Jamie nodded; the planks gave slightly when stepped upon, water oozing through the cracks between. But they bore his weight, though the vibration of his step made the bog beside the trackway tremble, the antennae of moss quivering in curiosity as he passed.
“The Old Ones thought the number three holy, just as we do.” Father Michael’s words, half-shouted above the wind, drifted back to him. “They had the three gods—the god of thunder, him they called Taranis. Then Esus, the god of the underworld—mind, they didn’t see the underworld quite the same way we think of hell, but it wasn’t a pleasant place, nonetheless.”
“And the third?” Jamie was still clutching the abbot’s handkerchief. He wiped his nose with it; the chill wind made it stream.
“Ah, now, that would be …” The abbot didn’t stop walking but tapped his fingers briskly on his skull, to assist thought. “Now, who in creation … Oh, of course. The third is the god of the particular tribe, so they’d all have different names.”
“Oh, aye.” Was the abbot telling him this only to pass the time? He wondered. Obviously they weren’t out walking for their health, and he knew of only one reason they might be traversing a bog.
He was right.
“Now, a proper god requires sacrifice, does he not? And the old gods wanted blood.”
He’d drawn close to the abbot now and could hear him clearly, despite the whine of the wind. There were birds in the moss, too; he heard the call of a snipe, thin and high.
“They would take prisoners of war and burn them in great wicker cages, for Taranis.” The abbot turned his head to look back at Jamie, showing a smile. “A good thing for you the English are more civilized now?” The ironic question at the end of this remark was evidently meant to convey the abbot’s doubt regarding the level of English civilization, and Jamie gave him back a wry smile, acknowledging it. Being burned alive … well, they’d done that, too, the English. Fired crofts and fields, without regard to the women and children they condemned—either by the fire itself, or by cold and slow starvation.
“I’m fortunate, to be sure, Father.”
“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 king.”
“That was a long time ago, Father.” He was beginning to have an uneasy feeling, and not only because of the cup, though the sight of it was making the hair prickle on his neck again.
The abbot straightened up and eyed him appraisingly.
“You’re in the prime of your manhood, Shéamais Mac Bhrian,” he said. “Is it right that you should waste the strength and the gift you have for leading men?” Jesus God, he wants me to do it, Jamie thought, appalled. Take that cursed thing and do as Quinn wants.
“Is it right for me to lead men to their deaths, for the sake of a vain cause?” he asked, sharply enough that the abbot blinked.
“Vain? The cause of the Church, of God? To restore the anointed king and remove the foot of the English from the neck of your people and mine?”
“Vain, Father,” he said, striving for calmness, though the mere thought of the Rising in Scotland tightened every muscle he had. “Ye know what I was, ye say. But ye dinna ken what I saw, what happened there. Ye havena seen what happened after, when the clans were crushed—crushed, Father! When they—” He stopped abruptly and closed his eyes, mouth pressed tight shut ’til he should recover himself.
“I hid,” Jamie said, after a moment. “On my own land. Hid in a cave for seven years, for fear of the English.” He took a deep breath and felt the scars tight on his back, burning. He opened his eyes and fixed the priest’s gaze with his own.
“I came down one night to hunt, perhaps a year past the time of Culloden. I passed a burnt-out croft, one I’d passed a hundred times. But rain had washed out the path and I stepped aside—and I stepped on her.” He swallowed, remembering the heart-stopping snap of the bone under his foot. The terrible delicacy of the tiny ribs, the sprinkle of bones that had once been hands, strewn careless as pebbles.
“A wee lass. She’d been there months.… The foxes and corbies … I didna
ken which one she was. There were three of them lived there, three wee lassies, near in age, and their hair brown—it was all that was left of her, her hair—so I couldna say was she Mairi or Beathag or wee Cairistiona—I—” He stopped speaking, abruptly.
“I said it would be difficult.” The priest spoke quietly, not looking away. His eyes were dark, the brightness of them shadowed but steady. “Do you think I’ve not seen such things here?”
“Do ye want to see them again?” His hands had curled into fists without his knowledge.
“Will they stop?” the priest snapped. “Will ye condemn your countrymen and mine to such cruelties, to the rule of the yellow-johns, for lack of will? I’d not thought from Alexander’s letters that ye lacked courage, but perhaps he was wrong in what he thought of you.”
“Oh, no, Father,” he said, and his voice dropped low in his throat. “Dinna be trying that one on me. Aye, I ken what it is to lead men, and how it’s done. I’ll not be led.”
Father Michael gave a brief snort, half amused, but his eyes stayed dark.
“Is it the boy?” he asked. “You’d turn aside from your duty—from the thing God has called you to do!—to be a lickspittle to the English, to wear their chains, to go and tend a child who does not need you, who will never bear your name?”
“No,” Jamie said between his teeth. “I have left home and family before, for the sake of duty. I lost my wife to it. And I saw what that duty led to. Mind me, Father—if it comes to war, it will not be different this time. It. Will. Not. Be. Different!”
“Not if men like you will not chance it! Mind what I say—there are sins of omission, as well as those of commission. And remember the parable of the talents, will you now. Do you mean to stand before God, come the Last Day, and tell Him you spurned the gifts He gave you?”
It came to Jamie quite suddenly that Father Michael knew. Knew what, or how much, Jamie couldn’t say—but the news of Quinn’s machinations perhaps fitted in with other things Father Michael knew, of the Irish Jacobites. This was not the first inkling he’d had of what was afoot, Jamie would swear to it.
He gathered himself, pushing down his temper. The man was doing his own duty—as he saw it.
“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 had, a sense of peace came upon him with the saying.
He stopped speaking, and the air of the evening was still.
For the first time, he saw what he had not seen before: the mound of slightly darker rock and soil, speckled with the sprouting green blades of fresh grass, spangled with the tiny jewels of wildflowers. And a small wooden cross at the head of it, just under the pine tree.
Dust to dust. This was the stranger’s grave, then; they had given him burial in the Christian way, letting the unseemly jumble of bones and leather, so long preserved in dark water, crumble at last in peaceful anonymity. Here, by the seat of kings.
The sun was still above the horizon, but the light came low, and shadows lay dark upon the bog, ready to rise and join the coming night.
“Wait for a bit, mo mhic,” Father Michael said, reaching to retrieve the cup. “Let me put this away safe, and I’ll see ye back.”
In the distance, Jamie could see the dark gash of the pit where the peat-cutters had been at work. They called that sort of place a moss-hag in Scotland, he thought, and wondered briefly what—or who?—might lie in other bogs.
“Dinna fash yourself, Father,” he said, looking out across the tumps and hummocks, the shallow pools glinting in the last of the sun. “I’ll find my own way.”
20
Stalking Horse
Quinn had gone, presumably to tend to his own business. Jamie found his absence soothing but not reassuring; Quinn hadn’t gone far. Jamie told Grey what the abbot had said regarding the Wild Hunt poem, and after some discussion it was decided that Jamie should make the first approach to Siverly.
“Show him the Wild Hunt poem,�
�� Grey had suggested. “I want to know if he seems to recognize it. If not, there’s at least the possibility that it has nothing to do with him and was somehow included with Carruthers’s packet by mistake. If he does recognize it, though, I want to know what he says about it.” He’d smiled at Jamie, eyes alight with the imminence of action. “And once you’ve spied out the land for me, I’ll have a better notion of which tack to take when I see him.”
A stalking horse, Jamie noted dourly. At least Grey had been honest about that.
On Tom Byrd’s advice, Jamie wore the brown worsted suit, as being more suitable to a day call in the country—the puce velvet was much too fine for such an occasion. There had been an argument between Tom and Lord John as to whether the yellow silk waistcoat with the blackwork was preferable to the plain cream-colored one, as indicating Jamie’s presumed wealth, or not, as possibly being thought vulgar.
“I dinna mind if he thinks I’m common,” Jamie assured Tom. “It will put him at his ease if he feels himself my superior. And the one thing we know of him for sure is that he likes money; so much the better if he thinks me a rich vulgarian.”
Lord John made a noise that he hastily converted to a sneeze, causing both Jamie and Tom to look at him austerely.
Jamie was not sure how much—if at all—Siverly might recall him. He had seen Siverly only now and then in Paris, and only for a few weeks. He thought they might have exchanged words once in the course of a dinner, but that was the extent of their interaction. Still … Jamie recalled Siverly; it was not unthinkable that the man would remember him, particularly given Jamie’s noticeable appearance.
In Paris, he had worked in his cousin Jared’s wine business; he might reasonably have continued in trade, after the Rising. There would be no reason for Siverly either to have heard of his actions, nor to have followed his movements after Culloden.
Jamie hadn’t bothered noting that his English speech would likely cause Siverly to regard him as a social inferior, no matter what he wore, and thus when he gave his horse to the gatekeeper who came out of the lodge to meet him, he broadened his accent slightly.
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