in John Grey’s book, save it had been preceded by a court-martial.
“He didn’t,” Jamie repeated stubbornly.
There was also no way to explain to Quinn what he knew to be true of John Grey. That being that the only circumstance in which Grey might possibly have killed Siverly was if he was in fear of his own life—and had that been the case, he would have said so. To Jamie, at least, via Tom Byrd.
He wasn’t going to argue the point, though, and not only because it would be futile. There was also the consideration that if Grey hadn’t killed Siverly, someone else had. And there were relatively few persons known to have been nearby, one of whom was Quinn. He couldn’t think why Quinn might have done such a thing, but thought it wiser not to point that out, given that he proposed to continue in company with Quinn for the next wee while.
“I’m going to Athlone, and ye’re goin’ with me.”
“What? Why?” Quinn cried, indignant. “Where d’ye get off, dragging me into it?”
“Where did you get off, dragging me into your bloody crack-brained scheme? You go with me, and I’ll take ye to Abbot Michael—ye can make your own case to him about the Cupбn.”
“Crackbrained?!” Quinn went pale with indignation; his curls stood on end, nearly crackling with it.
“Aye, crackbrained. And ye’re goin’ with me to Athlone because ye can sail a boat, and I can’t.”
“A boat?” Quinn said, momentarily distracted from his affront. “What boat?”
“How do I know what boat?” Jamie said, very irritated. “We’ll find one when we get there.”
“But—”
“If ye think I’m going to abscond from an English prison with his lordship and try to escape through a countryside that’s nay more than a monstrous bog with the occasional pig to stumble over—think again,” he advised Quinn briefly.
“But—”
“Athlone Castle is nearby the River Shannon, and the justiciar said the Shannon’s navigable. So we’ll bloody navigate it. Come on!”
HE’D GIVEN HIS INSTRUCTIONS to Tom Byrd on the way back from Glastuig, and the valet had managed accordingly, not packing up all their belongings, as Jamie wished to cause no more stir than there was already, but acquiring what he could for an instant journey.
They found Tom Byrd waiting impatiently by the road with horses, a little way from the ordinary. Tom gave both men a narrow look, glancing from face to face, but said nothing. He had procured a cabbage, and a few potatoes, which he modestly displayed.
“That’ll do us fine for a supper,” Quinn said, patting Tom approvingly on the shoulder. He looked to the sky. “It’s going to rain again,” he said in resigned tones. “We’d best find a spot and cook it while we can.”
Peat fires burned hot but gave little light. The fire at their feet was not much more than a sullen glow, as though the earth itself was burning from within, but it had cooked their food and warmed their feet. Some of their food—lacking a pot, they ate the cabbage raw, despite Quinn’s dire predictions of unparalleled flatulence.
