“I saw Hays go intae the water,” one of the shapes volunteered. “He’ll ha’ gone awa’ round the point. Likely the Gordons and Kennedy did, too. I didna hear anything as though they’d been taken.”
“Well enough,” Jamie said. “Now, then, Sassenach. What’s this about excisemen?”
Given the nonappearance of Oakie and his companion, I was beginning to feel rather foolish, but I recounted what Ian and I had heard.
“Aye?” Jamie sounded interested. “Can ye stand yet, Fergus? Ye can? Good lad. Well, then, perhaps we’ll have a look. Meldrum, have ye a flint about ye?”
A few moments later, a small torch struggling to stay alight in his hand, he strode down the road, and around the bend. The smugglers and I waited in tense silence, ready either to run or to rush to his assistance, but there were no noises of ambush. After what seemed like an eternity, Jamie’s voice floated back along the road.
“Come along, then,” he said, sounding calm and collected.
He was standing in the middle of the road, near a large alder. The torchlight fell round him in a flickering circle, and at first I saw nothing but Jamie. Then there was a gasp from the man beside me, and a choked sound of horror from another.
Another face appeared, dimly lit, hanging in the air just behind Jamie’s left shoulder. A horrible, congested face, black in the torchlight that robbed everything of color, with bulging eyes and tongue protruding. The hair, fair as dry straw, rose stirring in the wind. I felt a fresh scream rise in my throat, and choked it off.
“Ye were right, Sassenach,” Jamie said. “There
“Not like he is now,” a voice muttered behind me. “Christ, his mither wouldna ken him!” There was a general mutter of negation, with a nervous shuffling of feet. Clearly, everyone was as anxious to get away from the place as I was.
“All right, then.” Jamie stopped the retreat with a jerk of his head. “The cargo’s lost, so there’ll be no shares, aye? Will anyone need money for the present?” He reached for his pocket. “I can provide enough to live on for a bit—for I doubt we’ll be workin’ the coast for a time.”
One or two of the men reluctantly advanced within clear sight of the thing hanging from the tree to receive their money, but the rest of the smugglers melted quietly away into the night. Within a few minutes, only Fergus—still white, but standing on his own—Jamie, and I were left.
“I did—or so I expect the tale will be told, aye?” Jamie gazed upward, his face harsh in the sputtering torchlight. “We’ll no tarry longer, shall we?”
“What about Ian?” I said, suddenly remembering the boy. “He went to the abbey, to warn you!”
“He did?” Jamie’s voice sharpened. “I came from that direction, and didna meet him. Which way did he go, Sassenach?”
“That way,” I said, pointing.
Fergus made a small sound that might have been laughter.
“The abbey’s the other way,” Jamie said, sounding amused. “Come on, then; we’ll catch him up when he realizes his mistake and comes back.”
“Wait,” said Fergus, holding up a hand. There was a cautious rustling in the shrubbery, and Young Ian’s voice said, “Uncle Jamie?”
“Aye, Ian,” his uncle said dryly. “It’s me.”
The boy emerged from the bushes, leaves stuck in his hair, eyes wide with excitement.
“I saw the light, and thought I must come back to see that Auntie Claire was all right,” he explained. “Uncle Jamie, ye mustna linger about wi’ a torch—there are excisemen about!”
Jamie put an arm about his nephew’s shoulders and turned him, before he should notice the thing hanging from the alder tree.
“Dinna trouble yourself, Ian,” he said evenly. “They’ve gone.”
Swinging the torch through the wet shrubbery, he extinguished it with a hiss.
“Let’s go,” he said, his voice calm in the dark. “Mr. Willoughby’s down the road wi’ the horses; we’ll be in the Highlands by dawn.”
PART SEVEN
32
THE PRODIGAL’S RETURN
It was a four-day journey on horseback to Lallybroch from Arbroath, and there was little conversation for most of it. Both Young Ian and Jamie were preoccupied, presumably for different reasons. For myself, I was kept busy wondering, not only about the recent past, but about the immediate future.
Ian must have told Jamie’s sister, Jenny, about me. How would she take my reappearance?
Jenny Murray had been the nearest thing I had ever had to a sister, and by far the closest woman friend of my life. Owing to circumstance, most of my close friends in the last fifteen years had been men; there were no other female doctors, and the natural gulf between nursing staff and medical staff prevented more than casual acquaintance with other women working at the hospital. As for the women in Frank’s circle, the departmental secretaries and university wives…
