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Take a few staunch Calvinists, convinced that if they didn’t tuck their blankets tight, the Pope would nip down the chi them up in a prison cheek-by-joith in Maryaye, he could see it Football riots would be nothing to it, nu equal

"How did he come to be in Ardsmuir, then--Christie, I mean?"

Kenny looked surprised

"Och, he was a Jacobite--arrested wi’ the rest after Culloden, tried and imprisoned"

"A Protestant Jacobite?" It wasn’t ier bedfellows than that, and always had It was unusual, though

Kenny heaved a sigh, glancing toward the horizon, where the sun was slowly sinking into the pines

"Co inside then, MacKenzie If Toe, I suppose it’s best someone tells ye all about it If I hurry myself, ye’ll be in time for your supper"

Rosamund was not at home, but the buttermilk was cool in the well, as advertised Stools fetched and the butterood as his word, and started in in businesslike fashion Christie was a Lowlander, Kenny said; MacKenzie would have gathered as , Christie had been a ood business, newly inherited fro father Tom Christie was far froentleman

With this inthe city, Christie had put on his best suit of clothes and gone calling on O’Sullivan, the Irishe of the army commissary "Naebody kens what passed between them, other than words--but when Christie cahland Arht" Kenny took a long drink of sweet buttermilk and set down the cup, his er

"We heard what they were like, those balls at the Palace Mac Dubh told us of theain The Great Gallery, wi’ the portraits of all the kings o’ Scotland, and the hearths of blue Dutch tile, big enough to roast an ox The Prince, and all the great folk who’d come to see him, dressed in silks and laces And the food! Sweet Jesus, such food as he’d tell about" Kenny’s eyes grew round and drea descriptions heard on an eue came out and absently licked the buttermilk from his upper lip

Then he shook himself back to the present

"Well, so," he said, h, Christie ca Whether it was to mind his investment, or that he er noted privately that the notion of Christie having acted from patriotic motives wasn’t on Kenny Lindsay’s list of possibilities Whether from prudence or ambition, whatever his reasons, Christie had stayed--and stayed too long He had left the Army at Nairn, the day before Culloden, and started back toward Edinburgh, driving one of the coon and ridden one o’ the horses, he ht ha’ made it," Kenny said cynically "But no; he ran smack into a sackful o’ Caer nodded

"I heard tell as he tried to pass himself off as a peddler, but he’d taken a load of corn from a farmhouse on that road, and the farmer swore himself purple that Christie’d been in his yard no more than three days before, wi’ a white cockade on his breest So they took hione first to Berwick Prison, and then--for reasons known only to the Crown--to Ardsmuir, where he had arrived a year before Jamie Fraser

"I ca, then reached for the pitcher "It was an old prison--half-falling down--but they’d not used it for soht men from here and from there; maybe a hundred and fifty men, all told Mostly convicted Jacobites--the odd thief, and a er couldn’t help sreat storyteller, but he spoke with such si the scene he described: the soot-streaked stones and the ragged men Men from all over Scotland, ripped from home, deprived of kin and companions, thrown like bits of rubbish into a heap of coenerated a heat of rot that broke down both sensibility and civilness

Sroups had formed, for protection or for the comfort of society, and there was constant conflict between one group and another They banged to and fro like pebbles in the surf, bruising each other and now and then crushing soot in between

"It’s food and warht else to care for, in a place like that"

Aroups had been a small obdurate knot of Calvinists, headed by Thomas Christie Mindful of their own, they shared food and blankets, defended each other--and behaved with a dour self-righteousness that roused the Catholics to fury

"If one of us was to catch afire--and now and then, someone would, bein’ pushed into the hearth whilst sleepin’--they wouldna piss on hi his head "They wouldna be stealing food, to be sure, but they would stand in the corner and pray out loud, rattlin’ on and on about whore-ers and usurers and idolaters and the lot--and makin’ damn sure we kent as meant by it!"