#5 - Page 214 (1/2)

“We didna mind so much,” Jamie said. His eyes were open, but fixed on whatever he was seeing in the summer dim of memory. “It was better to be outside than in. And yet, by the evening, we would be so droukit wi’ fatigue that we could barely set one foot before the other. It was like walking in a dream.”

Both guards and men were numb with exhaustion, by the time the work of the day was done. The groups of prisoners were collected, formed up into a column, and marched back toward the prison, shuffling across the moorland, stumbling and nodding, drunk with the need to fall down and sleep.

“We were still by the quarry, when they set off; we were to load the wagon wi’ the stone-cutting tools and the last of the blocks, and follow. I remember—I heaved a great block up into the wagon bed, and stood back, panting wi’ the effort. There was a sound behind me, and I turned to see Sergeant Murchison—Billy, it was, though I didna find that out ’til later.”

The Sergeant was no more than a squat black shape in the dim, face invisible against a sky the color of an oyster’s sh.e.l.l.

“I wondered, now and then, if I wouldna have done it, had I seen his face.” The fingers of Jamie’s left hand stroked his wrist absently, and I realized that he still felt the weight of the irons he had worn.

The Sergeant had raised his club, poked Jamie hard in the ribs, then used it to point to a maul left lying on the ground. Then the Sergeant turned away.

“I didna think about it for a moment,” Jamie said softly. “I was on him in two steps, wi’ the chain of my fetters hard against his throat. He hadna time to make a sound.”

The wagon stood no more than ten feet from the lip of the quarry pool; there was a drop of forty feet straight down, and the water below, a hundred feet deep, black and waveless under that hollow white sky.

“I tied him to one of the blocks and threw him over, and then I went back to the wagon. The two men from my group were there, standing like statues in the dim, watching. They said nothing, nor did I. I stepped up and took the reins, they got into the back of the wagon, and I drove toward the prison. We caught up to the column before too long, and all went back together, without a word. No one missed Sergeant Murchison until the next evening, for they thought he was down in the village, off-duty. I dinna think they ever found him.”

He seemed to notice what he was doing, then, and took his hand away from his wrist.

“And the two men?” I asked softly. He nodded.

“Tom Christie and Duncan Innes.”

He sighed deeply, and stretched his arms, s.h.i.+fting his shoulders as though to ease the fit of his s.h.i.+rt—though he wore a loose nights.h.i.+rt. Then he raised one hand and turned it to and fro, frowning at his wrist in the light.

“That’s odd,” he said, sounding faintly surprised.

“What is?”

“The marks—they’re gone.”

“Marks . . . from the irons?” He nodded, examining both his wrists in bemus.e.m.e.nt. The skin was fair, weathered to a pale gold, but otherwise unblemished.

“I had them for years—from the chafing, aye? I never noticed that they’d gone.”

I set a hand on his wrist, rubbing my thumb gently over the pulse where his radial artery crossed the bone.

“You didn’t have them when I found you in Edinburgh, Jamie. They’ve been gone a long time.”

He looked down at his arms, and shook his head, as though unable to believe it.

“Aye,” he said softly. “Well, so has Tom Christie.”

PART NINE

A Dangerous Business

96

AURUM