Shadowbrook by Beverly Swerling Page B

to study the papers spread out on the scarred table, he dominated his visitor. “This map, you’re sure of it?”
    “Oui, mon Père.”
    The man, a Scot named Hamish Stewart, spoke passable French. He was the son of a minor laird from the Highlands, one of those who had clung to the True Faith since the days of the sainted Reine Marie—Mary Queen of Scots, as she was known to the English. Those who remained loyal to her these many years since her death were called Jacobites, after James II, the last Catholic king to rule over Britain and forced from the throne because of his religion. Many Jacobites smuggled their children to France to be educated, but
mon Dieu,
they never lost the Scots twist of tongue. The mutilated accent pained the priest’s ears. “We will speak English, so you will not fail to understand me. This land between the lake and the river, it is exactly as you have drawn it?”
    Père Antoine straightened and stepped aside. The candle flame illumined the map, the priest as well. He was of medium height, so thin as to be gaunt, and his brown hair was threaded with gray, but he still had the elegant carriage of the aristocratic family Rubin Montaigne into which he’d been born; a way of setting his shoulders and holding his head that no amount of asceticism could erase. “Exactly?” he asked again, indicating the map. “Because if there are errors—”
    “Na a single error,
mon Père.
I drew the thing meself. That’s the lay o’ Shadowbrook’s land, exactly as I saw it.”
    “Ah, then the question comes down to how well you see. I do not mean to be blunt, but with one eye …”
    Hamish Stewart had left the other eye on Culled Moor in 1746, fighting for the Bonnie Prince, Charles Edward Stuart, risking everything that a Catholic king might again rule Britain. A thousand Jacobites were slaughtered at Culloden. Thousands more were left so horribly maimed they could no longer think of themselves as men. They had been betrayed, as had happened so often before, by fellow Scots willing to sell their souls to the bloody Sassenachs, the devil-spawned English, may they choke on their God-rotting Act of Union. Blessed be the Holy Virgin and all the saints for letting him off that blood-soaked moor with na but the loss of an eye. But if he still had both—he chanced a sideways glance at the Franciscan—God’s truth, he wouldna be able to stare down this mad Friar. Like burning coals in his head, those black eyes were. Were he a heretic Protestant, God’s truth, he wouldna want to look into those eyes.
    “The pass,” Père Antoine said.
    Stewart bent over the table and studied the map as if he were looking at it for the first time, his eye squinting into the light of the flickering flame. After a few seconds he straightened. “I saw this place in 1730,
mon Père,
when I still had both eyes. Ephraim Hale himself showed me the lay of the land. I dinna make a mistake.”
    “And tell me again why you were there.”
    “The clan sent me. Back then there was still a wee bit o’ brass in the Highlands. There was talk o’ buying a bit o’ land in the New World, moving some o’ the young to a place where they’d be free o’ the devil Sassenachs.”
    “But these negotiations, they came to nothing?”
    “Less than that,
mon Père.
Hale wanted too much and we had too little. And the womenfolk dinna want the young to go.”
    Père Antoine bent once more over the map. “Exactly like this?” he repeated.
    “Aye, I swear it.”
    “Save your vows for the promises you make to God, my son. Here we are talking only of human intelligence.”
    “But for the good of Holy Church,
mon Père.
Is that na the same thing?”
    “Perhaps.” The black-eyed glance examined the Scot. He was a short, thick man, with straggly shoulder-length hair that was half black and half gray. His breeches and hip-length, belted coat were faded to no color and shabby with wear. “So that is why you have brought me this, Hamish