PART SEVEN
Sanctuary
35
WENTWORTH PRISON
Sir Fletcher Gordon was a short and portly man, whose striped silk waistcoat fitted him like a second skin. Slope-shouldered and paunch-bellied, he looked rather like a large ham seated in the governor’s wheel-backed chair.
The bald head and rich pinkish color of his complexion did little to dispel this impression, though few hams boasted such bright blue eyes. He turned over the sheaf of papers on his desk with a slow, deliberate forefinger.
“Yes, here it is,” he said, after an interminable pause to read a page. “Fraser, James. Convicted of murder. Sentenced to hang. Now, where’s the Warrant of Execution?” He paused again, shuffling nearsightedly through the papers. I dug my fingers deep into the satin of my reticule, willing my face to remain expressionless.
“Oh, yes. Date of execution, December 23. Yes, we still have him.”
I swallowed, relaxing my hold on my bag, torn between exultation and panic. He was still alive, then. For another two days. And he was nearby, somewhere in the same building with me. The knowledge surged through my veins with a rush of adrenaline and my hands trembled.
I sat forward in the visitor’s chair, trying to look winsomely appealing.
“May I see him, Sir Fletcher? Just for a moment, in case he…he might wish me to convey a message to his family?”
In the guise of an English friend of the Fraser family, I had found it reasonably easy to gain admittance to Wentworth, and to the office of Sir Fletcher, civilian governor of the prison. It was dangerous to ask to see Jamie; not knowing my cover story, he might well give me away if he saw me suddenly without warning. For that matter, I might give myself away; I was not at all sure that I could maintain my precarious self-control if I saw him. But the next step was clearly to find out where he was; in this huge stone rabbit warren, the chances of finding him without direction were almost nil.
Sir Fletcher frowned, considering. Plainly he considered this request from a mere family acquaintance a nuisance, but he was not an unfeeling man. Finally he shook his head reluctantly.
“No, my dear. No, I’m afraid I really cannot allow that. We are rather crowded at present, and haven’t sufficient facilities to permit private interviews. And the man is presently in”—he consulted his pile of papers again—”in one of the large cells in the west block, with several other condemned felons. It would be extremely perilous for you to visit him there—or at all. The man is a dangerous prisoner, you understand; I see here that we have been keeping him in chains since his arrival.”
I gripped my bag again; this time to keep from striking him.
He shook his head again, plump chest rising and falling with his labored breathing. “No, if you were an immediate member of his family, perhaps…” He looked up, blinking. I clamped my jaw tightly, determined to give nothing away. Surely a slight show of agitation was reasonable, under the circumstances.
“But perhaps, my dear…” He seemed struck by sudden inspiration. He got ponderously to his feet and went to an inner door, where a uniformed soldier stood on guard. He murmured to the man, who nodded once and vanished.
Sir Fletcher came back to his desk, pausing on the way to retrieve a decanter and glasses from the top of a cabinet. I accepted his offer of claret; I needed it.
We were both halfway through the second glass by the time the guard returned. He marched in without invitation, placed a wooden box on the desk at Sir Fletcher’s elbow, and turned to march out again. I caught his eye lingering on me and modestly lowered my own gaze. I was wearing a gown borrowed from a lady of Rupert’s acquaintance in the nearby town, and from the scent that saturated the dress and its matching reticule, I had a reasonably good idea just what this particular lady’s profession was. I hoped the guard didn’t recognize the gown.
Draining his cup, Sir Fletcher set it down and pulled the box toward him. It was a plain, square box of unfinished wood, with a sliding lid. There were letters chalked on the lid. I could read them, even upside down. FRAYSER, they read.
Sir Fletcher slid back the lid, peered inside for a moment, then closed the box and pushed it toward me.
“The prisoner’s personal effects,” he explained. “Customarily, we send them to whomever the prisoner designates as next of kin, after execution. This man, though”—he shook his head—”has refused altogether to say anything about his family. Some estrangement, no doubt. Not unusual, of course, but regrettable under the circumstances. I hesitate to make the request, Mrs. Beauchamp, but I thought that perhaps, since you are acquainted with the family, you would consider taking it upon yourself to convey his effects to the appropriate person?”
I didn’t trust myself to speak, but nodded and buried my nose in my cup of claret.
Sir Fletcher seemed relieved, whether at disposing of the box, or at the thought of my imminent departure. He sat back, wheezing slightly, and smiled expansively at me.
“That is very kind of you, Mrs. Beauchamp. I know such a thing cannot but be a painful duty to a young woman of feeling, and I am most sensible of your kindness in undertaking it, I do assure you.”
“N-not at all,” I stammered. I managed to stand up, and to gather up the box. It measured about eight inches by six, and was four or five inches deep. A small, light box, to hold the remains of a man’s life.
I knew the things it held. Three fishing lines, neatly coiled; a cork stuck with fishhooks; a flint and steel; a small piece of broken glass, edges blunt with wear; various small stones that looked interesting or had a good feel between the fingers; a dried mole’s foot, carried as a charm against rheumatism. A Bible—or perhaps they had let him keep that? I hoped so. A ruby ring, if it hadn’t been stolen. And a small wooden snake, carved of cherry wood, with the name SAWNY scratched on its underside.
I paused at the door, gripping the frame with my fingers to steady myself.
Sir Fletcher, following courteously to see me out, was at my side in a moment.
“Mrs. Beauchamp! Are you feeling faint, my dear? Guard, a chair!”
I could feel the prickles of a cold sweat breaking out along the sides of my face, but I managed to smile and wave away the proffered chair. I wanted more than anything to get out of there—I needed fresh air, in large quantities. And I needed to be alone to cry.
“No, I’m quite all right,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “It’s only…a bit close in here, perhaps. No, I shall be perfectly all right. My groom is waiting outside, in any case.”
Forcing myself to stand up straight and smile, I had a thought. It might not help, but it couldn’t hurt.
“Oh, Sir Fletcher…”
Still worried by my appearance, he was all gallantry and attention.
“Yes, my dear?”
“It occurred to me….How sad for a young man in this situation to be estranged from his family. I thought perhaps…if he wished to write to them—a letter of reconciliation, perhaps? I would be pleased to deliver it to—to his mother.”
“You are thoughtfulness itself, my dear.” Sir Fletcher was jovial, now that it seemed I was not going to collapse on his carpet after all. “Of course. I will inquire. Where are you staying, my dear? If there is a letter, I shall have it sent to you.”
“Well,” I was doing better with the smile, though it felt pasted on my face. “That is rather uncertain at the moment. I have several relatives and close acquaintances in the town, with whom I fear I shall be obliged to stay in turn, in order to avoid offending anyone, you see.” I managed a small laugh.
“So if it does not disturb you too much, perhaps my groom could call to inquire for the letter?”
“Of course, of course. That will do excellently, my dear. Excellently!”
And with a quick glance back at his decanter, he took my arm to escort me to the gate.
“Better, lassie?” Rupert pushed back the curtain of my hair to peer at my face. “Ye look like an ill-cured pork belly. Here, better have a bit more.”
I shook my head at the proffered whisky flask and sat up, wiping the damp rag he had brought across my face.
“No, I’m all right now.” Escorted by Murtagh, who was disguised as my groom, I had barely made it out of sight of the prison before sliding off my horse and being sick in the snow. There I remained, weeping, with Jamie’s box clutched to my bosom, until Murtagh had gathered me up bodily, forced me to mount, and led me to the small inn in Wentworth town where Rupert had found lodgings. We were in an upper room, from which the bulk of the prison was barely visible in the gathering dusk.
“Is the lad dead then?” Rupert’s broad face, half-obscured by his beard, was grave and kind, lacking any of its usual clowning.
I shook my head and took a deep breath. “Not yet.”
After hearing my story, Rupert paced slowly around the room, pushing his lips in and out as he thought. Murtagh sat still, as usual, no sign of agitation on his features. He would have made a wonderful poker player, I thought.
Rupert returned, sinking down on the bed beside me with a sigh.
“Weel, he’s alive still, and that’s the most important thing. Damned if I see what to do next, though. We’ve no way to get into the place.”
“Aye, we have,” Murtagh said, suddenly. “Thanks to the wee lassie’s thought about the letter.”
“Mmmphm. One man, though. And only so far as the governor’s office. But aye, it’s a start.” Rupert drew his dirk and idly scratched his thick beard with the point. “It’s a damn big place to search.”
“I know where he is,” I said, feeling better with the planning, and the knowledge that my companions weren’t giving up, no matter how hopeless our enterprise seemed. “At least I know which wing he’s in.”
“Do ye, then? Hmm.” He replaced the dirk and resumed his pacing, stopping to demand, “How much money have ye, lass?”
I fumbled in the pocket of my gown. I had Dougal’s purse, the money Jenny had forced me to take, and my string of pearls. Rupert rejected the pearls, but took the purse, pouring a stream of coins into the palm of one capacious hand.
“That’ll do,” he said, jingling them experimentally. He cocked an eye at the Coulter twins. “You twa laddies and Willie—come wi’ me. John and Murtagh can stay here wi’ the lassie.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
He poured the coins into his sporran, keeping back one, which he tossed meditatively in the air.
“Och,” he said vaguely. “Happen there’s another inn, the other side of the town. The guards from the prison go there when they’re off duty, for it’s closer, and the drink’s a penny cheaper.” He flipped the coin with his thumb, and turning his hand, caught it between two knuckles.
I watched it, with a growing idea of what he intended.
“Is that so?” I said. “I wouldn’t suppose they play cards there, too, would you?”
“I wouldna ken, lassie, wouldna ken,” he answered. He tossed the coin once more and clapped his hands together, trapping it, then spread his hands apart, to show nothing but thin air. He smiled, teeth white in the black beard.
“But we might go and see, no?” He snapped his fingers, and the coin appeared once more between them.
Shortly past one o’clock on the following afternoon, I passed again beneath the spiked portcullis that had guarded the gate of Wentworth since its construction in the late sixteenth century. It had lost very little of its forbidding aspect in the succeeding two hundred years, and I touched the dagger in my pocket for courage.
Sir Fletcher should now be well dug in at his midday repast, according to the information Rupert and his assistant spies had extracted from the prison guards during their foray the evening before. They had staggered in, red-eyed and reeking of ale, just before dawn. All Rupert would say in response to my questions was “Och, lassie, all it takes to win is luck. It takes skill to lose!” He curled up in the corner then and went soundly to sleep, leaving me to pace the floor in frustration, as I had been doing all night.
He woke an hour later, though, clear-eyed and clear-headed, and laid out the rudiments of the plan I was about to put into execution.
“Sir Fletcher doesna allow anyone or anything to disturb his meals,” he said. “Anyone wantin’ him then must just go on wantin’ until he’s done wi’ his food and drink. And after the midday meal, it’s his habit to retire to his quarters for a wee sleep.”
Murtagh, in the character of my groom, had arrived a quarter of an hour previously, and been admitted without difficulty. Presumably, he would be shown to Sir Fletcher’s office and asked to wait. While there, he was to search the office, first for a plan of the west wing, and then, on the off-chance, for keys that might open the cells.
I hung back a bit, glancing at the sky to judge the time. If I arrived before he had sat down, I might be invited to join Sir Fletcher for luncheon, which would be highly inconvenient. But Rupert’s card-playing acquaintances among the guards had assured him that the governor’s habits were invariable; the bell for dinner was rung promptly at one, and the soup served five minutes later.
The guard on duty at the entrance was the same as the day before. He looked surprised, but greeted me courteously.
“So vexing,” I said, “I had meant my groom to bring a small present for Sir Fletcher, as some return for his kindness to me yesterday. But I found that the silly man had ridden off without it, and so I was obliged to follow with it myself, hoping to catch him up. Has he arrived already?” I displayed the small package I carried and smiled, thinking that it would help if I had dimples. Since I hadn’t, I settled for a brilliant display of teeth.
It seemed to be sufficient. I was admitted and led through the corridors of the prison toward the governor’s office. Though this part of the castle was decently furnished, there was little mistaking the place for anything other than a prison. There was a smell about the place, which I imagined as the smell of misery and fear, though I supposed it was no more than the niff of ancient squalor and an absence of drains.
The guard allowed me to precede him down the hall, following discreetly so as not to step on my cloak. And a damn good thing he did, for I rounded the corner toward Sir Fletcher’s office a few feet ahead of him, just in time to see Murtagh through the open door, dragging the unconscious form of the office guard behind the enormous desk.
I took one step back and dropped my package onto the stone floor. There was a shattering of glass, and the air was filled with the smothering aroma of peach brandy.
“Oh, dear,” I said, “what have I done?”
While the guard was calling for a prisoner to clear up the mess, I tactfully murmured something about waiting for Sir Fletcher in his private office, slipped in, and hastily shut the door behind me.
“What the bloody hell have you done?” I snapped at Murtagh. He looked up from his rummaging of the body, unconcerned at my tone.
“Sir Fletcher doesna keep keys in his office,” he informed me in a low voice, “but this wee laddie has a set.” He pulled the huge ring free of the man’s coat, careful to keep the keys from jingling.
I dropped to my knees behind him. “Oh, good show!” I said. I cast an eye over the prostrate soldier; still breathing, at least. “What about a plan of the prison?”
He shook his head. “Not that either, but my friend here told me a bit while we waited. The condemned cells are on the same floor as this, in the middle of the west corridor. There’re three cells, though, and I couldna ask more than that—he was a bit suspicious as it was.”
“It’s enough—I hope. All right, give me the keys and get out.”
“Me? It’s you should leave, lassie, and right smart too.” He glanced at the door, but there was no sound on the other side.
“No, it has to be me,” I said, reaching again for the keys. “Listen,” I said impatiently. “If they find you wandering round the prison with a bunch of keys, and the guard here laid out like a mackerel, we’re both done for, because why didn’t I cry out for help?” I snatched the keys and crammed them in my pocket, with some difficulty.
Murtagh was still skeptical, but had risen to his feet.
“And if you’re caught?” he demanded.
“I swoon,” I said crisply. “And when I recover—eventually—I say that I saw you apparently murdering the guard and fled in terror, with no idea where I was going. I lost my way looking for help.”
He nodded slowly. “Aye, all right.” He moved toward the door, then stopped.
“But why did I—oh.” He crossed swiftly to the desk and pulled out one drawer after another, stirring the contents with one hand and tossing items onto the floor with the other.
“Theft,” he explained, coming back to the door. He opened it a crack, looking out.
“If it’s theft, shouldn’t you take something?” I suggested, looking about for something small and portable. I picked up an enameled snuffbox. “This, perhaps?”
He made an impatient gesture to me to put it down, still peering through the crack.
“Nay, lass! If I’m found wi’ Sir Fletcher’s property, that’s a hanging offense. Attempted theft is only flogging or mutilation.”
“Oh.” I put the snuffbox down hastily and stood behind him, peering over his shoulder. The hall seemed empty.
“I go first,” he said. “If I meet anyone, I’ll draw ‘em off. Wait to the count of thirty, then follow. We’ll meet ye in the small wood to the north.” He opened the door, then paused and turned back.
“If you’re caught, mind ye throw the keys awa’.” Before I could speak, he was through the door like an eel and down the corridor, moving silently as a shadow.
It seemed to take an eternity to find the west wing, dodging through the corridors of the old castle, peering around corners and hiding behind columns. I saw only one guard on my way, though, and managed to avoid him by diving back around a corner, pressing myself to the wall with hammering heart until he passed.
Once I found the west wing, though, I had little doubt that I was in the right place. There were three large doors in the corridor, each with a tiny barred window from which I could catch no more than a frustrating glimpse of the room behind it.
“Eenie, meenie, minie, mo,” I muttered to myself, and headed for the center cell. The keys on the ring were unlabeled, but of different sizes. Clearly only one of three big ones would fit the lock before me. Naturally, it was the third one. I took a deep breath as the lock clicked, then wiped my sweating hands on my skirt and shoved the door open.
I sorted frantically through the stinking mass of men in the cell, stepping over outstretched feet and legs, pushing past heavy bodies that moved with maddening sluggishness out of my way. The stir occasioned by my abrupt entrance had spread; those who had been asleep amid the filth on the floor began to sit up, roused by the rippling murmur of astonishment. Some were manacled to the walls; the chains grated and clanked in the half-light as they moved. I grabbed one of the standing men, a brown-bearded clansman in ragged yellow-and-green tartan. The bones of his arm under my hand were frighteningly near the skin; the English wasted little extra food on their prisoners.
“James Fraser! A big, redheaded man! Is he in this cell? Where is he?”
He was already moving toward the door with the others who were not chained, but paused a moment to glance down at me. The prisoners by now had seized the idea, and were pouring through the open door in a shuffling flood, peering and murmuring to each other.
“Who? Fraser? Och, they took him awa’ this mornin’.” The man shrugged, and pushed at my hands, trying to shake me off.
“I took hold of his belt with a grip that halted him in his tracks. “Where did they take him? Who took him?”
“I dinna ken where; was yon Captain Randall took ‘im—a pinch-faced snark, he is.” With an impatient wrench, he freed himself and headed for the door with a step born of long-nourished purpose.
Randall. I stood stunned for a moment, jostled by the escaping men, deaf to the shouts of the chained. Finally I shook myself from my stupor and tried to think. Geordie had watched the castle since dawn. No one had left in the morning save a small kitchen party going to fetch supplies. So they were still here, somewhere.
Randall was a captain; likely no one ranked higher in a prison garrison, save Sir Fletcher himself. Presumably Randall could thus command the castle’s resources so as to provide him with some suitable spot in which to torture a prisoner at his leisure.
And torture it surely was. Even if it was meant to end in hanging, the man I had seen at Fort William was a cat by nature. He could no more resist the chance to play with this particular mouse than he could alter his height or the color of his eyes.
I took a deep breath, resolutely shoving aside thoughts of what might have happened since morning, and charged out the door myself, colliding full force with an English Redcoat rushing in. The man reeled backward, staggering with tiny running steps to keep his balance. Thrown off balance myself, I crashed heavily into the doorjamb, numbing my left side and banging my head. I clutched the doorpost for support, the ringing in my ears chiming with the echoes of Rupert’s voice: Ye have a moment of surprise, lass. Use it!
It was open to question, I thought dizzily, who was more surprised. I groped madly for the pocket that held my dagger, cursing my stupidity for not having entered the cell with it already drawn.
The English soldier, balance recovered, was staring at me with his mouth agape, but I could feel my precious moment of surprise already slipping away. Abandoning the elusive pocket, I stooped and drew the dagger from my stocking in a move that continued upward with all the force I could muster. The knifepoint took the advancing soldier just under the chin as he reached for his belt. His hands rose halfway to his throat, then, with a look of surprise, he staggered back against the wall, and slid down it in slow motion, as the life drained away from him. Like me, he had come to investigate without bothering to draw his weapon first, and that small oversight had just cost him his life. The grace of God had saved me from this mistake; I could afford no more. Feeling very cold, I stepped over the twitching body, careful not to look.
I dashed back the way I had come, as far as the turning by the stairs. There was a spot here by the wall where I would be sheltered from view from both directions. I leaned against the wall and indulged myself in a moment of trembling nausea.
Wiping my sweaty hands on my skirt, I dredged the dirk from its hidden pocket. It was now my only weapon; I had neither time nor stomach enough to retrieve my sock-knife. Perhaps that was as well, I thought, rubbing my fingers on my bodice; there had been surprisingly little blood, and I shrank from the thought of the gush that would follow if I pulled the knife free.
Dagger now safely in hand, I peered cautiously out into the corridor. The prisoners I had inadvertently released had gone to the left. I had no idea what they were set on doing, but they would likely occupy the English while they were doing it. With no reason to pick one direction over another for my search, it made sense to move away from whatever commotion they caused.
The light from the high slit windows fell aslant behind me; this was the west side of the castle, then. I must keep my bearings as I moved, since Rupert would be waiting for me near the south gate.
Stairs. I forced my numbed mind to think, trying to reason my way to the spot I was looking for. If you wanted to torture someone, presumably you wanted both privacy and soundproofing. Both considerations pointed to an isolated dungeon as the most likely spot. And the dungeons in castles such as this were customarily underground, where tons of earth muffled any cries, and darkness hid all cruelty from the eyes of those responsible.
The wall rounded into a curve at the end of the corridor; I had reached one of the four corner towers—and the towers had stairs.
The spiral stair opened around another curve, the wedge-shaped steps plunging down in dizzying flights that deceived the eye and twisted the ankles. The plunge from the relative light of the corridor into the gloom of the stairwell made it even harder to judge the distance from one stair to the next, and I slipped several times, barking my knuckles and skinning my palms on the stone walls as I caught myself.
The stairway yielded one benefit. From a narrow window let in to save the stairwell from total darkness, I could see the main courtyard. At least I could now orient myself. A small group of soldiers was drawn up in neat red lines for inspection, but not, apparently, to witness the summary punishment of a Scottish rebel. There was a gibbet in the courtyard, black and foreboding, but unoccupied. The sight of it was like a blow in the stomach. Tomorrow morning. I clattered down the stairs, heedless of scraped elbows and stubbed toes.
Hitting the bottom in a swish of skirts, I stopped to listen. Dead silence all around, but at least this part of the castle was in use; there were torches in the wall sconces, dyeing the granite blocks in pools of flickering red, each pool ebbing into darkness at its edges before the pool of the next torch leached into light again. Smoke from the torches hung in grey swirls along the vaulted roof of the corridor.
There was only one way to go from this point. I went, dagger still gripped at the ready. It was eerie to be pacing softly down this corridor. I had seen similar dungeons before, as a day-tripper, visiting historic castles with Frank. But then the massive granite blocks had been stripped of their menace by the glare of fluorescent tubes hung from the arches of the cavernous ceiling. I remembered recoiling from the small, dank chambers, even in those days, when they had been in disuse for over a century. Seeing the remnants of old and horrible ways, the thick doors and the rusting manacles on the wall, I had been able, I thought, to imagine the torments of those imprisoned in these forbidding cells. I would have laughed now at my naivete. There were some things, as Dougal said, that the imagination was simply not equal to.
I tiptoed past bolted doors three inches thick; thick enough to smother any sound from inside. Bending close to the floor, I checked for a strip of light at the base of each door. Prisoners might be left to rot in darkness, but Randall would need to see what he was doing. The floor here was gummy with ancient dirt, covered with a thick layer of loose dust. Apparently this part of the prison was not in current use. But the torches showed that someone was down here.
The fourth door in the corridor showed the light I was looking for. I listened, kneeling on the floor with my ear pressed against the crack, but heard nothing more than the thin crackle of a fire.
The door was unlocked. I pushed it open a small crack and peered cautiously within. Jamie was there, sitting on the floor against one wall, curled into himself with his head between his knees. He was alone.
The room was small, but well lit, with a rather homely looking brazier in which burned a cheery fire. For a dungeon, it was remarkably cozy; the stone flags were halfway clean, and a small camp bed leaned against one wall. The room was further furnished with two chairs and a table, on which sat a number of objects, including a large pewter flask and horn cups. It was an astonishing sight, after my visions of dripping walls and scuttling rats. It occurred to me that perhaps the garrison officers had furnished this snuggery as a refuge in which to entertain such female companionship as they could induce to visit them within the prison; clearly it had the advantage of privacy over the barracks.
“Jamie!” I called softly. He didn’t raise his head or answer me, and I felt a thrill of fear. Pausing only long enough to shut the door behind me, I crossed rapidly to him and touched his shoulder.
“Jamie!”
He looked up then; his face was dead-white, unshaven and sheened with a cold sweat that had soaked his hair and shirt. The room stank of fear and vomit.
“Claire!” he said, speaking hoarsely through lips cracked with dryness. “How did you—ye must get out of here at once. He’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I was assessing the situation as rapidly as I could, hoping that concentration on the job at hand would ease the choking sensation and help melt the large ball of ice in the pit of my stomach.
He was chained by the ankle to a bolt in the wall, but otherwise unfettered. A coil of rope among the rubble of objects on the table had plainly been used, though; there were raw marks on his wrists and elbows.
I was puzzled by his condition. He was clearly dazed and every line of his body was eloquent with pain, but I could see no obvious damage. There was no blood and no wound visible. I dropped to my knees and began methodically to try the keys of my ring on the manacle around his ankle.
“What has he done to you?” I asked, keeping my voice low for fear of Randall’s return.
Jamie swayed where he sat, eyes closed, the sweat beading in hundreds of tiny pearls on his skin. Plainly he was near to fainting, but opened his eyes for a moment at my voice. Moving with exquisite care, he used his left hand to lift the object he had been cradling in his lap. It was his right hand, almost unrecognizable as a human appendage. Grotesquely swollen, it was now a bloated bag, blotched with red and purple, the fingers dangling at crazy angles. A white shard of bone poked through the torn skin of the middle finger, and a trickle of blood stained the knuckles, puffed into shapeless dimples.
The human hand is a delicate marvel of engineering, an intricate system of joints and pulleys, served and controlled by a network of millions of tiny nerves, exquisitely sensitive to touch. A single broken finger is enough to sink a strong man to his knees with nauseated pain.
“Payment,” Jamie said, “for his nose—with interest.” I stared at the sight for a moment, then said in a voice that I didn’t recognize as mine, “I’m going to kill him for this.”
Jamie’s mouth twitched slightly as a flicker of humor forced its way through the mask of pain and dizziness. “I’ll hold your cloak, Sassenach,” he whispered. His eyes closed again and he sagged against the wall, too far gone to protest my presence further.
I went back to work on the lock, glad to see that my hands were no longer shaking. The fear was gone, replaced by a glorious rage.
I had gone through the complete ring of keys twice, and still found none that would turn the lock. My hands were growing sweaty and the keys slid through my fingers like minnows as I began to try the most likely ones again. My muttered cursing roused Jamie from his stupor, and he leaned down slowly to look at what I was doing.
“Ye needn’t find a key will turn it,” he said, bracing a shoulder on the wall to keep upright. “If one will fit to the length of the barrel, you can spring the lock wi’ a good bash on the head of it.”
“You’ve seen this kind of lock before?” I wanted to keep him awake and talking; he was going to have to walk if we were to leave here.
“I’ve been in one. When they brought me here, they chained me in a big cell with a lot of others. A lad named Reilly was chained next to me; a Leinsterman—said he’d been in most of the jails in Ireland and decided to try Scotland for a change o’ scenery.” Jamie was struggling to talk; he realized as well as I that he must rouse himself. He managed a feeble smile. “He told me a good bit about locks and such, and showed me how we could break the ones we were wearing, if we’d had a spare bit of straight metal, which we didn’t.”
“Tell me, then.” The effort of talking was making him sweat freely, but he seemed more alert. Concentrating on the problem of the lock seemed to help.
Following his directions, I found a suitable key and thrust it in as far as it would go. According to Reilly, a solid blow straight in on the end of the key would force the other end hard against the tumblers and spring them loose. I looked around for a suitable instrument for bashing.
“Use the mallet on the table, Sassenach,” said Jamie. Caught by a grim note in his voice, I glanced from his face to the table, where a medium-sized wooden mallet lay, the handle wrapped with tarred twine.
“Is that what—” I began, aghast.
“Aye. Brace the manacle against the wall, lass, before ye hit it.”
Grasping the handle gingerly, I picked up the mallet. It was awkward to get the iron manacle correctly positioned so that one side was braced by the wall, as this required that Jamie cross the manacled leg under the other and press his knee to the wall on the far side.
My first two blows were too weak and timorous. Gathering determination about me like a cloak, I smashed the rounded end of the key as hard as I could. The mallet slipped off the key and caught Jamie a glancing but hard blow on the ankle. Recoiling, he lost his precarious balance and fell, instinctively reaching out his right hand to save himself. He let out an unearthly moan as his right arm crumpled beneath him and his shoulder hit the floor.
“Oh, damn,” I said wearily. Jamie had fainted, not that I could blame him. Taking advantage of his momentary immobility, I turned his ankle so that the manacle was well braced, and banged doggedly on the embedded key, with little apparent effect. I was thinking grim thoughts about Irish locksmiths, when the door beside me swung suddenly open.
Randall’s face, like Frank’s, seldom showed what he was thinking, presenting instead a bland and impenetrable facade. At the moment, though, the Captain’s customary poise had deserted him, and he stood in the doorway with his jaw agape, looking not unlike the man who accompanied him. A very large man in a stained and ragged uniform, this assistant had the sloping brow, flat nose, and loose prominent lips characteristic of some types of mental retardation. His expression did not change as he peered over Randall’s shoulder, showing no particular interest either in me or the unconscious man on the floor.
Recovering, Randall walked into the room and reached down to prod the manacle around Jamie’s ankle. “Been damaging the Crown’s property, I see, my girl. That’s an offense punishable by law, you know. To say nothing of attempting to aid a dangerous prisoner in escaping.” His pale grey eyes held a spark of amusement. “We’ll have to arrange something suitable for you. In the meantime…” He jerked me to my feet and pulled my arms behind me, twisting his stock around my wrists.
Struggle was plainly fruitless, but I stamped on his toes as hard as I could, purely to vent some of my own frustration.
“Ouch!” He turned me and gave me a hard shove, so that my legs hit the bed and I fell, half-lying on the rough blankets. Randall surveyed me with grim satisfaction, rubbing the scuffed toe of his boot with a linen handkerchief. I glared back at him, and he gave a short laugh.
“You’re no coward, I’ll give you that. In fact, you’re a fit match for him,” he nodded at Jamie, who was beginning to stir a bit, “and I can’t give you a better compliment than that.” He tenderly fingered his throat, where a darkening bruise showed in the open neck of his shirt. “He tried to kill me, one-handed, when I untied him. And damned near managed it too. Pity I didn’t realize he was lefthanded.”
“How unreasonable of him,” I said.
“Quite,” said Randall, with a nod. “I don’t suppose you’d be so impolite, do you? Still, on the off-chance…” He turned to the large servant, who was simply standing in the doorframe, shoulders sloped, waiting for orders.
“Marley,” said Randall, “come here and search this woman for weapons.” He watched with some amusement as the man groped clumsily about my person, eventually coming upon and extracting my dirk.
“You don’t care for Marley?” asked the Captain, watching me try to avoid the thick fingers that prodded me all too intimately. “Rather a pity; I’m sure he’s quite taken with you.”
“Poor Marley hasn’t much luck with women,” the Captain went on, a malicious gleam in his eye. “Have you, Marley? Even the whores won’t have him.” He fixed me with a designing sort of look, smiling wolfishly. “Too big, they say.” He raised one eyebrow. “Which is quite a judgment, coming from a whore, is it not?” He raised the other brow, making his meaning quite clear.
Marley, who had begun to pant rather heavily during the search, stopped and wiped a thread of saliva from the side of his mouth. I moved as far away as I could manage, disgusted.
Randall, watching me, said, “I imagine Marley would like to entertain you privately in his quarters, once we’ve finished our conversation. Of course, he might decide later on to share his good fortune with his friends, but that’s up to him.”
“Oh, you don’t want to watch?” I asked sarcastically.
Randall laughed, truly amused.
“I may have what are called ‘unnatural tastes’ myself, as I imagine you know by this time. But give me credit for some aesthetic principles.” He glanced at the immense orderly, slouched in his filthy clothes, paunch straining over his belt. The loose, blubbery lips chewed and mumbled constantly, as though seeking some fragment of food, and the short, thick fingers worked nervously against the crotch of the stained breeches. Randall shuddered delicately.
“No,” he said. “You’re a very lovely woman, shrewish tongue notwithstanding. To see you with Marley—no, I don’t believe I want to watch that. Appearance aside, Marley’s personal habits leave quite a lot to be desired.”
“So do yours,” I said.
“That’s as may be. At any rate, they’ll not concern you much longer.” He paused, looking down at me. “I would still like to know who you are, you know. A Jacobite, plainly, but whose? Marischal’s? Seaforth’s? Lovat’s, most likely, since you’re with the Frasers.” Randall nudged Jamie gently with a polished boot-toe, but he still lay inert. I could see his chest rising and falling regularly; perhaps he had merely slipped from unconsciousness into sleep. The smudges under his eyes gave evidence that he had had little rest of late.
“I’ve even heard from some that you’re a witch,” the Captain went on. His tone was light, but he watched me closely, as though I might suddenly turn myself into an owl and flap away. “There was some kind of trouble at Cranesmuir, wasn’t there? A death of some kind? But no doubt that’s all superstitious nonsense.”
Randall eyed me speculatively. “I might be persuaded to make a bargain with you,” he said abruptly. He leaned back, half-sitting on the table, inviting me.
I laughed bitterly. “I can’t say I’m in either a position or a mood to bargain at the moment. What can you offer me?”
Randall glanced at Marley. The idiot’s eyes were fixed on me, and he was mumbling under his breath.
“A choice, at least. Tell me—and convince me—who you are and who sent you to Scotland. What you’re doing and what information you’ve sent to whom. Tell me that, and I’ll take you to Sir Fletcher, instead of giving you to Marley.”
I kept my eyes firmly away from Marley. I had seen the rotting stumps of teeth embedded in pustulant gums, and the thought of him kissing me, let alone—I choked the thought off. Randall was right; I wasn’t a coward. But neither was I a fool.
“You can’t take me to Sir Fletcher,” I said, “and I know it as well as you do. Take me to him and risk my telling him about this?” My nod took in the snug little room, the cozy fire, the bed I sat on, and Jamie lying at my feet. “Whatever his own shortcomings, I don’t imagine Sir Fletcher would stand, officially, for his officers torturing prisoners. Even the English army must have some standards.”
Randall raised both eyebrows. “Torture? Oh, that.” He waved negligently at Jamie’s hand. “An accident. He fell in his cell and was trampled by the other prisoners. It’s rather crowded in those cells, you know.” He smiled derisively.
I was silent. While Sir Fletcher might or might not believe the damage to Jamie’s hand was an accident, he was most unlikely to believe anything I said, once I was unmasked as an English spy.
Randall was watching me, eyes alert for any signs of weakening. “Well? The choice is yours.”
I sighed and closed my eyes, tired of looking at him. The choice wasn’t mine, but I could hardly tell him why not.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said wearily. “I can’t tell you anything.”
“Think it over for a moment.” He stood up, and stepped carefully over Jamie’s unconscious form, taking a key from his pocket. “I may need Marley’s help for a bit, but then I’ll send him back to his quarters—and you with him, if you don’t mean to cooperate.” He stooped, unlocked the manacle, and heaved the inert body up with an impressive display of strength for one so slightly built. The muscles of his forearms ridged the cloth of his snowy shirt as he carried Jamie, head lolling, to a stool in the corner. He nodded at the bucket standing nearby.
“Rouse him,” he directed the silent hulk curtly. Cold water splashed from the stones in the corner and puddled on the floor, making a filthy pool underneath. “Once more,” Randall said, inspecting Jamie, who was moaning slightly, head stirring against the stones of the wall. He flinched and coughed under the second drenching shower.
Randall strode forward and took him by the hair, yanking his head back, shaking it like a drowned animal, so that drops of fetid water spattered the walls. Jamie’s eyes were dull slits. Randall threw Jamie’s head back in disgust, wiping his hand down the side of his trousers as he turned away. His eye must have caught the flicker of movement, because he began to turn back, but not in time to brace himself against the big Scot’s sudden lunge.
Jamie’s arms went around Randall’s neck. Lacking the use of his right hand, he gripped his right wrist with the able left and pulled, forearm braced on the Englishman’s windpipe. As Randall turned purple and began to sag, he let go his left hand long enough to drive it into the captain’s kidney. Even weakened as Jamie was, the blow was enough to make Randall give at the knees.
Dropping the limp captain, Jamie whirled to face the hulking orderly, who had been watching events so far without the slightest flicker of interest on his slack-jawed face. Although his expression remained rather inert, he did move, picking up the mallet from the table as Jamie came toward him, holding the stool by one leg in his good left hand. A certain dull wariness came into the orderly’s face as the two men circled each other slowly, looking for an opening.
Better-armed, Marley tried first, swinging the mallet at Jamie’s ribs. Jamie whirled away and feinted with the stool, forcing the orderly back toward the door. The next attempt, a murderous blow downward, would have split Jamie’s skull had it landed on target. As it was, the stool split instead, one leg and the seat sheared away.
Impatiently, Jamie smashed the stool against the wall with his next swing, reducing it to a smaller but more manageable club; a two-foot length of wood with a ragged, splintered end.
The air in the cell, made stifling with smoke from the torches, was still except for the gasping breath of the two men and the occasional bruising thud of wood on flesh. Afraid to speak for fear of disturbing Jamie’s precarious concentration, I pulled my feet up onto the bed and shrank back against the wall, trying to stay out of the way.
It was plain to me—and by his faint smile of anticipation, to the orderly also—that Jamie was tiring rapidly. Amazing enough that he was on his feet at all, let alone fighting. It was clear to all three of us that the fight couldn’t last much longer; if he was to have any chance at all, he must move soon. With short, hard jabs of the stool-leg, he advanced cautiously on Marley, forcing the bigger man into the corner where the arc of his swing would be restricted. Realizing this by some instinct, the orderly came out with a vicious horizontal swing, expecting to force Jamie back.
Instead of stepping back, Jamie stepped forward into the swing, taking the full brunt of the blow in the left side as he brought his club down full-force on Marley’s temple. Intent on the scene before me, I had paid no attention to Randall’s prone body on the floor near the door. But as the orderly tottered, eyes glazing, I heard the scraping sounds of boots on stone, and a labored breathing rasped in my ear.
“Nicely fought, Fraser.” Randall’s voice was hoarse from the choking, but as composed as ever. “Cost you a few ribs, though, didn’t it?”
Jamie leaned against the wall, breathing in sobbing gasps, still holding the club, elbow pressed hard to his side. His eyes dropped to the floor, measuring the distance.
“Don’t try it, Fraser.” The light voice was bland. “She’ll be dead before you get two steps.” The thin cool knife blade slid past my ear; I could feel the point gently pricking the corner of my jaw.
Jamie surveyed the scene with dispassionate eyes for a moment, still braced by the wall. With a sudden effort, he straightened painfully and stood swaying. The club clanked hollowly on the stone floor. The knifepoint pricked infinitesimally harder, but otherwise Randall stood motionless as Jamie slowly crossed the few feet to the table, stooping carefully on the way to pick up the twine-wrapped mallet. He held it dangling in two fingers in front of him, his nonoffensive intent apparent.
The mallet clattered on the table in front of me, the handle spinning hard enough to carry the weighty head nearly to the edge. It lay dark and heavy on the oak, a homely, solid tool. A reed basket of ha’penny nails to go with it lay in the jumble of objects at the far end of the table; something perhaps left behind by the carpenters who had furnished the room. Jamie’s good hand, the fine straight fingers rimmed with gold in the light, gripped the table-edge hard. With an effort I could only guess at, he lowered himself slowly into a chair and deliberately spread both hands flat before him on the scarred wood surface, the mallet within easy reach.
His gaze had been locked with Randall’s during the painful trip across the room, and did not waver now. He nodded briefly in my direction without looking at me and said, “Let her go.”
The knife-hand seemed to relax a trifle. Randall’s voice was amused and curious. “Why should I?”
Jamie seemed now in complete command of himself, despite his white face and the sweat that ran unregarded down his face like tears.
“You cannot hold a knife on two people at once. Kill the woman or leave her side, and I’ll kill you.” He spoke softly, a steely thread beneath the quiet Scots accent.
“And what’s to stop me killing both of you, one at a time?”
I would have called the expression on Jamie’s face a smile only because his teeth were showing. “What, and cheat the hangsman? Bit hard to explain, come morning, no?” He nodded briefly at the unconscious hulk on the floor. “You’ll recall that ye had to have your wee helper bind me wi’ rope before ye broke my hand.”
“So?” The knife stayed steady at my ear.
“Your helper is no going to be much good to ye awhile yet.” This was undeniably true; the monstrous orderly was lying on his face in the corner, breathing in ragged, stertorous snores. Severe concussion, I thought, mechanically. Possible cerebral hemorrhage. I couldn’t care less if he died before my eyes.
“You can’t take me alone, one-handed or no.” Jamie shook his head slowly, appraising Randall’s size and strength. “No. I’m bigger, and far the better fighter, hand to hand. Did ye not have the woman there, I would take that wee knife from ye and cram it down your throat. And you know it, which is why you’ve not harmed her.”
“But I do have her. You could leave yourself, of course. There’s a way out, quite near. That would leave your wife—you did say she’s your wife?—to die, of course.”
Jamie shrugged. “And myself as well. I’d not get far, with the whole garrison hunting me. To be shot in the open might be preferable to being hanged in here, but not enough to make a difference.” A brief grimace of pain crossed his face and he held his breath for a moment. When he breathed again, it was in shallow, panting gulps. Whatever shock had been protecting him from the worst of the pain, it was apparently wearing off.
“So we seem to be at an impasse.” Randall’s well-bred English tones were casual. “Unless you have a suggestion?”
“I have. You want me.” The cool Scottish voice was matter-of-fact. “Let the woman go, and ye can have me.” The knifepoint moved slightly, nicking my ear. I felt a sting and the warm ooze of blood.
“Do what ye wish to me. I’ll not struggle, though I’ll allow you to bind me if ye think it needful. And I’ll not speak of it, come tomorrow. But first you’ll see the woman safe from the prison.” My eyes were on Jamie’s ruined hand. A small pool of blood under the middle finger was growing, and I realized with a shock that he was deliberately pressing the finger into the table, using the pain as a spur to stay conscious. He was bargaining for my life using the only thing he had left—himself. If he fainted now, that single chance was gone.
Randall had relaxed completely; the knife lay carelessly on my right shoulder as he thought it through. I was there before him. Jamie was meant to hang in the morning. Sooner or later, he would be missed, and the Castle would be searched. While a certain amount of brutality might be tolerated among officers and gentlemen—I was sure it would extend to a broken hand or a flayed back—Randall’s other inclinations were not so likely to be overlooked. No matter what Jamie’s status as a condemned prisoner, if he stood at the foot of the gallows come morning and claimed abuse at the hands of Randall, his claims would be investigated. And if physical examination proved them true, Randall’s career was at an end, and possibly his life as well. But with Jamie sworn to silence….
“You’ll give me your word?”
Jamie’s eyes were like blue matchflames in the parchment of his face. After a moment, he nodded slowly. “In return for yours.”
The attraction of a victim at once completely unwilling and completely compliant was irresistible.
“Done.” The knife left my shoulder and I heard the susurrus of sheathed metal. Randall walked slowly past me, around the table, picking up the mallet as he went. He held it up, ironically questioning. “You’ll allow me a brief test of your sincerity?”
“Aye.” Jamie’s voice was as steady as his hands, flat and motionless on the table. I tried to speak, to utter some protest, but my throat had dried to a sticky silence.
Moving without haste, Randall leaned past Jamie to pluck a ha’penny nail delicately from the reed basket. He positioned the point with care and brought the mallet down, driving the nail through Jamie’s right hand into the table with four solid blows. The broken fingers twitched and sprang straight, like the legs of a spider pinned to a collection board.
Jamie groaned, his eyes wide and blank with shock. Randall set the mallet down with care. He took Jamie’s chin in his hand and turned his face up. “Now kiss me,” he said softly, and lowered his head to Jamie’s unresisting mouth.
Randall’s face when he rose was dreamy, eyes gentle and faraway, long mouth quirked in a smile. Once upon a time, I had loved a smile like that, and that dreamy look had roused me in anticipation. Now it sickened me. Tears ran into the corner of my mouth, though I didn’t remember starting to cry. Randall stood a moment in his trance, gazing down at Jamie. Then he stirred, remembering, and drew the knife once more from its sheath.
The blade slashed carelessly through the binding around my wrists, grazing the skin. I hardly had time to rub the circulation back into my hands before he was urging me up with a hand beneath my elbow, pushing me toward the door.
“Wait!” Jamie spoke behind us, and Randall turned impatiently.
“You’ll allow me to say goodbye?” It was a statement more than a question, and Randall hesitated only briefly before nodding and giving me a shove back toward the motionless figure at the table.
Jamie’s good arm was tight around my shoulders and my wet face was buried in his neck.
“You can’t,” I whispered. “You can’t. I won’t let you.”
His mouth was warm against my ear. “Claire, I’m to hang in the morning. What happens to me between now and then doesna matter to anyone.” I drew back and stared at him.
“It matters to me !” The strained lips quivered in what was almost a smile, and he raised his free hand and laid it against my wet cheek.
“I know it does, mo duinne. And that’s why you’ll go now. So I’ll know there is someone still who minds for me.” He drew me close again, kissed me gently and whispered in Gaelic, “He will let you go because he thinks you are helpless. I know you are not.” Releasing me, he said in English, “I love you. Go now.”
Randall paused as he ushered me out the door. “I’ll be back very shortly.” It was the voice of a man taking reluctant leave of his lover, and my stomach heaved.
Silhouetted in red by the torch behind him, Jamie inclined his head gracefully toward the pinioned hand. “I expect you’ll find me here.”
Black Jack. A common name for rogues and scoundrels in the eighteenth century. A staple of romantic fiction, the name conjured up charming highwaymen, dashing blades in plumed hats. The reality walked at my side.
One never stops to think what underlies romance. Tragedy and terror, transmuted by time. Add a little art in the telling, and voil?! a stirring romance, to make the blood run fast and maidens sigh. My blood was running fast, all right, and never maiden sighed like Jamie, cradling his mangled hand.
“This way.” It was the first time Randall had spoken since we had left the cell. He indicated a narrow alcove in the wall, unlighted by torches. The way out, of which he had spoken to Jamie.
By now I had sufficient command of myself to speak, and I did so. I stepped back a pace, so that the torchlight fell full on me, for I wanted him to remember my face.
“You asked me, Captain, if I were a witch,” I said, my voice low and steady. “I’ll answer you now. Witch I am. Witch, and I curse you. You will marry, Captain, and your wife will bear a child, but you shall not live to see your firstborn. I curse you with knowledge, Jack Randall—I give you the hour of your death.”
His face was in shadow, but the gleam of his eyes told me he believed me. And why should he not? For I spoke the truth, and I knew it. I could see the lines of Frank’s genealogical chart as though they were drawn on the mortar lines between the stones of the wall, and the names listed by them. “Jonathan Wolverton Randall,” I said softly, reading it from the stones. “Born, September the 3rd, 1705. Died—” He made a convulsive movement toward me, but not fast enough to prevent me from speaking.
A narrow door at the back of the alcove crashed open with a squeal of hinges. Expecting further darkness, my eyes were dazzled by a blinding flash of light on snow. A quick shove from behind sent me staggering headlong into the drifts, and the door slammed to behind me.
I was lying in a ditch of sorts, behind the prison. The drifts around me covered heaps of something—the prison’s refuse, most likely. There was something hard beneath the drift I had fallen into; wood, perhaps. Looking up at the sheering wall above me, I could see streaks and runnels down the stone, marking the path of garbage tipped from a sliding door forty feet above. That must be the kitchen quarters.
I rolled over, bracing myself to rise, and found myself looking into a pair of wide blue eyes. The face was nearly as blue as the eyes, and hard as the log of wood I had mistaken him for. I stumbled to my feet, choking, and staggered back against the prison wall.
Head down, breathe deep, I told myself firmly. You are not going to faint, you have seen dead men before, lots of them, you are not going to faint—God, he has blue eyes like—you are not going to faint, damn it!
My breathing slowed at last, and with it my racing pulse. As the panic receded, I forced myself back to that pathetic figure, wiping my hands convulsively on my skirt. I don’t know whether it was pity, curiosity, or simple shock that made me look again. Seen without the suddenness of surprise, there was nothing frightening about the dead man; there never is. No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying; once gone, what is left is only an object.
The blue-eyed stranger had been hanged. He was not the only inhabitant of the ditch. I didn’t bother to excavate the drift, but now that I knew what it contained, I could plainly see the outline of frozen limbs and the softly rounded heads under the snow. At least a dozen men lay here, waiting either for a thaw that would make their burial easier, or for a cruder disposal by the beasts of the nearby forest.
The thought startled me out of my pensive immobility. I had no time to waste in graveside meditation, or one more pair of blue eyes would stare sightless up into falling snow.
I had to find Murtagh and Rupert. That hidden postern door could be used, perhaps. Clearly it was not fortified or guarded like the main gates and other entrances to the prison. But I needed help, and I needed it quickly.
I glanced up at the rim of the ditch. The sun was quite low, burning through a haze of cloud just above the treetops. The air felt heavy with moisture. Likely it would snow again by nightfall; the haze was thick across the sky in the east. There was perhaps an hour of light left.
I began to follow the ditch, not wanting to climb the steep rocky sides until I had to. The ravine curved away from the prison quite soon, and looked as though it would lead down toward the river; presumably the runoff of melting snow carried the prison’s refuse away. I was nearly to the corner of the soaring wall when I heard a faint sound behind me. I whirled. The sound had been made by a rock falling from the lip of the ditch, dislodged by the foot of a large grey wolf.
As an alternative to the items under the snow, I had certain desirable characteristics, from a wolf’s point of view. On the one hand, I was mobile, harder to catch, and posed the possibility of resistance. On the other, I was slow, clumsy, and above all, not frozen stiff, thus offering no danger of broken teeth. I also smelled of fresh blood, temptingly warm in this frozen waste. Were I a wolf, I thought, I wouldn’t hesitate. The animal made up its mind at the same time I came to my own decision regarding our future relations.
There had been a Yank at Pembroke Hospital, name of Charlie Marshall. He was a pleasant chap, friendly as all the Yanks were, and most entertaining on his pet subject. His pet subject was dogs; Charlie was a sergeant in the K-9 Corps. He had been blown up, along with two of his dogs, by an antipersonnel mine outside a small village near Arles. He grieved for his dogs, and often told me stories about them when I would sit with him during the odd slack moments in my shift.
More to the immediate point, he had also once told me what to do, and not do, should I ever be attacked by a dog. I felt it was stretching a point to call the eerie creature picking its delicate way down the rocks a dog, but hoped that it might yet share a few basic character traits with its tame descendants.
“Bad dog,” I said firmly, staring it in one yellow eyeball. “In fact,” I said, backing very slowly toward the prison wall, “you are a perfectly horrible dog.” (Speak firmly and loudly, I heard Charlie saying.) “Probably the worst I’ve ever seen,” I said, firmly and loudly. I continued to back up, one hand feeling behind me for the stones of the wall, and once there, I sidled toward the corner, some ten yards away.
I pulled the ties at my throat and began to fumble at the brooch fastening my cloak, still telling the wolf firmly and loudly what I thought of him, his ancestors, and his immediate family. The beast seemed interested in the diatribe, tongue lolling in a doggy grin. He was in no hurry; he limped slightly, I could see, as he drew nearer, and was thin and mangy. Perhaps he had trouble hunting, and infirmity was what drew him to the prison midden to scavenge. I certainly hoped so; the more infirm, the better.
I found my leather gloves in the pocket of my cloak and put them on. Then I wrapped the heavy cloak several times around my right forearm, blessing the weight of the velvet. “They’ll go for the throat,” Charlie had instructed me, “unless their trainer tells them otherwise. Keep looking him in the eye; you’ll see it when he makes up his mind to jump. That’s your moment.”
I could see a number of things in that wicked yellow orb, including hunger, curiosity, and speculation, but not yet a decision to leap.
“You disgusting creature,” I told it, “don’t you dare leap at my throat!” I had other ideas. I had wrapped the cloak in several loose folds about my right arm, leaving the bulk of it dangling, but providing enough padding, I hoped, to keep the beast’s teeth from sinking through.
The wolf was thin, but not emaciated. I judged it to weigh perhaps eighty or ninety pounds; less than me, but not enough to give me any great advantage. The leverage was definitely in the animal’s favor; four legs against two gave better balance on the slippery crust of snow. I hoped bracing my back against the wall would help.
A certain feeling of emptiness at my back told me I had reached the corner. The wolf was some twenty feet away. This was it. I scraped enough snow from under my feet to give good footing and waited.
I didn’t even see the wolf leave the ground. I could swear I had been watching its eyes, but if the decision to leap had registered there, it had been followed by action too swiftly to note. It was instinct, not thought, that raised my arm as a whitish-grey blur hurtled toward me.
The teeth sank into the padding with a force that bruised my arm. It was heavier than I thought; I was unprepared for the weight, and my arm sagged. I had planned to try to throw the beast against the wall, perhaps stunning it. Instead, I heaved myself at the wall, squashing the wolf between the stone blocks and my hip. I struggled to wrap the loose cloak around it. Claws shredded my skirt and scraped my thigh. I drove a knee viciously into its chest, eliciting a strangled yelp. Only then did I realize that the odd, growling whimpers were coming from me and not the wolf.
Strangely enough, I was not at all frightened now, though I had been terrified watching the wolf stalk me. There was room in my mind for only one thought: I would kill this animal, or it would kill me. Therefore, I was going to kill it.
There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.
Past that certain point, you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple at that point; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt, and it does not really matter much which.
I had seen this sort of struggle during my training on the wards, but never had I experienced it before. Now all my concentration was focused on the jaws locked around my forearm and the writhing demon tearing at my body.
I managed to bang the beast’s head against the wall, but not hard enough to do much good. I was growing tired rapidly; had the wolf been in good condition, I would have had no chance. I hadn’t much now, but took what there was. I fell on the animal, pinning it under me and knocking the wind from it in a gust of carrion breath. It recovered almost immediately and began squirming beneath me, but the second’s relaxation enabled me to get it off my arm, one hand clamped under its wet muzzle.
By forcing my fingers back into the corners of its mouth, I managed to keep them out from between the scissoring carnassial teeth. Saliva drizzled down my arm. I was lying flat on top of the wolf. The corner of the prison wall was perhaps eighteen inches ahead of me. Somehow I must get there, without releasing the fury that heaved and squirmed under me.
Scrabbling with my feet, pressing down with all my might, I pushed myself forward inch by inch, constantly straining to keep the fangs from my throat. It cannot have taken more than a few minutes to move those eighteen inches, but it seemed I had lain there most of my life, locked in battle with this beast whose hind claws raked my legs, seeking a good ripping purchase in my belly.
At last I could see around the corner. The blunt angle of stone was directly in front of my face. Now was the tricky part. I must maneuver the wolf’s body to allow me to get both hands under the muzzle; I would never be able to exert the necessary force with one.
I rolled abruptly away, and the wolf slithered at once into the small clear space between my body and the wall. Before it could rise to its feet, I brought my knee up as hard as I could. The wolf grunted as my knee drove into its side, pinning it, however fleetingly, against the wall.
I had both hands beneath its jaw now. The fingers of one hand were actually in its mouth. I could feel a crushing sting across my gloved knuckles, but ignored it as I forced the hairy head back, and back, and back again, using the angle of the wall as a fulcrum for the lever of the beast’s body. I thought my arms would break, but this was the only chance.
There was no audible noise, but I felt the reverberation through the whole body as the neck snapped. The straining limbs—and the bladder—at once relaxed. The intolerable strain on my arms now released, I dropped, as limp as the dying wolf. I could feel the beast’s heart fibrillating beneath my cheek, the only part still capable of a death struggle. The stringy fur stank of ammonia and soggy hair. I wanted to move away, but could not.
I think I must have slept for a moment, odd as that sounds, cheek pillowed on the corpse. I opened my eyes to see the greenish stone of the prison a few inches in front of my nose. Only the thought of what was transpiring on the other side of that wall got me to my feet.
I stumbled down the ditch, cloak dragged over one shoulder, tripping on stones hidden in the snow, banging my shins painfully on half-buried tree branches. Subconsciously, I must have been aware that wolves usually run in packs, because I do not recall being surprised by the howl that wavered out of the forest above and behind me. If I felt anything, it was black rage at what seemed a conspiracy to thwart and delay me.
Wearily I turned to see where the sound had come from. I was in the open away from the prison by this time; no wall to brace my back against, and no weapon to hand. It had been luck as much as anything that helped me with the first wolf; there was not a chance in a thousand that I could kill another animal bare-handed—and how many more might there be? The pack I had seen feeding in the moonlight in the summer had had at least ten wolves. I could hear in memory the sounds of their teeth scraping, and the crack of breaking bones. The only question now was whether I bothered to fight at all, or whether I would rather just lie down in the snow and give up. That option seemed remarkably attractive, all things considered.
Still, Jamie had given up his life, and considerably more than that, to get me out of the prison. I owed it to him at least to try.
Once more I backed slowly away, moving farther down the ditch. The light was fading; soon the ravine would be filled with shadow. I doubted that that would help me. The wolves undoubtedly had better night-sight than I did.
The first of the hunters appeared on the rim of the ditch as the other had; a shaggy figure, standing motionless and alert. It was with something of a shock that I realized two more were already in the ravine with me, trotting slowly, almost in step with each other. They were almost the same color as the snow in the twilight—dirty grey—and almost invisible, though they moved with no attempt at concealment.
I stopped moving. Flight was clearly useless. Bending, I freed a dead pine branch from the snow. The bark was black with the wet, and rough even through my gloves. I waved the branch around my head and shouted. The animals stopped moving toward me, but did not retreat. The closest one flattened its ears, as though objecting to the noise.
“Don’t like it?” I screeched. “Too bloody bad! Back off, you fucking sod!” Scooping up a half-buried rock, I hurled it at the wolf. It missed, but the beast scooted to one side. Encouraged, I began to fling missiles wildly; rocks, twigs, handfuls of snow, anything I could grab one-handed. I shrieked until my throat was raw with cold air, howling like the wolves themselves.
At first I thought one of my missiles had scored a hit. The nearest wolf yelped and seemed to convulse. The second arrow passed within a foot of me and I caught the tiny blur of motion before it thudded home in the chest of the second wolf. That animal died where it stood. The first, struck less vitally, kicked and struggled in the snow, no more than a heaving lump in the growing dusk.
I stood stupidly staring at it for some time, then looked up by instinct to the lip of the ravine. The third wolf, wisely choosing discretion, had vanished back into the trees, from whence a shivering howl went up.
I was still looking up at the dark trees when a hand clutched my elbow. I whirled with a gasp to find myself looking up into the face of a stranger. Narrow-jawed and with a weak chin ill-disguised by a scabby beard, he was a stranger indeed, but his plaid and his dirk marked him a Scot.
“Help,” I said, and fell forward into his arms.