The Scottish Prisoner Read Online Free PDF Page B

now. I’ll not give the details just yet, if ye don’t mind—”
    “I dinna mind a bit.”
    “—but I
will
say that there’s an invasion planned, maybe assoon as next year—ha-ha! Would ye look at your face now? Flabbergasted, aye? Well, I was, too, first I heard of it. But there’s more!”
    “Oh, God.”
    Quinn leaned forward conspiratorially, lowering his voice—though there was no one near enough to hear save a soaring peregrine overhead.
    “And this is where
you
come into it.”
    “Me?!” Jamie had begun to sink back onto his rock, but this brought him up all standing at once. “Are ye mad?”
    He hadn’t meant it as a rhetorical question, but neither did he expect an affirmative answer, and it was just as well, because he didn’t get one.
    “Have ye ever heard”—and here Quinn paused to dart his eyes one way and then the other, looking out for invisible watchers—“of the
Cupán Druid riogh
?”
    “I have not. A cup …?”
    “The cup o’ the Druid king, the very thing!”
    Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, feeling very tired. “Quinn, I’m pleased to see ye well, but I’ve work to do and—”
    “Oh, indeed ye have, lad!” Quinn reached out and fastened an earnest hand to Jamie’s forearm. “Let me explain.”
    He didn’t wait for permission.
    “It’s the ancient possession o’ the kings of Ireland, the
Cupán
is. Given to the king of kings by the chief Druid himself, so far back folk have forgotten the time of it.”
    “Oh, aye?”
    “But the people know it still; it’s spoken of in the legends, and ’tis a powerful symbol of kingship.” The hand on Jamie’s forearm tightened. “Think, now. How would it be, Prince
Tearlach
riding into Dublin, standin’ in the courtyard o’ Dublin Castle,between the Gates of Fortitude and Justice, with the
Cupán
raised high as he claims all of Ireland for his father?”
    “Well, since ye ask …”
    “Why, man, the people would rise from the
bailes
and the bogs in their thousands! We should take England with scarce a shot fired, there’d be so many!”
    “Ye have
seen
the English army …” Jamie began, but he might as well have tried to stop the tide coming into the River Ness.
    “And that’s where
you
come in!” Quinn let go of his arm at last, but only in order to prod him enthusiastically in the chest.
    Jamie recoiled slightly. “Me?”
    “See, the thing is, we’ve found the
Cupán
—lost for two hundred years it’s been, and legends saying the faeries took it, the Druids reclaimed it, all manner of tosh, but we—well, I myself, in fact”—here he tried to look modest, with indifferent results—“discovered it, in the hands of the monks at the monastery of Inchcleraun.”
    “But—”
    “Now, the monks are keepin’ the precious thing close and quiet, to be sure. But the thing is, the abbot at Inchcleraun is one Michael FitzGibbons.” He stood back a bit, looking expectant.
    Jamie raised the brow again. Quinn sighed at such obtuseness but obliged with more information.
    “Mi-chael Fitz-Gib-bons,” he repeated, prodding Jamie’s chest anew with each syllable. Jamie moved back out of reach.
    “FitzGibbons,” Quinn repeated, “and the man first cousin to your godfather, Murtagh FitzGibbons Fraser, is he not? To say nothing of having grown up in the house of your uncle Alexander Fraser, and the two of them thick as thieves? Though perhaps that’s not quite the figure of speech to be using for a pair of priests, but what I mean to say is, they might be brothers, soclose as they are, and the two writing back and forth from month to month. So—”
    Finally, Quinn was obliged to draw breath, giving Jamie the chance to stick a word in edgewise.
    “No,” he said definitely. “Not for all the tea in China.”
    Quinn’s long face creased in puzzlement. “China? What’s China got to do with it, for all love?”
    Ah. Another of Claire’s sayings, then. He tried again. “I mean I will not try to persuade my