Dragonfly in Amber 2(371)

It seemed a very long time before I heard a step on the uncarpeted boards of the stair outside my refuge. I came to the door to find Jamie coming onto the landing. One look at his face was enough.

“Alec was right,” he said, without preliminaries. The bones of his face were stark beneath the skin, made prominent by hunger, sharpened by anger. “The troops are moving to Culloden—as they can. They havena slept or eaten in two days, there is no ordnance for the cannon—but they are going.” The anger erupted suddenly and he slammed his fist down on a rickety table. A cascade of small brass dishes from the pile of household rubble woke the echoes of the attic with an ungodly clatter.

With an impatient gesture, he snatched the dirk from his belt and jabbed it violently into the table, where it stood, quivering with the force of the blow.

“The country folk say that if ye see blood on your dirk, it means death.” He drew in his breath with a hiss, fist clenched on the table. “Well, I have seen it! So have they all. They know—Kilmarnock, Lochiel, and the rest. And no bit of good does the seeing of it do!”

He bent his head, hands braced on the table, staring at the dirk. He seemed much too large for the confines of the room, an angry smoldering presence that might break suddenly into flame. Instead, he flung up his hands, and threw himself onto a decrepit settle, where he sat, head buried in his hands.

“Jamie,” I said, and swallowed. I could barely speak the next words, but they had to be said. I had known what news he would bring, and I had thought of what might still be done. “Jamie. There’s only one thing left—only the one possibility.”

His head was bent, forehead resting on his knuckles. He shook his head, not looking at me.

“There is no way,” he said. “He’s bent on it. Murray has tried to turn him, so has Lochiel. Balmerino. Me. But the men are standing on the plain this hour. Cumberland has set out for Drumossie. There is no way.”

The healing arts are powerful ones, and any physician versed in the use of substances that heal knows also the power of those that harm. I had given Colum the cyanide he had not had time to use, and taken back the deadly vial from the table by the bed where his body lay. It was in my box now, the crudely distilled crystals a dull brownish-white, deceptively harmless in appearance.

My mouth was so dry that I couldn’t speak at once. There was a little wine left in my flask; I drank it, the acid taste like bile on my tongue.

“There is one way,” I said. “Only one.”

Jamie’s head stayed sunk in his hands. It had been a long ride, and the shock of Alec’s news had added depression to his tiredness. We had detoured to find his men, or most of them, a miserable, ragged crew, indistinguishable from the skeletal Frasers of Lovat who surrounded them. The interview with Charles was far beyond the last straw.

“Aye?” he said.

I hesitated, but had to speak. The possibility had to be mentioned; whether he—or I—could bring ourselves to it or not.

“It’s Charles Stuart,” I said, at last. “It’s him—everything. The battle, the war—everything depends on him, do you see?”

“Aye?” Jamie was looking up at me now, bloodshot eyes quizzical.

“If he were dead.…” I whispered at last.

Jamie’s eyes closed, and the last vestiges of blood drained from his face.

“If he were to die…now. Today. Or tonight. Jamie, without Charles, there’s nothing to fight for. No one to order the men to Culloden. There wouldn’t be a battle.”

The long muscles of his throat rippled briefly as he swallowed. He opened his eyes and stared at me, appalled.

“Christ,” he whispered. “Christ, ye canna mean it.”

My hand closed on the smoky, gold-mounted crystal around my neck.

They had called me to attend the Prince, before Falkirk. O’Sullivan, Tullibardine, and the others. His Highness was ill—an indisposition, they said. I had seen Charles, made him bare his breast and arms, examined his mouth and the whites of his eyes.

It was scurvy, and several of the other diseases of malnutrition. I said as much.

“Nonsense!” said Sheridan, outraged. “His Highness cannot suffer from the yeuk, like a common peasant!”

“He’s been eating like one,” I retorted. “Or rather worse than one.” The “peasants” were forced to eat onions and cabbage, having nothing else. Scorning such poor fare, His Highness and his advisers ate meat—and little else. Looking around the circle of scared, resentful faces, I saw few that didn’t show symptoms of the lack of fresh food. Loose and missing teeth, soft, bleeding gums, the pus-filled, itching follicles of “the yeuk” that so lavishly decorated His Highness’s white skin.