Dragonfly In Amber - Gabaldon Diana (читать книги бесплатно полностью без регистрации сокращений txt) 📗

Jamie sat down on a vacant seat beside me, mopping his glowing face with a large white handkerchief. He reached past me to the small table, where a tray with a few leftover cakes was sitting.

“I’m fair starved,” he said. “Dancing gives ye a terrible appetite, and the talking’s worse.” He popped a whole cake into his mouth at once, chewed it briefly, and reached for another.

I saw Prince Charles bend over the slumped form of the guest of honor and shake him by the shoulder, to little effect. The Spanish envoy’s head was fallen back and his mouth was slack beneath the drooping mustache. His Highness stood, rather unsteadily, and glanced about for help, but Sheridan and Tullibardine, both elderly gentlemen, had fallen asleep themselves, leaning companionably together like a couple of old village sots in lace and velvet.

“Maybe you’d better give His Highness a hand?” I suggested.

“Mmphm.”

Resigned, Jamie swallowed the rest of his cake, but before he could rise, I saw the younger Simpson, who had taken quick note of the situation, nudge his father in the ribs.

Senior advanced and bowed ceremoniously to Prince Charles, then, before the glazed prince could respond, the swordmakers had the Spanish envoy by wrists and ankles. With a heave of forge-toughened muscles, they lifted him from his seat, and bore him away, gently swinging him between them like some specimen of big game. They disappeared through the door at the far end of the hall, followed unsteadily by His Highness.

This rather unceremonious departure signaled the end of the ball.

The other guests began to relax and move about, the ladies disappearing into an anteroom to retrieve shawls and cloaks, the gentlemen standing about in small, impatient knots, exchanging complaints about the time the women were taking to make ready.

As we were housed in Holyrood, we left by the other door, at the north end of the gallery, going through the morning and evening drawing rooms to the main staircase.

The landing and the soaring stairwell were lined with tapestries, their figures dim and silvery in candlelight. And below them stood the giant form of Angus Mhor, his shadow huge on the wall, wavering like one of the tapestry figures as they shimmered in the draft.

“My master is dead,” he said.

“His Highness said,” Jamie reported, “that perhaps it was as well.” He spoke with a tone of sarcastic bitterness.

“Because of Dougal,” he added, seeing my shocked bewilderment at this statement. “Dougal has always been more than willing to join His Highness in the field. Now Colum’s gone, Dougal is chief. And so the MacKenzies of Leoch will march with the Highland army,” he said softly, “to victory – or not.”

The lines of grief and weariness were cut deep into his face, and he didn’t resist as I moved behind him and laid my hands on the broad swell of his shoulders. He made a small sound of incoherent relief as my fingertips pressed hard into the muscles at the base of his neck, and let his head fall forward, resting on his folded arms. He was seated before the table in our room, and piles of letters and dispatches lay neatly stacked around him. Amid the documents lay a small notebook, rather worn, bound in red morocco leather. Colum’s diary, which Jamie had taken from his uncle’s rooms in hopes that it would contain a recent entry confirming Colum’s decision not to support the Jacobite cause.

“Not that it would likely sway Dougal,” he had said, grimly thumbing the close-written pages, “but there’s nothing else to try.”

In the event, though, there had been nothing in Colum’s diary for the last three days, save one brief entry, clearly made upon his return from the churchyard the day before.

Met with young Jamie and his wife. Have made my peace with Ellen at last. And that was, of course, important – to Colum, to Jamie, and possibly to Ellen – but of little use in swaying the convictions of Dougal MacKenzie.

Jamie straightened up after a moment and turned to me. His eyes were dark with worry and resignation.

“What it means is that now we are committed to him, Claire – to Charles, I mean. There’s less choice than there ever was. We must try to assure his victory.”

My mouth felt dry with too much wine. I licked my lips before answering, to moisten them.

“I suppose so. Damn! Why couldn’t Colum have waited a little longer? Just ’til the morning, when he could have seen Charles?”

Jamie smiled lopsidedly.

“I dinna suppose he had so much to say about it, Sassenach. Few men get to choose the hour of their death.”

“Colum meant to.” I had been of two minds whether to tell Jamie what had passed between me and Colum at our first meeting in Holyrood, but now there was no point in keeping Colum’s secrets.

Jamie shook his head in disbelief and sighed, his shoulders slumping under the revelation that Colum had meant to take his own life.

“I wonder then,” he murmured, half to himself. “Was it a sign, do ye think, Claire?”

“A sign?”

“Colum’s death now, before he could do as he meant to and refuse Charles’s plea for help. Is it a sign that Charles is destined to win his fight?”

I remembered my last sight of Colum. Death had come for him as he sat in bed, a glass of brandy untouched near his hand. He had met it as he wished, then, clearheaded and alert; his head had fallen back, but his eyes were wide open, dulled to the sights he had left behind. His mouth was pressed tight, the habitual lines carved deep from nose to chin. The pain that was his constant companion had accompanied him as far as it could.

“God knows,” I said at last.

“Aye?” he said, voice once more muffled in his arms. “Aye, well. I hope somebody does.”

38 A BARGAIN WITH THE DEVIL

Catarrh settled on Edinburgh like the cloud of cold rain that masked the Castle from sight on its hill. Water ran day and night in the streets, and if the cobbles were temporarily clean of sewage, the relief from stench was more than made up for by the splatter of expectorations that slimed every close and wynd, and the choking cloud of fireplace smoke that filled every room from waist-height to ceiling.

Cold and miserable as the weather was outside, I found myself spending a good deal of time walking the grounds of Holyrood and the Canongate. A faceful of rain seemed preferable to lungfuls of woodsmoke and germ-filled air indoors. The sounds of coughing and sneezing rang through the Palace, though the constraint of His Highness’s genteel presence caused most hawking sufferers to spit into filthy handerchiefs or the Delft-lined fireplaces, rather than on the polished Scotch oak floors.

The light failed early at this time of year, and I turned back, halfway up the High Street, in order to reach Holyrood before dark. I had no fear at all of assault in the darkness; even had I not been known by now to all the Jacobite troops occupying the city, the prevailing horror of fresh air kept everyone indoors.

Men still well enough to leave their homes on business completed their errands with dispatch before diving thankfully into the smoke-filled sanctuary of Jenny Ha’s tavern, and stayed there, nestled cozily into warm airlessness, where the smell of damp wool, unwashed bodies, whisky, and ale nearly succeeded in overcoming the reek of the stove.

My only fear was of losing my footing in the dark and breaking an ankle on the slippery cobbles. The city was lit only by the feeble lanterns of the town watchmen, and these had a disconcerting habit of ducking from doorway to doorway, appearing and disappearing like fireflies. And sometimes disappearing altogether for half an hour at a time, as the lantern-bearer darted into The World’s End at the bottom of the Canongate for a life-saving draught of hot ale.