The Scottish Prisoner (65 page)

Willie rode atop the log, screeching with excitement, clinging to the rope. Once back at the house, Isobel had tried to teach him to sing “Good King Wenceslas,” but it was beyond him, and he dashed to and fro, into everything, until his grandmother declared that he would drive her to distraction and told Peggy to take him to the stable to help Jamie and Crusoe bring in the fresh-cut branches of pine and fir.

Thrilled, Willie rode on Jamie’s saddlebow to the grove and stood obediently on a stump where Jamie had put him, safe out of the way of the axes while the boughs were cut down. Then he
helped to load the greenery, clutching two or three fragrant, mangled twigs to his chest, dutifully chucking these in the general direction of the huge basket, then running back again for more, heedless of where his burden actually landed.

Jamie turned over, wriggling deeper into the nest of blankets, drowsy, remembering. He’d kept it up, the wean had, back and forth, back and forth, though red in the face and panting, until he dropped the very last branch on the pile. Jamie had looked down to find Willie beaming up at him with pride, laughed, and said on impulse, “Aye, that’s a bonnie lad. Come on. Let’s go home.”

William had fallen asleep on the ride home, his head heavy as a cannonball in its woolen cap against Jamie’s chest. Jamie had dismounted carefully, holding the child in one arm, but Willie had wakened, blinked groggily at Jamie, and said, “WEN-sess-loss,” clear as a bell, then fallen promptly back asleep. He’d waked properly by the time he was handed over to Nanny Elspeth, though, and as Jamie walked away, he had heard Willie, as he walked away, telling Nanny, “I a bonnie lad!”

But those words came out of his dreams from somewhere else, and long ago. Had his own father said that to him once?

He thought so, and for an instant—just an instant—was with his father and his brother, Willie, excited beyond bearing, holding the first fish he’d ever caught by himself, slimy and flapping, both of them laughing at him, with him in joy.
“Bonnie lad!”

Willie. God, Willie. I’m so glad they gave him your name
. He seldom thought of his brother, but every now and then, he could feel Willie with him; sometimes his mother or his father. More often, Claire.

I wish ye could see him, Sassenach
, he thought.
He’s a bonnie lad. Loud and obnoxious
, he added with honesty,
but bonnie
.

What would his own parents think of William? They had neither of them lived to see any of their children’s children.

He lay for some time, his throat aching, listening to the dark, hearing the voices of his dead pass by in the wind. His thoughts grew vague and his grief eased, comforted by the knowledge of love, still alive in the world. Sleep came near again.

He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, “Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children.”

Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her through the veils of time.

The concept of the Wild Hunt—a spectral horde seen rushing through the night skies or above the ground, hunting for things unknown—doesn’t come from Celtic mythology but from that of Central/Northern/Western Europe. Celtic mythology being the very plastic and inclusive thing that it is (
vide
the way it historically entwined itself easily with Catholic theology in Scotland and Ireland, where people might say a prayer to St. Bride in one breath, and a charm against piskies in the next)—and the inability of any Celt to pass up a good story—and it’s no wonder that you find variations on the Wild Hunt in the Celtic lands as well.

In some forms of these stories, the horde consists of faeries, in others, the “hunt” consists of the souls of the dead. Either way, it isn’t something you want to meet on a dark night—or a moonlit one, either. In the British forms, the best-known “wild hunt” tales are “Tam Lin” and “Thomas the Rhymer” (there are dozens of variations), in which a young man meets the Queen of Faerie and is more or less abducted by her.

The notion of abduction of humans by the hunt is common to almost all hunt tales, though—and it may be this aspect that caused our Irish Jacobite plotters to adopt this
nom de guerre
, as they planned to abduct George II. Then again, it might have been a reference to and natural extension from the older name, “Wild Geese,” as the Irish Jacobites of the late seventeenth century called themselves. The
idea of the
teind
—the tithe to hell—is from “Tam Lin,” and likely a word that would have resonance to people who lived by a code of honor, to whom betrayal and treason would carry a heavy price.

Thomas Arthur, Comte de Lally, Baron Tollendal, is one of the real historical figures who appear in this book, along with George II, George III, and Horace Walpole. Born of an Irish father and a French
mother (from whom he inherited his titles), he served with the famous Irish Brigade at Fontenoy and was a French general during the Seven Years War. He did in fact serve as Charles Edward Stuart’s aide de camp during the battle of Falkirk, in the ’45, and was mixed up in various Jacobite plots, including one hatched in Ireland in the 1760’s.

I
have
taken one small liberty with Thomas Lally, though. He was captured by the British following the Siege of Pondicherry, in India, and taken to England in 1761, not 1760. Given his real involvement with the Irish Jacobites—and his obvious spiritual kinship with Jamie Fraser as a prisoner of the English—I thought the minor temporal dislocation was worth it.

An interesting—if grim—footnote to Lally’s life is that he was indeed Just Furious about slurs cast on his reputation in France, following the French defeat at Pondicherry, and agitated to be sent back to France to defend himself at a court-martial. After five years of steady badgering, the British
did
send him back to France—where, in 1766, he was promptly convicted of treason and beheaded.

Twenty years later, a French court reviewed the evidence and reversed his conviction, which I trust he found satisfying.

I’ve always found bog bodies—the corpses of people found preserved in peat bogs—fascinating. The garb and accoutrements of the body found on Inchcleraun (which is a real place, and has a real monastery) are a composite of such items found on or with bog bodies from Europe. My thanks to the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History for hosting a special exhibition on bog bodies that provided me with a great deal of useful information, and to the British Museum, whose Lindow Man has always spoken powerfully to me.

I love Horace Walpole, as does anyone with an interest in eighteenth-century English society. The fourth son of Robert Walpole, who was
England’s first prime minister (though he himself never used the title), Horace was not politically active, nor was he socially important, physically attractive, or otherwise very noticeable. He was, however, intelligent, observant, witty, sarcastic, and apparently never suffered from writer’s cramp. His letters provide one of the most detailed and intimate views of English society during the mid-eighteenth century, and I’m indebted to one of these missives for Lord John’s experience of King George II’s state funeral.

Below is the text of Walpole’s account of the funeral; you may find it interesting to compare this with the fictionalized view in
Chapter 43
. The temptation, when presented with such eloquent historical largesse, is to use it all, but that’s a temptation that should, by and large, be resisted. The point of fiction is to tell a particular story, and too much embroidery can’t but detract, no matter how fascinating.

In this instance, the point of showing you the king’s funeral was primarily that it provided Lord John with his moment of enlightenment regarding Jamie’s motive for remaining at Helwater. Secondarily, it shows a historical turning point that a) anchors the reader in time, b) metaphorically underlines the conclusion of the Grey brothers’ quest, c) marks a turning point in Lord John’s relationship with Jamie Fraser, and d) opens the door to a new phase of both personal and public history—for George III (who was the grandson, not the son, of George II) is, of course, the king from whom the American colonies revolted, and we see in the later books of the Outlander series just how
that
affects the lives of Lord John, Jamie Fraser, and William.