The Scottish Prisoner Read Online Free PDF Page A

of the rocks and dripping icicles still hanging under ledges, but he felt the sun’s warmth on his shoulders and there was a faint haze of green over White Moss, just visible in the distance below.
    He’d come up this way, approaching the ruined shepherd’s cottage from behind and above, to give himself an opportunity to look things over. There was no reason to suspect ambush or trap, but instinct had kept him alive so far and he seldom ignored its grim mutterings in his ear.
    He’d not been up here in months, but very little changed on the fells, save the weather. There was a small tarn below, rimmed with a crescent of thin ice, last year’s dry reeds poking black through it, not yet supplanted by new growth. The shepherd’s hut was just beyond the tarn. So ruined was it that from the water’s level you’d never see it, taking it for no more than another heap of lichened stones. From above, though, the square foundation was clearly visible—and, in one corner, something flapped in the wind. Canvas, maybe? There was a bundle of some kind there, he was almost sure.
    Nothing moved below save the flapping canvas and the wind in the last of winter’s grass. He slid off Augustus and hobbled him, leaving the gelding to nose among the rocks for what might be found there. He walked a short way along the ridge for a better view and, emerging from behind a jutting outcrop, saw the man sitting on a rock, thirty feet below him, also watching the ruined hut.
    He was thin; Jamie could see the bones of his shoulders stark under his coat. He wore a slouched hat, but as Jamie watched him, he removed this to scratch his scalp, revealing a head of brown curls streaked with gray. He seemed familiar, and Jamie was racking his memory in search of the man’s name when his foot dislodged a small rock. It made a tiny sound, but enough. The man turned and stood up, thin face lighting. He’d lost an eyetooth, Jamie saw, but it didn’t impair the charm of his smile.
    “Well, and is it not Himself? Well met, Jamie dear, well met!”
    “Quinn?” he said, disbelieving. “Is it you?”
    The Irishman glanced quizzically down at his body, patted his chest, and looked up again.
    “Well, what’s left of me. There’s none of us is all we once were, after all—though I must say ye’re lookin’ well in yourself.” He looked Jamie up and down with approval. “The air up here must agree with ye. And ye’ve filled out a bit since last I saw ye.”
    “I daresay,” Jamie replied, rather dryly. When last he’d seen Tobias Quinn, in 1746, he had been twenty-five and starving along with the rest of the Jacobite army. Quinn was a year younger than himself, and Jamie saw the lines in the Irishman’s face and the gray in his hair with a sense of dismay. If Quinn felt any similar emotion at sight of Jamie, he kept it to himself.
    “Ye might have told Betty your name,” Jamie said, making his way down. He held out a hand to the Irishman, but Quinn stoodand flung his arms round Jamie, embracing him. Jamie was startled and embarrassed to feel tears come to his eyes at the touch, and he hugged Quinn tight for a minute, to blink them back.
    “She knows my name. But I wasn’t sure ye’d come, if ye knew ’twas me.” Quinn stood back, brushed an unashamed knuckle under his own eyes, and laughed. “By the Blessed Mother, Jamie, it’s glad I am to see ye!”
    “And I you.” That much was true; Jamie left alone the question of whether he would have come, knowing it was Quinn who waited on the fells. He sat down slowly on a rock, to gain a moment.
    It wasn’t that he disliked the man; quite the opposite. But to see this bit of the past rise up before him like a ghost from blood-soaked ground roused feelings he’d gone to great trouble to bury—and memories were stirring that he didn’t want back. Beyond that … instinct had given over muttering in his ear and was talking plain and clear. Quinn had been one of Charles Stuart’s intimates,