Chapter 39. TO RANSOM A MAN’S SOUL

In the morning, I went as usual to check Jamie, hoping that he had managed some breakfast. Just short of his room, Murtagh slid out of a wall alcove, barring my way.

“What is it?” I said abruptly. “What’s wrong?” My heart began to beat faster and my palms were suddenly wet.

My panic must have been obvious, for Murtagh shook his head in reassurance. “Nay, he’s all right.” He shrugged, “Or as much all right as he’s been.” He turned me with a light hand under the elbow and began to walk me back down the corridor. I thought with a moment’s shock that this was the first time Murtagh had ever deliberately touched me; his hand on my arm was light and strong as a pelican’s wing.

“What’s the matter with him?” I demanded. The little man’s seamed face was as expressionless as usual, but the crinkled eyelids twitched at the corners.

“He doesna want to see ye just yet,” he said.

I stopped dead and pulled my arm from his grasp.

“Why not?” I demanded.

Murtagh hesitated, as though choosing his words carefully. “Weel, it’s just… he’s decided as it would be best for ye to leave him here and go back to Scotland. He-”

The rest of what he was saying was lost as I pushed my way rudely past him.

The heavy door swung shut with a soft thump behind me. Jamie was dozing, facedown on the bed. He was uncovered, clad only in a novice’s short gown; the charcoal brazier in the corner made the room comfortably warm, if smoky.

He started violently when I touched him. His eyes, still glazed with sleep, were sunk deep and his face was haunted by dreams. I took his hand between both of mine, but he wrenched it away. With a look of near-despair, he shut his eyes and buried his face in the pillow.

Trying not to exhibit any outward sign of disturbance, I quietly pulled up a stool and sat down near his head. “I won’t touch you,” I said, “but you must talk to me.” I waited for several minutes while he lay unmoving, shoulders hunched defensively. At last he sighed and sat up, moving slowly and painfully, swinging his legs over the edge of the cot.

“Aye,” he said flatly, not looking at me, “aye, I suppose I must. I should have done so before… but I was coward enough to hope I need not.” His voice was bitter and he kept his head bowed, hands clasped loosely around his knees. “I didna used to think myself a coward, but I am. I should have made Randall kill me, but I did not. I had no reason to live, but I was not brave enough to die.” His voice dropped, and he spoke so softly I could hardly hear him. “And I knew I would have to see you one last time… to tell you… but… Claire, my love… oh, my love.”

He picked up the pillow from the bed and hugged it to him as though for protection, a substitute for the comfort he could not seek from me. He rested his forehead on it for a moment, gathering strength.

“When ye left me there at Wentworth, Claire,” he said quietly, head still bowed, “I listened to your footsteps, going away on the flags outside, and I said to myself, I’ll think of her now. I’ll remember her; the feel of her skin and the scent of her hair and the touch of her mouth on mine. I’ll think of her until that door opens again. And I’ll think of her tomorrow, when I stand on the gallows, to give me courage at the last. Between the time the door opens, and the time I leave this place to die” – the big hands clenched briefly and relaxed – “I will not think at all,” he finished softly.

In the small dungeon room, he had closed his eyes and sat waiting. The pain was not bad, so long as he sat still, but he knew it would grow worse soon. Fearing pain, still he had dealt with it often before. He knew it and his own response to it well enough that he was resigned to endurance, hoping only that it would not exceed his strength too soon. The prospect of physical violation, too, was only a matter of mild revulsion now. Despair was in its own way an anesthetic.

There was no window in the room by which to judge the time. It had been late afternoon when he was brought to the dungeon, but his sense of time was unreliable. How many hours could it be until dawn? Six, eight, ten? Until the end of everything. He thought with grim humor that Randall at least had done him the favor of rendering death welcome.

When the door opened, he had looked up, expecting – what? There was only a man, slightly built, handsome, and a little disheveled, linen shirt torn and hair disarranged, leaning against the wood of the door, watching him.

After a moment, Randall had crossed the room unspeaking and stood beside him. He rested a hand briefly on Jamie’s neck, then bent and freed the trapped hand with a jerk of the nail that brought Jamie to the edge of fainting. A glass of brandy was set before him, and a firm hand raised his head and helped him to drink it.

“He lifted my face then, between his hands, and he licked the drops of brandy from my lips. I wanted to pull back from him, but I’d given my word, so I just sat still.”

Randall had held Jamie’s head for a moment, looking searchingly into his eyes, then released him and sat down on the table next to him.

“He sat there for quite a time, not saying anything, just swinging one leg back and forth. I had no idea what he wanted, and wasn’t disposed to guess. I was tired and feeling a bit sick from the pain in my hand. So after a time I just laid my head down on my arms and turned my face away.” He sighed heavily.

“After a moment, I could feel a hand on my head, but I didn’t move. He began to stroke my hair, very gently, over and over. There wasn’t any sound but the big fellow’s hoarse breathing and the crackle of the fire in the brazier, and I think… I think I went to sleep for a few moments.”

When he woke, Randall was standing in front of him.

“Are you feeling a bit better?” Randall had asked in a remote, courteous tone.

Wordless, Jamie had nodded, and stood up. Randall had stripped him, careful of the wounded hand, and led him to the bed.

“I’d given my word not to struggle, but I did not mean to help, either, so I just stood, as though I were made of wood. I thought I would let him do as he liked, but I’d take no part in it – I would keep a distance from him, in my mind at least.” Randall had smiled then, and gripped Jamie’s right hand, hard enough to make him sink onto the bed, sick and dizzy with the sudden stab of pain. Randall had knelt then on the floor before him, and taught him, in a few shattering minutes, that distance is an illusion.

“When he rose up, he took the knife and drew it across my chest, from one side to the other. It was not a deep cut, but it bled a bit. He watched my face a moment, then reached out a finger and dipped it in the blood.” Jamie’s voice was unsteady, tripping and stammering from time to time. “He licked my blood off his finger, with little flicks of his tongue, like a c-cat washing itself. He smiled a bit, then – very kind, like – and bent his head to my chest. I was not bound at all, but I could not have moved. I just… sat there, while he used his tongue to… It did not hurt, precisely, but it felt verra queer. After a time, he stood up and cleaned himself careful with a towel.”

I watched Jamie’s hand. With his face turned away, it was the best indicator of his feelings. It clenched convulsively on the edge of the cot as he went on.

“He – he told me that… I was delicious. The cut had almost stopped bleeding, but he took the towel and scrubbed it hard over my chest to open the wound again.” The knuckles of the clenched hand were knobs of bloodless bone. “He unbuttoned his breeches then, and smeared the fresh blood on himself, and said it was my turn now.”

Afterward, Randall held his head and helped him to be sick, wiped his face gently with a wet cloth, and gave him brandy to cleanse his mouth of foulness. And so, by turns vicious and tender, bit by bit, using pain as his weapon, he had destroyed all barriers of mind and body.